Chapter 30: Love at Zero Range (War Edition)

When there's an alarm in Tel Aviv, my brain doesn't go into defense mode, it goes into writing mode. While normal people are checking to see if the shelter is clean and has mattresses already in it, I start imagining the new chapter I'll write.

Because let's face it: the dating world doesn't stand still. It's just rapidly adapting from survival of the fittest to survival of the horny. It's becoming a kind of survival acrobatics. The ability to stay at the peak of passion while the sky outside looks like a game of Tetris on fire.

This post isn't really related to reality. I quit apps, after all. So what's left for me but to imagine? Come on, really?

Come with me for a short trip into the realms of imagination. It's Juicy today.

In my imagination, I'm already wondering if my next date will arrive with a bouquet of flowers or an explosive drone. But the climax comes in the crazy and delusional combination of dates and missiles.

The battery is dead.

Imagine 2 pikemen trying to arrange an exotic date under missiles.

She switches identities, he's a keyboard warrior, who meet in the protected space of the messenger. They're at the height of dirty talk, the words firing faster than the interceptors. They're right there, on the verge of ecstasy, as Tel Aviv joins the celebration. Alarm. They calm down, their breathing returns, the words become dirty again, and suddenly? "red color" again. For the third time, when she's already screaming at him and moaning, at the height of the drama, the screen goes dark. Not ghosting, no! The battery is simply dead. Boom!!! She's left in the dark with a dead device, wondering if the orgasm was lost because of Khamenei or because she forgot to connect the charger.

The Great "March of Shame"

Nothing bonds a couple on a first date more than a half-naked run to the protected space of the floor.

Imagine the perfect romantic moment: the lights are dimmed, the tension is at its peak, clothes start flying everywhere, and suddenly "the color red." The dilemma becomes both existential and absurd. On the one hand, the temptation to continue, to declare that "we're going to die tonight anyway" and ignore the world, is incredibly strong. On the other hand, the basic instinct for survival wins out. And so they find themselves running to the stairwell, wrapped in only a thin duvet.

Their dubious luck brings them together with the downstairs neighbor, who has just let the dog out, and with the lady on the first floor, a pensioner from the Ministry of Education, who is holding a trembling Pekingese and a bowl of grapes. Her hair is still arranged in a 1960s style. This is the new boyfriend, Deborah, she says, blushing as an interceptor shakes the building and plaster falls on his shoulder. He seems like a good guy, Deborah replies, scanning his tattoos optically, it's just a shame he doesn't have a gas mask, I heard Iran is sending something special this time. They stand there for 10 minutes, trying to look nonchalant while all the neighbors stare at the blue marks on his neck. "It's not what you think," he tries to explain, "it's from an interceptor shrapnel."

He turns to her and says, "It was amazing, but I would have preferred to discover your G-spot without the accompaniment of overhead interceptions."

And what about the physics of reality?

I imagined a couple, let's call them Adi and Roy. Roy, an operational efficiency type, sets a date at the most psychopathic location in the city: a picnic on a hill overlooking the Iron Dome.

"This is the safest place in the Middle East," he explains to her as he spreads out a mat five meters from the launchers, "it's like sitting under God's umbrella." Just as he leans in for the first kiss, the one that's supposed to make them forget the fact that they're in the heart of a military target, the battery comes to life. "Ps

They flee from there, sooty and shivering, straight towards the supermarket. The only place in town with reinforced concrete walls and lighting that flatters the complexion even during a chemical attack.

"We met in the diaper aisle," one says excitedly, "it seemed like the safest place. He brought me wine in disposable glasses, how sweet it is." When the alarm went off, we hugged near the '2 for 10' counters. It was the closest I've come to an orgasm since Khamenei started threatening.

When you're afraid to go too far, dates also undergo local adaptation. Who needs fancy restaurants when there are underground parking garages or "Super-Pharm" branches?

The new pick-up club

The public shelter on the street instantly became the hottest and most crowded pick-up club in the city, with about thirty people crammed into a twenty-square-meter room that was permeated with the heavy smell of canned tuna and a general atmosphere of "the end of the world to the left." This shelter is where style is going to die. Amidst this chaos, a fascinating human zoo was revealed: a hipster with a designer oxygen mask that fits her shoes, a high-tech guy trying to conduct a conference call in an authoritative voice as if he were on the 40th floor of a tower and not in a dank basement, and a desperate bachelor who recognized the bombings as an operational opportunity and approached the girl closest to him with the ultimate martial law, offering her to share his six-pack of mineral water and his portable iPhone charger.

One couple sat down on a wooden box of "First Aid" from '73. Around them, people were starting to lose it. A young couple in the corner decided that this was the right moment to realize their love, because "who knows if we'll be here in ten minutes." When the loudest "boom" sounded, he grabbed her hand. "If we die now," he whispered with the dramatics of an actor in a 7th-grade telenovela, "just so you know that I wrote in my profile that I'm 5'10" but I'm actually 5'7". She laughed wildly at that moment, inside the sweaty shelter, with the neighbors staring at them and the missiles celebrating outside, she realized that this was the best story for the blog. "Hey, honey," she told him, "Don't worry. If we survive, I'll write about you being six feet tall."

A guy with a standard MMA and a stock of Bamba is needed.

I imagined, for example, the new war startup:

During this period, priorities change completely. Cubes in the stomach are nice, no doubt, but on these dates, 40 cm thick reinforced concrete is the real turn-on. A guy with an unprotected garden apartment? "Next" right away. But a guy with a standard MAM, strong Wi-Fi inside, and a stock of Bamba for emergencies? This is real "wife material." The new status on the profiles is looking for "a serious relationship, or at least someone with an apartment on the second floor or lower."

Tel Aviv looks like the set of a science fiction movie. Profiles of Revolutionary Guards fighters with an exaggerated fondness for bathroom selfies have started appearing on Facebook. But hey, this war won't stop the most basic human urge: to find someone to shiver with under the blanket when the sky explodes.

Take Noa, for example. She made an appointment with Daniel. He looked promising in the pictures. A smile of "I know how to change a flat tire" and a look of "I'm not a psychopath, I swear." Because they were afraid to stray from the radius of protection, the date took place on Zoom. She sat in front of her laptop, upper half in a little black dress that revealed almost everything, lower half in flannel pajamas and military socks. Just as Daniel started to explain to her why he believes white wine is the only way to survive the Middle East, his screen froze. Not because of the internet, but because his electricity went out with a "boom" that shook the display case in her living room.

"Daniel?" she shouted at the black screen, "Are you alive or did Khamenei just Unmatch you?"

And what about ghosting??

And of course, there's the "ghosting" thing. In a normal world, when he doesn't answer, she knows he's just a maniac. But in a war with Iran, she always wonders: "Is he screening me, or is he just in the reserves without reception? Or maybe a drone hit him?" Tel Avivian optimism refuses to die: "I'm sure he's not answering because he was transferred to a secret unit," she convinces herself, "and not because I told him my dog is bisexual."

So there you have it. Just so you know, in my imagination, Tel Aviv becomes a city of horny ghosts, running around the shelters looking for human contact that will make them forget the fact that the sky is falling. This is cynicism at its best, but it's also the most human thing there is: laughing at fear through the keyhole of the bedroom, or the emergency room.

Chapter 30: Love at Zero Range (War Edition)