Confessions

The Problem

Our first concert was a huge success.  The management hired Flora to give a joint vocal concert with me each weekend.  However, I discovered that there was a problem with Flora.  She seemed to be very uncomfortable.  After the concert, she went to her room, lay down on her bed, and began writhing like a snake.  She said to me, “Arthur, I feel itchy all over and only you can help me.”  I didn’t know what was wrong.  “What should I do?” I asked.  “You don’t know?” she asked incredulously.  “You really don’t know?” she repeated.

We drove back to New York City on Monday morning.  That evening I received a phone call from her, “If you want me to sing with you again, you must have sex with me.”  She used another four-letter word.  I never liked the sound of that word.

Well, back to the drawing board.  Of course, I took this up with Dr. Burns, my psychiatrist, on my next visit.  “I thought that you would develop a natural sexual interest in Flora on the first evening without any prompting from me,” he said.  His face looked fallen, but he felt up to the task of coaching me.  He started with foreplay.  He described things that I must do and he rolled his eyes with delight.  I quickly ran to the bathroom and puked.  With a sense of failure, he said to me, “You do not have to do anything.  Just lay beside her and hope for the best.”

On the way to Tamiment for our second weekend I told Flora that I would have sex with her after our concert.  She was delighted and said, “Arthur, we have this wonderful weekend together.  It would be foolish to waste any opportunity.”  I agreed.  I didn’t tell her that I was fearful about what may not happen, but something did happen.  So why do I think that I am still a celibate?

In the Beginning

It is called the “Gift of Celibacy.”  Had I been born Catholic, I would have known it was a gift from God.  But I was born Jewish.  As I grew up, I began to realize I had no interest in sex like other boys.  I would be unable to marry and have a family like my neighborhood friends.  I foresaw a life of loneliness.  I became an alcoholic and spent many years in therapy.

My story began before I was born with my mother, Ida Pekar, in Russia.   It is important to understand the circumstances of my mother’s early life in order to appreciate how they influenced me.   My mother was born in 1894 in the Russian city of Odessa on the northern coast of the Black Sea.  Ukraine was part of Russia then.  There was a large Jewish community in Odessa, and many of the streets had Old Testament names.  Mother had a sister named Esther who was eight years her senior.

My grandfather, Abram Kaplan, was in his late twenties when my mother was born.  He was away from home at the time, serving as a bugler in the Russian army.  He died when my mother was three months old.  The cause of his death was unknown to me.  He never saw his daughter.

When my mother was six, her mother became ill and died.  My mother told me how she sat with her and held her hand as she passed away.  A kind Jewish baker in the neighborhood took my mother and her sister into his home.  The Russian word for baker was Pekar.  In later years, my mother took this as her family name.  Two years later her sister married a young man named Boris Pruzhanski who was nineteen at the time.  It was the custom to marry young in Russia in those days.  Esther and Boris had four children.

My mother continued to live with the baker’s family.  In the mornings she looked out the window and saw other children going to school.  This made her cry because she was an orphan and couldn’t have a life like other children.  In Tsarist Russia, education was not free.