Creative Nonfiction

Under the Stars

THE FIRST TIME I approached Nurit*, she was leaning against the wall with a dessert plate in her hand. Cookies and sliced fruit and occasionally birthday cake with rainbow-colored icing were staples of the social hour that followed every Friday night service at Beth Chayim Chadashim. It was called the oneg, a Hebrew word for “joy”—aspirational, like the tribe of single queers it attracted alongside the already partnered.

For me, joy did not come naturally, but hung back, had to be coaxed from its hideout gradually, a fact that was not obvious, for I moved through the world with a joyful façade. People loved my sunny disposition, which seemed especially pronounced in Jewish contexts. I was the unencumbered Jew, unburdened by grim history, by grandparents murdered, by deeply ingrained distrust. I was open and eager to connect, any cautiousness mainly the residue of habitual self-doubt and prior disappointment in love.

Born in Israel, Nurit had grown up in Brazil, where her family had moved when she was nine. Now in her late twenties and new to the United States, she was in the first flush of exploring her gay identity and had found our synagogue by googling “gay + Jewish + Los Angeles.” I had noticed her coming to Friday night services that summer. She was petite, full around the hips and breasts, her mischievous brown eyes accented by black mascara. Her dark hair was stylishly cropped, and she wore low-cut tops and tight, tailored suits, buttons straining at their holes. Her voice, the first time you heard it, came as a complete surprise: from her look, you expected sultry sophistication—Marlene Dietrich—but what you got was Betty Boop.

“You’re getting to be a regular,” I said to her, trying to sound casual, repeatedly dunking a lukewarm tea bag in my paper cup.

She returned my smile and, in between bites of a juicy red strawberry pinched between her fingers, asked, “So, would you like to combine with me?”

Combine with you?”

“In Portuguese, we say combine, to make a plan.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, finally getting it, “let’s make a plan!” And we both laughed.

Linguistic differences notwithstanding, I had not expected Nurit to be so interested and so forthright. I mean, there were plenty of other women in the room closer to her age. I was in my late thirties, had come out as a lesbian two decades earlier, and was in the

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