A Week Without a Bagel

Euphemism? Metaphor? You will have to read a few pages to learn what 'A Week Without a Bagel' means. But it's worth it. Because before you get there you'll be treated to a Hemingway takedown, the concept for a 1955 CBS News documentary Edward R. Murrow really should have broadcast, and a tidbit about the Jewish experience where Aaron Epharim went to school. Because he'd made a huge culinary sacrifice leaving the comforts of St. Louis' Jewish delicatessens to attend the University of Kansas. 'Rock Chalk,' ya'll.

Sharing his autobiography in a split screen format his 'everyman' story bounces between the 1970s and 2019-2020. References to contemporary popular music and movies and books are good and user friendly sources that help explain his adult life, which he decides began as a KU freshman. When he also spiced his story with an inspired bit of S&M.

In the Spring of 1971 his most notable entry describes his first shiksa (non Jewish) girlfriend. Janie from Wichita not only deports his virginity, she helps birth his distaste for his family's endless recitations of 'shiksas are for practice.' And as his off campus off the books lab partner she persuades him to also read the collected works of the Marquis de Sade. So that together they can even more eagerly put those theories into practice.

Putting that craziness and more behind, and with fresh degrees in Journalism and Art History, Aaron returns home. He feels half lucky as the new art critic for the 'St. Louis Globe Democrat' but truly luckier discovering a co-worker who has some knowledge of Yiddish. Learning she knew his ancestral language from studying the Book of Three Stooges furthers their companionship. Up until she unconventionally baptizes him.

But after college it's with perfect shiksa lovers who enable Aaron's better understandings. Especially humanity's need for muses. And with that epiphany ask God to sign off on the paperwork that no one ever mourns him if he had ever thought of any of his 'shiksas' as 'practice.'

By 2019 he's been married thirty plus years. With his second wife basking in her five mile runs and quoting Shakespeare, Aaron pulls the bard aside to question. And soon asks why he'd never written a runner's manual? And just what was it with Elizabethans, who were never about publishing any kind of self-help folios?

All his questions are put aside to help Aaron conclude his story in a confession. Being an 'everyman' it's not much of an admission. On a 10 point scale it's maybe 1.5. Because all he wants is to write a book. Maybe two. The 'maybe' one an autobiography that stretches to his first clear memories, where he can see and hear his Beat poetry enamored bongo playing mother reading aloud at his bedtime. When she tried to explain between the lines, he too could 'live happily ever after.'