My roommate and I have been apartment hunting ever since someone slashed my tires in Park Slope. After five years in the Slope, I can no longer stand entitled parents and co-op fights.
My radically progressive agnostic mother is from Ukraine, so I felt at home in Greenpoint. But my dad's New York Jew culture drew me back to Brighton Beach.
In need of professional help, I stumbled into a real estate agency and let a male broker show me around, since it was free. Boris was tall, brooding and Polish, looking like he could beat me if he wanted, though he was probably more of a lover. We chatted about his job and why he moved from Poland.
We started talking about heritage, I blabbed to Boris my mother was from Eastern Europe, I felt comfortable in Greenpoint, my old best friend, who was Polish and lived there had moved to Brazil to marry her boyfriend.
“Why all good Eastern Europe women want foreigner?” Boris asked.
“My mother told me to never date a Slavic man. She said they are alcoholics who beat their wives,” I teased.
“Alisa, look at me, do I look like? Maybe you should try and then tell me,” he winked.
“Would you date a Jewish girl?” I countered.
“No too different,” he replied.
I was so ashamed, I played the Catholic card, talking about the church I went to as a child for Easter.
“How do you pray?” he asked me, “right or left?”
I tried to remember, but my mother had refused to teach me.
Boris lectured me about two types of Catholics. I knew he was trying me on. We'd shared a weird sexual tension in one apartment. He was my type: handsome and foreign.
He teased me about dating an Orthodox guy, I told him the outcome, the Yids refusal to marry me.
“Poland is best!” he proclaimed.
“I'd like to visit, but is it okay I'm half-Jewish?”
“You are not Jew, that is all,” he said, assuring me I had a chance at his heart.
I thought about sharing sulky meals with a bigoted broker in a fancy Brooklyn abode.
He called me recently about an apartment, but I let him go, “Boris, I think I am going to try it alone.”
-A. Pinsker
