Most people would say that I am, that outside of this tight little world of mostly humble people whom I've surrounded myself with, I'm not quite as big a man (a "Gadol," for those of you not in the know) as I imagine myself to be. Case in point: my effort to bring my life story to the silver screen. A famous Gadol in New York wrote up a cracker-jack screenplay based on the life of a man very much like me, a man who undertakes a Haj that transports him from radical Marxist-Leninism to Jewish Orthodoxy, all while writing about the flesh-pots of LA. I endorsed his work, and would have it made into a movie of some sort. In fact, part of the reason I bothered showing up at my own book party was the hope that I'd make connections with people who might be interested in seeing me or someone else act out my life story on the silver screen, and to that end I made sure that lots of interesting industry people were in attendance for me to shmooze with. (That is, in addition to my actual friends, some of whom happen to work in the field, and who I have never and would never hit up on for this sort of thing.)
All for naught. Not even the young women at the party who aggressively flirted with me by expressing interest in such a project have expressed any such interest once they've sobered up. And to the woman who told me she wanted to study a page of Talmud with me every day from now until forever I say, you broke my heart. Days like this make me wish I were a gay man or a liberal Democrat.
