My writing teacher: “I’d love to see a girl reacting to you.”
A girl who responds to me will typically hold my eye contact for an extra beat. She’ll position herself near me. She’ll smile. She’ll talk. She’ll open up emotionally. She’ll confess. She’ll ask me questions. Her flashing eyes will reveal her interest. She’ll get Doggy Dinner-Bowl Look. “The look on a woman’s face when she is so attracted to the PUA that she has big trance-like eyes, a slightly lowered and tilted head, and a look of anticipation, which resembles a dog waiting for his dinner bowl.”
So let me show you a night of my life in 1997. It was Makor, a monthly Friday-night program for Jewish singles. I’d been kicked out the year before after a dozen women complained I had spoken to them inappropriately.
Tonight the dinner is at the home of friends and I feel that makes it OK for me to go.
After buttoning my tongue over the meal and staying on the best of behavior, I go to the house where everyone gathers for dessert. I meet a cute brunette, a seven. Our attraction is immediate. She whips off her sweater, complaining about the heat.
“That’s a good sign,” I say.
She smiles back at me.
After an hour of Torah study and conversation, we agree on nothing, she’s way to my left, I walk her home. Outside her apartment, she equivocates for a minute, but then invites me in for a drink. I take a glass of water.
We sit on opposite sides of the room and talk awkwardly. Then I ask to massage her feet. She agrees. I fondle them for ten minutes, communicating more effectively with my hands than with my political positions.
She sits up and kisses me. After a break for me to wash my hands, we make-out further and then she suggests we move into the bedroom.
Thank God I carry condoms to Jewish events.
While undressing, I learn that my Sabbath bride is a “crunchy granola” feminist from U.C. Berkeley who’s considering entering rabbinical school at the University of Judaism.
Down to our underwear, we slide into bed. She clambers on top of me.
“I like to talk about Torah in bed,” she whispers.
“Great!” I say.
I’m up for anything. She can talk about Germaine Greer for all I care.
“I was arrested in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago,” she whispers, “for having sex in the back of a car, with a woman.”
“You’re an edgy girl,” I say.
Over the next nine hours, I make love to her three times in all her favorite feminist positions. Missionary is only allowed to me for a few seconds (to get my groove on) because it represents male subjugation of women. Like a sergeant in a boot camp, she commands me on what I should do, when, and where. She tells me to shut up with my Republican nonsense and to stop making jokes about rape.
I leave for temple Shabbos morning hoping I’ve cemented my ties to my community and to a particular woman. When I call her on motzi Shabbos, she says there’s no point in us seeing each other again. We have nothing in common but sex. I think that’s more than enough to carry on but she doesn’t agree.
Monday night, the rabbi of Makor calls. He asks me again to say away from its events.