J

My dad’s middle name is J. I think it might officially be “Jay”, but I have never once seen it written out like that. When I was a child I was fascinated and quite impressed that he had white envelopes printed up with a return address that started “Dr. Seymour J Perlin”. There was always a long row of these envelopes, in the bottom drawer of his old wooden desk. Throughout my childhood I was very pleased by the fact that my father had such a short and mysterious middle name – in my young mind it added to his already considerable mystique.

I was somewhat more ambivalent about my own middle name. To provide some context, my brother is two years older, and therefore was always the leader – the one who had read the books I wasn’t quite ready for, who had the record albums by music groups I had not quite yet heard of, as well as all of the other wondrous qualities conferred upon older siblings. For example, Mark’s favorite color was blue. When I was five or six years old this made me sad, because it meant that wonderful color was already spoken for. At various times I tried out red, or green, and a few others, but none of them ever felt right. What I really wanted was blue. But I had arrived too late on the scene, and blue, alas, was already taken.

The same goes for the number five – Mark’s favorite number. He even put it up on his bedroom door, as a big cutout digit – in blue, if I recall correctly. I pretended to be satisfied with the number three – a clear also-ran, compared with five – but I suspect that I fooled no one.

Mark’s middle name is “William” – obviously a big win all around. One of those noble names they give to English princes, it also suggests William Tell. In my mind I could practically see my brother, a heroic figure larger than life, shooting that apple off somebody’s head, while Rossini’s famous overture played in the background. Of course I had no idea at the time that the “William Tell Overture” was by Rossini – I just knew it as the theme music to the “Lone Ranger” – which made it even cooler.

I, on the other hand, have the middle name “H”. I’m still not sure exactly what my parents were thinking, but there it is, on my official birth documents. It’s not even a letter you can finesse into a full word, like J into Jay. Just a single orphan letter, sitting all alone. Some years ago I got into trouble down in Rio de Janeiro because the government official who was supposed to extend the visa on my passport refused to believe that anybody could have legally entered their lovely country with a single letter for a middle name. He demanded to know my full middle name, so that I would not be declared an illegal undesirable. It took quite a bit of persuading (and possibly a bribe) on the part of my hosts before the man would relent and stamp my obviously suspect visa application.

Although there was a time, when I was around five, that I thought I had an actual middle name. Specifically, I believed my middle name was “Horowitz”. I think of this as my “Horowitz” period – the year during which my brother took to referring to me as “Kenny Horowitz Perlin”. His logic was impeccable: Apparently there was a boy in his second grade class at school named “Mark Horowitz”. Employing the logic of parallels (my brother was very good at logic), he declared that since a “Mark Perlin” had been followed by a “Kenny Perlin”, a “Mark Horowitz” must therefore surely imply a “Kenny Horowitz”.

I, being only five years old, felt in no position to argue.