I stare at the screen. The read receipt stares back. I roll my eyes, toss the phone on the bed, and pull the blanket up to my chest. But I’m still not sleeping. The message sits in my brain like day-old cholent.
Brrrup.
Another message.
“I’m not usually that weird, I swear. It’s just… you’re the first frum guy I’ve seen on here who didn’t look miserable.”
Huh.
I sit up in bed, the blanket sliding down. The room is still. I type slowly.
“Define miserable.”
Brrrup.
“You know the look. Closeted, angry, self-hating, desperate. Not ‘I study Biblical Hebrew and wear my tzitzit proudly on a gay hookup app’ vibes.”
I can’t help but smile. Okay, maybe a half-smile.
“That’s an oddly flattering insult.”
Brrrup.
“I’m not trying to insult you. Honestly, I think it’s kind of amazing. I grew up frum, but I left all that behind. The rules, the pressure—it got too heavy. So seeing someone actually stay and still be out? I don’t know how you do it. Feels… impossible. Or at least complicated as hell.”
I pause.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard.
I type and delete three responses.
“It is.”
“It’s lonely sometimes.”
“More complicated than you think.”
I go with:
“It’s a lot. But being Jewish isn’t the hard part. It’s holding all the parts of myself at once.”
There’s a pause. Longer this time. I yawn and start to put the phone down when—
Brrrup.
“That’s deep for Grindr. You should write a book or something.”
“You caught me. My thesis title is ‘Hookups and Halakha: Negotiating Sacred Space in a Godless Algorithm.”
“😂 I’d read that. Especially if it had footnotes and nudes.”