Tash, This story took me to a new place with my now familiar narrator. In this story I feel a sense of her softness and vulnerability.
"Peering into the reading halls of the yeshivas felt foreign but viscerally familiar. I felt like I was traveling back in time to when great-great-grandparents fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe to Minnesota."
"I thought about him all week. Before we had met, I had been so worried about fetishizing him. But now, I was afraid to admit something more to myself. I liked Abe’s stories. I liked his worldview. I liked his smile. How could our worlds ever be compatible? Would he ever leave his community, like the rogue uncle he had mentioned? If I converted, would they ever accept me? Was that even a possibility?"
I loved this: "My cheeks burned. It felt like a spell had broken, and my mind was severing from my body, and I had fallen out of the car onto the dirty grit of the wintered parking lot".
The arc of the story begins with her excitement at the possibility of a sexual adventure with a Hasidic man and ends with being rejected with a classic line, "It’s nothing with you personally, of course. You’re an amazing and beautiful person. I’m a bit confused about myself now. I need some time now. I hope you understand.”
But I know my narrator well enough to know this is just one adventure in her long list of human adventures and she will move along to the next story that awaits her. As always, I have great admiration for her courage, her spirit, and her endless sense of adventure. Rock On!
Tash, This story took me to a new place with my now familiar narrator. In this story I feel a sense of her softness and vulnerability.
"Peering into the reading halls of the yeshivas felt foreign but viscerally familiar. I felt like I was traveling back in time to when great-great-grandparents fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe to Minnesota."
"I thought about him all week. Before we had met, I had been so worried about fetishizing him. But now, I was afraid to admit something more to myself. I liked Abe’s stories. I liked his worldview. I liked his smile. How could our worlds ever be compatible? Would he ever leave his community, like the rogue uncle he had mentioned? If I converted, would they ever accept me? Was that even a possibility?"
I loved this: "My cheeks burned. It felt like a spell had broken, and my mind was severing from my body, and I had fallen out of the car onto the dirty grit of the wintered parking lot".
The arc of the story begins with her excitement at the possibility of a sexual adventure with a Hasidic man and ends with being rejected with a classic line, "It’s nothing with you personally, of course. You’re an amazing and beautiful person. I’m a bit confused about myself now. I need some time now. I hope you understand.”
But I know my narrator well enough to know this is just one adventure in her long list of human adventures and she will move along to the next story that awaits her. As always, I have great admiration for her courage, her spirit, and her endless sense of adventure. Rock On!
💌
I want this to be a longer piece, as painful as it turns out to be. Maybe I'm like the narrator, wishing there were more...