Enter the goy toy

After the 2 previous relationships I wasn't really dying to dive back into the dating scene. The Frenchie had been my first love and knowing that he preferred his partners with a little bit ... more balls than I had to offer, was... a hard one to take in. 

My self esteem was at an all time low so instead of setting myself up for another spectacular shit-kicking from love, I decided to pursue something else. Something a bit more spriritual (little did I know what to expect from Tel Aviv. The only spirits there come from an off-license...) 


So, I got on a plane to the Holy Land. My plan was to work on my thesis and make the most of the scholarship I'd been granted. And as plans go... well, suddenly there was a plan B, plan C and plan D.

Plan B was another Frenchie. This time he was jazz-musician whose idea of romance was a trip to the graveyard in the early hours in the morning. Plan C was a bartending documentary filmmaker whom I think I was on a date with when Plan D decided to come after me. 

It was all very whirlwind. After the first date he just...sort of followed me home and never left. On day three we had our first row when he couldn't accept that our children (!) would be exposed to my gay friends at our Shabbat dinners (!!) By day four we'd gone away for a weekend and next Shabbat I was introduced to his father. All this sounds either extremely romantic... or just downright bonkers. I decided to go for the romantic; even after stories of his substance abuse, stints of homelessness and (my favourite) his "seeing things, you know, like Messiah". He was a struggling musician, making ends meet with open mic- nights. But I was happy to squander away my grant- I'd met my Match of the Day. Hell, the Life even! 

He said he was going to get  me a plane ticket to come see him in New York as he had a phenomenally successful business idea. Building sukkot. Now, even the most devout goyim among you know that Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles during which all the meals are consumed in huts made with leaves) only lasts 8 days. So... the sustainability of his idea of making money would have had Donald Trump pulling the last of his hair out.

I returned home, convinced that the time had come for me to take the first steps towards my life-long dream: converting into Judaism. (I know, I really have a sick need to do it all the hardest possible way...) Only those plane tickets never materialized. And I never got any of the money he'd promised to pay back.  By then I myself had become homeless - having already rented out my flat to a friend of a friend who turned out to be an aspiring Hell's Angel with Ku Klux Klan affiliations (no, one couldn't make something like this up...)

But after consultations at the synagogue, I started my classes. I knew it was something I'd always wanted to do and this seemed as good a time as ever. I'd just found a flat near the synagogue and the synagogue had started their second ever conversion program in the history of our Jewish community. It all seemed so beshert, meant to be. Even if it also meant no football on Saturdays, no pork well, ever and not getting involved with a goy. 

And then, on one fateful Guy Fawkes night... along came the bacon-munching goy toy you've all come to know and loathe: The Man.