Drama at a Glance #1

"What do I want?" he asks. 

What do I want?  His question is direct.  I sit on his bed, my head not quite spinning from an evening of gin and tonics.  I ask for water while he pours himself a Grey Goose.  My stomach flutters and my mouth is full of cotton. 

I work in a company comprised of a mostly-male sales force - at least 850 men.  My male colleagues are macho, aggressive and handsome.  There is no harnessing their unsolicited stares, comments or invitations.  I could consider myself flattered except that I'm one of maybe 40 women, it's late and they're drunk.  Pushing back on the wall of testosterone is easy in consideration of these facts.  They're attractive but my interest fraternal, platonic at best.

And then there's the one I like to call Mr. Mediterranean.  He's hip, direct and sexy as hell.  What do I want?  What I really want is to get together.  What I want is for him to feel the same way too.  What I want is to inhale this moment and hold it there indefinitely.  He wants to know what's happening in my marriage that brings me here tonight... my memory is fuzzy, did he use the word crisis?  It's a blur.

Reality returns like a slap in the face and I'm stradling the fulcrum between monogamy (meaning sex once a year) and freedom.  I want it all and yet cannot communicate with any form of intelligence in a 10-second sound bite.  How much time do we have to discuss this?  It's nearly 2:30am and I feel compelled to wrap up the state of my marriage, my life and my past in a package that will leave me looking good yet reveal some glimmer of honesty so he'll not judge me or compare me to his ex-wife who cheated on him and left for the other man.  Ouch.

I'm not the ex-Mrs. Mediterranean.  I'm neither a chronic cheater nor a pathological waffler.  I'm a being who stands in the mystery of this human experience wondering why it has to be so damned hard to have everything and in this moment I am a woman hungry to feel the passion of a man's mouth on my own.  I want his mouth on mine but he's made it abundantly clear that while we share some common interests, this is not what he wants.  I stand and leave with my dignity hanging by a thread.