Unbroken Glass

I am trying to get over this guy, right?
So I go out on shidduchim, cos everybody knows that the best way to get your mind off of one guy is to surround yourself with other guys. Ha ha that’s a good one.

Funny how I always find myself sitting in front of my date thinking “there has to be a better way to kill the pain, potentially having a memory erasing procedure done would be cheaper and less time consuming then these dates that go nowhere”.
Has to be.

This was just last week.
I was beginning to despair of men in general, when my friend calls me up telling about this fantastic guy that she had heard about. Educated, serious, funny, the works.
Sounds like a good start if you want to get over someone.
I went out with him once and it was not bad. He was normal to tell you the truth.
A step up from most the guys I have dated but I did not get the feeling that he was my husband. I was fairly certain that I would not be having a second date with him so I ordered myself a beer. Why not enjoy this brief time we have together was my thinking.
Suddenly I had to check to make sure that I had only had one beer because I was sure that I saw three of my good friends walking into the restaurant and being seated right in front of my face. Then I was sure it was them because they ever so subtly got up and moved discretely behind a huge potted plant so that I would not notice them .
This might have been the most intriguing part of the whole evening with him.
Until of course, the bit when I asked him what he misses the most in his secular life and he said sex. I said right… while rolling my eyes inwardly and thinking “now that is a new thought for a Ba’al Tshuvah”.
How original really.

The funny part about this was that all through the evening he kept repeating that what he really wants is to be tzaddik.
This juxtaposition was ok though. I had already decided that I was not going to go out with him again.

The next day the shaddchan left me few urgent messages, but neglected to leave me her phone number. I couldn’t really call her back to tell her that I was not interested.
Usually, I like to know what the guy thinks of me the day after, I think it’s the right way to do things, so I try to be nice also and contact the shaddchan the next day.
But, as I said, I didn’t have her number.
I felt rude, the guy was not so bad that I wanted to blow him off completely, I felt that he definitely had earned the right to get rejected in a timely manor.
By the time I got a hold of the Scaddchan it was two days later. I was feeling like it was not shayach to say no anymore, I don’t want to be rude,so I had to say fine, that I will go out with him again.
I am such a tzaddik really, mashiach must be on his way now cos of me.

So we met. He came to fetch me. He picked me up all smiling and radiating confidence. Getting that second date must have made him think that this was really going somewhere.
I was polite and nice. The guilt from not saying no fast enough must have really been getting to me.
I smiled at him and we started driving.
I took him to my favorite coffee shop, not like Jerusalem has lots anyway.

Every question I had asked him on our first date had the same answer to it : I want to be a tzaddik.
Where do you want to live ? I want to be a tzaddik.
Do you plan to have a job ? I want to be a tzaddik.
Are you thinking of quitting smoking ? I want to be a tzaddik.
On the 8th time he said that I thought I was about to smack every drop of tzaddik out of him.
Then we go out again and he proves just how unlike a Tzaddik he really is.

I started talking, while he was giving me those looks… I knew I remember those looks from somewhere in my secular past. How shall I put this….unpure. That’s it. Very unpure.
I ignored that.

I was speaking about the usual boring shidduch stuff and he kept interrupting me to say things that no Tzaddik would ever say. I would have blushed if I was that kind of girl.
He was talking about the most un-tznius things to me, and I was feeling very very uncomfortable.
As it was I just kept ignoring him trying to steer the conversation back to more appropriate topics like world-views and Hashkafa. He countered this attempt at civil interaction with yet another deviant comment .
I blatantly ignored the innuendo.

And all the time he is staring at me as if I was there only to entertain him.
Maybe he expected me to belly dance, I don’t know.
And he had that irritating confident smile he has been having for two dates now.

In between those looks he was telling me how he really wants to have a life based only on Kedusha and Tahara. This guy really has issues.

Finally he said something so rude it could not be ignored. I was beginning to lose my patience with this guy, it had transformed from just an innocent boring evening to a proper disgrace.
I didn’t do T’shuvah to hear this kind of talk.

Then he came out with the most perverse thing I had heard all night. It was so sick and twisted that I am embarrassed to say it here in print. Okay, fine, so I am not really embarrassed but my editor might kill me if I do. I can only imply that it had something to do with him, me and how fun it could be.
The tzaddik.

The funny thing is that I am not even that good looking.
He must really be desperate.

I was winding up, getting ready to just get up and leave the place when he came up with
So will you marry me?
Smiling at me in that annoying way like he had just solved all my men problems.

I looked at him in awe, as he continued sipping his beer.

He just kept smiling away, never expecting me to say “no, and to be perfectly honest, please do not call, do not talk about me and do not think about me again thank you and good bye” . I think he finally stopped smiling then but I was leaving the coffee shop too quickly to glance back and see for sure.

My flatmate was shocked when I came back earlier then expected and told her this.
I was not. Oh no, no, I am way beyond that now.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 25th, 2002 at 2:10 am 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.