Category Archives: Faith

Apr26

The Uncircumcised Penis (NSFW)

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The Uncircumcised Penis (NSFW)

As most of you know, I am a nice Jewish girl, albeit one who takes on divorce with an alarming amount of – oh, what’s the word – audacity. I have gone through many guys since the divorce, and not all of them have been Jewish. So therefore, I have had to unzip a guy and figure out whether the penis I will be working with comes with a sweater (read: uncircumcised).

While I am very fortunate to live in America where most men get the snip, it’s not always the case. If you decide, after a divorce from a Jewish guy where you had to beg for sex from him, that you’re going to try different varieties of sausages other than the kosher variety, you may get some different… well, casings, from time to time.

I am just very thankful that I didn’t have my friend SO’s experience when she went to Spain. A stunning Jewish Persian beauty, she met a gorgeous man in Barcelona and went to bed with him. Up until that point, she had never seen a guy with his junk still intact from the womb days, and had no idea what she would be facing. And she was disgusted by it.

“I just kept my eyes closed when he was out,” she said to me. “As long as I couldn’t see it, it didn’t bother me. He tried to bring it up for me to work with, and I said, ‘No, no! I’m good!’”

There has been much research into circumcision over the years as being healthier than not doing it, although now there are plenty of liberal and back-to-nature movements trying to fight it. I have heard all the research into how it prevents more STDs, how in truth it’s there in the womb only for penile development and is unnecessary afterwards.

Ironically, my first time seeing a penis was with my first high school boyfriend, who was technically a summer love at camp, and he was uncircumcised. I didn’t really want to see his penis in the first place, but he decided to whip it out. I was so traumatized I began to cry. Didn’t help that he was soon after bitten by a poisonous bug and hallucinated in the camp’s infirmary for the next two hours.

I never really had sex with that boyfriend, and was fortunate that, up until my marriage, I never got another uncircumcised guy. I learned my sexual bearings on the unobstructed mushrooms and didn’t have any issues with the casings.

About five months after my divorce, I got involved with The Psychic. He was 10 years older than me, a fashion-forward Latino punk with psychic tendencies whose family came from Mexico. They didn’t circumcise, and he told me so before I unzipped him and found the sweater.

“It’s okay,” he said to me. “It’s helps me from coming too fast.”

And now here I was, a nice Jewish girl who, even though she dated non-Jews, had only seen one uncircumcised penis before this point. How was I supposed to go down on him? My technique was dependent on the mushroom tip variety. Would sex be different for us?

It wasn’t as terrible looking as all the girls think it is (but then again, I’m not squeamish by any sense), and since we used protection, the mechanics weren’t too terrible. But giving head was a problem. Where was my tongue supposed to go? Could he feel what I was doing? Should I suck harder? Should I change my technique?

It turns out that there wasn’t a terrible amount of difference – simply shift the foreskin around to do what you would normally do without it – but I was not a huge fan of the uncircumcised penis. It wasn’t as satisfying being able to work my normal sexual technique. And even though the sex was good, it wasn’t great. I missed my mushrooms. I wanted my American-style cocks back, where I knew how to give head, where sex wasn’t dependent on moving foreskins, where there were no casings around.

So after the Psychic faded away into casual sex phase memory, I moved back to the more traditional Western-style penis. Although I haven’t gone back to solely Jewish penis – mainly because Jewish men are attached to them, and they’ve got issues up the wazoo – I think there is something to be said about Abraham and his snipping practices. As Mel Brooks said to the Merry Men of Robin Hood: Men in Tights, “The ladies love it!”

Mar14

Traveler’s Prayer

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Traveler’s Prayer

When it came time to open a bank account after my cycle of poverty, I sat patiently as the girl named Mayra smiled and me and listened to my tales of woe from the past year of my existence. She asked me for my identification, and I reached into my wallet to take out my driver’s license. But then I found a different card.

It was the size of a credit card, and I remember when I received it. It was the May after my divorce, and had resided in my wallet since then. But today, it struck a chord. On the card is written the traditional Jewish traveler’s prayer.

There’s a joke that Jews have a blessing for everything, and we do. But the traveler’s prayer is rather extensive. It translates to this:

“May it be Your will, Adonai our G-d, and G-d of our fathers, that You lead us in peace, incline our footsteps in peace, and course us to reach our desired destination for life, for joy and in peace. Rescue us from the grasp of every adversary and ambush along the way. Send us blessing for all our handiwork, and grant us favor, kindness, and compassion in Your eyes, and in the eyes of all who see us. Hear the sound of our supplication, for You are Almighty who hears prayer and supplication. Blessed are You, Adonai, Who hears prayer. And Yaakov went on his way, and angels of G-d met him. And Yaavok said when he say them, ‘This is an encampment of G-d.’ And he called the name of the place Mahanayim. Behold, I send an angel before you, to preserve you on the way, and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Adonai will give strength to His people. Adonai will bless His people with peace.”

Jews have been saying it for centuries. Holocaust victims and survivors probably said it as they were being transported to the concentration camps and ghettos. My mother’s family said it as they left their homes and wandered down the hills of Spain to the docks, where ships would take them to Turkey, one of the only places where Jews were welcome. Jews said it as they left Israel 2,000 years ago to head into the Diaspora. It is the prayer of every Jew who wanders into a frightening world, not knowing what will become of them.

After a night of hell, I sat in my car in the middle of road construction on the 405 freeway after I left. My car was packed with all my valuable things I could carry. I had fled my home, never to call it that again. My aunt, a powerful lawyer, told me that the way to protect myself, both for safety and for legal reasons, was to never call that apartment my home again and to leave that night, never looking back. The rooms with my pictures hanging on the walls, my furniture in the rooms, my books and creature comforts all had to stay behind. I didn’t know when I would come back for them. I still don’t.

I remember sitting there, my hands bathed in that orange light of the freeway. It was 12:45 a.m. Very few people knew where I was or what was happened, what A had put me through. One of the few items I took was my siddur, my prayer book that I received when I was eight years old. It was sitting on top of the picture of my grandparents, with their menorah from Israel. I realized I had to say the prayer. I had to pray to my one G-d, Hashem on high.

At that moment in my life, so filled with fear and uncertainty, I had no faith in anything. It was Shabbat, where I was supposed to find comfort, yet I was in a state of emergency. Where was I going to go? What was going to happen to me now? Who was I now that I had lost a huge portion of my life?

So I said the words. My Hebrew reading is passable, but not great, but I made sure to read every word in the language of my ancestors, with tears flowing down my face. I was linking to the past, praying for guidance from my family members who had long left me behind in this world by myself, sitting in a car with my desperate grab of items, heading to a safehouse where no one would think to look for me, because I had to plan it that way for my protection.

I didn’t know that night what would happen to me over the next year. I paid the price for my freedom in so many ways. But as I sat there looking at the traveler’s prayer in the bank, a year later, I realized I was so grateful. It took this amount of time to put my life together, but it was like a bookend. And I learned to never take anything for granted, not even my own safety.

To this day, the prayer is in my wallet. It reminds me of G-d, that even though I am not the Jew that I once was, that I am still the daughter of a King. I remembered that despite everything, there was protection for me. And somehow, in a weird, twisted way, I found my peace. I may have only had $600 in the bank when I opened my account, but I felt like the richest woman in the world.

Mar5

Intuition Issues

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Intuition Issues

I met a girl recently in my adventures who is a psychologist, but one with a great spiritual base. She was leading a discussion of all women, talking about the power of being a woman. And one of the things she pointed to was intuition.

“Women naturally have intuition,” she said. “I think we can sometimes hinder it by focusing on the wrong things. But when our minds are clear and we let go of our doubts, that’s when our intuition really shines. Sometimes, it can border on psychic power.”

It was funny that she mentioned intuition, because I realized after the divorce, once my mind was clear and removed of stress, that I could sense things – things that people were thinking or even saying. I sensed the presence of spirits, people who I knew that were long gone (that’s another post). I didn’t have a word for it, until I talked to SH and P. It was intuition. Both of them have it, although a lot stronger than me (although P would argue that I just haven’t harnessed it properly). And let us not forget the creepy tendencies of the Psychic from the Boys’ stories.

It wasn’t like that it hadn’t had these abilities before. I sensed the beginning of my relationship with my ex long before it happened. I started sensing spirits when I was 16, but thought it was just me. My gifts seemed to be reduced over time as the stresses of being with A took over and when I was filled with self-doubt. But intuition came in little spurts, like at one point being able to sense when I was about to get a job or sense when someone else was posed for love or financial success.

Problem was that after the divorce, my intuition got stronger, to the point where I was able to sense a lot of things before they actually happened. I would get woken up in the middle of the night with different intuitive thoughts. I could see people in private moments when I shouldn’t have — for example, I saw Kinky Bastard in bed sick with a cold (that was one of the tamer things I’ve caught). It was problematic and difficult to take on. I wasn’t psychic by any sense of the imagination, but the fact that I was having strong senses about my world and the people in it was a crazy thing to imagine.

The stresses of my split were difficult, but with this burgeoning gift I felt like I was flirting with crazy now. How could I have what could be perceived as potential psychic powers? My logic may not be my go-to sense, but it seemed like this wasn’t normal in the slightest. I thought i was going out of my head.

However, my intuition has proven invaluable in protecting me. On Labor Day, I was about to go into a party. AD I knew was going to be there, and I felt like I could be courageous and do the thing I normally do at parties when I know he’s going to be there: Act like I don’t know him, no matter how much he is trying to command my attention. I had done it at a previous party where we weren’t talking, and I could be happy doing it again.

I drove down to the house where the party was at, and the minute I got there, something was stopping me from going inside. I didn’t know what it was stopping me, but my body became rigid and still. Don’t go in there. I sensed something wrong, and I couldn’t budge. I couldn’t get over something.

My friend EB pulled up in her car and asked me what was wrong. I told her about my doubts, and that there was something in me telling me not to go inside.

“If you don’t feel 100 percent sure, don’t go in there,” she said. “It’s as simple as that. Go to The Grove or something. Do something that makes you happy. If you can’t do it, don’t force yourself.”

I went down to Third and Fairfax’s Los Angeles Farmer’s Market, one of the two places in LA where I am the happiest, and wandered, fulfilling myself with French macaroons and a copy of Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet,” which gave me comfort. I had a wonderful day. Later on, I found that my intuition proved right – AD changed his status update that night to “in a relationship” with a new girl. It would have only given me heartbreak to walk into that room, with him possibly debuting a new girlfriend.

Sometimes we have to remember our instincts, and keep them keen. Everyone has great power, and as it was said by Uncle Ben in Spider-Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Our main responsibility to our gifts is to harness them and use them properly – even with intuition.

Jan17

Family Values

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Family Values

My former brother-in-law was a tyrant. A Modern Orthodox man with a Napoleon complex, when he came to southern California with his wife and children to visit, he expected everything to be made just for him. My mother-in-law would have to buy the specific foods that he wanted for the children, arrange for everything so they could be Sabbath-observant, plan activities and host all his friends. My ex and I were always expected to come be with his family when they were visiting. Everything else in our lives had to be put on hold. Events such as other people’s weddings were even planned around him. He was the center of the universe.

I watched as he would throw a fit if everything wasn’t just right. I watched the way he yelled at my mother-in-law if she made a mistake or snap at my father-in-law if he thought his ideas were ridiculous. He was more concerned about the status of the light switch than whether he was making his own mother cry with the stress he caused. This was a man claiming to be religious, and he was breaking the basic commandment of honoring his mother and his father. And it made me mad as hell, because I loved them dearly. But those were their family values, where the brother allowed to behave like a dictator without anyone standing up to him.

I studied enough Talmud to know that this commandment doesn’t only apply to your direct parents, but also to your in-laws. And, although I had difficulties with A throughout my marriage to him, I loved my mother- and father-in-law and respected them while I was married. In turn, they treated me like a daughter. It was one of the things that made it so difficult to leave.

While my father is very loving to me and I have a strong relationship with him, my relationship with my mother is lukewarm at best (although it has been getting better). They did not accept A as my in-laws accepted me, although they were friendly when we came to visit. But every time, A would tell me how my parents didn’t treat me right, how my family was crazy, how much better his family was, how we should just forget my parents and focus more on his.

In a weird way, I felt like my ex was forcing me to give up my family to be with his. When we would go to my family’s affairs, I would watch as he would be uncomfortable and aloof – that is, if he came with me at all. But with his family, I was expected at every event, and A wanted to go down every few weeks. I had to stop him to make sure we had enough time to ourselves as a couple.

As I was getting ready to leave my marriage, I realized that I stayed for a long time particularly because of A’s family. I was very close with his cousins, I loved being an aunt (as much as I despised my brother-in-law) and I loved my parents-in-law. I was losing so much.

I will never forget what happened the night I left, though — to this day, I am still in shock. I was forced to flee into the night. A’s parents knew we were having problems in our marriage (as we had for many years), and that night, in the most dire of circumstances, I was leaving. I called my in-laws, asking them if they were on their way to see my ex because he was in trouble; after all, they weren’t that far away. My mother-in-law said in the most casual tone, as if it were nothing, “No.”

My only acknowledgement was an okay, but it was followed with a tut from my mother-in-law’s lips and these words that I will never forget: “You know, this is really inconvenient. [Your father-in-law] is reading Torah tomorrow and we’re hosting the Kiddush.”

I was driving, and I’m shocked I didn’t flip my car into an accident. After I got off the phone, the friend who was in the car with me exclaimed, “Oh my G-d, what a bitch!” I learned where my former brother-in-law learned his disregard. At that moment, I was a problem, and so was A. We were none of their concern when things got truly tough. Their acceptance of me was just a smokescreen. And as far as they were concerned, I was dead to all of them.

My parents said many months after the divorce that they always sensed that I was taking on the burden of my in-laws by marrying A, and was left the responsibility of taking care of him. Sometimes, I wonder if incident that happened that night was not the first occurrence of such behavior. But either way, my in-laws became nasty to me, and I was a pariah. I’m wondering if they’re now pulling the same trick with X, accepting her and treating her like a daughter because they want to get rid of A again. It’s strange, but I truly pity him.

My ex would delude himself later that his parents showed up that night, but I’m not sure they ever did. Meanwhile, my family sprung into action. Even though I was far away, my aunt called a lawyer friend of her’s at a high-end divorce firm to meet with me as soon as possible and provided me legal advice on how to leave an abusive situation. One of my cousins called with psychological counseling. My parents called me almost every hour to check on me. My friends surrounded me to make sure I was never alone because my family couldn’t be there. And the next morning, my sister and my cousin were by my side at breakfast.

Yes, I have a crazy family, and things are difficult. But if I needed it, my family would rally for me. They love me no matter what, not just if it’s convenient. I am a daughter, a cousin, a niece. I struggle, but there will always be loving people to catch me. Those are true family values.

Jan1

No Regrets, No Turning Back

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No Regrets, No Turning Back

We often live our lives with regret, looking back on New Year’s resolutions from the previous year and wondering why we didn’t fulfill them, what we can do this year to better ourselves and all the things that we regret we did.

All I can think about was last New Year’s, I knew I was about to transition. My marriage was ending, and there were no questions in my mind about that – by that point, A was already violating my trust. He tried to kiss me at midnight that night, and I pulled away, as I no longer wanted this man who made me feel completely unsafe in my home anywhere near my body.

Within days, my life was upended. It set the tone for this past year. It was a year of hurried survival and utter reflection. Although there were people surrounding me, making sure that I was safe and trying to keep me in check, in many ways this was a solitary journey. Even though I was very fortunate to have SL and AB around, who were also going through divorces, I was going through unusual circumstances. They left with their husbands’ blessings. I fled my home in the dead of night, leaving many of my valuables behind. Eventually, my ex agreed to the divorce — but not before making my life a living hell. He messed with my mind every step of the way.

But do I regret? Never.

I think where my life would be now if I had chosen to stay. Sure, certain things would have remained the same, but as we would have passed the five-year mark, I think that things would shift as we started talking about future plans. We were expected to start thinking about children. But I would have still been unhappy. I would have still been unable to talk to my ex without him calling me nasty names or treating me the way he did. I would have been terrified of his temper and wondering whether or not this time would mean he would hit me. And I still would have been hiding the truth from everyone: that I was somewhere that I desperately needed to get out from.

In the year since the divorce, I struggled, there is no doubt about that. If I hadn’t, there would have been something terribly wrong with me. I drank heavily, had multiple sex partners, engaged in risky behavior, dated the wrong guys, gotten contract jobs, lost contract jobs, applied to food stamps, gained and lost weight, laid in bed crying for hours, occasionally days, listened to sad songs, danced like a maniac to happy ones and sometimes wrote like a fiend where there was no interrupting my progress. Oh, and created a sassy divorce blog.

It was never an easy road. It would have been easier for me to stay – not only on me but on a lot of people. But it’s a hard road when we choose our freedoms over what everyone else wants of us. It’s difficult when we have to be selfish, because we have to look out for ourselves before we can be there for others. And sometimes, being selfish is okay after divorce. Sometimes it’s necessary.

I’m not going to lie and say that people didn’t suffer because of my emotional issues – AD suffered, among others. I hope one day he and everyone else who had a difficult time looking at my world will understand what truly happened to me and where I came from, not to mention where I had to go emotionally to get back to some resemblance of who I am. I hope they will be as forgiving as I would be had they had the same experience.

In my divorce, I learned a lot about myself. I am not an easy person to be around. I can be passive-aggressive, finicky, indecisive, gullible, sensitive, loud, crazy, dramatic and impulsive. Occasionally I can be a bitch and have serious commitment issues. I am far from perfect, and you will never see me proclaiming that I am.

Yet I remember looking at my aunt, my uncle’s wife, on Thanksgiving. The night I left my ex when I was in tremendous danger, she able to make sure I was able to get out both legally and safely, even from a far distance. She knew what it took to get me out, because I didn’t realize as I had left that in her first marriage, she faced a similar battle. She is not the easiest person in the world to get along with. But it doesn’t stop me from having tremendous respect for her.

I hugged her tight as I said softly that I wouldn’t have been able to leave without her. It was the truth – there was divorce in my family, but not a divorce like mine and hers, and I am in her debt. And we hugged each other tight as she began to cry.

“You are so strong, Amira,” she said to me. “I am so proud of you.”

Sure, I have my weaknesses. I am not perfect. Despite this, I have my strength, bravery, creativity, smarts, sense of humor and resilience that have taken me this far. But above all, I reclaimed myself. I was not the wife, the daughter or being in possession of someone else. For the first time in my life I was me – just me. And, more than anything, I needed to be Amira Young – no attachments, no apologies, no regrets. And definitely no turning back.

Nov22

Giving Thanks; or, A Tale of Food Stamps

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Giving Thanks; or, A Tale of Food Stamps

November 21, 2012

Sitting in a waiting room of Ventura County’s Human Services Agency, I looked up at the television screen that was playing the Disney cartoon Aladdin. I watched him run through the streets, stealing bread and vegetables so he and his pet monkey Abu could eat, singing all the way.

I had lost weight lately, but it was because of the hunger that I was facing. My stomach rumbled, because all I had to eat was two leftover oatmeal cookies that I found in the car that morning for breakfast. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and I was here applying for food stamps and welfare.

One of the aftereffects of divorce that they don’t tell you during your split is the abject poverty that you face, particularly for women. A has been rather fortunate in that he got to keep his job and his parents are paying for a lot of his things. He also got to stay in our apartment and keep my furniture for the time being, as I couldn’t afford to move it and had nowhere to put it. He hasn’t had to suffer.

As for me, I had been jumping from contract job to contract job until this recent bout of unemployment, which has lasted about five months. I’m back at my parents’ house trying to get on my feet. My father is also out of work, so they haven’t been able to afford to help me. I have tried applying for any type of job, but I’m unqualified to work in retail or doing general office work; as a higher-level media and communications professional, I hadn’t had to do jobs like that in years.

Less than a month ago, I found out that I would lose my EDD benefits, as my claims ran out of money. Then I had to pay a hefty debt in order to keep my cell phone activated; I couldn’t afford to lose my only lifeline to a potential job. As a result, I only had $75 to my name by the time I walked into the agency.

I sat there in a room with cold white painted brick and no windows as the nice lady was trying to make sure that I could get my food stamps as quickly as possible, but sadly telling me there was no way for me to get additional relief, as I was single with no dependent children under 18. She looked at me sympathetically as I sat there, crying in this little prison of a room, wondering how I was going to afford toiletries to clean myself, money for my phone or gas in my car so I could go to job interviews. I prayed she would shut the door so no one would see me, but she couldn’t.

I never thought I would come to this point in my life. Now, as I am about to go into the ultimate consumerist holiday of Black Friday and a wacky Christmas season, I am scared to death about my future. Yet I am facing Thanksgiving, where I should be thankful. How do you give thanks when you have come to a horrible rock bottom?

I have lost so much in the months since the divorce – my home, my belongings, the community that I had created for myself, even my own identity at times. I long for how things used to be, right down to AD’s warm smile and beautiful baritone voice. Everything is unfamiliar now, frightening because I have no control over my existence or survival. I am groping in the dark praying for help, singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables, because it’s the only song that begins to describe where I am right now.

I watch as people have turned to the want and consumption of Black Friday, not even pausing to stop for Thanksgiving dinner. They’re camping out in front of Best Buy and Target waiting for their games and toys. If I didn’t have my parents’ house, I would be camping outside too, but not because I needed a Wii U. People forget what it’s like to want for something simple – in my case, a job, almost any job, so I can make some money to pay off all my debts.

And yet, I need to give thanks despite it all. But how do we show our earthly gratitude towards a world that doesn’t seem to want us to be satisfied, because that doesn’t do anything for the economy, let alone our senses of self-worth? How does a woman with next to nothing show thanks for anything at all?

I have to be reminded of something a friend once told me: That every once in a while, we should sit back and say thank you for the things we do have, to close our eyes and really think about the beauty of the world around us, no matter how bad things get. After all, as I learned over this past year, the things we have can be taken away from us so quickly that we get whiplash just by getting our heads to track it.

So I sit here in thanks for all the things that I was able to have over the past year: A roof over my head, a car that moves, loyal friends that love me, a family that cares, my food stamps, the breath in my lungs, my beating heart and, above all, a chance to hit the reset button. I have my freedom from anger, deception, lies, abuse and pain from my marriage. My ex continues to live his life in denial whereas I decided to take a dangerous leap. Although I live with the aftereffects of that risk, I also have the comfort knowing that I am, and will be, a better person for it.

I wish you all a happy and healthy Thanksgiving full of love, life and joy. I hope you remember the things that make you the happiest and never take anything for granted. May you go from strength to strength.