The Watchmaker's Daughter: A Memoir by Sonia Taitz

Author:Sonia Taitz [Taitz, Sonia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 097556188X
Amazon: B00918JQSY
Publisher: McWitty Press
Published: 2012-09-24T07:00:00+00:00

The Making of a Courtesan

AT FOURTEEN, a great miracle happened there, as we say on Chanukah. Not, in this case, in the city of Modi’in, where Maccabee warriors battled Hellenized Syrians, but in my own developing body. Somehow, finally, I made the full transition from studious girl with coke-bottle glasses and braces to a sultry, Semitic Lolita with contacts, straight teeth, and killer curves à la Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren.

Still a child inside the modest Orthodox world, I did not know the true meaning of what I radiated for several more years. The first sign of this transformation was my English teacher, Mr. Levin, who suddenly said:

“And what is your opinion of this play, Sonia—you, you COURTESAN?”

This shouted, untoward word froze in the air. The moment passed. I suppose that none of us had the vaguest idea what a courtesan was, and Mr. Levin, always a bit fanciful, did have a tendency to shout out various wacky epithets. (I remember that he called one classmate “an ugly bowling ball.” What did that mean?) When I hear the word now, I am almost flattered—for wasn’t that what I had always dreamed about being—a modern Scheherezade-Esther? Yes, a courtesan—one who can make powerful men weak and susceptible.

Something beside my own subconscious intentions had brought out this reaction. One of the meaner boys had started sneezing every time I walked by, saying “Ah-choo! I’m allergic to foam rubber!” This was hilarious to him; “falsies” were apparently made out of foam rubber, and my breasts were big enough to seem improbable.

It was also of considerable advantage to me that my formerly despised, dangerous black hair was now considered sexy. I wore it straight, long, and glossy, an effect achieved by “wrapping” the hair around an empty coffee can. My looks were a political statement. Jews could be sexy, as were Italians and Puerto Ricans. I was an Indian Princess, or maybe even a Jewish American one. Nothing to be ashamed of. Ali McGraw played one in Goodbye Columbus, and the Holocaust wasn’t mentioned even once. Finally, Jewish daughters could be spoiled, like Kitten in Father Knows Best. And when they grew up, these kittens could wrap men around their little fingers.

So this was how Helen of Troy addled Paris, how Cleopatra made Antony irrational. These clever women were blessed with brains, but to that were added more mysterious powers. The powers of the courtesan, the seductress, the femme fatale. My first perfume, after a brief false start with a girlish lily-of-the-valley, was called Tigress. It was musky, and the top of the bottle was covered in fake tiger fur. You can’t get sexier than that, can you?

In my idiotic solipsism, in my vanity and adolescent fancy, I thought I had figured out some great abiding truth of the universe. Something that would solve all ethnic hatred, solve it in the simple union of man and woman whose love was so powerful that swords would be bent into wedding rings. The trouble with the

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