I met Julia from Sweden in October 2007. It was right before Yom Kippur. She was tall, blonde and beautiful.
After I wrote up our chat, Julia emailed me: "Good god you’re perfectly evil. Did you know that I used to keep a cut-out picture of you from an old issue of Rolling Stone in my diary when was 15? I think I was a little bit in love with you."
Yeah, well, I am fond of you too.
About nine months ago, I noticed on Facebook that she was engaged to a bloke named Quinn. I clicked the link and looked at his profile and wondered if I hated him.
The next day, I got his friend request.
I was freaked. How did he know I was looking at his profile?
I accepted the friend request and we had no further contact.
Three weeks ago, Julia calls me. She has a friend who loves my blog and wants to meet me.
"A hot chick!" I thought to myself. "Awesome!"
We finally meet for coffee this afternoon.
Julia is 45 minutes late. She brings Quinn with her.
"I don’t know why Julia thinks all her guy friends will be excited to meet me," he says. "I don’t get it. ‘Oh, this is Steve. He’s been trying to f— me for five years. You must meet him.’"
Julia had some immigration issues a while back and a whole slew of guys offered to marry her.
"I heard you offered to marry her," says Quinn.
"Yeah."
All of us had our different demands. Mine was that she convert to Orthodox Judaism.
"Everyone had a price," Julia remembers.
Quinn tells me about his Jewish dad. A rock musician.
"He drowned when I was 13," Quinn says. "We were swimming in Hawaii and got caught in a rip. I caught waves back to shore. He just gave up. I saw his black head bobbing around for three hours and then he just gave up and went under. It was the easy way out.
"He was a cutter before it was fashionable. He had a lot of depression issues."
"The grant system is much better in Sweden," he says. "We’re applying for different grants. I’m writing for a gay sports blog. These guys met me at the gym. I think they wanted to f*** me but I ended up with this gig writing about the hunkiest mixed martial artists."
Julia is a trained boxer. She talks about knocking this guy out recently. He wanted her to hit him. She finally did. He pissed himself.
"She doesn’t need me and she can do better than me," says Quinn.
I find myself accidentally touching Julia. A lot. When I get up to get a refill on my iced green tea with two splendas, I rub her back.
"I don’t know why I’m doing this," I say to Quinn. "My every deed is governed by G-d’s immutable moral law. I can do no evil."
"Is that some Dennis Prager-approved titty touching line?" he asks.
He says gay men have a fascination with him. They alternately want to f*** him and to father him.
Quinn remembers when daddy went to India and came back all spiritual. "He’d make us say, ‘Let us give thanks to Vishnu for this Big Mac.’"
A few years ago, Quinn had an important interview with an important bearded composer. Quinn messed things up by remarking about a picture of Brahms: "How many hits do you need to justify a beard of that size?"
Quinn is brilliant. He says hasn’t accomplished anything yet.
He turns to Julia. "I’m so productive when I don’t think you love me."
They were seeing this therapist. She gave up four hours for their first session and only charged $50. "Then she started slipping Jesus in the backdoor. We never went back."
I must leave to observe Shabbat. Thank God for this spiritual time to get away from the goyim and their contamination.
D. emails me about an earlier version of this post: "There was no "the" in the band’s name. It was just SPIRIT, you ignorant ponce! Randy Wolfe, better known as Randy California, was a fair-dinkum CRACKER-JACK of a guitarist, mate. Your dead mum and I quite enjoyed Spirit’s classic psychedelic LP Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. Of course, given your girlish tastes, Spirit is probably a little too "heavy" for you to appreciate."
