Luke Ford

I’ve lived my life slightly more popular than the loser crowd and significantly less popular than the popular crowd.

My social status hasn’t changed much since I entered school in second grade.

As a bachelor, I naturally orient upwards in my social aspirations and ignore the suffering. It usually takes a wife, family and community to broaden a man’s concerns.

What do I mean by “loser”? A loser is somebody people avoid. A winner is somebody who attracts people. For instance, when Dennis Prager walks in a room, people notice and try to get close to him.

From first grade to 12th grade, Dennis was always elected his class president. That’s a winner.

A panhandler is a typical loser. Very few people want to engage with some smelly bloke on the street asking for a handout.

I don’t like to write about my triumphs. I prefer to specialize in my humiliations. The down side of this is that people who vibrate the strongest to my tales of woe tend to be losers and they consider me one of them.

No way, dude! I’m a winner who just happens to focus his writing on losing. This distinction is a bit fine, however, for the crowd with IQs under 120.

In 1992 while I was bedridden by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and living with my parents in remote Northern California (95658), I placed a singles ad in the Northern California Jewish Bulletin talking about how lost and lonely I was. It was the featured ad.

It got one response from a woman every bit as screwed up as me. But not nearly as attractive.

She empathized with my ad. She had few friends. She had a difficult personality. Her family was socially awkward.

When I talked to her on the phone, I kept wincing because she’d get upset at things I said. She was always offended. And she wasn’t cute.

I wouldn’t have kept up with her if I wasn’t so lonely.

I placed a new ad in the Jewish Bulletin that read something like this: “Australian-made world traveler convert to Judaism…”

This got responses from my targeted demographic — attractive high-achieving Jewesses. Most of them lost interest when they learned I was bedridden but some of them made the trip up to visit me.

When I was in constant contact with the girls I wanted, I dropped the loser girl. I told her I didn’t want to talk to her anymore. “I was just getting fond of you,” she said in a small voice.

I’ve been blogging since 1997. I learn time and time again that what I put out into the world comes back to me. I love to write about my humiliations but if I am not careful, that can increase them. You have to be precise when writing about feeling like a loser to make sure that your observant reader realizes that you’re on the right side of the social divider.

Since my own experience of chronic illness, I’ve consistently enlarged my soul by dedicating some of my time and money to helping those less fortunate than myself. But I don’t want to let losers into my real life. They’ll suck the life out of you.

I remember one guy in grade school with low social status who wore a t-shirt to school featuring some Peanuts character talking about how he hates jogging. The shirt was a hit.

Then the guy made the mistake of wearing it two or three days in a row, by which time he had a bad odor.

One of the great things about growing older is that people rarely try to humiliate you in person after age 40. Rather than believing that people are born good and society corrupts them, I think most people start out rotten and society makes them better.

I have a friend in his twenties who constantly tries to embarrass me in public by telling people about embarrassing things I used to do. I’ve asked him many times to desist. I remind him that it is forbidden by Torah law to bring up a person’s sins prior to his conversion or penitence, but this reference to Jewish law does no good. Time however will fix the problem. By the time my friend is 40, I doubt he’ll still be doing this.

We all feel like losers much of the time. The world keeps spinning and we all keep moving in and out of four different stages — dependency, feeling small in a big world, mastery and grandiosity (Stephen Marmer). But wherever we are in life and no matter what we’re feeling, we can always work on mastery. Losers don’t work on mastery much and it shows.

One of my nightmares while reporting on the porn industry was that I would be considered one of them. “One of us, one of us,” they cackled, while hauling me off to hell.

I blog about the heartbreak of ostracism and losers relate to that. They think that you can recreate yourself on the internet and change your social status, just like Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook. They see me as somebody who ran away in 1997 and joined the internet circus, earning an independent living by telling all. No boss. Lots of women and media attention and enough money to pay for psycho-therapy.

Told a friend: “The hole in your soul can never be filled by sexual conquests, but only by God.” He said, “Attributing sexual conquest to me is like accusing the Poles of abusing the Germans.”

I usually finish work about 5 p.m., but I hate to go home. One night a week I have psycho-therapy. Two nights a week, I go to 12-step meetings for my various emotional addictions. And one night a week I go to writing class.

If I go home, it’s all predictable. I’ve been there and done that. Out and about, I can meet new people. I can learn stuff.

I hate my plantar fascitis. Five physical therapist visits in the past six week and I have to stay off my feet as much as possible for the next three weeks. This is cutting down on my ability to get out and about.

I prefer to stay at work and blog rather than to come home.

And I have a lovely apartment, my best living situation in 16 years, but nothing amazing is likely to happen there. Out in the wider world, there’s excitement. Unpredictability. I want to be with people. I’ve had too much isolation in my life. Oy, my four months of full-time efforts to set up an Alexander Technique practice, they were brutally lonely.

When I have a day off, I find myself missing work.

What’s the image in my head? My boring apartment. Familiarity breeds contempt. I want more.

I went to writing class last night to read my essay on why Jewish men chase shiksas only to have the tall blonde newcomer share first her story about her love of Jewish ****.

I believe in God. I don’t believe that my instincts are right more than 50% of the time. I believe that I’m an addict to sex, love, fantasy, and co-dependent relationships. If I follow my own will, I’m lost.

I love money in the bank.

I hate dangerous conscience-less people, those who don’t consider the effect of their behavior on others, those old ladies in Pico-Robertson who push their shopping carts into the street without mind of the obstacles they’re placing to the traffic, addicts who won’t get help, ungrateful people, those who don’t see themselves, those who edge their car into your lane, forcing you to stop and backing up traffic behind you just so they can get a good look, rageaholics, absent parents unconcerned about the welfare of those they brought into the world, those so focused on the next world that they don’t enjoy this one, those who think happiness is unimportant, those who’d prefer to blame others than to work on themselves with a therapist or 12-step group, those lost in resentment they can’t see their own role in their misery, all the losers who attach themselves to me because they think I’m one of them, those who need constant reassurance, unfaithful partners, manipulative girlfriends who make you call them twice for every time they deign to return your call, those with bad credit scores, bludgers, those who take welfare, unemployment, disability and food stamps when they’re able-bodied, drug users, heavy drinkers, those who blast loud music, those who wear their pants down their butts, tattoos, terrorists…

If you have no feelings, you don’t wince when you carve up people. You’re as cold as ice. You’re a surgeon. Your job is to cut people up. Sometimes you heal them and sometimes you kill them (even the best of doctors kill at least a dozen of their patients). A non-surgeon who started doing the things a surgeon did would be locked up and viewed as bad, but once you can prove that you’re a surgeon, a writer, then the previously taboo behavior becomes acceptable.

Writer is an all-access pass to life. You can do anything and go anywhere. You’re entitled by the quality of your work. Many of the things you blog would be unacceptable to say in polite company but because you’re a writer, you can share them with the world.

So my writing teacher asked me how did I know that I had low social status in Jewish life.

I met Bella* at a Shabbat dinner in March of 1998. It was set up by **** but was at the home of a ****** couple. My life was bare during the week, just blogging lukeford.com, so on Friday night I was a tad exuberant, charming the woman of the house and offending the man of the house (by sitting in his seat).

Sitting across from Bella, I asked her, even though I could tell she was in her late 20s, “Where do you go to high school?” She smiled. She blushed. She confessed she was a nutritionist, a common profession for a Jewish woman, like speech pathologist. You can usually do it part-time if need be while raising kids.

A week or so later, I ran into Bella on Purim at my Reform temple *** *******. She was happy to see me. I got her phone number and took her to a Torah class a few days later in my old bomb. Then we hit a Shabbat dinner in Venice for our second date, ending up all cuddly in my hovel.

The next week, I parted company with my Orthodox shul ****, choosing my forbidden blogging over the new life that I had promised the rabbi, and I took Bella on our third date — dinner and a movie. Due to time constraints, dinner became the Ralphs salad bar (eaten in my old car) and the movie was Wag the Dog, which she had already seen.

We went back to her place. I wasn’t fully comfortable and her jaw got tired after a few minutes, so there was no Hollywood ending. I left before 6 a.m. to make early minyan and daf yomi at my new Orthodox shul.

She liked that I was so dedicated.

She said that her previous boyfriend had taught her that if you give your man a blowjob in the morning, he’s happy all day.

A day or two later, I called. It turned out that our third date had not been spectacular for her (I think it was eating Ralphs salad in my bombed out van before the movie she’d already seen). She was headed to Europe for a few weeks of vacation. “Don’t wait for me,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

And that’s where things would’ve ended if I hadn’t fractured my wrist a month later playing football at my Reform temple Sunday picnic. Feeling bereft, I called Bella. She said she was strangely stirred by my vulnerability. She came over that Shabbos afternoon and very awkwardly, my left arm in a cast, we consummated our friendship on the floor of my hovel, shortly before bringing in Shuvuot at Adat Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Westwood.

Over the next year, we went out about once a month. We never talked about having a relationship and never talked about a future together. I was getting a lot of media attention in those days, and whenever I got on TV, Bella rewarded me with sex.

I think the last time we hooked up was after a screening of the Holocaust movie Life is Beautiful. We both felt queasy. She said she’d just finished her period, which I took as a cue to lay out towels in case things got messy. She threw the towels away. I understand now that she meant we could go unprotected.

A year went by. She came to my Reform temple one Shabbos morning. She didn’t seem that thrilled to see me. She might’ve been avoiding me but I didn’t get the hint. There was a vibe in the air at my temple that I was not cool and I remember worrying that Bella was picking up on it. I felt like a pariah in my own shul. If Bella hadn’t been there, it would not have been so bad, but I felt the rejection and got all reactive and trying too hard and then giving up and ignoring the ostracism and trying to connect to God.

I guess I was very glad to see Bella and desperate to connect, so desperate that I ignored her signals.

I was happy when she stayed for lunch. I might’ve even paid for it. We sat together with a group of friends. When she stood up to go, I said I’d walk her out. She told me not to worry. I said it was no worry.

I followed her out. Strangely, she barreled ahead, trying to ignore me. I struggled to keep up and to simultaneously initiate conversation. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t get the hint until she stopped, turned to me, and said, “I don’t want you to walk me out because I don’t want people to think we’re together.”

She had no problem detecting the stench of my low social status and she didn’t want to be contaminated.

A couple of days later, she called and apologized.

It reminded me of our bitter-sweet conversation a few months before when we realized we were going our separate ways. I might’ve shared I was seeing someone. And Bella said, “And I never even got to show you off.”

A few years later, I ran into her at Friday Night Live at Sinai Temple in Westwood. I called her a few days later and asked if we could try again. She said no.