unlucky in love

rather than wallow (any more) in an acute state of singledom, here is an account of the number one most humiliating moment in my sort-of-dating life so far:

when i was small, my mother told us that if we missed her when she went out to dinner, we should go to the coat cupboard, and sniff her perfume on the clothes in there, and then she wouldn't seem so far away.

when i was not small at all, yet blithely unaware of, well, anything much really, i was in tel aviv airport waiting on standby to get a flight home for rosh hashanah. although i'd only said goodbye to dbl a couple of hours ago, i was feeling an intense sense of loss rather beyond what was appropriate for a new best friend. anyway, i had an idea! dbl had a thing about drakkar noir aftershave. i would go into the duty-free shop, and squirt myself with a bit of drakkar noir from a tester, and then she wouldn't seem so far away.

when i entered the duty-free shop, a snooty woman looked down on me from behind the counter. 'may i help you?' she said snootily. ok i didn't look my best - 6 months without a haircut, black denim shorts, black basketball shirt, sneakers and baseball cap - but still i was a customer. once in the hilton hotel in manhattan, dressed much the same but with dark glasses on as well, i was sitting on a lovely sofa waiting to collect a plane ticket from the continental desk when an officious hotel security man said 'hey, ya bum, get offa that couch!'. i looked over the top of my shades and said in my best english accent, 'i beg your pardon?' 'gee, lady, i'm sorry!' he said, and left me alone, no longer a bum but now an eccentric englishwoman. israelis do not, of course, have the same reverence for an english accent. but i digress ...

'may i help you?' she said. 'no, thank you,' i replied, 'i'm just looking.' so i looked around, keeping an eye for the moment when she turned around so i could grab the tester and squirt myself. she, of course, was keeping an eye on me because i was a bum. we danced this dance for a while, and then my moment suddenly appeared: she turned away! quickly i grabbed the drakkar noir bottle, and squirted it on my face and neck. the trouble was - i got the shaving cream by mistake. the kind that expanded. and then, the saleslady turned back.

what did i do? what could i do? i wiped my face off with my hand, and walked out of the shop. *sigh*