In the 1970s I knew very little about diamonds as a child other than Superman could squeeze coal with his steel-hard hands to create diamonds and my father had bought a diamond ring for my mother. It was a hundredth of the size of the diamonds Superman never gave to Lois Lane, but my mother loved hers often singing, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”
Marilyn Monroe performed a breathy version of that song in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. I like my mother’s rendition better, however this preference failed to diminish my ignorance about diamonds and films like TO CATCH A THIEF and THE PINK PANTHER shone nothing on the glitter. Their only lesson was that diamonds were worth stealing. Murph the Surf must have seen the same movies, because in 1964 he masterminded the theft of the ‘Star of India’ from the New York’s Natural History Museum.
His arrest didn’t deter my casual casing Boston’s museums and jewelry stores. The guards were armed with pistols and the salesmen scrutinized every teenager boy as a potential thief. In the end I bought a gold locket for my girlfriend and abandoned this outlaw ambition to become a writer. My mother cried and my father said I would end up living under a bridge. I told them I’d be on the Johnny Carson Show within a year.
“Johnny Carson doesn’t appear under bridges.” My father believed in 9 to 5.
“Well, neither do poets.” At least none that I could think of.
My pursuit of literary success forced a move from Boston to New York in 1976. I lived in the East Village with my hillbilly girlfriend. Alice studied acting and I wrote detective poems. For money I worked at Hurrah, a punk disco, on West 62nd Street. An off-duty cop moonlighted as security. His seventeen year-old nephew wanted to see the Ramones. As doorman I possessed the privilege of free admission. Seymour’s skinny nephew and his friend got their wish. Richie Boy thanked me with a gram of blow. The teenager from the Five Towns and I became friends.
That summer Richie worked for his father at his father’s jewelry store on Canal Street. The window sparkled with diamonds and glowed with gold and pearls. All Manny’s kids were grown up and he was divorced from Richie’s mother. At the height of his powers the fifty year-old looked like the Jackie Mason and he wasn’t above not telling the girls he wasn’t the Jewish shtick comedian.
Once a week I came downtown to have lunch. It was a perk for getting Richie free drinks at the bar. Manny ordered from sandwiches from Little Italy and told funny stories about thieves, women, and diamonds. None of them explained womens attraction to the sparkle other than in base greed.
“Women like to see men spend money they don’t want to spend. If anyone who says it’s not about the money, then it’s definitely about the money.” Manny’s low estimation of humanity was based on his daily contact with gonifs, schnorrers, and starkers. I had read most of Isaac B Singer’s books and Manny was surprised by my knowledge of Yiddish. “My son knows nothing.”
“Weiss nichts, sagt nichts.” I had graduate from university. A good one, but all I knew was basically monkey no know, monkey no say.
“I know how to sell.” Richie had coined more than an investment banker that summer from buying graduation Rolexes from his high school friends desperate to finance their disco evenings at Studio 54. Richie smiled at his father. “I know nimmt geld. Take the money. That’s enough.”
“Alevai, my son, the genius.”
Richie Boy was supposed to go onto college, instead he followed my nightclub career from Hurrah’s to The Jefferson, an after-hours club frequented by movie stars, pop singers, and top models. Richie never got home before dawn. His professors failed grade a student whose existence was merely a name. They gave him an incomplete.
Later that summer I left my hillbilly girlfriend for a blonde model from Buffalo. Lisa disappeared in the summer of 1980 on a trip to Milan. Richie dropped out of Baruch and started full-time with his father when gold spiked to $800 in January of 1980. They ran a foundry behind the store on Elizabeth Street. They couldn’t count the money fast enough, but this gold rush died out after a few months and I was arrested by Internal Affairs for working an illegal nightclub establishment. I got off with a good word from Seymour, who told the judge, “Basically the goy was a schlemiel.”
No one liked being called an idiot, even if it gets them off with a full dismissal, but Seymour also said I was the shabbas goy for his family, the gentile who turned on the lights for holy days. That comment was a little nicer and closer to the truth. I attended a whole slew of the Jewish family functions; weddings, funerals, bris, and Sedars.
“If there was some way to make you an honorary Jew, I would,” Manny declared after a few too many cocktails at the Hanukkah party in 1981. He held up a knife to demonstrate how.
“Sorry, but my schlong is already schnitten.” My circumcision came at birth.
“So you’re still a sheygutz. Some people think that’s a bad word for a goy and it can be, but for me it means you’re a smart goy, unless of course I mean sheygutz the other way.” Manny liked leaving himself an out for every eventuality. I thanked him and wished everyone a happy holiday. Richie wasn’t happy, since I was leaving in January for Paris.
“I don’t know why you’re going.” Richie was teary-eyed. He was two drinks ahead of his father.
“The new club is doing great.”
“True.” I was grinding $500/night at the door of the Continental on West 25th Street. The owner, Arthur, had partnered up with the FBI and Russian counterfeiters. My ex-Lisa, being the Russian’s girlfriend had been nothing more than a coincidence, but Arthur had warned that Uncle Seymour couldn’t save me from the rumored Internal Affairs investigation.
“So why not leave?”
For Richie the Continental was simply a good time. Like almost everyone else not written into the main drama the minor participants would have to learn about the NYPD payoff scandal from the New York Times.
“Weiss nichts, sagt nichts.” I knew nothing and said nothing. “Trust me, it’s better I get out of town.”
“
Yeah, sie gesund.” Richie had learned how to say ‘be well’ in Yiddish.
Two months later I was sitting at the Cafe de Flore on the Boulevard St. Germain. I read in the Herald Tribune about a cop scandal in New York. Arthur had kept my name out of the paper, although my subleasee said a Grand Jury subpoena had been stuffed under the door of my East Village apartment.
I remained in Paris through the 1980s, coming back once a year to see my family and friends. In New York I stayed with Richie.
The jewelry business bloomed under Reagan, although Little Italy was overwhelmed by the influx of Chinese illegals from Fujien province. Richie was looking to move uptown to 47th Street. His father wanted to stay put on Elizabeth Street. They argued about the future, especially when Richie’s older brother entered the business after a failed career as a car salesman in New Jersey.
“I don’t mind him coming into the business as long as Chet doesn’t affect my income.”
“He’s your brother.” Manny cared for all his kids. “How could he affect your income?”
Chet was crazy. A horse had kicked him in the head at a stable outside Boston. My older brother was a lawyer. I had called him to see if Googs had a case. My brother had explained Googs had been whipping a horse in a stall.
“Oh, so there’s no case,” Manny had said after hearing this story. “But no arrest either,so all is good.”
“I guess so,”I had answered, because nothing about Chet’s head was right.
I returned to America later that year to write porno scripts for my cousin, Sharon, in North Hollywood, hoping to become the Hemingway of XXX. Her producer criticized my scenarios as too pseudo-intellectual.
“Too much cheese and not enough pizza boy.”
A literary agent read one of my straight efforts GONE TO HELL and hooked me up with an albino film producer. We wrote WHERE THE HIGHWAY ENDS in a snow-bound cabin outside of Kent. Ct. Flush with money. I stupidly rejected the producer’s offer to meet the film’s prospective lead in Thailand and jetted to France instead to write a collection of semi-fiction. The agent disowned me for this move and the producer refused my phone calls. When I returned to New York, Manny castigated my decision without any restraint, “What’s the first rule of New York?”
“Don’t trust anyone.”
“Yes, and what’s the first rule in selling diamonds?”
“Nimmt geld?” I had learned Yiddish from Leo Rosen THE JOYS OF YIDDISH and Isaac B Singer’s writings.
“Yes, take the money.” Manny threw his hands the air. “You fail to obey this rule and we might have to revoke your honorary Jew status.”
Richie was more forgiving. They had made the move to a diamond exchange on 47th Street. No more Italian subs, but the pastrami sandwich from the Berger’s Deli was built for two. Richie and I shared one.
“So what are you going to do?” Richie positioned napkins on his lap and chest to avoid any greases dripping onto his Armani suit. He had bought it :hot’ from Frankie Fingers, the street’s haberdasher.
“Work in a club, I guess.” Fifteen publishers had rejected my stories.
“Any ideas?”
“None at all.” I stalled getting a job for several months, while I rewrote my short stories. The amount of typos was astounding, almost as if my fingers suffering from dyslexia.
The New Year brought an eviction notice. I didn’t panic. My landlord couldn’t take me to court for another three months. The refrigerator went empty and the heating was augmented by the gas range, as I typed away at my kitchen table, imagining fame and fortune would save me two minutes after I wrote THE END, then the springs of my typewriter broke with a off-note twang.
I walked to the repair shop through a snowstorm. The man at the counter said fixing the Olivetti portable would cost $50. My wallet held $10. Richie had returned from a ski trip to Jackson Hole. He had to be in a good mood to lend $50 and I trudged up 5th Avenue to his store. My toes were wet icicles and my fingers frozen worms by the time I opened the glass door to the diamond exchange.
Richie stood behind the counter. He wasn’t wearing his usual tailored suit, but a fleece sweater and jeans, which had been sliced to the knee to allow access to the steel pins screwed into his legs.
“What happened?” This was not good. No one on crutches likes to be asked for money.
“I popped both my knees skiing. I’ll be off my legs for six months. You working?”
“No.” I could see what was coming and realized THE END would have to wait until summer.
“I need someone to schlepp around goods.”
“Goods?” I knew ‘schlepp’ meant to carry.
“Diamonds, jewelry to repair, money. Someone I can trust. Manny, what you think?”
“Why not?” Manny glanced up from a small pile of iridescent stones. “As long as you show up on time and don’t break my balls, you’ll do fine. $100 a day.”
“Cash?” I hadn’t paid taxes in ten years.
“I’m not the IRS.” Manny dropped a necklace into a small manila envelope and wrote an address. “Take this to the setter. Have him call me, then come back here fast. I got more for you to do.”
“Okay.” I had become a worker in less than a minute.
“Don’t lose anything.”
Sure.” I stuffed the envelope inside my damp jacket. “What time is lunch?”
“The goy hasn’t been working for more than a minute and already worried about lunch. I’ll order you a sandwich for when you get back.” Manny resumed sorting the diamonds.
“Thanks,” Richie said from his desk.
“Thank you.” I would be able to pay off my back rent within the month.
“Can you two stop the love story and let the goy get going?” Manny sighed with annoyance.
“You know, Manny, I know nothing about diamonds.”
“And you don’t need to know shit. You go where you’re told and come back. Now already.”
Six hours later we locked the merchandise in the safe. I hadn’t lost anything.
“So now you’re an official shabbat goy.” Manny flipped me a twenty. “For dinner. Now help Richie to a cab. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Will you tell me about diamonds tomorrow?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you a story or two.”
There would be much more than one or two, because I had survived day one as a goyim on 47th Street and my life wasn’t going anywhere fast. At least not in 1990.