“So, your mom is making you go too?”

I was on the phone with my best friend, David Weber, discussing a Bar Mitzvah we were going to that weekend.

“Yeah.” He sounded depressed. “She plays Mahjong with Yahney’s mother. I freaking hate that kid.”

Philip Yahney was the least popular kid in our junior high. Short and round, with a stupid smile that seemed to be permanently imprinted on his face. The Bar Mitzvah was his.

I twirled the phone’s curly cord around my finger. “My mom’s making me go out of pity.”

A common move among the unpopular was to invite everyone from the school to whatever party it was you were having, thereby assuring that at least someone would show up. Yahney had invited the whole school.

“If you’d told me that I’d be at a Bar Mitzvah every Saturday of my junior high school years, I’d have spent them hibernating instead,” David grumbled. “Even the summers aren’t safe.” It was July.

He wasn’t exaggerating. School or no school, if it was a weekend, we probably were going to a Bar (or occasionally a Bat) Mitzvah. You might think that there are a lot of weekends in a year, which means that we were going to a lot of Bar Mitzvahs, and you’d be right. From 1980 to 1981, I went to twenty or thirty of them. And given that Jews only make up two and a half percent of the US population, you might think it strange that there could be so many Bar Mitzvahs among a single junior high’s worth of kids, and you’d be right again. But this was Long Island, New York, and our school was ninety percent Jewish, so there were a lot of Bar Mitzvahs.

“Where is it?” I’d only been ordered to attend Yahney’s shindig a few days earlier, and my mother hadn’t mentioned the venue.

“Where is what?” There were rustling sounds, and I imagined David squirming uncomfortably on the stool Mrs. Weber had set up by the phone in their kitchen. The only other phone in the house was in his parents’ bedroom, and neither he nor his brother Aaron were allowed to use it.

“The Bar Mitzvah.” I wished David would stay focused. Nothing to do with Yahney was worth talking about for more than a few minutes. At least, I was comfortable lounging on the couch in our living room.

“Oh, right.” David had gathered himself. “The Sea Cliff Country Club, I think. His parents are members.”

“Well, that’ll be a first. I haven’t been there yet.” It was a consolation, if a small one.

More rustling. “It’s the nicest club in the area. Yahney’s trying to overcome his loserdom.”

This seemed a fair observation. We lived on Long Island’s “Gold Coast,” where people are wealthy and status-obsessed, and among the Jewish population this means a perennial competition over who can host the most lavish Bar Mitzvah. The last one we’d gone to had a Star Wars theme, with a ten foot ice sculpture of the iconic movie poster and waitstaff dressed up as Han Solo, Chewbacca, C3P0, Luke, and Leia. (The busboys were Jawas.) By displaying this kind of opulence, Yahney sought to improve his low social position, or at least that’s what we thought.

“It won’t work.” I was confident that Yahney’s status would remain unchanged, the fanciness of his Bar Mitzvah notwithstanding. 

“Yeah…” David wasn’t convinced. “I gotta’ go. Mom’s yelling at me to take out the garbage.” The Webers were big on giving David and Aaron chores. They said it built character.

The big day came (well, Yahney’s big day), and I was reminded of one of the many reasons I hated Bar Mitzvahs: you had to wear a suit and tie. It was sweltering, and I was in the back seat of my mother’s car, a 1978 Honda Accord, whose meager air-conditioning was struggling to keep up with the heat and humidity. 

“This fucking sucks.” My shirt-collar was tight and itchy, and I could feel the sweat dripping down my back.

“Language,” my mother murmured absent-mindedly. She was dropping me off and going grocery shopping. Normally, a trip to the supermarket wouldn’t be very appealing, but I found myself fantasizing about the freezer aisle.

 “A perfectly good Saturday wasted. For Yahney.” I glared at the back of my mother’s neck, as if I expected her to feel my resentment through her skin.

“Mmhmmrm.” She wasn’t listening anymore. Not her Bar Mitzvah, not her problem. 

The club was on a bluff, high above the main road, and from the gravel circle outside the front doors you could see cars passing by below. We were early and there were just a few other kids milling around. Mom pulled into the circle and I climbed out and waved at David who was loitering near the entrance. He raised a hand limply in a half-hearted gesture of greeting.

“Why aren’t you inside?” I asked. “It’s hot as hell out here.” The club’s circle drive was unshaded.

“The doors are locked,” David said bitterly. “Yahney isn’t here yet. We got to his stupid Bar Mitzvah before he did.” He picked up a clod of dirt and chucked it off the bluff. There was something satisfying about watching it explode in a little puff on the road below.

“Be glad we didn’t spend the last two hours in Temple Sinai watching him chant Torah.” Our parents had spared us that misery, requiring only that we go to the party. “Maybe he won’t show up, and we can leave.” I found my own clod of dirt and threw it.

“No way.” David searched the ground for more projectiles. “His cred depends on this.” David was still convinced that the whole thing was a plot to improve Yahney’s social status. 

Kids continued to arrive in a slow but steady stream. Seeing us, they began lobbing their own clods of dirt onto the road, and soon there were volleys of the stuff raining down. One or two of these little missiles hit cars, which was even more satisfying than seeing them explode on the ground.

David picked up a clump of dirt and grass and pointed. “See that yellow Volkswagen? I’m going to nail it on the hood.”

The clump flew in a much straighter line than earlier efforts, suggesting that it had some weight to it, probably from a rock inside. David also had miscalculated the timing of his throw, so rather than hitting the hood, he struck the windshield. There was an audible crunch and the car swerved wildly, before turning and heading up the club’s drive.

The kids who were on the bluff beat a chaotic retreat, clustering around the club doors, which were still locked. Several pounded on them, shouting “Let us in!” but no one came. A few seconds later, the Volkswagen pulled into the circle and a bald, red-faced man with a mustache leaped out.

“Look at my windshield! Look at it!” There was a sizable divot on the passenger’s side, with spidery cracks spreading around it. “Which one of you kids threw the rock?! Tell me!” 

No one said a word. By this point, there must have been thirty or forty of us. If we kept our mouths shut, there’d be no way to prove who’d done it. And since everyone had been throwing stuff, no one actually knew who had hit the car. (Except for David and me of course.)

“I know one of you threw that rock!” The man looked around the group, and grabbed Gabe Fisher by the shoulders. “Was it you?! Well? Was it?!” 

Gabe shook his head, and the man released him. Turned to Peter Rosen and pointed an accusing finger in his face. “Was it you?!”

Peter pushed away his finger and laughed. “I didn’t hit your stupid car.” 

Mustache man was losing steam. He turned slowly in circles, spluttering, as if the rock-thrower might suddenly reveal himself, but everyone just stood around, looking at the ground. Eventually, he gave up and returned to his car in a huff. “I’ll be calling the club,” he declared, as he got in, “and one of you will be in serious trouble!” He slammed the door and drove off. A few minutes later, a lady in a uniform holding a walkie talkie let us in.

Sea Cliff Country Club was an enormous place, with an indoor pool, game room, bar, restaurant, barber shop, and hair salon. Outside was an eighteen hole golf course, six tennis courts, another pool, a café, and a pro-shop. David wasn’t kidding when he said it was the nicest club around.

The party was in one of several large ballrooms, and the guests numbered in the hundreds: a combination of kids from our school and what I assumed were members of the Yahney family. (There were twice as many people I didn’t recognize as people I did.) The Bar Mitzvah had no theme per se, but was a general ode to excess, as everything was either gold or bejeweled or smothered in balloons or plastered with blown up pictures of Yahney’s face. There were buckets of candy everywhere, and each table sported a three foot tall Yahney statue made of chocolate. If Yahney was going to be fat, then everyone else would be too. 

David and I snagged a spot at a table close to one of the exits. Peter Rosen was there, as well as John Lawrence and Billy Jacobsen, who also had been outside on the bluff during the rock-throwing episode. For a while, we just watched people filing in, and you could tell the poor souls who had endured the two-hour service by the “just-released-hostage” look on their faces. 

Lunch was the standard banquet fare: baked chicken, with mashed potatoes and some limp, overcooked vegetables. Eating the chicken was like chewing through soft wood. 

“I’ve had better food on airplanes.” David made swirling patterns through the mashed potatoes with his fork. 

“Wait until you see the cake.” I’d noticed two waiters wheeling the lopsided monstrosity out of the kitchen on a trolley: a huge, icing-encrusted Leaning Tower of Pisa, with a figurine of Yahney at the top. 

“Screw the cake.” Peter got up, and John and Billy followed. “Let’s go find something to do.” They headed out of the ballroom.

“We should go with them,” David said. “You know what happens at cake time.”

As per the early-80’s Bar Mitzvah script, once the cake-cutting started, the DJ (there was always a DJ) would instruct the celebrant’s relatives to “get on the dance floor!” whereupon he would play Sister Sledge’s We Are Family, as the Bar Mitzvah boy (or girl) and his (or her) siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins danced awkwardly. If you were anywhere nearby, you’d get roped into the follow-up number, YMCA, and be expected to make an ass out of yourself pantomiming the individual letters. (Even if you were lucky enough to avoid this, you’d still have to watch everyone else doing it, which was nearly as bad.)

“Grandma and Grandpa Lipchitz are on the dance floor!” the DJ announced triumphantly, as if Cher and Michael Jackson had just shown up. A wizened man with a walker and a bent-over old lady clutching a cane hobbled out, and We Are Family started playing. I stared, fascinated, as they staggered around, wondering if one or both would fall and break a hip.

David was pulling my arm now. “We have to leave before YMCA starts!”

I swatted him away. “Hold on.” Yahney had appeared with his little sister, who couldn’t have been older than six or seven, and the two joined their geriatric counterparts. It was like watching a hippopotamus dance with a chipmunk in an old-age home.

“Too late,” David groaned. We Are Family faded out, and the DJ was shouting and gesturing to us: “Everyone on the dance floor!” The opening strains of YMCA came over the PA.

🎵 “Young man, there’s no need to feel down. I said, young man…” 🎵

Wearily, we rose to our feet, resigned to what was coming. But, as we shuffled towards the dance floor, there was a sudden commotion on the far side of the ballroom. An old woman at one of the tables was screaming and waving something over her head, but it was too far away to see.

Then, a ruckus broke out at a table nearby, where a bunch of kids were clustered tightly together and jabbering excitedly over something which, again, we couldn’t see. Soon, there were outbursts at every table in the room.

The DJ continued spinning records – YMCA was followed by another Bar Mitzvah favorite, Celebration, by Kool and the Gang – but by this time the dancers had left to find out what was going on.

David and I spotted Yahney’s father speaking angrily to a man who I think was the club’s manager. He jabbed his finger at what looked like a piece of paper that they were examining. We moved closer.

“What I want to know is how this could happen?! We’ve got kids here! And elderly!” Mr. Yahney was enraged.

The manager looked like he wanted to crawl under the floor. “I don’t know, sir. I’m sure the barber shop is locked. We lock all of the club’s shops, when the ballrooms are leased for parties.”

“So how did these get out?!” Yahney’s father remained incensed. “The kids are passing them around! I mean, look at this!” He brandished what he was holding in front of the manager’s face, and David and I finally saw what was causing all the fuss.

It was a centerfold from Penthouse or Hustler or some other such publication, featuring a naked woman, with a mane of blond hair and her legs splayed open facing the camera. It seemed that the Sea Cliff Country Club’s barber shop had a stack of adult magazines in it and someone had broken in, found them, and distributed them throughout the ballroom. Looking around, I saw Peter, John, and Billy standing by the entrance, grinning while they watched the spectacle.

“Howie, do something!” Another old lady at another table thrust an issue of Oui at her husband who raised his hands in protest. 

“What am I supposed to do with the damned thing?” He tossed the magazine back on the table, where it was eagerly snatched up by one of Yahney’s cousins, who promptly ran off.

“Oh, Howie…” The old lady’s dismay was palpable.

General confusion followed as the party staff tried to regain control of the situation, which meant finding and gathering up all the magazines and centerfolds that had been scattered about. The job was made trickier by the fact that some kids had already taken their share of the loot and disappeared to other areas of the club. Taking advantage of the chaos, David and I slipped out of the ballroom. Eventually, things would return to normal, and we didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity when the music and dancing resumed.

The five of us — Peter, John, Billy, David and me — met up on the back terrace, just outside the ballroom’s French windows. Inside, things had calmed down, and the party had moved onto another Bar Mitzvah staple: lifting the Bar Mitzvah boy (or girl) on a chair and whooping it up, while the spectators dance the Hora. In this case it was tough going, and several burly men aided by a gaggle of pre-adolescents struggled to get Yahney aloft, but eventually they succeeded and the whooping and dancing commenced.

There was no reason to return to the Bar Mitzvah, until it was time for our parents to pick us up. There were hundreds of people at this thing. None of us were friends with Yahney, and no one would notice whether we were there or not. So, we made our way through the gate and down a path that led to the golf course. When we arrived at the clubhouse, just yards away from the first tee, everything opened up. It was night at this point and the only sounds were those of birds and crickets and the summer breeze on the fairways and greens. 

Behind the clubhouse was a large shed with a padlock on it. A sign read, “Golf Carts.” John rummaged around in his pocket, pulled out two hairpins, and started messing with the lock.

“What, you’re a lock picker?” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

It wasn’t even ten seconds before there was a “click” and the lock opened. John smiled and raised his finger, as if he was giving a lesson.

“People come to the party from the service, right? They dump their yarmulkes into the bin at the door. What’s attached to every yarmulke? A hairpin.” He reached into his pocket and pulled one out for effect. “And you’re damned right I know how to pick a lock. How do you think I get into my parents’ liquor cabinet?” John was crazy, but way cool.

Billy pushed the door open and we entered the shed. Inside were several rows of golf carts. There must have been forty or fifty of them. Peter ran over to one. 

“Keys are in the ignitions. Ready to go.”

He scanned the shed for a moment, then crossed to the far side. Pushed a button, and two garage-style doors lifted.

We clambered into the carts, David and me in one, Peter, John, and Billy in another. Then we headed out, pausing just as we got outside.

”We’re gonna’ go to the lake, behind the third hole” Peter said, giving us a little salute. “Enjoy a nice waterfront view.”

“Here,” John flicked me a pack of Marlboros and a lighter. “You can thank my lockpicking skills again. My parents keep their cigs in the liquor cabinet.” He held another pack in his other hand.

Cigarettes stolen from parents were rare but always welcome. “You’re a decent and honorable man.” I returned Peter’s salute. “We’re headed to the first sand trap.”

As the golf cart hummed along, I glanced at David. His head was tilted back, and his eyes were closed, and I wondered how many moments like this we would have before we grew up and went our own ways.

We arrived at the sand trap, and I found that if I turned the wheel a certain way and rested my foot lightly on the pedal, I could drive a perfect circle around the sand without even thinking about it. I looked over at David again, and his eyes were still closed. Was he asleep?

As I was leaning over him, his eyes opened halfway, and he smiled for the first time since we’d met on the bluff that afternoon. “Let’s have a cigarette.” 

I slid two Marlboros out of the pack, put both in my mouth and lit them. Handed one to David. For several moments we sat in silence, blowing thin streams of smoke up towards the clouds.

“You know what?” David turned to me. “I just realized, Liz Goldstein’s Bat Mitzvah is next Saturday, and it’s at Temple Beth Shalom!”

The significance of this was lost on me, aside from the fact that both of us went to Hebrew School at Temple Beth Shalom and both of us had been invited to Liz’s Bat Mitzvah. “And?”

“Well, I was wondering,” David waved his cigarette and sat up with a renewed vigor. “I’m getting a ‘C’ in Rabbi Schwartz’s class. During the Bat Mitzvah, do you think we can break into his office and change my grade?”