my new plan
Tonight's play was a little intense; a lot of stuff about fathers and daughters and forgiving yourself and forgiving others and not wasting time on anger and the Snow Queen and kids in Tyvek overalls. I might have been better able to focus if the guy next to me hadn't been quietly and thoroughly polluting my aura with sausagey farts; each somehow magically timed to coincide with the especially touching moments onstage. How did he do that? A side effect of excitement? Because that's, you know, a gift.
Happily, I'd run into Wry and her hus-bean in the line outside. Happily not just because they have a car and this meant I didn't have to take some weird hoofing it/bus/BART odyssey to get home, but because they're good company. Sadly, we did not reprise our Fourth of July Mime Troupe post-show experience where we went for margaritas and their friend tried to tell a very long and elaborate story about why he was carrying a little shopping bag with some woman's panties in it. All I remember about the story is that it wasn't nearly as good as it sounds like it should have been, but it was taking so long to tell that the telling itself became hilariously funny. Something like that might have taken my mind off the Weapon of Gas Destruction I'd been sitting next to for ninety minutes. Instead, I shared my new theory on getting married as we tooled across the Bay Bridge.
I won't until I'm forty, I said, pushing my head between their seats, no matter what.
Husband Of Wry: Is this some sort of reverse psychology thing?
Moi: Sure. But really. Even if every man I've ever loved, even the ones who are married now, if I tried to leave my apartment tomorrow morning and every last one of them was standing outside saying, I was wrong, I must be with you, I wouldn't do it. I'd say, I'm sorry boys, but I'm too young to get married. You'll have to wait four years and then you can battle it out for me.
HOW: I think you should tell them this.
Moi: I'll go into bars and announce it, what do you think? Jump up on the bar and yell, I'm not marrying any of you!
HOW: And now who's gonna buy me a drink?
Wry and Husband Of Wry laughed kindly. Then they dropped me off, Wry threatening to take me to a dance performance tomorrow night that involves puppets somehow, and I went to the corner store to buy a can of chili and a carton of milk. I have some garlic-and-cheddar bread to toast and eat with my chili, two fresh bottles of fizzy water, and a new (to me) copy of The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. A good night.
p.s. Is it wrong that I really want to try this? I've had the window open on my desktop for a couple of days now, I think. Mmm, fried food.
