Another Daniel
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I know it's been a long time since I've written anything, but instead of dwelling too much on that mistake, I'll just tell about the excellent fellow I met this past Monday night. I was out on the street near my house, about to run an errand, when I made eye contact with a tourist who was passing by. He stopped to ask me if I had any suggestions for something interesting to do. I never came up with anything good to do that evening (now that tourist season is over, most things close even earlier than usual), but then we got to talking.
I learned that his name is also Daniel and that he's visiting Israel for a couple weeks and would be spending the next couple days in Tzfat. He lives in Miami, but was born and grew up in Venezuela. He works as a writer and reporter for the New Herald, a Spanish newspaper in Miami. During our conversation, he mentioned that he planned to go hiking the next day, and I happily offered to act as his guide. It had been too long since I'd had a good walk, and Daniel was certainly enjoyable company. We agreed to rendezvous the next morning for services at a nearby synagogue. The itinerary for the day was to have breakfast, attend morning classes at my yeshiva, hike all the way to Meron in the afternoon, reach the grave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai at about nightfall, and take the bus back to Tzfat.
I felt excited after we parted for the evening. The plans for spending the next day together did have the uncanny feeling of a date hovering around it. But I couldn't be sure it wasn't just the result of the wishful thinking I can't help but indulge in whenever I meet a handsome and apparently eligible bachelor. As I spent the day with Daniel, a myriad microscopic details I noticed about him accumulated in my semi-conscious mind, adding up to a steadily growing hunch that he was, in fact, gay. For instance, there was a certain quality in his voice that reminded me of Moshe, the Brazilian guy I had dated last spring. He exhibited the concern for neatness and cleanliness in his personal surroundings that is so common among gay men. And, of course, he hadn't made even the slightest mention of relationships with women. But I still had nothing firm to confirm my hunch by the time we were about halfway through our hike.
The weather had been beautiful from the very beginning of the hike, with just enough cloudiness to keep the sunlight from being too hot. The scenery was as gorgeous as always. Though most of the herbs and grasses in the fields and hillsides were dried up after the recent summer season, leaving only thorns and burrs behind, the woods surrounding the stream at the bottom of the valley were still vibrant and green. The water burbled cheerfully as we chatted about topics ranging from our personal lives to the philosophy and psychology of self-improvement. I segued the conversation into how I had spent my time during the recent war. First, I related the basic details of where I set up lodgings, how my parents came to visit, and Seth's wedding. Then I steeled my nerve a bit and mentioned, as casually as I could manage, how I also had a lot of fun and made a lot of friends at the World Pride week in Jerusalem. Daniel responded with perfect aplomb that he'd heard of the event, but thought it had been cancelled because of the war. We were soon chatting about gay life and culture in both Miami and in different parts of Israel as if it were the most natural thing in the world, which it was, after all. The conversation after that became a lot deeper and more meaningful for both of us, as we compared experiences dealing with how being gay influences relationships with family, friends, and religion. Daniel was pleasantly surprised at how open and out I am to the rabbi and my fellow students at yeshiva without any discomfort. He told me about how he had recently grown so much closer to one of his Israeli cousins who had come out to him through a letter, and how he was going to be spending most of the rest of his vacation bonding with this formerly distant relation.
When we finally got back to Tzfat, we greedily gobbled a schwarma dinner and wandered around the Artists' Quarter a bit. In search of an alleged Torah class that we never found, we wound up discovering a beautiful tea house which was unfortunately reserved for a women's group till late in the night. Instead, we decided to split up for a half hour to freshen up and meet back at Ascent, the hostel at which Daniel was staying, where a small class on the weekly Torah portion was being held. Reluctant to let the night end, we both schmoozed as long as we could after the class was over, but eventually capitulated to the satisfying exhaustion that follows a good exercise.
Regretfully, our respective schedules didn't give us any free time to spend together today, but I managed to catch Daniel at the bus station at sunset to see him off before he left for Haifa to meet his cousin and proceed to more southern parts of the country. My romantic sentimentality made me buy him a small bundle of flowers as a parting gift. I probably won't see him again before he returns to Florida. I'm overjoyed to have made a new friend, and I intend to keep in touch with him. But it's a little too bad: if we both lived in the same part of the world, he's the kind of guy I'd snap up as quickly as I could. Parting is such sweet sorrow.