Little Chicken Media

Posted By Hinda Mandell on November 8, 2009

By Maidel

“Maybe he’s not really gay,” pined my mother after meeting my roommate, the Faigel.

Oh, that sweet little gay Faigeleh. How he charmed my middle-aged Jewish suburban mother. His six-foot frame. His twinkly brown-as-a-button eyes. Those self-deprecating remarks. She was betwixt by the idea of her daughter, the lonely Maidel, living with such a nice young man. The fact that he happened to like – ahem! – crushed her burgeoning fantasy of her daughter finding love after all. Oh the Faigel, who generously let my out-of-town parents take over his bed for three nights as he found refuge – and canoodling – with a man halfway across town.

And as my parents slept in his bed, they lay inches from a book on his nightstand. “Bigger than life: the history of gay porn cinema from beefcake to hardcore.”

Machismo!

The Faigel is really quite a faigeleh. As queer and pink as cotton candy. Even my mother realized the evidence pointed against her whimsical fantasy.

Earlier this year the Faigel and I shacked up together for the usual reason: We are cash-strapped graduate students quickly approaching 30. We found comfort in the other’s quirks. It confirmed that we’re each not as weird as we thought. Because that roommate – no that one! – is significantly more insane. He has a tendency to pop pharmaceuticals in the evening. I indulge my Lhasa Apso with love songs. When I sing “love,” the Faigel hears “lube.”

Pure cotton candy.

The gossip between the Maidel and the Faigel is epic. We are yentahs (read: old ladies). The Faigel is slowly learning his Yiddish. He’s a good Catholic, having been raised by a Polish-Russian American mother and a German-American father. He grew up on piergois. I grew up on tales of the Polish-Russian Cossacks pillaging my ancestors’ shtetls. Maybe we were neighbors from another life.

Certainly we’re a match made in the 21^st century.

Maidel: “Pure love!”

Faigel: “Lube!”

By Faigel

Last year I was going through a messy breakup with my on-again, off-again boyfriend – the kind of break-up that results in therapy and prescription drugs and insomnia (oh stop judging, you’ve been there). At the time I kept a “for-emergencies-only” bottle of … let’s say lemonade … in a locked drawer of my desk at school, deep in the bowels of the Ivory Tower. After a particularly rough morning following a sleepless night, I pulled out the bottle and unscrewed the cap.

“To things not getting any worse,” I toasted the Maidel, a fellow doctoral student, as she walked by my desk.

“What are you doing?” she asked, eying the bottle.

“Oh, Maidel, it’s been a bad morning.” And with that I raised the bottle to my lips and took a burning swig.

The Maidel glanced at the clock on the wall behind her, which read something like 10:15 a.m., and then returned her gaze to me.

“Well,” she sighed, grabbing the bottle from my hand, “one should never drink alone.” Her face puckered at the taste, she smacked her lips, slammed the bottle down on my desk, shot me one of her characteristic nods, and exited the office without another word.

A part of me fell in love with the Maidel right then and there.

Since this incident, I can now call the Maidel my roommate. Together we vie for the attention of Nigel, the Maidel’s beloved and grumbly Lhasa Apso (that’s a dog for the less canine-refined among us). And though living together sometimes feels like my very own “Will & Grace” hell (she’s got red hair and she’s Jewish) – I love playing Faigel to her Maidel. Will and Grace have nothing on us.

Category: Maidel & Faigel
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