Mother mother

It serves me right.

Right after my post on Jewish mothers, I got a call from The Boy's mother. Normally, this would be superweird and awkward because, well -- we've never really talked before and certainly not over the phone. According to the trusted iPhone, the conversation lasted 9 minutes and 4 seconds and at the end of it, I determined:

1. She may be the cutest woman alive -- seriously, she sounds like Angela Lansbury. How can someone who sounds like Mrs. Potts be intimidating? That's right: it's impossible.

2. I am mistaken if I think every mother-in-law will be like my mother. See, my mom hates when one of her kids is in a relationship. (The one and only time my brother brought a girl home, my mother made her cry on the couch. Pretty good, I know.) At any rate, The Boy's mother is nothing like this -- she is really, really happy that her son is dating me and it's not contrived. This is so totally foreign that I don't really know what to make of it; I'm only equipped to deal with crazy mothers, protective wolf-pack mothers, judgmental mothers.

Now, it's not like I'm trying to look a gift horse in the mouth; I know I'm lucky to have such a nice situation. So while I'm elated to be in this position, here's what I don't love: thinking for the first time ever that someone else's mother may be better than mine at even a single thing. Is that something that you just get over because it's childish? Because I was under the impression that you're supposed to think the world of your parents until forever....

I met a Jewish mother and lived to tell the tale

Confession: sometimes I make tasteless jokes. In fact, after experiencing the hell that was my ex-fiance's mother (First Sentence ever spoken in my presence: "Well, John would never do that to me", with John being my fiance's dead brother), I used to say that the next one would have to be an orphan. And then the next one was an orphan which presented a whole new mess of issues and since then I've preferred to date out-of-towners who have nice, arms-length relations. Combine this with the fact that I live in a really not-very-Jewy place and it basically means that I don't have much occasion to bump into Jewish mothers, which is both good and bad. Bad because I really want to see a seriously Jewish mom in shabbat/yom tov cooking mode, but good because -- well, they scare the shit out of me.

Cue three weeks ago, when I volunteered to show some Monsey BY girls around my campus -- why, I couldn't tell you because they aren't Maimonides Day School girls, you know? They weren't progressive Orthodox Jewish girls who'd ever be interested in going to my university, more the Touro type and so while I was confused as to why they were there, I was polite and pleasant all the same -- after all, what do I know? So as I'm walking and talking, it starts to rain; without thinking, I take my umbrella and pass it to their chaperone, a very Monsey (but still very nice) mom. This was kind of a no brainer thing: it would have been selfish for me to use the umbrella when I a) had a pashmina to put over my head, b) wasn't wearing a very stylish sheitel, and c) was in the presence of an elder who must be respected.

So I think I'm being nice, but this woman immediately and firmly rejected my advances -- 'What are you doing giving that to me?" "No, no, you keep that umbrella." "No, why would you think I want that thing?" I finally gathered that she just didn't want to hold it herself but she was miserable in the rain, so I finally told her just as firmly that if my hair gets wet I go back to the apartment and dry it, whereas she will be stuck for the rest of the day in someone else's damp hair, after which she took the effing parapluie. Of course, I said this in the nicest way possible and so she started in on the questions:

What did you say your name was?
How old are you?
Where do you live?
When did your parents move here?
What are their names?
Where does your father daven?
You ever been to Monsey?
Do you know the so and sos?
Where did you go to day school?
Are you studying here?
What are you studying? That? What do you want to study that for?
So you're in shidduch?
You have a boyfriend?
Where's he from? Where are his parents from? Where is he learning? Why is he learning there? He's not frum? Oh, he is frum? Why did his mother let him do that?

I mean, come on! Me, who usually keeps secrets from everyone, who will leave anything vague if given the option -- I could not stop answering her! I just felt compelled to give her all this information, and she asked so quickly, one question and the next and if I hadn't shaken myself out of that trance when she asked about The Boy's mother, she'd have my social security number by now.

I went home at the end of the day still a little stunned, but thanking God for my ivory tower situation. I don't know how you girls do it out there in the trenches -- Brooklyn, Lakewood, the Five Towns just crawling with shaddchanim and well-meaning mothers -- but better you than me. Better you than me.

Iz in yo' house, stealin' yo' men!

I know I've mentioned it before -- Jewish girls aren't really fans of me. We could sit here and brainstorm a million reasons but in the interest of time, let's just get down to what we really know it is: I'm taking their men. Until now, that's just meant dating; turning their men into piles of mush and then throwing them back into the shidduch pool, spoiled by finally meeting a girl who knows how to date and not just sit there like part of the Mariott lobby furniture. But know, now it's a little different because I'm no longer casually dating -- I'm seriously seeing someone. So you hear me, jewesses of the world? I'm taking a really, really good one. (I secretly feel like this is akin to when white women marry black men: what do you hear then? Not the silvery peals of wedding bells, but a chorus of LaQuishas and TaRonda's screaming "Kill the white shedevils!")

I mention this because a few days ago, I was telling some of the girls from my Hillel about my summer plans, summer plans that involve a trip to Israel to pick The Boy up, and then a trip to his family's home, and they kind of exchanged looks with each other. Then there were those polite non-statements of "Oh, so you two are getting to be a little serious?" and "Huh, that's nice. Have you ever met his family before?". And then one by one, they invited me out to a lunch, or dropped by for coffee, or "bumped into me" at the gym to pump me for all the dirty details about The Boy. Smiling, I let them know that he is slightly younger than I, that he is finishing a degree in something very manly, that he is good to his family, understanding of my odd family situation, willing to respect my religious idiosyncrasies, never OTD but not your average conformist FFB, knowledgeable beyond belief about gemarra and halacha and to top it all of, he's as shomer as shomer can be. Not a kiss, not an pseudo-accidental groin brush, not even a just-the-tip-just-for-a-second-just-to-see-how-it-feels. Aaaand he is good-looking and tall and very, very sweet.

You know what? They weren't too happy. In fact, they said lots of things that implied I had somehow tricked him or ensnared him or put some kind of convert/formershiksa voodoo spell on him. Things that implied I should be lucky to have the hope of a Jewish generation somehow interested in me. So while you were sitting in front of me, overtly condescending and internally irate, I was polite and I played dumb. But now, let me tell you what my good breeding wouldn't allow me to say then: he's more than interested in me, he calls me a billion times a day, he counts the days until I get there, and he couldn't be a better catch. So all of you cranky, sideways-glancing, jealous JAP-y haters out there can suck it because I didn't play by your silly rules and I still got one of the five non-nebbishe 20-somethings out there.

Twitter-pated

So I don't really know if we've covered this or not, but I'm Twittering under @shesnameless -- this weekend it's all about Bonnaroo. Newsflash right now is that I just lost my earplugs and that totally blows, as they were in my pocket until 30 minutes ago.

Anyway, so yeah: Twitter = I'm there. Hope everyone had a good shabbat!

It's all coming back to me now...

Okay, this one's from The Lakewood Scoop via Jacob da Jew

I'm sure by now most of you have seen that ridiculous note telling that poor Lakewood lady to cover her knees better. It reminded me of a few things from my previous life as a good Christian girl, which basically means that it brings up thousands of pissed-off memories involving hypocrisy and general stupidities. However, of all those fantastic thoughts, there are only a few pertinent ones and so here they are:

Where I went to university, spring not only brought flowers and sunshine, but it also heralded the tzuniut-dress debate. As my school was run by Christians taking cues from Third Reich manuals, those rants would show up the only place they could: the Forum Wall. (In itself an abomination, the Wall was the only place for students to express ideas anonymously and without fear of disciplinary action or the knowing glances of your newly-judgmental peers.) Invariably, as soon as the weather got warm some dipshit would tack up a diatribe on spaghetti straps and loving your spiritual brothers and helping them not to stumble by covering up. And then another boy would talk about seeing girls in short skirts, sunning their legs on the quad. And then another would scribble something about necklines (no cleavage ever on campus, by the way -- no one but me ever showed tit, you know) and pretty soon every girl was in winter clothes again, miserable and sweaty, while the boys would run back and forth to intramurals, to the dining hall, to the library -- shirtless and glistening.

All I could think was What the fuck?! – why were we expected to do all the dirty work for them? Our boys couldn’t handle seeing us in shit that showed our knees or collarbones and so the obvious answer was to make us cover them? What about working on controlling your own damn selves? Where was the self-improvement, the spiritually-driven bolstering of the soul, the strength drawn from your religious texts and deep faith in a force that could overcome all temptations or trials? I mean, there are men who send me pictures of them creaming themselves over my neck in that profile picture – should I always wear a turtleneck on the odd chance that one man out there has some kind of trachea fetish? This is to say nothing of the horrible sexism here, as there is that loudly silent dismissal of the fact this might be something boys should also do for women. Sure, you can tell me that men are more visually stimulated, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a girl who’s never bitten her bottom lip or swallowed thickly upon catching a glance at a man playing skins basketball or a guy in a well-fitting oxford. What are we supposed to do then, because no one is telling men to make themselves as unattractive as possible -- or maybe they are. Maybe this is why most frummy men keep themselves the way they do: food all over their shirts, wrinkles, ill-fitting pants, the pube beard, the lack of hygiene. Maybe it’s their way of saying "Hey ladies, don’t worry - I got this one. I’m going to uggo myself up a bit so you don’t throb all day long thinking of me pulsating between your thighs."

No? I didn’t think so. At any rate, after so many springs at university, I snapped. I wrote a scathing commentary on the collective stupidity of our males, the rampant oppression of rights, this mockery of morality enforced by a pathetically patriarchal coloration of the Bible and the shocking lack of responsibility on the part of HALF the campus -- the half with cocks, no matter how shy and underused they may have been. However, in true douchebag religious fashion, it was torn down within minutes because extremists always move in that way to cover up reason or understanding because that just reeks of tolerance, and any idea of tolerance moves a society closer to the middle. I just wish that people would understand that a moderate society isn’t such a bad thing, that there’s a way to remain unique while being loving. My college needed to learn that, and so do those Lakewood Jews.

The Dilemma

Things you may not yet know about me:

1. I rarely ask for advice.
2. I play my cards close to the vest.

The two are obviously connected. So when an old friend called to catch up, she was surprised to hear that I was seriously dating someone -- she had assumed she'd have heard it through the grapevine. Thing is, I don't tell anyone anything, whether they be human or fruit. At any rate, she pumped me for all the details, afterward announcing that she'd never heard me so happy and then (because she is essentially me) she came right out and asked me. She asked me *that*. She asked me about the sex.

And so I told her; I needed some advice.

I told her that The Boy is a virg and it's an observant Jewish thing and he's very proud of it but not too proud that he's not dying to get rid of it. I told her that no matter how much he says he wants it, I haven't caved yet because being someone's first comes with great emotional responsibility and I don't want to be part of something he regrets. And so I told her that it makes me a little uneasy, that I didn't know if I could do it before we get married and her reaction to this was so fantastic, I had to write it down.

"Why the *fuck* not?! You know what kind of notch in your bedpost that is -- at this age to be able to take someone's virginity? That's a big ol' fucking menorah with his name on it!"

And here I was thinking romance was dead....

Yom Yerushalayim

Big thanks to Jacob da Jew for the first post on the day!

Yom Yerushalayim is always a big day for me, and I'll let you know why. I know I've said on this blog that I'm probably a little more Zionist than I am frummy Jewish girl and that's due in large part to good ol' IDF. I haven't written about him in a while, but that doesn't mean that I don't think about him everyday -- it's impossible when so much of my Judaism is tied up in him. Anyway, I was always convinced that he was put on this earth to be Super Zionist Jew because he was born on Yom Yerushalayim. It makes it very, very easy to remember, which isn't so great when you are trying to forget.

In ironically related news, the current boyfriend casually mentioned that the Israeli police (translation: "watchers") were out in front of his yeshiva last night. I didn't have the heart to tell him that IDF knows all those guys. And that IDF probably knows The Boy is there. And that IDF is most likely watching him. I did ask him nonchalantly if he'd seen them around a lot, or if he's noticed maybe the same few faces in different places -- he said no. He said no, but truth be told I'm still a little nervous and it's not all selfless concern, either: I'm going to be there in a few weeks and I'd really not like to be telephoto lens-ed this time.

And for the record, I'm not calling or emailing or contacting IDF at all to say "happy birthday" or "how's everything been?" even though he did the same for me on my birthday. Even though I have this bizarre compulsion to be polite and cordial and proper. I'm learning to be okay with leaving some pleasantries in the past because -- while I absolutely still care for him on some level -- there has to be something, some noticeable difference in our interactions. That's okay, right? Is the intentional oversight any better because I'm calling it growth?