Free Summer Accommodations: A Novel by Sidney Hart

room.” Seeing his perplexity Abe explained to Harlan that while a “shmuck” was the entire male member, a “putz” was just the foreskin.
    â€œWhat is it Harlan, you’re schmekele is cold? It needs to wear a turtleneck? Do you think a Jewish girl wants to have to deal with that? She’d probably faint when she sees it.” Harlan countenanced this barrage with composure and equanimity saying nothing. Girls didn’t seem at all put off by him, quite the contrary, whether or not they had seen his anatomical anomaly, the foreskin being anomalous only among Jews. Indeed, mothers and daughters could sometimes be seen elbowing one another out of the way to get in front of him, the mother’s being more seductive than their pouting daughters had ever imagined possible. It was something amazing to observe.
    â€œThey don’t really know what to make of me, do they?” he asked me as we lay in our bunks staring at the ceiling one afternoon after lunch in mid-July.
    â€œYou are very different, Harlan. They can’t understand why a Harvard man is waiting tables here. At the Concord or at Grossinger’s there might be an Ivy but at Braverman’s?” I was hanging “they” as a curtain in front of my own curiosity.
    â€œI didn’t have enough experience to work in those hotels. They’re more demanding in their hiring practices than the Bravermans. I’m here for the same reasons all of the rest of you are, to make money.”
    I heard “all the rest of you” as “JEWS” and bridled inside, but then saw an opportunity in that statement. “That may be so Harlan, but all the rest of us are also Jewish and you’re not.”
    â€œAnd the basketball players from Mississippi and Kansas?”
    â€œThey’re basketball players. They’re different.”
    â€œAnd I’m different too, Melvin.”
    Whenever people called me Melvin instead of Mel I always felt that they were angry at me, an imprinting by my parents who used my full proper name to alert me to their imminent castigations. I didn’t want Harlan to be angry with me and I didn’t want him to call me Melvin. I didn’t want anybody to call me Melvin. “I wish you wouldn’t call me Melvin. Mel is fine.”
    â€œYou don’t like your name, do you. I’ve seen you grimace when Sammy or Ron call you Melvin. What’s wrong with it?”
    â€œHaven’t you ever seen Jerry Lewis do his Melvin routines? Do you have any idea what it felt like to be a Melvin when that was the name that meant hopeless moron, shmuck?”
    â€œI understand. It’s not the most square-jawed of names, is it? I bet people tell you, ‘Hey, there’s Mel Torme and Mel Ferrer and they’re great,’ right?”
    â€œWere you hiding under the bed? That’s exactly what they tell me. And don’t forget Melvyn Douglas, who just happens to look like my father’s twin brother so how can I complain? Yeah, that’s exactly what they tell me when they’re not yelling at me to stop feeling sorry for myself.”
    â€œThen, why don’t you change it? You can call yourself anything you like. You can call yourself–Jack. I like that. Jack. That’s a good name. Jack and Jill, Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy! You are now Jack.”
    â€œThere are Jakes where I come from, Harlan, but no Jacks,” I objected.
    â€œGreat, then you will be the first, that’s even better. C’mon Jack, do it.” I looked over at him lying on his cot. His hands were clasped behind his neck, his arms forming triangles on either side of his head, and he was smiling a smile of genuine pleasure and satisfaction. “C’mon.”
    â€œI don’t think I can do it, I really don’t think so.”
    â€œJack, I’m going to tell you something and I don’t want you to repeat it to anyone.