Yehooters

My brother’s name, Yehuda, is a fortuante name for me, because there are so many ways to make fun of it. Yehooters, Hooters, Ya-Who-Da, are all examples of how it has been misconstrued over the years. For over a decade, Gurty, a woman who dressed like a nurse and cleaned our parents apartment each week, called him Yehula. But no other misappropriation of the name has made as much of an impact as our sisters elementary school yearbook did.

When our sister, Ilana, first brought home her yearbook, Yehuda and I pored over the pictures of her friends and classmates. She was fourteen, three years older than me and six years older than Yehuda. Older kids had a certain mystique and everything they did – from the way they spoke with their hands, to the way their shirts hung out of their pants – held my attention. Staring at pictures of the graduates mid extra-curricular activity, was a lot like reading the ‘Stars, They’re Just Like Us’ section of Us Magazine.

Teachers, families and friends had purchased quarter to full page advertisements in the back of the yearbook, wishing the graduates well.

“Mazal Tov, Jacob! Love, Daniel, Jonathan and Sarah”

Together, my brother and I feverishly scanned the pages for our names. Eytan and Yehuda would stand out in the Michelles and Erics of our sisters class and their family members.

“Congratulations Ben! You did it! Love, Mom, Dad, Rachel and Emily”

The idea of our names printed in block letters in a published and distributed, hardcover book excited us. Yes, we were buried in the back of the 275 page tome, but we were in there, somewhere, and it proved that we were alive. “Eytan!” “Yehuda!” It would be written right there. Everyone who ever saw our parents half-page ad would know that we exist. And no one could argue with the 1991 Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy Jewish Day School Yearbook.

“Dear Ilana, We are so proud of you! May the future be bright. Love Mommy, Daddy, Eytan and Yelinda.”

We read silently. I took a breath and focused hard on my name. E-Y-T-A-N. No mistakes. It was spelled exactly as it was supposed to. Thank God. I was there.

Then I turned to my brother and said, “Yelinda?”

Could it be true? A variation on the name I never would have thought up myself? A twist so ludicrous, so feminine? This was a gift, I told myself. I looked at my brother next to me and screamed, “Yelinda!” and cackled like a true prick.

Yehuda just sat there, staring at the page, seething. How could anyone make such a ridiculous error, he must have thought. Sure ‘Yehuda’ is obscure, but not so much in an orthodox Jewish day school that a yearbook editor would somehow mistake it for Yelinda, an entirely made up name. This was an affront. A malicious act that denied his very existence, meant solely to piss him off and add fuel to his brother’s growing arsenal of name misuses. The plot against Yehuda.

“Shut up, Eytan,” he said calmly through his teeth as I howled away, “That’s not my name.”

But it was. Yelinda would become my brother, the yearbook said so right there in plain English. Yehuda was some kid my parents spoke about, it wasn’t written anywhere.

Over the next few weeks as I scratched the surface of Yelinda based teasing that would plague him for years to come, Yehuda pleaded with my parents to contact the yearbook editor and recall the printing.

“That’s impossible, Yehuda,” My father told him, “You are just going to have to live with it.” And he did, through countless taunting and provocations.

“Take a shower, ya smell, Yelinda!”

“Yelinda, stop eating cake, ya so fat!”

“Haha! Yelinda!”

If the 1991 yearbook editor knew the extent of the domestic abuse my brother suffered from his typo, I believe he would not have rushed through transcribing the half page ads in the rear of the book. Even after I graduated, three years later, and Yehuda was set in print and officially acknowledged in my half page ad, Yelinda stuck.

I only stopped making fun of my brother about his name, when I left for college and we stopped seeing each other daily. Distance turned the teasing into something more evil than I could stomach. He became Yehuda, sometimes Judah, as he prefers at the workplace and the bar. Today, Yelinda is saved for nostalgic purposes; High Holiday dinners, Milestone birthdays, perhaps a graduation.

Abi Gezunt

At age eleven, my prize possesion was an eight and a half by eleven inch photograph of a chimpanzee sucking on a cigar. Wearing cut off Jean shorts, red suspenders and a white T-shirt with the slogan ‘Abi-Gezunt,’ the monkey sat on a tar covered rooftop somewhere in Brooklyn, perhaps.

The origin of the photo was unknown. My older, benevolent, cousin Torin may have secretly stuffed it in my bag after a trip down to his home in Maryland. Or my mother may have pilfered it from the collection of one of her deceased clients, whom she acted as estate executor for, at her geriatric care management business. Either way, the photograph contained all the elements of absurdity that meant so much to me at that age.

Who on earth, I thought, had such a vivid imagination that they would take a picture of a monkey, smoking a cigar, on an urban rooftop? This genius, as far as I was concerned, took pains to dress the chimp in not just any human clothes, but ironic, silly clothes. Perhaps there was a costume designer involved in the shoot who had concieved of the monkeys dress to meet my exacting standard of ridiculousness. “Abi-Gezunt.” A Yiddish word, no doubt. A word my father could easily translate had I desired. Yet, I preferred it to remain non-sensical and add to the the mystique of the art. The less logical the picture, the more value it held.

I kept the photo in a plastic frame with a cardboard backing on a shelf above my bed in the room I shared with my younger brother of three years.

There were a few strict but fair rules for my brother regarding the monkey picture. He could look at it all he wanted, but he couldn’t take it out of the frame, nor could he take it out of the apartment. I would have preffered if the picture stayed in our room, but the end of the world would not come if he looked at it in the TV watching area. A violation of these rules would result in a swift dead arm punch, maybe a surprise kick in the butt.

“Relax, Eytan,” my brother said, annoyed, “I know.”

And he did. My brother undestood the value. He was respectful of the art. Sometimes I would come into our room at night and find him laying on my bed in an oversized t-shirt, resting the photo on his belly and pondering its mysteries.

Where did the monkey come from?

Why does he need suspenders?

How did they get on the roof?

Today, these mysteries don’t seem like mysteries at all or rather they are easily explained by answers that would never have satisfied our youthful minds. The monkey came from somewhere; He needs suspenders because someone put them on him; the roof was obviously unlocked.

As the years went by, we looked at the picture less, but it never lost its allure. Little league trophies were stacked in front of it on my shelf. And it was moved to a cabinet and got lost for a time behind a pile of MAD Magazines. But everytime it resurfaced, a warm feeling washed over me, like finding my riches still intact after leaving them unattended for so long.

One Shabbat afternoon when I was sixteen, my brother and his friend Zak were playing in our room. The games my brother and his friends played usually involved dumping a giant tub of legos on the floor and building a mismatched fort on wheels; occasionally they jumped on his bed or read Ren and Stimpy comic books; perhaps they smacked each other with pillows. They were fun activities and I often inserted myself in the playdate despite my three years seniority. Zak was happy to hang out with an older kid, but my brother rolled his eyes at me.

When Yehuda and I hung out, I was the more dominineering sibling. The games I liked were, tie my him to a chair, pile on him, and stuff him under the bed. He enjoyed these games somewhat, I think, but certainly did not want to play them with Zak, whom he was the more domineering friend with.

I was letting them admire my baseball card collection when Zak started jumping on my bed.

“Stop jumping on my bed, Zak,” I said forcefully.

“Why? It’s cool, we always do it,” he replied.

“What?” I said and looked at my brother, who was examining my Ken Griffey Jr rookie card all too closely. Jumping on my bed while I was around, was one thing, like a little annoying joke to get under my skin, but stamping all over the place I sleep when no one was looking, was a malicious disrespect. A ‘fuck you.’ He had his own bed to jump on, not five feet away.

“No, we don’t,” my brother said casually, “he doesn’t know what he is talking about.”

But before I could respond, something fell out of Zak’s pocket into the rumpled quilt on my bed. He quickly snatched it up and threw it at me.

“Here,” he said and continued jumping.

It was a piece of bulging paper folded over several times. I unfolded it slowly to reveal the monkey picture, sectioned and flaking at its folds. The paper was so thick, that he had to have used the edge of a table to make the deep creases. The chimps head was framed by white wrinkly gashes where the paper was folded. The slogan on his shirt was partially gone, folded over at the tag line.

“What the hell is this?” I asked my brother, incredulously. I ignored Zak, even though he had the picture in his pocket. He was my brothers friend, after all, equal to a stranger brought in and vouched for by a resident. I held my brother responsible for all his actions.

“Shoot,” my brother said lazily. He seemed to know he was in trouble, but only partially cared, as if he knew I was about to make a scene and was waiting for me to get it over with. And I did. I shouted and screamed and cried a little because of how much I liked that picture.

He took it all in, got scared at the parts he was supposed to get scared at and admitted guilt. But there was a coolness to his response.

“It’s done, Eytan,” he said after I calmed down, “What do you want me to do?”

“I want…” I didn’t know how to respond. There was nothing he could do that would fix the picture. He knew it and he knew I knew it. This unexpected logic threw my tempertantrum wildly off course.

I raised a fist to punch him in the arm.

“Don’t beat me up, Eytan,” he said impatiently.

Somehow I began feeling vulnerable. It didn’t make much sense, but I felt it. He was responsible for ruining the monkey picture, yet I was feeling immature. Perhaps it was his recent Bar-Mitzvah or perhaps he had simply been through this enough times, but that day my brother figured out how to take the upper hand in our relationship. It wasn’t the end of the teasing and tormenting, I would still find excuses to tie him down and almost drool on him, but he forced me to become smarter in my provocations.

Zak tried to smooth out the creases in the photo and leaned it against a cup full of pencils on my desk.

“Sorry, Eytan, Sorry,” he said in all seriousness. He appeared to be oblivious to the transition that had taken place or he was quietly relishing his pride as my brother was.

I got up and left them to their playdate. I wasn’t really needed there.