One of the ways I classify the great places of the world is if I ever made it there. I never did in Australia. Never got further than a hearty kiss and some fondling above the belt.

I just reconnected with an old acquaintance from Pacific Union College Elementary School — Rod. He was in the grade below me. He played quarterback. Like me, he had a smart mouth.

I just posted on his Facebook: “Dude, did you get laid in Angwin? I felt like I was the only one who never did… SDA girls were goody girls as far as I found. I was a virgin until I was 22… You were always precocious, playing quarterback…slick with the girls. How old were you when you lost it?”

An old friend responds: “”Luke…the girls weren’t goody girls…they were just smart!!”

I never did anything naughty with a Seventh-Day Adventist girl. I never did anything naughty until I was 22.

The closest to naughty I ever got was the summer of 1983 when a bunch of us got in the hot tub one Shabbos afternoon. There was a girl with us in a bikini (my age, we’d all known her for years). And about five guys.

And we started rough-housing and pretending to pull off her clothes. Things got rowdy. And she was screaming. I don’t think she was traumatized, she was just playing along. She wasn’t physically lashing out. We were just teasing her. And suddenly my hand brushed against her pubic hair and I got really frightened and we all stopped messing around and returned to our sober observance of the Holy Sabbath.

The owner of the home, a pastor, got fired in a sex scandal a few years later.

Growing up Seventh-Day Adventist, about the only way I could touch girls was with violence. We’d play keepaway games in the pool. Each guy would pair up with his girl. And then it would be guys against the girls. And we’d toss the ball back and forth. But it was all an excuse for us to feel each other up in the PUC pool.

But I was pretty awkward. I got pretty violent and competitive with the girls. I remember the guys would tell to calm down and just use the opportunities to feel her up.

I was about 16 or 17 before I could just make-out with a girl. Prior to this, I only got to touch them while rough-housing.

Around age 11, I decided that I would dedicate my life to getting laid. This did not pay off for another 11 years but at least I had a goal.

During those years, I thought that touching girls was the greatest thing on earth. I was so desperate for affection and so grateful but mixed up when it came. I was awkward. I was rough. I was frightened. I often felt like a social outcast, that I’d have to totally transform myself to get a foxy chick. I was always going on these kicks to transform myself so I could land a foxy chick.

Come to think of it, I’m still doing this. I’m going to become a teacher of Alexander Technique. That should really impress the ladies. The money and applause will just flow in.

The first time I fell passionate in love was the summer before 11th grade. My girl was Lorraine aka “Rainy” (she was a year or two below me in school, we both loved Barry Manilow). We used to go to the PUC pool on many afternoons and were quite affectionate (though I was frightened to kiss her that first summer), rubbing in liberal quantities of suntan lotion on the other’s soft skin, much to the amusement of the older folks around. My friends called her “Action Jackson” because of our innocent antics (she was a sweet innocent girl). I was known as “Hans Ford” because I tried to look like a guy who knew how to feel up a girl.

The summer before 12th grade, I finally kissed her. French-kissed her. Long, slow kisses, just the perfect kisses for a summer’s day. She had soft full cheeks and I loved to pinch them. I felt like a grown-up. We’d walk through the woods around PUC and hold hands.

I once got her back to the home where I was staying. I finally got her into my room. I finally got her on to my bed. And then I tried to take off her clothes. She wouldn’t let me. She kept saying, “I’m not that kind of girl.”

Once in the PUC pool, I was frolicking with Rainy, when this little black boy popped up and said to me, “Why is your penis sticking out like a lance?”

I’ve never been so embarrassed.

Rainy let out a scream and swam away.

I dunked the little black boy and swam after her, trying to talk my way out of my embarrassment.

I chat this afternoon with an ex-girlfriend from more than 15 years ago.

She met me (I answered a singles ad her mom placed for her on a Messianic dating service) when I was really sick and she lifted my spirits. I had just gotten out of a horrible relationship with a woman more than 11 years my senior. This woman was nine years older than me. She had three kids. Three divorces. She was a pile of fun.

I was living rent-free (in exchange for doing chores) at the time across the street from my shul. My woman would often do my chores for me so I could concentrate on writing up my autobiography.

As we chat, I Facebook friend her two married daughters (in their twenties) with little notes that I dated their mom.

Ex: “I have healing abilities. My son said his ear drum exploded. I put my hand on his ear and he said, ‘My ear popped. I can hear.’”

“Any women in your life?”

Luke: “I was dating someone but it’s over.”

Ex: “You’re impossible. You’re Peter Pan. Where’s Wendy? Luke’s waiting for Wendy to read him a bedtime story.”

Luke: “I’ve still got the Chronic Fatigue.”

Ex: “Oh, you do? You were better when you were with me. Not at the beginning but you started to get better.”

Luke: “I’m two-thirds of normal.”

Ex: “I think going to California [in 1994] was a godsend for you.”

“My ex was a screenwriter. You guys are very similar. He’s also Jewish.”

My ex is not Jewish. I met her on a Messianic dating site. There weren’t many Jews around at that time, and so I was looking everywhere for a girlfriend.

So I brought her to shul with me and she really got into it and started the conversion process. Then I left town and she let it go.

Ex: “After you left, when I went to synagogue, it was awful. I remember sitting there by myself trying to be the good spiritual person like, ‘He isn’t the only reason why I was here,’ but ‘He was the only reason I was here’. The songs made me cry when not all of them were said. It was really hard.

“I had to make a completely different life switch in order to you know, which I did. I jumped into work again. I met a guy that year. We were together until last Thanksgiving.”

Luke: “I was in New York in 1994. A few months after I left Orlando. I met this rich girl answering a singles ad she’d placed for a friend. She spent Memorial Day weekend with me in LA. Then she paid for me to fly to New York and stay with her on the Upper West Side for three weeks. She even gave me spending money.

“Her name was Debbie. I remember that because she gave me a prayer book (siddur) I still use. She inscribed it in Hebrew and English: ‘Wishing you peace of mind and joy to your heart. Love always, Debbie”

“While I was there, I placed singles ads to meet other women. Debbie was very bossy and it became obvious to me in on my first day in town that we didn’t have a future.”

Ex: “Mr. Gigolo. I hope you got some nice clothes out of it.”

When I was with my ex, she said to me one day, “I’d have to win the lottery to keep you with me.”

Ex: “You should have had me there with you picking the s— out.”

“Is that bridge still smoking?”

“I love your brother. Remember being in the canoe with him and singing those songs? That was so fun. From a girl’s point of view, come on, it doesn’t get any better than that. That picture of us used to be on the internet.”

“I saw you on television. On 60 Minutes. I turned to my husband and said, ‘That was the guy I was with before you, whatever asshole.’

“You had a suit on. I said, ‘Oh God, if I was there, he’d have a better tie on’.”

Luke: “That tie was from an ex-girlfriend [who used to date Rabbi David Wolpe].”

Ex: “Of course it was. I knew that. Even the underwear probably.”

“I saw you at the beginning of the Steve Martin movie Mixed Nuts. You were an extra sitting outside at a table.”

Luke: “I haven’t seen that. I did a bunch of movies as an extra [in 1994] but never spotted myself.”

“Did you ever do a modeling layout for Sandals beach resort? I picked out a bridal magazine looking for dresses for my wedding. Lo and behold is your ass lying on a beach on your honeymoon at the Sandals resort at the same time I’m planning my beach wedding. I know it was you.”

“Are you still following Dennis Prager?”

Luke: “Yes.”

Ex: “I love love love him.”

Luke: “Remember when we went to meet him?”

Ex: “Yep. Remember the guy we met? He and I became very good friends. The good looking one, the married guy, not the other guy. I went out with him once. He was married but bitching about it. I met him at a bar on the beach.

“The whole thing was like a second flavor of ice cream from you. You were pistachio and he was mint-chocolate chip. It still kept you alive in there. We all met each other together.”

Luke: “We had a great weekend together.”

Ex: “I felt like I was keeping that going.”

Luke: “Are you still a tiger?”

Ex: “It’s been a while. I think so. You’ve got to have the right partner. It’s been months. So I’m celibate. Is that what you call it? I don’t think about it too much because I’m not stimulated.”

Luke: “Do you remember when we’d hook up in the back of your stationwagon? And the police came back when we were in the synagogue parking lot?”

Ex: “I forgot about that.”

Luke: “And we were lucky because the policeman was someone I’d opened the synagogue door for a few days prior.”

Ex: “Ohmygod, I had buried that one in my subconscious. We were completely naked.”

Luke: “We were when the police drove up. We were in the deed. We were rushing to put our clothes on.”

Ex: “I remember the wash machine.”

Luke: “I put you on top of the washing machine. I’m wearing my tefillin.”

Ex: “That’s because your roommate wouldn’t let us do it in the house. So we had to go out to the shed with the washing machine.”

Luke: “Those were some good vibrations.”

“I have to get back to work. I’m doing some writing.”

Ex: “I hope you’re inspired. That’s what I want to be.”

Luke: “A muse.”

Ex: “That’s what I’m good for.”

“It’s so good hearing your voice.”

Luke: “Take care. Goodbye.”

Ex: “I’m going to say it anyways. I love you.”

Luke: “I love you too.”

Ex: “Because I do love you, OK?”

I had one teacher in elementary school who was a greater source of fantasy for me than any other woman in the world.

How traumatic it would’ve been for me at age 14 if one of my beautiful teachers had repeatedly seduced. Oy, the stain on my soul!

My eighth grade teacher later ran off with one of her female students.

This beautiful teacher in question, Amy Beck, looks amazing in a toga.

She’s got herself in a real predicament and I just want to be there for her. I don’t judge her.

Report:

BURBANK — A Burbank Unified School District teacher turned herself in Monday to face allegations she had sex with one of her students.

Amy Beck, 33, a teacher at David Starr Jordan Middle School, surrendered to Burbank Police yesterday afternoon with her lawyer.

She was booked on suspicion of lewd or lascivious acts with a child of 14 or 15 years and was held on $400,000 bail, said Burbank police Sgt. Robert Quesada.

“She said she had sexual relations with one of her students,” Quesada said.

Police interviewed the boy “and confirmed that the acts did occur” between March and September of last year, the sergeant said.

The boy was 14 at the time the alleged sexual activity began, and he is now 15, Quesada said. His name was not released.

In 2001, “The Edah Journal” ran what it said was the first publication in English of a 1920 responsum (opinion on Jewish law) regarding women’s electoral rights by Rav BenZion Meir Hai Uziel, who was Sephardic chief rabbi of Jaffa (Tel Aviv) when he wrote this responsum and later served as the first chief Sephardic rabbi of the State of Israel.

In discussing women’s suffrage from a halachic standpoint, Rabbi Uziel also wrote about issues that were apparently inconceivable then but which, incredibly, actually do plague us today (italics added by YP):

But perhaps this [women voting] should be prohibited because of licentiousness?
But what licentiousness can there be in this,
that each person goes to the poll and enters his voting
slip? If we start considering such activities as licentious,
no creature would be able to survive! Women and men
would be prohibited from walking in the street, or from
entering a shop together; it would be forbidden to negotiate
in commerce with a woman, lest this encourage
closeness and lead to licentiousness. Such ideas have never
been suggested by anyone.

Until now, that is.

As The Moral Leader, I get asked this question a lot.

I’m reading a terrific book addressing this question — Freedom to Change by Frank Pierce Jones, a professor of Classics at Brown University and a teacher of Alexander Technique.

Dr. Jones writes about John Dewey: I asked Dewey about his early experiences with the Alexander Technique. He said he had been taken by it first because it provided a demonstration of the unity of mind and body. He thought that the demonstration had struck him more forcibly than it might have struck someone who got the sensory experience easily and quickly, because he was such a slow learner. He had always been physically awkward, he said, and performed all actions too quickly and impulsively and without thought. “Thought” in his case was saved for “mental” activity, which had always been easy for him. (Alexander told me that when Dewey first came to him he was “drugged with thinking” and used to fall asleep during lessons.) It was a revelation to discover that thought could be applied with equal advantage to everyday movements.

That’s a great title for a movie.

I was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist. There were no out homosexuals in the religious communities I grew up in (Avondale College and Pacific Union College). We would’ve dragged them behind a pack of kangaroos until they were cured of their disease.

I remember in sixth, seventh and eighth grade at Pacific Union College Elementary School, “fag” was the dirtiest word you could hurl at someone. I used a lot.

Guess that wasn’t very Christlike of me.

Here’s more info on this movie:

This film explores the complex intersection of religion, identity, and sexuality through the stories of gay Adventists who are often faced with a gut-wrenching decision. They must choose between the church they were raised to believe is God’s true remnant church and their innate desire for an intimate, loving relationship. Or is there a way to reconcile their faith and their identity?

Why Make This Film?

A Seventh-day Adventist religion professor recently told a group of LGBT Adventists that they have two incurable conditions, “You’re gay and you’re Adventist. And it’s awfully hard to stop being either one of those things.” He knows this from first-hand experience. He only become passionate about how LGBT members of the Seventh-day Adventist church are treated after his gay brother committed suicide, unable to reconcile who he was with what he thought God required.

Being a gay Christian isn’t easy, but being a gay Adventist is especially difficult because Adventism, to most, is more than a belief system; it’s also a close-knit community with unique cultural habits and deeply held beliefs. Growing up Adventist usually means going to church schools, church summer camps, and hanging out with other Adventist kids who also don’t play sports on Sabbath and who know what Big Franks, Pathfinders, and haystacks are. There’s a powerful sense of community, purpose and belonging in an Adventist childhood.

For all its unique traits, Adventism does not deviate from the Christian mainstream in its condemnation of homosexuality. Like almost every other Protestant denomination, the Adventist church teaches that the only way for gays to live within God’s will is to abstain from any intimate relationship, and official church language avoids any mention of a homosexual orientation; behavior is what matters. The approach taught is typically, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” Gays are allowed to attend church as long as they don’t “live the homosexual lifestyle.” But even then they are typically barred from holding any leadership role and often feel like a suspected outsider within their own church.

LGBT Adventists face a gut-wrenching decision. They must choose between the church they were raised to believe is God’s true remnant church and their innate desire for an intimate, loving relationship. Or is there a way to reconcile their faith and their identity?

From Hirhurim:

• Reform rabbis suggest interfaith couple blessingslink
• Ancient Cairo synagogue reopened: link
• Nefesh B’Nefesh to stage ‘mega’ events in 8 US cities: link
• David Greenfield condemns negative attack: link

• Weiss will not ordain Orthodox female rabbis: link
• NY Times on eruvin and snow: link
• Controversial bill to permit local rabbis to perform conversions: link
• Jewish papal knight in Long Island: link
• OU gets ready for Pesach with annual website: link
• Jewish group declares lox unkosher because of parasite, causes uproar: link
• Special ‘Pollard Haggadah’ issued (I’m waiting for the haggadah dedicated to the three kids who allegedly smuggled drugs into Japan): link

Daniel Joseph Neah was a longtime employee of David Rubin who plead guilty for a lenient sentence. It appears he is cooperating with the government.

Jim Goad emails: “I realize you’ve Jewed-up your look in the past few years, but has anyone else noted that the pre-bearded Luke Ford looks a lot like anti-Islamist Dutch politician Geert Wilders?”

What’s new with you, Jim?

He replies: In the past few years I’ve survived a brain tumor, gotten married and spawned a son, and I live in Stone Mountain, GA, surrounded by blacks who never give me static.

> Has your journey made you very religious?>

Quite the contrary. I was legally dead twice during the brain-tumor
ordeal, and I saw absolutely nothing.

More than ever, I’m convinced this life is all we get.

After yoga class one evening, I was extolling the benefits of Alexander Technique.

The woman talked about how yoga imparts similar benefits — it opens up the chakras.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m not so sure. I look around in yoga class and see so many people with bad use. They are just making themselves worse. They are more deeply ingraining bad habits of use so that their exercise and yoga is not only not helping them, it is hurting them.”

“That’s very judgmental of you,” the woman said.

I’m guess that I’m getting cocky now that I’m nearing the halfway point of my three-year Alexander Technique teacher training.