From
Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox: The
Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (2012; p. 172):
The days
after the wedding, which should be the happiest of my life, become consumed by
the effort to consummate my marriage.
But as each effort results in failure, [my husband] Eli becomes more and
more anxious, and as a result, his family exerts more and more pressure on us
to be finished with it. By the third
try, Eli can no longer muster any eagerness from his own body, and I cannot
submit to something that isn’t there...
In
yeshiva, Eli says, the boys would jerk each other off. Because there were only men around and no
girls, the sight of a boy could get him aroused. After many years, he explains with a sigh, to
switch suddenly is weird. “I don’t even
know if I should be attracted to you. I
didn’t even have an idea of what a girl looked like before I saw you.”
I’m
suddenly horribly self-conscious. I took
for granted that he would be excited at the mere glimpse of me. But now I see my body through his eyes –
foreign, mysterious, and confusing.
. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment