attachment

I went to Brooklyn this weekend, to see my college nonboyfriend. This was significant. We slept in the same bed, side by side, but barely touched. This was also significant.

I saw the guy tonight, on my return from Brooklyn. We talked about my race discrimination case from this summer (the first case I wrote). He took my hands into his and said I'm so proud of you--so sweetly, so earnestly, and it was supremely (if strangely and narcissistically?) validating. Perhaps because he really heard what I had to say, because in contrast to just about everyone else I've told about this case, it was obvious that it meant something to him, that it mattered, that it was not just a coup for me, but it was personally significant to him, because he saw me in that moment, and acknowledged that yes, I am white, but I am really in the struggle.

And when he pulled me near to him and uttered those words, I burst into tears, and wept, inconsolable, like a spoiled child.

There are things I've tried to learn by reading, things I've intellectually understood but never really felt. And now I am learning things from him, things that books could never teach me, that simple rhetoric has never taught me. Things that are essential but invisible; inscribed in my heart and written on my body.

Opposites

As a Jew (and a deeply skeptical, atheistic one at that), I have never been one for asking favors of g-d, at least not in the sense of Christian tradition (or, perhaps more fairly, the way that the Christian tradition has been stereotyped and portrayed in mass media).

That is to say, there are no please sweet Lord, shower me with your mercies coming from me, because I harbor neither expectation nor hope that there is a g-d to make it rain.

Still, in weak moments, I have plea-bargained. Cajoled. Begged. Borrowed. Stolen.

If you stop me from yakking all over the place, I'll believe.

If you clear the traffic so I make it to my crim final on time, I will go to shul on Fridays. Hell, I'll even go to church on Sundays.

If Obama is elected, I will pray, daily. Forever.

I yakked in the toilet. And I made it to my crim final with time to spare. And Obama, well, you know how that turned out.

I don't believe. And I haven't been to shul on any Friday since my crim final, to say nothing of all the church I haven't been attending on Sunday mornings. As for the daily prayer? Hardly.

Still, I threw one offhanded request into the universe that seems to have been gifted.

After my last serious relationship ended, I begged the g-ds, the fates and furies, and my very conscience:

May the next man I'm seriously interested in be the polar opposite of this one.

A few months ago, and seemingly out of nowhere, that very person has materialized.

I am not sure that he is exactly what I thought I wanted, but here he is. Just exactly what I asked for, and perfect because and in spite of it. Perfect for a hundred reasons, besides.

It hasn't made a believer of me yet, but I trust this: if there is a g-d(dess), (s)he has one hell of a sense of humor.

Pyrrhic Victory

I don't miss him anymore,

(Baruch Hashem)

but part of me worries that I will never feel that sort of love for a person again.

It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care

I am prone to bouts of jealousy, in romantic situations. I am never irrationally jealous. And my jealousy tends to signify that something's rotten in the state of Denmark. Or is at least a little bit awry.

I have fought it, but I've never been able to kill it completely. It is in my blood. It is my very nature.

So I am letting it be a lesson, or a series of lessons. My jealousy has taught me:

Love won't change a person. I can't date a person's potential. Musicians are trouble. Artists are trouble, also. Dating a player very probably means getting played. No one's vagina is magic.

This one's controversial:

I should not sleep with any man I'm not seriously involved with.

Not on a why-buy-the-cow-if-the-milk-is-free theory, exactly, although -- lord help me -- there may be something to that -- a person can't be "used" for sex if they're not giving it up. Of course, if you're after casual sex, then, by all means, do it. Do it twice, or a hundred times, do it and do it and do it well. Do it until you're dirty, and then take a good long shower.

But if what you want is something else, if casual sex is not what you're after, if it makes you feel sad and empty and dissatisfied, don't do it.

I thought I wanted for most recent man -- this fantastically beautiful man -- to lie on top of me.

And I did. And he did. And it was lovely.

But it turned out that that alone was not what I desired. Or rather, the lying on top of me did not work out because once he drew his body over me, I decided I was after something else. Something more substantial than the weight of a beautiful man's body, draped upon me.

Something he couldn't give, something I probably didn't want from him to begin with.

And all the while, as sexually attractive as he was and is, I knew and know, that what he could give was not enough. It would never satisfy. And that's okay. I got what I wanted, or what I thought I wanted. He is not smart enough, not competent enough, not mature enough; too flaky. And that's okay. I am in all reality too much for him, too verbal, too noisy, too demanding, and that's okay, too. We brought what we had to the table. And the meal is over.

It was what I thought I wanted. And at the time, perhaps it was. But I realized something, in that interaction: no more of that, no more of him. I am not remotely constituted for such things.

If I am going to throw down with a man, I want something different, something truer, something more. And absent that, I will take nothing.

I Thought I Was Over It

We broke up fifteen months ago.

And I really thought I'd long since moved on.

I saw him, and he's put on quite a bit of weight, Jason said.

A photograph, pulled from his website, confirmed my friend's observation.

At first, this made me giddy.

He has grown worse in my absence, I thought, smug and righteous and full of schadenfreude.

But the more I thought on it, the sadder his fatness - and my reaction to his fatness - made me.

My glee suggested an unhealthy degree of attachment, for people who aren't invested just don't give a damn about such trivial things.

His weight gain signified to me that he is drinking, frequently and heavily.

And that realization killed whatever small shred of joy I found in his increased girth.

That realization impressed upon me just how sick he still is, and just how not-over-it I still am.

Could you admire it from afar, please?

I can deal with a lot of things on the race front. I can deal with my own family's hypersensitive, holy-shit-it's-time-to-prove-we're-down, nervous "We love Black people! Whatever makes you happy! We voted for Obama!" They mean well, even if they're unschooled in issues involving race. They are trying, in their desperate way.

And I can deal with the reservations of his family, with being described as the Jewish law student girl, with being told you're getting your swirl on, the pointed choice of Jungle Fever as an after-dinner movie. They are trying, too, trying to feel me out. To test me. To see what I'm made of. They have a stake. I am happy to roll with that, for now.

What I cannot suffer is this:

we were sitting in a coffeeshop, and a woman came up to him and began fondling his hair.

A total stranger, a middle-aged white woman.

"Um, do I know you?" he asked.

"I'm just admiring your hair," she said.

"Could you admire it from afar, please?" he asked.

She did not move away. She went on to call him unusual-looking and exotic.

He handled it well, I thought; he was far more polite than I would have been about the entire thing.

I was enraged.

"Were you jealous?" my good friend Andy asked me after the fact.

I had wondered that soon after the incident; was I responding out of a sense of displeasure that this man I am interested in is being touched by another woman? Or worse, out of a sense of personal ownership?

I thought on it, long and hard.

It was not that.

I have never been denied bodily autonomy in that way, in public, by a stranger. I have seen it happen to white women who are pregnant -- the indiscriminate belly touch -- horribly offensive, but nonetheless a different thing entirely.

It is fundamentally bad manners to touch a stranger's hair. Right? I mean, this is not socially acceptable. It has never happened to me, and it did not happen to me the other day. It was not my experience. I wasn't entitled to have the reaction I did.

And it was a painful thing to watch. Because it wasn't just hair in his case; because black people have been denied bodily autonomy throughout the course of US history, and this unsolicited touching felt like such a violation of this man's space, and bodily integrity, and personhood. It would bother me to see happen to any person, but as I'm starting to really care for him, the ferocious Italian wingnut loyalty in me flared bigtime, and I wanted to smash this woman in the face with the nearest blunt object.

His hair is not in the public domain! I wanted to scream.

But it was not my sentence to scream. I had to defer to his reaction, to his judgment. Because while I bore witness to this imposition, it was not my space that was violated. It wasn't my hair that was touched.

He, unfortunately, has been dealing with this shit for his entire life. I have been observing it for about five figurative minutes. I need to handle my white girl outrage. And figure out how and where I fit into all of this, honestly.

It Is Hard to Blog About Your Dating Embargo

When you've violated the embargo.

It is even harder to do it when you actually like the guy you're, um, violating the embargo with.

But I will write more later.