BEFORE THERE WAS JDATE...

There was the AOL Jewish Singles chat room. This recent story, on the CBS 11 o'clock news here in NY, reminded me of something that happened to me in what now seems like a lifetime ago. I was in my mid-twenties, horny and bored - a dangerous combination. There was no high-speed internet, and AOL charged by the minute. Given that I spent many minutes in the aforementioned chat room, my monthly bill was in the hundreds of dollars. I thought all that money would finally be well spent when I was IMd by an orthodox woman from Brooklyn. The conversation as best I can recall went something like:

Orthodox Woman: a/s/l? (that was dial up internet talk for "age, sex, location?")

Me: 25, m, bklyn. u? (the "m" might as well have stood for moron instead of male)

Orthodox Woman: 30, f, bklyn. are you frum? I only wanna talk to frum guys (frum = Jewy for orthodox)

Me: yeah, I'm frum. (why not, I thought?)

Orthodox Woman: do you like cunnilingus?

Me (taken aback for a second): sure. I love eating pussy. (Hey, like I told you. I was 25, horny and bored!)

Orthodox Woman: I'm impressed you know what cunnilingus is.

Me: I've been around.

Orthodox Woman: Most frum guys don't know what cunnilingus is.

Me: I'm not like most frum guys. Shall we talk on the phone?

Orthodox Woman: Sure. My number is ***-**** (you didn't need to dial the area code first back in them days, if you lived in the same area code)

Me: Okay. I'm signing off, so I can call (but you couldn't be online and on the phone at the same time - you don't know how lucky you youngsters have it with your iPods and your Facebook)

When we spoke on the phone, she mentioned that she was only interested in meeting another married person. That wasn't a problem, I told her, since I was married - and as luck would have it, my wife was in Florida visiting her grandparents. I suggested we meet asap since my frum wife, on whom I loved to perform cunnilingus, was coming back to town in two short days.

"Okay," she said. "Let's meet in an hour in front of Kosher Delight. My husband will be in shul, and I can get my oldest to watch the rest of the kids."

"How many kids do you have?" I asked.

"Five. And you?"

"None yet. We're trying, but we're having trouble conceiving," I explained.

"You should go to the rabbi and ask for a brucha," she advised.

"Oh yeah, definitely... So, uh, do you wanna do this in the car, or do you have a place we can go?" I said, frantically searching for a yarmulke to wear to our little rendezvous.

"My husband's coming," she said. "I'll call you back."

She never called me back, but we did speak via IM a few days later. I asked her what happened to her that day, and she explained that she got turned off by the fact that I kept focusing on sex. I thought that was curious given that she opened up with "do you like cunnilingus?" during our first IM session, and then proceeded to tell me, during what would be our last IM session, about how she took a shower that afternoon with a guy from her synagogue. She explained that the shower guy was less focused on the sex, and more on the romance and treating her like a lady.

In the end, orthodox woman got what was really missing from her marriage, while shower guy probably got what was missing from his - a really sore jaw.

I got what would be the first of many online blow offs.