TZAIMS & GENE

 The Story of Tzaims  and Gene

It only seems timely to explain the relationship between Tzaims and Gene since there are so many confused people in the world whose minds grab what ever they hear, read, or think, believing it to be the truth.  

Of course trying to tell them the truth is like pulling hen's teeth.  

I will write this in the first person since it is a personal story.

I was about 24 years old when my mother explained something hidden from me until then but I had already served 4 yeat active in tbe US Navy and it was about a year after my father died on our dairy farm, Cedar Meadows.  We had sold the farm in Wakefield, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania after he died and I found a nice house that I bought and signed a mortgage for my mother in Philadelphia so I must have been 24, years old since she told this to me in the living room of that house.

In 1931 my mother convinced my father to have a second child.  Raymond, first born in May 1923 was almost 10 years old.  She wanted a girl but but on 1st of January 1932 I was born instead.  Due to the great depression living had its difficulties economically.  My father lost his fortune in the 1929 stock market crash but didn't jump out of a sky scraper but got a factory job and supported his wife and son.  I might have been adopted out at birth since I wasn't a girl but my father decided to keep me. My mother decided to educate me in the arts, music, dance, theatre, acrobatics, gymnastics, fencing and tennis, so I wasn't ever a sports team jock.

Again she begged my father to try for a girl in 1934 buf he insisted on a proviso if born a boy he would be put up for adoption at birth

John James Junior was born.  The terms for adopting was the couple had to be wealthy, give him a name John or similar name, and be a Methodist Christian family, living far away from Chicago, Illinois.

.  So this one day possibly at Christmas 1956 or 1957 my mother draws me aside and tells me I have a younger brother somewhere in the world but no clue of his name, location or family but I should search for him.  She insisted on this as she seemed stressed about him not knowing his real family.

How?  Where?  Impossible, with all records privately sealed for over 20 years.  Unfortunately it hung in my mind like a hugh unmovable rock but I tried to put it out of my mind.  The only clue she could give me was tbat he was born on the 28th of September, 1935 which I. wrote down on something important for me to save and forgot it.

In 1966, February, I was now a famous fabric and fashion designer in New York City and I was staying with a good friend Paul Smith,the director of the Museum of Contempory Craft for the weekend reading the New York Times art and theatre sections on a Sunday afternoon.  I found in the theatre section mention of an Experimental Film Society in tbe East Village advertising a Midnight showing of two controversal films by two different avante guarde film makers so I decided to go since it was a one time showing for only that night.  The Magazine section had a big cover story introducing Bob Dylen and his musical s tyle and poetic verse construction.

I arrived at the Bridge Theatre on 8th Street early and was the first to start a line about an hour before the box office opened.  Many people filled the lobbr but I didn't pay much attsntion to tbem.  Wby I looked back at the door entrance at this one moment I cannot explain but a very thin, lean young man entered alone and stood at the open door.  He was wearing a surplus US Army fatigue jacket and worn blue genes, gaunt, remote, serious, with sunken eyes looking weary as though he went tbrough a great mental and physical suffering.  He was at least 25 feet away but our eyes met briefly and there was suddenly an instant flash of lightning that struck between us.  Startled by it I managed to look away 

The moment was then disturbed as the box office opened and we went into the theatre.  I alwas sat middle center which in this almost empty theatre I was quite surrounded by empty seats.  Suddenly this same young man came and sat down in the seat on my right beside me.  Strange but although I tried to ignor it I felt comforted by his doing so.  We were the only two in the middle of the theatre

We didn't speak to one another or even acknowledge tbe presence of one another through both films.  When it was over he said.  Would you like to go and talk, have a beer and a cheeseburger at a West Village Pub?.  I said. Yes.

We walked dow 8th Street to Bleeker Street but though I was familiar with the zexpresso czfes he took me to a bug beautiful and elegant pub in a historic building built on a triangle island called The Riviera.  We both order dark beer and the cheeseburgers were the best and juciest I ever had on toasted sesemy seed buns.  We both liked dark beer,STOUT and PORTER 

He had a ZbA In English Literature from the University of Maryland so we talked about English writers and poets, He could recite whole passages from Shakespeare, Dickens, but his favorite was Thomas Mann.

To be continued.