vignettes from a january without romance (so far…)

ROLLY’S SHRINK: I have someone I think might be good for you: he’s very smart, very experienced, very understanding — but his office is even messier than mine.

ME: That’s not a problem. (I didn’t think Rolly’s shrink’s office looked messy; I thought it looked artsy and literary and had ‘atmosphere.’)

* * *

IN A GROCERY STORE IN ANOTHER STATE

CHECKER: Do you get the discount?

ME: What discount?

CHECKER: Over 55.

ME (reluctantly): Yes.

* * *

MY MOTHER: How are Performer’s children doing?

ME [have not yet felt like talking to my mother and children about what happened with Performer, so they still don't know, but they don't seem to have noticed his absence from my conversation]: Not well. His son’s psychosis has returned and he’s been institutionalized again. He’s in New Hampshire visiting him. (This is a complete fiction.)

MY MOTHER [makes a worried, sympathetic face]: Oh dear, that’s too bad.

* * *

TELEPHONE INTERVIEW WITH PROSPECTIVE DATE

DATE: You’re a super-intellectual.

ME: That sounds awful. I’m smart and quirky.

DATE: I like quirky.

Best info from the phone call: his son is a retired software designer who is now a competitive swing-dancer.

* * *
UPDATES ON POST-PERFORMER MEN

REG and AM1 disappeared into the mists. Both were likeable, but I wasn’t attracted to either one, and no doubt they could tell.

Have not heard from RB; before we met, he said over the phone that I was his ‘last great hope,’ because he was giving up on the internet and no one was introducing him to any other women. I had ‘great hope’ in him also, but he was very shy, and the attraction just wasn’t there — on my side, at least. I’d accept another date with him, but I doubt if anything romantic would emerge.

Have also not heard from FG: he was the one who kept giving me goofy smiles and telling me he was in love with me or was going to be soon or something like that. He spoke confidently of a relationship in our future. Knowing how unlikely that was, I was concerned about how to tell him politely that that was not going to happen, but my task is now easier. However, I’m a bit worried about him: he had had a relapse of some serious health problems and was looking very pale that evening. He said he almost considered not meeting me, but he really wanted to. He had planned on checking into a hospital the next day. FG also said that when he has to fill out a ‘next-of-kin’ form, he writes, ‘Nobody.’ I wonder if he’s all right…

* * *
PAUSING OVER MENU AFTER DRINKS AND BEFORE DINNER WITH FG (Wednesday 9 January)

FG: What are you having?

ME: I see things I’d like, but I don’t know about ordering them…

FG: Why not?

ME: Well, I have lots of restrictions for first-date-food: nothing that’s hard to cut, nothing that’s hard to chew, nothing with garlic, nothing too expensive, nothing red, nothing that will stick in my teeth….

FG: Pretend it’s our twentieth date.

ME: Okay, I’ll have the hot spinach salad. Tell me if you see little pieces of green between my teeth.

* * *

MY NEXT FIRST-DATE

It’s with SDF (swing-dancer’s father). I think I’ll do what I did with FG, be completely open about my ‘first-date food restrictions,’ because SDF will probably find them funny also. It’s a good shtick.

* * *

APPARENT REJECTION OF MY FAMILY’S CULTURAL/RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS

My friend R, a rabbi, has urged me to go to services at Manhattan’s “dating synagogue.” She knows a middle-aged divorced man who met his new wife there. I’m going to go this Friday, but — having been brought up by an atheist mother and an anti-clerical aunt , and sent to non-Jewish church school and Sunday school — I’m a cultural shiksa. All I know is to turn the pages backwards. I don’t know the liturgy and I can’t read one letter of Hebrew. And will Jewish men hungry for women venture out in the middle of January? They didn’t last year….at least, my dating numbers dropped precipitously when the weather was cold. We’ll see.

But the problem is: suppose I do meet someone there? I have no interest in organized religion or even unorganized religion. Spirituality is just not my thing, not at all, in any form. Will I really meet someone else who has no such interests, or who doesn’t mind meeting a secular eccentric like me? And if so, what will I tell my mother? and my children? I can imagine their collective jaws dropping if I tell them I met my love in a synagogue…

Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. I should be so lucky.
* * *
UPDATE

Practicing my conversation for Friday services: the woman (member of the synagogue) who is meeting me asks me how I heard of this place; I mention my rabbi friend and her recommendation that I go.

The woman asks why, and I mention Performer, saying, ‘We broke up just before Christmas.’

?!?

Am I allowed to say ‘Christmas’?

When was Hanukah this year?

Oh oh. I’m in trouble already, and I haven’t even entered the building yet.

Do I need to wear something on my head? would an Irish knitted cap do?

* * *

I see problems ahead. I can’t hide my shiksaheit.

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE

I’ll say ‘just after Thanksgiving.’ That’s accurate enough; and who cares, anyway, besides me, when it was??

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