Living for the Possibilities

Despite my Mom's predilection for it, I find worrying a waste of time.

Last night, I went to bed feeling guilty - which is first cousins with worry - knowing I had two play tickets for tonight and no date, although not for lack of asking. This morning, I woke up to a friend's message announcing that he was a bachelor for the weekend because his fiancee was out of town.

Woo hoo! My invitation was immediate.

If you're buying, I'm flying. Can I buy you some supper?

See? the universe seemed to be chiding me. Brief as it had been, all that late night obsessing was for naught. Lesson reinforced.

Like a good date, he gave me my choice of restaurants and I wanted My Noodle, preferably in a booth with a curtain. I got both. Like past men I have taken there, he fell in love with the green curry I highly recommended and the server seconded. Win/win.

Walking down Lombardy, we passed a long-time friend of mine who never even saw me, necessitating a brief dressing down on the sidewalk. I got home to a message with the subject line: "I'm an ass." He's not, just apparently oblivious, but now there's an apology (or perhaps guilt?) drink in it for me.

And I had on the fuchsia lace tights, too, so I wasn't all that easy to miss.

Tonight's gorgeous weather made the walk to Virginia Repertory downright delightful and we arrived early enough to have plenty of time for conversation before "The End of War" began.

We were only a few minutes into his dissertation on all the sex he got before his girlfriend left for the weekend when we noticed there was a man onstage, moving about on the incredibly immersive set of a bombed-out Berlin circa 1945.

But wait, there were still 15 minutes to curtain. What was up?

Interrupting his mention of the third time in 12 hours, I pointed to the man, raising my eyebrows. "He's either part of the show or psychotic," my friend surmised. Since we were in the second row, if the guy were to pull out a gun and begin spraying, we'd have been prime targets.

Since my friend is bigger than I am, I inquired if it would be okay for me to use him as a shield if such a thing went down. Without missing a beat, he whined, "Aww, but I'm getting laid a lot, so I've got more to live for."

Truth. That's the hardest I've laughed in weeks.

It was also the best possible thing to do before a very serious play about the hard choices people - embattled Russian soldiers, a desperate German woman, her adult daughter who was a female cellist with little empathy and a Jewish man hidden in a cellar - make in wartime.

At intermission, my friend had a slightly stricken look. "Just a little light Friday night entertainment," he quipped.

I can't say enough good about the sobering effect of the set or the projections of bombings, concentration camps and the general mayhem of war, even the eerie hues projected to convey mood. They were as much a character of the play as the actors.

And speaking of them, Nick Aliff nailed his part as a Russian killing machine so entrenched in the non-stop slaughter that he begins to see the ghosts of all his victims and eventually decides once they arrive in Berlin that he just needs the war to stop.

Tragically, as his comrade-in-arms points out, one war ends and the next one begins immediately (sort of like meals at my mother's house).

Which is exactly why my friend is brilliant for getting laid as much as possible right now. No telling what's on the horizon.

But I can tell you this much: whatever it is, I'm not worrying about it.