Thursday night at Workmen’s Circle, I read this story:
I met Jane at UCLA in the fall of 1988. I was an atheistic communist at the time, lost in the early stages of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I spent most of that school year in bed with what felt like the flu. I only finished three classes.
Jane was a compact, busty Christian from Korea. I wanted to be her missionary of love and baptize her into my cult.
Jane was the sweetest girl. She had this shy retiring smile that would make her eyes disappear into slits. I often felt that she wanted to reveal more to me, but as she sensibly pointed out when I started flirting with her, ‘You have a girlfriend.’
Many times when I was with my atheist girlfriend, I imagined I was with Jane.
I feared it would never happen, but a man can dream, can’t he? That voluptuousness. That snugness. That innocence. That Christianity. I wanted in.
Jane represented the goodness of the Christian home I’d grown up in and plooking her would be a simultaneous exploration of my parents’ values and a return to a paradise lost.
When Chronic Fatigue Syndrome forced me to leave UCLA, I moved back home with my Christian parents, embraced Judaism on my own terms, grew a beard, answered the phone ‘Shalom’, and fantasized about Jane.
I wrote her a couple of times a year and on average she wrote me back once a year.
I became really religious. I abstained from masturbation for 14 months straight, the longest stretch of my adulthood. I refused to shake hands with women. I was going to be the real deal.
Then I met a Jewish girl with amazing qualities. My resolve faded before such abundance, before such a bountiful playground for my wicked desires.
I plooked her constantly in my mother’s old bed until I met someone hotter and then I plooked her until she gave me the boot and then I kept plooking women until partially recovering my health and moving to Los Angeles in March 1994 to work for my hero, the conservative talk show host and Jewish theologian Dennis Prager.
One day in April, Jane came to visit me. I had a friend’s place in Westwood all to myself. I felt as triumphant as Douglas MacArthur returning to the Philippines. I had proven it was not all psychological. I was a warrior and I had returned home for my prize.
Jane wasn’t as hot as she used to be at 18 but she was still my fantasy.
We sat outside on the deck. The sun shone upon us. I turned the conversation to sex. Jane looked at me, leaned over and kissed me.
I kissed her back. Then I gathered her in my arms and walked her to the bedroom. I took off her clothes. Everything seemed possible. I could resume a grand life, an even better life than I had before illness. I finally had what I wanted but when it came time for the ultimate deed, it was awful. It was the worst of my life.
It was all so new to her that she couldn’t relax into it. With time and love and commitment, it might’ve worked out.
‘This is what I’ve been fantasizing about for all these years?’ I thought. ‘I’m sure the Torah has something to say about this.’
After a string of failures, I told her, ‘You’ll have other lovers and it will be better for you as you go along.’
Our communication was excellent. I told her I’d been fantasizing about her since the day we met. She was confused. How could I feel that way when I had a girlfriend?
I told her that the heart has reasons of its own that the mind will never understand.
One night my former girlfriend from UCLA came over with a bag of potatoes. It didn’t take much effort to get together with her.
Afterwards, she asked me, ‘How many girls have you been with since me?’
‘About ten,’ I said. ‘How many guys have you been with?’
‘One,’ she said. ‘Those other girls, they taught you well. You used to be really awkward.’
I felt good. I had come of age. I was smooth. I was a man. I was creating my own life. I was combining Judaism with hedonism. I was taking my values out of the dusty shul and into the shiny world, offering ethical monotheism and enlightened pleasure to all who would listen. I had the master’s touch. I was Guru Luke. I was Dr. Ford. I was Rabbi Levi. I was having the best of both worlds, the best of my parents’ world, and the best of Dennis Prager’s world, and I was combining them with the best of the hot young stuff at university.
The next day Jane came over. In the morning while I was shaving, I thought about how easily I could fulfill Jane’s fantasy. She was sitting on the bed looking at me.
Then she asked me, ‘What are we?’
‘We’re daytime friends and nighttime lovers,’ I said.
‘Have there been other lovers?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
The next time she came over, she said she couldn’t see me any more.
And indeed I never saw her again.
I kicked myself for years afterwards for telling her the truth about my infidelity and thus losing access to her body and soul, to her sweetness and light, to the best antidotes for my darkness and homelessness within.
Ten years passed since that Spring of ’94 and I Googled her name and emailed her. She made a short reply, mystified about why I would contact her. I wrote back. She did not answer.
A few more years passed and I emailed her again. I wanted to make things right. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to be with her again. And again. And again, until it was good. Until it was evening and it was morning, and Luke said it was very good.
She did not reply.
According to Google, Jane has not married.
D. emails: “The shame I feel today, Sunny Jim, is boundless. How your dear old dad wishes he had throttled the life out of you when you were but a little joey thus sparing that audience the awful spectacle of you flailing about trying to be “controversial.” The stony silence of the attendees is a good indication of how badly you failed as an entertainer and “writer.” A story as boring and pointless as the one you told cannot be saved by any amount of shouting, arm waiving and table pounding. Hang your head in shame, mate. You not only embarrassed yourself, but your family as well. Know that on some moonless night I’ll gut you and strangle you with your own intestines, you attention-seeking ponce.”
