Bess Kalb Almost Looked Like The Long Island Lolita At Her Bat Mitzvah
Bess Kalb is a bonafide city kid. Born and raised on the Upper West Side, she has big Nora Ephron energy. But for a brief period in Kalb’s childhood, she was uprooted from Manhattan… and the timing unfortunately coincided with her bat mitzvah. “My parents moved us to Scarsdale for middle school. It’s a town in Westchester full of angry Jewish bankers who buy McMansions. But we lived in a little ranch midcentury house in the woods,” Kalb tells me. “The Great Suburban experiment didn’t work out for us. We moved back to the Upper West Side and I went to high school in the city.”
Despite being an NYC transplant, Kalb’s peers were less than impressed by their new classmate and her theme-free bat mitzvah. (Kalb opted for the color scheme of black, pink, and silver instead of an actual party theme.) And while it’s easy to imagine the now 33-year-old comedy writer winning them over with her sense of humor, Kalb maintains that she was far from a funny pre-teen. “I was sure that I was [going to be a doctor] and cure a disease,” explains the former Jimmy Kimmel Live! writer. “I don't think I realized that anyone else thought I was funny other than my brother and my dad until I got the job at Kimmel.”
Even now, after writing the best-selling book Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, and producing the comedy special Yearly Departed (which features everyone from Tiffany Haddish to Ziwe) — Kalb still isn’t so sure her adolescent self would believe she’s funny. “My 13-year-old self would be like, ‘Ok you got a couple gigs but how long is this actually going to last? We really did Kumon for nothing!'" Below, Kalb reflects on her velcro wall, slow dancing, and instituting a jeans only dress code at her party.
On her Long Island divorcée makeup:
I forgot to schedule a blowout or to buy special makeup. So my brother’s babysitter brought out her makeup and flat ironed my hair an hour before the party. To this day I know she tried her damn best, but my curly hair was charred and fried and the back was crimped.
She also gave me whore’s makeup. It was sort of a “Lady Marmalade” look. I thought, “I’m so lucky that this expert in makeup is my brother’s babysitter. This is crazy! There is an Adonai!” But really she had transformed me into this Long Island divorcée. Then my mom came in and she literally took a wet paper towel and smudged off everything on my eyes and lips. I cried. I remember being like, “I’m a woman! I can have eyeshadow! They gave me the Kiddush cup, does that not mean anything to you?” My mom was like, “This is the stupidest conversation I have ever had.” Thank god for my mom though, it was so Long Island Lolita.
On serving “alienating” food:
My parents insisted on having an adults only luncheon at our house in Westchester in the middle of January. (The night time was a kids only dance party.) Everybody was in a freezing tent at the strange, creaky, dark ranch house that I grew up in with Shoji screens and West African masks. It was like if you took an Upper West Side apartment and made it into a house in the suburbs.
My dad is a doctor but he’s also a gourmand. So the party wasn’t going to have your classic bagels and schmear, it was going to be very good food. However, the food was kind of alienating. It was bone marrow, tartlets, and a lot of flatbreads that my dad made with preserved lemon and fig. Nobody ate anything! Everyone was like we want bagels and schmear.
On her jeans only dress code:
I remember insisting that everyone wear jeans to the party. It was even on the little reply card like: “wear jeans!” There were a lot of ball gowns, skirts, and tube tops at the other bar and bat mitzvahs. (I had my rotation of three tube tops and three ball gown skirts that I would mix and match.) But for my bat mitzvah I wanted it to be this fun and casual atmosphere.
There was a girl in my grade who we’ll call Sara. Sara was very cool and beautiful and popular and mean. She asked me what I was going to wear to my bat mitzvah the week before and I made something up because I didn’t think what I had was fancy enough. So I was like, “I’m wearing a silver halter top with beads and bell bottoms.” But what I actually wore was this set that was a black ruched material tank top that had this problematic Indian beading on the neckline area. There was a corresponding cardigan with the same black ruched material and orange, yellow, and red beading, along with a matching headband. And Sara showed up at my bat mitzvah in the exact fucking same ruched set. I turned into a bridezilla immediately.
On renting a velcro wall:
The entire budget for the bat mitzvah was spent on a velcro wall. I thought I was being so cool and avant-garde because it was like a jumping castle for teenagers. It was an inflatable wall that was full of velcro and you’d put on a suit and get launched up and stick on the wall. I felt like the owner of a restaurant because I would just walk around like, “Did you go on the velcro wall?” I wasn’t there to enjoy myself, I was just making sure that other people did. The theme of my bat mitzvah was, “Please have fun! I beg you! Have fun! I spared no expense to make sure you had a good time!”
On her ill-fated slow dance:
There was rumor that one boy who had curly hair liked me. This was not someone I was attracted to — I had seen him wipe boogers on his sleeve — but as soon as I found out he might be attracted to me I was hot for him. I was like, “I guess we’ll be married by spring!” But it turns out that I can’t override that I’m not attracted to somebody just because he’s attracted to me. I remember he actually ended up slow dancing with me at somebody else’s bat mitzvah, which was the only time in my entire bat mitzvah career where I slow danced with a boy. He was trying to make sexy small talk as a 13-year-old and he was like, “Hey what’s up with the braces?” I just remember being like, “Oh no, I have to go to the bathroom.” I waited out the rest of “Truly Madly Deeply” there. It was an early brush with dignity.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Where do you find these people? Does anyone ever say- oh we had a great time and everything was perfect and I was so cool?
Great piece!!!!!