Love in the Time of Corona (part 1)

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.