Luke Ford

I hit my first match.com event tonight. The women in their 20s had little interest in talking to me. Others were put off by my talking right off about my emotional addictions. At the end of the night, I met two women with MFAs in Writing and I hope they’ll be friends for life.

I figured out tonight with a beautiful blonde Russian accountant why Russian women have such a terrible reputation as gold diggers. When you come from places like Russia or Iran where there are few consumer goods available, you go crazy for luxuries when you get to America. In Russia, there’s little middle class, so Russian women from poor backgrounds naturally obsess about getting the goods.

I love stereotypes and figuring out what lies underneath them.

Josh asks: “Luke I watched your YouTube video on Finding Your Place in Orthodox Judaism. Has anything changed since you did that video? You said that someone who was your friend told you that you would never be accepted.”

Luke: It remains a work in progress for me.

* “Are you working or just staring at the screen and charging me $18 an hour? You’re not an Orthodox Jew unless you’re screwing some other Jew.” Orthodox Jews are not popular among my peers.

Why are Orthodox Jews unpopular with many of my peers? Whenever you stand up for something difficult and unpopular, the people around you try to tear you down to their level. Religious people encounter this all the time. Orthodox Judaism has so many things it stands for, secular Jews in particular want to tear down Orthodox Jews.

They don’t want the challenge of people who live their lives according to God’s law. It irritates them. Gets under their skin. Infuriates them. And so they look for flaws and inconsistencies so they can dismiss what is bothering them. The 10 Commandments bother the world and the world looks to tear down those who hold to God’s law.

“You look so different,” she said. “No more ZZ Top. A new hair cut? You’re working out? You look cut. Hey, I want you to meet my boyfriend.”

The conversation zigged and zagged.

An hour later as I detailed my latest foupe, she said, “You wouldn’t know anything about making people uncomfortable, right Luke?”

After dinner, after Grace After Meals, as I walked out knocking over the water, I announced to the table, “I didn’t say anything inappropriate tonight. The new meds are helping!”

The last thing I heard as I went through the door was the sound of her laughter.

I don’t think I’ve ever told on anyone to authority. I never dobbed in another kid to a teacher or to my parents or to any authority. I hated kids who did that.

I grew up a preacher’s kid on Seventh-Day Adventist college campuses. It felt like I couldn’t get away with anything. I was always watched and reported for my sins. When I was at Avondale in Australia, other kids would tell on me all the time for swearing, rambunctious behavior and the like. Yep, they’d go to the teacher and report that I said the word “bloody.” They’d tell on me for making fun of the retarded kids visiting our school. They’d tell on me for having a pile of candy (a sin in Adventism).

This didn’t happen to me nearly as much at Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley. California Adventists were much cooler than Australian Adventists.

It never occurred to me to dob anyone in. If I had a problem with somebody, I either tried to work it out with the person directly, or I spoke to mutual friends, or I did nothing.

Australian author Bob Ellis nails it: “Being a Seventh-Day Adventist was hard but it was kinda fair. They quickly sorted out the ones they couldn’t trust and branded us with the mark of Cain and sent us wandering, fugitive sinners, through the Land of Nod for all our days.” (The Nostradamus Kid)

When I converted to Judaism, I got turned in to the rabbis for my indiscretions. I remember when I was in Orlando and attending the Conservative synagogue Ohev Shalom. I met this woman who was attending college out of town. So I started writing to her. In one letter, I included an article my Christian mother wrote about trying to understand my interest in Judaism.

So this girl showed my letter to her mother and her mom sent her to her Hillel rabbi. They were worried I was trying to infiltrate the Jews to make converts to Christianity. My rabbi eventually reviewed my letter and attachment and saw nothing wrong with it.

So one Friday night at shul, I ran into the girl and her mom and they made some awkward explanation and I avoided them after that.

Oh, I also got into trouble when I wouldn’t let this dyke into shul when the rabbi was speaking. She took it to the board and I got relieved from my usher position for acting like a Nazi.

In March of 1994, I moved to Los Angeles. At a singles event in a shul, I showed this guy some lingerie photos a girl had sent me. And this guy turned me in to the organizer. Oy vey!

On an intermediate day during Succot, I exchanged a bunch of tawdry notes with a woman in an Orthodox rabbi’s succah. We forgot the paper and the rabbi found it and called me up and got stuck into me. He didn’t call the girl. He probably knew she wouldn’t take any of his remonstrance. There’s something about me that screams, “Kick me!”

Over the years, fellow congregants would turn in things I wrote online to the rabbi and I’d get called on the carpet and sometimes asked to leave the shul.

2 He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

There was this girl I liked in high school. She was tall and strong and athletic and two years below me. I never got to talk to her. I never got to hang out with her.

She lived near me. I sometimes ran into her on my walks. I think we just nodded and said hi.

She had blonde hair and a cute face and even though she was strong, she had curves in the right places. She was all woman. I liked how she was kinda shy and demure.

I never sensed an opening so I never got anywhere with her.

About six years ago, a lawyer from high school who was a year or two below me posted on a Placer High School newsgroup, “Who was the best editor ever of the Hillmen Messenger?” He nominated me. He was just trying to stir up a discussion.

This girl I liked got into the discussion. She’s now married with kids. She said she thought in high school that I’d become successful writing about politics and it was sad to see what I had turned into, always writing on my blog about how pathetic my life was.

Oh well, all the girls I yearned for in high school, when I look at their current pictures, I don’t yearn for them anymore.

Around age 43, I stopped finding women my own age attractive. I’m not happy about this. I’m just speaking the truth.

I transferred to public school for the first time in September of 1981 so that I could take journalism classes. I was 15 and a sophomore.

When the time came to sign up for classes, I rushed over to the teacher Bob Burge and told him why I’d switched to Placer High School. He was amused by my intensity.

I was a handful in his class, asking pointed questions and issuing challenges. A fellow student later related to her mom, “Nobody knew what to do with his brain.” In the Spring semester, I transferred to the school newspaper, the Messenger.

I was intimidated by the senior members of the staff. I felt small and scared.

Part of the responsibility of being on the newspaper was that you had to go out and get two ads for each issue. I remember having to go to the ski shop on Main Street to get their ad.

I hate selling. It’s just not in my blood. My dad’s an academic. My emotional state tends to be detached. I hate asking for anything. I prefer to be an observer. Collecting this ad was one of the hardest things I ever did.

I’m not sure if Bob Burge noticed how hard this was for me, but I don’t remember having to go out and get another ad in my 2.5 years on the staff. I just got accounts with set ads.

As I became more comfortable on the newspaper, I became my normal obnoxious inappropriate self. Mr. Burge had to often tell me to shape up and to cool it and to stop being a jerk.

Just before I graduated in 1984, he wrote in my yearbook: “I remember when you first joined the newspaper staff, I gave anyone permission to strangle you at any time…

“These have been three exciting, lively years…. In seventeen years of teaching I have never had another student challenge me as much as you did. If I have challenged you to remain calm in the face of disaster and to be both a gentleman and a journalist then, we have both gained.”

In my Junior year, I got in a daily habit of taking bets from other students on various sporting events. Mr. Burge didn’t like this. He said we were learning to take advantage of each other. He said that if I was going to do this, I had to take it out of the room.

I was always trying to get a rise from Mr. Burge. I was always baiting him, trying to provoke him. Mr. Burge was very calm. He had six kids. He was a centered guy. He had inner peace and secure attachment.

Towards the end of my Junior year, I challenged Mr. Burge to appoint me Editor-in-Chief for the next school year. I was the obvious choice based on my experience and enthusiasm but he had obvious concerns.

“OK,” he said to me one afternoon, “let’s go in the other room and talk.”

So we settled in and he said he needed assurances that I would act appropriately if he were to appoint me Editor. I assured him that I would shape up, and I did. I’ve always been able to do this when I’ve needed to. There’s something about being called on the carpet that wonderfully concentrates my mind.

So I was the Editor of my school newspaper in my Senior year and things went smoothly. I changed its name to “Hillmen Messenger“, which remains. I behaved myself. I treated the staff respectfully. After we published our final issue, I hung out in the room after everyone left and turned on Top 40 music and cried.

I went back to Australia for a year after high school to live with my brother. I didn’t know many people in Tannum Sands and wrote a lot of letters home to California. Mr. Burge wrote me back at length and cheered me up.

At Sierra Community College, I became the Editor of the school newspaper for the 1985-1986 school year and often came back to Placer High School to kibbitz with Mr. Burge.

The last time I saw him was in May of 2000. He was in the same room and as good humored and friendly as ever.

I still want his approval.

This morning, I found out he had blocked me on Facebook. I want to cry. I know I post too much and this must’ve driven him crazy, cluttering up his news feed, or perhaps I posted something inappropriate on his wall, I know I do this stuff regularly and without any concern for the repercussions, and yet I feel gutted.

A lot of people have blocked me on Facebook. The stuff I write is too crazy for them. They have reputations to consider.

My former boss at KAHI radio news (from 1981-1987), Pete DuFour, never did accept my Facebook friend request.

Many of my classmates were relieved when I did not show up for the 25th anniversary celebration. That way I couldn’t write about them.

My Placer High School journalism advisor.

I lived in the Auburn area for most of 1980-1993 (usually at 7955 Bullard Drive, Newcastle, 95658). Like the other homes around us, we had about seven acres and in the summer the grass died and the fire danger was extreme.

It was isolated and lonely compared to the tight Seventh-Day Adventist communities I had known at Pacific Union and Avondale colleges.

We were a Sabbath-keeping home. After church Saturday morning, I’d often go for long walks on my own. One Sabbath afternoon, I walked in to Auburn and over to my Placer High School. It was the Spring of 1984. I was about to graduate. It was a beautiful sunny day and I felt happy.

I saw a bunch of classmates on the football field and I wandered over to say hello.

As I got closer, I saw that people were dressed up and a feast was laid out on the tables and I realized that whatever this celebration was for, it was not for me. I stopped and turned around and got away as fast as I could, my face burning. I felt like such a loser because not being invited played on my repeated experiences of abandonment, going back to earliest childhood when my mother died and I got a bunch of temporary replacements and I never learned to attach securely, and as I grew up, my anxiety would cause me to lash out at others and eventually to abandon myself and whatever ties I had before anyone else could dump me first.

I was the Editor of my school newspaper and reported for the Auburn Journal and KAHI radio, but there were still some events for which I did not have a pass.

Surely the Lord will gather me in.