Mom really hasn't got a clue. Not a one. Go to a church, find a nice young man, she tells me. But Mom, I tell her, we're Jewish. Get into the 21st, dear, she says. There are maybe 200 single Jewish men left in the whole city. Nobody cares about that any more, she insists. You be you, and he'll be him, and the kids will work it all out. So I get there, and it's girls, nothing but girls, and maybe the youngest of them knew Caesar personally. I go to one of the church dances, still not a man in sight, and ask out loud who knows how to do the Lindy, whatever that was.

Every hand goes up. I mean every hand. Yes, this will be a rocking good time. But I've got no place to be, no place that I can think of, so I decide I'll keep trying this place until I can think of another. I'm down on my knees, enough. Maybe God will answer my prayers and drop an idea into my head.

Finally, a guy shows up. John. Kind of cute, in his own way, and best of all, he's only half of a million years old. I don't know if this is going to work, he doesn't know that I'm not Catholic, but soon I find out that this doesn't matter. All he talks about is that stationery store her runs. I'm about to say something about the fact that there he is, in a store full of writing materials, and yet he's never sent anybody a letter in his life, but why? He doesn't deserve that. I guess he's an OK guy, and who would he have sent that letter to, anyway? He doesn't need me rubbing his nose in his life, does he?

It's awkward, but not too awkward. We're in church to pray, right, even if we're not? I get there a little late, with no choice but to skip conversation. Not that I need to. The boy goes into a stammering fit every time I look at him, so like he's going to bother me much, anyway, and part of me hopes that someday he will. Being that dull isn't a terminal disease, is it? Maybe he can outgrow it? And then come talk?

A few weeks pass, and I'm guessing that the answer to that last one is a no, but hope keeps finding excuses, even when they're not good ones. One night one of those excuses walks in, in a pair of jeans long overdue for a patching and a "The Truth is Out There" T-shirt, which I guess should have been a warning. Is there such a thing as not being boring enough? I try talking to X-files boy ... yes, Jack ... and he's all over me, and not in a good way. Yes, my clothes were on the whole time, this is my mind he was having intercourse with, not my body, and to be frank, I wish he had used a condom. The stuff he left floating around in there can't be healthy. For once, I'm going to need to see a therapist, just to shake off that conversation, or at least to talk to somebody who isn't completely ...

But he's sitting back there, six pews behind me in mass, pretending to keep his eyes where they belong, isn't he?

I talk to the ... he's really not a boy, is he? But he seems so much younger than John. He starts talking about every cause and conspiracy and scandal anybody's talked to him about in the last thousand years, and he seems to believe in all of this. I don't know what to say, and so I say nothing at all.

He looks kind of hurt the next time I see him in church, and then never says much after that. I guess he went around the bend, because a month later, there he is on the ground, trying to do push ups, right in the middle of church! I know what you're thinking - what happens when they try to take the Torah scroll through there? But the goyim don't do that during their services.

He gets down there - and this is the sad part - he doesn't even manage to do one push-up! His arms quake a little with the rest of him, quaking like they're pudding, and then he gets so frustrated by this that he starts pounding his head into the floor. Which, by the way, looks about as smooth as Aunt Sadie's oatmeal. Not that I'm saying anything, I'm just saying ... never mind.

Maybe he's a little slow, because he's out there on the floor every mass, for the next two months, with as much success each time and throwing the same tantrum. Maybe if he'd warm up? Maybe a doctor could ...?

But I never say anything, and forget about the business as soon as I learn to ignore it, not remembering again until one day I look out my window, down on the street leading to that too conveniently located church, and see John pushing Jack down the street with a look of triumph lighting up his face.

Don't even want to know about this, I tell myself, fighting that urge you get to turn when you pass an accident, and you know that you don't want to see that, you don't want the memory, but you just can't help yourself.

The good news is that I could help myself. I stayed away from St.Etta's after that, promising myself that I would use the back exit for my building until whatever that was, was long done.

That, and to find a shul where all of the boys weren't my cousins. Inbreeding! Whoo!

Mom, can we move to New York?