Modern Love

Phone digits work like currency in Israel.

I learned this one of my first nights out, as I roamed from bar to bar in the holy city of Jerusalem. My night began in a dimly lit dive bar where a man offered to buy me a drink. Guy number one, who wore his pants up to his stomach, opened the conversation by telling me about the Messiah.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with the occasional biblical sermon, but I was finding it difficult to take shots to his account of the messianic ages and the rise of corruption.

A part of me wanted to run, but another part of me knew it would be rude to take his drink without some sort of conversation. I didn’t know what to do, so after ten minutes of nodding politely and 10 minutes of nodding impolitely (it’s all in the ears) I did what I always do when I want to reject someone and still keep my drink: I gave him my number and told him to text me. And then I ran away.

In my defense, in the United States no one ever follows up.

But my night did not end there. While I was trying to ignore the texts from guy number one, I stumbled into guy number two outside of a bar in an alleyway. The encounter was pretty romantic; I think there is some Nicholas Sparks book about it somewhere on some middle-aged woman’s kindle.

Guy number two was somewhere between 24 and 60 years old, and unlike my previous suitor, he wore his pants at the waist. A good start. Plus, after my last experience, I was in need of another drink, so I decided to use some subtle hints and body language to convince him to buy me a drink.

“Hey,” I said motioning to his wallet, “you should buy me a drink.”

It was just like inception. He handed me a drink. I was about to walk away but he protested. He wanted my number. Of course, how could I be so uncultured?  I rattled off my digits and skipped away feeling worldly.

He texted me immediately. I was beginning to learn I wasn’t in Kansas, anymore. Because Kansas is in the United States, where no one ever follows up.

But I was not done yet. The night was still young and I was still sober enough to remember my phone number. Plus my friends were getting hungry.

It was at that point that we met the guy who would later become known as Pizza Man in my contact list. He was sitting outside a restaurant alone with a large box of cheese pizza. Perhaps he was full, or perhaps he had just remembered that he was lactose intolerant, because he insisted that we help him by taking a slice. I know taking food from strangers goes against everything I learned as a child, (“Don’t ever eat carbs!”) but we were hungry and I was stressed from all the unopened text messages piling up in my inbox.

So we ate the pizza. By that time my friends had caught on to the social norms of Israel, so they held up their end of the bargain and gave him a number. My number. Which, by this time, they had also memorized.

We returned home and he texted me immediately. However, this time I kept his number. It’s hard to find a good pizza dealer who will work on shabbat.