Shomer negiah tefillin date

This is a work of fiction

I met the girl on frumster and after several conversations we agreed to meet. This was going to be another run of the mill date. I would pick her up in the Heights and we would try and check each other out in the dark car while making awkward conversation about driving a stick shift in the city and shidduch dating in general. I happened to have my tefillin on the dashboard; when she got back in the car,  she happened  to brush my hand and shoulders  by accident several times, and began to comment  about tefillin dates.

Her roommates happened to be out of town, but she said that if we went through with this tefilin date thing, we couldn’t go on any more dates because she doesn’t go out with guys who are not shomer negiah. When confronted with this contradiction, she stated that she would hook up or fool around with any guy she felt worthy but that automatically made them less frum than what she was looking for. I rolled my eyes, but since I wanted to get some I didn’t push the subject.

When we went upstairs, we left the door open ajar for yichud purposes. She ended up confessing that she actually felt like dating me some more, but that would mean that we couldn’t hook up. I agreed. We looked at her photo albums instead. Even though she leaned in closely and touched my knees regularly, it didn’t get hot and steamy.

I walked out of her building and thought that everyone was looking at me strangely. Then it dawned on me that I had missed z’man tefilah by 4 hours and a modern guy carrying a tefillin bag looks strange walking down Bennet Ave at 1 in the afternoon. The older Bruers ladies probably knew about tefillin dates. They probably thought of me as this new breed of alter bachur ruining their neighborhoods with eruvin and mingling of the sexes on street corners. Maybe they were staring at me because of  my long hair and the zoned out blue ball look in my eyes, but I think they knew of the tefillin date walk of shame that I was taking to get to my car. Whatever, that’s them not being dan l’kaf z’chus and mistakenly thinking I had just gotten some. In truth, I had just been on my first shomer negiah tefillin date.