I'm not a boy to kiss and tell, so you only get the following synopsis: Indian food, very long walk in the park, introducing Avishai to parts of the city he never knew about, olive trees, holding hands, hedgehogs, sitting on a park bench with arms around shoulders to ward off the cold, lots and lots of talking about religion, music, relationships, and a really very long good-bye.

So I really have to thank Avishai for introducing me Elroy, my most gracious host for this past Friday night Shabbos feast. I had a great time and made some nice new friends. It was the first time I had the fortune to spend a Shabbos meal at a table surrounded entirely by gay men, and I must say I like the feeling of fitting in. The five of us spanned a religious spectrum from strongly Orthodox-identified to non-Jewish, and the languages spoken around the table included Hebrew, English, and Dutch. So we formed a nice little rainbow. Elroy's cooking was amazing; elegant, rich, and delicious. One of us facetiously asked why he wasn't married already.

Tonight, I went to the Jerusalem Open House to catch their monthly meeting for English-speakers. I met a lot of warm and friendly people there, and found the staff there to be very nice. The topic of the meeting was the upcoming World Pride week here in Jerusalem. I got a lot of really useful information out of the meeting, and I succumbed a bit to their appeal for volunteers. (I should be able to help guide people around at the Multifaith Conference on Wednesday, the day after Seth and Rachel's wedding.) The event seems to be shaping up to something really exciting, something with a lot of substance. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of the war on the northern border is that the Jerusalem police force won't have enough humanpower to provide adequate security, so the parade part of the week is being postponed. But we are determined that the march will go ahead as planned as soon as the crisis is quelled.

The week's winding to another end. I'm spending Shabbos in Maale Adumim at Jacob Laderman's house, Seth and Rachel are in Efrat, and I presume Rebecca and Avraham and Ashira are spending Shabbos in the apartment they're renting in the Old City of Jerusalem. I saw Steve off this morning at the bus station on his way to the airport. We celebrated his last night here with a pint of Haagen Dazs, followed by a stroll around town to work off the resulting sugar buzz. It's too bad that the sudden war kept me from showing him a better time here, but I think he still got his money's worth. :)

Sunday's headache had the good grace to stay away. Didn't do much yesterday besides go to yeshiva and work and nap away the hottest part of the day. Very fortunately, the yeshiva managed to get the dorm boys settled in a decent place in Jerusalem that will be able to take them in for as long as the fighting lasts up north, so today's classes actually took on some semblance of normalcy.

Here's the daily update. I took the bus with Steve last night from Lisa and Moshe's house in Tel Mond to Seth's apartment in Jerusalem and we spent the night there. I expect we'll stay here for the foreseeable future. My yeshiva has all fled Tzfat and we're meeting now in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem as long as we remain refugees. I got an awful headache in the middle of the morning, though, had to take an expensive cab ride home, and spent a pretty miserable afternoon in bed. The heat today was awful, and your typical analgesics don't seem to work so well for me. What seemed most effective against the headache was a wet towel applied to my head and body. I'm mostly better now, except when I tilt my head too far away from the vertical, and I was able to catch up on some work in the late afternoon. I plan to take it easy this evening, hopefully catch dinner with Seth and/or one or more of the Seigel family members.

So, I haven't been keeping up with writing about the events of the week, and there's nice things to report, but first I have to update you about the sudden military crisis, so this will seem a bit backwards.

So, I had a lovely set of shabbos meals with Dionne and Chaim and their little toddler Itamar. And after Shabbos, I told Chaim that I'm gay when he called me on the phone: I finally had enough of him trying to set me up with girls. Which brings me to the topic of this rant: reactions to coming out of the closet. Or, rather, apparent lack thereof. I know, everyone wants to be the good supportive friend and no one wants to come off as a bigot, but really, I don't mind if you are at least a teensy bit flustered or something. Just take a second to say, "oh." Acknowledge the fact that I just said something kinda significant. Don't pretend that you're totally unsurprised when you were quite obviously working under the assumption that I was straight. It really is nicer for me that way.

The Klezmer Festival is starting this Sunday, and you can see the signs sprouting up around the city. The visitors are starting to trickle in, and, in fact, I'm spending my Shabbos meals with a couple I'm friends with from Jerusalem, Chaim and Dionne Hayman, who are in town for the first two days of the festival.