A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist's Quest for a Naughty & Nice Jewish Girl (11 page)

“
That’s totally okay. Your kids obviously come first.” I turned around in the museum parking lot and headed back to Stamford, on the phone with Galadriel the whole time to keep her company and ease her anxiety as she sped down to the precinct house in the Bronx. I felt frustrated but understood the seriousness of the situation. Galadriel and I later met and I was a guest at a seder and Thanksgiving with her family. We’re still friends.

Nicki’s profile only had one picture, but I liked it. Her teasing attitude, something that always caught my attention, came through clearly. She talked about finding a good kisser, and I licked my lips at the possibility. I wrote,

We arranged to meet on a summer weekend afternoon at the Starbucks in Wilton, Connecticut. I found the place and sat outside, waiting with that heart-thumping anticipation that comes from meeting an attractive prospect. Looks do count, after all.

Nicki finally sauntered up to my table. She looked even better than her picture. She wore tight jeans and a sleeveless top cut excruciatingly low, providing me an unnerving view of her cleavage. She gave me a warm hug.

We got our icy coffee drinks and chatted. At one point she said, “You seem to be looking at me very intensely.” I shrugged it off with a non-committal answer. She was in a creative field, always a good sign, but something told me she gravitated more to the greasy biker types than an egghead like me. Still, we were giving it a chance. We strolled around downtown Wilton, a place with its share of hidden nooks and crannies for couples. Boldly (idiotically?) I held her hand and she seemed pleased or, at least, not completely repulsed. We found a bench and, completely out of character, I auditioned for the good kisser role.

We were in a jolly mood as I walked her back to her car. I could see getting together again and we agreed to do that. I decided to keep rolling the dice with Nicki.

“
Am I looking at you less intensely?” I asked as we leaned against her car.

“
Yes.”

“
I was looking that way so I wouldn’t be staring at your cleavage,” I admitted, which made her laugh. She was very provocative with the low-cut blouse and perky bosom—very upfront.

“
Plus,” I wrote, “she has a very strong Jewish identity, which gives us a lot of common ground.”

Then: the old, old story. Calls and emails and IMs went nowhere. I finally got her on IM after plans for a birthday get-together with ice cream failed to happen:

I never heard from her again. I didn’t have a last name and I had deleted her phone number (a very unusual act for an information scavenger like me). I guess some greasy biker is enjoying that deliriously cantilevered bosom.

Sometimes my journal tells a story so succinctly I might as well quote that. Here goes:

In New York City, cars never figured in my dating life. Subways and cabs moved me and my romantic interests around (although in rueful retrospect I could have sprung for cabs more often). In the suburbs, however, cars rule. Besides reliable transportation, they provide a rough guide to status and income potential.

After my divorce, I fell miserably short along both matrices of automotive excellence. I got the 1986 Saab 900, a red four-door that looked right at home in Fairfield Country, where half the cars at the time seemed to be distinctive Saabs. They have a great reputation for performance in snow and solidness in accidents, but my particular car had expensive repair bills and horrid reliability (I’m from South Texas. People in South Texas don’t know Saabs at all; there’s just not much need for a snow-savvy car on the windy flatlands of Hidalgo County).

The Saab had a nasty habit of stalling at stoplights, accelerated from zero to 30 mph in 60 seconds (offering great fun when I entered the Merritt Parkway and jostled with the Jaguars, Miatas and occasional Ferraris of the Masters of the Universe who roared past me) and sometimes just wouldn’t start at all no matter how many times I finessed the key, opened and closed the doors and tried every trick I could imagine. Some of my worst moments as a new single dad came on Fridays when I was going to pick up my son—and my car wouldn’t start. That led to some mighty uncomfortable conversations. Ultimately, I avoided the custodial headaches by renting cars on the weekend.

The car figured into the early years of my dating life, usually in a negative way. I dreaded the thought of driving too far from home on the off-chance that the Saab would conk out. Once a woman, Motek, and I were hot to meet each other, but she lived hundreds of miles away and I couldn’t muster the nerve to actually drive up there to meet her—a missed opportunity I regretted. She later reminded me of this miscue. What could I say? For neither the first nor last time in my dating career, I failed to seize the day for a moronic reason.

The Saab fear was grounded in reality. I learned just how treacherous the car was when I took a date to fireworks on the Connecticut shore for the Fourth of July, 2004. After the event we headed to the Saab for the drive back to Stamford. The car started, then died. Nothing happened. It sat there like an inert piece of red, rusty iron. I was mortified. The police came to check on things. The woman, from Eastern Europe, took the episode in stride. I got AAA to come lug the car to a local repair place and my date and I took a cab back to Stamford.

Still, the car could perform well enough as a warm, enclosed space for conversations and other activities once a relationship had moved past the Starbucks stage. Dulce, mentioned earlier, and I used to bond in the front seat while the heating system strained to keep the frigid Connecticut beach weather at bay. In the summer of 2005, I finally bought a Hyundai Elantra. Finding a group to take the Saab as a donation proved more difficult than I expected, but ultimately Chabad of Great Neck came to Stamford to take the car off my hands, and the moment when the Saab rolled forever out of my sight was a time of great rejoicing—I was free at last from a car that held too many memories.

The year 2005 split my dating life into two parts. As the year started, I had a crappy car and lots of credit card debt. By the summer, I had reliable wheels in the form of a Hyundai Elantra and no credit card debt. The effect was immediate and exhilarating. I had the freedom to go places and actually enjoy myself rather than fret—and I am a fretter
par excellence
—about the impact of a date on my credit-card debt. Women can sense a man with money woes and I’m sure I gave off waves of money anxiety so long as I was juggling three credit cards with massive balance transfers. Suddenly that anxiety vanished, replaced by a sense of financial confidence and, even, generosity.

The Elantra let me hit the road in a new way. The car didn’t stall, didn’t wheeze, didn’t give me headaches. It gave me four wheels and the open road to explore the region. Dating became much easier when I didn’t have to sweat over another sad Saab stall story.

The car even gave me a conversation gambit and way to connect with other new car owners. Look at it this way: talking about a car that malfunctioned regularly would turn off anybody; talking about a smooth new ride speaks of good judgment, solid finances and a respectable lifestyle. Just two days after I happily wheeled away the Elantra, I wrote:

Singer soon sang her swan song before we could act out scenes from Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall movies—“You do know how to whistle, Jim? You just pucker your lips and blow” (To Have and Have Not)—but my new car served as a faithful sidekick in my dating adventures. What happened? Pull out your old LP by the singer Meat Loaf and listen to “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” That’ll explain everything.

Truth be told, Mrs. Robinson exuded sensuality in person but came across as a bit starchy online, a wonkish cougar, if you can imagine the combination. Chatting once, I asked impishly, “What turns you on?”

“
Healthcare policy,” she wrote back in all seriousness.

Still, she stoked my curiosity (I’m not calling her Mrs. Robinson for nothing). We talked about meeting when she visited New York for a wedding. She even made noises about me getting a tux and being her date at the upscale wedding, to which she promised to wear a very slinky gown. My imagination began to wander. The escort part, alas, fell through, but we still got together. As I wrote,

I never saw the dress. Still, she fired my imagination. I envisioned us in our very own swashbuckling romance novel. I would be her hairy-eared Fabio and she would be my flushed, ruby-lipped pirate queen. Together we would point the prow of her curving bodice toward the great passion of her life—discussions of healthcare policy reforms. A year later, I visited the city where Mrs. Robinson lived and we planned to meet. I had visions of a romantic walk under the spring foliage, but as I hit the city limits she called to cancel because of a family matter. I could taste the metallic disappointment in my mouth. I checked in several times during the crisis, but I finally gave up.

Sometimes, the magic happened. Timing, inclination, location, daring, attraction and the alignment of the stars combined to move me speedily up the online dating curve. At those moments, the good angels locked their wings together, lay down their ever-turning flaming swords and opened the gates to the Garden of Eden for biblical bonding. One woman who regularly visited New York contacted me and we met for a Friday night service at the Carlebach Shul on the Upper West Side, known for its rollicking Orthodox services. After that, we returned to the apartment where this Shabbat Seductress was staying. I wrote,