experience

\”I\’d like to give you the keys to my apartment,\” he said. This was after our first date, if you could call it that. We met for a couple drinks at a bowling alley bar with all the ambiance of a Greyhound station in Lompoc.

I picked the bowling alley. You don\’t want ambiance when you\’re going on a curiosity date, more gawking than bonding. This guy wasn\’t my type, but he asked me out via e-mail and I\’m a sucker for prose. We\’d had only one brief conversation when I got his e-mail, which ended with this: \”Don\’t dislike me because of how much I like you. If you do, we\’re doomed.\”

I thought I could tell the difference between Jews and gentiles, and not just by using Lenny Bruce\’s criteria: chocolate is Jewish and fudge is goyish.

Granted, people are individuals — and particularly post-Sept. 11, stereotyping seems gauche if not utterly narrow-minded — but still, I believed Jews and gentiles operate on intrinsically different levels.

Consider: \”I hate my family.\” My friend Linda Rothstein says this means: \”My family calls 10 times a day and drives me nuts, but I love them more than life itself.\” My friend Ashley Edwards\’ interpretation? \”We have no contact, and my trust fund\’s been frozen.\”

Have you ever wanted to be a Soccer Mom? If you\’re not one, it looks like a pretty good gig from the outside: Leisurely lunches with the girls and shopping trips to the mall. Do a couple of errands, get the kids off to their after-school amusements, then pick up some take-out for dinner, and you\’re done. All you need is a car, a cell phone and a charge card, no experience necessary. If you\’re lucky, you\’ve got a housekeeper to do the heavy lifting, and you never so much as break a nail on the job.

I\’m in a Commerce outlet mall feverishly darting from store to store. A swirl of images plays across my frontal lobe.

Don\’t bother me with the guy voted \”Cutest smile.\” That guy\’s gonna go bad on you. That guy will be of no use. Worse, someday soon he will bore you; he will frustrate you with his basic inability to understand human suffering the way a geek can.

My sister Julie was not bat mitzvahed. She does not read Hebrew. She attends synagogue exactly four times a year, observes the first night of Passover and celebrates Purim. She lives in Montecito, a lovely suburb just south of Santa Barbara, where she is known by the title: \”Queen of the Jews.\” She earned it.

I want to tell you about the \”No Mas Date,\” but first I have to tell you about legendary Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran.

Perhaps you\’ve heard of Duran, widely considered one of the 10 best boxers of the 20th century. His nickname was \”Manos de Piedra,\” Spanish for \”Hands of Stone.\” Those brick fists took him from the streets of Panama to the world lightweight championship. He won his first 28 professional fights, 23 by knockout.

What does this have to do with dating? I\’m getting to that.