Conversations with G-d

Blind dating can turn even the most ardent atheist into a believer. And while I have always believed in G-d, I've never been actively religious - though there have been moments that I came close.

One in particular stands out. It was a warm autumn night, friends had set me up with a friend of theirs, and it was my first blind date in years. This was early on in the era of Internet dating, prior to a time where asking someone for a photograph was considered a pre-requisite for drinking a cup of coffee together. An era when one was always conscious of the statement "The date may be blind, but I'm not…".

My theory at the time was that one can't go very wrong with mutual friends. Having been accused in the past of being 'too fussy', I had told my friends I had very few 'stipulations' – all I wanted was a decent guy, with a head on his shoulders. That will be the last time I forget to add that I expect a neck to separate the two.

So there I was, standing on the street corner, waiting for my date to appear. And as a car approached slowly, manned by a driver with a head firmly located on his shoulders and no neck in view, I had a classic conversation with G-d, which went something like this: "G-d, as You are my witness, please, PLEASE, make 'neckless' someone else's date. If you do, I will observe the Sabbath for the rest of my natural life". At that, the driver turned the corner and as I let out a long sigh of relief, I wondered whether I had let myself in for a lifetime of long skirts and synagogue Saturdays. But that didn't last for very long, as I witnessed the car turn around at the nearest traffic circle and return to pick me up.

Conversations with G-d are not just about bargaining and trade-offs. They include a range of subject matter, borne witness in the continuation of the religious discourse as the date continued. There's:

• The silent plea: "Oh G-d, please don't make us go somewhere where we'll recognize someone" (we didn't);
• The despair: "G-d, could he slurp his milkshake ANY louder?" (he did); and
• The threat: "May G-d help the friends who fixed us up once I get my hands on them" (what friends?).

And for once, there was the happy ending, the 'Thank G-d' to end the episode. After all was said and done, the interminable date over, and all communication with deities put on hold, I got the inevitable 'callback'. Not to ask me out on a second date, but to tactfully explain that I'm "just not his type". Talk about divine intervention…

What not to do for love

I have to share my experience from the 'GATES OF LOVE' event. After a process of life coaching, where I was encouraged to try new avenues and open my mind to new experiences, an event for singles was highly recommended and I decided to give it a try. Just one more thing I know I will NEVER do again.

My life coach suggested I attend an interesting evening of lectures and activities for people in a similar phase of life.

I'm afraid this experience fits into the category of 'OV VEY'. My attitude was strong, my make-up impeccable, my heels high and my girlfriends at my side. We went in the spirit of enjoying the moment and with no expectations whatsoever. I had been told that this would be an evening of activities and lectures, in the company of like-minded single people, and was looking forward to trying something new.

I should have sensed that something was up when I arrived 15 minutes late and was the third person here. A circle of chairs had been set up next to a warehouse, and there was a drinks table with Red Bull, Vodka, a bottle of wine and some water. Within 5 minutes one guy had literally downed 2 red bulls, spilled the wine, and left. He was the only male there at that stage. By the time 11 o'clock came around, there were 24 people. 16 women, 8 men. I was a little shy but trying hard to embrace the experience and allow the real me to show. I was also trying not to be judgmental, but I have to admit that a stranger collection of men I have NEVER seen. Instead of an exciting episode of Sex in the City, I found myself in a spoof of 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly', except this was more like 'The Short, The Fat and the Hideous'. And this is the NON-judgmental me talking. I am absolutely convinced that the guy who sat in the corner hugging his knees had been released for the night from a low-security mental institution for good behaviour.

But still, all was going fine until they called us into the warehouse. No air conditioning, confined space, and no lights. And in the dark, we are asked to remove our shoes, stand in the hall, and listen to our breathing. While this may be the right approach for an ashram, I must admit I started to feel a little out of my personal comfort zone. That only escalated when I was asked to imagine myself as a tree in a forest, sucking up the water through the roots (the roots being my beautifully manicured feet on the filthy warehouse floor…), swaying in the wind, getting in tune with the other trees. At this point I was being a good sport, but I admit that I started panicking when I was handed a blindfold and told to cover the eyes of a male tree in the hall. However, in the spirit of openness and adventure, I decided to play along. I went up to one of the shorter 'trees', covered his eyes, and realized my cloth was too short to reach all the way around his head. That's probably because it was covered in so much hair there was added volume of at least 15 cm in circumference. Luckily, though, his hair had enough gel on not to pose a real problem, as I took the blindfold and simply tucked it into the hair, pressing on it to get it to stick nice and tight.

At this point my giggles had started coming up to the surface and I focused my attention more on how to avoid laughing out loud, cause my giggle is contagious and I didn't want to spoil everyone's enjoyment. People were taking this event VERY seriously, I could see a lot of focus on the roots and leaves of the trees, but try as I may I started laughing and couldn't stop.

And then we were told to 'make like the wind', and make the 'male trees' sway in the breeze, hold their hands and move their 'leaves' with the wind. That was it for me. My new approach went out the window and rather than 'making like the wind' I did my own version of 'Gone with the Wind', and made my great escape. My girlfriends followed shortly. Hopefully they will start talking to me again one of these days

It looks like there are certain things this girl is STILL not prepared to do in the name of potential love. I am okay with that. But 'The Gates of Love' and I are not going to be getting together again any time soon.

The recurring bad date

I once read a great saying in a book. The author was my age, and in a similar position in life – interested in settling down, dated 101 men (usually only once), and couldn't find 'The One'. She wrote the following: "I don't know when it happened, but somehow I have made the transition from being Single, to being Still Single".

I heard those words resonate in my head as I waited for a friend to meet me for lunch one Friday. We arranged to meet outside a large shopping centre in Tel Aviv, and my friend arrived 15 minutes late. It was a lovely day. I was standing on the sidewalk, catching a bit of winter sun, and almost pulled a muscle trying to avoid bumping into someone I once went out with. I found myself doing a personalized version of an Irish jig as I spotted an ex-blind-date and had to get behind the nearest static object I could find before he spotted me in return. This was a guy I will never forget – a brother of the wife of one of my many cousins, who I went out with on one date about 6 years ago. He was the funniest person I have ever met, and I spent the entire date in hysterics. He had a knack of keeping a deadpan face at all times, but he told stories about his childhood that had me literally holding my sides and wiping tears of laughter from my cheeks. And then he didn't call again, and I was terribly disappointed. Not because I thought we had anything in common (we didn't) or because I was into how he looked (I wasn't), but he was funny enough for me to be willing to compromise on other aspects. It was only years later that I plucked up the courage to ask my cousin's wife what it was about me her brother didn't like, and she said he was offended that I laughed at him all night long, without even trying to hide my amusement. As it turned out, he had no intention of being funny, and my obvious delight at his dry 'humour' was completely misspent. Hence my need to hide when I spotted him on Friday. However bad some of my own dates have been, I'm pretty sure he considers me one of his very worst blind dates ever. He's probably written a story about me somewhere.

But the tale of the recurring blind date nightmare does not end there. Not two minutes after I successfully dodged funny boy, I found myself once more pretending to tie a shoe lace on my zipped boot, after nearly colliding head-on with yet another past (and almost forgotten) date. My memory of this date is cloudy, it happened a long long time ago, and what I remember most from that night was that I was running late and took a taxi to meet this boy. The taxi driver asked me where I was going and I told him I had a blind date, and asked him whether he thought my date would be happy with what he was getting. To which he replied, "Lady, I'm happy and you're just my fare. I'd be THRILLED if you were my date". Okay, he was about 60 and smelled like an expired yoghurt, but we take our compliments where we can get them. It was also a good boost for the ego before the date, which was traumatic only because we'd arranged to meet at a place that seems to be the meeting place for most people in Tel Aviv who have never seen each other before. In retrospect it could be a great way to pick up people: just arrive one night, stand at the spot and ask everyone if they're , and see if any of them take the bait. What happened on that night was that I spent 40 minutes trying to find the date, and another 40 trying to make him go away. It was a dull date, the feeling was mutual, we never spoke again, and I doubt whether he'd have recognized me even if I hadn't managed to smoothly avoid him on Friday.

Which brings me to my real dilemma: have I actually managed to work through the entire database of eligible straight men in Tel Aviv, and all that remains is to start round two with people I dated in a different era? I could have been fixed up with this guy again and he wouldn't have even known it, other than perhaps some vague feeling of déjà vu when he met up with me.

And fear set in. Fear that not only wasI still single, but so were those dozens of men I have had the pleasure of writing about over the years. And the fear sent me back to that dark dungeon of dating doom, cyberspace, where I quickly set up a date for that very night with the first eligible man I could find. The lucky winner was Yuval, 39, Israeli, and all I could tell was he looked nice enough and, most important, he was interested in meeting me (the only criteria I was really focused on in my moment of sheer terror). Anything had to be better than bad first date reruns. What Yuval's picture on the Web failed to reveal was a particularly bad case of overbite that should have been dealt with by an orthodontist 20 years ago, accompanied by a tongue thrust issue (and its twin brother, the spit dispenser), all of which were wrapped in a lisp that would make a speech therapist drool. Now I am a counselor by profession and I would never let a speech impediment come between me and the love of my life. But I think coping with dating in Hebrew and bridging the cultural gap is enough of a challenge, without adding additional communication stumbling blocks, no? It was all brought home when he told me he was writing a book on something I couldn't for the life of me fathom. I asked him to repeat the title 3 times in Hebrew (for those who know Hebrew, the title was "Tikthoret Ben Ithit"); eventually I blamed my confusion on the language and asked if he knows the term in English. "Interperthonal Communicathon". The guy is writing a book on how people communicate and it is practically impossible to understand him. He is possibly a terrific guy. I will never know. The obstacles were too many and after an exhausting hour of asking him to repeat himself while avoiding the backwash, I called it a night and decided to give cyber dating a break again. Suddenly, being single didn't look quite so bad…

When is a date not a date?

One of my most memorable worst dates was with Walter the Weird Writer. The one thing that's worse than a bad date, is a bad date that is not a date.
On this occasion, I became a chapter in Walter's book.
Walter is a British author who was commissioned to write a book on Israeli Jewish identity. Fascinating idea, but considering the fact that he has been in Israel twice before in his lifetime, both times for the sum total of a week, I found it hard to fathom how he would get to the bottom of the whole Israeli identity crisis. He knew three and a half words of Hebrew and even then he pronounced them with such a strong accent that nobody could understand him. When we met, he was living in a luxury furnished apartment in Tel Aviv for 6 months to write his book, and then planned on returning to England. I couldn't help but wonder how exposed he really was to the average Israeli lifestyle and how he could presume to write about the country when he needed to look at a map to work out where Ra'anana was (he thought he'd heard of it but couldn't be sure!).
I cannot say Walter is a bore, because I didn't get a chance to find out. He told me nothing about himself. Walter asked me question after question all night long. It was like playing in "The Weakest Link" but without the money. And the questions weren't the usual 'date' questions either. They were very deep philosophical questions about the home I grew up in (e.g. do your parents believe in G-d?), my political beliefs (So what party do you vote for and why?), and then my personal weakness, general knowledge questions, where I fear I disappointed Walter terribly (I can still picture the look on his face when he realized he was talking to someone who barely knows the difference between Abu Ala and Abu Gosh!).
The main problem with the interrogation was not the questions themselves, but the total lack of reciprocity. He did not talk. He barely responded. Eye contact was a no no. All forms of facial reaction seemed to be out the question, other than the odd grimace (which I just assumed was gas, but who knows…). At one point he asked a fairly loaded political question, and after responding I had the audacity to ask what his opinion was. He told me that I would have to read his book to find out. So I told him to 'pretend' I wasn't going to read his book - ever - and would he just tell me what he thinks. I have to say this for the man, there was no budging him. This was all give and no take. No opinion was expressed and no more questions were answered by yours truly. The ensuing silence was awkward.
When I couldn't take it any more I asked for the bill. I asked for the bill because he didn't have enough Hebrew to do so himself. Yet when it came, it lay between us, screaming to be opened. Now the standard operating procedure for first dates is that the man pays and the woman offers to pay her half, then the man says that it's okay and there's no need, and the woman says she will pay next time, and that's that. When the woman really doesn't want to see a man again, she can insist on paying her own share to make it clear that there will be no next time, just to give the guy a subtle message. But that night was a first for me. I think he thought I would pay the entire bill for the sheer pleasure of being interviewed by an (as-of-yet-unpublished) author. I took out my purse to politely offer to pay my share, removed my credit card and saw he still hadn't budged. I truly believe he thought I was covering the bill. So I asked him if he'd prefer to give me cash for his share or if he wanted to give the waitress a credit card as well. At which point he reluctantly pulled out his wallet and generously shared the cost of dinner.
In conclusion, it's safe to say that when we parted ways, I did not ask for a signed copy of the book.