Oy

A few months ago, a friend was in town for work and wanted to catch up with a vaguely related web of New Yorkers in the span of about two hours before splitting for JFK. He proposed a group dinner, plans were made, and I ate pizza in Union Square with an odd crew: me, my friend, two of his friends from college and a very tall Jew I briefly dated the summer before and had not seen since.

I have no memory of how the topic came up, but shortly after we ordered beers, the five of us start talking marriage—specifically, the role that religion plays as we get more serious about this dating thing.

As we’re chatting amicably, one guy shares an un-amicable viewpoint: “saying you’d only marry another Jew is like saying you’d only marry another white person. Basically, it’s racist.”

I had not professed a personal belief in this sentiment—nor do I profess one now—but I was offended by the comment. As one of two Jews at the table, I rushed to defend the chosen peeps like a modern-day Judah Macabee. I felt like I’d been called a racist; that doesn’t feel good to a person who works hard in the inner city every day. 

As the accusatory words popped out of this stranger’s mouth, the man I dated and I made brief eye contact, perhaps a nod to the fact that our matching dark curls had been a bonus when sizing the other up for match potential. A paltry bonus—it fizzled in spite of religion, if you’d believe it—but a bonus nonetheless. Both of us quickly stepped up to play Devil’s Advocate because, really, the urge to marry Jewish has little in common with being a white supremacist.

The whole exchange was off-putting, and I’ve been thinking about the topic since.  For my generation—for me—how important is marrying another Jew?

Tomorrow, I’m flying to Tel Aviv to go on my Birthright trip: a free, ten-day trip to Israel sponsored by a seemingly-never-ending cache of cash. The objective of the grant is to get young American Jews interested in supporting Israel, financially and otherwise. It’s meant to counteract a growing apathy among Jewish youth so the state of Israel has a fighting chance at survival.  For the most part, people know little about Birthright, but what they do know is singularly focused on one pre-conceived notion: 

“How many Israeli soldiers are you gonna make out with?”

Implication: enjoy your get-out-of-slut-free card, but make sure you use it on your kind.

“Can’t wait to see that ring on your finger!”

Implication: a blingin’ Star of David engagement ring.

“Be careful: A lot can happen in ten days.  Bring condoms…or don't!”

Implication: Don’t get impregnated with a little Zionist fetus…or do!

Oy.

If Jews don’t marry Jews, we might not last long.  Working from that reality, people think Birthright is the grown-up version of temple lockdowns and Jewish summer camp.  It’s about dating, mating then breeding.  I doubt the assumption is entirely off base, but I think I can hold my own.  And if I meet the perfect Jewish dude, well, so be it.   

In January, I dated another Jewish man (a trend only since moving to the East Coast), who told me on our first or second date that he thinks it’s basically imprudent at age 27 to date a goy because of the limited relationship potential.  Fair enough, but I don’t see marrying Jewish quite in that light—to that extreme or ultimate necessity.  It’s a factor, sure, but one of many that I consider linear not hierarchical. Those selling points include—yes, along with breaking the middle matzo—deep reverence for the west coast, tolerance for tofu and a non-fabricated interest in contemporary (women’s) literature.  Is that asking too much? 

Despite my non-commitment to the issue, I do recognize that shared religion offers up a certain ease when thinking of all that’s involved in starting a life with another person. For me, growing up 100% was fun and family.  It was sneaky sips of booze at cousins’ bar mitzvahs and singing the frog song at Seder. In terms of religion, I had no identity confusion or division; being Jewish simply was and continues to be. There is an unavoidable truism, though, that as a Jewish vegetarian I’d probably struggle to whip up the perfect Christmas ham for any mudblood babies I might acquire.  But I will cross that bacon-y bridge if I come to it; there’s always the Internet. 

The Memoir Blues

Memoir is a genre of writing in which I’ve taken an interest: Lately, it permeates my reading list as well as my own writing. To write about oneself is alleviating, indulgent and fun. Mostly, though, it’s complicated. There’s an unsettling idea underlying the genre—one that’s backed with considerable evidence if you browse any bookstore—that success as a memoirist hinges on a life of pain and hardship. Perhaps, the meager benefits of such a life include a lucrative book deal and the notoriety that comes with your pain being accessible to any reader who can shell out thirteen bucks for a paperback. Mary Karr, Tobias Wolffe, Jeannette Walls write memoirs that are as painful to read as I imagine they were to scribe. To be a good country singer, you need several bad breakups under your belt; to sing the blues, baby, you gotta know them.

The genesis of my interest was a writing class called “Creative Non-Fiction: Writing the Memoir.” The class was intense: Each week we were responsible for producing ten fresh pages about ourselves to be work-shopped by the professor (whom I worshipped) and the other fifteen budding memoirists (many of whom I came to worship). During the first workshop, a brave young woman read about her battle with anorexia, shocking us with vivid descriptions of hunger pangs, food repulsion and the ultimate therapy that led to her shaky recovery. We critiqued the piece as best as we could, finding it difficult to judge the deeply personal writing of a stranger right there in the flesh. How to talk about sentence fluency and voice when looking into the eyes of someone who just made public her darkest hour in ten double-spaced pages.

A week later, the girl was not in her normal seat, and tardiness was not customary. The professor explained matter-of-factly that she’d dropped the course. This happens all the time in college, but we stared back like she’d gotten false information from the registrar. One night later that week, I smiled at my former classmate in the dining hall and carefully watched her sinewy body as she contemplated her dinner. I felt guilty to be privy to information that made me wonder whether she should be at the salad bar. With no real way of knowing, I suspect she left the class because she got what she needed that first day: to transcribe and share her pain. Once she wrote about it, and stoically divulged to a room full of strangers bound by compassionate objectivity, there was nothing left but a dry pen. I never saw her in a writing class again and imagine she went on to study something harder like biology or international relations. 

Everyone wrote about sad things—an amateur anthology of painful experiences. Dan wrote about drug addiction in the Arizona desert, and Jamie wrote about familial dysfunction in New England. There were divorced parents and rape, there was disease and estrangement and death. On more than one occasion, writers’ workshop verged on group therapy, and I wondered what line separates the two in a setting devoted to exploring the personal. To be in the class was to enter into a contract of confidentiality; we made quiet promises to each other because we knew too much.

And here’s where I’m going to complain about living a charmed life, so stop reading if that offends you. Often, I’ve wondered if my life is too bland and carefree to write meaningful, transcendent memoir. My family is barely a lackluster iteration of dysfunction. Is it twisted to hypothesize that happiness impedes good writing? I wonder if my writing will be stunted—immature—until I’m faced with real hardship with which to fill pages. But what strange person welcomes hardship for the sake of art? During office hours one afternoon, I sat with my professor while she looked over my work, ruthlessly crossing out adverbs in green pen. I’d written about a friend whose painful life experiences had strained our friendship almost beyond repair. It was a good piece of writing, and yet.

“You know, this is lovely, but it’s about your friend, not you,” my professor asserted, looking up from the adverb massacre. I suspected she might say as much. The piece was a transparent attempt to write about pain, even if it was stolen and secondhand. Already, I had felt pangs of guilt and inadequacy in the class for writing about funny, happy moments. Though perhaps a necessary break from therapy—like when a Seinfeld rerun comes on TV the moment you need it most—I felt like the ugly duckling among mature, literary swans. Once, I wrote about my grandfather’s belated Texas Bar Mitzvah at age 75, a weekend that was nothing but inspiration and celebration. Insecure with my light topic, I thought to myself: no one’s gonna wanna read this.

I explained my frustration to my professor and asked like a child craving affirmation: “Are there any happy memoirs?”

She laughed at my question, though it was genuine beneath its innocent facade, and responded something along the lines of: “I’ll get back to you.” She did not. 

Like brutal clockwork, each of the past two Novembers was marked by the death of a grandparent. When faced with the unfamiliar terrain of death, I responded by writing—pages and pages. Our liberal, secular society gives young people few tools with which to grieve or mourn, so I looked to my own words as a way of alleviating pain and making sense of death. When I paused and scrolled up, what I wrote was good: raw and real. The therapy of ordering words into sentences, then paragraphs, then pages helped me remember and perhaps ultimately forget. I’m hesitant to admit this, but a sick, twisted part of me wondered if I’d finally found material in tragedy. If memoir was a genre in which I could now fully participate—the experience of death allowing me full membership in its angsty ranks. 

If I were to share my concern about memoir with my seventh grade students, they would look at me like I’m a crazy person and respond, “That’s messed up, Ms.” For once, middle school wisdom may prove sage. Indeed, the memoir genre is entrenched in pain, but there are no rules governing this or telling writers it must be so. Pain gives us something to write about—and writing repays in full by alleviating pain—but strong writing should never be dependent on pain. Really, the thought is masochistic. Looking back, the people whose writing I envied probably envied me for far more legitimate reasons: The material they possessed is not the sort you wish on others. What I know for certain is that personal writing is best when it’s real. If reality proves dull, write fiction—it’s just embellished memoir, anyway.

Crossroads

Women’s college made dating tricky when I was living it and, for better or for worse, its influence chased me into the co-ed universe. First of all, I like boys and there wasn’t a single one enrolled at Scripps—slim pickings. Less literally, the women’s college mindset sticks with me as I lunge headfirst into the complex world of post-college dating. More than two years after the fact, I can’t shake it back to the California desert.

Fellow Scripps graduate Ogram (her not-so-secret ogre name) has a problem that tips precariously at the intersection of feminism and dating. It’s a crossroads at which I find myself relatively frequently and, frankly, it’s one of my least favorite locales. Most of my friends and most of the cool-looking women I see on any subway line and in every bar have likely found themselves wandering there as well—aimlessly or with purpose.

Ogram’s been dating a man—we’ll call him Harvard, though his Ivy is slightly more Southern—for close to a year. A year. They spend a lot of time together, as you tend to do when you date someone you like. When she describes the situation to me one morning on Gchat—a dangerous, virtual box that bears heavier convo than its creators intended—I think it sounds normal, verging on great. Then she brings up the But. The But is that Ogram doesn’t call Harvard her boyfriend, nor does he call her his girlfriend. Those old-timey labels are apt for what’s going down, but the air is thick with their disuse. Fine, except that Ogram is at the point where she’s ready; she wants some stability, some recognition, some commitment. But she has a hard time admitting that—to herself, to Harvard, perhaps to women everywhere. She kinda tries to bring it up—kinda when they’re drinking—but for now and maybe forever, bf/gf is not currency in which they trade. He mostly returns her text messages, but avoids even benign public affection. Even after months of enjoying the benefits that come with dating, Harvard hesitates to define. Miss. Miriam Webster would not be proud.

This brand of non-relationship-relationship is common, it seems, for our generation. When I lived in Argentina, they used the term novecito, which translates roughly to little boyfriend—Your almost boyfriend. Thanks (or not) to post-feminism, we have fuck buddies, we have “things,” we have whatevers. We’re casual—like sale-rack khakis from the Gap—because who needs more? In these situations, we tell ourselves that it really doesn’t matter what we call our romantic partners, and in some ways it really doesn’t. Only in some ways—some big, looming ways—it really does. There’s a link between labels and expectations; refusing simple labels severs the link, leaving us where, exactly, in the realm of commitment? Avoiding definition opens up a dark cavern of interpretation. Beneath the wordy surface, I think there’s more going on than mere semantics. 

As feminists—and if that’s not something you call yourself, start—we’re hyper-aware of how to behave in modern relationships, to our role as the shapelier half of a romantic duo. We are told by the first and second-wavers to be independent, self-assured and obsessively modern in all our dealings—negotiate men like you negotiate salary. We’ve got high-powered careers, our wonderful friends, our sports, our book clubs, our supportive families. A boyfriend is not required for the purchase or enjoyment of a $12 cocktail, nor is one necessary for sex. Technically, we’re good without men. And when one does waltz (or slam) into our lives, we want to make sure to play it cool so as not to appear needy or obsessive. Avoid, at all costs, being the boring girlfriend type: That’s tired, it’s not you. Be cutting-edge, non-traditional, blasé. Shoot arrows like a Woman Warrior (thanks, Maxine). We are careful that the way we behave as daters aligns with our beliefs as feminists. Possibly, we are overly cautious. 

I worry that this mindset—though born of something empowering, with all the best intentions—has confused our sense of normalcy where dating is concerned. And if I’m going to get Smith College militant, it’s allowed men to get away with a bit too much because they assume we're cool with wishy-washy. Even high-powered, smart, sexy, independent women want stable relationships with reliable, phenomenal men. At some points in our lives, we may want boyfriends who are proud to call us their girlfriends, and that’s more than fine. It’s not old-fashioned or anti-feminist to want certain things from a relationship and to expect men to deliver. Neither the rules of feminism nor the rules of dating are hard and fast. It seems the happy union is attainable simply by admitting what it is we want and being comfortable asking for it. The intersection of feminism and dating is tricky to navigate—especially if you have the Scripps College podcast implanted in your frontal lobe—but there is ample space for the healthy coexistence of the two variables.

Battery Pack

A few weeks ago, I was sitting slumped over next to a coworker on the trusty B62 bus after a particularly trying day at work. Sidenote: Brooklyn buses are way underrated, especially when 99% of the time I'm the only white girl on board. Majken--my forever-wise bff--once told me that true closeness can be measured by the ability of two people to be together without talking. True, perhaps, but in practice I have found very few people with whom I can achieve comfortable silence. My coworker and I were really too exhausted to make spicy conversational fire, but we tried our best at dialogue because we have not reached the point of magical silence in our relationship.

When you're exhausted--together--the easiest conversation topic is exhaustion. We've all been there. "This week has been killer. I'm beat. I need to recharge," I complained to her, because communal complaining is another surefire to make conversation when you're tired.

"I know," she agreed in turn, "I just wanna go home, sit on my couch, order thai food and turn on the tv until I pass out." I thought about that for a second. She looked at me expectantly, waiting for a head nod or some verbal recognition that I, too, was heading in that direction, to a couch slightly West of her Fort Greene apartment. But I wasn't. This easy conversation just got weird.

The thing is, when I need to recharge, I want to see friends, talk to people, walk around, jam out, play games, listen to music, drink beer and go out to dinner. I want to be social and urban and friend-y. This may seem counter-intuitive because those things are exhausting in their own right, but they remind me of who I am and where I fit in. So I told her my plans. Straight up: Gonna run this town (not really). She nodded, then shared with me the battery theory championed by a friend of hers from college: Some people are alone-rechargers, and some people are social-rechargers. Simple enough. Obviously, she and I split camps. Now, the conversation just got interesting--provocative, theoretical. Okay, maybe not all those adjectives, but better than one-upping each other on the exhaustion scale--a banal game at which teachers excel.

I've never been good at alone time, perhaps because I associate it with my nemesis: Boredom. To fight that fear, I make plans, I go places, I do things. When I need to recharge, I look first to my friends and second to people I can tolerate for an hour or two. Just kidding, guys! Mostly, this is fine; I feel comfortable with my status as social-recharger. To me, though, there does appear to be a troubling imbalance, the seedy underbelly of the battery theory. It seems that while alone-rechargers are capable of socializing--and yearn to do so once fully charged--social-rechargers may have trouble simply being alone. Social-rechargers like myself may not reap the same benefits from solo-time (does that sound sexual?). I've started to worry I'm missing out on something good.

So, I was supposed to go play billiards with the PDX crew on Flatbush. Then I was supposed to go meet a guy I might like to see if I might like him a little bit more. Then I was supposed to meet my friend whose flight got canceled and is back in the East Village. But I'm exhausted after a day of grad school and the necessary day-drinking that follows and there's a monsoon outside, so I'm trying something new instead. Welcome, LEL, to alone-recharging. Clothing optional, lime popsicles in the freezer, many things to write and even more to read. Music on. Roommates out. Let's do this thing.

To Be Masterful

The thing I talk about least in my everyday life—the gurgling reality I forget about for large stretches of time until it bites me from behind—is the fact that I’m currently a graduate student. Yep, for the past year I’ve been pursuing a Master’s Degree in education from the illustrious Hunter College. Who knew, right?

I know what you’re thinking: But don’t you work close to 60 hours a week and also drink too much and write a self-indulgent blog? Yes: Hermione gave me her time-stopping clock in exchange for tips on how to style curly hair.

In a year, I will be highly masterful—a master, if you will. There are many perks to being a master: bragging rights, sword-fighting prowess, resume building and cold, hard cash. I chant these benefits in my head like I learned to do in yoga as I ride the train uptown on a Saturday morning at 8am, but somehow my brain doesn’t buy its own internal chanting.

In its current iteration, being a graduate student is an unpleasant necessity. So much so that I’ve disassociated my current experience with higher education in general so I can maintain images of grandeur, intellect and rigor should I decide to become a master twice over—doubly masterful. I don’t think of graduate school as graduate school; I think of it as sitting in an overly-air-conditioned room on 94^th and Park for eight hours at a time doodling on a handout. It’s just this weird thing that sometimes I have to do.

The most regrettable part of leaving Boston besides leaving my INCREDIBLE friends (see: “Beantown Break-Up” and envision the weekend of antagonism it caused) was leaving behind a fully-functional, brand-new Massachusetts teaching certificate. Though some states have reciprocity with Massachusetts, New York is not one of them (shoulda moved to Oklahoma). So here I am: writing a blog post at graduate school—about graduate school—during the second week of summer (that’s as meta as it is sad).

My school hired me under the stipulation that I concurrently pursue a master’s degree while teaching. That’s how Teach for America teachers get thrown in classrooms straight outta college with no real cred, least of all street. They agree to become masterful. The program is an offshoot of Hunter that works within the life of a full-time teacher to get all us under-the-table educators legal and legit. It pumps us with practical knowledge and distilled teaching strategies and spits us out spiffy and masterful in just under 24 months, upon completion of a shoddy dissertation. Really, it’s not a bad deal. In theory, I support the idea of a practical, inexpensive graduate school for young teachers who don’t have the time or money to do it in a more traditional way. But that doesn’t mean I like it. 

Again, intellectually, I can’t complain: The program is essentially paid for by my school, it requires little real effort, I can read New Yorker fiction during class and, in the grand scheme of things, the time commitment is minimal. But, like they occasionally do, my emotions have won out, stomping all over those intellectual arguments and turning me resentful, self-pitying and annoyed. The content is largely a dumbed-down repeat of last year; it eats up my Saturdays; it’s far away; it’s oftentimes insultingly simplistic; it’s impersonal. That felt good. 

I try and try to flip a cranial switch to get a mindset adjustment about the whole endeavor, but I think there’s a broken fuse up there (perhaps one of many). While I know it’s a good thing—in theory, intellectually, practically—I just can’t get behind it. And so I sit here, clockwatching and single-handedly confirming the theory that teachers make the worst students. I chew gum, I eye roll, I text message, I take 20-minute bathroom breaks where I wander around the building contemplating my existence. I fume internally. Everyone’s in the same boat. Graduate school is the perpetual last priority because we’re all too busy and tired to really care. Closing the achievement gap during the week makes it hard to want to learn to do it better on the weekends. Once I’m masterful, I know it’ll all be worth it, but for now I’d really rather be in Brooklyn—in my bed, at a bar, or both.

Beantown Break-Up

I’m sitting on the BOLT Bus to Boston, digging the futuristic bus wifi and cheap ticket, but bemoaning the traffic and several choice smells emanating from my fellow commuters. Once again, I’ve survived the insanity that is the BOLT bus launch pad outside the Tick-Tock diner on 34^th and 8^th. Travel adrenaline is still pumping through my bod. A throbbing crowd forms with no lines or signs and no communal knowledge of who’s going where and what’s going on. A veteran BOLTER at this point, I assure several freaker-outters that they’re in the right place and that it’s going to be just fine—though I lie because about half the time BOLT is way South of just fine. The feisty driver (Karla with a K) dares us in a voice that’s calm but I bet not always: “I run a drama-free bus.” With that mantra, I know it’s not going to end well for the guy in the Red Sox cap screaming outside on his Blackberry as Karla expertly finesses her way into Manhattan traffic. If you think travel inspires the worst in people, BOLT Bus makes Southwest Airlines seem pleasant. Luckily, my bag is full of Bagels and Books (Booze is sadly absent from the perfect alliterative trifecta).

In an undetermined matter of hours that I pray resembles four, I’m going to rendezvous with my ex—city not boyfriend, though there’s some potential for the latter. Just like the premeditated post-relationship coffee date to “catch up” (why do we torture ourselves?) or the unplanned run-in with an ex on the street (why do the Gods of Chance torture us?), meeting up with an ex-city forces you to wonder.

Allow me to make explicit my amateur Carrie Bradshaw-esque dating metaphor: Ex-cities are like ex-boyfriends. Cue inner-monologue, dwindling cigarette, wild curls and old-school Macbook, not that Carrie’s ever been on BOLT. But really, they are.

You move to a new city—anxious with possibility and lusty newness—thinking it might be the perfect fit. You make your bed, plot your daily routes and find “the perfect yoga class,” the whole time wondering if these streets could be the real deal. Forever streets. Do you mesh? Do you vibe? Is there chemistry? Would your parents like it here? Keep an open mind, you tell yourself, even as things start to feel wrong or flat. Everyone tells you this city has so much to offer. Keep trying—relationships take work.

Boston and I had a tumultuous yearlong relationship; we gave it the old (post) college try. Looking back, we had a lot of good times: sailing on the Charles, drinking Harpoon, hanging in Central Square and lapping Jamaica Pond. Boston introduced me to amazing people and taught me how to be a teacher. Like any boy who’s worth dating for a year, Boston challenged me and forever changed me. Things weren’t always so bright and easy with Boston, though. By the end of the year, things had dulled. My bond with the city felt weak and fractured. It was a hard decision to make—we’d gone through so much, much of it good—but I knew it was time to move on. After much internal wrestling, I broke it off with Boston and started something fresh with New York. Fresh streets, fresh job, fresh yoga, fresh friends and fresh boys (then fresh ex-boys). Despite some bumps, things are still going strong with New York. I find the city very, very good-looking.

After a few months of not speaking—a solid post-break-up rule that I have yet to successfully practice with an actual ex—I visited Boston in October, and I’m doing it again this weekend. While the October weekend was wonderful, and I know this one will be, too, the visitations reaffirm that Boston and I aren’t meant to be together. Unless Harvard decides to offer me a free doctorate, we’re better friends than lovers. Although I will always have love for the city and consider a small part of it mine, some things are simply not meant to be.

And if this BOLT bus never picks up speed, even my post-break up visitation is perhaps not meant to be.