A longing twilight, with relations sundered, together only in that they’re alone — after the tempered happiness, the disapproval of day, an unblinking moon, arched eyebrows of cloud…this, a memory of that ceremonial strangeness, the ritual off, which would almost ruin such promise, their vows, put a damper on incipient bliss, its bounty eternal: the bride carried in, the door shut after its holding uniform’s tipped in splurging style, lavishly absurd in its shame; this tasteless as tastefully underlit room as expensive as happiness always is, this milk and honeymooning who could afford, and who couldn’t? Benjamin had had enough of this side of the family, Israel’s people and their Affiliated menschs, their slumming marriages, their goyishe lusts, His PopPop having married out of the tribe, His MomMom’s mother and her mothers, their mothers before them and blah, all having married an alien kind: how they loved stuff like this, they lived for it, demanded to be spent on, and their menschs were spent, paying topdollar for luxury, bankrupting themselves to be pampered, degraded by class.

His mother’s people, Hanna’s, they were that whole different story, the dialectical spiel; He never knew them, they died too long ago before they would’ve died for all time; it was cancer, too, of the wallet, of the pocket, it had to’ve been, whichever was cheaper to die of…

It’d been a mania for intermarriage that’d afflicted untold generations of Benjamin’s family: Benjamin on His mother’s side simply the product of untold generations of Affiliated women who without fail had married the Unaffiliated, and had verily reproduced with them, and so, in terms of the Law, their offspring would be Affiliated, would’ve been, though not many households were as monogamously observant — religionwise, and especially leaning to the wife’s Affiliation — as was Benjamin’s and would be still, only if. All these goyim, these goyishe monsters of prick and pride attracted to Affiliated women, gonifs with their loves and lust for darkhaired darkheiresses, breastcrowned lusciously, princesses if not queens. Benjamin’s father, Unaffiliated — born, later converted, the first — Benjamin’s mother’s father, Hanna’s, Unaffiliated, check, check, probably sundering unto the first Unaffiliated, Adam, whose second wife seems to’ve been the first Affiliated Mother herself, and how to explain, calling her Cain inside for a piece fruit, very funny. Darkeyed, darker skin, or maybe just maybe degree of endogamy dependant so pale, demure, modest modestum in their natural habitat — in winter the mall, in summer the stripmall — often to be found in their long sleeves and skirts, a secret fetish this ritualwear, dressed down to their white sneaks shomering home on the Shabbos from shul: these women, these girls, daughters ghettowilling, shtupshy. And the goyim they end up with, even worse, dripping smegma from their every pore sebaceous, obsessed with fantasies of the right shoppingbags for breasts, a thickening neck hung with heavy amber jewelry, of women thicklipped, too, frizzyheaded, between their thighs egregriously burning Flatbushes to consume, consume, consume without ever consuming…O these dyed-in-the-lamb’s-wool-maydels — preferring the savor of unkosher salami, treyf schlong, endless unskinned lengths forced through golden doors, a Chosen Peephole through which to taste, sniff, or ogle: the throb of shaigetzes, each to their own specialized lusts, unholy desires but out also to ascend angelic ladders, social and business both; and so union after separation, love sacrificed to lust, new Unaffiliateds kept on being introduced into the line, water to wine, water to wine, and still any offspring, abracadabra, would be Affiliated, thanks Mom, as long as you’re holding the — lessening — line, how’s dad?

Tell him I say what’s up!

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