ENOUGH CHAR SIU NOODLE SOUP FOR TWO PEOPLE

There is a new commenter on Dovbear's blog. A commenter who sternly disapproves of nearly everything, and enjoys pointing out to everyone else how utterly unholy they are.
All in a spirit of ungentle remonstrance. And indignant sincerity. From the Vaad Lmaan Kovod Hatorah.


I may have suggested in a comment on Dov's blog that his efforts were counter-productive.


The Vaad Lmaan Kovod Torah (who is a very lonely yeshivish teenager in Flatbush) responded:
"What a goyish kop. u sure your jewish?"



In answer to that query, my dear Vaady, no, I'm not sure of that at all. Quite the contrary.


I'm actually a Catholic high school girl with thick raven tresses. My stiffly starched long sleeved cotton blouse is just a little too small in a particular area, and my plaid skirt flashes a sight of dimpled knees when I walk. My long white socks hug my calves - the effect is both very modest, very girlish, and incredibly revealing. Not Jewish at all.
I smell alluringly of Alfred Sung perfume, despite that being far too mature a scent for a person of my youthfulness.

You hide behind that bus shelter as you watch me lifting juicy morsels from my bowl of roast-pork noodle soup to my red red lips with my chopsticks at the front table of a Chinatown eatery. You spy upon me, as you have so often in these past few weeks. You observe my every move. It is an aesthetic obsession, but there may be more to it than that.
Guileless, perhaps. But is it you or me that is so?

Do you notice the elegance of my delicate hands? The deft way my fine-boned fingers enfold the pale ivory plastic shafts? And especially, do you note the perfect line of my nose, the exquisite undulation of my eyelids, when I close my eyes to inhale deeply of the porky brothy aroma wafting up from the bowl?

I know you do. I can feel it.

Vicariously, you too absorb this treif. Your mouth makes its own masticatory motions, an unwilled and unconscious echo of what I do with such joy.
It is good. It is very good. You just know it.


You cannot fail to observe, even from that distance, how my eyebrows, which curve like the antennae of a moth, are mirrored in the surface of the soup. How black they are, how velvety against the pale skin. That soft soft skin, those gentle features.

You do not know that I see your shadow out of the corner of my eyes, that I sense you spying on me.
I am conscious of your sweaty discomfort - I can see your forehead shining, and you are wearing too many garments.
I lift some noodles to my mouth and slurp, swallowing them entire. A fragment of cilantro clings to a corner of my mouth. As I lift the bowl up to sup the last savoury drops, I know that your knees have turned to jelly. You slide down against the bus shelter exhausted.


Good boy.


I pay for my soup. As I leave the restaurant it starts to rain. I stride past you, crumpled up behind the bus shelter, your frog-like eyes glassily staring up at me. You hope that I will not notice you, and yet.... you wish I would.
When I have passed, and you can no longer see my face, I smile.

It was good soup. I'll go there again tomorrow.



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