Chapter 2: Hot Chocolate, Steaks, and G Major

There's a myth, as stubborn as a tahini stain on a white shirt, that women my age (or as the National Insurance Institute calls it: "senior citizen") have no needs. That after age 60, our bodies become a kind of comfortable hanger for loose clothes, and the only organ that still beats strongly is the heart - and even that only when we buy clothes or when there's a sale at the supermarket. Or when there are missiles from Iran.

So I have news for you. Bullshit.

Or as the wonderful Dana Spector once wrote in a monologue that I saved in my favorites:

I read this and felt like someone had slapped me awake. Yes, I want a friend. Yes, I want someone to watch Netflix with. But for God's sake, I want someone to touch me. Not the touch of a doctor looking for lymph nodes, but the touch of a man who wants to know if my skin is still soft.

The first adventure: Sol

Late September 2023. The summer heat has begun to break, and with it my skepticism about this app.

Suddenly a small message appeared. Small, small.

"Hi."

That's it. Two letters. No exclamation points, no eggplant emoji (thank goodness), and no embarrassing opening lines on my eyes.

I looked at the profile. The name was Sol.

Sol? I raised an eyebrow. Like the sun in Spanish? Like the note in music? Or like the fried fish in the kibbutz dining room? The picture was blurry, as if it had been taken through a foggy haze or a very dirty lens.

Usually, that's when I do a quick "Unmatch." But something about that short "hi," maybe the mystery of the name, maybe just the boredom of a Tuesday night, made me answer.

I sent him:

I was direct. I don't have time for games, my biological clock has long since become a decorative wall clock, but time is still precious.

He didn't panic. He immediately sent his number and wrote:

The Steak Test

The next day, I decided to give him a test. Not an IQ test, but a humor and stomach test.

It was the eve of Yom Kippur, and I, the infidel, was sitting in front of a corrupt meal.

I took a picture of my plate: a magnificent steak and behind it - me. A bull. With hands, with sauce, without filters and without posing like an Instagram model eating lettuce.

I sent him the picture with the caption:

I pressed 'send' and immediately thought - Yael, have you gone crazy? This is a romantic reception? It looks like an advertisement for 'Agadir' that got out of hand. But I had to know. If he's scared of a woman who eats with appetite - he's not for me. If he thinks it's vulgar - let him go find someone who orders mineral water on a date.

The tension in the air was thicker than the sauce on my steak. I was convinced I was funny, but would he understand?

Then, the cell phone vibrated.

He laughed. He didn't just write "hahaha," he sent a voice message in which he choked on laughter.

"Woman, my dear,"

The hot chocolate effect

It was fun. Interesting. Warm and cozy.

After he left, something strange happened. I didn't sleep at all that night.

I lay in bed, staring at the familiar ceiling, but my body felt foreign. In the best possible way.

There was a thrill. Not the usual anxiety of "did I lock the door," but a butterfly. A real, almost physical butterfly that fluttered across my stomach, climbed to my chest, tickled my ears slightly, glided to my cheeks, and finally rose and exploded in my brain like fireworks on Independence Day.

The excitement was increasing by the minute. I'm already at the "I don't really remember this feeling" level. When was the last time I felt my blood flowing like this? Not because of high blood pressure, but because of desire?

A warm, almost liquid pleasantness spread through my body. I felt like hot chocolate all over. Thick, sweet, melting.

It was the most sensual feeling I had experienced in a long time. It was delightful. I lay there, in the dark, and I didn't need anything but this feeling. I didn't need a TV, a book, or my phone. Just being inside my body, which suddenly remembered that it was alive. A pleasant, caressing shiver wrapped me under the blanket. I got it. I want this. This is how I want to feel. This is how I want to be.

Dreams apart and reality apart

Under the blanket of hot chocolate and the shivers of pleasure, there was one little truth that I completely missed in the cloud of euphoria: this "Sol" is not just a stranger from Tinder. At some point in our conversations on WhatsApp, the chip fell.

And then it hit me. The 1980s. Tel Aviv. I'm young, shapely, working at a small, prestigious publishing house, surrounded by the scent of printing and Time cigarettes. And him? He was "Shmulik," a publisher of all sorts of children's booklets, who would come to our office with suspicious frequency. Officially, he came to "coordinate distributions." Practically? He came to stare at me and stutter in front of my cleavage.

It turns out that Shmulik, sorry, "Sol", never forgot me.

"I've waited forty years," he whispered dramatically to me in the living room. It was supposed to be romantic. Oh my. But in retrospect, it should have been the moment when a flashing red light the size of Azrieli came on.

Because amidst all the excitement of "Fate Brought Us Together," I didn't notice a small, marginal detail: the man had become a complete spiritualist.

The name "Sol"? It's not an abbreviation. It's a name he adopted while living in an ashram of some sect I can't even remember what they believed in (something to do with purification through eating sprouts or worshipping the sun god?). His talk of "energies" and "cosmic connection"? I, foolishly, thought he was talking about the sexual chemistry between us. It turns out he was talking about a purple aura he saw above me.

It was bizarre. But the thrill blinded me. We parted with a hug that promised the world.

The next day?

nothing.

quiet.

Digital crickets.

I waited for the "good morning" message, for the "how did you sleep?", for the "your energies still resonate with me."

Nada.

It took me two days to figure it out. Two days of staring at the phone, refreshing WhatsApp, checking if I had reception. Finally I called Dikla. The gorgeous Dikla, my best friend, is a longtime divorcee with a PhD in Tinder science. I told her everything. About the steak, about the night, about the hot chocolate, and about the deafening silence.

"Honey," she said in a girl scout leader voice, "Welcome to the real world. It's called 'fading.' Ghosting. Fading."

"But he knew me!" I shouted into the phone, "He waited for me for forty years! He saw my aura!"

"He saw the illusion," Dikla interrupted. "He got the boost to his ego, saw that the fantasy from the '80s was still alive and kicking, and ran away as soon as it became real. He's a ghost, Yael. Ghosts tend to disappear."

I was deeply offended. Not just by the rejection, but by the gap. The unimaginable gap between what he conveyed to me - the warmth, the laughter, the "fate" - and the cold reality of a blank screen. And that's how I landed in this world. Unprepared. Exposed. With sweet illusions that now I would have a life full of stormy romances and exciting closures.

Did you think I learned? That I removed the app and went back to knitting? You made me laugh.

If there's one thing a girl like me knows how to do, it's get up, shake off the dust (and the ego), and keep dancing. This is just the beginning.

Next.

Chapter 2: Hot Chocolate, Steaks, and G Major