True love came my way in the usual fashion.   I had nothing to do with it.    
 

At that time, I was dating every woman in my class in university.  I had chosen to study languages because my classes were filled with women and it was so much easier to talk to them than to males.  I now found I had nothing to say to my male colleagues.  I wasn’t able to flirt with them or to use my mellow voice to influence them.  They were always competing to see who could be funnier, wittier and faster.  I was not interested.
 
The tongue tied teenager became the loquacious young man, able to hold charming conversations with many women at once or, if necessary, one at a time.  All I had to do was to learn the secret of how to move from conversation to intimacy.   This I intended to master through diligent practice and years of study.  University seemed the appropriate place to try out this systematic approach.
 

Through dedicated effort, I managed to date quite a number of my female classmates.   One young woman, who I had met at a friend’s house, I had not dated yet but had become friends with over time.  We had much in common, including the same mother tongue and some of the same courses.   We each knew that being “in camp” meant places like Auschwitz rather than B’nai Brith.  With her I spent hours talking about life, the universe and everything including our common likes in music and literature.
 

I made dates with her to go to concerts and attend plays.  
 

She was very smart and very kind to me.   I also made her laugh which I now knew was a good thing.   We started to date more regularly.  Because she laughed at my jokes, I then started to make more serious advances and she did not resist.
 

This was a pleasant shock.  A woman who could talk me under the table, also made out.   Life was full of surprises.  But this was just the beginning.  We spent more and more time together.    This was the summer of 1967, Canada’s Centennial and we agreed to go out for Canada’s 100th birthday bash on July 1.
 

Yet despite the festive air, I experienced one of the Greatest Funks of my existence as we laughed and danced with the hundreds of thousands of revelers around City Hall.   More and more, I felt withdrawn into the citadel of my brain, looking out at her smiling and laughing, through those narrow slits, my eyes.  I could sense my body moving.  My mouth opened and closed and sounds, reasonably happy sounds, came out of it.   Yet, it was if I was not the entity speaking.   The real me was floating away or burrowing into my brain.
 

I looked down at her it seemed from a great height.   All feelings I thought I had were numb.  I was turning to stone.  I was dreading taking her home.   I would have to tell her that we had no future, that I was incapable of affection, that I was constitutionally incapable of love unless it was hopeless longing for something unattainable.   I could not love a woman who I could have.
 

We drove to her house, still talking about the evening.   She leaned over against me and we fell silent.   I rehearsed what I would say.  “I’m not worthy of you,” I would say, “I’m a weakling who always feels most exhausted when closest to his goal.  I am hopeless.”
 

When we arrived at our destination, she invited me in.   She smiled again.  Her face was radiating warmth and her eyes looked at me, I feared, in admiration.   I sat down.   I was sure she must have noticed my withdrawal, my sunken spirit, but she gave no indication of it.
 

Suddenly she came over and sat in my lap.  She put her arms around me and kissed me, long and pressing her lips tightly to mine, as tightly as her arms squeezed me.  “I really like you,” she said and kissed me again.   I could not speak.
 

She looked at me in hope, smiling, her cheeks red, her face flushed.  “Did you have a good time tonight?”
 

“Fantastic.” I said, both the truth and an utter lie.  I could not say more.   I could not speak of the paralysis which had seized my emotions nor my sense of complete despair.  She kissed me now more deeply and her eyes looked searchingly at my face.   I caressed her and felt her body weigh on mine.  “I love you,” she whispered.  
 

Looking at her face, I believed her and at that instant my feeling of utter isolation was ripped to shreds.   “I love you too,” I said and now felt this was true.   She smiled, stood up and led me to the door. 
 

“Will we see each other soon?” she asked.  
 

“Let’s go to the beach,” I said.
 

We made a date and kissed again.
 

I walked out the door and down the stairs, my head and feet completely disconnected from each other.  How had that happened?  How could it be that I was now closer to her than when we started the evening?  Wasn’t this going to be the tragic finish?
 

It then dawned on me that the unattainable had already dropped as it were into my lap.  I had found the girl of my unfulfilled longings or rather, she had found me.   She knew exactly what to do even when I, myself, did not. She approached when I withdrew.   She had seen me at my lowest point yet still saw something in me to love.   Was there anything, besides a mother’s love, that could be better than that? 
 

It was this intricate dance of warmth and rejection, smiles and isolation, longing and touching that turned out to be the real thing.