Erotomania: the Flunken

Monica soon realized that wedding preparations were not easy in that they brought up many of the same issues that had caused divisiveness in the past. One night, for example, Monica had been watching a Yiddish cook-book author on the Food Channel and she had become captivated with a form of Jewish pot roast called flunken. The flunken was sometimes served alone, but often it was mixed in with a carrot stew called tsimmos. When James tried to explain that these specialties would be appropriate for a Jewish wedding, Monica began to wail about James's insensitivity to her feelings, ending up by accusing him of being anti-Semitic, racist, and sexist for trying to dominate her. James tried to explain that weddings were elegant affairs whose purpose was to express the historic identities of the couple who were taking their vows, Monica started to let out biblical-level utterances of grief. Her hands flew into the air, she made fists and cried out Jesus’ words, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” James didn’t dare yell out the joke he had heard about self pity at one of his recent AA meetings: “Get off the cross, we need the wood.”