Called up an old girlfriend the other day
Who fell out of touch
Not asking too greatly
But hoping a bit too much
I tell her, So I hear you got yourself a new dude
Why didn’t you ask me if it was all right?
You know you been keeping me wandering
For a thousand black nights?
She says, What do you want me to do
When you’re way out of town?
I say, Stay with me baby
And I won’t let you down
She says, I don’t know, Heshy
I go for this guy in a big way
Maybe some other time!
So you know what I had to say?
Love is a yutzmach
Oh yeah, love is a yutzmach
Plays tricks with your heart
It tears you apart
Love is a yutzmach
I’m hanging out with this girl now
Who drives me up the wall
She wants my goomies, my beret, and my pins
She treats me like her “pet chayal”
I tell her, You want a goomie?
That’s fine with me, honey
But my goomies have a price
That isn’t paid in money!
She doesn’t care ‘bout me or my songs
It’s all ‘cause I’m in the army
She says, For all I care you can go to hell
But at night she says she can’t go to bed without me
She says, Remember me when you get famous
Don’t forget to come by my place
I say, Well come here baby
And I’ll autograph your face!
Love is a yutzmach …
And then when finally something’s going right
She’ll say, Something’s wrong!
Even if it’s all coming naturally
Just like a song
I tell her, Baby come out tonight
But she says to me, I’m not making the same mistake twice
I been through this thing before with an old boyfriend
And the end of that wasn’t too nice
I tell her, Time doesn’t slip into the future
It slips into the past
There’s no way we can stop that
But we can make our love last
And then I tell her, I’d spend my whole life
Looking for ways to make you happy
She says, That’s really sweet of you
But if you’ll excuse me it sounds really sappy!
Love is a yutzmach …
Yeah, yeah, yeah, love is a yutzmach
That’s what the blues is all about, honey
Oh yeah, love is a yutzmach
©2024 The Hesh Inc.
"Yutzmach" is one of my favorite expressions, a Yiddish word ostensibly meaning someone clueless. Although I grew up speaking Yiddish at home, I first heard the word many years later, once I had moved to Israel and my family stopped speaking Yiddish amongst ourselves. If I remember correctly, it was yelled out by the musical director of one of the IDF orchestras at one of his errant musicians during rehearsal. I adopted the word and used it as an all-purpose epithet, popularizing it in my circles as I did so.
This song goes back to 1986 or thereabouts, chronicling some of my boneheaded romantic misfires during that era. It utilizes the same slow blues groove used in such songs as "I Just Want to Make Love to You," "I'm Evil," "Riot in Cell Block Number Nine," and many others. One of my friends, upon reading the lyrics in my old notebook, quipped that only I could get away with writing a song called "Love Is a Yutzmach." But all told, it was never played outside my four walls.
Yutzmach=Yiddish for someone who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.
Goomie=literally “rubber” in Hebrew and Yiddish. Refers to the rubber gasket that keeps mortar-shell containers air- and watertight. Used by girls, mainly from English- and French-speaking countries, as bracelets, “trophies” glommed from IDF soldiers, at least during the 1980s. The word can also be taken to refer to a condom, as in English.
Chayal=Hebrew for soldier.