The Baba Ghanoushes of Brooklyn

By William St. Lawrence

With its nondescript front, it didn’t even look like a bar except for the small neon martini glass in the corner of the window and the occasional guy walking out completely hammered. Large illuminated cubes of opaque glass lined the threshold, so you couldn’t see around the corner and kind of felt like a kid entering a fun house. Only now, your capacity for giddy enthusiasm relied heavily on grain alcohol and your mother wouldn’t be waiting for you with cotton candy when you came out.

The shelves on the mantel were decorated with what they call “kitsch.” A 50-year-old man might have recognized it as junk from his childhood. There were toy trucks, hoola hoops, a wooden cigar store Indian in a Hawaiian grass skirt, and various other bric-à-brac, the lot of which could have been picked up at a garage sale in Cincinnati for ten dollars. This being Brooklyn, they probably spent a couple of grand and many weekends searching for just the right velvet Elvis tapestry for the door of the men’s bathroom. To the confusion of the women under 60, there was a poster of Rock Hudson on the door to the ladies room.

The drink prices reflected the clientele: $1 Pabst Blue Ribbons for the artists and $9 Mojitos for the lawyers and bankers. A small minority of working class locals collected at the tables near the door, bus drivers and plumbers who serviced the area. They clung to happy-hour scotches like shreds of cotton protecting their eardrums from the inevitable screeches of their wives.

“What’ll it be?” asked the thin, tattooed girl behind the bar. She had China-blue eyes and the standard provocatively ripped CBGBs t-shirt. As she pulled the tap, a tattoo of a Viking warship dropped its sail over her wiry arm muscles. Choppy blond hair bloomed from her scalp like dandelion petals with a flattened crown. The back looked as though it’d been ironed down from an hour or two in the missionary position. She was a perfect candidate for spreading venereal diseases and far-left political ideologies.

“Brooklyn have everyzing zough…” she was saying in an accent I couldn’t place. “Za black man, za Arab man, za China man, za Jew man…. Ah za culture!” she cried out at a loss for words. “My god! Za culture!” Interpreting my nods as signs complicity, she took a liking to me. Tears began to well-up in the China blues as she expressed her outrage against guerilla warfare in East Timor and littering.

“On Atlantic Avenue zis morning, I saw cabbie. He empty whole ashtray on street!” she wept. “On street for godsake!”

“You mean all at once?” I asked, stubbing out my cigarette. “I do it one at time. You know to spread them around the neighborhood so they’re harder to pick, but all at once! Now, that’s too much!”

Her nostrils flared with a warlike look. Then she slapped her knee animatedly and said with a laugh, “Ah, I see that you are teasing with me.” She placed her elbows on the bar displaying her strong forearms, which if not larger were definitely more muscular than my own. She let her face rest in the palms of her large mannish hands and said with a sigh, “You know… I have za like for you, American boy.”

Three hours later, after she placed the stools on the bars, I was the only able-bodied man left. “Come zen,” she said with a wave of her hand as she turned off the lights. “We go have whammie whammie, now.”

It was as simple as that. It had been 8 months without sex. Then I stumbled on the one bar in Brooklyn where my tolerance would be rewarded with a promiscuous Scandinavian woman.

She lived just around the corner on the second floor of a dilapidated brownstone. I scaled her body like a great fallen tree, marveling that I could hardly cover three-quarters of her at once. It had been so long since a real live woman gave me permission to touch her naked body. All of my pent-up carnality unleashed at once. With her eyes to the ceiling, she began screaming, “Jeremy! Jeremy!” over and over as her pale lanky thighs chaffed my slender girlish hips. Then she pulled me to the mattress and straddled on top so that together we looked like a tremendous mast on tiny ship that might upend itself at any moment.

Over her shoulder, the bright morning sun shone from between the bras and camouflage pants draped over a curtain rod. I climbed her belly with my hands to spread and mash her breasts together, mesmerized by their pliability. “Boobies,” I thought giddily to myself.

“JERRRRRRMY!”

“Who’s Jeremy?” I asked afterward as I fetched a tissue to wipe up the mess I’d made on her naval.

“Jeremy?” she said, strangely oblivious.

“You’ve been screaming his name at me for the last twenty minutes. What’s he… an old boyfriend or something?” I said, trying not to sound jealous.

She was genuinely perplexed. It took her a full minute to figure out what I was talking about.

“Oh no,” she laughed. “I was singing zat song by za Pearl Jam.” Then one eyebrow raised with a look of pure astonishment. “You mean you could hear zat? I only sing in my head.”

She thought I was some kind of mind reader. And I was in a way. I was privy to the innermost thoughts that she sang aloud unawares. I didn’t say anything to dissuade her, happy to be considered more talented than the ordinary wretches she lugged home to pleasure herself atop. My ability got her excited again. She began kissing my mouth and reached for my limp and repairing member.

“Hold on a minute,” I said. “I’m not a machine.” I didn’t want her to think I was incapable of encores, but there was nothing left in the tank. “I need a little tenderness,” I confessed.

“You want za pee-pee kisses?” she said and bent to suckle my flaccid hood.

“No,” I pulled away. “How about… How about a little conversation? What’s your story? You know, where did you come from, that sort of thing?”

“All right,” she sighed, “But if I tell you za story of me, zen I get the whammie whammie again?” She made a crude clapping noise with her palms.

I nodded.

***

Ingrid was from a small town in Michigan. Her family had moved there from Sweden just before she was born. Her father was a fisherman named Johan Johansson, which is about as common a name in Sweden as John Smith in America. On account of the name, his mail always got mixed up at the post office, and once a week he had to go pick it up and sort through all the other Johanssons’ mail, which was half the town.

Johan was not big on lines or waiting, so the process infuriated him. One day, he got fed up and said “That’s it! I’m not a Johansson any more. From now on my name is…” He saw a menu for a new India restaurant and pronounced, “Baba Ghanoush! That’s a name nobody else in town will to have.” The other Johanssons scoffed at him, but he would not back down. The postmaster made it official right there on the spot.

“What are we heathens?” Johan’s wife screeched after he told her they were Baba Ghanoushes. “It’s not even a Christian name.”

They had a big row about it and Johan ended up sleeping in his boat that night. Since the sun never sets during the summertime in Sweden, Johan tossed and turned and didn’t get a wink of sleep.

Early in the morning, he headed back to his house with a sunburn to apologize to his wife and agree to go back to being a Johansson. On the way, ran into some of his drinking buddies who were returning from the pub. Some had been there during his scene at the post office, and after drinking all night it was the funniest thing in the world to them.

“Oh, look at old Baba Ghaganouj! You’re up before the fishes and you haven’t even been at the pub,” one said. “Judging by the sunburn, I bet your old lady threw you out when she heard she had a heathen name and you’ve been sleeping in your boat all night,” he said and they all began to laugh.

“Threw me out nothing,” he pronounced. “The old lady loved it. Said I’m like a new man since I changed the name. In fact, she can’t keep her hands off me. Yeah, we’ve been at it damn near all night. I’m just a little flushed the exercise.” Johan plucked his elastic suspenders, then let them snap back against his belly. “In fact, I was just going to fetch some water from the well to cool down. Don’t be surprised if there’s a little Baba Ghanoush in the nursery 9 months from now.”

Johan’s wife was the coldest woman in the entire village. She hadn’t let Johan lay his hands on her since little Stephan was born 3 years earlier. After his birth, she swore he’d never lay his hands on her again, so there was little chance of Johan producing a child in 9 months.

“Pack your things,” he told his wife when he got home. “We’re moving out of the country.”

“What? First, you tell me we’re heathens. Now, you tell me we’re leaving the homeland. Lord in Heaven! What’s happened to us?”

“Say what you will woman, but over my dead body will I be here in the spring,” Johan decreed.

“I’m not moving anywhere, unless it’s to America,” she said firmly, “and if we do move there, we’ll be going by the name of Johansson, so help me god.”

Johan didn’t much like the idea of going to America with its warm coastal beaches and flat plains, but he would not stand for being the laughing stock of the entire village. “So be it, woman,” he conceded, “but you must find a place where there’s lakes for fishing and mountains for bobsledding.”

Mrs. Johansson was so happy they made love. Nine months later, Ingrid was born in a small town on Lake Michigan. The town was a popular destination for Swedish immigrants, nicknamed Little Stockholm. When Johan went to the post office to collect his mail, he found there were 12 other Johanssons in town.

“That’s it,” he told his wife as he came in the door. “We’re Baba Ghanoushes now, and it’s official. I’ll be sleeping in the icehouse on the lake if anyone needs me.”

For the first 15 years of Ingrid’s life, she was home-schooled by her mother and seldom met any native-born Americans. She picked up her mother’s accent, so most people she came across regarded her as a foreigner. Though she’d never known any other home, she felt like a permanent tourist in her own country. Eventually, Ingrid went to high school with other Swedish girls, some of which had accents too, but they all teased her because of her heathen name.

“So I come to Brooklyn where I can be accepted as a Baba Ghanoush,” Ingrid told me. “Brooklyn accept everybody. Here, if you have strange name, it is just reason for people to make conversation with you.”

***

Everybody needs a place to feel at home, and for a 6-foot blond woman named after a seasoned eggplant dip, it was Brooklyn. We saw each other pretty regularly over the next few months, but never before 3 am. When I came into the bar, she was always perfumed in beer and twirling a dish rag.

Draping her leg over my hip one night, she said to me, “Ah, the savior of me,” then planted her lips on my neck. “Here to rescue me from these drunken leeches.”

“You mean letches?”

“Yes, the leeches… who like to suck very strongly on my boobs.”

It was implied that if I didn’t rescue her each night, she might dust off one of the hobos in the corner, fill him full of feminist ideologies, then fuck the dirt from his body. Ingrid had a strong sexual appetite. I was not a jealous person by nature. She made me into one. Instead of sitting at the bar all night watching her flirt with the customers, I filled my time with other activities like knitting beer cozies, while checking my messages every 20 minutes to see if I was being called off the bench.

“Zis is Ingrid,” one voicemail began. “It’s seven o’clock.” A bus roared by in the background. “I get off at four or whenever zese old men go. Maybe you can meet me, but I zink you are out with friends.”

What I heard was an entirely different message: “This is Ingrid. I’m sucking some cocks.” She slurped. “I get off like a whore with old men for blow. Maybe they will beat me. I think they are your friends.”

Clearly, I had a sickness. Whenever something was bothering me, I went to see Sammy for advice. As a white man from a sheltered suburban town, it was important for me to have at least one disadvantaged, yet extremely talented black friend. Sammy had no legs and was the best drummer in the entire subway system. He played on inverted buckets and sink basins, old metal shutters and twangy pieces of tin positioned in a semicircle on the platform of the F train. I could never figure out how the hell he got down there, let alone how he carried all that stuff, but he could play better than any Julliard-trained percussionist with a thousand-dollar drum kit.

“Sammy, I think this girl’s cheating on me,” I told him. “I’m having sex with her 5 nights a week and I’m afraid if I don’t show up she’ll take someone else home. I don’t even know what she does on her two nights off. I’m just glad for the break. What should I do? I’ve never been with a 6-foot blond before, let alone a Swedish one.”

“You mean Ingrid?” he asked.

“What? Not you too Sammy? Shit, you don’t even have legs and she’s balling you.”

“Nah, kid. You were telling me about a girl named Ingrid last week. You said she left your balls swollen. I don’t know why you’re complaining. Look at me. I don’t even have balls. Damn landmine! Damn war! All I got is these sticks and the sounds of bombs exploding in my head. Hell, if I didn’t have the drumming and the subway roaring by, I’d hear the voices again. Damn voices!”

“I can’t get this girl out of my mind, Sammy. I’ve never met anyone like her.”

“Sounds like a lot of other people have though.”

“Hey, that’s my girl you’re talking about! I guess it’s true though. But does her uniqueness depreciate just because everyone else is experiencing it as well?”

“Who cares? Just enjoy it while it lasts. Eventually, you’ll either get jealous and breakup with her, or she’ll decide she wants to be monogamous. So, either grow a set or sit tight.”

“I don’t think she’s monogamous type of girl, Sammy. She’s sort of free-spirited.”

“Got her tits hanging out all over the place, huh?”

“Yeah, so how can I tell if she’ll ever change?”

“Ah, if she digs your shit, she’ll probably show herself to you in ways she don’t to them other dudes.”

“But, how will I know for sure if she’s just showing it to me and not a dozen other guys?”

“You do anal?”

“Once a month,” I said.

“Well, then the next step is for you to meet her parents.”

“Thanks, Sammy.”

I decided sit tight and see what would happen. I patiently bit my lip when Ingrid didn’t call, then dutifully went to her bedside when she summoned me in the predawn hours. After a couple of weeks, my patience finally paid off. As I was wiping my mess from Ingrid’s belly one morning, she told me that her parents were coming to town for Thanksgiving.

“That’s nice, honey.” I was careful not to leave the soft blond fuzz on her navel sticky. The process always mesmerized her. She sat still and wide-eyed like a baby getting its diaper changed. She thought it was the most romantic thing in the world that I did such a thing.

“And I hope for you to come at Zanksgiving,” she said.

She looked so tender with the pieces of tissue clinging to the matted hair on between her legs. Clearly, I had a girlfriend.

On Thanksgiving Day, Ingrid had to work until 8 pm, so I volunteered to pick up her parents at LaGaurdia at 4:15. They were easy enough to spot coming out of the gate. Mr. Baba Ghanoush was a burly blonde man carrying two sacks that looked like dirty laundry. Under his armpits were whole fish wrapped in newspaper with the heads sticking out. His wife was a paunch and crabby woman, barking orders at him as he juggled the fish and baggage.

“Let’s have a look at you,” Johan said squeezing my puny bicep with his oversized thumb. “You don’t look like no whammie whammie expert to me.”

“Leave za boy alone,” his wife swatted him with a magazine. “Ingrid say he very nice boy. He even wipe up his mess after he finish on her.”

“Ho, Ho, Ho!” chuckled Johan. “Wipes up his mess and everyzing.” He swatted me on the back.

In 5th grade, the rope-climbing portion of our annual physical fitness test happened to coincide with taco day in our school’s cafeteria. As I reached the top and gloriously tapped the steel fastener of the rope, I was suddenly given over to stomach cramps that that left me unable to climb back down. Suspended 30 feet above my entire class, I gambled and lost on fart, which leaked down my bare, hairless legs. For the remainder of the year, my thoughtful classmates honored me with the nickname Tarzan the Turdman. Thankfully, my father received a job transfer that summer and I got to change schools, but for many years I considered it be the most embarrassing moment of my life. In retrospect, I could see now that it was only preparing me for this far more mortifying moment.

“Look, now he turn red,” his wife said. “You knocked za blood from his face.” She pinched my cheek.

“Not so strong for whammie whammie expert who cleans up his mess on a woman, huh?” Johan remarked.

“Um, Ingrid gets off work at 8,” I said. “I can take you sightseeing if you like.”

“Take us to seaport,” Johan demanded.

I thought Johan would be disappointed when we arrived at South Street Seaport. The Statue of Liberty wasn’t even visible through the fog. There were no fishing boats in sight either, just a stretch of blackened water and a few seagulls fighting with pigeons over a discarded hotdog bun. Johan stretched out his arms, filling his lungs with the salty air. “Ah, it’s been so long,” he said with a sigh. “Now, let’s go to pub.”

The traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge kept us at a standstill for nearly 20 minutes. I tried to make conversation, but Johan hardly heard me as he stared down the East River to where the harbor met the ocean under the Verrazano Bridge. Then he suddenly noticed the cab driver’s nameplate. It said Hummus Baba Ghanoush. The coincidence was too much.

“You are Baba Ghanoush, too?” Johan screeched incredulously. “One of our kin! I am also Baba Ghanoush. Please, tell me how you come by this name.”

The cabbie explained that his grandfather had changed his name to Baba Ghanoush during a famine in Egypt. He had craftily speculated that houseguests would be more likely to bring food if the family was named after it. After all, nobody would ask, “What shall we bring to the Baba Ghanoushes tonight?” It worked and no matter how hungry their guests were, they still managed to bring large bowls of the spiced eggplant dip. His son was grateful to be well fed, but after eating so much baba ghanoush throughout his childhood, he longed for a little variety. When he had a son of his own, he named him Hummus, hoping visitors might now bring the mashed chickpea dip that he craved. The plan worked and guests brought both spreads in equal amounts.

By the time Hummus was a teenager, the famine had long ended, but their guests still continued to bring baba ghanoush and hummus, assuming that the family loved them. So as to not appear ungrateful, Hummus was forced to eat the surplus at every meal. To make matters worse, everyone at school teased him about his name, and he didn’t have a single friend.

“I suppose it would be like having the name of peanut butter and jelly in this country,” he said with a laugh. “As you can imagine the children were quite cruel.”

It was a lonesome adolescence for Hummus, where name-calling led to fistfights on a daily basis. No woman would think of marrying the young man and taking the family name. He fell into despair and, by the time he was 18 years old, wished to end his life. His father was a chemist, and one day he stole a jar marked poisonous from his shop. He carried it around for several months trying to build up the nerve to swallow it, but he still harbored a hope that a greater life awaited him. Finally, a distant cousin offered to put him up in America. In the “Great Melting Pot,” he was overjoyed to find everyone had a strange-sounding name, and there was a near limitless variety of foods available. Most importantly, he was no longer obligated to eat the dishes that had been his namesake.

“Now, I have finally embraced my name for its uniqueness,” Hummus said with some serenity in his voice. “It gives me the opportunity to speak with passengers, such as yourself, and import my simple message of peace and acceptance.”

“Ah, you simply must come to Zanksgiving dinner with us,” Johan insisted. “Zough we are Baba Ghanoushes, I assure you we will not be serving any—nor any hummus!” He laughed heartily.

After many protests, Hummus confessed that after living in New York for 15 years, he had never been to a real American Thanksgiving dinner.

“We will give ze most traditional Zanksgiving dinner in all of America!” Johan pronounced.

“Just think, this morning I woke up and thought I was the only Baba Ghanoush in all of America, and now I find there is a whole family of them,” Hummus pronounced.

“Yes, the world is smaller growing every day,” conferred Johan. “Zis is the boyfriend of my daughter. He is an expert at whammie whammie,” he made the customary clapping noise with his palms. “He also wipes his mess from a woman after he finishes.”

“You don’t say?” Hummus remarked.

“Perhaps one day he will give me grandchildren and zere will be another Baba Ghanoush in Brooklyn.”

“Soon Baba Ghanoush will be a very common name,” Hummus speculated. “I rather enjoyed being the only one, I must say. When passengers get in my cab, they are happy to be able to pronounce it. They ask me about it and after I tell the story, usually they laugh and give me a nice tip.”

“It is a new era, my brozer. We will go to za pub where my daughter fetches beer,” Johan said. “Zen we will cook a traditional Zanksgiving dinner of fish.”

At the bar, I had a large glass of whisky with no ice to steady myself. Johan emptied several mugs of beer as if watering an alcoholic plant in his belly. After experiencing him sober, I feared what would come after a few drinks. Between inappropriate jokes, he pinched Ingrid’s behind when she walked by. As I got up to go to the bathroom, I gripped my belt loops in case he decided to pants me.

“Ah, my daughter za beer fetcher,” he said proudly. “All grown up and with a man to clean her belly when he’s done. It is every father’s dream. And also to meet a fellow Baba Ghanoush on America’s happy-to-be-eating holiday. What a country!”

Hummus sat between us at the bar sipping ginger ale with an affable grin.

“To think, before today I was the only Baba Ghanoush in America. Now, I am not so unique. It is a little bit sad when I think of it. Not to be the only Baba Ghanoush, anymore. Now, there are so many. A whole family here in Brooklyn! Not to mention the tips I will lose when the name becomes common.”

“And all of my grandchildren will be Baba Ghanoushes as well.” Johan gaze sentimentally at the green and white toy Hess trucks on the mantel. “And my grandchildren’s children! Someday the world will be filled with Baba Ghanoushes,” he chuckled, then after a moment a frown came across his face. “It will be very long line at post office, zough.”

When we got back to Ingrid’s apartment, I noticed that my boxer shorts were still hanging from the curtain rod where she’d flung them the night before. Before I could discreetly remove them Johan saw them as well.

“I don’t see any panties hanging up zere,” he chuckled. “Ingrid must be more excited to unwrap her little present zan you.” He needled my ribs. “Oh perhaps, you give little strip show, Huh? Maybe you twirl your underwear like dancing girl. Come, give us little show,” he poked me in the belly with his finger.

Mrs. Baba Ghanoush went to the kitchen to prepare a meal of fish and eggs. As the halibut was sizzling in a pan, Johan pranced around in imitation of the strip shows he imagined that I performed for his daughter. Hummus sat rubbing his hands together in what I presumed was mystification.

“Just as I imagined a real American Thanksgiving would be,” he pronounced. “Ah, where are my manners,” he reached for his jacket. “I must help in kitchen. I have special spices that will make the meal even tastier.”

“Ah, thatta Baba Ghanoush,” Johan said.

Hummus was very domesticated in the kitchen. He cheerfully stirred his special spices into the pan while Mrs. Baba Ghanoush prepared some pickled herring as a side dish. We all crowded around the table, and when the meal was finally served everyone gorged on the Halibut. Hummus alone sat back with his dish untouched. His arms were crossed over his chest with a pleased smile. A short while later, Johan grew white as a ghost and got up from the table. His wife soon followed, then my beloved Ingrid dashed for the crowded toilet. I, too, felt a little queasy, although I’d only had a few bites of the spiced fish as I was wary of anything that might make me flatulent in public.

That’s when I realized that tomorrow there would be only one Baba Ghanoush left in the borough. Brooklyn’s diversity depended upon it.