Esther grips my arm even harder as a group of kids head into the library.
“But who delivers this message to us, Sid?” she asks.
“The children.”
My voice breaks.
“Yes!” she exclaims. “And that is the secret of the afikomen ritual. Who do we trust to bring us this? The children. The remaining piece, the point of all of this—our future, our redemption—is in the hands of the next generation. We must trust them, again and again, to deliver it.”
I place my head on the wheel, and my eyes fill with tears.
“Isn’t that why you’re here, Sid?” Talia asks. “Why you’ve been reading to kids for years? Because you trust that the next generation will be different, that our community, the gay community, the world will be different because of them?”
“Yes.”
“Then take our hands,” Esther says, “and let us lead you to the table where you can trust that maybe, just maybe, the next generation will not experience what we have endured, because they will no longer allow it.”
Talia opens the car door.
We slide out.
Talia and Esther flank me, grabbing my hands, and we walk into the library as one, me in the middle—broken, shattered—but our united shadow bigger, stronger together.
“Thank you for agreeing to do the interview, Sid.”
“I’m nervous.”
“We can sit here as long as you like, okay?”
Leo and I are seated in the midst of a thick grove of palm trees in the Downtown Park, staring up and directly into Marilyn Monroe’s panties.
Fittingly, the untrimmed Washingtonia fan palms surrounding us look as if they are wearing hula skirts.
The park is new to downtown Palm Springs and sits across from the Palm Springs Art Museum. It has already been embraced by locals. The controversial sculpture entitledForever Marilyn, however, has been met with significant skepticism.
Towering over the park, the twenty-six-foot-tallForever Marilyncaptures the famed image from Billy Wilder’s 1955 filmThe Seven Year Itch, the actress’s skirt blowing skyward as she stands over a subway grate, baring her backside.
And I am old Marilyn, still dressed as Sophia—per Leo’s request—following my Reading Hour at the library.
“Tell me about her,” Leo finally says, breaking the silence.
I know it’s a way to get me to start talking ahead of the interview as a cameraman stands before us, adjusting his lens and checking light levels.
“The sculpture has been a source of great controversy in Palm Springs over the years,” I say to Leo, as tourists of all ages flock to have their photos taken underneath Marilyn. “The sculpture has been moved around to various locations all over town. Many prominent local citizens have tried to sue to have the sculpture moved from its current location.”
“She seems so popular, though,” he says.
“She is,” I say, as each tourist does the same thing: They laugh and hold a finger up to point at her undercarriage.
“What’s the issue?” he asks.
“Some worry that museum visitors, particularly schoolchildren, are being flashed on their way to and from the museum,” I say. Leo chuckles, but my rote explanation stops me cold. “Others feel the sculpture of her captured in this moment is misogyny disguised as nostalgia. If you remember, Joe DiMaggio allegedly beat up Marilyn after she posed for this photo shoot.”
Leo stares at the sculpture as the sounds of water cascading down a brutalist concrete fountain drown out the traffic and voices of visitors just a block away.
“I understand all of that, and that is horrific, but isn’t the point of art to make people think? Perhaps the sculptor’s mission was not simply to recreate this moment in time but to create a piece that forces us to ask ourselves to consider how women have been viewed throughout history and still are today?” Leo nods toward the tourists. “Is it bad art simply because it appeals to the masses?”
For a moment, I am not lost in Leo’s eyes or his deep dimple, but in his sensitivity and intellect. There is nothing sexier than a brain.
