Hills Like White Danishes – A New Year’s Story

The big night was upon them. Sol made an effort. He put on cologne and shaved. He wore a blazer, which didn’t actually button around his middle, but he wasn’t sure it ever did. He picked Rita up at her place. She was dazzling as usual. All feminine fleshy folds just barely tucked into a black satin cocktail dress, her reddish hair falling in soft curls around her dimpled cheeks. She smelled like fresh baked bread and Madagascar vanilla.

Sol took her arm and they made their way downstairs to the curb where the taxi was waiting for them. After they waited in line, after they met up with Rita’s friends, and after they checked their coats, they settled down at a table for two, abutting the table where Rita’s publishing friends were seated. Sol perused the menu, but he already knew what he was ordering. Rita knew his taste to the T. Once they had ordered, Sol felt much more at ease. Food was on the way.

Rita took his clammy hands in hers across the table and looked into his small deep-set eyes.

“Thank you. This means a lot to me.”

“Do I still get my private show later on?”

Rita blushed. “You’d better believe it.”

The band was called Kugelmass and the show began quite tame. Sol appreciated the fact that most of the songs that they played had culinary names: “The Corned Beef Chacha,” “The Bagel Tanz,” and the one he particularly appreciated, “Bei Mir Bistro Shein.”

He was actually enjoying himself. He fed whitefish-spread rye crackers to Rita, allowed her to ply him with forkfulls of sour-cream dipped knish, and enjoyed the sensation of her lips as she sucked an errant glob of mustard off his thumb.

Until the stage went dark and out came the Belly Dancing Rabbi. Barbara Streisand in drag was a bit easier for him to stomach, and he even found the men who danced the Hava Nagila clad in nothing but alternating Santa Claus beards and black hats kind of funny, but when a Hasidic-dressed woman stripped down to nothing but a black leather thong and a cap-topped wig, Sol started to have heart palpitations.

Rita was laughing and grinning so hard that Sol was certain her cheeks hurt. He didn’t want to ruin her night, but he was becoming increasingly more and more uncomfortable.

I’m a Yeshiva-educated nice Jewish telepharmacist from Brooklyn. My mother would be rolling in her grave if she wasn’t, tfu tfu tfu, still alive. He thought to himself.

But when a blonde-wigged wonder came out wearing nothing but a bacon bra, and the Hasidic woman started to nosh on them lascvisiously, Sol excused himself. He nearly ran, red-faced, all the way to the men’s room. He washed his face vigorously and sat outside on a bench in the lobby.

Rita came looking for him soon after.

“You okay?”

Sol nodded.

Rita sat down next to him.

“Did the food disagree with you?”

Sol shook his head no.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m just uncomfortable in there, that’s all,” he shrugged.

“I would never have guessed you were such a prude from the way you act in the bedroom,” Rita said shyly, blushing.

“What goes on in there you find hilarious, but when you talk about me and you together, that makes you blush?”

Rita looked down at the red carpeting.

“Don’t be sad, bubbelah,” Sol touched one of his chubby fingers to her chin, tilting her face up. “Go back in there and have a good time. I’ll just wait here.”

“No…Solly. That’s not it. I’m blushing because, what’s in there,” she said with a nod to the doors she had just come through, “that’s not real. But this,” she said as she looked into his eyes, “this is as real as it gets.”

She leaned over to kiss him, but Sol put a finger to her lips.

“Uh-uh-uh…” he shook his head, clucking his tongue, “it’s not midnight yet…” and he took her by the hand and led her out into the cold wet Brooklyn night.

He hailed a taxi, and they held hands and smiled all the way back to his apartment. All he had in the fridge in the way of alcohol was a bottle of Manischewitz. It was going to have to do, he thought as he poured two glasses and snuggled up to Rita, who was curled up on the sofa massaging her stockinged feet.

“Want me to do that for you?”

“Mmmhmmmm…” she crooned.

“Better yet, why don’t I do that in the bedroom?”

“But I wanted to watch the ball drop.”

“What I can show you in there is better than anything you’ll find on TV.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Hell yeah,” he said as he started to nibble on her ear, which he loved to suckle on, because it reminded him of a pierogi.

“Well, let’s at least leave the TV on so we can hear the countdown,” she said, breathlessly. When Sol nibbled on her ear like that it always reminded her of what she liked to do to shrimp. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.

They picked up their wineglasses and made their way to the bedroom. Sol placed both glasses on his night table, and began to kiss Rita. Her lips were thick and juicy with the sweet red wine.

10

He unzipped her black satin dress, unsheathing her babka-like body.

9

He unhooked her bra and cupped her Sourdough-roll breasts in his hands.

8

He shed his blazer and she unbuttoned his blue dress shirt, eagerly seeking his pastrami colored chest, but slyly thinking how much he resembled honeyed ham.

7

He cupped her ass, crooning into her ear “this is the sexiest tuchus in town,” and imagining holishkes.

6

She unzipped his jeans and felt the warmth of his hairy thighs press up against her hairless ones, thinking of the comfort of blintzes, and how she liked them topped with bacon.

5

He slid his hand in her panties, feeling all the soft filling he knew would be there inside her hamantaschen-shaped cleft.

4

She slid down his boxers, taking him into her hands and feeling his hardness, thinking of all the obvious things: sausages, rugelach.

3

Sol groaned, and put his arms around her, gently nudging her down onto the bed as he nuzzled at her neck, where he smelled mandelbrot, and something else too, honeycake?

2

Rita guided him inside her. Sol was her everything. The lox to her bagel, the sour cream in her borscht, the gravy on her brisket, the butter on her matzah. So what if he didn’t like bikini-clad Rabbis in drag and treif food. He understood every inch of her body in a way no other man ever could. She arched her back to meet his every thrust.

1

Sol gasped as he heard the ball in Times Square drop. Rita moaned and panted. They came together, thinking in tandem of schmaltz-soaked potato kugel, and Sol cried out, unexpectedly, Happy New Year!