January 28, 2024
by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher; Art by Alberto Lenz
I started dating an attractive woman, although she denied that; not that she's attractive, but that we are dating: "Just because we spent the last three Saturday nights together doesn't mean we are dating."
She lives in the colonia and loves my cooking: "Why go out to a restaurant when the best food is here?" She also loves my sense of humor and wisdom; the two things often go together.
On her way out the door one evening, she declared, surprised to find it true, and mostly to herself, "I love you." Then, after a two-second pause, repeated loudly for emphasis, "I love you." But all that love, so far, hasn't even gotten me a kiss.
A cynical New Yorker, she's what an earlier generation would have called "a tough broad." She admits that she abused her sexuality, having sex with the wrong guys under the wrong conditions, often intoxicated. My problem with her is that she isn't quite ready for the right guy under the right conditions.
We already have mutual appreciation, even admiration. I like that New York tough schtick. As I have had my own problems receiving, kosher, sacred sex, loving, respectful, tantric physicality, would be healing for the both of us.
I've written her poems about innocent love; one about my playing spin-the-bottle when I was nine-years-old. She encourages my poetry, but rebuffs any direct discussion, claiming to not "feel the pheromones." This tough broad, underneath it all, is, you might have already guessed, afraid of genuine intimacy.
What's a guy to do? Regardless of how much insight into her psyche I have, however much I resonate with the deeper levels of her soul, her adopting a pissed-off tone (if only for a moment) when I speak of love is a turn off.
I can take a hint. I gave her space, or, maybe, she took it. Then she left town for a month. Then, when I finally messaged her, she wrote that she was back, but indisposed. Then, when I saw her on the street, and she suggested that we get together and that I make her my amazing lentils, I responded, with my own New York toughness, "You're the one that's hard to get."
She messaged me later, setting the date, and saying that she wanted to study Torah when she visited.
Torah, in its most basic definition, means the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus... and she is reading her way through those. But on a deeper level, Torah means (like the Tao) the meaningful way to live life. Most basically, that involves not wasting time in meaningless pursuits; doing significant things.
I told her that, after our lentil stew. (It's the spices.) After dessert, when I tentatively spoke of love, she adopted her pissed-off tone, accused me of just wanting to jump her bones (she used another word), and I just shut up.
The dark cloud passed. We spoke of something else; there is no shortage of conversation between us; and she left after telling me to save the remainder of the ice cream for us to enjoy together on another evening. It is sweeter with her.
A week later that evening arrived. There at my dining room table, she told me that she likes to zone out watching some meaningless online series, to get numb like she used to do by taking drugs, but that since I told her about not wasting time (not "humiliating the Torah") she can't do that anymore.
I told her that, following her cues, I wanted to stop pursuing a romantic relationship with her, but I was afraid that, many years from now, when we have both left the body, she would take me before the heavenly court and, blaming me for her earthly failures, sue me for spiritual damages:
