Without a Doubt - [69]

By now, my old school chums were history. I wouldn’t date high school boys. I didn’t have to. Village dudes were invariably more attractive to me than high school geeks. I’d finally found someplace where I belonged. Then, once again, the ax fell. We had to move again-back to the West Coast, this time to Los Angeles. I was too young to stay in New York and finish high school alone. I had to go with my parents.

That next fall, when I started college at U.C. Riverside, I was suffering from depression. I hated the place. I hated life in a girls’ dorm. You can understand why. I’d just come from the Village, which was on the cutting edge of everything from street fashion to politics. Now all of a sudden, here I was, stuck in a dormitory where my floormates wore curlers and fuzzy slippers and agonized over whether boys should be allowed to use the girls’ bathrooms during Sunday visits.

I had fun shocking people. I still dressed in my Village clothes, which consisted mostly of velvet and leather. The only thing I would consider wearing to bed was an ivory satin gown, Jean Harlow-style, fitted to the hips and flaring out into a swirl around the ankles. I’d found it in a thrift shop. The Sandra Dee types viewed me with suspicion, and I avoided them like the plague. After two weeks I transferred to a coed dorm where I had a much better time.

The coursework was easy and I found a terrific jazz dance class. It was taught by Joe Tremaine, a slender redhead who had an impressive list of professional credits as both a dancer and a choreographer. It was just dumb luck to have run into someone that good. Joe gave me religion. One day the class was doing a combination he’d just demonstrated when he suddenly stopped the music and glared at us.

“You all think you can just get out there and wiggle your fannies and have a good time, don’t you? Well, you look sloppy and amateurish. Anyone can see it. I can tell who’s had ballet. I can tell who’s trained and worked, and who hasn’t. There’s no substitute for real work. If you’re not working, you’re not fooling anyone but yourselves.”

I knew he was right. Whether I ever danced professionally or not, I knew I wanted to do it right or not at all. The next day I got myself into a ballet class and continued to study ballet for the next twelve years. I danced until the rigors of trial work, and later, motherhood, made it impossible for me to keep up.

The following year I transferred to UCLA. I cut classes as often as I could get away with it. I don’t mean to leave the impression that I was a slacker. Far from it. I just preferred to study on my own. In fact, I took a heavy load each semester so I could graduate as soon as possible. I also worked several nights a week as a waitress at a local steak house. I hardly dated at all. To make up for the absence of a social life, I started folk dancing, which was a real craze back then. I made a few good friends, mostly women, and we started going out together on the nights when there was no good place to dance. Our favorite watering hole was on Fairfax Avenue.

This was the early seventies; the Six-Day War, which had ended in a huge victory for Israel, was still fresh in the minds of American Jews. Israeli males who streamed to the States in its aftermath carried with them not only the aura of foreignness but the macho allure of the conqueror. Most of these hotshots found their way to Jewish communities, where they felt most at home. In Los Angeles, that was the Fairfax district.

Fairfax Avenue was jammed with small restaurants that served falafel and shuwarma. They were in constant and largely unsuccessful competition with Cantor’s Delicatessen, the flagship anchored on the busiest part of the thoroughfare. Cantor’s was the premier hangout for newly arrived Israelis, as well as for Americans who wanted to meet them. Young Jewish girls who were bored by the nice Jewish boys they’d grown up with were thrilled by the prospect of these exotic specimens. (How strenuously, after all, could one’s parents object? These Israelis were Jewish-and war heroes to boot.)

The Israelis were perfectly well aware of their allure, and took full advantage of the many romantic opportunities it afforded them. Some were honorable; some weren’t. The rogues among them left a trail of broken hearts and bitter stories that eventually saddled the whole lot with reputations as womanizing bastards. When I came on the scene, that rep hadn’t yet evolved; we still had reason to believe that they could be okay guys.

My girlfriends and I tended to congregate at a joint across the street from Cantor’s. It had only about ten glass-topped tables, seating forty at most. On the walls hung posters of Israel. A tape of popular Israeli music played nonstop. The owners didn’t object to patrons nursing cups of coffee for hours rather than spending money on dinner. This made it a great favorite of the Israelis, and of the girls looking for Israelis.

It was there I met my first husband.

I wasn’t looking for a husband, or even a boyfriend. I had no desire to be added to anyone’s list of conquests. My friends and I had finished eating when I was aware that one of the sharks was cruising our way. I was about to warn my friends to ignore him when he pulled up a chair and sat down next to me.