My friend Oliver recently wrote a heart-wrenchingly tragic blog (he probably won't mind me linking to it) about travelling to Israel in pursuit of an amazing Russian-Israeli girl he met once, who ultimately seemed less enthusiastic than him. The beautiful fool.
I obviously didn't learn a thing from this parable, and became a bit obsessively infatuated with a Russian-Israeli girl (not the same one) who I met last month in Florence, who was irresponsibly appealing.
Not only did she possess an illuminating knowledge of the history and culture of the places we visited (which I'd been too lazy to research myself), but she also had inexplicably flawless taste, creative talent, a great attitude and weird sense of humour. Considering I only have to see a girl reading a book on a bus to get hot under the collar, what sort of chance did I stand against this? No chance is the answer. In every respect.
I probably would have ended up in Jerusalem at some point on my Mediterranean odyssey anyway, but it was nice to have a reason to travel somewhere beyond mere geographic happenstance. So when I arrived here, and drank sufficient alcohol, I spoke up.
She obviously wasn't interested. It would be like receiving The Last Starfighter on VHS from your clueless nan at Christmas, because your mum told her you were into Star Wars.
My friend didn't have the magical combo of beauty and low self-esteem to fail to realise the discrepancy, either. Through dogged persistence and over-saturation I've occasionally managed to fool people into lowering their standards, typically for one to three days before they cotton on, and these brief periods of stolen affection always seemed worth the unpleasant months that followed.
Maybe keeping my standards unreasonably high is a defence mechanism that allows me to enjoy the tantalising prospect of love without having to endure the trauma of an actual relationship with someone more suitable, which would just be awful. I'm about to leap headlong into National Novel Writing Month and write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days - the last thing I need is happiness.
So what is it about the Russian-Israeli hybrid that makes them such alluring sirens? There does seem to be an infectious lust for life in people from immigrant nations (an Australian was my previous tragic weakness), making them infinitely more preferable to the unenthused people you get back home.
I'm sure I haven't learned anything from this, beyond managing not to completely destroy a friendship for the first time. More unrequited obsession to follow, I'm sure!
