* * *
After synagogue came the party. Bar mitzvah parties were generally fancy affairs like a sweet sixteen or a wedding, even, with a theme chosen by the thirteen-year-old host. （In the early ’90s, baseball, cupcakes, and hockey were especially popular.） You’d enter the venue to find a small card with your table number, make a pit stop at the bar for a Shirley Temple, and squint to find your chair under the colored mood lighting. The food was always delicious and always “kosher-style,” with meals accordingly topped off with an endless supply of chocolate soy ice cream served tableside （seconds were available for those who made the trek to the dessert station on the far side of the room, where brown-paper-wrapped tubs sat over dry ice）。7 You’d dance your face off, hoist your friend up on a chair, and go home at the end of the night with either a bag full of top-shelf candy or a bar mitzvah T-shirt on which a pun connected to the theme of the party was written （“Peter’s Bar Mitzvah Was Out-of-this-World” under a cartoon rocket, or “I had a sweet time at Amy’s Bat Mitzvah!” scrawled inside a giant pink lollipop）。
Every once in a while a party was so excessive that it blew everyone’s minds. Deah Fishman had one such bat mitzvah. The faux-gem-studded addendum card accompanying the pink, glitter-infused invitation said it all:
Buses depart synagogue —— 4:45 p.m.
Boat leaves dock promptly —— 5:30 p.m.
A BOAT?!
For an entire evening, Dr. and Mrs. Fishman had rented a party boat that cruised up and down the Hudson River. The excess made me feel like I was in an MC Hammer video. On the water between Manhattan and New Jersey, eighty-five thirteen-year-olds had a DJ booth, a large dance floor under a double-height ceiling, and an endless supply of nonalcoholic cocktails, all to ourselves. The signature drink? A Deah Daiquiri. （This was actually a virgin pi?a colada. Deah hated strawberries but loved alliteration.）
My parents would never host a glamorous party like this. They and most of their friends are hardworking, middle-class Indian immigrants who save their pennies. They were not showy, and I just couldn’t fathom a scenario in which hiring a party boat on the Hudson was in the realm of possibility for them. The Indian version of getting out on the water would be bringing a picnic lunch to a nearby state park and renting paddle boats.8
（There was the occasional outlier. My dad’s friend Tapu Uncle once bought a brand-new emerald-green four-door Mercedes. He drove it to our house forty minutes down the Garden State Parkway just to proudly show off the gigantic built-in car phone. “As a cardiologist,” he opined, making sure we understood there was something practical behind his extravagance, “my patients rely on me to stay in constant communication and arrive very fast.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis. “Very fast.”）
* * *
For the first hour of Deah’s party, we drank our Deah Daiquiris, admiring the intimate view of the Statue of Liberty from the outdoor deck. As the sun set and dinner was served, we scattered to find our tables. I was relieved to be seated between Praveen Ramachandaran and Ed Cheng. I guess in any other scenario it might look a little racist that the three Asian boys were put at the same table, but Itay Borenstein, Andrew Spielvogel, and Tamir Jones were seated there too because we all happened to be in band together （I played baritone sax）。 Waitstaff brought around our previously selected “chicken, beef, or veggie” plates and I ate slowly, watching wealthy seventh-grade metrosexual Jason Gross to see which fork to use for which dish, and whether my water glass was on the left side or the right.
After dinner, everyone returned to dancing, which is when things really took a turn. Deah and her crew of besties had kicked off their shoes. They jumped around in their various-sized polka-dotted （as was the fashion） dresses, energized by the upbeat music. At some point they huddled together for some urgent negotiations and, with mischief in their eyes, strode confidently to the DJ booth. A song was requested. Moments later, the opening beat of Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony” burst through the speakers. “Here she come now sayin’， ‘Mony Mony.’？” Deah and her friends interrupted loudly, taking advantage of the two measures of music ahead of Billy’s next lyric by chanting, “Hey, hey slut, get laid, get fucked!” before the speakers blared, “Shoot ’em down, turn around, come on, Mony—”
WHAT DID THEY JUST SAY? I felt a pit in my stomach.
“That’s not part of the song,” whispered Praveen, decisively.
“What’s happening?” Ed Cheng asked. He looked shaken.
We had no idea how the girls learned this surreal refrain, because nobody we knew ever spoke this way in real life.
As the second verse approached, it became clear that Deah expected all her friends to join in the vulgar off-script chant, including me, Praveen, and Ed. Praveen and I were a hard no from the start. I wasn’t about to repeat my “hooker” mistake. Ed started to recite, “Hey, hey…” but then he noticed the videographer and he clammed up. While we wanted to be supportive of our host, the only words of Hey, hey slut, get laid, get fucked! we felt comfortable saying were “hey” and “get,” so the three of us feigned thirst and quietly escaped to the bar area for another Deah Daquiri.
At that very moment, I glanced across to find Deah’s disappointed mom leaning over the railing one deck above us. She looked so elegant, holding her white wine with freshly manicured pink-glitter fingernails,9 a little diamond in the middle of each one. The chagrin on her face was unmistakable. This is it, I thought, Mrs. Fishman is going to pull the plug on that DJ and turn this boat right around. No more MC Hammer immersion.
Ed, Praveen, and I watched with morbid curiosity as Mrs. Fishman steadied herself on the top rail. She took an extra-large swig of her wine, shooting the chardonnay like a sorority girl, and sarcastically shouted, “Nice language, ladies! Very nice language!” Mrs. Fishman then turned back to her friends, who refilled her glass, and Deah’s crew continued with the rest of the song, obscene chant and all.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. First, unbelievable that Deah and her friends had somehow learned this chant （and this was before the internet）。 Second, unfathomable that they had the guts to request the song from the DJ. And third, completely and totally incomprehensible that they sang it in front of their parents and other adults. And I’m sorry, Mrs. Fishman’s inscrutable reaction was “Nice language, ladies”？ That’s it? Are you kidding me?! If a group of us Indian kids chanted, “Hey, hey slut, get laid, get fucked” in front of Bhumi Auntie at Janvi Jhaveri’s sweet sixteen, all the parents would have drowned themselves in the Hudson River out of shame.
I was in total awe. Here was Deah Fishman. She had her own boat, her own DJ, and she could shout her own filthy made-up verses to well-known songs at the top of her lungs because this was her bat mitzvah. This. Girl. Had. It. All! At the age of thirteen I had discovered a whole new world: an envy-inspiring universe of white folks, where adults would merely offer opinions, and instead of enforcing consequences, they’d make observations and go back to their wine.
Deah’s parents allowed her certain independent choices that I was still a few years away from exercising in my own right. Coming off the boat that night, I felt simultaneously invigorated and frightened. It was like the first ocean swim where you force yourself just a few feet beyond where your toes can touch the sand, terrified and exhilarated by the possibility that your reward for this boldness could be a rip current that sucks you out to sea.