Pantyhose Are Like Torahs

Once upon a time, Rabbi Scold had told us, Jacob wrestled with an angel. They wrestled all night, hour after hour, from evening to morning, neither one willing to relent or surrender, but it was nothing compared to how I wrestled that evening with my mother’s pantyhose. For what seemed like hours, I tried to figure out how to get the damned things on, as it was impossible to tell the front from the back, or even if there was a front or back. I grew irritated, angry. Would a label have killed them? Every time I tried to slide my foot down one leg of it, the other leg seemed to disappear, leaving me no choice but to back my first foot out, find the other leg, and start all over again. It was as if they didn’t want me to get them on, as if they knew I was committing a sin. I tried to get both feet into both legs simultaneously, but the nail of my big toe snagged painfully on the fabric, threatening to tear my mother’s pantyhose or rip off my toenail. My frustration grew; every minute I spent in the bathroom was another minute my father could come downstairs, kick the bathroom door open, and catch me. At last, from a combination of exasperation and fear, I gave up. I would not contend with pantyhose forever.

I trudged back to my bedroom, climbed into bed, and took out the Victoria’s Secret catalog, hoping that within it lay some revelations, some instructions, some clues. I flipped glumly through the pages, careful not to rouse my brother, who was sleeping just a few feet away, wondering where it was that women gathered to pass along the ancient secrets of pantyhose, when I happened upon the image of a woman sitting on the edge of a yellow tufted chair, pulling some parma violet tights onto her long, graceful leg. She had pulled them only halfway up, but I noticed that she had first gathered them in her hand, bunching the leg together all the way to the toes, and only then sliding them up her leg.

Of course! I thought.

Like Torahs.

Pantyhose are like Torahs.

In synagogue, before the Torah is returned to the Holy Ark, it is raised overhead, the scrolls rolled back up, and its cover replaced. In order to get the cover back over the scrolls, you first have to gather the cover in your hands, slip the openings over the scroll handles, only then pulling the cover down around the scroll itself.

A moment later I was back in the bathroom, door locked, blinds closed, successfully unrolling the pantyhose up my legs. I shivered at the wave of delightful sensations it sent through me. Cool yet warm, tight yet soft, restrictive yet utterly freeing. I looked down in amazement at my once-hideous form. My legs were now smooth, my calves were now shapely, my thighs were now long and lean. From the waist up, I was still a hideous male, but from the waist down I was a beautiful woman.

I was elated, and I was furious. Why the hell were these magical garments reserved for women? Men were the ugly ones. If anyone needed pantyhose, it was us.

I was desperate to see my new form in full, but the only mirror in the bathroom was the door of the medicine cabinet above the sink. I tiptoed back to my bedroom in my pantyhosed feet, heart pounding, alert for the slightest creak of a floorboard overhead, the tiniest squeal of a mattress spring from my parents’ bedroom that would signal my doom. If my father caught me, he’d kill me; if my mother caught me, she’d cry so much I’d kill myself. I crept in, quietly opened my closet door, and had to silence a gasp as I stared in wonder at my reflection in the full-length mirror that hung behind it.

—And the Lord, Rabbi Scold had taught us, saw that it was good.

Good? I thought as I admired my shapely legs.

I was fucking fantastic.

—Today, Rabbi Scold announced, his eyebrows furrowing even deeper than usual, we are going to read a story about a terrible city called Sodom.

—God destroyed Sodom, Rabbi Scold continued, because the men who lived there were feigeles.

Yiddish for fags.

Everyone laughed.

Of all the insults in the Yiddish language, none was so mortifying as feigele. Sure, we called one another schmuck and putz and occasionally, if no rabbis were around, asshole. But feigele was worse than them all. It had nothing to do with sex, which we knew nothing about at the time. To be a schmuck or a putz was to be a fool—but to be a feigele was to be weak, mincing, effeminate. To be a feigele was worse than being a woman, who had no choice but to be a woman. A feigele was a man who wanted to be a woman. And that was unforgivable.

Rabbi Scold smiled along with my snickering classmates. Nechemya, sitting beside me, did his best feigele impression—hands out to his sides, wrists dangling limply as he swiveled his hips in his seat—and the laughter began again.

Over the past week, pantyhose had led to skirts. Skirts had led to blouses. Blouses had led to perfume.

Was I a feigele? I wondered as they laughed, feeling myself redden with bitter shame. How could I know for sure? Did feigeles know they were feigeles? Did they want to be feigeles? And could I unfeigeleize myself if I was?

Rabbi Scold had taught us that to combat the temptations of the Evil Inclination, we should repeat to ourselves the names of the seven Canaanite nations: Canaanites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hittites, Hivites, Jebusites, and Perizzites. This, he said, would remind us of the wages of sin.

I was up to Girgashites when the mockery of my classmates turned my shame to anger. So I put on pantyhose, so what? So I put on a skirt? Why were pants for men and skirts for women anyway? It seemed so arbitrary. What was everyone’s obsession with fabric?

—I know you’re my son! the feigele’s father shouts. But in my house, boys wear fabric formed into two tubes and connected at the top, not one single cylinder of fabric that goes around the waist! A single cylinder of fabric that goes around the waist is for girls!

To hell with them, I thought. I was just doing what God Himself did when He created Eve, trying to undo the hideous blunder that was Man. This was God’s screwup, not mine. Here I was, cleaning up His mess, fixing His mistake—and I was the sicko?

School came to an end, but my mood did not. I felt uglier than ever, as sick inside as I was revolting outside, and needed something to cheer me up. Something like high heels.

Finding the house empty when I returned from yeshiva, I hurried to my mother’s bedroom closet. On the floor at the back where she kept her Shabbos shoes, I found the white chunky heels she wore on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. They were no stilettos, and they had no feathers, but they would do.

Downstairs in my bedroom, I pulled on my mother’s pantyhose, slipped on her shoes, and all that was hideous disappeared—Rabbi Scold, Nechemya, my father, myself, all were gloriously gone—and behold, I was beautiful again, more beautiful than ever before. The heels made me taller, longer; they made my hips tilt forward, my lower back arch, my shoulders drop.

I hurried again to my closet mirror. Unfortunately, though, while from the waist down I had my mother’s physique—a tiny woman who shopped for clothes in the petites department in Bamberger’s—from the waist up I had my father’s build—a squat, barrel-chested man who shopped for clothes in the auto department at Sears. Consequently, my body looks as if God, running out of parts during my creation, jammed the top half of a strongman onto the bottom half of a ballerina, glued a penis on it, and called it a day.

I lifted the mirror off its hook, set it on the floor, and tilted it forward, angling it so that my upper body was not in frame.

I was all lower half.

And I was beautiful.

I turned my back to the mirror, put my hands on my waist, and cocked my hips to one side as I’d seen the women in Victoria’s Secret do, then peered over my shoulder at the half reflection of my half-beautiful self. I may have been an abomination, but Christ Almighty, what an ass I had on me.