I never thought much about New York until I got into Judaism. Then I discovered that New York was the center of Jewish life (at least outside of Israel).
From 1989-1993, I was largely bedridden by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and living at my parents house in Newcastle, CA. I reached out to synagogues in Sacramento and Helene Mathias, the educational director at the Reform temple began calling me once a week to tutor me. She eventually bought me a subscription to the New York Jewish Week (this was before Gary Rosenblatt took charge).
The paper had a particular smell that I associated with New York. Foreign. Sophisticated. Intimidating. The newspaper itself was unimpressive but it was a taste of higher quality Jewish life.
In August 1993, I moved to Orlando. In early 1994, I answered a singles ad that a Jewish woman about 30 years of age, Rina*, had placed for her friend. Rina forwarded all of the responses to her friend but mine.
I started talking to Rina regularly. She lived in New York but had a parent in Orlando.
After a few conversation, Rina revealed she had trouble sleeping. I said that sex usually fixes that problem for me. Rina agreed.
I moved to Los Angeles March 31, 1994 and Rina flew out to visit me Memorial Day weekend. We got along fine. We made arrangements for me to stay with her in Manhattan (around 77th Street and Broadway on the Upper West Side). Rina paid for my ticket. She was an heiress. She had two graduate degrees (one from YU and one from JTS). She was a social worker.
She had a big apartment with two levels on about the 20th floor. She had her cleaning lady in just before I arrived and the place looked spotless.
Rina took a few days off work to show me around the city. On our first day, I found her too bossy. I shut down emotionally and decided that she was not for me.
I went to some acting auditions. I got some modeling photos taken. I borrowed $500 from Rina and bought two hours of some acting manager’s time. He was featured in Life magazine so I figured he had to be good.
I went to the 42nd Street Public Library. I sat in one of the reading rooms and looked at this attractive woman on the other side of the room. I imagined that she was particularly educated and sophisticated and that I didn’t have a chance with her. So I just looked and fantasized and never approached her.
Every morning, the New York Times was delivered to Rina’s door. We’d read it over breakfast. And then she’d give me spending money and I’d go do my own thing.
I had fantasies about booking acting and modeling work and becoming bicoastal but that never happened. I placed a singles ad in the Village Voice but Rina found it, called it, heard my voice, and flipped out.
I had no interest in Rina, but I liked the things she gave me.
After I returned to LA, she said her therapist had convinced her that I was exploiting her and we stopped talking.
I often think about New York. That was my only visit. I always thought I’d become famous and people would fly me around the world. That hasn’t happened as much as I’d like.
Here I am the greatest writer of my generation and I’ve only been to New York once and had to sing for my supper every night at that. This country has its priorities all screwed up. I wish she’d stop persecuting artists like me. Los Angeles is about to get its own poet laureate but do you think I’ll be selected? No. I’m too dirty. Too unconventional. No wonder Karen Carpenter starved herself to death.
I sometimes drift back to my afternoon in the Public Library wondering if I had a chance with that spectacled, particularly smart, presumably Jewish woman with long dark curls on the other side of the room. Perhaps I am capable of a relationship? Perhaps if I met the right woman? There was that PhD in Chemistry I met via a singles ad. She lived in Massachusetts. She was drawing up plans for me to live with her. I’d sit in her home in the snow and write and she’d pay for everything.
Then I was a little clumsy with some of my wording, made some joke about her getting fat like the rest of the women in her family, and she went off and married a real man.
I just Googled her name. She’s published some distinguished book on electro-chemical combinations.
I remember when she used to call me at my parents home. I liked how solid she was. How much commonsense she possessed. She had no problem calling me on my bad behavior, like the time I published a letter in Spectrum (the Seventh-Day Adventist intellectual magazine) critical of my father. She read me the riot act for that.
She said I should wait at least two dates before I jump people with ethical monotheism.
I like solid women. I like women who don’t let me get away with anything. I like women who have their act together. I like women who take charge. I don’t like bossy. Bossy means to me trying to force me to do stupid things that are not in my interest. Taking charge means directing me to do things that are in my interest.
I’m condemned to spend my life leaching off women.
