Unbroken Glass

I was mamesh considering to have this guy hospitalised. Seriously, is it against the halacha to just be NORMAL?

I had just ended things with a guy who I thought was great. He drank a little too much, and when I began suspecting that he might be a slight alcoholic, I realised things had gone far enough and I broke it off.

I was a little sad. I kept replaying moments that we had had, moments in which he had outshone himself in coolness and aloofness and all those other things that I love in a man.

My shadchan phoned.
It was about a week later, and he said that he had a guy for me. A great guy, serious, learned, a baal teshuva.
Although I myself am a baal teshuva, I sometimes get nervous to hear that. Some of them can be pretty fanatical, and the guy I had just ended with was an FFB who knew a daf gemora when he saw one.
But… I decided to give it a go.

I borrowed my mom’s car and drove to Tel Aviv. We met on the board-walk; he seemed nice. His peyos were nice. Even the fanatic gleam in his eyes was nice.
If you like that sort of thing.
We sat down. He was silent. I decided to take things into my own hands. I chatted a bit about myself, how I had come to Judaism, and about those hard beginning stages; how I hadnt listened to music…
I told him that I was in a bus one day, maybe one year into my teshuva and I heard a song that I loved so much, how it affected me and I realised that maybe cutting myself off from the world completely wasnt the best solution.
“Which song?” he interrupted.
I told him it was a song from The Cure. Sure he had never heard of them.
“Which one?” he said again.
“Pictures Of You”, I told him, shrugging.
I heard him mumble something suspiciously like ‘It’s a sign’.
But I carried on.
We talked a bit more, by then he had got a little more animated, and I was telling him how when I was younger I had always wanted to go to Mexico and meet Don Juan. Not the lover, I explained, the Indian Chief who nobody ever hears of because of the OTHER Don Juan.
I told him I loved the books, that the author Carlos Castaneda was my hero.
“You’ve read the books?” he asked me quietly.
Yes, I said.
“All of them?” he whispered.
Yes. All of them, I replied.
To which he stood up in a frenzy and started shouting, “It’s a sign! I know it! It’s a sign!” Gesticulating wildly with his hands, his face upwards towards the heavens, “They’ve sent me a sign! I feel that it’s so shayach, so shayach to this moment, it can’t be any other way! Yes! Yes!” Walking around in circles, yelling to (by this time) the entire beach “This is it! I’ve found her! It’s so shayach!”

I sat. And watched him.
I thought ‘You are one f*@#d up baal teshuva.’
But aloud I only said (and admire my restraint), “I must go home. So late… my mom… she’s waiting up for me… (it was ten thirty).. I need to go home and wash my hair…”
I had been meaning to offer him a lift home, but nothing doing. All I wanted was to get as far away from this maniac as possible.
“Goodbye!” I yelled from the safety of my car.
And I thought – Is an alcoholic perhaps preferable to this?

I went home and washed my hair.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 30th, 2002 at 4:49 pm and is filed under She. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.