From
Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox: The
Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (2012; pp. 167-168):
“You can
take a shower now,” I call into the dark of the apartment. [My husband] Eli is in the kitchen, still
dressed, uncorking a bottle of cheap kosher champagne. “Your favorite. [Your aunt] Chaya told me,” he says. I smile quickly. I don’t really like any wine at all.
As he
showers, I go to the bedroom with my champagne flute in hand and set it down on
the nightstand. My mother-in-law has
already laid out layers of cheap towels over one of the beds, and there is a
bottle of K-Y jelly as well. I put on a
long white nightgown.
I sit
down on the bed next to the nightstand and pop open the bottle of K-Y,
squeezing a pea-sized blob onto my fingers curiously. It’s surprisingly cold and viscous. Carefully, I lie down on the bed so that my
hips are on the towels and reach down to anoint myself gingerly with the clear,
cold jelly. I don’t want to get the new
linen dirty. It’s very dark, until Eli
opens the bathroom door and light pours faintly into the apartment. He comes into the bedroom wearing a towel
wrapped around his waist, and the outlines of his body are strange and
new. He smiles uncomfortably before
squatting on top of me like his teacher said, letting the towel roll off. I still can’t see much. I ease my knees apart and he moves closer,
adjusting his weight on his palms. I
feel something hard nudge my inner thigh.
It feels bigger than I expected it to.
He looks at me anxiously in the darkness. He’s nudging everywhere, waiting for some
sort of direction from me, I think, but what do I know? This is as much a mystery to me as to him.
Finally
he pokes, I think, in the right area, and I lift up to meet him and wait for
the obligatory thrust and the deposit.
Nothing happens. He pushes and
pushes, grunts with the effort, but nothing seems to give way. And in fact, I can’t see what should. What is expected to happen here?
After a
while he gives up and rolls over to one side, his back to me. I lie there for a few moments peering up at
the dark ceiling before I turn to nudge him slightly. “Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yes. I’m just very tired,” he murmurs.
Soon I
can hear him snoring lightly...
. . .
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