It's a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories

INDOOR KIDS

BY ALEX LONDON

It happened somewhere over Canada, although it had probably been happening since Australia. No one even knew anything had gone wrong until the International Space Station was over the Atlantic, a tiny dot of light heading toward the west coast of Africa, not a single earthly eye on it, and we only found out at camp because Jackson Kimmel had an aunt who worked at NASA.

She was not an astronaut.

She was in human resources, so she didn’t actually do anything with the space program, but she texted her nephew, because space was his thing, and her nephew told me, because he knew space was also my thing, and that’s how summer camp works: find someone whose thing is your thing and geek out together.

It would’ve been nice if I’d had someone to geek out with who wasn’t a ten-year-old.

They think it was an impact with space junk, Jackson said, waving his arms around while he circled me. He was one of those kids in constant, exhausting motion. "Did you know that NASA tracks over half a million pieces of space debris that orbit the earth? It travels at seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour, so, like, that could cut through a space station. Usually they have all kinds of warnings and ways to maneuver around space junk. They call it the ‘pizza box’ because it’s an imaginary box that’s a mile deep and thirty miles wide around the vehicle, and if anything looks like it’s gonna get too close to the ‘box,’ they take steps to keep the astronauts and the equipment safe, but not all the debris is tracked, so maybe they missed something? My aunt doesn’t know; she just does paperwork for people’s travel to conferences. She got to meet Leland Melvin once. Do you know who he is? He’s spent over five hundred sixty-five hours in space during his career, but you probably know him as the astronaut who took his official NASA portrait with his dogs? You ever see it? The dogs’ names are Jack and Scout. Or Jake? I can’t remember. Do you have a dog? I named my dog Elon, after Elon Musk, but now I think that—"

Okay, Jackson. I interrupted his monologue. He had actually made air quotes with his fingers around the words pizza box. What ten-year-old makes air quotes? Take a breath and change for basketball.

His smile vanished, his face a crash landing, no survivors.

"Do I haaaave to?" he whined. I wanted to tell him, No, of course not! Who sends their ten-year-old space nerd to a sports camp when there is an actual place called Space Camp! Your parents should be punished for this! But sports were required at Camp Winatoo, and Jackson had to go play basketball before he could come back for afternoon science club in Craft Cabin.

It was my unfortunate duty to make him go play basketball, just as it had been some other seventeen-year-old counselor-in-training’s job to force me to go play basketball when I was a ten-year-old space nerd here. That’s the curse of the indoor kids. People are always trying to make us go outside and play. The bastards.

Now I was one of them.

Yes, you have to, I told him.

I would have much rather spent the morning talking about the merits of the Falcon 9 rocket in commercial applications, but that wasn’t an option, not if I wanted to keep my job. The silver lining of this job was that I, personally, did not have to go to basketball. I had the entire early afternoon to do what I pleased. I was extremely lucky today, because I didn’t even have to supervise the aftermath of basketball, which was one of the worst jobs you could have. Those kids smelled ripe. Old enough for BO, not quite old enough to have figured out deodorant. And the ones that had figured it out? Axe Body Spray might be the worst thing to have happened in the history of mankind. It’s chemical warfare marketed to tweens.

After Jackson skulked off in his too-big basketball jersey, I pulled out my phone, trying to see if there was any news about the space station. Nothing had hit the mainstream media yet, but @GeekHeadNebula on Twitter had posted about a possible catastrophic hull breach impacting all ISS life-support systems.

That seemed a bit dramatic, in the way of breaking news, and I knew the reality would end up more mundane. Not that the mundane couldn’t be deadly in the void of space. It was usually the mundane that turned deadly up there.

Kind of like my life on Earth.

The Deadly Mundane could’ve been the title of my autobiography. Nothing dramatic ever happened to me. I was a junior counselor at the same summer camp I’d gone to as a kid, where I’d known most of the other junior counselors since forever. Back home, I lived in the suburbs and went to the kind of school where teenagers on the Disney Channel would go: everything was well lit and oversaturated, every adult was caring and concerned and a bit clueless, and every family was more affluent than the national average, but not so affluent that we’d be the bad guys in a dystopian novel.

I’d had my bar mitzvah and come out of the closet the same year, and both went…fine. I almost cried when my voice cracked during the haftorah recitation, and I also almost cried when my dad told me he was proud I was living my truth. The bar mitzvah involved me getting envelopes with eighteen-dollar checks in them, and coming out involved my mom putting a pride flag on our car. Neither was earth-shattering.

The bar mitzvah money went into a savings account I couldn’t touch, and just because I was out and living my truth didn’t mean I could get a date. Four years later and I’d never had a boyfriend, and not because I was the only gay kid. That would’ve at least been a good reason, but there were, like, five other cis gay boys in my class by the time we got to junior year, and a trans gay boy, and three other genderqueer kids, all of whom might’ve been dating material, except not a single one of them had any interest in a science geek with acne, no muscle tone, no taste in music, and more than one T-shirt with Carl Sagan on it. None of them were mean about not dating me—my life wasn’t even that dramatic. They just didn’t express any interest. So I mostly hung out in my room, read, and fantasized about being trapped in a Mars simulator for six months with Troye Sivan.

In his Instastory, Troye teased a new video while standing shirtless in the rain—seriously, I didn’t think Jewish boys could look like that—and NASA had an update in their Insta with a video of Japanese flight engineer Isao Tatsuta and American flight commander Anne Frisch explaining that they had sealed off damaged sections of the structure and were working with their international partners to prepare for a space walk to assess the best course of action. They reassured everyone watching that they had protocols in place. Commander Frisch ended the story with a view down at Earth through the window and then back up to herself giving a thumbs-up.

When, in the history of thumbs, was that ever a comforting gesture?

I put my phone away and thought about hitting the showers while I might manage some actual privacy. Being at summer camp was a lot like being on the International Space Station: privacy was nearly impossible to find, and sometimes it meant putting on a space suit and walking into the void.

In this case, the void was the boys’ showers, and the danger was more about what you took off than what you put on. My younger years at camp had been spent largely in dread of the showers, less for fear of a wet towel whipping across my butt than for fear of being noticed by anyone or being caught noticing anyone.

My fellow campers and I had matured since middle school; the shower stalls themselves had gained privacy curtains, and my showering was no longer ruled by terror and shame, but I still wasn’t going to miss an opportunity for quiet and privacy.

You ever think about the golem?

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d been seduced by the idea of having the showers to myself.

Levi Klein-Behar was standing at the wide mirror in the changing area, wrapped in a towel and studying a bunch of symbols he’d written in the mirror mist. I recognized the symbols as Hebrew, but that’s as far as my Jewish knowledge went. After my bar mitzvah, my parents didn’t make me go to Hebrew school anymore, and I’d worked pretty hard to forget everything I’d learned.

Uh was the brilliant reply I mustered, as befuddled by the question as by his lean back and broad shoulders and the way that towel hung off his hips as if balanced on a breath. He was not one of the Winatoo Lifers and had only started this summer…which wasn’t to say I didn’t know anything about him.

I knew he was from Philadelphia by way of Havana, Kampala, Buenos Aires, and Yangon. I knew that he was the son of a pair of traveling rabbis who supported Jewish communities in far-flung corners of the Diaspora; that he wore clicking Buddhist prayer beads around his wrist, which definitely deserved the eye rolls they got; but also that he didn’t care about the eye rolls. He was one of the few kids at camp who wore a yarmulke; his was a small black knit one with a rainbow border he said he got from an LGBTQ synagogue in New York. He was also an indoor kid, but not like me. He too did his best to avoid sports, even though he looked like the kind of guy who would be good at them, but he worked with the artsy kids, doing drama and painting and music. He was especially good at music and could play at least three instruments.

Why did I know so much about Levi Klein-Behar? Did I mention the towel hanging off his hips? My romantic life might’ve been as empty as the vacuum of space, but you didn’t have to be an astronomer to admire Orion’s Belt.

Like, really think about it? Levi turned around to look at me, leaning back on the sink in a pose that could only be described as insouciant, forcing me to fix my face into an expression that could only be described as awkward.

I mean, I didn’t know rabbis’ sons could look like that.

He didn’t seem to notice my total lack of chill, because he just kept going. Like, why hasn’t there been a superhero movie about the golem? Ferocious and holy, inhuman but lonely, called forth to protect the innocent? He folded his arms across his chest, and my throat went dry. Also, I thought he’d been talking about Gollum from Lord of the Rings. That was not who he meant. I just nodded. This was the most we’d talked in three weeks. He’s brought to life in times of need, activated by a word pressed into his forehead. Emet. He pointed at the word behind him. I nodded like I knew that’s what it said. I mean, how cool is that mythology? Someone at this camp has got to be related to a producer, right?

"We do control the media, I told him. Or the banks? Or we’re all communists. I can never remember."

He smiled and shook his head, and his braces caught the fluorescent light, and I wondered what it must be like to be a seventeen-year-old with braces and what it would feel like to kiss someone with braces.

The golem is, like, a guaranteed hit! The Jews need our own Black Panther!

I think we’ve got Superman.

"But imagine if it wasn’t some metaphor, but, like, an actual Jewish myth kicking ass on screen. It’s specific, but universal, right? Did you know that Fiddler on the Roof was one of the biggest international hit musicals ever made? They were worried it was ‘too Jewish,’ and it ended up being huge in India, and it is Jewish AF. We need the twenty-first century’s version, which would absolutely be a superhero franchise and— Sorry. Levi stopped himself. His cheeks had flushed. The Hebrew words behind him on the mirror misted over. I have this, like, mission to make Jewish stuff mainstream. Why do you keep looking at your phone?"

I hadn’t noticed that I was, but I was. It was something I did when I got nervous, which I also was. Easier to look down than up sometimes, especially when up meant Levi’s dark brown eyes with their Venus-flytrap lashes.

Oh, well…I was just…uh…checking on the space station. I glanced down and saw the updates. Space walk aborted. Egress not optimal. Possible ammonia leak. People were talking about the Challenger explosion and the Columbia explosion and the Apollo 1 fire. Warning of the worst space disaster in decades. Official statement from mission control to come.

What’s going on with it?

Just, um, like… I didn’t want to geek out too much. Kind of a crisis? They got hit by space debris? It’s pretty serious? Four different countries have astronauts up there? Why was everything coming out of my mouth like a question?

Damn, Levi said. It’s like our own Tower of Babel. They keep falling, and we keep building them.

Huh?

Nothing. He fidgeted with his prayer beads. I don’t mean to be all theological; I just get like that sometimes. I’ll let you take your shower.

Now I had a problem. How could I take my shower with Levi, of all people, right there?

When astronauts are faced with a tough situation, they work the problem with a decision tree, spelling out each choice in a given scenario and its probable consequences. Right now, on the International Space Station, the multinational crew was likely working through their decision tree, solving one problem at a time until the crisis was over or until they ran out of oxygen.

I found the certainty of decision trees comforting. One formed in my head almost instantly.

No good outcomes, but waiting to wash was definitely the wiser choice.

Oh man. I furrowed my brow at my phone. I forgot I have to get ready for D block science club. No shower for me!

I was a terrible actor, but it didn’t matter. He’d already turned around to change into his shorts, and I risked one nervous glance as his towel dropped, and I stepped out in the sunlight, sweating more than when I’d gone in.

***

Catastrophic failure! Jackson wailed, or something like that, through his snotty tears. I handed him a Kleenex, told him we didn’t know what was happening and we shouldn’t assume the worst. Although assuming the worst was kind of a Jewish tradition. Assuming the worst was how we’d survived for millennia. I didn’t actually know why we shouldn’t assume the worst, but it felt like something someone wiser would say to a child, so I said it.

It did not comfort him.

"If their life-support system is suffering complete collapse, how is that not a catastrophic failure? He sniffled. They’ve sealed almost every section of the station! Can you check the news again? Is SpaceX preparing a rescue? What’s @RogueNASA saying?"

I just checked, I told him. Why don’t we work on our rubber-band sonar? I pointed at the cool science project I’d planned for that hour, but Jackson had no interest, and three other science kids who’d chosen to spend their afternoon inside with me had more interest in Jackson’s meltdown than my perfectly planned project.

What if it crashes? What if radioactive compounds explode in the atmosphere? Jackson’s voice was like a siren, and his tears started the other kids crying, and I wanted to shake the kid and yell at him to get it together. I was the closest thing to an adult in the room, and I needed to either calm him down or get one of the actual adult counselors to help.

Do you want to call your moms? I asked him.

They’re lawyers! How can they help? he yelled in my face, then collapsed back in his chair, weeping.

Uh… I needed to think of something. I hated the uncertainty as much as he did. I pictured Commander Frisch from her Instastory, betraying no worry. What did her face look like now, trapped in a tiny part of the International Space Station with her crew, knowing that millions of people were looking up from the planet below, counting down the minutes until the ISS became her tomb and one of the greatest feats of human engineering, scientific endeavor, and international cooperation died with her. It wasn’t the Tower of Babel; it was a statistically improbable catastrophe that was, nevertheless, not impossible. A problem of physics, not God. Why would Levi have even brought some Torah story into it? And why was I thinking about him right now?

They’re working the problem like they’ve been trained, I told Jackson. If there’s a solution, they’ll find it.

He looked up at me with big, wet eyes and offered this nugget of tween nihilism: The astronauts are all going to die!

Uh…, I said again. I was really not great at this, but what did I know about counseling a ten-year-old through the possible death of his heroes?

Isn’t it great? A too-cheery voice cut through the room, surprising Jackson out of his meltdown. All our heads snapped to the doorway, where Levi Klein-Behar stood in sunlit silhouette, a six-foot shadow bursting into full color as he charged into the room. His metal smile beamed at us. "Everyone is going to die! You! Me! Our parents! The astronauts!"

Levi? I wanted to stop him from making this situation worse. Also, to ask him what he was doing in the Craft Cabin.

Death is one thing that everyone on Earth has in common, he said. "It is nothing to be afraid of. It happens to every single person in the world, and no one’s ever come back to complain about it, right? We all do it sometime, and how lucky would these astronauts be if they got to die doing what they loved? If it was my time, I’d want to die while dancing naked in the desert! The kids giggled nervously, their eyes puffy, but they were curious about this sudden change in the mood of the room. I still gaped at him. He turned to me and winked. How ’bout you, Josh? How would you want to die?"

I…um… They all looked at me, expectant. Jackson’s lip was still quivering, but he was breathing normally again, sniffling and waiting for my answer. Levi wore a smirk now, and I had to meet it. I forced a smile and drenched my voice in cheer, trying to think of something kids liked. I guess I’d want to die in an explosion at my cotton-candy factory on Mars?

How about you, Jackson? Levi asked, leaning toward him like a co-conspirator.

I’d want to— Jackson wiped his nose on his arm, his brow furrowed in thought. Then his face lit up. I’d want to die because I ate all the pizza in the world and then farted so much it opened a black hole and I fell in!

The other kids cackled.

I’d poop a nuclear explosion! Marie, a quiet eleven-year-old girl, added. And blow up my sisters, too!

More laughter. More fart and poop deaths. Levi pulled out some chart paper and decided we’d rank our ways to die, coolest to dullest, and no one brought up the disaster on the ISS again, and pretty soon the hour was over, and it was time for them to go to free swim. They groaned because they wanted to stay and learn about embalming, which Levi promised they could do another day, and when we were alone in the room, I collapsed into a too-small chair, relieved and exhausted and in absolute awe of Levi Klein-Behar.

That was amazing.

He shrugged. Distracting ten-year-olds is my one talent.

Oh, you have more talents than that, I blurted way too quickly and way too loudly. I mean, like, music and stuff, right?

Why did I sound like such an idiot when I talked to him? I had fives in AP Physics and Bio, was going to get a five in Chemistry, too. I was so much smarter than music and stuff.

I guess, he said, which was an understatement. The first Friday night of camp, he had played an original acoustic The Room Where It Happens parody—The Shul Where It Happens—that had every Hamilton fan at camp, which was basically everyone, rolling in the dirt laughing so hard. An eighth-grade girl peed herself from laughing, and she wasn’t even embarrassed.

So was Jackson right? he asked me. Is it bad up there? He looked at the ceiling, but he meant in space.

It’s not good, I said. He waited for me to go on, and I went…and went…and went…"The outside of the space station is covered in pipes to keep the solar panels cool, and they’re filled with ammonia gas, which, if it leaks into space, is harmless, but if the leak is inside the space station, high concentrations of ammonia gas can kill everyone on board in just a few minutes. It seems like some space debris flying at seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour made multiple impacts with the hull of the station, breaching it and the coolant pipes, which forced the crew to seal most of the ship. Normally, they’d put on the space suits and perform a depressurization for controlled breach egress into a shuttle or pod, but they’ve been cut off from their space suits by the breaches, and the atmospheric ammonia levels are rising. SpaceX is prepping Falcon rockets for a rescue, but the mission window isn’t for at least twelve hours, and the crew might not survive that long. Hull breaches and ammonia leaks are two of the ‘big three’ scenarios that are considered the most catastrophic in space. The third is fire, and, because of the system damage, they can’t confirm there isn’t a fire burning somewhere on the station. Fire on Earth is predictable, but combustion events in space burn in every direction. They can’t even place smoke detectors with one hundred percent accuracy. The air could literally catch fire anywhere and burn up and down and sideways. Also, the CO2 levels in the pod where they’re sealed are going up fast, and they’re trying to fix that system, too, while the NH3 levels are rising, and their venting process risks cutting short their breathable air supply. Managing the chemical composition of the crew environment is one of the most challenging aspects of life in space under optimal circumstances, but in the event of catastrophic system failure, managing O2, CO2, and about a dozen other potential hazards under a severe time limit is the kind of challenge that— Sorry."

I noticed his eyes had glazed over. That happened to people when I got excited about atmospheric chemical management. I—I know…it’s nerdy. I just—it’s really important, actually. Or, like, I think it is? Most people think it’s just weird….

No. He shook his head. People with passions are cool.

Literally no one thinks this stuff is cool.

You do.

I shrugged. I wasn’t sure cool was how I’d describe it.

Anyway, cool is overrated, he added.

I wouldn’t know.

Yeah, neither would I. He leaned on the edge of the wooden table in the middle of the room, one leg crossed over his knee, and I saw his thigh vanish into the shadow of his shorts, which made my eyes dart up to his face like nervous carp avoiding a predator.

We move around so much, I’m always the new kid, he said. And this doesn’t help. He pointed to his rainbow yarmulke. I’m not Jewish enough for the Jewish kids, too religious for the other queer kids, and too Jewish for everyone else. Also, I genuinely like spending time with my parents.

The other queer kids, he’d said. There was a combustion event in my heart. It burned in every direction, sideways and up and down. And down farther. I suddenly hated the treasonous shorts I was wearing.

So what are you doing here? I blurted as I adjusted my legs and leaned forward.

Beatrice sent me over, he said. Told me she didn’t need me at play rehearsal, and I could either help out in the science club or senior-camper flag football.

Oof, anything to avoid football, right?

Something like that. He flashed his metal-mouth grin, and until then I never thought braces could glimmer. That was the only word I could think of, though. When his lips