A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist's Quest for a Naughty & Nice Jewish Girl (7 page)

Receiving a positive response merely started the process. The exchange of real-world contact details, the IMs, the phone calls followed. And even then, surprises inevitably lurked. Consider my encounter with a woman I’ll call Spacey Stacy. We set a 7 p.m. rendezvous on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The vibe turned strange that afternoon, as I walked to the train station near my apartment. She called my cell phone to nail down the details, then said she’d had “a rough day” and “too many margaritas” the night before (Halloween). Finally she said we could get coffee “and if it worked out, maybe dinner.” The words and tone rang alarm bells, but I shrugged them off.

I arrived first at the appointed Starbucks and grabbed a table. I recognized Stacy when she came in—hair a little shorter than in her picture, but the same cute pug nose. She sat down and abruptly asked about a grueling work project I had endured that week. We complimented each other on how closely we resembled our profile photos. We talked about her job search and smiled through strained silences. I offered to get some drinks. She waved me off. “Just get one for yourself.”

“
Do you want to go someplace else?” I asked.

“
No.”

After I returned with my Tazo iced tea, we spoke about her relations with her ex, her dancing classes, get-to-know-you stuff. Finally Stacy declared, “I don’t sense this is a love connection, so I’m going to go. Good luck with your search.”

I was stupefied. We had been together fifteen minutes, if that. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll talk to you later,” I muttered. That sounded moronic. “No, I guess I won’t be talking to you later.” Stacy strode into the New York night, leaving me speechless. Finally, I took the dregs of tea and hit Broadway, now swarming with happy couples touching, strolling, snacking, laughing—or so my eyes told me. On this night, I was not among them.

From the churning mass of possibilities, contacts emerged in thematic waves. There were the Latina therapists, the little white liars (regarding age, location, number of kids, Clinton-era photos), and the creative collective of designers, P.R. mavens, teachers, writers, and even rabbis. I surfed the Princeton wave, meeting and sometimes dating women whose son, brother, or cousin graduated—also a few Princetonians. The Tiger connection on my profile definitely attracted attention—no coy “Ivy League graduate” description for me.

Over the years I learned how online contacts can swell quickly into rainbow-colored intensity, enveloping a man and woman in a virtual intimacy of nightly gossip and revelation. But like a soap bubble, what feels like the start of a real friendship or even romance can pop and vanish, leaving only a filmy residue in memory. A woman I’ll call Motek, for example, called me “very special” during one of our lengthy conversations and emailed photos of her kids. I was ready to drive hundreds of miles to meet her, out of surging curiosity (although I delayed this obvious next step because I worried my rattletrap car couldn’t handle the trip. Stupid me). Then Motek avoided my contacts. She never explained why, but the friendship tanked immediately after I called her cell phone while she was at dinner with a man she termed the “competition.” More on that later.

Ninety-seven percent of the contacts went nowhere. One percent, at most, went somewhere exciting. And in two percent, warmth and affection took root as two people groped for common ground in the space between romance and indifference. These friendships settled into easy patterns once we realized they would never be anything else.

Sometimes the relationship bounced between longing and loathing, attraction and repulsion based on forces unseen. Chana and I were in contact on-and-off for years. We kept in touch despite hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and bouts of online hide-and-go-seek. Finally settling into a comfortable rhythm, I called her
mi brujita
, “my little witch,” because of the spell she cast on me, and she teased me about my “cyber-
novias
,” or online sweethearts. And then we met, felt nothing and ended our contacts permanently.

That’s the way online dating goes. Something works great up to a point, and then you discover that outside of being Jewish and speaking English, you are simply two strangers with nothing to share and nowhere to go.

In some cases, however, we found a groove and remain platonic contacts with technology serving as the useful go-between. We talk, we IM, and sometimes we get together to catch up on life. I reached the point where I didn’t presume to know a woman based on our contact on dating sites. I’ve been in touch with at least a dozen women who have moved beyond online dating into co-habitation, engagement, and (
mazel tov!
) marriage. Through all the stages, we’ve been able to sustain a simple friendship with each other.

Thanks, Facebook.

Astute marketers know the value of a good name, one that captures an essence, provokes thought, and closes the sale. Over my years of online dating, I took that approach. I’m a writer, I freelanced for
Advertising Age,
and I know the value of a clear message. And what is online dating, other than the direct marketing of a single product (i.e., me, Me, ME)? To effectively brand myself, I needed cute pictures, a compelling profile, and a snappy screen name. With a unique selling proposition, I could tilt the odds in my favor in that split-second when a woman decides whether to respond to an email—or ignore me.

Upon joining Jcupid, I tinkered with names like Van, VW, and even Tazio, the Italian middle name I loathed as a kid but came to grudgingly like as an adult because it is so freakishly different and “ethnic.” (My father, obsessed with race cars, named me after the Italian race car driver Tazio Nuvolari.) But everything I chose seemed either boring or bizarre. I got closer to the mark with Ze’ev, a Hebrew name that sounds like Van and that I use at religious services. Ze’ev worked well enough to remain the name on one profile; it drew women who thought I was Israeli. Still, Ze’ev lacked a certain Van-ness and emotional resonance.

So I doodled possibilities reflecting my upbringing amidst the balmy breezes and pastoral landscapes of the Rio Grande Valley—Mission, Texas, to be exact, Home of the Grapefruit and Tom Landry, first coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Some ideas:

ValleyGuy. Too obscure, and the U.S. has lots of Valleys, including San Fernando, Red River, and Death.

TexDude. Sounds lame, and I never think of myself as a “dude.”

Missionary. This cleverly alludes to my hometown, but it could excessively appeal to Southern Baptists. Also, people might assume Missionary implies a limited erotic repertoire. Come to think of it, that assumption might also get Baptists knocking on my digital door.

Then, clawing up from the overactive self-marketing node in my brain, there emerged “TexasHoldEm.” The more I noodled, the better it sounded. Free associations clustered around it like lobbyists at the Texas Railroad Commission. It tells a short story in four syllables. Soon, TexasHoldEm became the screen name that I used on three sites.

You might ask, why make a big deal out of my Texas provenance? I left Texas for Princeton in 1976 and haven’t lived in that state since the summer of 1977. My returns for high school reunions and family visits are rare. I’ve lived in New York and Connecticut far longer than I lived in Texas. And yet, those early years are forever imprinted on me, through education, values, memories, even my way of talking (I joke that after a few Coronas I sound just like LBJ).

I’ve made my peace with that influence—and I’ve discovered that Lone Star roots are a great marketing tactic, endlessly provocative at cocktail parties and singles sites. I could always spin tales of guns, black-helicopter obsessives, the Dallas Cowboys, the cultural disputations of the high school cultures known as the “ropers and the dopers,” the complex relations of Anglos and Hispanics and the dangerous allure of Mexico, located about four miles down Conway Avenue and across from Anzalduas Park, on the other side of the Rio Grande. One of my favorite stories involves a conversation I overheard between two local worthies in the summer of 1976, after I had graduated from Mission High School. Let’s call them Waylon and Willie. As I wrote on June 19, 1976 (names and expletives deleted):

Reflecting those roots, I note in one profile, “I practice an archaic Southern chivalry: I hold open doors, stand up when a lady enters the room, write thank-you notes, and help her take her coat off.”

My profiles carried a teasing line, “Now, who can guess the multiple meanings of my screen name?” That shameless come-on indeed attracted women to my fiesta of verbal playfulness. The name and line invited women to casually contact me. A woman I’ll call BruchaFromBoca wrote the most memorable response. Her jaw-dropping first email, in its entirety, read, “Masturbation comes to mind, but far be it from this lady of Boca to admit to it ...”

To which I quickly replied, “Very good! Obviously we think along the same lines. I was picturing holding somebody else (TexasHoldEm, after all, not TexasHoldIt), but you’ve certainly got the right idea. Now, the other meanings: I really am from Texas originally, so there’s that connotation. TexasHoldEm is a form of poker, and card-playing was very popular in my family when I was young—my mother enjoyed nothing better than playing poker late into the night with her aunts during family vacations to San Antonio.”

Photos on my profile gave visual clues to the meanings, some obvious, others indecipherable without explanation. One photo heavy with Texas atmosphere showed me at a Houston shooting range blasting away at targets with a Glock pistol. I told women that I was “getting in touch with my inner NRA.” In another, I clutched two squirming Yorkshire Terrier puppies to my chest, with the caption, “Holdin’ ’Em.” In a picture from a high school reunion, I’m grinning impishly as I sit next to a hugely pregnant classmate from Mission; she points one finger at her stomach and another at me (dream on).

I hoped my pitch would attract women, but I also was drawn to women who used TX in their screen names. One friend, TexDG, says that the name generated curiosity from men. She wrote to me, “Guys from the east coast think Texas is ‘exotic.’ ” Many figure she supported Bush in the election; as she said, “They think the whole state voted for George—yes, a bunch a yahoos us’ns.”

“
Did you get into any heated discussions? Could they get past their notions of Exotic Laurie to who you really are?” I asked.

“
No heated discussions. I just don’t go there. LOL—funny about that,” she wrote back. “A lot of the guys just want to know what color my undies are!”

Another woman, GoodListenerTX, commented, “I have received more emails with this name than either my first screen name of honestmom or afierytopaz. Most people couldn’t spell fiery let alone grasp the meaning of topaz. (I know it is an obscure fact that topaz comes in colors other than blue.) I would have been a ruby but it was too cliché.”