Next year, I will spend President's Day by myself.

Everything changes so quickly that it is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment where I decided that this just wasn't fun anymore. I had an interesting weekend with the Israeli that included a weekend trip, 48 hours straight together, and him meeting my parents.

My mom called me on Friday morning and told me that she and my father had gotten a hotel room in Atlantic City for the weekend, and then they decided that they didn't want it for both nights. She asked me if I wanted it for the second night (Sunday into Monday). The Israeli had mentioned to me on one of our first dates that he really wanted to go to Atlantic City, so my initial response was to invite him to go with me. I didn't really consider at the time what kind of message this was sending to him, or to myself, or to my parents... Here I was, just wanting to do something nice for the guy, and I didn't stop to think that inviting someone to go away with you for the weekend is a BFD (Big F'n Deal). Last year, on this very same weekend/week, I made the same catastrophic error with my ex. It was one year ago yesterday (President's Day just must be a bad day for me), where we had the most miserable day I think two people on vacation in Jamaica ever had. But it was all because it was way too soon, and we had spent way too much time together, and we didn't really know/understand the other... You would think I would learn from my mistakes. But I am jumping way ahead of myself...

The Israeli was very excited about the prospects of going to Atlantic City, he text messaged me back as soon as he got my message, telling me how I made his weekend. He called me while I was still teaching on Friday, and I called him back as soon as I got home. He was going to some overnight orthodox shabbat thing at Hillel, but wanted me to come over Saturday night and spend the night. So we could leave early on Sunday, I was thinking, sure it made perfect sense. He called me Saturday as soon as he left his Shabbaton thing, and wanted me to come over right away. I was doing some homework so I wouldn't be behind on grad school stuff if I took the 2 days off, and told him I'd be over later around 8 or so. I got caught up talking with my roommate and neighbor and didn't end up getting to his place until after 9. He called a few times to see where I was, he was REALLY anxious for me to get there.

Things were nice when I first got there, he seemed really happy to see me, and as it had been almost a week, he was all over me from the second I walked in the door. He also decided we needed to discuss further "about us." He asked me if I was planning on moving to Israel... um, nope. Not anytime in the near future that I'm planning. So, he decided that since this relationship can't go anywhere serious, he wants to have a semi-open relationship. I am not sure what that is, but what we decided is that if he is going to date someone else, he needs to tell me about it. In fairness to him, I told him about the acupuncturist, and he didn't really care. This kind of pissed me off, but I asked him if he really wasn't bothered by it, and he replied with, what do you want me to say? I can't do anything about it... Fair enough. So, we had dinner and watched tv, and I still had to do some reading for class. I took my book and went into the bedroom to read it. Mistake, I had fallen asleep before I knew it. I woke up slightly groggily around 1 am, to hear the Israeli on the phone. I wasn't sure who he was talking to, but it was someone who didn't speak Hebrew because he was speaking all in English. I could hear that he was making plans to go visit this person over Passover, and he seemed to be very excited to go wherever this person is. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl at first, but by the conversation, I could tell that it was someone probably about our age. Then, he made some comment about the person he was talking to being a girl... so then I knew... and I was mad. But then he made a comment about how he was going to Atlantic City that weekend, and of course the person asked who he was going with. He hesitated when he said, Oh.. a friend. So I was mad already, but that pushed me over into really mad. Really really mad. Ok, it was one thing to be making plans to go visit someone, but to be making plans to go visit a girl, while I am asleep in HIS bed, and a few hours earlier he defintely wasn't treating me as just a friend. That was just too much for me. I was raging angry. Like heart pounding, fist clenching angry. I waited until he got off the phone with her, and then stayed in bed for a few minutes longer, because I wasn't sure what I was going to do next. Should I just get my things and storm out.. or should I confront him, or should I take the passive way out, and tell him I want to leave because I didn't feel well. The latter won. I came out of the bedroom, and he was very surprised to see me awake, but didn't seem guilty of anything. I was cold on top of being angry, and I told him that I didn't feel well, and I wanted to go home. Because of the cold and the anger, I was actually shaking, and not really portraying great motor skills. He didn't want me to drive home in that state, and kept trying to convince me to stay. He was very sympathetic, offering to make me tea, and came and wrapped a blanket around me. It was all very sweet, but I was so mad that I didn't care. Thankfully, Debbie sent me a text message on her way home from a date, so I knew she was up and I could call her. I called her from his bedroom, and sort of managed to get the story out in whispers and a lot of "uh-huh, yeah, no" one word responses that wouldn't clue him in to what I was upset about. Debbie convinced me that I should stay and figure out what was going on with the other girl, and not to give up a fun weekend down the shore for this. I had to agree, it would have been silly. The Israeli was great for the rest of the night, he had me switch sides of the bed with him so I slept on his side, and was more affectionate than he had been in previous nights.

In the morning, it seemed all was fine, until he asked me what I was doing the week of Passover. All the sudden, it all came crashing back to me, and I was angry all over again. I told him I didn't know yet, probably just going to my parents' house or something, and of course... I had to reciprocate the question. I held my breath, just anticipating what he was going to say. He said, oh I think I'm going to go to San Francisco. Oh really? I responded, who do you know out there? He replied without hesitation, Oh, my mother's cousin lives out there, I'm going to stay with her for the week. Oh. well. Aren't I the biggest idiot ever?? I went back and forth over that a couple of times, to figure out if he was lying or leaving something out, and it just didn't seem like it. He brought it up, he told me without me having to coerce it out of him. So again, I jumped to the wrong conclusion, and worked myself up over nothing.

We made it down the shore uneventfully, and met up with my parents for a late lunch/early dinner in the hotel. I had such a headache from the night before, and just wanted some time to myself, so as soon as we got there, I locked myself in the bathroom and left the Israeli with my mom for about 10 minutes. My dad came back with lunch/dinner not long after that, and the four of us ate in the hotel, and it was a little weird, but not too bad. I wanted to pick up a bottle of wine for later, and hadn't thought to stop along the way, so I decided to talk a walk up to the liquor store 2 blocks away from the hotel. I asked the Israeli to come with, but he preferred to stay in the hotel with my parents, so I let him. I felt a little strange leaving him there, but at that point I had been with him for almost 24 hours straight, and was grateful for the time alone.

After my parents left, we went down to the casinos to do some gambling. I won $60 on roulette, and he lost $50. We only stayed for a hour or so, because I could tell he wasn't really having fun, and casinos make me a little anxious anyway. All the bells and whistles, the lights and extra oxygen. It makes me a little stir crazy. We walked along the boardwalk, but AC in the winter is dead. Not to mention it was a Sunday night, so there was no one out... nothing to do. We walked on the beach for a little bit, and then went back to the room. I read from Oracle Night for a bit, and he started to doze off. The hotel had one of those huge jacuzzi bathtubs (the bathroom was bigger than my bedroom last year - I know that doesn't say a lot.. but still. it was huge), and I was dying for a bath. So, I let the Israeli sleep/watch tv, and I took a long luxurious bath. After a while though, I felt bad that I kept leaving him, so I invited him to the bath with me. We spent a while relaxing in the bath, and then went to bed. And even though it was a very intimate night, nothing physical at all happened. I don't know if it was because we were both tired or just tired of each other, but I wasn't feeling it, and from what I could tell, he wasn't either.

The morning was nice, we woke up about an hour before we had to get up, and spent time in bed. I read more from the book, and eventually, I got up and showered/dressed while he slept until just before we had to check out. We went to breakfast, and then to the outlet shops in downtown Atlantic City. During the course of the day, his Israeli side came out... and I remembered why I always said I didn't want to date an Israeli. We shopped for a while, and then out of nowhere, I was exhausted, and ready to be home and didn't even want to have a 3 hour car ride back with him to the city. He wanted to go to the liquor store before we left to pick up some stuff to bring back to his apartment (note: this was the same store I had gone to the day before and if he had wanted to come with me then, we would have to stop twice.) and then to the dollar store next door. I was at the point where I was just irritated, and the liquor store and dollar store in Atlantic City held just about every kind of mid-day drunk and delinquent. I was so ready to leave.

No sooner do we get 1o miles on the Parkway back to the city, do we get stopped in a 3 mile backup from an overturned car. An extra half an hour onto the trip. Grr. We had some good discussions on the way back, but he was being arrogant and ignorant at the same time. He wanted to argue with me the state of education and welfare in the country, but really had no basis or background knowledge to talk about it. He made me so mad at one point I told him he could either stop talking or I would pull over the car and he could walk the rest of the way back on the parkway. He stopped, for the most part. When we finally got back to Brooklyn, I had to drop him off at his apartment. When we were almost there, I mentioned that I was looking forward to getting Thai food for dinner. He was almost surprised when he said, Oh you don't want to go have pizza with me? As if he already mentioned that, and I was supposed to know that he wanted to have dinner with me. We had pizza on Sunday before we left Brooklyn, and to be honest, I wanted to go home. I actually turned to him at that point and said, "aren't you sick of me yet?" To which he responded, "Sick of you? of course not!" I was even sick of me at that point, and just couldn't take it anymore. I took him home and then dropped him off at Hillel, and we left it as we would talk later in the week. He leaned in to kiss me goodbye, but I just offered him my cheek. I think he really had a good time, so I feel bad that I couldn't replicate his excitement, but I think it was just way too much time together too early in the game.

I don't know what I feel about him right now. I have the week off of school and I'm seeing the acupuncturist on Weds, right after I am seeing a movie and having dinner with the college kid Wednesday afternoon. But I am really sure he knows it's just as friends at this point.