A Middle-Eastern evening

My social life is more active these days. I get more time, thanks to no rehearsals, and I’m feeling better. Last night, I went out on a date with an exotic guy – a gay Israeli man. Very accomplished. Very well rounded. Very complex.

He’s a divorcee, a father of three, the ex-lover of two men, and is not actively looking. Our date went from a riveting conversation in a café to searching for a pub to down some beer, failing which we ended up in another café.

The conversation was primarily one of discovery. I discovered very strange, very Indian – yes, I said that – norms of behavior with respect to social life. For example, an Israeli’s home is open to all. People walk in and out all the time. This is almost exactly what happens in Kerala, by the way.

I, expecting Western – American/Western European - customs, was surprised that a white man was saying all the things that I don’t practice, quite frankly, am intimidated by. I later confirmed that these are common practices in Israel – yes, I have my sources.

1 comment:

masalai said...

Sorry to be a pedant, but this person is the wrong gender to be a divorcée: he’s a divorcé. An unusual Israeli, this fellow. Israelis are famously hospitable to pale-complexioned westerners regardless whether Jewish or Christian but of course infamously not to indigenous Palestinians regardless whether Christian or Muslim. And Jews from Kerala and Ethiopia are unwelcome. What makes this Israeli so tolerant of other ethnicities than European and American? (Note that the full and correct “Indo-European” racial description is too broad for relevance to Israelis.) One wonders how Pakistani Jews would fit in. One must assume not with great welcome. Moving back to mere spelling, I guess that by using the US “behavior” rather than international “behaviour” you explain “practice” when it’s a verb.

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