Jew for Jesus
“You know Ari never had a full-time job.”
“His partner said that a lot of people thought Ari was a rich man.”
“People thought Ari was rich because he was Jewish, and his father owned properties. But his father wasn’t hedge fund manager rich.”
“And his father didn’t leave any money to him. His father left everything to his younger brother.”
“The understanding was that his younger brother, Ben, would send him an allowance, like his parents had been doing.”
“But that wasn’t what transpired.”
“ … “
“Ben went full religious. He’d met and quickly married his first real girlfriend. An evangelical Christian lady from Mississippi. This sharp-elbowed, short, pug-nosed lady who wore heaps of make-up and spoke with a gravelly Southern drawl…”
“I met her once… I can still recall the heavy, noxious odor of her perfume, her crazy long fingernails, and frilly, tacky clothes…”
“Ben met her by Times Square. Guy used to sneak over there to go to the peep shows, Ari’d said…”
“She was with her church group, passing out Bibles or something.”
“ … “
“Then Ben became a Jew for Jesus.”
“ … “
“Ari really blamed Joan, too, Ben’s wife, for corrupting Ben, polluting his mind with the Jesus stuff.”
“But hey, for some people, religion really benefits them. Ben was a total slacker who went to peep shows and spent all day watching TV. But after he got religious he was a changed man. He went from living with his parents, at 33, to working his way up the corporate ladder at an investment bank. The guy went on to head a division in Mergers and Acquisitions. Even got featured once in the Wall Street Journal.”
“Ben was at _____ ___, right?”
“For 40 years…”
“Jesus…”
“… yeah, but Ben hid the Jesus stuff pretty well. He only pushed it on Ari and their parents. He never once talked about it with anyone else in the family…”
“Ben could never bring his brother or their old man to Jesus, but he did ‘convert’ their mother on her death bed.”
“If you wanna call that a conversion… The lady was a vegetable, gone with dementia, had lost all her marbles…”
“ … “
“Okay, sure, it seems superfluous. Their parents leaving the money to the son making 6, 7 figures. But look, think about it, who’s gonna be more responsible? An executive at an investment bank? Or Ari, Matoosh, or whatever, living with a yoga cult, in Death Valley? This dude who never had full-time employment…”
“Matoosh?”
“Ari had changed his name to ‘Matoosh’ for a while, was demanding that everyone address him as ‘Matoosh.’”
“And it was around then that he started wearing his trademark bandannas.”
“Some thought he wore those due to his obsession with the writer David Foster Wallace. But Ari claimed DFW swiped the bandanna thing from him, after they’d met briefly, at a Don DeLillo book signing…”
“It was around the Matoosh time, too, that Ari began wearing those Burmese longyis…”
“And it was around that time that he decided he was gay. Then he started living with something of a new-age yoga cult in Pahrump, Nevada, near Death Valley…”
“I’m sure none of this sat too well with his parents…”
“Matoosh, the longyis and bandannas, being gay, the yoga… His parents were conservative, second-generation Russian Jews. Ari’s grandfather was a rabbi…”
“It’d caused quite the stir when Ari got up and demonstrated the ‘downward-facing dog’ at a seder.”
“Jesus…”
“I mean he was living in Pahrump, Nevada… I mean… Pahrump… And calling himself ‘Matoosh’…”
“Ari apparently got quite angry too if you didn’t refer to him as ‘Matoosh.’”
“Living in the desert, in Pahrump was a big reason why hardly anyone in the family ever went to visit him. It was just so hot and remote…”
“His parents could have bought him a house in a place that didn’t have ‘death’ in its name and wasn’t hot as a furnace.”
“Or, like, the money could have gone to charity.”
“So Matoosh wasn’t enough of a charity case?”
“ … “
“Ari became an avowed pacifist around that time, too. Getting involved and volunteering at lots of hippy, antiwar, anti-violence organizations…”
“ … “
“Really everything between Ari and Ben went sideways, though, after their parents died. Their parents were accepting of Ari’s homosexuality, his ‘lifestyle,’ as his father called it…”
“Ari’s parents actually seemed far more uncomfortable with the yoga…”
“ … “
“First their father had a deadly, freak accident at the Serenoa Golf Club.”
“The Serenoa?”
“The Serenoa Golf Club.”
“The guy was out golfing alone, early morning. Got attacked by a swarm of wasps and drove his golf cart into a lake. Drowned to death…”
“It was in the papers. Front page of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.”
“Jesus…”
“Then their mother died. And after their mother died, Ben let it rip. Started calling Ari ‘disgusting’ and saying that it was ‘Ari’s fault, Ari’s fault that Ari was gay.’ Then he insisted Ari ditch his partner, stop doing yoga and start taking gay conversion classes.”
“That didn’t happen, and Ari took his younger brother to court, tried to sue for the inheritance.”
“ … “
“… But Ari’s legal efforts were to no avail. The will was signed, sealed, delivered. Written in plain English. It was airtight. There was nothing in the will for him. No property. Zero dollars. Nothing. And that whole ‘Ben providing Ari an allowance’ or whatevs was only a handshake agreement.”
“Ben’s lawyer had the case thrown out before it got anywhere.”
“After the suit got dismissed, Ari proclaimed that he’d ‘divorced his brother.’ I don’t think they ever spoke again…”
“Ben, Joan and their Jesus clique are quite polarizing… I don’t think I’ve even seen Ben this century… I heard through the grapevine that he has this stupid crib in Sanibel Island and that he’s been wintering there and summering in the Hamptons… And I heard Joan spends part of the year in Iceland… Their two sons are both bankers at ______ ____, following in their old man’s footsteps…”
“ … “
“Why didn’t Ari just get a job? His old man, Ben, anyone could have put him on…”
“… pink bandannas, Burmese longyis, spontaneous outbursts of yoga, demanding to be addressed as ‘Matoosh’… None of that goes over well on Wall Street…”
“My Pops was always on him, always pushing Ari ‘to do something with his life…’”
“For a while Ari tried to make a living as a poet… He’d done a yoga course in India, too, became a certified yoga instructor. But he never taught yoga as a profession.”
“So he never had a full-time job?”
“Nope. He claimed he couldn’t work because ‘he couldn’t.’”
“ … “
“Ari was quite coddled as a kid. He was a child of that post-Holocaust generation. That generation thought of every child as a miracle beyond miracles, treated them like Fabergé eggs… His mother always cooking him food, picking up after him, letting him do whatever.”
“With parenting like that it shouldn’t have been surprising he had problems working… Showing up to an office every day. Someone all in his face, telling him what to do…”
“Then at some point Ari started writing new-age, self-help books. Then he tried getting his self-help books published. To no avail.”
“Part of me thought that because he had big teeth and was tall, that he could be the next Tony Robbins…”
“You know, I sorta liked Jacinda Ardern, and I think part of it was because she also has big teeth. There’s something striking and powerful about a person with big teeth…”
“ … “
“It’s just… I didn’t know. I didn’t know Ari was sick. No one knew about his heart condition. No one, aside from his partner.”
“…Ari was walking with a cane and confined to his couch, those last couple a’ years. He was bitter too. He hated not being able to do yoga or go teach his yoga classes at the prison. His partner told me Ari was spending most of his time eating hummus, drinking apple juice and watching the Daily Show and Oakland A’s games…”
“Ari always watched a lot of TV. I think he watched more TV than Chauncey Gardner.”
“Ari had told me he’d send a box of family photos and stuff. But I never received it. He’d also told me that I was ‘in his will.’ And I thought that might mean the old Harley he had in the garage, which he’d once said he wanted to leave me. I’d have taken that. But it wasn’t that.”
“ … “
“I discovered that Ari left $6,000 to split between me and three other people. So I just told his partner to keep it and to only send the family photos.”
“Ari’s net worth was about $6,000.”
“His partner worked as a nurse, in Pahrump, and had bought their house, was paying the bills.”
“$6000… Bro… That’s a friggin’ first-class ticket from NYC to London…”
“Six thousand dollars.”
“Jesus…”
“I had no idea. But he never said anything. Never asked for help…”
“I was on him to do something with his Dahmer story… Write a book or make a movie…”
“Dahmer? Jeffery Dahmer?”
“Yup. Back when Ari was trying to be straight, he dated, of all people, Jeffery Dahmer’s mother.”
“And they remained friends for the duration of their lives. I have a picture of them together, arm in arm…”
“Jeffery Dahmer could have been your cousin.”
“I know right? Six degrees of something terrible…”
“ … “
“Despite Dahmer’s crimes, abhorrent crimes, I mean, killing and eating people, necrophilia… Ari always had a soft spot for him. Called him ‘Jeffery.’ Said he saw Jeffery as a lost soul, blamed Jeffery’s father for everything… And Ari even had a long letter-writing correspondence with Jeffrey.”
“Ari told me he cried when Dahmer was murdered in jail.”
“Remember that Black lady, in court, hysterically screaming: ‘I hate you, Jeffery Dahmer!!!’? That lady who was all jumping up and convulsing with anger, getting restrained by the bailiffs… She probably didn’t share that sentiment.”
“I googled her… Rita Isbell… I saw a clip of her praising Dahmer’s killer.”
“Serial killer stuff might make for entertaining movies. But if your friend or loved one were among Dahmer’s victims… Like, yeah, I doubt Rita was watching the Netflix Dahmer movie.”
“Reminds me of this incredible one-man show I saw, by a comedian, Anthony DeVito. This dude discovered, at age 18, that his father was a mafia hitman that’d been shot and killed and found hogtied in the trunk of a car. I doubt that dude wants to watch The Sopranos…”
“Wait… Danny DeVito? The actor? Was a mafia hitman?”
“Nah, it’s another DeVito…”
“ … “
“Bro, I’m so, so sick of all these true crime shows, murder shows and podcasts.”
“I liked it better when there were only one or two murder shows.”
“I bet that jerkoff who killed those college kids in Idaho was a fan of murder TV shows and podcasts. I bet that stinkin’ jerkoff streamed the Dahmer movie like ten times.”
“That Netflix Dahmer movie really pissed Ari off. After it came out, he and his partner canceled their Netflix subscription. Then Ari wrote Netflix a series of angry letters.”
“Handwritten letters too… Envelopes, stamps and everything…”
“Ari was apoplectic, talking about ‘if a member of Reed Hastings’ family got murdered by a serial killer, Netflix wouldn’t be showing Dahmer and Bundy crap’… That ‘Netflix probably wouldn’t find serial killers too sexy and cool then’…”
“Ari just developed a seething hatred of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Like the way liberals hate Trump, and how conservatives hate Hillary or Obama. That’s how Ari felt about Reed Hastings.”
“I think his Dahmer connection was why Ari did the volunteer yoga teaching gig at the prison. Why he believed in those inmates.”
“Teaching yoga at a maximum-security prison…”
“You know Ari had a long letter-writing correspondence with Kip Kinkel, too, the mass killer. They’d connected through yoga. Ari considered him a friend, supported his release.”
“But Ari’s partner told me that Ari had all his Dahmer and Kinkel letters shredded upon his death. Ari didn’t want any of that finding its way to a ‘murderabilia’ site.”
“Hence probably why Ari didn’t write a book or make a movie or documentary with Dahmer’s mother.”
“Ari always saw the good in people.”
“Except for Reed Hastings… And Ben and Joan… And Israel… Oh, man, he just despised Israel.”
“Normally it’s only those Hassidic type of Jews, you know, the ones with the sideburn curls, black hats and big beards who hate Israel.”
“And Norm Chomsky.”
“Noam Chomsky…”
“Noam?”
“Noam.”
“How do you spell that?”
“N-O-A-M…”
“No-am.”
“No, you pronounce it like ‘gnome.’ As in gnome, like the mythical creature, or gnome, like a garden gnome, you know?”
“Noam?”
“Noam.”
“Not Noah?”
“No.”
“Not Norm?”
“No. Noam.”
“So… did he ever visit Israel?”
“Who? Norm Chomsky?”
“Noam!”
“No, not Chomsky, Ari…”
“Ari did, yeah. After India, he visited Israel and briefly lived on a Kibbutz.”
“He’d had something of a ‘Jewish Prophet’ phase, where either he thought he might be the messiah or that he might find the messiah in Israel…”
“But this is different from the Matoosh phase?”
“Yeah, no, Matoosh was a different time in his life.”
“After Israel, Ari volunteered at a potato farm in Ethiopia, then went backpacking through Europe.”
“Then while he was in Germany, he had this super-intense dream that he was standing in line, in what looked like a death camp. And he was next to this little red-haired girl, maybe 5 or 6 y/o, and that this little girl had these dimples and freckles, and was like the most adorable, most innocent girl he’d ever seen… After he woke up, he said he spent an entire day, in his bunk bed at the hostel, just crying.”
“That’s why he tatted the pink teardrop on his face…”
“Bro, Ari wouldn’t have done well in the Holocaust, being gay AND Jewish…. And antiwar…”
“And practicing yoga…”
“ … “
“… but Ari just hated Israel. He’d stand up, throw stuff, yell and spit at the TV if he saw anything about the ‘Zionist Occupation.’”
“He had a watercolor painting in his living room of a young Arab boy throwing a rock at an Israeli tank…”
“He always rooted for the underdog.”
“Like with everything. Sports too… He hated the Yankees. Though that could have been because his brother’s a big Yankees fan.”
“But Ari also detested Duke basketball, the Cowboys, and the Lakers. I think he saw the Palestinians as like the Oakland A’s or the Sacramento Kings or something…”
“I’m not sure Ari would have done well living in Palestine. Or Riyadh. Or anywhere in Saudi Arabia…”
“I know right? It was weird, his passionate, anti-Israel stance. Since homosexuality is so severely criminalized in the Middle East. Everywhere except Israel. Like, if he were in Gaza, he’d be lynched.”
“Eh, I think his hatred of Israel was more in relation to his younger brother. Ben and his wife’s church are big-time Israel supporters.”
“Maybe it was because of Ben, too, that Ari eventually became an atheist.”
“He’d gone from Jewish to Buddhist to Hindu, back to Jewish, for a few years, then tried to be a Sikh, I think… But once he discovered Sam Harris, he never looked back…”
“I wonder what happens to atheists when they die.”
“ … “
“I talked to Ari’s partner the other night. I saw on Facebook that it was his 76th birthday, so I gave him a shout.”
“They never got married?”
“Nah, but they talked about it.”
“Ari said that despite being together for almost 40 years, he wasn’t sure they ‘knew each other well enough.’”
“ … “
“It was around Thanksgiving that Ari died…”
“We both miss him.”