The birthday gifts my mother gave me were more like a series of insults than a present. A new outfit with an empire waist to hide my belly. A gift certificate to a salon she found on Yelp that specializes in curly hair. And one VIP admission to the Jewish Shalom Speed Dating event in Albany last Wednesday.

“They told me 85% of the men who attend are generally professionals,” she told me over IM after I’d emailed a terse thank you.

“The other 15%?” I asked.

“I don’t know – actors?”

“Gross.” I’d imagined some blue-collar Jew canceling Trivia Night to meet the Jewess of his enduring wet dreams.

“You’re welcome.”

Of course it turned out worse than I could have imagined (unless I’d brainstormed the whole thing out with Cathy Guisewite and the creative giants behind He’s Just Not That Into You.)

My VIP ticket entitled me to the worst seat possible – up on a stage that the restaurant had set up for a band that would be playing Jewish folk songs reggae-style after the dating. Of course my makeup wasn’t stage-ready. So the whole thing becomes the Husky Girl with a Sickly White Blur of a Face Who Talks with Her Hands Show. A dozen unmarried Jews and two-dozen unmarried Jewesses are situated at little tables with a candle and a digital stopwatch. And everywhere I look, homely Jews are staring at me.

Other VIP benefits? Every round starts with me choosing the guy I want to speak with next. When I explain I don’t want to choose, Janelle Lipshitz, the girl who runs the thing says, “Your mom said not to let you get away with that!”

Two lawyers—both with mustaches that have annexed some nose hairs. Then a CPA who wants to talk Sex and the City. He makes some passing reference to liking to hang with “the girls” a lot, and thankfully, some digital buzzer indicates it’s time to switch.

“Who do want next? See the future grandfather of your future grandchildren out there?” Lipshitz asks.

“I’d like the black one.”

“The black one,” Lipshitz says. Then she swallows as if someone has naughtied in her mouth. She turns to look at the array of Jews she’s gathered.

“Is tan ok? Like Sephardic?” Lipshitz says, hopefully.

“I’m going to the bathroom.”

It’s not like I start crying in the bathroom. I decide to make myself cry, just in case anyone sees me fleeing to my Prius. The lighting really helps. But that isn’t enough.

If I’d only been born male and Jewish, I begin to think when the urge to count wrinkles arises. One less chromosome and I wouldn’t have some expiration date. An unmarried, barren Jewess at 40—you might as well be a heroin addict or a disgraced hedge fund manager. Then my mother would take some slight joy telling everyone she knows your sad tale over and over. But to be completely average, unlovable and seeking. That’s a cliché that obligates toward neurosis.

I’m in my car when the phone rings. Mother. She’s calling from Palm Springs where she lives in house she and Ron were going to get rid of when the world fell apart and selling a McMansion became more difficult than electing a black man president.

“If you just got off the phone with a woman named Lipshitz, I don’t want to hear it,” I said before she can say hello.

One second. I hear her wrestling her phone until it sounds as if it has been smooshed into her shoulder. “I’m getting a refund. Don’t worry. Are you still on that black thing, Linda? Seriously.”

“You know what they say. You don’t go back.”

And it’s right then I begin to cry. It’s such an easy joke. That’s my whole life, I realize. Easy lame jokes—matching every cliché with an appropriate dose of irony. Before I can properly chastise myself, I’m crying and yucking like a girl at a Beatles concert in 1964. There’s nothing modern or self-sufficient about me.

“Pull over,” she tells me. She knows how badly I drive when I’m crying. A lesson she learned the first time she went on the 405 with me. (I glanced a tour bus. Insurance was never involved.)

I realize I’m parked across the street the Albany Bowl when I’m cognizant enough to apologize.

“What is wrong with you, Linda?” There’s some hubbub in the background, nothing that makes any sense. The world is blurry and bleeding into itself like a moody Impressionistic study done by some third-rate art student who’ll end up teaching fourth grade in some private school that doesn’t give health benefits.

As my mother asks what’s wrong four or five more times, I watch a family enter the bowling alley. There are four kids and the mother is all twitchy and stiff as if she’s been shooing spiders off her skin all day long.

And suddenly I’m thinking my life isn’t so terrible—at least in small doses. “I’m never going to have a baby.” I add after a deep breath. “Probably never.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Let me say it’s a premonition. I know. It’s my body. You are now allowed to disown me.”

“Can I think about that?” she asks. In the background I hear an amplified, deadpan voice call out, “EEEEEEEEEE-13.”

Before I can say no, my mother screams, “Bingo! I’ll call you back. Blackout over here!”

“For Some Reason It Never Feels Right” is the occasional blog of Linda Weissberg MFT.

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