I am alone in my tiny Upper West Side apartment. A few days ago, I asked Karen's father for permission to marry Karen and it was granted.

I am going to marry Karen.

I am 26-years old and I have been in love with Karen since the 4th grade, since I was 9-years old, since we were grade school students together in Yeshiva of Flatbush. Karen and I attended separate high schools, different colleges, we have both dated others, but I have never forgotten over my school boy crush. Never stopped loving Karen, not for a moment. I'm as tenacious as the Samurai I admire in Kurosawa's great films.

And Karen never knew about my love for her, until a few months ago.

But the impossible has happened, and though I still have trouble believing it, this lovely, brilliant and down-to-earth woman actually loves me and is going to marry me.

I finally know happiness. I finally know contentment. The chronic gnawing feeling deep in my gut that I have lived with—well, my whole life, is suddenly quelled.

Yet a central part of me is absolutely terrified.

I feel like Yves Montand and the other characters in Clouzot's thriller The Wages of Fear, desperate men ferrying truck loads of unstable nitroglycerin over crumbling roads and collapsing bridges. Any minute a massive explosion will send these men to kingdom come.

No, no, no. I'm not afraid of giving up bachelorhood. Being single is awful and lonely, especially for an observant Jew. I'm not afraid of all the responsibilities that will be heaped on us. I know we'll do fine with the day to day responsibilities that adults deal with.

No, I'm afraid that maybe I've fooled Karen. Maybe I haven't been entirely myself. Perhaps Karen thinks I'm a better person than I really am. A small voice whispers that I should sit down and confess to Karen, well, everything that I've ever done on my whole life that is wrong and objectionable and just plain creepy. G-d knows there are enough of them.

I sit down at my desk and start making a list of all the bad things I've done in my life.

The list gets long.

Really long.

I feel like making a citizen's arrest — on myself.

If Karen sees this list, she will be appalled. I'm appalled.

I look closer at the writing tablet and see a ball point imprint from the other side of the paper. I flip it over and there, neatly arrayed is Karen's handwriting. She has been practicing her new signature:

Karen Avrech Karen Avrech Karen Avrech Karen Avrech Karen Avrech

I stare at Karen's flowing handwriting and try and imagine what it is to take on a new name. My name. Her first attempts are a bit clumsy, she's attempting to make the name Avrech her own. Karen perseveres. Soon enough, her new signature is elegant, old world, like something out of Jane Austen.

I feel like crying.

Karen knows me. She may not know every detail, every foolish and stupid act I've committed, but this woman probably knows me better than I know myself.

I tear up my list of sins.

And carefully fold up the page with Karen's new signature. I will forever cherish it.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:54 PM | Comments (16)

September 09, 2005

Permission to Marry Karen

The continuing saga of of Robert's lifelong love affair with Karen.

I know that I have to do this. I know because, well, because I've seen it in the movies. You go into your fiance's father's book-lined study and you say, "Sir, I'm in love with your daughter and I'd like permission to marry her." And Spencer Tracy, wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, reaches over and hugs you and with tears in his eyes saying, "Welcome to the family, son."

And so, I'm over at Karen's house in Bensonhurst and I tell her, "I'm going to speak to your father." Karen looks at me like I'm absolutely insane.

"Speak to my father, about what?"

"I have to ask his permission to marry you?"

Karen says, "Are you sure about this?"

I nod my head, "Absolutely."

Karen rolls her eyes, "Okay, but..."

"But what?"

"But don't blame me if it doesn't go the way you think it should."

Like a moron, I say, "It'll be fine."

You'd think that by now I'd listen to Karen. But I've seen way too many movies. They have distorted my view of reality.

I make my way down to the basement. Remember the basement bathroom? I still wait for someone to mention that the floor is kind of... soggy.

Rabbi Singer is sitting behind his massive oak desk. It is piled high with volumes of Talmud and notebooks filled with notations and comments in Rabbi Singer's beautiful script. He wears a black suit and tie even in the house.

"Rabbi Singer?"

"Yes?"

"May I speak with you?"

"Come in."

I sit.

He stares at me. Karen has his eyes, his penetrating gaze.

"Nu?" His voice is deep, like an oboe.

I take a deep breath. "I love Karen very much. I'd like your permission to marry her."

He lights his cigar. He studies the glowing tip.

"How do you propose to support my daughter?"

"I have a job. I make a living."

"And what are your prospects?"

"I'm going to be a Hollywood screenwriter."

That was a mistake.

Karen's father gives me a dubious look and blows out a thick stream of smoke.

"Karen is very special you know, don't you?" he says

"I know. I know that." Helloooo! I've been in love with your daughter since fourth grade!

"I don't know anything about this Hollywood... I just want Karen to be happy and to have a good life."

"Me too."

I'm so articulate. And I feel about two inches tall. This is not going like that Spencer Tracy movie. Not at all. I should have listened to Karen.

Rabbi Singer nods his head as if listening to some inner voice.

"I trust you will learn?"

"Um, sure."

"Not just movies, Torah."

He smiles. He's making a joke. And I'm drenched in sweat.

"Of course."

"Good, good.."

He comes out from behind his desk and it's going to happen. The Spencer Tracy moment. I'm going to get The Hug. The welcome-to-the- family-gesture. But no, he just sails right past me. Goes to the landing of the stairs and calls up to Karen. No doubt she's sitting in the kitchen worrying about the incredibly dumb things I'm saying to her father.

Karen descends the stairs. Gosh, she is beautiful. I should not stare at her like this in front of her father. It's just not right. I'm practically drooling.

"So?" Says Karen's father

"So." Says Karen.

They speak in a powerful shorthand.

"When do you want to get married?"

Karen says: "August?"

He says: "Why not sooner?"

Karen says: June?"

He pulls out his pocket OU calendar, thumbs through the pages. Karen pulls out her calendar, whips through the pages. I don't have a calendar. I stand there, useless. I think about The Kurosawa Film Festival coming to New York in a few months. Karen and her father discuss wedding dates. I'll finally get to see The Hidden Fortress, the one great Kurosawa film I have never screened.

"Is this day good for you?" he asks.

"It would make it exactly a year after we met, sounds good to me." She says.

"Robert?"

"Um, sure." That's not the day The Hidden Fortress is being shown. I have that day memorized.

"Good, it's settled. Karen, tell your mother."

Karen goes upstairs.

I turn follow Karen.

"Robert?" says Rabbi Singer.

I turn back. My future father-in-law steps forward and hugs me.

"Mazal Tov."

"Mazal Tov."

I can't help it, I have tears in my eyes.

My Spencer Tracy moment.

Karen adds: I always told Robert that his fears of being rejected based on "poor prospects" were groundless, in fact, my parents wanted to speed up the whole engagement process, the sooner the wedding the better. Why wait till the end of the summer, all you need is three months to prepare for a wedding. Needless to say, I never knew of the conflict of dates with the film festival until today. Good move, Robert, for not telling me at the time.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:07 AM | Comments (11)

August 26, 2005

No Diamond Ring!?

It started when I was in fourth grade at Yeshiva Flatbush. Karen transferred from Yeshiva Ohel Moshe and it was her first day in school. I laid eyes on her and WHAP! That was it. The course of my life was forever changed. Okay, ten years old. What can a pisher like that know of true love? Well, read this series and find out.

I'm flat on my back staring up at the ceiling.

My mouth is filled with blood.

I am five-years old.

There was a family get-together. For some reason, I started yelling. Screaming. People said, "Robert, stop." But oddly enough, I thought this was really silly and I just kept screaming—even louder. Everyone turned and looked at me. Hmm, good way to get attention. Finally, a woman stepped forward, stuck her face in mine and said, "If you don't shaddup, I'm going to give you such a zets."

You'd think I'd pay attention.

Not me. If anything, my volume finds an even higher register.

I can still see it: the diamond ring catching the light as she hauls off and back-hands me right across the mouth.

Sslap!

Just like in the classic Hollywood movies where slapping was an art form.

I stop screaming.

In fact, I have never heard such perfect silence in all my life.

I'm flat on my back, blood running down my throat.

Note to self: women with diamond rings are violent creatures.

My top lip is sliced open, there is blood everywhere. And the woman who hit me is just horrified. She looks around and says, "I—I didn't mean to do that."

My uncle the diamond cutter deadpans, "It's a good stone! Whaddaya expect's gonna happen?"

And so, when Karen and I discuss our impending marriage, I timidly ask, "Do you mind if we don't buy a diamond ring?"

She just waves her hand as if swatting away a mosquitoe. "Who cares?"

But a moment later she queries: "Would you object to diamond earrings?"

"Not at all," I assure Karen. "Spend whatever you want."

For this is not about money. This is about me being unable to get get over the absurd notion that once Karen is wearing one of these huge diamond rocks on her finger I will be stuck, like Proust and his madelaine, in some perpetual memory cycle, forever replaying that awful moment of violence, and forever tasting the warm salty blood slithering down my throat, forever believing that women who flash karats, are by nature violent beings capable of doing terrible things to the male of the species.

Gosh, just look at Elizabeth Taylor. I loved her in National Velvet. Those were the days before she was weighted down with, um, weight and diamonds. Now she's heavy with flesh and karats and and the poor woman clearly has more durable and healthier relationships with her jewelry than with any of the unfortunate men who have stumbled into the mad psychodrama of her life.

Gold. Diamonds. Jewelry. It's all so perplexing. I just want to be normal, but there doesn't seem to be enough of that to go to around.

I've got too much of not enough.

Sigh.

And to this very day, when I see a big fat diamond on a woman's hand, my lip actually tingles.

Karen adds: I never doubted Robert's aversion to diamond rings, and I did get the diamond studs. When we had been married for about fifteen years, I don't even remember the occasion, but Robert asked me if I wanted a piece of jewelry. I had my eye on a ring that was a diamond surrounded by two emeralds. The diamond was in a bezel setting so there were no sharp edges. We sketched it and had it copied by Robert's aunt, who has worked in the jewelry business for over thirty years. I love the ring, Robert is not scared of it, and it is sort of my belated "engagement" ring. I always loved emeralds.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:26 AM | Comments (20)

August 22, 2005

Not Popping the Question

The continuing saga of how Robert fell in love with Karen at the tender age of nine, stayed in love, and Karen had no idea until many years later and you know, sometimes miracles happen.

How do I ask Karen to marry me?

We have been going out for several months and it's obvious that we hold the same values, are deeply in love, meant to live our lives together.

But, I'm stumped. Really, I have no idea how this is done. How do you ask a woman to marry you? Especially the woman you've been in love with since fourth grade. My only role models are, and this is sad, the movies.

Especially the screwball comedies, which, quite frankly, are amusing and brilliant, but relations between the sexes are not really all that normal. In fact, the love impulse is based on conflict—pathological conflict.

Example: Barbara Stanwyck hisses her love for Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve.

"I need him like the axe needs the turkey."

Or the way Rosalind Russell declares her love for Cary Grant in His Girl Friday:

"Oh Walter, you're wonderful—in a loathsome sort of way."

Or Cary Grant and Irene Dunne dueling deliciously in The Awful Truth.

The delight in these films is the way the men and women just keep nailing each other with amazing zingers; it is obvious that the relationship can never be exhausted; the man and woman will never tire of one another. But boy oh boy, it will be noisy.

Karen and I are not in the movies. We do not trade endlessly amusing zingers. We talk, we laugh. We are at ease when we don't talk. We say "I'm sorry" and "thank you" when it's appropriate for if you never say you're sorry then you're a boor or a moron or probably both. There is no conflict. No drama. In short, we are happy.

Let's see what else is out there to guide me in this perplexing problem of how to pop the question?

There are the Samurai movies that I love. Kurosawa, he knows everything, right? The noble samurai warrior keeps his distance from the chaste but lovesick princess/peasant/servant/beauty/whatever, and then the night before the decisive battle they find themselves alone and she offers herself to him and he declines because, well, he's a warrior and he's noble. And it's funny, I just realized, in these samurai movies, no one ever talks about getting married. The women are always howling: "Take me! Take me! For tomorrow you die!" Sheesh, talk about speed dating.

Again, not a great role model for an Orthodox Jew.

Maybe I should just, you know, ask her.

"Karen, will you marry me... Please!? Or I'll shrivel up and die and end up a bum in the street!"

No, strike that.

"Karen, will you marry me? I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Better.

Maybe I should even get down one one knee, like in those really bad movies? But I'm pretty sure Karen would laugh. Or at least stifle a laugh.

So, I'm stuck. Really stuck. And then, well you know me. Never do anything nice and easy. I have a brilliant idea. I'll drop some hints.

Subtle hints.

Karen and I are window shopping on Columbus Avenue, there's some furniture on view and I grab the opportunity.

"That's kind of nice, isn't it? I don't know all that much about furniture, but I mean, it's got subtle colors, strong lines, looks really comfortable, it's not too expensive, and when we're married we could get something like that for our apartment, right?" I say it all in one breath, really fast.

See what I mean. Subtle.

Karen turns her onyx gaze on me. She knows me by now. She's much smarter than me and so instead of jumping up and down and clapping her hands, and instead of even acknowledging the reference to marriage, Karen just sort of locks me in that lazer gaze and says... nothing.

Hellooo. Didn't you hear me? I used the M word?

And we move on and I keep babbling and before you know I've made about ten references to "being married" and "when we're married" by the end of the day.

By the end of the week, who knows how many references I've dropped? Dozens. Hundreds. They are scattered all over the Upper West Side like mad butterflies.

And suddenly it is understood that we are, well, getting married.

I don't think Karen has ever said, yes.

It's just... there.

Us.

The moral of the story is: You don't have to pop the question. You don't need any theatrics. You just know when it's right and you glide along and life kind of sneaks up and gently takes care of you.

To be continued...

Karen adds: Robert is a dramatist by trade, I am a realist. So the story goes something like this: Robert mentioned the M word about twice. The first time I sort of froze in disbelief, thinking, "Was it a slip of the tongue? Will I look over anxious if I jump at the reference? I can't look too eager? He didn't even ask me?"

I kept cool and didn't say anything.

The second time he used the "M" word, I said something like, "Did you really mean that? Are you really thinking we are going to get married?" Robert answered, "Sure, don't you?" I answered, "Yeah, I do, When were you thinking of?" Robert answered, "Oh, in about five years."

I nearly blacked out.

Here I was, in my mid twenties, FIVE YEARS!

I know now he was worried about his screenwriting career, finances.

I swiftly set Robert straight, and said, that's way too long, "I'm not waiting five years!" Robert said, "When do you want to get married?" I answered, "Within the year." Robert rebounded quickly, "Okay, whatever you want."

And that was our proposal, no flourishes, no flowers, just brass tacks. We didn't go public for about two more months. We waited until the very second Robert's sister's wedding was over and then announced our engagement in February, having this conversation in December.

No ring either. That's another blog entirely.

Robert adds: Whoops!

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:06 AM | Comments (40)

August 16, 2005

Plan 9 From Bensonhurst

The saga of how I met, fell in love and pursued Karen for many, many years. All this before she even knew that I existed.

"Well you see, Rabbi and Mrs. Singer, I flushed the toilet and it kind of overflowed and your basement bathroom is flooded and well..."

And Karen is sitting there, looking at me, confused, disappointed, and I know, I just know that this is a huge disaster.

I'm still in the basement washroom. The toilet has finally stopped flushing, finally stopped overflowing. I've been playing various scenarios in my head and let me tell you, none of them are good. And so I go to Plan 9 From Bensonhurst. (This, by the way, is a very obscure allusion to possibly the worst movie ever made: Plan 9 From Outer Space, directed by the wretched Ed Wood.)

The plan flashes through my mind in a fraction of a second, the sign, I'm afraid, of a true criminal mastermind. There is one plastic cup over the washbasin. I grab it, lean over and yes, start filling it up with the water flooding the floor, and dumping the water down the tiny drain in the corner shower. One small cup after another. It feels like I'm draining the ocean. Why can't I just go upstairs and tell the truth?

For the same reason that I sneaked upstairs, in a mad quest for Karen's fourth grade dress.

Because I'm not too normal.

Because if there's a choice between doing things in a straight line, nice and easy, you can be sure that I'll find the most twisted path.

I have no idea how long I bail but pretty soon the line of water on the floor has actually diminished. I frantically search underneath the sink and find several rolls of paper towels. I start mopping up the excess water. I make a tidy pile of the soaked towels on the edge of the sink. I'm sort of like Norman Bates, in Psycho, cleaning up after his mother murders Marion Crane. He's methodical, thorough, clear-headed, but completely demented.

I am breathing hard and soaked in sweat. I survey the washroom; it looks pretty good; in the dim light you can barely tell that just a few minutes ago there was a massive flood in this room.

I mop up the floor once again, then I shove the sopping paper towels, yup, in my side pockets, my back pockets. I mean, I can't very well flush them down the toilet, now can I? Squish. Squish. Squish. Guh-ross.

I exit the washroom and make my way towards the basement stairs. Oh joy, there's a trash can. I dump in one congealed clump of towels, and cover the mess with a layer of papers. Hmm, looks like some notes Karen's father has made for a speech. He has beautiful handwriting. I never learned to write script. I envy people who can. I still write in big dumb block letters.

Up the stairs, into the kitchen, whoopee! another garbage can. This is a great house: lots of garbage cans. Quickly, I shove the rest of the sopping towels into the trash and cover the mess with foodstuff and empty milk cartons.

I've cleverly disposed of the evidence.

Breathing a huge sigh of relief, feeling like a Mossad agent I reenter the Succah and sit down.

"Are you okay," Karen asks.

"Stomach ache," I say with a brave shrug.

I shift in my seat. My pants are thoroughly soaked from the wet towels. I don't know how long I'm going to be able to sit like this. My slacks are starting to chafe in a really bad place. And what happens if somebody uses the washroom in the next few minutes?

Not a pretty thought.

Karen's parents, Rabbi Phillip and Celia Singer, wedding day,
August 1947

And that's when Karen's father, Rabbi Singer, enters. He's an imposing man in a black Borsalino and black suit. He looks at me like he has x-ray vision. I'll bet he knows all about the washroom.

Karen makes the introductions. After cursory small talk, and the basic but oh-so-necessary Jewish geography, Rabbi Singer gets down to business.

"Nu, so what are you learning these days?"

Possible answers:
1. I'm learning to be a plumber.
2. I'm learning Kurosawa.
3. I'm learning the architecture of your daughter's lovely face.

But I have not studied in yeshiva my whole life for nothing. There are certain passages of Talmud I know pretty well and have in reserve just for moments like this.

"Baba Metziya, Daf Tes." I say.

"Ah..." And Rabbi Singer proceeds to quote chapter and verse, including Tosfos, no mean feat, and all I have to do is sit there and nod.

After a few moments, Karen's parents politely withdraw, it's almost time for me to go to shul for Mincha, afternoon prayers.

I wonder if I should confide to Karen about the washroom. This is the woman I love, the woman, presumably I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. Surely I can trust her with this little hiccup. I mean, I should warn the love of my life about the chaos downstairs, right?

Nah.

I'm a coward. And I'm thinking magically. Maybe the pipes will just fix themselves—that does happen, doesn't it?

Karen walks me to the door.

"I had a good time," she says.

"Me too."

We look at each other for a long moment.

"See you back in Manhattan, " she says.

I can't hold myself back any longer. I recognized certain looks back in the house. Looks between Karen and her mother. Between Karen and her father. Between Karen's mother and Karen's father.

"Karen, did your parents know I was coming over?"

"Not really."

I walk home and I wonder: why didn't Karen tell them? Isn't she serious about me? If she is serious, wouldn't she have said something to her parents about yours truly ?

Conclusion: maybe she really isn't as serious as I think she is.

Great, something to drive me crazy. Another relationship clue with which to torture myself. Gee-willikers, I told my parents I was going over to see Karen.

Is there no justice in this universe?

To be continued.

Karen answers: Robert says he was a coward, well I was a coward in another way. I didn't know how to tell my parents about Robert without their pressuring me, without their blowing the relationship out of the water with questions about how serious we were, and Robert's "intentions." I wanted to keep the relationship so to speak, on my court, under my control, without anyone else calling the shots, calling foul, or calling "game."

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:22 AM | Comments (22)

August 10, 2005

Flushing in Brooklyn

The continuing saga of Robert and Karen and Karen and Robert and how Robert fell in love with Karen in fourth grade and Karen had absolutely no idea and they exchanged barely ten words until—okay, it's a long story.

Into the Succah walks Karen's mother. I do a double take. Is this woman Jewish? She looks like the great American actress Lee Remick. I'm talking blond hair, blue eyes, thin as a stalk of wheat. She's stunning. Okay, beauty runs in the family. Karen's mother is gracious, makes small talk and asks after my parents. Pretty soon she's serving me cake and cookies and hmmm, what's that little battle of eyes I see going on between Karen and her mother?

Now, if you've been following my little tale of not too normal behavior, you know that my little psycho trip upstairs to the restroom was really a secret mission to discover Karen's fourth grade outfit.

If you're new to this blog—well, don't ask.

Anyway, I never made it to the restroom. It was occupied and I'm pretty sure that I almost walked in on the devastatingly beautiful Mrs. Singer—which might not have been a very good move for a perspective son-in-law.

So, I'm down in the Succah, being shtupped with cookies and tea and I lean over, embarrassed, and say to Karen in an teensy-weensy voice: "Um, I need to use the restroom..."

Karen looks at me, obviously wondering what's going on because I just came down from the restroom five minutes ago. Is she getting involved with some guy who has, um, bladder issues? So, I quickly, reassuringly add: "It was occupied." Observe my oh-so-delicate use of language. I want to impress Karen as a gentleman.

I didn't know it at the time, but Karen's mother has Super Hearing.

"Oh, I think Dad's in there now, Robert, why don't you use the bathroom downstairs."

My washroom habits are now public. Wonderful.

Karen walks me to the stairs.

"Watch your step, they're kind of tricky."

I make my way to the basement. I feel like Paul Newman as Fast Eddie in The Hustler, all cocky and confident. It's like that great scene where Newman meets Jackie Gleason, Minnesota Fats, for the very first time. Fast Eddie, like yours truly, has no idea that he's on the edge of disaster.

I take a series of deep, cleansing breaths. I gaze at my reflection in the mirror and tell myself: Robert, you got away with the insanity of looking for the fourth grade dress in the closet. You didn't walk in on Karen's mother in the bathroom. You're just about to meet her father, a highly respected and very well known Rav and Talmudic scholar. You love Karen and Karen probably loves you. Just go upstairs, sit down and chat, and try not to start babbling about Akira Kurosawa, or Kenji Mizoguchi. Everything is going to be fine.

I smile at myself.

This is going to be great. I feel wonderful, optimistic. I have not felt this hopeful since, well, since the day I met Karen at the Jewish Street Festival.

I flush the toilet, turn to leave the bathroom.

And then I hear a funny sound. I turn and watch in horror as the water in the bowl rises and rises and—

I run over and cry: "No, don't!"

As if this will halt the coming deluge.

—and the water gently, lazily slips over the lip of the bowl and just keeps flowing and flooding the bathroom and I'm just standing there feeling my shoes get wet. Gee willikers, when is the flush going to stop already?

I'm wondering how I'm going to go upstairs and tell Karen that I just broke the toilet and flooded the bathroom and probably caused, oh, a couple of hundred dollars worth of damage. How am I going to do this and not die of embarrassment?

I'm pretty sure that some truly heinous medieval torture might actually be a preferable fate than going upstairs and saying what I'm going to have to say in a minute or two.

I'm also wondering: is this going to have a negative effect on my relationship with Karen?

To be continued:

Karen adds: Robert never told me that this happened but he surely has a kindred soul in this nightmare. I have recurring dreams of malfunctioning toilets and it doesn't take a psychoanalyst to realize that I fear losing control. But I truly hate lousy plumbing and it did happen often in my childhood house.

Now, as a homeowner, as soon as there is the slightest drip, gurgle, clog, or any loss of pressure I'm speed dialing the plumbers, call it obsessive, that's my illness. I don't know how I ever survived camp, or any camping trip, but believe it or not, I feel grateful every time I take a shower and have gloriously hot water.

When we had the big earthquake of '94 the first thing I checked out after the shaking stopped was whether the toilet flushed, after that, I was calm. All was well in the Avrech abode. I don't take any of these amenities for granted, and Robert and I are fusspots about these little things that have to be just right. I guess that's why we don't travel much, and when we do, guess what we check out first?

FYI: Re the title of this entry, Flushing is a section of Queens which, when I was about six years old, sent me into spasms of laughter, I couldn't believe someone could live in a place called "Flushing." I think it's now called something like "Hillcrest."

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 05:08 PM | Comments (19)

August 09, 2005

Seraphic Psycho

The continuing story of Karen and Robert. In this installment, Robert reveals that his love for Karen was so obsessive that the word obsessive actually does not do justice to his somewhat loony actions. As will be seen, Robert was doing Ben Stiller before Ben Stiller was doing Ben Stiller.

Up the stairs. Two doors. The washroom is on the left. The other room is, well, heaven. Karen's room. Somehow, in the dark recesses of my damaged mind (way too many movies) I have convinced myself that if I step into Karen's bedroom, I'll open her closet and find myself face-to-face with that adorable skirt and blouse that she wore the very first day I laid eyes on her. And once I see this outfit I'll —

I am drawing a blank here. I have absolutely no idea what I'll do if the outfit is hanging there.

I'm sure psychologists have a term for this frame of mind, but I really don't want to know what it is. I'm sure it's some scary Latin phrase that Karen has kindly withheld from me.

Slowly, I make my way up the stairs. You remember Psycho, Detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) is climbing the stairs, the camera cranes overhead and then BLAM, Norman's mother erupts from a doorway, knife flashing, slashing. Okay, I don't expect to get knifed. But I do feel really creepy.

I'm in the middle of my life-long dream of actually having a relationship with the one girl I've been in love with since fourth grade and what am I about to do? On my first visit to her parents home I'm going to sneak into her bedroom and peek into her closet on the one-in-a-million chance that some fifteen-year-old skirt and blouse will be hanging there.

Am I really going to do this?

Yup.

I arrive at the top of the stairs. There's the washroom. My fingers close round the knob. I turn it.

"I'm in here!" somebody calls out.

My hand pulls back as if it's been scalded. Great. I almost walked in on, who knows, her mother! I'm lucky. That lock, I learn, has been broken for, let's see, about forty years.

Okay. This is good. I have to wait. I edge over to Karen's bedroom. I casually nudge the door open. Nobody's there. And oh, Hashem is good to me. One single closet, right at the entrance. I reach out, open the door, look inside and...

Oh

My

Gosh...

The closet is stuffed, crammed, packed with, well, everything. It's a chaos of clothing. Mens suits, women's dresses, piles of white Shabbos shirts, skirts, blouses, jackets, a jumble of interlocking wire hangers, but wait, there's something in the back that looks vaguely familiar...

Whoosh...

The toilet is flushing.

I have never moved so fast in my life. I'm back in the hallway in about four seconds. I wait for the washroom door to open.

And wait.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Maybe it's a trap.

And then the bedroom door at the end of the hallway groans open and I catch a glimpse of Karen's father, Rabbi Singer, stepping out of his bedroom and before he catches sight of me —

—I fly down the stairs. Back into the Succah. Karen looks up and and gives me a nervous look.

"I think my parents are coming down now."

"Great, can't wait to meet them."

"Want some more hot tea?"

I hear footsteps. I am sweating and my bladder is busting and a little voice inside my head says: why do you do this to yourself?

At that moment, Karen's mother enters the Succah.

To be continued.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:08 AM | Comments (20)

August 08, 2005

Robert Enters the Closet

The continuing story of Robert and Karen's long courtship. It started in fourth grade—actually it only started for Robert. Karen was completely unaware of any relationship. She only caught on, oh, let's see, about sixteen years later.

We can't put it off any longer. Karen and I have been living in a sort of dream world. Going out together for about two months, we're living an almost isolated existence. We're happy, we're content, and I sense that we're both frightened of changing the status quo. We're fearful of bringing in the X-factor--and what exactly is the X-factor?

The parents.

But we have to do it.

The time has come.

Karen and I will be home for Succos. Home is Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Our parents live just a few blocks away from each other. So far, the Upper West Side has been our home turf, it's going to be, I don't know, weird seeing Karen, at last, in her parent's home.

But I actually want to see the room she grew up in. I have this fantasy that I'll open her closet and I'll see the same dress she was wearing the first day I saw her when she transferred from Yeshiva Ohel Moshe. And her white linen handkerchief will be pinned to the dress. Even her shoes will be neatly aligned on the floor, right below the dress.

Since my parents stumbled into my apartment and ran into Karen I've not told them them that I've been seeing her on a regular basis. I don't want to get their hopes up. What am I saying? I'm afraid of getting my hopes up. So when they quiz me about who I'm going out with I just mumble incoherently.

My poor parents shake their heads. Their eldest born is a complete mystery to them. He talks about being a screenwriter, they don't even know what that means. And Caron, my younger sister is already planning a beautiful wedding.

I keep my mouth shut on the first night of Succos. We go to shul, eat in the Succah. My parents ask me what's new and I shrug and talk about the latest interview I did with director Sidney Lumet. What a brilliant man, I sigh, there's so much to learn from him.

Funny, years later as writer/producer in Hollywood I asked Sidney Lumet to direct my film A Stranger Among Us and under Sidney's tutelage I learned more about the craft of making movies than from anyone else in Hollywood. He is a remarkable and important director.

"How's Rabbi Singer's daughter?" my father probes.
I shrug. "Okay, I guess. "I might walk over and visit her tomorrow afternoon." I add.

My mother shrieks.
Caron (my sister) smiles.
My father says: "Send my regards to Rabbi Singer."

Sleep is elusive. My childhood room seems very small. I sit by the window and wonder if Karen is sleeping or if she too is awake, anxious about my visit tomorrow.

Shul, the next day is... a blur. During lunch, my stomach siezes up and I feel vaguely ill. I pace for about twenty minutes then, as casually as I can manage, I announce, "I, uh, I think I'll walk over to Karen's house now." My sister wiggles her eyebrows, teasing with great affection. She looks like the Jewish Ali McGraw.

It's odd, walking through Brooklyn to meet Karen. This is where I grew up. These are the streets that I associate with my loneliness and yearning for Karen. Every corner, every store, every street light holds some memory that vividly tells me that Karen Singer will never love me, that I will live a life unfulfilled, a life of broken parts, a life of short circuited desires.

I knock on the door, and no one answers. It's a holiday, so I can't ring the bell. I knock louder. Nothing.

It kicks in. Fear. Paranoia. Karen has realized that she doesn't love me after all and she's going to ignore me. Oh wait, I know! She had a long talk with her parents. They knocked some sense into her head. Screenwriter? Is that a real job? Is that a living? Come on, Karen, since when do you play around with these romantic boys who have no prospects. Drop him. Find a lawyer, a level-headed dentist, an accountant. Something real. Something solid. Someone with a future! And Karen must have realized that they were absolutely right... No, that's crazy. She wouldn't do that. She's, well, different.

I think.

I hope.

I pray.

Maybe they're all napping. That's it. I've come waaaaay to early. I'm going to wake them all up and they are going to think that I'm an absolute idiot. They'll never let me marry their daughter. "Are you kidding," her father will thunder, "the boy has no common sense, we're all shloofing and he pounds on the front door like King Kong!"

I make a deal with myself. I will knock once more, count to five. If no one comes to the door I'll turn around and go home.

And when I get home, I'll tell my parents—what?

I'll lock myself in my room and never come out. I'll become a neighborhood curiosity. Robert The Hermit.

I knock. Hard.
One. Two. Three. Four.
My future is slipping away here, folks.
Four-and-a-half...
My so-called life.
Five...
I turn to leave.

Robert the Hermit. It has kind of a nice ring. I'll become a tragic but wise figure.

Behind me, I hear the door swinging open on its hinges.

"Robert?"

I turn around and find myself looking up at Karen. Gosh, she is beautiful. She's smiling. Smiling hugely. As if she's actually glad to see me.

"Where are you going?" she asks, looking perplexed.
"No one was answering the door."
"We agreed to meet."
"I thought maybe..."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Come in. Let's sit in the Succah."

I take a deep breath and step inside. This is where Karen grew up. This is the air she breathed. This is the furniture she sat in. The walls that sheltered her.

"Where's your room?
"Upstairs, why?"
I shrug, "No reason, just wondering. Actually, I'm plotting like a Mossad agent (a deranged Mossad agent) to get into her room and peek into her closet. That 4th grade dress, I just know it's there.

I understand, this is beyond obsessive.

Karen leads me through the living room, through the kitchen, to the back porch and we sit in the Succah.

We stare at one another for a long moment. Karen grins.
"This is so weird, isn't it?" Karen says.
"It's just funny seeing you, in another context, I mean."
Karen bustles about, serves tea and cake. Soon enough, we fall into our easy flowing conversation. Her parents are upstairs, still napping. They'll be down soon.

"Do they know I'm coming?"
Karen inclines her head a bit; is that an affirmative? I'm too insecure to ask.

Too much tea. I need to use the washroom. Karen walks me back into the house. It's so quiet. In the John Wayne westerns I love so much, right before the ambush they always say: "It's quiet out there," and then The Duke says: "Too quiet." And then, of course, all hell breaks loose.

"Up the stairs, first door to the left is the restroom." Karen says.

I start up the stairs.

"Karen?
"Yes"
"What's the second door?"
"My bedroom."
Okaaaaaay.

To be continued...

Karen adds: Robert's memory for this first visit is so vivid. All I remember is that Robert wasn't wearing a suit, he hates suits, and that we had managed to avoid our shared Brooklyn turf until Succos. During the Yamim Noraim (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur), we each went to our respective shul,) but hurried back to Manhattan as soon as feasibly possible. By Succos, it was time to "Meet the Parents." My parents had no idea why Robert Avrech suddenly appeared at our front door.

I had a lot of explaining to do.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:14 AM | Comments (13)

August 03, 2005

Karrrrrrrrrrrrrrren!

Robert first laid eyes on Karen when they were both nine-years-old, 4th graders in Yeshiva of Flatbush grade school. Thus began a love affair that defined and continues to define Robert's existence. This series tells the story of...

It's the middle of the night. Karen and I have been going out for four months. The relationship is obviously... a relationship. Still, being male and horribly insecure, I wait for disaster to strike, I wait for the phone call where she tells me that we should just be friends, that she's not ready to commit, that maybe we're moving too fast. I'm waiting for all the cliches that hover in the air of the Upper West Side. But Karen is different, at least I think she's different.

All my life I have assumed that disaster is just around the corner. Whenever anything good happens, I just wait for something equally dreadful to follow. I'm not pessimistic, just a realistic kind of guy. Bad things happen with alarming regularity.

Isn't that normal?

Anyhoo.

I sit up at four in the morning. I am drenched in a cold sweat and I know, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that something terrible is going to happen. Sooner or later Karen, the most level-headed of women, is going to realize that she really loves somebody else, or she's going to come to her senses and understand that loving me, an impoverished screenwriter, is sheer madness.

I must do something.

I bolt out of bed, throw on my clothing, and I run through the deserted streets of Manhattan. I stand outside Karen's building and...

I know, I should scream, Karrrrrrrren! Like Marlon Brando's primal Stellaaaaa! in Streetcar Named Desire. But, look, I don't want to get arrested and I'm pretty sure Karrrrrrrren! wouldn't hear me anyway. Besides, what would I say afterwards?

Marry me?

Please?

Pretty please?

So I stand there and stare at the blank face of her building and a bum walks by muttering some madness and I realize, whoa, I'm out on the street in the middle of the night about to scream Karen's name.

Get a grip.

I turn round and make my way back to my apartment and never tell Karen about this episode. Until today.

Karen adds: I guess this is the nature of the early stages of courtship, each person trying to hide their insecurities, hoping, praying that the other feels the same way they do, that the feeling will "last" and that the intangible, irrational attraction that drew the couple together will endure and grow.

While Robert was having his night terrors, he hid it so well it never occurred to me that he was insecure. I, on the other hand, was sure I would blow it, that I would project my need for a commitment, that I would suffocate Robert with my neediness, and my possessive nature. Perhaps I even held back somewhat to compensate for these tendencies. So while Robert was dealing with his insecurities I was dealing with mine. I took measures to deal with them, and in the end, it was the best move I ever made.

Had Robert screamed at the top of his lungs I probably wouldn't have heard him, since my apartment faced an air shaft, with quite a distance to the front of the building. As far as screaming on the Upper West Side, in those days, there was a screamer on every block.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:10 PM | Comments (15)

August 02, 2005

How to Lose (Not so Seraphic) Friends

The saga of Robert and Karen's life-long courtship continues. This chapter veers off into the often dangerous territory of friends and how they relate to the primary love relationship.

He is dirty. He chain-smokes and smells like an ash tray. His clothing has not been washed in a very long time. His hair is greasy. He also knows more about movies than anybody else on earth. He's sort of a shmutzy genius.

Meet Henry, my new friend.

I have been a student at Bard College for about two incredibly lonely weeks. It's not easy being the only Shomer Shabbos student at college.

Henry writes looooooong film reviews for the student newspaper. He tosses off phrases that are well, French to me: Mise 'en scene, Film Noir. He discusses the theoretical positions of Jean Luc Goddard, Andre Bazin and Francois Truffaut. He is passionate about the cinema of Samuel Fuller. Huh? Doesn't Fuller make like these lousy B pictures? I feel really stupid when I read Henry's articles.

One day I screw up my courage and ask Henry about his latest essay regarding Ingmar Bergman. I know that this Swedish director is supposed to be deep and "heavy" but isn't it all a bit... pretentious? Henry, to his credit, does not blow me off. In fact he allows that this is a "valid position" taken by many of the "cahier" crowd. I nod as if I know who the cahier crowd are. Answer: a bunch of dopey Frenchman who watch American films not understanding a word of English, hence basing their cinematic theories on mis en scene—go figure.

Anyway, in spite of Henry's, ahem, hygiene problems, I form a close friendship with him. My other friend, Jamie A"H, sniffs when Henry comes round and rapidly disappears. He thinks I'm nuts to hang around with Henry, but gee, Henry is so smart, he knows sooooo much, and I've been in yeshiva all my life and I've got a lot of catching up to do. And so Henry, bless his kind and most generous heart, gives me a crash course in the history of world cinema. To this day, when people ask me how I learned so much about film, I tell them about Henry.

We even start writing films together. Oh yes, Henry wants to be a screenwriter too. But our collaboration never quite works out. I am still an earnest yeshiva student at heart. I'll be sitting in my dorm room writing, waiting for Henry and he'll be off with one of his girlfriends, down the road, partying hard. He'll show up—whenever—dash off a pound of pages, some brilliant, some incoherent, and I instinctively know that this can never work.

I confess, it also bothers me, deep, deep in my gut, though I never articulate it, that Henry is Jewish, can rattle off Shakespeare, Donne, Emerson, and knows not one word of Torah. He does not even know the Sh'ma.

And he couldn't care less.

It never crosses his mind that it might be sort of appropriate to go out with a Jewish girl. Nope, only thin, crazy, very crazy, Presbyterian Princesses for Henry.

After Bard, Henry and I end up living around the corner from each other in New York. You know how when you are seriously going out with a woman the time comes when you introduce her to your circle of friends? It's another crossroads in the relationship. It announces that this is real. The friends look the woman over, they hesitate for a moment, then realize that she's perfect and they welcome her to the inner circle.

I do not have a circle of friends. I have no friends from Yeshiva anymore. Once you leave Beis Midrash to study art, it's hard keeping up with old friends.

So, my only friend is Henry.

And he is still dirty.

And I know that when Karen takes one look at him, hears him rattle off his theories about the cinema of Howard Hawks, the structuralism of Claude Levi Strauss as applied to the films of Jean Luc Goddard, well, it's not going to be pretty. Karen has no patience for, well, intellectual gibberish.

And knowing Henry, he will scrutinize Karen, see, gasp! a ferociously normal woman, probably the greatest threat to his world-view, to our friendship, and, well, I just want to get this over with as quickly as possible.

The question is: How far does loyalty extend?

Henry has given me an education in film, the tools that will probably allow me to have a career in film. He has, in short, been a good friend. He has also helped me get my job at Millimeter Magazine.
What do I owe him? I feel like I owe him, well, close to everything.

Does every passionate relationship inevitably destroy another?

Karen is away now, but when she comes back I'll have her add the coup de grace. Pardon my French.

Karen adds: Robert has cast me as Marie Antoinette in this story, yet, as I remember it, I was more on the side of liberte and egalite. You see, there were terrible hygiene problem, second-hand smoke which was camel strength and unrelenting, and the verbal diarrhea.

In addition when Robert told me he sometimes would go over to Henry's apartment and pick Henry's dirty laundry off the floor it sickened me. I told Robert, "This man is pathological and you are enabling him! What purpose is this relationship serving for you?" It made me question the health of our own relationship which seemed so normal and straight forward.

Robert agreed that he would not ask me to socialize with Henry, that once they finished a screenplay they were working on, and that was not going well because Henry did not know the meaning of discipline, they would no longer collaborate. After that, the relationship sort of fizzled out on its own. Whatever purpose Henry served no longer paid off, maybe Robert saw him in another light once he wasn't dependent on him for artistic inspiration. For whatever reason, once we got married, Robert and Henry saw each other only about every ten years, and they never renewed the bond they once had. I was the spoiler and I don't regret it.

Robert adds: Henry was right about the films of Sam Fuller. Check out Shock Corridor. It is great. Especially the scene in the, yup, nympho ward!

And of course don't forget Fuller's last film The Big Red One. It has just been released in the Director's Cut and it is a thing of beauty.

Thank you, Henry.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:08 AM | Comments (16)

August 01, 2005

Seraphic Obsession Meets DePalma's Obsession

The continuing saga of Robert and Karen's looooooong relationship, that became a romance when childhood obsessions finally matured into love.

Karen and I are watching Brian De Palma's Obsession and I'm thinking to myself, I'd give anything to work with De Palma, give most anything to write a film for him. But I know that it will never happen because, well, he's a pretty twisted character and me, well, I'm just a regular guy from Brooklyn with a nice normal sensibility and my favorite writer in the whole wide world is probably Jane Austen, and my favorite films are the screwball comedies from the 30's and 40's, and I mean, that's a long way from Brian De Palma's macabre sensibility. But gee willikers, I really like his movies, really enjoy his bravura camera moves and his absolutely psychotic take on the human condition.

Oddly enough, my big break in Hollywood came from Brian De Palma when he tapped me to write the thriller, Body Double (1984).

Obsession. I know something about obsession. And she is sitting right beside me.

This is one film where Karen is not, thank goodness, hunched over, bored out of her skull, as she was in The Seven Samurai my favorite film of all time. Why, you might ask? Because it elegantly teaches the most important lesson a man must learn in this life: that to live in this world evil must be met and utterly defeated.

Obsession is smart, stylish, tricky and absolutely satisfying, and, as I said, we both like it. Big sigh of relief. No need for any long tortuous debates on the nature of film aesthetics. Sometimes I exhaust myself over absolutely nothing. Karen is teaching me—by osmosis—to separate the important from the unimportant. I realize that there is much in me that is, well, pretentious and arty. Four years in Bard College leaves a deep, intellectually flawed tattoo.

Karen and I are going out regularly, if not every night, almost every night. It's nice. No, it's heavenly. I feel as if I'm living someone else's life. I wait for disaster to strike for how is it possible for this good, kind, generous and strikingly beautiful woman to actually care for me?

Sometimes I think that I'm in a lost episode of The Twilight Zone.

I invite Karen for Shabbos dinner at my apartment. Don't get all excited. Banish all thoughts of me sweating in the kitchen, running around with a little chef's hat perched on my head. I can cook a mean omelet—that's about it. No, I buy take-out. One thing about Karen then and now, she's not picky about food. Give her some salad, some melon, and she's happy. In fact, Karen is the lowest maintenance woman in the history of, well, the universe. Basically, I'm playing house. I want to see what it's like having a Shabbos meal with Karen—just the two of us. No friends to distract.

One man. One woman. One Shabbos.

And it is great. We sing z'meros. We talk for hours. Naturally, I can't remember a thing about the food; it's never been an important component in my life. Afterwards, I walk Karen back to her apartment and I know that a threshold has been crossed. I wonder if Karen knows it too. I wonder where her mind is going in terms of, well, the future, commitment, marriage.

I wonder what will happen next.

Karen adds: I have an everyman's attitude toward movies — if it's entertaining, if it keeps my interest and it's smart — I like it. Obsession did the trick.

As far as food, Robert is the one who couldn't care less. I remember cooking that meal, and bringing it over to Robert's apartment. Definitely not take-out. I wasn't a vegetarian in those days, so we shared a meal.

The dates with other guys were dropping out gradually, and our relationship just seemed magical from the very beginning. Robert was a straight-shooter, didn't play any games, but I was so jaded, and cautious that I needed time to trust his feelings. So, on both sides, we had this, I-can't-believe-this-is-happening, pinch-me-when-I-wake-up, feeling.

I guess it's called, falling in love.

To be continued...

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:57 AM | Comments (19)

July 28, 2005

What is Art?

The continuing saga of my loooong love affair with Karen. Actually, it wasn't really, technically, a love affair. It was more like, um, me pining for someone who didn't even know that I existed. It was sad. No, it was downright pathetic.

Robert skipped ahead in our courtship, telling of his epiphany--that I didn't have to share his rapture with The Seven Samurai, there was no litmus test to be passed. Still, there were future rites of passage that involved questions of artistic taste.

One of these was the flip side, where I was upset, and had to come to the understanding that it was OK for the two of us to have different tastes in art, and that I had to be tolerant and suspend judgment.

The movie in question, was one that we never would go to now, and will remain nameless. At that time it was considered a classic, starring Marlon Brando. Those old enough will know the film. Well, I didn't get it. I was upset. I was crying for most of the film. Not because it moved me, but because I was repulsed by it. So what do I do? I make allowances, I understand that we are different people, with different sensibilities, and different set points for art. And we talk about it. The last point is the most important. I explain what I am feeling.

Another example: Before Robert and I were married, we had a debate about modern art. It was one of the few times we actually had a formal debate. It was titled, "What is Art?" We never resolved it. Of course, I came down on the side of a more conservative, representational art.

Girl Reading a Letter by a Window, by Johannes Vermeer (1657 -1659)

Robert's argument favored a conceptual art, for example, a totally white canvas. We never resolved our differences, but we did come to a civilized compromise—I agreed to go to his types of museums and galleries for ten minutes, and ten minutes only.

Robert Ryman, Vector, 1997

So I guess the point I'm making is that there is room for differences as long as you are accepting of the differences and you respect each other and can work out a way of compromising and living with the differences in a realistic way. No two people agree on everything. And if they do, well, that would make for a pretty boring relationship. In fact, if you think about it, that's what totalitarian governments are all about: getting people to shed their individual identities and agree upon some some bland collective identity.

P.S. I spent my time in The Seven Samurai trying to figure out who played whom in the adaptation of the movie in The Magnificent Seven.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:59 PM | Comments (23)

July 27, 2005

Karen: Seraphic Samurai

The Gentle Tale of Robert-san, the Poor but Honorable Peasant Warrior and his Desperate Gonin Onna, Loving Love, for the Proud but Lonely Princess Karen, the Jewish/Samurai Lady from the Clan of Singer who Possess much Ying-Yang-Yichus.

A clarification. This was not our next date. In fact, this Samurai event took place several months after I returned from Sweden. Karen and I were, by then, going out regularly--to the exclusion of all others. Why do I choose to derail my time line so severely? I guess it has something to do with how important an event it was in How I Married Karen. Chronology is important, don't get us wrong, but just not as important as the veracity of the feelings we are trying to recapture over twenty-seven years later.

The time has come to introduce Karen to Akira Kurosawa. The time has come to introduce Karen to the single most important movie in my life, the film that has shaped my consciousness, the film that has turned me from a directionless yeshiva student into a rabid film fanatic, into a budding screenwriter.

Yes, The Seven Samura is playing at The Thalia and I've invited Karen to see it with me. Keep in mind, these are ancient days, there are no videos, much less DVD's. To see a classic film, you must rush to Manhattan, to one of the revival houses and hope that the print they have is half-way decent. And with Japanese films, the biggest problem is the subtitles. Frequently, they are illegible.

As we stand on line to purchase tickets, Karen quizzes me about the film.

"What's it about?"

"Courage and loyalty in 16th century Japan."

"Does it have a... plot?"

"Oh, yes, several very strong plots running parallel to one another. Don't worry, it's a foreign film, but you'll find that all the emotions are completely familiar."

Karen looks a bit skeptical. By now she knows me well enough to know that my take on reality is a bit, well, not all that, ahem, real.

"How long is it?"

"We're incredibly lucky, Karen," I enthuse, "This doesn't happen very often but we're actually getting to see the original three-hour version! Isn't that great!?"

Karen smiles, but her smile is strained. I'm not worried. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that once the film gets going she'll be caught up in the magnificent imagery, in the classic story-telling, in the heroic, tragic characters. Once Karen imbibes this film, our relationship will be sealed—a final intellectual union.

The house lights dim and chills run up and down my spine as the opening shots of The Seven Samurai thunder across the screen. Karen is at full attention, her spine is rigid, she sits straight as a pilaster, like a proud Japanese princess.

A half-hour into the film Karen is:

Oh

My

Gosh

idly toying with her split ends. I am incredulous, in shock, in a kind of numbed pain that I never knew existed. How is this possible?

Slumped in her seat, Karen is the portrait of a a bored grade school student. My heart is actually pattering in my chest at twice its normal rate. I am twenty-five years old and I'm having, I'm pretty sure, a massive heart attack.

A few years ago, I told a friend that I could never love a woman who didn't love The Seven Samurai. Not only did I say it, but I believed it.

"You'll have to excuse me, " says Karen, "I need to take a break."

"There's a break at the hour-and-a-half point," I lamely point out.

"I need it now," Karen says quite evenly with no hint of rancor whatsoever. Karen exits to the lobby.

I feel like committing hara-kiri.

In the dark, I gaze at my beloved and outnumbered Samurai warriors; even unto death they maintain their orthodox code of honor. There is something very Jewish about these men and their stubborn refusal to give up their Samurai mesorah, l'havdeel. This film has changed my life, made of me a screenwriter, a scribe with a developing vision.

What to do?

The images no longer cohere for now I see Karen, ten-years old, on the day that she first transferred from Yeshiva Ohel Moshe to Yeshiva Flatbush, the day I, also ten-years old, fell in love with her; now I see her leaning against the chain link fence during recess, pressing her linen handkerchief against unnaturally pale lips; there she is, years later, when we meet in camp and exchange a few awkward sentences; and again I spot her at a high school basketball game. Karen has no idea how I feel. What am I saying? She has no idea that I even exist. This life of mine is one that can easily slip into utter catastrophe.

Karen's image splits and flies away; there she is, up on the screen in full close-up. I love her, have always loved her. And this moment, this film, this decision that I'm about to make will define the balance of my life.

The Samurai speak of Bushido, the soul of the warrior, the perpetual struggle to maintain honor and dignity, the fight to recognize your true inner-self. I catch a glimpse of my Bushido. It's in danger of being crushed... by yours truly.

I bolt from my seat and follow Karen into the lobby. Sitting on a bench, she looks sad.

"I know how much this movie means to you," says Karen.

"It doesn't matter," I respond.

And it doesn't.

In a split second I have gone from being a boy to a man. Morally, I have matured, been forced by this honest and most un-pretentious of women, to reorder my priorities.

I took another young woman to see The Seven Samurai and she told me that she loved it. Adored it. "It's fantastic," she gushed. But in the darkness I felt her boredom, sensed her incredible yearning for the film to end. She was just saying what she knew I wanted to hear.

Karen cannot lie. Karen is constitutionally unable to say that she admires something when she just plain doesn't like it.

To this day, when I slip the DVD of The Seven Samurai into the player, Karen beats a hasty retreat.

This night, this moment, I make the decision to grow up and to be a man. I understand that admiring or despising The Seven Samurai, any movie, has nothing to do with the guts of a relationship. If you look closely, it's merely about aesthetics.

What it's not about is values. Admiring or disliking a movie or a book or painting or a song or whatever —is not a good indicator of the strength of a relationship. Love, real love and lasting relationships are built on shared values.

Karen knows how important this movie is to me. But because this film is so central to my life she cannot bring herself to pretend that she likes it. In fact, the way I feel about The Sound of Music is how she feels about The Seven Samurai.

I bid goodbye to The Seven Samurai. We do not stay for the rest of the film. We exit the theater. Walking along Broadway, Karen searches my face for some expression of what I'm feeling, some hint of what my reaction is to her reaction.

As we walk away from the movie theater, I discover that I feel lighter, I feel unburdened and I find that I am grinning hugely. I smile because at long last I'm able to bid goodbye to my youth. Karen's perfect scrupulousness, her Female/Jewish/Samurai personae has, as I have long suspected, compelled me to become a better man.

To be continued.

Look for Princess Karen to Add Her Royal comments later today.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:29 AM | Comments (21)

July 26, 2005

Not So Seraphic Sweden

In which the Author Recounts the Saga of how He, An Awkward Jewish Lad, Fell in Love with Karen, The Fair Jewish Lady, at age nine, and Though She Knew Not That He was Alive, the Author Surrendered Not and Strange as it Seems, the Author Met The Lady Again Under Most Extraordinary Circumstances and Somehow The Author Won the Lady's Most Fair Hand.

Dousing all the lights in the room, sealing the windows like Count Dracula, I crawl into bed and find a position that will allow me to fight off the migraine. Sometimes I'm able to put myself into a trance; I suppose it's a kind of anti-pain meditative state. Several hours later, I'm out of bed, drinking buckets of black coffee and eating slices of burnt toast, and I'm ready for more of, you guessed it, Karen.

That evening, we meet at The Library. No, not the New York Public Library. The Library was an intimate coffee shop on Broadway. The walls of the cafe filled with books, hence the clever name. We continue our endless conversation and more than ever I consider the wisdom, actually the non-wisdom of my impending trip to Sweden.

I walk Karen back to her apartment and promise to write. This time, I do not shake her hand. I actually learn from my mistakes.

Sweden. What can I say? My body is there, but my mind is definitely not. It's a pretty country. But how many medieval cathedrals can you look at? How many castles can you explore saying, “Wow, it's so... old.” Sweden has lots of, um, trees and blond people who are excruciatingly polite.

But even in neutral Sweden I run into hostile students who argue, no, lecture me about the poor Palestinians. Most American students who agitate for the genocidal Arabs are pretty ignorant about history, about Jewish history, about simple facts, but the Swedes are not only ignorant, they spout, get this, Stalinist propaganda, and I feel like I'm in some time warp from the 1930's.

I realize that European socialism is alive and well and anti-Zionism is just a convenient front for some pretty vicious Jew-hatred. No wonder all my Jewish/Swedish friends are planning to making aliyah, all of them repeating the same mantra: “There is no future for Jews in Sweden.”

When I'm in Stockholm I daven in a tiny and dying Orthodox Shul on St. Paulsgaaten. The old men are all refugees from Poland. At first they are suspicious of me, but soon enough they approach and greet me; they smile and chat in Yiddish. I understand about half of what they say.

The old men honor me with an aliyah at every minyan. I feel like crying for they are just so happy to have another observant Jew under the age of eighty. And when I announce, in Hebrew, our only common language, that I am about to leave, that it's time for me to return to America, the old men look so very sad. I can still feel their hands on my shoulder, skin like leather, gently patting me goodbye. I have to admit that I am crying. When you daven, put on tefillin, with a minyan for a length of time a bond is formed that is transcendent.

I send Karen three postcards from Scandinavia. They are somewhere in our house, but Karen has not been able to dig them up. She will find them, but it will take time.

The day I return to America—oh G-d, I love the US, I hate traveling, I hate foreign countries, they reallyreallyreally bite, big-time—I immediately call Karen right from the airport. I want to make sure that:

1. Karen is real.
2. Karen did not get married while I was gone.
3. Karen still wants to see me.

Affirmative to all the above. Huge sigh of relief.

Karen and I get together a few hours after I get back to my upper West Side apartment. It takes all my willpower not to gather Karen in my arms and hold her and announce to her that I will never be separated from her ever again. I want to ask her to marry me right then and there, but even I, crazy and obsessed as I am, know that this kind of behavior is, ahem, highly inappropriate.

To be continued.

Karen adds: These were not ordinary postcards; not shots of the towering cathedrals or the ancient castles. Rather, Robert sent me museum portraits of classic paintings. They were romantic yet tasteful and just right for that stage in our relationship.

The words he wrote really didn't matter, what mattered was that he took the time to write. I remember pasting them to the wall next to my desk, and they stayed there until I moved. I wrote back and the addresses on the postcards were longer than the messages, but boy did I work on those words. I finally wrote something about our shared quest for the perfect raw mushroom (a weird interest at that time) and it's symbolism—go figure the folly of youth.

While Robert was gone I had the leisure of house sitting for my family who had all gone to Israel, so I was alone, going on a series of non-serious dates, commuting between my apartment and my parent's house in Brooklyn, depending on my schedule, seeing friends, working temporary odd jobs, and checking my mailbox.

When the call came from Robert I remember how surprised I was, since he called about two weeks earlier than I expected. I kept repeating like an idiot, “I can't believe you're back!”

We agreed to meet the next day, and I practically flew back to Manhattan.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:31 AM | Comments (34)

July 25, 2005

Migraine Date

The continuing story of how I fell in love with my wife at age nine and, well, did not give up until Karen, so to speak, gave in.

Karen and I are sitting in my apartment. We're talking. And talking. I'm about to leave for Sweden in a day or two and deep in my gut I have this sinking feeling that this trip is about the dumbest thing I have ever done. I'll probably return from the land of the blonds and find that Karen has married one of the med students who have been courting her. I'll end up a miserable human being living a life of endless regrets.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I've got a raging migraine.

Migraine therapy in ancient Egypt. Have not tried this cure... yet

I've been getting these headaches since I've been a child. First I get an aura. Lights pulse weirdly. My skin becomes extra sensitive to, well, everything. Even my yarmulke feels like a lead weight on my head. And the bobby pin? Like a nail going through my skull. The pain pulses at the base of my skull, travels up, usually to the left side of my head. Boom! Boom! BOOM! Unrelenting agony. Sometimes it goes on for two or three days at a time. Bottomless nausea follows. Light hurts like you wouldn't believe. Sound penetrates my skull like hot shrapnel. Normally I'd be curled up in bed in a completely dark room for the slightest amount of light can send fragments of pain flying deep into the cortex of my brain.

Medicine? Forget it. The only thing that helps is a trip to the ER and a slow drip of some powerful opiate that puts me deeply out of it for the rest of the week. I have a magazine to edit; no way I can take that medicine. When I was a child I was sure that HaShem was punishing me for something. Actually, that thought still crosses my mind when I get a killer migraine. Guilt is a powerful master when you truly believe that you are accountable for your actions.

But Karen is here and gosh, I have been in love/obsessed/crazyabout this child/girl/teenager/woman for as long as I can remember and I'm not going to let mere agony get in the way.

“Are you okay?”

As I've said, Karen is smart and perceptive. Nothing gets by her. When she looks at me she's like Superwoman—minus the skin-tight suit—but with the X-ray vision. She sees right through me. And now, I suppose that my eyes have been blinking uncontrollably, and my forehead is creased like ancient papyrus, and my voice is probably not much above a whisper.

"I have a bit of a headache,” I allow.

Karen studies me and nods. She knows that I'm not in good shape.

“How long will you be gone?” she asks.

That's a good sign, I say to myself. She cares.

“A month,” I say, “maybe less.”

I'm already planning on cutting the trip short. And that's just what I end up doing. I have to. I am so bored in Scandinavia that I absolutely understand why they have the highest suicide rate in the world.

Abruptly, I am steamrolled by a tsunami of pain and Karen must see it for she stands up and announces that it's time for her to go. This is becoming a habit. She did this just a few days ago. I offer to walk Karen home, but she insists that I stay, that I really do not look too good.

Exit Karen.

I bolt to the bathroom, drop to the cool tile and, well, you know the rest.

Ah, the end of another romantic evening.

Karen adds: Robert did a better job of hiding his distress than he remembers, otherwise I would have had to be blind not to have seen immediately how miserable he was. He actually was able to carry on a charming conversation and it was only after about an hour that I began to notice that his mouth was puckering in funny ways — a good cue he might be sick to his stomach!

I do recall my disappointment when Robert told me he was going to be away not a month, but six weeks, it seemed to a very long stretch.

During that time, I had what seems in retrospect, an active social life, but none of the prospects were serious. I should explain that Shidduch dates had not taken hold in the Orthodox community at that time, but we did have the Shavuos event at Grossinger's which was one of the few ways that young singles could meet.

It was traumatic, humiliating, but effective. So, the month following Shavuos, my calendar was full. As much as this blog has emphasized the powers of hashgacha pratis (divine intervention) and Bashert (there is a predestined lifemate) I do want to emphasize the importance of being an advocate for yourself.

As a single I did have to get out there, push myself into situations that were really uncomfortable, and do the "Hishtadlus" thing. This means going to Grossinger's when I hated it, and indeed, getting myself to Lincoln Square (where Robert sighted me) picking myself up and getting out of the apartment on a hot Sunday afternoon to the Jewish Street Festival all by myself even without the security of a gal-pal, where I bumped into Robert.

So I guess my message is, there is the element of romance, but there is also something to be said for being a realist, and taking the bull by the horns and being an advocate for yourself and taking initiative, and putting yourself into the right situations, even when it is uncomfortable and seems like work.

To be continued.

You can now subscribe to Seraphic Secret via e-mail. Just scroll down on the left hand side and fill in your e-mail address. Don't worry, I won't sell the list to anybody else. Also, please be aware that I have the habit of revising my blog several times a day. And Karen might add her thoughts a few minutes or hours later. So the blog you read in the morning might be different by night.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:11 AM | Comments (11)

July 21, 2005

Seraphic Shakespearean Urges

The romantic saga of how I fell head-over-heels in love with Karen. Here, the aftermath of our very first date. It took but sixteen years from the moment I fell in love with Karen to get a first date. I am, if anything, patient.

I take Karen back to her apartment. Leavetaking is particularly difficult for this evening has been the culmination of a dream that started a long time ago. In fact, it began when I was but nine-years old and Karen transferred to Yeshiva Flatbush from Yeshiva Ohel Moshe. I saw her that first day. I fell in love—or whatever it is that happens emotionally to a fourth grade yeshiva kid—and I remained obsessed with Karen throughout elementary school, high school, college, and now, a few years after college we have finally met, purely by accident, at a Jewish street festival on the Upper West Side.

And so here we stand at the front door to her apartment. We are both smiling, and I tell Karen that I will call and we will get together before I leave for Sweden. Do I detect a faint expression of—what, doubt in her eyes? I know that guys say they are going to call and they have absolutely no intention of calling. Ever. But Karen, really, I've been waiting fifteen years just to talk to you!

It occurs to me that I really should cancel this trip to Sweden. I reallyreallyreallyreally should. After all, these friends from Israel will understand. Won't they? But then, I realize that if I cancel I'll probably lose the entire fare. And I do not have a great deal of money. In fact, I live from pay check to pay check. Just barely. I have saved, counted pennies for over a year for this vacation. And there's the simple issue of friendship, responsibility. My friends have long made plans for my visit. I have said that I will do something and not to do it is, well, just plain wrong.

Again, I tell Karen that I have had a wonderful time. Again, I tell Karen that we will get together before I leave for Scandinavia.

I have a tremendous urge, almost Shakesperian, to fall to one knee and proclaim my love for Karen, an almost overwhelming urge to tell Karen that I have always loved her, that I vividly recall watching her during recess of her very first day of school. The other girls were skipping rope in the center of the yard and Karen was leaning against the chain link fence dabbing at her unnaturally pale lips with a snow white linen handkerchief.

I have the urge to tell Karen that I once watched her in the pizza shop on Avenue J with one of the alpha male Yeshiva Flatbush jocks, and when she smiled at him I felt as if my world had collapsed. I will never be that guy, I said to myself.

I have the urge to reveal to Karen that even when I was going out with other girls, even when I liked them, even when I thought that I could love them, her image always pasted itself over their faces and I was left with the sinking feeling that I was doomed to a life never to be lived. I want, oh how I want to enfold Karen in my arms and ask, no beg her to marry me.

Instead, I say goodnight. I shake her hand.

What a dork.

Singin' in the Rain. One of the greatest movies ever made. Gene Kelly has just met Debbie Reynolds, he has, natch, fallen head-over-heels in love. The rain machines are switched on and Gene Kelly dances; he dances with the rain, he dances with the puddles, he dances with his umbrella, he dances with the lampposts. Kelly performs what has to be the most powerful expression of love I have ever seen.

I am no Gene Kelly. And it is not raining. But walking back to my apartment after my date with Karen, I do hum Singin' in the Rain and I know, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my life has just changed. I can finally glimpse what it can be. What I have always wanted it to be.

I have waited all my life for Karen, for this relationship; naturally, my greatest fear is that somehow I will make a mess of it and forever destroy my only real chance at the life I desperately want.

To be continued.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:34 AM | Comments (26)

July 20, 2005

Seraphic First Date

The continuing saga of how Robert fell in love with Karen when he was nine-years old, stayed in love with her throughout high school, college, and post college. In this, our latest installment, Robert is finally going out with Karen on a first date.

The Lovely Girl From Boro Park is not happy. As soon as Karen leaves TLGFBP wants to know what's going on. She demands to know where she stands, even though we've only gone out once. She makes it clear that I have to choose between her and “that girl.”

Sheesh, you'd think Karen had a scarlet A emblazoned across her chest.

I take a deep breath and spill. TLGFBP rolls with this new plot-point because, well, that's the kind of young woman she is—realistic and diligent about guiding her future.

Anyhoo.

The next time I see TLGFBP, she's flirting with a Lovely Boy From Boro Park on 47th street. We chat for a few moments and part on a chilly but polite note.

I call Karen the next day and we make plans to meet in three days for a private film critic's screening, a perk my job offers me. Very casual, we'll meet at my office.

I have a hard time concentrating on work the day of my first date with Karen. I am Editor-in-Chief of Millimeter, a film magazine. Desperately trying to edit a long interview I did with director Roman Polanski, I'm having very little success. Instead of talking about the craft of film he constantly veers off into fascinating but somewhat inappropriate monologues about the joys of female flesh.

So nervous am I before meeting with Karen that I sprint to the restroom, fall to my knees like a slaughtered lamb and heave.

Karen is waiting for me outside my office. After saving for months, I have finally bought a Nikon camera. Karen is sooooo beautiful, so ravishing, that I positively yearn to start snapping away. But I sense that Karen is naturally reserved and my intuition tells me that if I raise the lens she will freeze like a deer in headlights.

We walk to Farm Food, a dairy restaurant that no longer exists. You older folks will remember it as offering decent food, decent service and moderate prices. Karen has no interest in going to one of the more expensive restaurants. She doesn't make a big deal out of it, but I find out that she is—and remains—a vegetarian:

“Not out of any ethical considerations,” Karen goes out of her way to explain, “I just don't like the taste of meat.”

Conversation flows easily, though my guts are churning and my heart beats like a Ginger Baker drum solo. I talk about films and screenplays and my dream of a Hollywood career.

Karen
Does
Not
Flinch

Understand how unusual this is. This is the 70's. There are no Orthodox Jews in the film business. Oh, wait, Shimon Wincelberg Z"L, a friend of my father from Yeshiva University, has had a pretty good run writing episodic TV. But I'm determined to crack feature films. The odds are not good for normal people, and for an Orthodox Jew, well, I have a better chance of becoming head of the Physics Department at MIT — and let's not forget that I have a severe math disability.

After dinner, Karen and I walk to the screening that, as Editor of Millimeter, I'm obliged to attend. The whole time we're walking I steal glances at her and say to myself: It's really her. Karen Singer is actually on a date with me—of her own free will.

Karen sees something that prompts her to say: “America is a great country. I hate when people put it down.”

As these words spill from her mouth, I actually feel like getting down on my hands and knees and kissing her feet. Anti-American sentiment is fashionable, a by-product of the Viet Nam War. I hate the poisonous rhetoric used by the anti-war protesters. Karen's unadorned love of America is not popular and signals that she is not afraid to stand outside the currents of popular culture. I admire her enormously.

Here is what I discover about Karen during our dinner:

1. Her intelligence is fierce, but she holds it in reserve.
2. She is practical without being dull.
3. She has impeccable table manners.
4. She's religious, but does not make a display of it.
5. She does not flip her hair.
6. She does not idly play with her split-ends. Well, not too much.
7. She does not make believe that she knows more than she does.
8. She has no interest in status.
9. She becomes more beautiful the more time I spend with her.
10. She has no idea who Akira Kurosawa is.

Outside the restaurant:

“Karen, I just bought this new camera and I was wondering if I could test it out?”

“You mean, take my picture?”

“I guess.”

She ponders a moment. Shrugs. She smiles and says, “Hurry up, before I get too nervous.”

Snick!

It is the best picture I have ever taken because it records the moment when I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would marry Karen Singer.

The movie we go to, A Small Town in Texas, is awful, just awful. I take Karen home and tell her that I want to see her again—as soon as possible. I explain that at the end of the week I'm flying to Sweden to spend a month with some friends that I met in Israel.

She looks at me and says, “Oh.”

I have no idea what her single word of dialog indicates.

Karen adds:
First of all: Robert told me he was leaving for Sweden the first day we met, and I couldn't believe it. That gave an urgency to our encounter from the very first moment.

Second, every girl in the universe plays with her split ends, perhaps not in public, but it's on the x chromosome — for sure.

Third, Robert forgot to mention that I sensed he was so incredibly nervous that I had to say something or I would burst. I said something like, “I think if we talk about how nervous you seem to be it might help.” Of course, this just made matters worse. After I made that incredible faux pas of addressing Robert's jitters, I beat it to the ladies room, but I think he actually did relax a bit.

Farm Food was already on the skids, on a seamy side street right off Times Square. I wasn't officially a vegetarian yet, but potato latkes and mock chopped liver weren't for me either. I think I had my standard melon.

The comment about the United States completely escapes my memory, but it was probably related to the Bicentennial which was coming up in a week. Yes, it was that long ago.

To be continued.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:13 AM | Comments (35)

July 13, 2005

Sunday Afternoon Around the Corner from the Park with Robert

The continuing saga of how I met, fell in love, and pursued, pursued, pursued—you get the idea—Karen until, well, it's a megillah.

The scene thus far: Karen is on the couch being interrogated by my mother, AH. My father is pacing, jingling the change in his pocket, an habitual gesture which continues to this very day.

Enter my sister.

"Caron this is Karen."

Yup, the love of my life has the same name as my sister.

Caron (sister) gives Karen (not-yet-wife) a friendly greeting. Caron (sister) scopes out the situation in a fraction of a second. Caron (sister) sits down with Karen (not-yet-wife) and my mother, and joins the conversation.

The sound of the change in my father's pocket seems to grow even louder. I look over at Karen—you can figure out who's whom, right?—and shrug. My apartment is genuinely tiny. Take six paces in any direction and you hit a wall.

Karen and I are no longer lost in our magical conversation. Now Karen is politely talking with my mother and my sister. My father has switched on the teensy-weensy black & white portable television to watch the Yankee game — but don't worry, the coins in his pocket continue to chime.

And now the doorbell rings. Again.

My Aunt Pearlie, my mother's youngest sister, makes an entrance like Bette Davis. Hugs and kisses are exchanged. Aunt Pearlie studies Karen so carefully I'm pretty sure she's going to take whip out a microscope for a closer view.

"So, Rob," (Note: some people in my family feel it's their G-d given right to call me Rob, sometimes Robbie. Who am I to argue?) "So Rob, who is this lovely young lady?"

"This is Karen Singer. We went to Yeshiva Flatbush together."

"Rabbi Singer's daughter," my father notes without tearing his eyes away from the TV.

"A Ph.D student at Ferkauf," my mother quickly adds.

HELLLLLP, I silently scream.

"Very pleased to meet you, Karen," says my beloved Aunt Pearlie.

Karen smiles and shakes my aunt's hand. Pearlie gives me a look which says: Marry this one or I will personally disembowel you! At least I think that's what the look expresses. Or perhaps I'm just projecting. And Karen? She's looking, well, a bit uncomfortable, if not downright confused.

Aunt Pearlie positions herself to the left of Karen. My mother and sister Caron are to the right. Good grief, they've got Karen surrounded!

ALL SOUND FADES:

All I can hear is my HEARTBEAT thump, thump, thumping in my chest like a galloping horse. The light coming through the window is so bright my head starts to ache.

My eyes focus on Karen, she is poised, talking with my mother, my sister, my aunt, but every once in a while her eyes shift towards me and beckon me to return to planet earth.

I step towards Karen. I must remedy this situation which started out so promisingly and abruptly turned so... weird.

And believe it or not, the doorbell rings. Again. Who could that possibly be?

I swing the door open.

"Hello cutie-pie!"

There stands G. She's a lovely girl from Boro Park. We have (ahem) a complicated history. She's got a blazing head full of reddish blond hair, deep sea-green eyes, and when she speaks Yiddish you do a double take because it's a bit like Rita Hayworth speaking the mama lashon.

Remember the scene in A Night at the Opera, the classic Marx Bros. film where the stateroom just overflows with bodies? Well, the resemblance is startling.

G. sweeps into the room. I introduce her to my mother, my father, my sister, my Aunt. Smiles all around.

I break into a cold sweat.

I look at Karen. Karen looks at me. I try, oh how I try and convey to her that G. is, well, not the one. I have this impulse to confess to Karen that I love her, that I have always loved her, that no matter who I've gone out with she, Karen, has always been the love of my life.

But of course, I'm not insane. Well, maybe just a little. How else to explain falling irrevocably in love when you are nine years old—in fourth grade for crying out loud—and never getting over it?

I introduce Karen to G.

G. smiles.

Karen smiles.

You know how women smile at each other but the smiles are really daggers? Well, that's what is going on here. But squared to the 10th degree.

There is perfect silence in my perfectly tiny apartment. Karen and G. gaze at one another for what seems like an eternity. Karen is still stuck in that couch. Meanwhile, G. has maneuvered herself so that she's standing right next to me. In fact, her hip whispers against mine. She's making sure that Karen sees this.

Karen abruptly stands up. How she manages to move this fast, extricating herself from the vacuum-like couch cushions is a wonder of modern physics.

"I think it's time for me to go," she says in measured tones.

I excuse myself and accompany Karen outside. I decide not to say anything about G. I'll deal with that later. I cut to the chase.

"Will you go out with me?"

"When?"

"Tomorrow. Let's meet after work?"

"Yes."

Karen gives me her phone number.

I enter my apartment. My mother looks at me. My sister looks at me. My aunt looks at me. My father looks at the ball game on TV.

G. crooks her finger, beckons me to a join her in the galley kitchen.

Oh boy.

To be continued...

Karen Adds: When "another woman" showed up, I really got confused, and although not doubting Robert's interest, felt quite uncomfortable, and there was no question the scene had to close. This was an instance where a woman's intuition and split second timing was essential. Before I could articulate words, my body extricated itself from the couch, almost gracefully, and I said, almost in a dignified way, "I think it's time for me to leave." and I made my exit. Just like Robert wrote. There was nothing else to be said or done.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:17 AM | Comments (29)

July 11, 2005

Karen's View From the Couch

The continuing story of Robert's mad love for Karen. It started out in fourth grade at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, when Robert first laid eyes on Karen. Can a 9-year old dweeb really fall in love, and stay in love, pursue said love object? Read the series and find out.

Karen Writes: My memory of that scene must include a description of the apartment. It was a studio. Basically the room consisted of one enormous couch that took up the entire space. It was one of those 70's platform couches that was made up of gigantic cushions that sucked you in. Once you sat down, you couldn't get up. This couch had the added feature of being two-tiered. The top level was Robert's bed. Well, once the parents arrived, they had to be in the same room. There was only one place to sit. Think of the state room in the Marx Brothers “Night of the Opera.”

Being the super analyst I am, I told Robert that I think we are engaging in all this nostalgia because it is one area that we don't have to mourn Ariel. All this romantic froth is a way of celebrating a time when we couldn't possibly miss Ariel, he didn't exist yet.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:38 PM | Comments (16)

Karen Meets the Parents—Way Too Early

Our continuing series that tells the painful, humorous, often deeply weird, and other times simply unbelievable story of my lifelong love for Karen.

I have been in love with Karen since fourth grade. I have finally run into her at a Jewish street festival on the Upper West Side. She is not married. She is not going out with anybody. And now she is sitting in my apartment drinking a glass of water and we are talking and talking and it is absolutely magic. My eyes are fixed on Karen with such intensity that they feel like hot rivets in my head. And that's when the doorbell rings. I open the door. My parents—G-d help me—sweep into the apartment.

My parents, Abraham and Mina Z'L Avrech, wedding day, 1943

There is a long awkward moment as my mother and father realize that a young woman is sitting in my apartment.

“Mom, dad, this is Karen Singer, we went to Yeshiva Flatbush together.”

My mother screams.

She screams Karen's name. She just can't help herself. It is the primal cry of a mother who realizes deep in her gut that this is the one young woman who can save her only son from bachelorhood. My father smiles from ear to ear. Karen is reserved and polite, but I can tell she's a bit uncomfortable. It is a bit early to meet the parents.

My mother sits and plies Karen with questions. My father paces and jingles the change in his pocket. I scrunch down into the couch and try and figure some way of getting my parents out of the apartment without breaking the fifth commandment.

Karen smiles politely at my mother and submits to a ruthless interrogation: What school are you going to? What are you studying? What are your plans for the future? Questions designed to elicit one morsel of information: Are. You. Going. To. Marry. My. Shmendrik. Son?

I search for an opening, and that's when the doorbell rings. I breath a sigh of relief, go to the door, swing it open and who stands there but my younger sister.

Okaaaaay!

At least now there's another body in the room to distract my mother.

To be continued...

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:47 AM | Comments (15)

July 06, 2005

Karen's Side of the Street Festival

Robert didn't find me, because as I've mentioned before, I avoided the mixer madness in front of the shul, and escaped to the rear exit. No meat market for me. The next day, I was stuck in my broiling apartment writing a final term paper and getting nowhere. Another thing that was going nowhere was my latest relationship. I was angry and fed up with the guy who had led me on. No shidduch dating in those days for the Modern Orthodox, you were never sure where you stood, and then when you thought you were heading for a serious relationship, one member (usually the male) got cold feet and had the not ready for a serious commitment, let's see where it goes talk. I was angry, I was ready to break out. Hah! Big rebellion. I would go to the Jewish Street Festival all by my lonesome. Talk about Hashgacha Pratis, Divine Intervention. Well, the street was lined with tacky arts and crafts booths, and I do remember considering buying something. I truly did not know who Robert was when he approached me, but once we started to talk, well, believe it or not, it was magic. You know how they talk about the background sort of fading out, and you just focus on the person in front of you? Well, that's how it was for the next hour. The only thing that was missing was the violins.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:03 PM | Comments (9)

Seraphic Street Festival

The continuing story, actually it's an old fashioned romantic saga, of how I fell in love with my wife.

I am ashamed to admit that I do very little davening, praying, the Shabbos I spot Karen in the women's section. Her hair is not covered, a sure sign in the Orthodox world that a girl is not yet married. She's probably engaged, I tell myself. And so, for the rest of shul, I stare at Karen. Cannot tear my eyes away from her. Gosh, but she is beautiful. As always, she does not know that I am alive. Which is the story of our, ahem, relationship. As far back as fourth grade in Yeshiva Flatbush, I would stare at Karen in the hallways, during recess, class assemblies, and she was simply not aware.

I am determined to approach Karen after shul, talk to her, ask her out. Finally, I am going to let her know that I exist, that I am...what, in love?

Shul is over. Lincoln Square Synagogue is a meat market for Orthodox singles. After services everyone congregates outside; they talk, flirt, make weekend plans, invite people over for Shabbos lunch.

I am carried along by the tide of young, attractive Jewish singles. As always, I feel like an outsider. Most of my elementary and high school yeshiva friends have gone on to respectable careers in law, medicine, and, natch, accounting. I am the Editor-in-Chief of Millimeter, a small, struggling film magazine — and of course I am an aspiring screenwriter, have been ever since I saw The Seven Samurai when I was about fourteen years old.

When I do talk to Orthodox women about my Hollywood dreams their eyes betray either total confusion or they simply glaze over. It is an ambition so far removed from the Orthodox norm that most people considered me if not eccentric, well, at least a loser-in-training. Clearly, I am not a stable prospect; some girls find me amusing, fun to be with, but definitely not husband material.

What these young women never get about me is that more than anything I yearn for a good middle class life.

I lust for normalcy.

In the Lincoln Square crowd, I search for Karen. Moving from group to group I am like some lost soul. I think I spot her shining helmet of black hair, and my heart leaps, but as I inch closer I realize with a sinking feeling that it is not Karen. I slink away.

I feel like weeping.

Paranoia kicks in. Perhaps Karen did spot me in shul. Maybe she did sense my unrelenting gaze and rather than chance running into me, made a tactical retreat.

I walk around the neighborhood for an hour. I am hoping that somehow, miraculously I will bump into her. Everywhere I turn I see clots of attractive Jewish singles. Everyone seems to have someone—everyone but me.

Depressed beyond words, I make my way back to my apartment on West 86th street and eat a miserable, solitary Shabbos lunch.

The next day, there is a Jewish Street Festival. Huge crowds are streaming by my apartment. Normally I flee from crowds, which I define as anything more than, ooooh, two people. But I am so lonely that I simply have to get out of my tiny, shoe box apartment. I need human contact.

Maneuvering my way through the congested streets, all I see are happy Jewish couples. I run into no less than three high school friends with their radiant, pregnant wives. My childhood friends are on their way to prosperous careers, and when I tell them what I am doing, they smile tolerantly, as if to say: same old Robert.

More depressed than ever, I make my way back to my apartment. And then —

— and then I see her.

Karen Singer.

She is at a merchant's booth, holding a t-shirt in her hand, deciding whether to buy it or not. Karen is wearing a khaki skirt, navy blue top, and adorable brown clogs. With her perfect skin, Karen looks like a modest Jewish milkmaid.

A gust of wind blows in from Central Park and a whisp of hair dances across her face. Karen shakes her head, smiling and I am once again that nine-year-old child seeing her for the first time, falling hopelessly, helplessly, inexplicably in love.

I stand there and just gaze at Karen. Where is the inevitable boyfriend? The med student? The high-powered lawyer? The bound-for- millions real estate mogul? But after a few moments it's clear that Karen is alone.

There are puzzles in the universe; there are worlds within worlds. Karen is still single and this is as confusing to me as string theory.

I walk up to her. The world has switched into slow motion. I have no idea what I am going to say.

“Are you Karen Singer?”

Can you believe it, that's exactly what I said to her the last time I saw Karen nine years ago. Wide-eyed, Karen looks at me. She has absolutely no idea who I am.

“Yes, I am,” she answers.

“I'm Robert Avrech. We went to Yeshiva Flatbush together?” Yup, I actually put a question mark at the end of the sentence.

“Oh, right. Hi. I'm driving myself crazy trying to decide if I should buy this t-shirt or not. What do you think?”

She holds up the t-shirt.

Forget about the t-shirt, just marry me!

Finally, Karen puts down the t-shirt down, deciding not to make the purchase. We walk along, chatting about nothing in particular.

I have to know.

“Are you going out with anybody right now?” I asked quite abruptly.

Karen looks me straight in the eye.

“No. Nobody.”

I have no idea what keeps me on my feet. Karen meets my gaze so directly, so fiercely, that it makes water of my knees.

“What about you,” Karen asks, “are you going out with anyone?”

I cannot believe that she's asking me this question.

“No, nobody,” I shake my head.

We continue walking and talking. It's a great two-shot. I can just see it. Max Ophuls would shoot it in one fluid take. It would be... magic.

I tell Karen about my passion for film, for screenwriting. She does not flinch. In fact, this solidly frum, orthodox girl, this daughter of a well known and scholarly black hat Rabbi is genuinely interested as I enthusiastically ramble on about Buster Keaton, Preston Sturges, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Carl Dreyer.

“I'm thirsty,” said Karen.

“I live around the block, would it be okay...?”

“Sure.”

We step into my apartment and Karen sips water. My couch is in an L shape. Karen sits on one end of the L and I sit on the other. We are very proper, and I realize, very nervous.

We continue chatting. I learn that Karen graduated from Barnard and is in a Ph.D program in Psychology at Ferkauf Graduate School. She shares an apartment with several other unmarried young Orthodox women on West 74th street.

You would think that after all these years the reality of being with Karen would be something of a let-down. That my fantasy would come crashing down to earth. That the real Karen would be, well, anti-climactic.

But if anything, I am even more smitten. Karen is exactly what I have imagined — and more.

I was and am a dreamer. My head is in the clouds. Karen is rooted to reality. She was and is the most capable person I have ever met.

Instinctively I know that she will make a better man out of me. Instinctively, I also know that Karen is almost as alienated from the Orthodox mainstream as I am.

She is special; too smart, too aware and introspective to be mindlessly carried along by the powerful currents of the surrounding Orthodox culture.

She is in the society but not of the society.

I understand that we both love Torah Judaism, but there are acute angles to our round personalities.

We talk and talk. I make Karen laugh and when she does her whole face lights up. Like shards of glass, her eyes shine. There seems no end of things to say to each other.

I think of those great Hollywood screwball comedies that I love so much. In these films, the men are always one or two steps behind the women in the dance of love. I feel like one of those clueless men—except I'm about ten steps behind the dance.

The Lady Eve, Barbara Stanwyck is way ahead of clueless Henry Fonda

And then there is a knock at the door. Who can that be? I squint through the peephole.

My parents.

This is going to be... interesting.

To be continued...

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:29 AM | Comments (25)

June 30, 2005

How Not to Pray

The continuing narrative of how I fell in love with my wife.

The year 1967 was the last time I saw Karen. Every once in a while I would spot her at a Yeshiva league basketball game, or in the local pizza shop. Once we all graduated high school, I no longer saw her. My college, Bard, was in upstate New York. I learned that Karen was attending Barnard.

Speaking to my parents by phone they told me that they had driven Karen home from a wedding that past Sunday.

“I told Karen that you're a poet!” my mother gleefully exclaimed.

Inwardly I groaned, horribly embarrassed. I no longer wrote poetry. Gee-willikers, I was writing screeenplays. Karen probably thinks I'm a total lo-ser.

I graduated college, spent a year in Israel, lost several close friends in the Yom Kippur War, and wrote a blisteringly violent script about war and the way violence makes men of boys. I heard from someone that Karen was still not married. Hmmm. Interesting. I assumed that Karen would be one of the first of our class to stand under the chuppah.

I was living on the Upper West Side in 1976, working as the editor-in-chief of Millimeter, a New York film magazine. On Shabbos, I attended the Lincoln Square Synagogue, in those days, a magnet for Jewish singles.

One Shabbos, I lifted my gaze from the siddur and looked at the women's section.

Lincoln Square Synagogue, Main Sanctuary

There was Karen.

And she was not wearing a hat. Which meant that she was still not married. My breath caught in my throat. She had grown into her beauty in the most elegant way. I didn't do much davening after that. Karen prayed with single-minded intensity. Her eyes did not roam. She did not speak to the women sitting next to her. Her black hair shined like a planet. When she stood to chant the Shmoneh Esrei, the Eighteen Benedictions, my eyes fixed on her body swaying back and forth. I was hypnotized. If only I would concentrate on my davening the way I was concentrating on Karen.

Watching her, I realized that my feelings for Karen had not changed in all these years. I was still in love with the girl I had first seen when I was nine-years old.

How to explain it? How to understand it?

I told myself that after shul I would go over, introduce myself and ask Karen out on a date.

To be continued.

Karen adds: I do remember that ride to the wedding. Robert's mother didn't just tell me that Robert wrote poetry, she told me he had won some kind of poetry prize. I didn't think he was a lo-ser, I just didn't relate. He was “arty” and I was on my way to a wedding where I would meet a medical student and fall into another disastrous relationship that lasted about a year. My memories of Lincoln Square Synagogue are full of social anxiety. It was built in the round. Minimal mechitza that has since been modified. In between each aliyah, the gabais would marshal people in and all eyes would turn to the fresh meat entering the shul. It was humiliating. I found a back entrance. My salvation was being able to enter from the top balcony right into the woman's section. Going to shul became easier after that. Robert probably couldn't find me after shul, because I would flee the same way. Well, I'll see what he writes, he never told me.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:03 AM | Comments (8)

June 17, 2005

Seraphic Encounter

The continuing story of the author's love for his wife, Karen. It began when the author was nine-years old, in the fourth grade in Yeshiva Flatbush. It's a long story and this series will continue for, well, until I finish telling the tale.

The basketball game was over. We lost, big time. Our camp, Morasha, was playing Camp Beaver Lake, another Orthodox sleep-a-way camp. At a certain point during the game, I looked up and there she was. Karen was sitting in the bleachers watching the game. Well, not really watching. It was clear she wasn't terribly interested. She was with a group of girls, the alpha group, all of them pretty and smart and unapproachable.

It was 1967. I was point-guard for my camp team, a short but scrappy player with a decent jump shot. My team counted on me for at least ten points a game plus a bunch of assists. But once I saw Karen, my game collapsed. I wanted to be a hero, rip up the court, show her how good I was. But, naturally, I missed every shot. I passed and the ball got stolen. It was gruesome.

Karen was a sight, sitting courtside, wearing cute khaki shorts, and hardly-skuffed white Keds. The fact that she ignored the game, was not aware of my existence just drove me into a pit of despair.

She attended Yeshiva Flatbush high school and I was at, BTA, Brooklyn Talmudic Academy. Sometimes I would see her at Yeshiva League basketball games, at the pizza shop on Avenue J. I was still madly in love with her. And she was blossoming into a rare beauty. The other pretty girls knew they were pretty. You could see their game, the way they flipped their hair every twelve seconds.

But Karen was different. She wore her beauty with obvious discomfort. Her body language was devoid of the traditional teen-girl tactics. Every once in a while I would see her with a boy. She would speak directly, abandoning all the cute little flirtatious giggles that the other girls cultivated into an art form. Though Karen was an adolescent, she was already a woman.

I dreamed about her. I wrote stories about her. I composed bad poetry dedicated to her. I imagined that I would end up marrying some perfectly nice girl, but I'd always secretly be in love with Karen. I would live a hopeless and helpless life.

The game was over. I managed to maneuver close to Karen.

I am a lunatic movie lover and so, naturally, I'm thinking of David Lean's towering and tragic love story, Brief Encounter.

“Hi,” I said, “you're Karen Singer, right?”

Smooth.

She looked at me, obviously had no idea who I was.

“Yes, I am and you're... ?”

“Robert, Robert Avrech.”

“Oh, right, hi.”

Pause. Awkward silence.

“Well, nice to see you,” I said.

I totally missed my line of dialog: Shall I see you again. Please, please, I ask you most humbly.

I did not see or speak to Karen for another nine years.

To be continued.

Karen adds: My first response when I read this entry was, "Was I really different from the other girls?" Then I thought about it. Yes, I followed the fads, but there was always a feelings of dis-ease, a sense of not really belonging, of not feeling so comfortable in my skin. One example. The epitome of queenbeehood was becoming a cheerleader. I entered the "booster" freshman sort of hazing phase, but passed on trying out for the treasured spots on the cheerleader squad. It just didn't feel right. I told myself at the time that I was probably just afraid of being rejected, but a part of me also acknowledged that it felt immodest to parade in front of the crowd in a very short skirt. So I removed myself from the Alpha squad and thus my clique changed and I was relegated to a hazy area between the "brains" and the "popular" groups. Robert was right, I didn't really belong.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:14 AM | Comments (16)

June 16, 2005

Seraphic (Pity) Dance

The saga continues.

Karen's POV: A sociological comment first. Modern Orthodoxy was very different in the 50's and 60's. Our culture was more innocent, hence, the barrier between the general society and our own did not have to be as high. At least that is my theory. Boy/girl parties began in 5th grade, dating in 8th, and we had dances and proms even in yeshiva. The "Welcome Freshman Dance" was the highlight of our entrance into 9th grade. But, as far as I know, there was no drug problem, no pre-marital sex. There was a refinement that is lacking even among the girls in our high schools who use profanities and coarse words with abandon such as "suck" and worse. But, don't get me started.

Robert has a pretty accurate grasp of my mind-set. I have a hazy memory of "The Dance." We were in the basement, there was pizza, and I remember thinking, "Why did this boy ask me to dance? I never spoke to him in my life." It was sort of a "pity dance" because I was polite and didn't know how to say no. We didn't talk or anything. In fact, we didn't speak again until seven years later when we met on the basketball court after my camp played Robert's camp. At that time I remember thinking that Robert looked cute. He was wearing John Lennon glasses now. So don't let him tell you that I gave him another pity dance.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:11 PM | Comments (3)

June 15, 2005

Seraphic Dance

The continuing saga of my lifelong relationship with Karen. Well, actually, to be brutally honest, it wasn't really a relationship until many years after we first met. It's along story. Hence this series.