Today is the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. My best wishes to everyone who is celebrating...

Being non-observant, Sir Cranky sits at his computer, blogging.

When I was a teenager, I used to usher at the young adult services back at the temple in the neighborhood where I grew up in Chicago. I wasn't very observant then, either...but being an usher gave me a chance to flirt with the girls who came to the services. I particularly liked them in their high heels and dark stockings.

Yet I consider myself a decent person who tries to treat other people decently. That is how I practice my Judaism.

A famous Yiddish writer said something like (I paraphrase): "It is impossible to be pious like our grandparents without living their type of lives."

I have long agreed with that.

I am a secular Jew, but I am not ignorant of the teachings or the traditions.

Interestingly, I have met very few Jewish strippers. Only three I've personally known come readily to mind. There may be lots more, but I just haven't met them. Maybe because I have long been more attracted to Hispanic, African-American, or Asian dancers.

It's funny, and perhaps hypocritical of me, but I feel vaguely embarrassed when I meet a Jewish stripper--embarrassed for her. Embedded in my psyche is a primal and tribal feeling that this is not something a "nice Jewish girl" should do. I know this knee-jerk reaction is ridiculous and based on a double standard, because what justifies my own hanging around in stripclubs? Is that something for a "nice Jewish boy"? Ironically, I don't feel the same embarrassment about that. The stripclubs symbolize a precious form of rebellion for me, a rebellion that never ends, a rebellion against the somber traditions I grew up with and was educated in...traditions that in my case induced more guilt than spirituality, more anxiety than uplift...

Which is not to say the traditions affect other people that way.

I'm just describing one Jew's journey here.

Jews are brought up to question things--just think of the Four Questions, recited by the youngest on Passover. "Why is this night different from other nights?" and so forth. It's interesting to note that the questions are NOT asked by the oldest person at the Seder...by the time you're mature, you're supposed to understand it all, and accept it all. But to ask questions is part of the scholarly Hebraic tradition, as much an element of being Jewish as being adept with a spear was part of being an ancient Spartan warrior.

I would say that in my need to question and analyze, this blog is as Jewish a document as can be.

But questioning is also part of the American tradition of democracy--so it is also as American a document as can be.

I am deeply ambivalent about having grown up as a "nice boy," Jewish or otherwise.

Although I am NOT a tough guy (although I do have certain qualities of resilience), I have identified with that type my whole life.

This is reflected in the classic movie actors I idolize...

My rebellion did not take place in the 60s or 70s, with long hair, pot, and a scruffy beard.

It took place later...in adulthood.

It never ends...

Just a few thoughts on Rosh Hashanah from one quirky Jew...

I spent some time last night re-reading my blog, something I haven’t done much of; and I’m glad I didn’t re-read it before, because it was better to wait to get some perspective on the stuff I was involved in six months ago--stuff such as my feeling for Lily, once my favorite stripper. I last saw her at the end of March, and have not been back to that club since.

Reviewing my posts about her now, I see how much I twisted myself into an emotional pretzel over my attraction to her--analyzing, weighing, hoping, wondering. No matter how much I strove to maintain an intellectual perspective on the interaction we had, my body and my romantic yearnings got the upper hand. I wanted her, plain and simple, but I had a hard time just admitting that. If I can take anything away from this experience, perhaps it will be learning simply how to not obscure my real desires in a mental fog of misplaced tenderness.

I think I always knew we had little in common other than two facts: one, I was aroused by her, and two, she wanted the money I was willing to pay her to tease me. But these blunt truths got obscured in my head by my sentimentality towards women in general, and women I like in particular. Some curmudgeon Sir Cranky turned out to be, cloaked in his mantle of soft-boiled sappiness!

Well, even Attila the Hun was flummoxed by a woman...he met his end not in battle, but at the end of a vixen’s blade.

I’m now glad I wrote in such tortured detail about my thoughts and feelings about Lily, because now I have a step-by-step record of how my mind works when I have the hots for a STRIPPER: a usually unattainable woman in the guise of an “entertainer” who stands almost naked between men’s legs for twenty dollars a song.

To my literary mind, the word “stripper” abounds in irony; she strips her clothes, yes, but she also strips away my common sense.

Yes, I took it too seriously, despite trying not to fool myself; re-reading the blog, I could feel the angst and unhappiness under my carefully crafted words. To further the irony, writing the words in those posts gave me the illusion I was in control of the situation, but as I re-read them I could feel how I was trying to convince myself that I was having a better time than I actually was. I always went to see Lily at eight p.m. when her shift began, and what remains with me very acutely from perusing my entries is the feeling of aloneness I would experience after leaving her in the early evening and not having her company for dinner afterward. Sometimes I would feel so lonesome I couldn’t bear to go a restaurant, and would return instead to my book-and-video-cluttered studio apartment and stuff my face with popcorn or pretzels (fine nutrients, both) while watching a DVD.

I think by writing about Lily in this blog I gave myself a long-overdue lesson in necessary cynicism about these dancers--a lesson which on an unconscious level is expressed in my current avoidance of stripclubs. I thought I’d been avoiding the joints since the end of July mostly because of my current financial squeeze, and that’s certainly the major reason; but I also now believe I felt really and truly disappointed that what I shared with Lily just remained yet another flimsy acquaintanceship based on my buying a girl drinks and lapdances. Obviously, I never stopped hoping for more.

You silly Cranky...

Maybe the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was right. He said, “Goest thou to a woman? Bring thy whip.”

Then again, he lost his mind to syphilis he probably contracted from a prostitute, so maybe he was just speaking from bitterness, rather than an encompassing world-view...

That silly Freddy!

At breakfast the other day at a supermarket, trying to butter my onion bagel with a white plastic knife, I was struck how the flimsy utensil seemed to reduce my movements to a rather prissy cautiousness. I didn’t want the knife to snap and break, and I became very self-conscious of the care and deliberation with which I prepared the bagel for its trip through my lips, down my throat, into my stomach, and eventually out my butt.

I began to think about scenes in classic Hollywood movies that might show people buttering bagels, or muffins, or rolls, and I couldn’t think of...any! I specifically couldn’t recall a single instance of the great Humphrey Bogart buttering anything, much less a bagel. Ditto for Robert Mitchum, William Holden, Clark Gable, George Reeves, Buster Crabbe, James Cagney (although he did have something to do with a grapefruit), Dennis O’Keefe, Richard Conte, John Wayne, John Payne, John Garfield, Sterling Hayden, Ted De Corsia and Edward G. Robinson.

In movies, action is character, and in the Golden Age of Hollywood, buttering things may have been regarded as an ambiguous activity. Maybe Clifton Webb buttered something once on-screen, I can't say for sure. Certainly, in Laura, he did work on his typewriter while taking a bath, and that was quirky enough.

Would Bogart have gotten the lead in Casablanca if he’d ever buttered a bagel on screen?

When they used to say a guy was “two-fisted,” it didn’t mean he held his bagel in his left hand while he buttered it with his right!

Much less with a plastic knife!

When I was coming home a little while ago from my freelance gig in New Jersey, leaving the subway, I saw the eminent actor Eli Wallach walking toward the train. He's about 90 now, but a spry fellow. A lot smaller than he seems in his famous movies like The Magnificent Seven, where he played the Mexican bandit leader Calvera, or The Lineup, where he played a vicious hitman. I recommend both flicks. I also remember him fondly from a play called The Typists, which he did with his wife Anne Jackson. They played a pair of lonely daydreamers working in a little office together, growing older over the years. It's on VHS or DVD in its filmed version--and very touching. I also recall him in an obscure movie playing a middle-aged rabbi who has a crush on a younger woman played by Melanie Mayron, who was later so memorable as the artsy chick in the tv show "thirtysomething." I'm probably one of the few people who actually saw that flick; I wish I could remember its title. I was a fan of Melanie Mayron back in the 80s...I also liked Polly Draper, who played the other zany single female in that show...

Anyway, I don't usually say anything to celebrities, but I suddenly blurted out, "Mr. Wallach! I love your films!" He turned and said thank you, and I added, "And I read your autobiography too! Very enjoyable!" He smiled and said thank you again. It was a fun encounter for me, however brief; but ironically, it followed directly upon a very Sir Crankesque moment--because only about ten seconds earlier, a couple of pretty gals with bare midriffs over their tight blue jeans were walking by me, and as women so often do, they pull their snug shirts down over their tummies when they see a MTDWTF (Male They Don't Want To Fuck) noticing their pulchritude. As they passed, I grumbled to myself, "Why do they show it if they don't want us to look?" Then I noticed a little white-haired guy coming in my direction...the aforementioned Mr. Wallach. I wonder if he saw me muttering to myself and thought, "Uh-oh, a subway psycho!"

How was he to know Sir Cranky's bark is worse than his bite?

I've been feeling depressed of late. It has a lot to do with money, and how I've had to pinch pennies and budget myself in a way I haven't for years...when I went to the movie memorabilia show the other day, I realized that the not-unreasonable amount I spent was now enough to put a real dent in my budget for the rest of the week...

I tell myself that I have to find a way to make more money. Living in NY is expensive. I managed to replace some of the income I lost last year when a couple of my freelance accounts dried up, but not all of it...

I've been living in a rather sober fashion for the last several weeks...too sober, probably!...sticking to a weekly budget, eating at home as much as possible, buying very few magazines or books...and avoiding the stripclubs, which suck money out of me...

Yet without stripclubs, I feel bereft of the attentions (however mercenary) of pretty young women, and this is eating away at me...

Instead, I spend my hours reading books and watching movies, but without a girl to think about and visit, everything seems not quite right, not quite real...

I mean, I've read a lot of good stuff, and seen some fine films on DVD and at the movies, but the lack of a little flirtation and physical contact is making me turn away from everybody...

I have a tendency to be solitary, and it seems to be increasing...when I get depressed, I don't want to see people, and prefer to keep my interactions at a minimum...

Yet I sometimes feel embarrassed being alone so much...as if it marks me as a schlub...

Still, I find myself restless with all the other people in my life if I don't have some kind of sexual adventure going on in some dark club...

It doesn't matter if the "adventure" is essentially a chaste teasing sort of thing, because actual sex has never been the main attraction for me, but rather the company of the gals...

Maybe I've never really had very good sex, and if I had, I would feel otherwise...

Eroticism for me takes place mostly in the mind, in words and teasing...or at least, it seems to have evolved that way since my late thirties, early forties.

I think at one time I was more open to sex itself, but being involved with too many neurotic or psycho chicks eventually made me wary...like I was scarred in own psyche by their emotional "vaginas dentata"...

I sometimes think my experiences with the various fucked-up women I've known (with a couple of notable, decent exceptions) had the same traumatic effect on me as if they'd suddenly gone into some kind of neurological fit in the middle of screwing...

"Doc, ever since she began frothing at the mouth and twitching when I was fucking her, I haven't wanted regular sex with anyone!! I'd rather get a lapdance!!"

Call it Post-Traumatic Nutty Broad Syndrome...

Somewhere along the line in the late 80s (after a month-and-a-half long affair with a manipulative and wacky stripper, in fact) I became deeply fearful of getting too close to women, and substituted a life in the stripclubs. It was an okay substitute...sometimes exciting, sometimes boring, sometimes frustrating, but it was a compromise I could live with...when everything stayed within the stripclub walls, I could manage it...the times I've actually gone out with dancers for dates were lousy...

But in the clubs, these women can be fun.

So I feel as if I've lost one of the most important components of my social life, basically because I can't really afford it anymore. But strangely, I don't feel very motivated to make the extra money I need for it...

Maybe I'd rather complain than take action? I wonder why...

Or maybe I don't believe, deep in my gut, that knocking myself out to make more money to spend on strippers is really worth it after all! Epiphany?

Although the downside of losing freelance accounts is less money in my pocket, the upside is that I've had more time to write (as on this blog), and to read books and watch films...

For years I worked myself to a point of total exhaustion for a number of clients, and since it was all based on piecework rates, I only basically made a living...I haven't been able to save much...

I still make my money in a piecework fashion, but with less work the pace is less frenzied, and I like it...

Maybe I enjoy the less hectic schedule more than I crave the company of strippers...but this makes me sound like an old man!!

As always, I'm trying to figure myself out...

Yes, I try to control my life by understanding myself, but sometimes I feel like I go around in circles inside my bald and shiny head!