The Chemical Formula for Drama - Part I

I almost ended things with Doc Harley yesterday. I almost walked out of his apartment Monday night. Then I almost blogged about it yesterday. Wow, with all these almosts, I'm exhausted...its been a full week and its only Wednesday.

Our story begins with our lovely (and oh so modest) heroine preparing to see her boyfriend, whom she had not seen in a whole week. Imagine, if you will, the schoolgirl excitement of it all - the opening night butterflies in her tummy as she puts on secret saucy lingerie, replete with garters and stocking that she knows he likes. They had made plans on the telephone the night before, and she finds she has really missed him after a week's abscence. Despite having been up since the crack of dawn to take a train home from her Thanksgiving weekend, she is all energy and a tumble of overly awkward fumbling limbs as she prepares for their mini-reunion of sorts.

Now imagine her frustration when he is nowhere to be found; the endless rings and that hideous voice mail message in which a grown man somehow manages to camoflauge his voice to sound like a boy in the losing battle with awkward puberty. Granted, she was a half hour later in calling then she had originally told him, as she ran (well, okay, she who pays rent off of her credit cards actually splurged on a cab) uptown with her two ton suitcase in tow to drop off her things at her own apartment before heading downtown. But he's been a half hour or more late, as she recalls, and even left her out in the rain as a result. She leaves several messages on the voice mail with the voice that does not in any way belong to him, and tells him she is waiting at her apartment to avoid wandering aimlessly around the East Village waiting for him. She also text messages, at the risk of overdoing the communication attempts, because, well damnitt they had plans and where the hell is he?!!

Finally she receives a response to her text message informing her that they do still have plans for the evening and that he will pick her up at her apartment with the motorcycle. She writes back for him to call her when he is downstairs (she not only lives in a 5th floor walkup, but an embarassingly filthy pigsty 5th floor walkup at that) and receives a response that he will be there at around 9:30, a 45 minute wait at that point. While she is slightly irked by the delay, she puts it aside in lieu of the much more joyous excitement of anticipation.

The boyfriend arrives exactly on time, and they begin their journey downtown, when our heroine's stomach suddenly plunges to the tips of her boots, threatening to fall and be lost forever on 5th Avenue. He was out to dinner at some restaurant and that's why she was left waiting around? He didn't even bother to call her? But she hadn't seen him in a whole week! Wasn't he as anxious to see her as she was to see him? Had he not missed her at all and had her abscence gone unnoticed? The sting from the perceived slap in the face of it all is almost a physical reality. She mentions that she has not eaten, as they were going to cook dinner together at his place and he offers to take her anywhere to get food but at this point her appetite seems to have plunged south with her previously butterfly inhabited stomach that is now precariously perched on the pedals of the motorcycle whose roar seems to be ringing far louder in her ears than when they had begun.

She decides that if one is to pick and choose their various battles (a lesson she has yet to grasp fully), this is one that cannot go by without any action whatsoever; the lack of consideration on his part is too great to go unmentioned. She waits until they have dropped the bike off at its garage home, not wanting any distraction from what she wants him to hear.

"Listen, I really don't want to make a big deal out of this, but I feel like I can't not say something either...the next time we have plans and you go off to dinner at the last minute, can you please at least call and let me know?"

He draws in a breath and opens then closes his mouth, as if preparing to say something in his defence and then thinking better of it. "Okay. I will." Then, unable to refrain, he says, "It was a last minute thing, I had to go." "Well you could have at least called." "I was on the motorcycle, I couldn't call. I text messaged you and told you I was coming to pick you up. I knew yuo had stuff to do..." "Oh, what stuff would that be?" "Putting away your things and all." "I didn't get anything done, I merely waited for you because we had plans." "I'm sorry about that. I had to go to this dinner." "Well it just makes me feel very unimportant to you." He pulls her to him in an awkward hug, his bicycle in one hand and his girlfriend in the other. "You are important to me." She accepts this, as she desperately wants this night to be somehow special, something of the stuff of the romatic classic novels she has been revisting and not of the dysfunctional relationships theme so prevalent in newer fiction.

They go into the apartment together, but the boyfriend has to go pick up his computer from his office, as he informs her there are a few things he must get done. While she would have preferred he were overcome with desire fueled by the week's separation and had thrown her down on the dining table right then and there, she settles for a kiss, takes off her boots, and positions herself in the big chair so that just a hint of garter is showing as she takes out the compelling South African novel she is currently reading which is somehow subtlely steamier than her own life at that precise moment. When he returns (faling to notice the garter peek which becomes more clownishly obvious and less sensuously subtle as the night wears on), he offers her food and she makes a trite and overly obvious attempt at seduction, the metaphor in keeping with his offer. This is acknowledged but not acted upon, as the boyfriend has things he must do, which do not seem to be more important than what she would like him to do, but our heroine keeps her chin up and as always, takes solice in fiction and the lovely realm of her imagination that is always ultimately fulfilling.

After the infintely slow passage of time, the accomplishment of the boyfriend's tasks, an in depth but circumstantially out of place discussion on the civil war and slavery (our heroine having just returned from the south), and the obscenely comical rise of her dress in a garish attempt to reveal the still neglected garters and stockings, she bluntly tells him that she does not wish to discuss slavery and the economic motivation behind it when he is sitting in front of her in his underwear and she has not had sex in a week (with something not battery operated at least). He goes into the bedroom, where she finds him in bed, beneath the covers with the radio on and NPR holding court. She is stunned and literally stares at him, mouth agape, whether in shock, horror or frustration she has no idea. "What? What's wrong? Why are you staring at me like that?" You're going to bed? You're going to bed?!" "I'm tired. What? Close your mouth and come to bed." But she doesn't. She stands there, mute and frozen for a good minute or so, before turning around and heading for the solace of the bathroom with its glaring lights eliminating any option of hiding from the truth of her infinte disappointment in the entire evening that was supposed to be magical, not mundane.

TO BE CONTINUED..........