Post 18: New Age Lover

Post 18: New Age Lover
originally created as column 18, November, 2000

Dafna poses the following two questions to the men she dates: Do you like cats? How do you feel about your mother? If the man in question hesitates on both accounts, he is out of the picture. Needless to say, Dafna doesn’t date as much as she used to.

Dafna spent a few months in the U.S this year visiting friends and family and trying to raise some funds for one of her business projects. She became very fond of Mark, and Mark was crazy about her. “Like, that’s so great”, he used to say about almost anything. Mark was very wealthy but lived like a hippie. Dafna considered herself fairly into new age associated subjects such as natural medicine, mysticism and yoga. But even she had her limits.

And although Mark showed serious intentions of investing in Dafna’s business, she wasn’t quite sure what she had to give in return. “I mean the guy is intelligent, handsome, and very sexy” she confessed to me. “But if I slept with him, I’d probably have to sleep with everyone else he is friends with. I mean, there we were in a beautiful house made of wood, eating a tasty vegetarian meal. At the dinner table gathered an assortment of intelligent, warm-hearted people, who had apparently has shared more than a meal with Mark.

I thought he adored me, but he seemed to adore these friends just as much, and wanted me to experience them too. But even I have my limits. Just because all of the people at the dinner table had clear skin, and were eating herb salad and tofu, does that mean I have to sleep with them all?”. It seems that even in the twenty-first century, Mark was a misplaced sixties child who believed in free love. Dafna returned to Israel a little less ambitious than when she initially set out on her fund-raising mission to the States. American men may be more tolerant and smoke less, but Mark lacked in terms of quantities of unhealthy substances he made up for in number of partners. So much for moral vegetarians.

This writer invited Dafna for a steak dinner upon her return to Israel. And we didn’t order dessert.

Post 17: Coffee, Watermelon or Spaghetti Bolognaise

first created as column 17, November, 2000

Those of you who have been faithful readers know that since my cooking talents are rather limited, to say the least, I am convinced that the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach. Some women have a weakness for blue eyes, some for men in uniforms. I admit it – my weakness is men who cook. And there seem to be many.

Finally, Friday night I had a chance to have sex, but I have been keeping myself so busy lately that I already had plans with Liat to go to a concert. Alon, a man I had gone out with months ago, invited me for dinner – but not out for dinner – to dinner that he had cooked himself, spaghetti bolognaise in fact. Once upon a time when a man wanted to have sex with a woman, he would invite her to his apartment for “coffee”. In the summer, it’s sometimes called “watermelon”. Now in the age when men cook, it has progressed to “spaghetti”.

The lack of sex in my life has become so depressing, that I simply have scheduled my free evenings (which are every second Friday night, when my son is with his father), a long time in advance. I don’t want to have sex with someone who isn’t interested in a relationship other than a sexual one, and although it would be nice, I might get hurt.

But when the invitation actually came, and I refused I felt a bit disappointed. I didn’t know whether to feel cheap that this guy was asking me over for a home-cooked meal after three months of not hearing from him, or whether to feel flattered that he still thought about me. I told him I needed a lot more notice than the same-night invitation, and was glad that he realized I was a woman in demand (for all he knows I was busy with another man).

The concert I saw with Liat was quite enjoyable, and I do not regret going with her by any means. When I checked my messages that night, there was one from an ex-boyfriend who wasn’t asleep yet, and invited me to drop in on my way home from Tel Aviv. It was 2 am when I checked the messages, and he had called at midnight, so I decided that it was way too late to call him back. Two offers in one night. And a few days later, a blind date I went out with called me and invited me to go out on a second date. Hey, I might be on a roll.

But what will happen when I actually have sex and/or a boyfriend? Will I stop writing? The whole point of this column is that there is no sex in the city, but I don’t think I’ll stop writing at least until Liat, Dafna and I all get a third date.

During her lunch break on Sunday, this writer ordered pasta on her lunch break on Sunday, instead of tuna salad. She could have chosen to have a full stomach on Friday night, but might have woken up Saturday morning with an empty heart.