I'm writing essays now

And here's the first one

This summer, I’ll be writing an essay every week (or so), ideally around 12 in total. These will be personal and non-astrological, a book-in-progress fed by your input and insight. I hope you’ll become a paid subscriber to support this new project. Here’s the first one:

5870 W. Olympic Boulevard

I never had heating, in any of the apartments I lived in in Los Angeles. I suffered plenty in Boston and New York, through the sort of cold that would gather between your toenails. But the buildings were heated—often oppressively so, the dermatological consequences of which would require full tubs of Aquaphor, to be slabbed on nightly. But I never shivered at night as I did in Los Angeles, the pads of my feet hitting tundral linoleum in the morning, each tip-toe to the bathroom an exercise in agony.

It’s the winters I remember most fondly when I recall working at the Westside Jewish Community Center, on Olympic Avenue, in L.A.’s Pico-Robertson neighborhood.

When I was 22, I got a job with my Jewish spiritual community, my de facto mishpucha in Los Angeles, whose base of operations was at the JCC. On Shabbat and holidays, we’d make over the gymnasium into a prayer space, where the percussionists pounded and the Rabbi delivered fire from heaven. And on weekdays, we’d occupy a few rickety offices in the back. Since that time, the community has grown, and found better digs. This moment in time feels like polaroid footage in a documentary — that dingy studio where the band recorded its early hits.

It was me and a cadre of Ashkenazi women in that chilly building. If we’d kept to the diet of potatoes and buttered rolls which sustained our ancestors through winter in Kiev, we’d have been fine; but alas, this was L.A., and we all had some cross to bear about gluten. While davening at services, we’d clutch our talit for warmth, like they were mink stoles. At the office, we’d sit at our desks in sweaters, and sometimes gloves. I would recall my seventh grade math teacher Ms. Farley, who wore white gloves while attacking the chalk board. “I HAVE ROSACEA,” she’d announce. WE KNOW, I wanted to say. I was a pest in her class, taking out my worst mommy issues on her. She never forgave me. When I’d run into her, years later, I’d have to hear about my menacing dark days. The shame would make my cheeks burn red, as if I were the one afflicted with an inflammatory skin condition.

But I never got in trouble at this job, and was loved unconditionally. As the only male of the lot, I was afforded great leniency, and I regret how I took advantage of my status as the little prince. I can’t imagine that I was a good employee. I’d wander off, and my manager, so like an older sister to me, would ask: “where is he always going?” One Purim, I lost 100 mishloach manot, gift bags meant to go to the community. I was spoiled, talking about my destiny as a writer of comic books and movies. Life hadn’t sufficiently humiliated me enough to make me a good worker. But they kept me around, for my joie de vivre, and for the way I could, with great pleasure, greet congregants on Saturday mornings.

To get to the bathroom, you’d have to walk the long way from one side of the building to the other. I felt like one of Bluebeard’s brides, crossing into a forbidden wing of the castle. The center had been considered state-of-the-art when it was constructed in the ’50s. Now, there were stairways that led nowhere and haunted closets. Still, considering that most of the state’s Jewish Community Centers were shuttered, this one, and its people, were something of survivors.

I’d pass the gym, where Russian septuagenarians would meet for boot camp training, their fortysomething coach clearly atoning in some Fitness community exile, longing to find his way back to Equinox. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” he’d yell at them, as they’d raise frail bones for leg lifts. “One,” they’d moan, “two…” I laughed them off at first, but inevitably came to regard them as triumphant, turning up in purple nylon sweatsuits, their eyebrows pencilled and bouffants sprayed to solidity. The building could fall down at any moment; the city could often felt like a fading hallucination. But there was something unyielding in the Jewish women around me, something hard and joyful. They endured.

In the cavernous bathroom, I’d ready myself for the bracing sting of cold porcelain, and then find myself lingering in the hollow, watching Vines or scrolling gay sex apps like JACK’D. Sex for me was a map of embarrassments and “stories,” obvious cries for help. I had no map of myself yet, no understanding of why my moods careened and collapsed, why my life didn’t yet make sense. I was the fourth son at the Passover table, the one who doesn’t know how to ask.

One night, I got lucky. I caught a Crossfit instructor on Scruff, and had him over to my moldy apartment. He was built like a minivan, with light eyebrows and a sweet, innocent smile. I thought he must be in his mid-twenties, but he told me he was 38. It wasn’t just that he looked young, but that he was progressing through a life without friction. When did this begin, this blurring? How would you know when it was too late?

I played dead for much of the sex, as was my way for most of my twenties, but in the end, came to orgasm in his arms. “You just needed someone to hold you,” he said.

Certain days at the JCC brought us to new levels of humility. There were the N.A. meetings, directly next to the Rabbi’s office. She’d come out of harrowing familial mediations, political dialogues, or from writing the sort of sermons which would change history, only to find outside her door a gaggle of lost souls, a motley crew resembling a police lineup — or actor’s callback. The women who ran my shul worked beyond selflessness, but in conditions like this, you couldn’t take yourself too seriously. Most of the time, all we could do was laugh.

I was taken in by the whole community, invited to Shabbat dinners and seen as something of an adopted son to many of the chic women who populated services, wearing fine linens to discuss climate change with the Rabbis. Despite my insistence that I was going places, it was clear that I didn’t have the thick skin to work my way u the industry. But at shul I thrived, and greeted morning services with elan. I’d meet writers and directors within the community, but would come off as obsequious, obviously wanting a taste of their blood. It didn’t occur to me that they were now in my turf, that within these frozen walls I was for once secure.

Working in a Jewish community, you experience every life cycle, of every congregant. With so much grief, there had to be celebration, which meant that there was always a birthday cake to slice into. Women have a thing with sweets. It’s not to say that I haven’t terrorized myself over body standards since I was 10. But it’s not the same as what girls get. Every box of pastries sent by a grateful Bar Mitzvah mother would inspire tortured hesitation, hands shaking before giving into rapture. Sugar was a fetish, and to bite into that gooey sufgania was to take a lashing from the sadist’s whip. But when one of the Rabbis baked, I was always game, never wincing as I licked the icing.

The winters had been disenchanting, but somehow, the summers felt like even more of a betrayal. Endless light cast a heavy contrast. I was depressed, and saying it out loud to my mother for the first time made me burst into tears. I didn’t look like the other men at the West Hollywood Crunch, and I couldn’t see my way in this world anymore, in any of the nice houses I went to for Torah study. When I’d meet middle-aged writers whose moment still hadn’t come, I felt myself fading deeper into the netherworld, the dusty bungalow of purgatory. Girls and Broad City had freshly debuted. My idols were in Brooklyn and Manhattan, stomping around, pissing people off. I had a new dream, or delusion, to cleave to. New York was calling.

I got an interview to be a production assistant on a Marvel series, and even met with the showrunner. After, I sat in my Jeep on the Disney lot, and made myself a promise: If I got the job, I’d stay. Otherwise, off to New York. The job didn’t happen, and, concurrently, my apartment building was sold. The owners offered each tenant a few thousand dollars to pack up and leave. I knew it was my time.

We held my final cake ceremony in the Rabbi’s office. I don’t think I deserved that much love, but I got it anyway. That last Shabbat felt like a season finale; they even wrote a goodbye to me in the Torah study leaflet. After services, the Rabbi caught me on the stairs of the JCC, looked me in the eyes, and told me that I was making a mistake. “Why would you leave a community behind that loves you so much?” It was devastating, a living legend asking me to wake up: this is your life, and you’re missing it.

It broke my heart, but I made the right choice, moving on. I return for high holy days every few years or so, at the shul’s new digs, and I’m hugged and fawned over as if I’m still the synagogue orphan, forever the lost child in the mall these women took in. The country has devolved, and the women of this temple have only gotten stronger and harder and more loving than ever before.

I’m not built like them. The rooms within me are at once cavernous and cramped, overly exposed and poorly heated. There would be warmer days for me, in New York and beyond, but the chill always sets back in. All that remains is for the lost to be held and fed, before they continue to wander the ruins.