A Story About Attraction, Politics, and Religion ️

And why I am ghosting someone 👻

Have you had a story that floated around in your head for a long time, perhaps years?

This one is a stab at one that has been in mine for at least the past two years, but it is so convoluted and I tend to be long-winded, thus do not even know exactly where to start.

There is a wise expression that religion and politics are often considered forbidden topics in polite conversation. Perhaps we remember it from a family gathering around the Thanksgiving table just after a particularly hot election, or as a discussion around certain holidays.

Passions are stirred, tempers flare, and someone eventually says, “Never discuss politics or religion in polite company.”

Nothing stirs the blood more than God and the flag. And when it comes to forming our own opinions, most of us believe what we do because our parents believed it and we simply absorbed their views as we grew up. Reason played no part. They became our “truth.”

Add the topic of sex, or in this case an element of sexual attraction, and it becomes clear why I have never tried to put this situation in writing and also why I insist on writing under a pen name. My wife, my employer, friends, and family, and the person in question would not appreciate sharing these thoughts for anyone in the world to read.

So where to start?

How about a few months prior to the worldwide pandemic that has since morphed into endemic status, meaning something that is here to stay and has become part of our lives?

I have been an economic development professional for a very long time. After spending my first seven years out of college serving as an Adult Probation Officer, I leveraged my master’s degree to move up a tad bit in the world and transitioned into the field.

I have been working in a similar capacity since mid-2000, over twenty-two long years ago. Given enough time, I could easily write a 1,000-page tome about the field and how it has changed since Y2K, but this is not about that and I do not want to relive or tell the many stories that I have about it.

Perhaps after retiring if that actually ever happens.

The relevance of this is that I have been employed by the same conservative suburban community for the past seventeen years. I have worked with so many businesses, developers, brokers, and investors that I could not even imagine how many. I estimated about three to four thousand for an earlier story, which is as good a guess as any.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of working with executives of Fortune 500 and even a few Fortune 50 companies, but many more mom-and-pop entrepreneurs putting everything they have into launching their small businesses and pursuing the American Dream of working for themselves.

Such a person walked into our City Hall and asked to speak with me around Christmas time of 2019.

Sometimes you just hit it off with someone.

There may be no rhyme or reason to it and it often comes at times when you least expect it.

I’m not implying that you cannot meet your true love via a dating app or by getting introduced by a mutual friend. Some might even meet in bars, although by my many years of experience, those relationships do not work out more frequently than they do.

But you may also meet someone special while just going for a walk or reading at the library.

I could not tell you if it was the way she looked at me or the unwavering positive attitude that she exuded, but this woman has the goods.

I have a special place in my heart for entrepreneurial women. My wife does not know this exactly, although I sometimes come home from work and gush on for a while about women launching their own businesses in my town.

I should also add here that throughout the course of my life, I tend to not always realize when someone likes me. I am hard on myself and frequently do not view myself as attractive as other people do.

That said, I did have quite a few girlfriends back in the day prior to settling down with my wife of twenty-six years.

What I am trying to say is that despite being a one-woman man for the past three decades, long before the Internet even existed, I can still tell when a woman is making herself available to me.

I helped this woman get her business up and running in the throes of the pandemic, mostly assisting remotely but a few times in person.

The usual boring stuff that you may not think of when opening a business. Pressuring the Building Dept. to move her permits higher on their priority list. Asking the sign review person a few times per week if her sign permit was ready. Talking her business up to the City manager and a few elected officials. Basically letting it be known to be nicer and more welcoming to this lady than they would otherwise be.

Once her business opened, I began stopping in every other Friday for a while. I typically walk for the entirety of my lunch hour most days, which is one of the ways that I average about seven miles per day.

Even though she was building up a business with a fair amount of overhead ($6,000 per month in rent alone), trying to hire trustworthy and dedicated employees, and dealing with frequently demanding customers, she would light up like a Christmas tree when I walked in, drop everything that she was doing, and then do something like make some tea for me or show me some new products or services that she was offering.

This will be a G-rated story, but suffice it to say that our visits became cozier and friendlier as time went on. I should also add that, as of today, I have never even kissed another woman since we were married. I’m not looking for an award. I just do not want to give you the wrong impression.

But this woman was so happy to see me that she asked to hug me, which seemed like a nice thing. Lots of women who I know hug me, and I don’t think much of it.

In this case, our hugs gradually became much closer and lasted much longer. I never engaged in a close embrace due to being afraid that she would be offended and think that I overstepped or was creepy. But instead, she pulled me closer, buried her face in my chest, and then made a suggestion that I kind of shrugged off and never really answered.

I would be lying if I denied thinking frequently early last year about various scenarios that could play out between us. I should also mention that she is only a few years younger than I am. She has been married for twentyish years and also has a high-school-aged son.

My brain knows that it is not a great idea to become too close to a married woman business owner in the city that employs me, but temptation is a real thing, my friend.

We both live in a Blue State. If you take the level of acrimony that exists in our political arena on the national level, multiply that by a few when it comes to the suburbs of Chicago.

The town that I work for is quite conservative and there is a widespread expectation that those of us who work on its behalf must embrace that philosophy.

Which simply is not true.

Existing in a political environment on a daily basis leads us City Hall people to talk about politics quite a bit. Truth be told, about half of the employees in our city are more liberal in nature, myself included.

During the political turmoil that was brewing in Illinois at the time, namely the orders to lock down businesses including hers, I would politely listen to the businesses in our town complain.

I, too, would be supremely pissed off if the state ordered my business to be closed to the public. Even with all of the grants, and all the fraud associated with them, quite a few businesses did not make it past the lockdown stage.

This woman’s business was ordered closed right around the time that it opened and she started paying rent and hired several employees.

First, she started cursing about recently-reelected Governor Pritzker, which is de rigueur for most of the businesses in my town, so I do not think much of it.

When she suggested that President Trump be put in charge of business rules for Illinois, I could not fathom how to react besides fabricating an excuse to take my leave.

For my next several visits, this lovely lady of Italian descent still hugged me a little bit closer and a little bit longer than the last time which, truth be told, was kinda nice.

She is, ahem, well-endowed so to speak and would be sure to press herself close to me so there would be no mistaking that attribute. Once I felt a physical reaction begin along with how damned great she smells, I would pull away.

That would be when she begins airing her grievances about this regulation and that tax, again things that I have heard thousands of times from thousands of businesses. Nothing to be alarmed about.

But then she started with the Trump stuff again, which got so intense that I began wondering if a Trump-hating guy like me could possibly even be friends with a pro-Trumper like her, ample buxom or not.

I took to Quora last November and posed the question, hoping to glean some advice from random people on the Internet. What I actually received was a fair number of heartfelt replies that were wiser than what I had contemplated on my own.

For instance,

This is about YOUR values as a human being.

This is about whether or not you think immigrants should be treated like humans. Trump supporters don’t believe that — they are fine with kids being separated, perhaps forever from their parents. They are fine with them being kept in crowded quarters, with some of them dying. They literally don’t care. And don’t give me “but Obama”. Even if Obama DID do the same thing (and he didn’t), that doesn’t excuse YOU or those YOU support from doing it or supporting it, especially since you’ve been telling us for forty years that you are so much more better, so much more pro life and Christian than we evil libruls. If it would outrage you if “Obama did it”, then it should outrage you now. That it doesn’t says worlds about your moral compass.

This is about whether or not we are going to continue to pretend that there aren’t racial problems and actions by conservatives that have caused pain to communities of color and that complaining about institutions that are changing to eliminate that pain is “depriving ourselves of our freedoms”.

Trump in particular has gone out of his way to piss people of color and women off, and you Trumpers at best have chosen to overlook it and at worse have cheered it on at those braindead rallies.. That’s not only insensitive, it’s ahistorical and a denying of the harm that history has caused to portions of America. And you apparently couldn’t care less. Some of you think it’s funny at best. Sorry, that’s kind of disgusting. As a black woman who counts as friends people from all racial backgrounds, I don’t find that endearing at all in people I choose to associate with.

This is about whether or not you are okay with a guy that commits an impeachable and/or criminal act just about daily, and lies about everything simply because he says stuff you like. Trump was a con man who arguably should have seen the inside of a jail cell before he became President. There is numerous documentation regarding his business practices, how he treated people in his personal and business life, and now as President we have tons of information about his behavior in office. He is a bully who is dishonest in both his personal and public life. We know what kind of a person Trump is, and most of us wouldn’t want such a person anywhere near us in real life. Trump supporters don’t care about any of this, but if this was a Democrat we are talking about they’d have the rope ready, and call the rest of US bereft of values. And we know what a person like that is…starts with “h” and ends in “crite”.

This is about whether or not you will accept outright incompetence in office. Trump is unfit for the office he holds. Full stop. No other president since Hoover has been so unfit for the office. He doesn’t have the intellect to debate a fifth grader, let alone run the richest most powerful country in the world. His incompetence has led to a pandemic raging out of control with the result of hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions infected. Our economy is in a shambles because this pandemic was handled so badly, and still IS being handled badly. The rest of the world doesn’t trust us anymore, including our allies. The damage he has caused to this country will take years to clean up.

I was once able to be friends with Republicans. As I said, my husband was a Republican (he came to his senses after Clinton). But being friends with Republicans who line up behind this “person”, would be pretty impossible for me right now.

Supporting Trump is indicative of a major character flaw, not a mere difference in political opinion. As they say, you are the company you keep. And the company you are choosing to keep by supporting this man tells me a lot about you and your “values”.

Hard to argue with, huh?

Mike May wrote:

I have very good friends who are what you would consider conservative by most rational definitions. I even enjoy debating politics with them because they are knowledgeable and open to new information. We rarely ever agree but that isn’t always the point of a debate.

I can be cordial to a Trump supporter, I have several in my family. But for this liberal, I cannot be friends with a Trump Supporter who still supports Trump. To me they support things that are anathema to my personal values and integrity.

If you support Trump still it tells me you support a seditionist traitor who attacked the core of our country. If you support Trump it tells me that you support open racism. If you support Trump it tells me that hatred is the most important value to you. You may disagree with my painting Trump supporters with such a broad brush, but well that is how life works. The minute I say I am liberal the vast majority of Trumpsters know for a fact that I am a Communist, regardless of whether they understand what Communism is or not.

Bear in mind that these responses were written prior to January 6th.

One more response that I will share was from Nathaniel Ziegler:

I am a liberal farmer (yes, there are such things), living in a Red State. My farmhands are all conservative. One old man who works for me off and on is a Flaming Conservative. I get along with him just fine. My secret? I refuse to argue with him. Or, if I do find myself in a discussion that is getting heated, I say, “Okay, Danny,” and go off to do something.

The easiest way to deal with someone who thinks differently than you do is to go through their humanity. Recognize that they are good people. Once you start looking for the goodness in people, you can find common ground. Focus on that.

My father, even more liberal than I am, dealt with his very conservative parents-in-law by refusing to discuss certain topics. He realized that these subjects had the potential to shatter the peace, so he considered them taboo.

Things that people are passionate about are just one part of them. Observing how they live outside the areas of passion leads to empathy.

It is even possible to feel sympathy for a person who disagrees with you because you know his/her heart is in the right place. Two people, both of whom are concerned about other people, can look at an issue from two different perspectives and come to entirely different conclusions as to the cause of the problem and what to do about it. The concerns of both are legitimate and worthy of being taken seriously.

Conservatives are wary of liberals because, with justification, they see us as arrogant know-it-alls. Staying humble and humane will keep us friends; treating half the population as if they are intellectually or inherently inferior does all of us a disservice.

Best wishes.

I read every response to my question and came to the obvious decision.

Religion is the third taboo topic that I will address here. Besides the strong attraction between us and some highly suggestive comments that this lovely lady made to me, she somehow morphed this all with a heavy dose of religion.

There are many rooms in her place of business, several of which she adorned like little shrines to Jesus and Mary. I have nothing against that per se, but I am Jewish and worship differently than she does.

Frequently after raving against liberals (like everyone in my family and my close friends — I am more of a moderate Democrat) and then extolling upon Trump’s virtues, she would launch into sermons about her Lord and savior.

Again, my wife is Episcopalian and I have nothing against others who worship Gods different than my own. It is just that after hearing her rant about politics, her holier-than-thou religious sermons became too much for me to bear.

I just want to get away from work for an hour and get about 6,000 steps in. I do not want to hear an Italian woman rant against liberals, about how great Trump is, and then wrap it up in a sermon about Jesus, and then show off her latest new crucifix.

I do not know much about Catholicism, but I wondered how she could low-key proposition me at 1:15 PM and then be urging me to pray to Jesus with her ten minutes later. The best that I can figure is that, unlike the way I try to conduct myself, she figured that a confession on Sunday would absolve her of anything and everything.

So after reading the responses to my inquiry last November, I vowed never to step foot into her door again.

Keep in mind that I would still assist her in a purely professional capacity. It’s just that I do not feel it wise to engage in a long, super-close embrace, which would lead me into thinking many impure thoughts, and then try to ignore all the words that come out of her mouth.

I feel guilty nonetheless.

Without any explanation to her, I have not entered her place of business for over eighteen months now and, to take it one step further, she occasionally calls on my personal cell phone (many business owners in my town have the number due to me working from home on the Best Day of the Week to do so) and instead of answering like I probably should, I hit the red button.

No, I never told her that I am her polar opposite when it comes to politics and religion — a liberal-leaning Jew. It is not something that I go out of my way to publicize as someone who is employed by a Mayor and City Council whose ideals are more in line with hers than mine.

I have certainly avoided particular people over the years, perhaps more than most. I have learned to say No over the past several years and am less of a people-pleaser than I used to be.

But I have never really gone from visiting with someone every other Friday for a year to basically ignoring and avoiding them entirely without further explanation.

As a generally nice guy and someone who feels more than his fair share of guilt, I share this little tidbit from Chabad.org:

The myth goes that Jews are more guilt-driven than any other people on the planet. Supposedly this guilt is a conspiracy of Jewish mothers. All those Jewish doctors, lawyers, and Nobel laureates — were driven to succeed on the fuel of loving, Jewish motherly guilt. It’s also presented as something genetic, much like the Jewish nose.

I do have a Jewish nose, a feature that is more prominent on my mother’s side than on my late father’s. Did my mother instill a sense of guilt or failure in me?

I do not think so.

I love my mother immensely, but it would be a total cop-out to lay any of my feelings of guilt at her feet.

She did teach me, and very strongly, to put myself in others’ shoes, which is something that I still do to this day with most others who I interact with.

And I acknowledge that if someone who I liked and clicked with totally cut me off without explanation, I would be extremely insulted.

So why do I bring this up now?

And in this disjointed story that does not really delve too deeply into any of the title phrases and does not fit neatly into any particular publication?

Because of my walking, of course. 🚶

I was walking a week ago along a fairly busy road when a dark SUV pulled up next to me.

Keep in mind that I am becoming very well known for walking around the city where I work. I frequently see two, three, or even four people who I know while walking, most of whom waive and/or beep their horns as they drive by. It is one of the things that I like the best about the town that employs me.

I do get annoyed when someone stops and wants to engage me in a conversation, as I consider that hour to be private time when I want to get three miles in.

Lo and behold, of course it was the woman whose calls and emails I have ignored — which I have since learned from my daughter is considered “ghosting” — and she was not too happy with me.

First, she mentioned that it has been almost a year-and-a-half since I last stopped at her place of business for a visit.

I shrugged it off, “Oh yeah, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

She asked me why, and I mumbled something about being very busy with work, which happens to be true. Also true is that if she had divulged herself as a liberal-leaning woman who hates Trump and is more accepting of religious beliefs different from her own, things would likely be different between us.

But now that I have typed out these 4,000 words, I have come to realize that is for the best.

I may not be the most exciting guy, but I always strive to be the best son, husband, father, brother, etc. that I can be. And if this woman was more to my liking politically and religiously, who knows where things would stand between us?

Would our five-second cordial hugs that became thirty-second embraces have progressed into something else? God knows she dropped some hints and gave me opportunities.

Should I “man up” and the next time she sees me, just tell her that I choose not to be friends with someone who supports a lying, racist, cheating, and stealing tyrannical buffoon? That probably would not go over very well.

Should I put those things aside, give in to wanting someone else to be close with, and head over there next Friday and receive a hero’s welcome? Act as if the past seventeen months didn’t exist?

I do not think that would be wise either.

I suppose that I will continue doing what I have done. Ghosting 👻 her, hoping that she does not call me out in front of someone else, and do my best to forget how close we almost became.