Written by Lytton Bell. Lytton is a first-time Jewrotica writer.
Hans was in his early sixties when I met him in 1992. I was twenty at the time, a student at a small liberal arts college in the tiny Pennsylvania town where we both lived. We met in a painting class at a local art gallery. I was a dabbler with tons of enthusiasm and very little skill or experience. Hans was already an established painter who’d sold his work for thousands of dollars across Europe. His paintings were gorgeous and extreme. Though they were abstract, they seemed to tell a story filled with fierce emotions. The violent splashes of bright color were tinged with a powerful anguish that touched me in a way I could not understand.
Though he looked like an “old man” to me at first glance, I also couldn’t help noticing his undeniable sex appeal. He was long and lean, with a gray beard and dark, piercing eyes. A cigarette hung perpetually from his pink lips, which looked soft and plump. He met your gaze in a penetrating way that made a person feel really seen – often uncomfortably so. He was quiet and laid back, but with a pent-up intensity that hovered around him like a force field. I felt flustered and did not know how to act around him, so I did the first thing that came naturally. I flirted.
The other two people in the class, the instructor and a bored housewife – both middle aged women – found the whole thing very amusing. Hans seemed perplexed – almost alarmed. Yet he never lost his gentle and serene composure.
One day I thought I might have gone too far. Hans was wearing an ornate leather belt on his paint-stained jeans, which clung to his thighs and ass in a very flattering way. As I complimented the craftsmanship of the item, I ran my hand over the buckle. Hans sucked in a breath. “Come outside with me while I smoke a cigarette,” he whispered in his husky Austrian accent. I did.
Once we were outside, he lit the cigarette and took a long drag, leaning back against the brick wall facing the alley. “Are you just flirting, or do you want something from me?” he asked, blunt as can be. I couldn’t fathom what he meant. “Like what?” I ventured. With that, he tossed the cigarette down and ground it under his heel. Before I understood what was happening, he had backed me up against the wall and his hot tongue was invading my mouth. He was a skilled kisser, and every time his tongue rolled over mine I got a flutter in my tummy and a wet surge of arousal down my inner thighs. My nipples tingled, straining against the fabric of my shirt.
I wasn’t a virgin, but my experiences with sex up to that point had been extremely limited and very, very bad. My ex-boyfriend, the overweight tuba player for the high school band, had been a quick, clumsy and selfish lover. Not even reading D.H. Lawrence novels in the woods behind the gym had prepared me for Hans. Nothing could have.
After class, Hans took me to his apartment – a small studio, with a wall full of windows, over a little bakery. He had virtually no furniture. The floor was covered with canvases, tubes of oil paint and brimming ashtrays. He took his time making love to me but barely spoke a word. At one point, I noticed he was crying. At first I was frightened, but then I decided they must be joyful tears. I can’t remember the exact moment when I spotted the faint numbers tattooed vertically along the inside of his wrist. All the blood drained out of my face. I’d had to interview Holocaust survivors for a school project some years earlier, so I knew precisely what it meant. Hans immediately saw my distress.
“It wasn’t as bad for me as it was for others. I don’t even think about it anymore,” he tried to reassure me. I kissed him with an extra surge of passion now. Growing up in an upper middle class neighborhood on the nice side of town, I’d never had to deal with deprivation or oppression of any kind. I couldn’t even imagine it. Yet here he was, years after the fact, boldly making art, embracing life. I would have expected him to be bitter, or traumatized, but he never was. The one thing he did not ever want to do, though, was talk about it.
Celebrating 10 Years & Marking the End of An Amazing Project
Celebrating 10 Years & Marking the End of An Amazing Project
I’m into Jewrotica. I went in for my second circumcision.
I had a great time deejaying at the Jewrotica event at Columbia University. The live readings were hilarious, informative, and in some cases, deeply moving. I know that I, along with many of my AEPi fraternity brothers, loved being able to connect our Judaism and our sexuality in a way that made all of us feel comfortable and welcome. I look forward to being a part of this again in the future!
You may not tell your mom that you’re going to a live Jewrotica reading (or whatever clever name you will dub these events) but you will tell your friends. However, both would be jealous if they find out that they missed it. I think it will only be a matter of time before Jewrotica helps us reclaim the term “Dirty Jew” the way rap music has done for “The ‘N’ Word.” I know I am now proud to be a Dirty Jew!
I’m so glad that Jewrotica is represented here at Jewlicious! It’s bringing voices that need to be heard in the Jewish discussion and Jewish climate environment.
The Jewrotica event “Evening of Jewrotica: Bedside Reading” was awesome. As Master of Confessions, I got to read the deepest, darkest secrets of people in the room out loud… It was scintillating, titillating, and – yes – even educational!
Jewrotica is a great way to ask interesting questions about the interplay between sensuality and Jewish wisdom. Check it out.
I attended and participated in last month’s Jewrotica event. The engaging performers and Ayo, our inviting host, inspired the audience to feel like one big community. What a great way to inspire our community to embrace sex as a beautiful thing that can be fun, exciting, sacred, sensual, ridiculous, scary and everything in between!
At Jewrotica’s Evening of Bedside Readings, students declaimed monologues on sexual encounters that had a Jewish twist. At Columbia/Barnard Hillel, the speakers pushed their own boundaries by performing a range of explicit narratives that challenged how the audience thought of the relationship to Judaism and sex. During the speakers’ preparation, the arguments about which narratives would be appropriate forced students to take a stand and voice their opinion on their own beliefs about Judaism an… Read more
The people behind Jewrotica are quite quality! I have confidence that any project these folks take on will be equally quality.
I love the inclusiveness – there is something for everyone, in and out of the Jewish community.
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