Shiksas

It will come as a surprise to no one who's read my book (1) that I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. As a result, I learned many valuable life lessons -- even if some tidbits reached me in a somewhat circuitous manner.

Thousands of years ago, the revealed word of G-d (2) was given to Moses who, in turn, wrote the Torah. The Torah was given to G-d's chosen people, the Jews, who studied it with meticulous care. The most sagacious of the ancient scholars ruminated upon it and regurgitated the Talmud, a compilation of the elders' vast discernment on all things within their purview. Throughout the centuries, the best and brightest of the Children of Israel would be called upon to spend years toiling at yeshivot and eventually become rabbis. The rabbis spread out, formed congregations and inculcated succeeding generations of little Jew-lets (3) with the wisdom of antiquity. When I was in middle school, several of my compatriots spent weekends at their synagogues being immersed in those very teachings. On Monday, they would come back to school and dazzle me with their erudition. Foremost among the many locker room admonitions they related to me was the apotropaic axiom, "Shiksas are for practice." (4)

Naturally, I was dubious. After all, doesn't "practice" go both ways? If the shiksas were giving all this practice, wouldn't they likewise be getting substantial amounts of practice and, thereby, be further along the road to perfection? It made no sense. It was like putting a soldier through boot camp and then discharging her. Further, why would mathematical induction fail in this situation? If they were good to date before you started dating them (day 0), and they were presumptively good for n days, how could their suitability precipitously decline, or perhaps vanish, at n+1 days? (5) Alas, the mutually unshrouded glandes of my Kabbalah cabal comrades and I belied an intellectual sodality that was woefully absent and their chary orations remained beyond my ken.

Soon thereafter, I plunged into the world of dating, forewarned but not forearmed. Although I had a lovely dalliance with a Jew-bian Princess (6) in high school, she was the exception. In the succeeding decades, my love life was circumscribed by the Realm of Shiksa Temptresses -- with very satisfying results.

Until recently. After spending the better part of a decade with my muse, a goyish gal if ever a gal was goy, (7) the dangers inherent in dating shiksas were finally made clear in a blinding flash of enlightenment.

A couple weeks ago, a lesion (8) appeared on the back of my left shoulder. It was big and red and annoyingly painful, but these things happen. They go away in time. If they don't, you see a doctor. This particular lesion appears to be fading nicely, thank you very much, but before its disposition became obvious, I was forced into the following conversation with my muse:

Muse:	How's that sore on your shoulder?
Me:	I don't know. I can't see it.
Muse:	[looks, prods] Does that hurt?
Me:	[grimacing] Yes.
Muse:	Maybe you should go to the doctor.
Me:	Bah. It's probably nothing.
Muse:	It could get infected. It probably is infected; I squeezed pus out of it the other night. You seem awfully nonchalant; don't you know you could die from an infection?
Me:	I'm non-cholent because I haven't stewed over it.
Muse:	[no reaction, continues nagging...]

No reaction. I reapeat, no damn reaction! I extemporaneously pulled a cholent pun out of thin air and she didn't even realize I'd done it! The opportunity to pun on cholent comes around, perhaps, once in a lifetime and it was wasted on an uncomprehending and unappreciative shiksa.

I hope my middle school chums don't read this, otherwise I'm in for a flurry of I-told-ya-so's.

Shiksas suck.

Which, by the way, is why they're totally worth dating.

Salivo Ergo Sum,
D.I. Prime
February 22, 2008

(1) Yes, that phrase has no informational value whatsoever. It was only included in a futile attempt to plug my book.

(2) It's a Jew thing. I wouldn't understand. Apparently, the elided form is mandated since there's a rule about not erasing or defacing the name of the deity.

(3) In most places, Jew-lets are wrought but, in the Southern US, they mint Jew-lets.

(4) According to Wikipedia, "shiksa" is a Yiddish word for a "non-Jewish woman" derived from a Hebrew word meaning, variously, "loathsome", "abomination", "unclean", "dirty", "rodent", or "lizard".

(5) What can I say? I was a mathematically precocious middle schooler. I've since regressed below the mean.

(6) What's a Jew-bian? Bitch, you almost made me laugh.

(7) I'm sorry, Wizard of Oz references are beneath me. It wasn't even a good reference. Perhaps the literati who frequent my blog would be more comfortable with, "Andrew Marvell could have written 'To His Goy Mistress' about her."

(8) Don't be fooled by the faux-medical term. I have no idea what my shoulder blemish is, but "lesion" seems more erudite than "Zit of Epic Proportions". Maybe it's an insect bite. Maybe it's a plague being visited upon me for dating a shiksa. I don't know. It's irrelevant to the story.