10:47 AM:

(In the unlikely event that anybody in my family has stumbled across this journal, and somehow missed the prominent "Go Away" message on the front page, let me reiterate: the stuff here doesn't concern you, and if you read on anyway, and I find out, I will make your life a living hell. And that goes for any entry, not just this one. Scram. Thank you.)

I'm blaming this entry on Jen. We were walking down the street (more on that, and other New York highlights, in an upcoming entry), she remarked on the general attractiveness of the denizens of the area, I replied that I really preferred not to notice, but that I hadn't actually written that entry yet, and she said that, yeah, when was I going to stop beating around the bush and write about it already? But I have been circling around the edges of this for some time, and that question was really just a catalyst, a mere excuse, allowing me to pin the rap on someone else, while knowing full well that, ultimately, I have only myself to blame. Which is something I've been doing for years, actually, but now I'm evading the point...

What the hell, let's come right out and say it: I'm 29, I have absolutely no sexual experience, and I'm horny, dammit. And this has only been getting worse the longer I've tried to ignore it.

The religious side of me is aware that this is God's less-than-subtle way of reminding me that I should've gone on the marriage market years ago. I am, by a wide margin, the oldest unmarried male in my family tree. The next four siblings in my family have all gotten hitched, In the world of Orthodox Jewish dating, I'm practically over the hill; while 29-year-old bachelors aren't unheard of, it's usually not for want of trying. The stirrings in my loins, then, are supposed to be spurring me on to start dating, find Ms. Right, marry her, and get to work on propagating the species.

I've never been comfortable with that idea. As far back as I can remember (way back into the years when my age was represented by a single digit), I was loudly insistent that I had no intention of getting married. And while the reasons for that have changed somewhat with time, it's still pretty much the way I feel.

But it's gotten harder. A few short years ago, when asked why I didn't want to get married, I was able to return the question with some added spin, saying that the bigger question was why on earth I would want to get married. I can't do that anymore, not honestly. I can see the appeal, and sex doesn't even enter into the main one. The idea of having a really good friend around to talk to on a daily basis turns out to be surprisingly seductive and compelling.

I say "surprisingly" only because I spent years trying to disprove the adage that no man is an island. I never wanted to need social interaction; I wanted to be able to be entirely self-sufficient. Given that I devoted over 900 minutes last month to long-distance phone calls, it's pretty obvious that that didn't work out. In fact, when I started seeing a counselor at the university a few months ago, and typed up a list of the problems I was then facing, "I'm lonely" was a prominent one. Phone calls and online forums go only so far.

So, duh, why not go on the market and settle down with a Nice Jewish Girl, you might ask? (And you might as well ask; everybody else has. Although most of them don't get anything near as complete an answer as you're about to get.) There are several reasons, actually.

Perhaps first and foremost, I still haven't sorted out the whole religious identity thing. I'm still Orthodox Jewish, and the religious side of me is still pretty much ultra-right-wing as regards religious philosophy. I tend to see things in black and white, not shades of grey-- very intricate and convoluted black-and-white patterns, yes, but everything is ultimately binary: right or wrong, permitted or forbidden, what I should be doing or what I shouldn't. And, y'know, I prefer it that way. It works for me. I can get behind the idea of Ultimate Justice, based on a very precise and definite set of rules. Grey areas are more disturbing than comforting, in my book.

(Of course, even underlying my religious side, I'm still a staunch moral relativist, so I'm also aware that this is merely the perspective that works for me, and not the "right" one in any sense. But this is largely irrelevant to the point at hand; this is nothing if not a subjective entry.)

With that having been said, I haven't exactly been living up to the demands of that religious philosophy. Nice Jewish Boys take the time to study the Talmud (or at least some religious text) every day. Nice Jewish Boys don't study four-letter-words. Nice Jewish Boys don't edit erotica. Nice Jewish Boys have never checked out an issue of Playboy, not even for "market research" purposes. Nice Jewish Boys have certainly never subscribed to Playboy in a moment of weakness. Nice Jewish Boys don't know what "masturbation" means, let alone how to spell it correctly. Nice Jewish Boys start dating in their early twenties, get married as soon as possible, and set about channelling all that sexual energy into bonding with their wives and producing the next generation. So while I keep kosher, say prayers daily and blessings as required, keep Shabbos, and so on, I am clearly not a Nice Jewish Boy.

But this is getting a bit circular, which I hadn't intended. The point I was heading towards is that while some might find a way of reconciling the gap between philosophy and practice, I've resisted anything of the sort. Remember, I don't believe in shades of gray. I'd rather know that I'm doing the wrong thing than try to convince myself that the wrong thing isn't so wrong after all. The former is at least intellectually honest, which matters to me pretty much above all else.

In the meantime, I've been living a pretty schizophrenic life, to the extent that I've been allowing myself to live at all. And while this has finally started changing a bit in recent months -- I've been allowing myself a bit more room to experiment, to shake up the rules a bit, to somewhat arbitrarily choose from a palette of Orthodox Jewish rulings and customs, replacing those followed by my father without consulting a rabbi first -- I'm still by no means certain where I'm gonna end up. Is this a step towards a more comfortable compromise, in which I discover or develop an Orthodox Jewish philosophy and lifestyle I can live with? Or a step towards a more drastic break from that world? At this point, I still don't know.

This is perhaps the most important reason why dating isn't really an option for me just now. Because if the point of dating is to facilitate marriage, and if marriage is a joining of the lives of two people for the mutual pursuit of a common goal, not knowing what one's goal is can lead to disaster. And while I know that the particulars are constantly being worked out, that nobody really knows where they're headed, and that this very journey might be taken together, it helps to have at least a rough idea. What happens if I assume that I'll be sticking with the religious path, marry a Nice Jewish Girl accordingly, and then realize, a couple of years later, that, no, I just can't live that way? And this isn't just me being insecure-- this is a pretty damn plausible scenario. The results wouldn't be fair to her, and wouldn't be good for either of us.

There are other reasons, too. I value my privacy; on the whole, I'm thrilled to be living in my very own apartment. While the idea of having a friend around every day is appealing, the idea of living with one full-time is pretty frightening. But this, and other such arguments, no longer seem as compelling as they once did. I'm finally becoming convinced that the gains might outweigh the losses in that regard.

But then there's the other big one: Orthodox Jewish life revolves around the family. The three major stages in a person's life are Torah, Chuppah, u'Ma'asim Tovim: learning Torah, entering the marriage canopy, and doing good works. And prominent within the category of "good works" is the very first commandment in the Bible: go forth and multiply. This is much of the point in getting married, from an Orthodox Jewish standpoint: producing the next generation. Under Jewish law, I'm required to do my best to bring forth at least one daughter and one son.

But I don't wanna. If nothing else, I'm pretty damn certain that I'd be a lousy father. I don't want to ever put anybody through what I went through, and I'm self-aware enough to know that self-awareness isn't gonna be enough to keep that from happening to any offspring I might have. Frankly, I don't think my father had any business subjecting fifteen kids to having him as a parent, and I have no interest in repeating the mistake. (Plus, y'know, I simply don't like kids, at least until they get old enough to be interesting.)

Which, from an Orthodox Jewish standpoint, at least, makes me entirely unsuitable as a potential match. Which might further suggest that I ought to seriously consider my possibilities outside the Orthodox Jewish world, but I'm not ready to go there yet.

In the meantime, I'm 29, I have no sexual experience, and I'm horny.

This presents a number of problems, some of which I've been wrestling with for years. I never have been able to deal with my sexuality very well; for the most part, I've simply wished it would go away. I like to think I'm a rational person; I've always wanted to run my life through logic and reasoning. I've always wanted to be a Vulcan, with emotions kept under control and out of the way.

But even Vulcans have to deal with ponn farr. And sexuality refuses to be the least bit rational. Which drives me bonkers. One very strong reason why I've devoted so much time and energy to studying sex-related issues over the years is that I've been trying to pin it down and understand it, the better to disarm and contain it. Not that this has worked in the least.

But, as always, I have a positive genius for introspection and over-analyzing everything. As I put it in a late-night chat session some time back, "I'm no more sex-obsessed than average, I think, but I'm obsessed with that obsession more than most... Most guys might think 'hey, nice hooters,' and be done with it. I have to spend hours wondering why I feel attracted, why I can't break that, why it all matters, and whether this destroys my feminist and religious credentials, and whether the solution is not to notice, or to accept the fact that I do notice, but, no, I shouldn't, but I'm human, but I hate being human, but... well, anyway."

(While I've been concentrating on the religious elements in this entry, the feminist stuff is indeed relevant here, too. But let's leave that can of worms alone for now, okay?)

Anyway, that particular intellectual struggle has been going on for quite some time, and hasn't really gotten any worse lately. It may even have eased off somewhat. Then there's the force of curiosity, always my fatal flaw. This has continued to lead me to new, interesting, and not entirely comfortable places over the years, but, again, nothing drastically new there.

The sexual frustration is starting to get to me, though.

It was suggested on a forum I frequent, some time back, that crushes might be fun primarily for those who are actually in relationships, while those who aren't might find them more upsetting than anything else. I don't know about the universality of that, but there does seem to be something there. I might add that somebody who isn't in a relationship and has no reasonable chance of being in one anytime soon might have it worst of all; what possible positive function might such a person's libido serve? To put it bluntly, what good does it do one to get turned on when one knows full well that one isn't gonna be getting any? How can arousing stimuli be construed as fun, rather than slow torture?

I dunno.

I could go on longer, but I think I've expanded the Too Much Information boundary enough for one entry.