Gil finally
agreed that I was probably right about how we first met (after
gaslighting me for at least 6 months). For a long time we disagreed
about where we’d met, him claiming it was at a Shavuot picnic, and
me claiming it was at a friend’s Shabbat dinner. It made for an
awkward answer when excited strangers asked us how we had met. About
a week ago, after I had already started believing his version of
events (I’m distrustful of my memory to begin with, so when people
are very insistent about their memory of events, I tend to believe
them), he finally admitted that his memory of how we met wasn’t
consistent with the order of events. He’s going to have to get used
to admitting I’m right.
So the order
of events is apparently something like this:
He starts
getting acquainted with the Jerusalem social scene, poking his head
out of the sand every once in a while. He meets and befriends a
friend of mine, and is invited to Shabbat dinner at which I too am a
guest. He is a bit horrified and astonished to see me there, as he
had swiped on my profile on OkCupid literally a few days earlier, and
had not gotten a response from me. So he spends the meal trying to
play it cool, while wondering if I’m pretending nothing happened,
or if he should say something, maybe acknowledge the fact that he had
“liked” my profile. Meanwhile, I am completely unaware of any
inner drama going on with this guy since I never saw him on OkCupid
and to my knowledge we are complete strangers. I just thought he
seemed like a nice guy.
Then we meet
again a few weeks or so later at another friend’s picnic. There are
a lot of people there, so Gil and I don’t really talk much, though
I vaguely remember his presence and me thinking that he was tall.
Fast forward
a few months later and he is gradually becoming part of my social
circle. I see him occasionally at Shabbat meals, and then a friend
brings him to one of my meals so I start inviting him to my meals. He
seems like a nice guy, funny, and intelligent too, so why not? Plus
he lives in my
neighborhood, so it’s
easy enough for all involved.
I didn’t
really think of him as dating material, despite the fact that one of
my friends suggested it, and a family friend (you know who you are
Jeff) that knows us both from the old country wanted to set us up
(but was thankfully dissuaded by his wife). The biggest reason I
didn’t consider him as a potential match was a pretty big one- a
daughter from a previous marriage. Anyone who has ever talked to me
for more than 5 minutes knows my feelings about children and animals
(there’s an inverse relationship between the two). I’ve dated
guys with kids before but it always ended up feeling too complicated.
And frankly, my life is complicated enough as it is. I
live with a stubborn cat who destroys everything my roommate owns,
and I can’t seem to get
through a whole year without having more than three jobs (at the same
time). Throw a helpless, small human into
the mix, and we’ve created sit-com levels of unnecessary
complications.
Apparently
though he thought I was hinting my interest to him by inviting him to
Shabbat meals and to singles events through Facebook. I can see now
how that might be misconstrued, but I invite lots of people for
Shabbat meals, and I invite Facebook friends to
events I think they
might be interested in
(including single friends to singles events). I guess inviting him to
a Tu B’Av party and then to Shabbat dinner the next night was not
the best idea if I was trying to broadcast platonicity, but it
honestly never even occurred to me (I invited maybe 10 people to the
event and then another 10 or so to Shabbat dinner, probably
with several people overlapping).
He stayed
after dinner to “chat” and we ended up having a 4 hour
conversation. It was 1 o’clock in the morning by the time I finally
looked at my watch. This was possibly the longest conversation I’d
had with another human being (Oliver and I chat all the time, but
mostly about tuna), including on dates, in a very long time. And even
more unusual, it was actually interesting.
I
remember sitting behind a guy at some event, a guy that I had sent a
message to on OkCupid and who had not replied, and listening to him
have an entire conversation with a
girl about bags. He got very excited when he saw she had a similar
cotton bag as him, and found this an interesting enough topic of
conversation to maintain for at least the next 5 minutes (that’s
when I tuned out). Needless to say, I dodged a bullet on that one.
Then
when he asked me out to dinner, I was intrigued and pleasantly
surprised. Dinner? Guys don’t ask girls out to dinner anymore. I’ve
been asked out to coffee, drinks, and a park bench once (that
probably should have been a red flag right there), but dinner? Men
just don’t invest that kind of time or money on a woman these days.
It’s all about quantity of
dates, not quality.
I
accepted, on the condition that he wasn’t making it (he had warned
me before that his cooking skills rival that of a 5 year old’s).
The evening of the date, we met at the bus
stop located between us. He had been reading something on his phone,
and after greeting each other, he asked me what I thought about moral
relativism (that’s what he’d been reading about on his phone). So
we spent the first part of our first date
discussing the definition of morality as a function of time and
culture. As opposed to where we got our
bags from.
