We had already broken up three times in ten months when we first said, “I love you.”
She said it first and launched our doomed winter of love.
The day she gave me a hamper for my washing, she said, “It can hold two loads.”
I took her in my arms and said, “So can you, baby.”
She called my name more than any girl I’ve known. She’d say, “Luke, Luke, Luke, Luke, Luke!” And she said like she meant it.
“I’m so open to you,” she’d say and our connection kept getting stronger even as our differences in matters of religion and politics became more stark.
Eventually, I was able to keep my eyes open at the end and I didn’t need to think about anyone else.
It was so good, it didn’t make any sense to me that we would end. Normally, the excitement wanes well in advance of the breakup.
What kind of relationship ends while the connection keeps getting stronger?
One Wednesday afternoon in February, I emailed her: “I got a sore arm. I want you to come rub it. Do you have anything in need of rubbing?”
She replied: “Luke, I don’t want to date you anymore.”
Fourteen months later, I called her and we talked for 70 minutes.
“When did you last have sex?” she asked.
“With you,” I said.
“That’s good,” she said. “Do you still have your beard?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“Even if I didn’t have my beard, why would I call you? It makes no sense for me to talk to you.”
“I’ve been dating someone long-distance for the past year,” she said. “It turned out he was an alcoholic. It ended very badly two weeks ago.”
A few days later, I emailed her: “I’d like to interview you for my blog. I’ll keep you anonymous. Show it to you beforehand. It would be good for me, good for my blog, good for my writing, good for my therapy. It gives me an adrenalin rush to think about it.”
Right after havdalah, he lit out for the Hollywood hills.
Destination? A party!
He’d removed his black undertaker suit but preserved his white cotton dress shirt. He added his best blue jeans, a black belt, black socks and his black Klondike Klodhoppers.
It’d been a long time since he’d gone to a secular party!
You know what they say about secular humanists? They do it before marriage.
Sabbath was gone, a distant memory in 30 seconds. His eye was now set not on a mythical theological queen but a flesh and blood queen, a girly, and Jewish, Baruch HaShem!
He was in a state of high anxiety. Where would he park? Those treacherous canyon roads. How would he maneuver? Perhaps it would be best to part on Crescent Heights, get a nice straight easy run in to the curve, and then hike a mile north, so what if there were long stretches without sidewalks and it was dark and there was lots of traffic?
Passing Santa Monica Blvd, he didn’t see any parking spots so he decided to push north. As he crossed Sunset Blvd, his anxiety grew. He felt the world pushing in on him as turned into the canyon and up the hill, looking for parking. He executed a three point turn at one of the first free spots and then it was onward and upward by foot.
Winded. How quickly he became winded. Was it the climb or was it the anxiety? Would he know anyone at this party? Oh, how he looked forward to tonight. Did his anticipation make the anxiety worse?
Party is in full swing when he arrives. He gets a hug from the hostess. He digs the strappy high-heels and the tiny little dress and the toned brown legs. He wants her to keep on the high heels all the time. All the time.
He needs a drink and he needs a conversation.
One, two, three water bottles later, and it is midnight and time to go home.
* I suspect the Torah would rejoice in the royal wedding. Here are two goys pledging eternal fidelity. The Torah is cool with people having a special role, including kingship, by birth. Psalm 45 is about the joy of a royal wedding.
* Is it sacrilegious or sinful to say that some Torah portions are more or less riveting than others? For instance, the traditional commentators such as Rashi and the Rambam had more to say and less to say about varying parshas.
* Holiness and ritual protect ethics. God consciousness as demonstrated by holy behavior leads to ethical behavior. The core of Leviticus is Kedoshim (the holiness code) and in the middle of it is the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. If you had to choose a college student babysitter and you could watch prospective sitters sit around and talk, you’d likely choose the ones who cursed less rather than more, if that was the only distinguishing characteristic. You expect a sitter who curses less to be more responsible.
* Torah cautions parents to moderate their behavior so that they will set a good example for their children. Even though I have no children, I influence people. All of us influence people. Whether we like it or not, we are each role models and so we shouldn’t smoke crack and patronize massage parlors.
* Priests should not marry prostitutes. I’m not a priest. What’s my excuse? I’ve met many nice ladies of the evening. Do hookers make for good wives?
* The priest and the Jew are not merely individuals. They represent God and the people Israel. They have responsibilities. So even though I want to move to Hawaii and frolic with bikini-wearing shiksas, this is forbidden to me, even if I don’t hurt anyone.
* Studying Torah is not always natural and easy. I’m a man of great holiness, but when the sun’s out and women are wearing scant clothing, it’s hard for me to sit indoors and to read about priests with crushed testes and their need to marry virgins.
* I remember telling this Orthodox rabbi that I was writing a scholarly book on the history of sex in film and he said, “I’m sure it’s very academic as you say, but we can’t have that in our community. No Orthodox synagogue will put up with this. It’s tamei.”
What does tamei mean?
He had this disgusted look on his face when he said the word. I could tell this was not his favorite conversation.
* In the song “Desperado,” the Eagles say that the Queen of Hearts is always your best bet. Is this true? Dennis Prager says: “The heart stinks as a guide to life. Stinks. It’s the worst. It is better to be guided by a ouija board than by your heart. I’d rather you had a tarot card reading to tell you what to do than let your heart determine what you do. The heart is wonderful for intimacy. For you love this piece of music rather than that one. It is perfectly fine if your heart determine what music you like, what food you like, what hairdo you have, let your heart determine it as long as you live.”
* As I was preparing for this week’s show, I was listening to some nice soft music in the background, including “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones. It seemed like incongruous music to study Torah by. I might not be going about Torah study the right way.
I’ve got my mind made up
I need to feel your touch
I’m gonna run to you
Is a Jew permitted to listen to goyisha music about forbidden sexual relations? While studying Torah?
* Why is the Torah so obsessed with not having priests serving in the temple with testes “squeezed, crushed, torn or cut”? (Lev. 22:24) How did so many priests in ancient times suffer these indignities? What about cysts on the gonads, would that prohibit a priest from serving? What about a rabbi doing Torah Talk?
* Lev. 22:32. God and Torah are concerned about the sanctification and the desecration of God’s name. Do you think this show makes Jews, God and Torah look good or bad?
* I think the rabbi has morally desensitized me. I was giving a little talk the other day and for the first time publicly, I used the f-word. I don’t where that came from except from Rabbs. Nobody else I know uses that kind of language.
* Do Torah talks enhance or hurt our chances of getting shidduchim?
* Lev. 24:10. Blasphemy leads to anti-social behavior such as murder and property theft.
There are no Alexander Technique teachers in Hawaii. I’ll have the market all to myself. My mentors warn me against the move. They say there’s not a sufficient market there to support me in the style to which I have become accustomed.
I love the tropics. I love the beach. I love the sun and surf and sand and the girls in bikinis yearning to be free.
In Hawaii, I’d be almost halfway home to Australia and to my friends and family.
I wonder how many single Jewish women there are in Hawaii? Would it be a good place to find a wife? Would it be good for my writing or would it lead to lassitude? I don’t particularly care for New York, but it would be good for my writing, I’d move there.
I want to get an MFA in Creative Writing. Will I stay in Los Angeles, a hotbed of Orthodox Judaism, or will I go live among the goyim? I feel drunk with possibilities.
Here are my main concerns — will it be good for my Judaism? For my writing? For my marriage? For my career? For my happiness?
Why aren’t I thinking about moving to Israel? Why am I dreaming about banging shiksas in Hawaii when I could be studying Torah in Jerusalem?
Jeff emails: So why not move to Tel Aviv and practice Alexander Technique on the bikinis on the beach — every one of them is certified kosher.
The planet is a glove; Israel is closer to Oz than Honolulu; only seven time zones away, mate.
At the end of Mattie’s call Friday, Dennis Prager says: “You are a very articulate young woman. I’d like to stay in touch with you.
“Let’s go to Jeff in Los Angeles.”
Jeff: “A teenage sister just broke up with a boyfriend who I understand wasn’t too good for her. She’s been in this muck for a month and she can’t get over it. She’s miserable without him even though she knows he’s not good for her. I’ve been trying to approach this with her from a rational perspective, telling her she has to want to get out of this muck. Do you have any advice?”
Dennis: “Take her away for a week or two. It’s mind clearing to leave one’s normal surrounding. Just talking on the rational level won’t do it.”
“I have found in my life it is emotion and mind-clearing to leave where I am if I can. If I can take a vacation or even work from a different place. Leaving the physical environ is a powerful change in one’s life. I’ve been told by 12 Step people that if you are addicted to something, changing your physical environment is hugely helpful and returning to your exact environment where you exercised your addiction is the worst thing you can do.”
“The physical is very important. We are not only spiritual or mental beings. The physical plays a big role in how we behave.”
On his show April 29, 2011, Dennis Prager said: “I am not good at petitionary prayer and rarely make it [on behalf of myself]. I’ve done it maybe twice in my life. I don’t like using God as a celestial butler.”
“The type of prayer that is meaningful to me is two things: A very beautiful service at a house of worship — and they are not common — with beautiful music in a beautiful environment. That can be uplifting to me if it is brief… After a certain period of time, you have the law of diminishing returns with prayer. I particularly like when a benediction or invocation or some sort of prayer is made at the beginning of the meal. That is the one that most moves me — a brief spontaneous prayer at the beginning of a meal invoking God and uplifting eating from that of biological necessity to something higher. The purpose of prayer is to elevate the moment.”
“In my religion, there’s too much prayer and it’s too long and it has not had good effects within religious Jewish life.”
Dennis is not a fan of people wearing their baseball caps backward. “I can’t stand it. While there are undoubtedly some kind and decent people who wear it backward, men specifically, I think it is a sign of childhood. I gave my kids until a certain age to wear and then banned it. There was an argument. There was objection that I didn’t know what I was talking about, but it worked. Not everything has worked. Boys have to willfully mature or they stay boys. There’s no higher appellation in life than ‘Be a man!’ The aspiration to be and act and dress like a man should be there.”
I am just realizing how much stronger I am today than when I started my Alexander Technique teacher training program in January 2009.
When I started the program, which lasts for three hours every day (36 weeks a year), I had great doubts about my ability to do it. Just the thought of the 20-minute commute each way scared me. I would have to be operating at a high level while driving my car or I would get into trouble.
So the first few weeks of the program, I took an energy drink (Five Hour Energy) almost every morning to pep me up.
I found that interfered with my sleep, so I quit.
At the same time, I did yoga almost every day.
Within a couple of weeks, I started having cycles of extreme fatigue but I’d always come out of them after a few days.
During my first six months in the training program, the teachers would give me two ten-minute turns a day and a couple of the more advanced students would work with me to. We’d do things like sitting and standing, walking, and other tasks of daily life but learn how to do them with good use. So most of my time in the program, I’d sit around and watch or I’d read books and magazines on Alexander Technique.
During the last three months of my first year, I learned to start doing hands on work on other students. For the next year, I was exhausted most of the time and had to cut out of my life almost everything else. But I worked through this.
Now I get up at 7 am every day, go for a 20-minute walk, and then go in every day to the institute and for the next three hours, I’m working most of the time with other students. I can lift ’em up, throw ’em around, and treat ’em bad.
I come home and feel OK most days and I go to work on my computer.
I quit doing yoga to save on money in January, so that has freed up time and energy.
I feel like possibilities are opening up for me in life because of this work. I feel capable of doing more. I would love to get an MFA in Creative Writing.
I hope to establish a thriving Alexander practice so I can afford to go back to the institute for a fourth year to hone my skills.
Fred emails: I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that Luke does not want to leave LA.
Khunrum: A bit more than speculation counselor. Could you be hoping Luke doesn’t want to relocate 400 miles north?
Fred: Nonesense. He’s just what our neighborhood needs to add some local color. Someone who looks like a schizophrenic homeless guy with a Jeffrey Dahmer van wandering around, babbling about Talmud and scaring the neighborhood children. It will help me cement good relations with the neighbors and remove the tedious veneer of normalcy that has spread about the community. What a service I’d be performing! I think the word is “mitzvah”.
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
