The Future is Now

Three women of a certain age (and their male consort) walk into a Basque restaurant.

Before the evening is over, they will drink from the western Loire, consume an array of the sea's bounty (squid, softshell crab, skate and shrimp) and plant life (chilled almond soup, warm chicories, roasted artichoke hearts with anchovy aioli and heirloom white cucumber salad with Spanish ham, oh, my!) and see a play about mature southern women. In that order.

For what it's worth, all three of the women involved in our party had been born south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Like every other time I'd eaten at Adarra, every dish was spot-on, dazzling us with nuance and flavor marriages made in heaven. The sherry vinegar-laced chilled almond soup was unlike anything I've ever had (rich, addicting and thickened with bread) and the artichoke hearts were simple perfection.

After hearing the dessert offerings, there was an order placed for three housemade strawberry ice creams and while it seemed like too much for three people, I'm here to tell you that every last drop was consumed. The credit for that goes to the fact that the chef's strawberry ice cream recipe came across a lot like my own very basic recipe: nothing but heavy cream, fresh strawberries, a little lemon juice and a pinch of salt.

As I learned long ago, it's hard to go wrong with a generous bowl of strawberries and cream. And don't get me started on my peaches and cream ice cream (at least until July).

After rolling out of Adarra, we headed south for a play espousing a philosophy of living single and drinking doubles. "Savannah Sipping Society" was written by the same trio who'd concocted "Dixie Swim Club" (which included Jamie Wooten, who'd written for "The Golden Girls"), so director Tom Width promised us a good time and plenty of familiar characters.

You know that feeling you get when you're all tingly and feeling just wonderful when you fall in love? That's common sense leaving your body.

The story followed four women, three of whom meet after escaping a hot yoga class, all of them going through changes. They begin gathering on one woman's veranda for deep discussions and alcohol of every kind.  One's husband recently died, another's spouse had left her for a 23-year old chippie and the one with the veranda where all the drinking goes on has been fired from the architecture firm where she has worked for decades.

So none of them are in a great place. And that doesn't even include the Grandmother character, whose only scene requires her come onstage and die.

Enough butter and love can fix anything

The last of the group has aspirations of being a life coach, so she takes the reins to get the women out of their ruts and into the next stages of their lives. For fuel along the way, they drink Mojitos, bourbon, Madeira, hot chocolate with Kahlua, wine and probably more that I can't even remember.

Mostly, the women support each other as they move their midlife baggage from an unhappy place to a more satisfying place for their next chapter. I'm proof that it can happen.

It's not flirting. I call it chatting with intent.

And, of course, because they're women, they support each other in everything: salsa dancing, going out with a date for Valentine's Day, getting tattoos and role playing, to name a few. So they can't help but learn to love each other and rely on each other for advice, commiseration and laughs.

The play was fun, plain and simple, for many reason: relatable characters, quick dialog, physical humor and sheer familiarity. Southern accents came on strong and dropped off and it was sometimes hard to see the stage right monologues from our vantage point, but the four actresses' chemistry was so strong that you couldn't look away from their fast-moving conversations for fear of missing someone's pithy observation.

It's a concern I know well. When I'm with my five sisters, the cardinal rule is you don't exit the room unless you're willing to be talked about. I like to say I'm not escaping, I'm leaving with intent.

Fact is, you worry a lot less about that sort of thing once common sense leaves your body.

Which it did for one simple reason. Not gonna lie, I chatted with intent.

Crumbs from the Feast of Love

Any day when I hear the Stranglers' "Skin Deep" on the radio - its lyrics even more salient in 2019 than 1984 when it was written - is bound to be an interesting day.

Or at least make me smile.

As usual, my walk to the river and back takes me through Capital Square where I pass the now-omnipresent media trucks - CNN, CBS, NBC, assorted others with no identifying signs beyond the satellite dishes atop the vans - waiting for the dumpster fire that is our current state administration to officially burn out. On Wednesday Mac and I had run into into two female anti-abortion protesters (because, let's face it, they're not pro-life or they'd worry about how those babies would be raised), complete with illustrated signs ("Mama, don't kill me! ~ baby), and a speech being given on the steps of the capital.

Just another day in the Old Dominion.

At Kroger later in the afternoon, I get a shot of youth when I'm behind two VCU guys, each with a four-pack of alcohol in their hand and already anticipating Friday's pleasures. "You gonna do shots or are you just gonna drink tonight?" the big one asks the other. "Both, I think," he responds, but without much conviction.

Ah, the pressures of being young and having a weekend of drunkenness ahead of you.

Serious noise was the soundtrack to an afternoon of writing on Clay Street. Thursday I'd lost the tree directly across the street from my apartment of ten years and today, the tree police showed up and amputated any number of branches on the two large trees on my side of the street, the ones that have framed my view for as long.

The sense of being in a treehouse from my second floor perch, always lesser in winter anyway because of bare branches, will have to wait for the trees to leaf out.

I met up with Beau for dinner at Alewife, followed by "Cyrano de Bergerac" at Swift Creek Mill, Pru having opted out because of the countless times she's seen, read or studied the play. Personally, any play that introduced the word "panache" into the English language is going to call to me.

When we got to Alewife, it was lightly populated and when we headed out two hours later, people were stacked up at the bar, waiting for tables. Sometimes it pays to be obscenely early for dinner.

The evening's wine special was an orange wine, Sebastion Riffault "Akmenine" Sancerre, described as funky and vegetal, which got both our attention. Love the region, love the grape, adore some funk. When our server hedged her bets by asking if we wanted to taste it first, we demurred. Not bloody likely a wine is going to come out of Sancerre that we can't drink.

Creamy with funk and a bit of smokiness suited us just fine.

Although we didn't intend to go rich, our selections took us there. Right off the bat, I wanted to try the smoked whitefish dip (which turned out to be snapper), in tribute to all the smoked fish dips Mr. Wright and I had eaten in the Keys. Alewife's, though, was a horse of a different color, combining, as it did, not just fish and a bit of mayonnaise, but also cream cheese and horseradish and served with pickled onions, celery and house focaccia crisped with oil and some time in a pan.

Truly decadent first course eating, and that's not even allowing for the housemade hummus riding shotgun. It's hard to appreciate good hummus when cheese dip calls its siren song.

What do two friends talk about when the person who connects them - his main squeeze, my long-time friend - isn't present? Why, her, of course. Beau regaled me with tidbits from the early days of their courting, sharing that he'd gotten only as far as their fourth meeting (because they never referred to them as "dates") before stating that he had designs on her and the rest of her life.

I can't say I have a problem with a man stating his intentions, even as early as the fourth face-to-face.

Next came the fried course, which necessitated me switching to bubbles, namely the Catalonian Cava Macaveo Xarel-lo, to keep pace with the fried.

We dove into crab hushpuppies with preserved lemon vinaigrette and crab roe dust and Buffalo sugar toads, the latter a distinctive take on the little fish usually served in a butter sauce. These were fried up in a crispy batter and served with hot sauce butter, pickled celery and bleu cheese and immediately brought to mind Chef Lee Gregory's Buffalo sweetbreads from the halcyon Six Burner days (so, 2009-10?), back when the notion of Buffalo could only mean wings.

Ah, the dark ages.

Just so I could live with myself, our next course was a bowl of beets with a bit of arugula dressed with bleu cheese and sesame peanut crumble, a dish so loaded with beets that it reminded us of a long-ago meal where Beau and I had ordered a beet salad that arrived with nothing more than beet shavings, disappointing us both. Alewife's beet salad was for serious beet lovers.

Meanwhile, Beau regaled me with tales of his work comrades, one of whom wants to cook a meal at the manse for a crowd and only one of whom (his boss) who has the nerve to call him by the nickname they've all secretly given him. "Hey, Bowtie!" Bossman now greets him, which is pretty darn funny if you know Beau.

We closed out the meal with soft-serve chocolate/raspberry frozen custard for me and banana pudding for Beau, who especially liked the mashed bananas under the pudding. The smokey Islay single malt he chose ended up disappointing him, so we made tracks for the play.

Our drive south was accompanied by his "New Love" playlist, which he assured me catered to my tastes because it was full of new songs/bands he'd discovered and loved, like Christine and the Queens and lots of electronica which he and I both favor. Hearing Jade Bird, Beau claimed her heard a Sheryl Crow thing in her voice, albeit without the life experience.

Our seats for "Cyrano" were front and center, third row, making for a fine view. Artistic director Tom Width opened by telling us that "Cyrano" was written in verse for 50 actors. "We're not doing that," he said and got a huge laugh. "We're doing it in prose with sixteen actors."

And with lots of wonderful actors that we'd seen and enjoyed before. Dean Knight never fails to get laughs with his hangdog face and delivery. Jeff Clevenger manages to play drunk in, I think, every role I've ever seen him in and he's always hilarious. It's been far too long since I've seen Thomas Cunningham's expressive face. Debra Wagoner and Jacqueline Jones never disappoint and always delight.

Beau and I differed on Matt Bloch's portrayal of Cyrano, which I found brash and strong-willed, just like the character is written. But no, Beau saw his characterization as bombastic, although he allowed that it was less so in the second act.

The size of a man's nose is the size of a man's spirit...and other parts.

Word nerds that Beau and I are, we'd discussed jackanapes on the drive down, only to hear popinjay not once but twice during the play. What's fascinating is that both words mean the same thing.

No man has ever said more sweet nothings that mean everything to a woman.

For a play about unrequited love, there were some excellent sword-fighting scenes as well as literary commentary. When Cyrano is told that Moliere has been stealing some of his writing for his own plays, he dismisses the thief by spitting out, "Moliere!" with such disgust it sounded like a curse. Hysterical.

Your neck, I want to kiss it.

When all was said and done, Roxanne had been in the convent for 14 years and Cyrano is dying in front of her, Beau turns to me and observes, "Tragedy is always fun."

The end.

Stopping at a Wawa along Route 1 on the way home, I couldn't help but notice a man in a flannel shirt with a gun holstered at his hip climbing into a giant truck. Open carry, my ass, it was time to get out of Colonial Heights and back to Church Hill.

Pru was waiting for us at the manse, showing off how the porch has been augmented and rearranged in anticipation of warm nights ahead (sadly, it was too cold for a porch blather) and humble bragging that she's already read 15 books since 2019 arrived.

Talk about living the dream.

Once we settled in to discuss life and how sophistication is the tie that binds Pru and I together (Beau's theory), time got away from us, at least until my hosts threw me out sometime around 1:30 a.m.

As much as I love a good late night, it doesn't change my need for nine hours sleep, meaning that by the time I awoke, it was going on lunch time. Conveniently, a cursory check of the Interwebs had revealed that today is National Pizza day and Tarrant's was giving away a free slice to anyone who cared to celebrate.

Coming up from the river on my walk, I couldn't think of a single reason not to stop and collect my slice at Tarrant's Back Door. After putting it in the oven to warm, the guy behind the counter rang it up, looked at me and said, "That'll be one smile."

Naturally, I flashed him my most sincere grin, offering that I'd give up 2 or 3 smiles for a slice and then doing so.

"Thanks," he said, smiling back and handing me my slice. "I'll keep the change."

Talk about your panache...

Paying Attention or Not

As of this month, Playboy magazine is celebrating its 65th anniversary.

From that first issue with Marilyn Monroe on the cover through decades of iconic sex symbols and insignificant tarts, the "Magazine for Men" has managed to weather everything from abandoning full frontal nudes and then returning to them to its first transgender Playmate. And still, it persists.

If you want the truth, I was a dedicated reader of Playboy for years.

Look, as a female, I was never into airbrushed pictures of 20-year old twinkies in their birthday suits. But my Dad always had a subscription when I was young and after the initial titillation of naked girls in a magazine I could access wore off, I grasped the broader appeal.

Playboy showcased some damn fine writing, both current and past. All those cliched jokes about "I read it for the articles?" This non-airbrushed woman really did. Not going to lie, I could ignore the nudes for the sake of a good read.

I was that woman who would gift my boyfriends with subscriptions to ensure I had access to the writing. No, really. Before we called it that, that was a win/win.

So you can imagine my complete delight recently when, while having a record-listening party at Holmes' house, I spotted a copy of the March 1980 Playboy - all 264 pages of it! - on his bar.

I knew from conversation that he had an extensive collection of back issues, but I also knew they were buried in a basement room along with scores of vintage comic books, copies of Mad magazine and god knows what else.

Flipping through, I was bowled over by the width and breadth of what was considered Playboy-worthy circa 1980. In fact, it was too much to take in all at once, much less while vintage albums were playing, so I asked to check it out of the basement library, with a cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die promise to return it intact.

What constituted Playboy 38 years ago? Popular culture, for one thing. The cover features Bo Derek in a fringed leather bikini and touts, "Bo Derek, the "10" girl in a sensational nude pictorial." What struck me about her body was not its sexiness, but the sheer athleticism of it.

Inside, the '80s announced themselves with tableaux such as a Ronrico Rum ad with a slender but not ripped guy in a black Speedo on a sailboat, his girlfriend on tiptoe while he masterfully adjusts the sail while kissing her.

Tucked into "Playboy After Dark" was a small feature called "Checking In," which amounted to a brief interview with 29-year old Tom Waites. Asked what he thinks he'll be like as an old man, Waites responds, "I'll probably be your real irritable son of a bitch."

What 29-year old musician could we interview now and still care about in 2050? Far too few, I'd wager.

I'm gratified to read a review of the newest Eagles album, "The Long Run," which Playboy describes as "like a press release from the ontology department of the California Institute for the Mellow" with cuts that describe "that vapid kind of angst, that vague existential discomfort southern Californians are prone to contract. Bimbo starlets, power-crazed moguls, urban cowboys all dressed up with nowhere to go -- haven't we had enough of all that already?"

If the reviewer thinks the world had had enough of that peaceful, easy crap in 1980, imagine how some of us feel now, after 38 additional years of listening to them whine.

Always one of the strengths of Playboy was its extended interview (devoted readers like me salivated over the generous page counts assigned to its interviewers) and if any one subject sealed my devotion to the format, it was the 1976 interview with Jimmy Carter. And not particularly for the "lust in my heart" thread, but the fact that a man running for President saw the value in sitting down for Playboy magazine.

This was truly a new world order.

But this issue's interview was with quarterback Terry Bradshaw, described as wearing white elephant skin boots with the number twelve on them (made out of the bellies of a lot of little lizards), a nod to his jersey number, or maybe just his over-sized ego.

The intro says Bradshaw "makes about a quarter of a million dollars a year for throwing a football very straight and very hard." That $250,000 seemed outlandish in 1980 seems downright quaint now.

Throughout the magazine, I spot ads for all the brands my audiophile guy friends worshiped in 1980: Audiovox, Sony Audio, AR, Pioneer and Bose. The only ads more plentiful are for cigarettes and booze, both of which seemed to require a mustache.

As for the obligatory nude spreads, some are laughable, such as "Welcome Back, Haller," showing the only female "sweathog" from "Welcome Back, Kotter" reminiscing how her erect nipples drove the show's censors crazy. Poor little thing, they made her wear a padded bra to cover them.

Others give me pause. Henriette, the southern centerfold, admits that her ambition is to be a yoga teacher, her favorite drink is ice cold lemonade and her fave authors are Ray Bradbury and John G. Neihardt.

In case you aren't as well read as a 26-year old in 1980, Neihardt was Nebraska's Poet Laureate for 52 years and his masterpiece is considered to be "Black Elk Speaks," told in the voice of a Lakota medicine man.

But what impressed me most was the sheer talent on display throughout.

Here's a new Shel Silverstein poem "Uncle Don, Who Read Us the Sunday Funnies on the Radio." Further back, there's a two-page comic drawing by Silverstein called "And He Has Never Been Heard From Since" that involves a tiny, hatted, naked man who seems to be crawling into a woman's nether region, only reaching back out to grab his hat.

To be clear, that's four pages, two different features, devoted to Silverstein's work. Astounding.

Over here is an entire page called "The Cockeyed Muse- a little treasury of comic verse, some intended, some not" and inconceivable in anything but a literary journal today. Along with two in-house illustrations and a fair amount of white space are pieces by - wait for it - Emily Dickinson and John Keats, among others.

Yes, in Playboy.

Leroy Neiman's Sketchbook shows extraordinary renderings of Charles Mingus, done in Chicago in the late '50s, in NYC clubs in the late '60s and early '70s and finally, confined to a wheelchair during the Newport Jazz festival in 1978, essentially telling the story of one artist documenting another.

And, of course, Playboy was always staying current on the political scene with pieces like "The Canny Conservatism of John Connally" about the then-presidential candidate who'd been governor of Texas and in the car with JFK in Dallas that fateful day in 1963. Who even recalled he was in the running for the White House?

Culled from the Ayatollah Khomeini's writings (while in exile in Paris) about proper behavior for Shi'ite Muslims, "Rules to Live By" covers everything from how to urinate and defecate to relations between humans and animals. After decreeing that, "A woman can not have any sort of sexual relations with an animal; that is reserved for men alone," he further clarifies with acceptable species: dogs, cats, pigeons, donkeys and lambs.

Pigeons?

Since you may not have access to this particular issue of Playboy, allow me to also share with you that he's firm on one thing. After having sexual relations with a lamb, it's a mortal sin to eat its flesh.

Sex or chops, you have to choose.

Another fascinating piece, "Who'd Profit from Legal Marijuana?" breaks down just whose grass would be greener if it were made legal, a topic still being worked through today. Witness:

"It's only a matter of time before Uncle Sam will want to cut himself in on a booming business that seems destined for greater growth. And forgetting for a moment the alleged moral and psychological ramifications of legalized marijuana,  a Federal scheme that would generate considerable tax revenue, impose rigid controls and take the paranoia out of pot seem to make solid social and economic sense."

"Tomorrow's News Today" offers up some  predictions from the director of the Central Premonition Registry, including one that predicts, "The next president will be shot in 1981."  You read it first in Playboy, folks. The question is whether or not Reagan did.

And at the back of the book is "Grapevine," the ragtag two page-spread of inappropriate black and white photographs, assembled as reward for those who make it to page 258.

Here's Tim Curry posing, arms outstretched, astride a huge stone eagle and Andrew Young practically sticking his thumb up his nose, but it's a photograph of Iggy Pop, penis in hand at a Detroit show, coming 93 pages after Keats that best sums up the state of the union as Playboy saw it in March 1980.

Back then, a magazine that could swing from Derek to Dickinson was entertainment for all, not just men. The shame was that the parts I so looked forward to - literary, cartoons, interviews - moved to the back burner as articles about foot fetishes, the value of the quickie and viral sensations began to fill its pages.

Wherever he was, Shel Silverstein was softly weeping at the changes.

So while my interest waned long ago, enough people are apparently still reading (or gawking at) it to justify Playboy making it to their 65th anniversary, even if you can be damn sure there's no more white space.

Forgive me if I sound like a real irritable son of a bitch. Fact is, 38 more years of the Eagles would do it to anybody.

Enough already.

Freedom of Pleasure

Perhaps a night that began with a discussion of a sculpture urinating, moved through smut and ended with memories of being called the naked family, wasn't the night to go stag.

I suppose you could call it an evening wasted with Tom Lehrer, but only because he called one of his live albums that. There was nothing wasted about it.

It began when I met the posse in Church Hill, where we promptly worried Queen B by taking the ridiculously steep 23rd Street hill to get down to Nota Bene. You know, the one that feels like your car is going to roll hood over trunk because it's so vertical?

For thrill seekers like Beau and I, it's a personal favorite as far as hills go. The ladies, not so much.

But dangerous descents were forgotten once the owner found out about my travel plans and began offering recommendations involving food and sculpture, followed by the arrival of a bottle of fruity and berry fresh Tete au Bois Dormant sparkling Rose. It was brought to the table by our lanky server who called us y'all because, as he put it, "You guys doesn't sound right."

Three women and one non-alpha male? Correct, not a guy in the bunch.

A menu of 5 different gin and tonics seduced Beau who ordered one called "Oh, you fancy, huh?" supposedly because it included black pepper, but I'm inclined to think he just wanted to say that to our server, who grinned when he did.

From there we had a food lovers' feast, starting with the creamiest of burrata over sweet little heirloom tomatoes with pine nuts and grilled cucumber vinaigrette that screamed summer. My favorite part of a charcuterie board was the duck and pork country pate, not to mention a superb rhubarb jam that resembled nothing so much as apple butter.

Staying true to Nota Bene's roots, we had two pizzas, a red and a white - sausage, kale and red onion plus potato and fontina with leek cream and olive tapenade - while marveling over the chew and flavor of the crust. So. Incredibly. Good.

Bucatini white bolognese seems to get ordered every single time we go to Nota Bene (not a complaint), but this was my first time ordering their branzino with pepperonata. The combination of the wood-fired fish and long-cooked, deeply flavored peppers, onions and garlic was nothing short of sublime, to the point that moaning after taking a bite became the norm.

People stared, we didn't care.

You don't put away that much savory food and call it quits, though, meaning we capped the meal with with tiramisu (full disclosure: we got two of them) and a bay leaf panna cotta with amaretti cookie crumble and blueberries, one of those desserts that pretends to be light but is only fooling the wishful thinkers.

Start to finish, the meal was memorable, every bite a masterful marriage of flavors, colors and textures, the better to complement the wide-ranging conversations that accompanied the sipping and supping. We left in a blissful food coma, all of us.

Fortunately, nothing more was expected of us than a drive to Swift Creek Mill Theater to see "Tomfoolery," a musical revue devoted to the satirical (and protest) songs of the brilliant and hilarious Tom Lehrer.

I mean, how can you not love a lyricist who writes a song about "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park?"

Or, in the grand tradition of woman singing songs about the man they love - no matter how antisocial, alcoholic, physically repulsive or just plain unsanitary, as he put it - Lehrer writes one from the man's point of view and it's a whole lot funnier.

Sharks gotta swim, bats gotta fly
I gotta love one woman till I die
To Ed or Dick or Bob
She may be just a slob
But to me, well, she's my girl

Just as funny was "When You Are Old and Gray, a song he dedicated to anyone still in love in the audience.

So say you love me here and now
I'll make the most of that
Say you love and trust me
For I know you'll disgust me
When you're old and getting fat

Listening to "The Masochism Tango," I couldn't help but think what an appropriate song it was for that most unromantic of womankind: Pru. Sure enough, the moment it ended, she looked at me and observed, "You know that's my song, right?"

I did indeed.

Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany
That's why I'm in such exquisite agony
My soul is on fire, it's aflame with desire
Which is why I prespire when we tango

"Smut" had the four talented actors holding Playboy and Playgirl magazines while singing about the pleasures of dirty books.

All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder
For filth (I'm glad to say) is in
The mind of the beholder
When correctly viewed, everything is lewd

I left the theater wondering how I ever thought I'd lived a full life when I'd only ever heard one Tom Lehrer song before tonight. I was an innocent, little fool, that's for sure.

The remainder of my waking hours were spent on Pru's glorious screened porch, where she regaled us with stories about her parents' penchant for clothing-optional living and the friend from childhood who'd said she always thought of Pru's clan as "the naked family." The child can hardly be blamed for that, after all, how many of us have Dads who went streaking during thunderstorms? Or naked Moms who took phone calls in full view of the garbage men?

Around midnight, I got up to leave, only to be told to sit back down, so I did. This is not a group who wants the conversation stopped until everyone agrees it's over. At least I made it home before daybreak.

But I also went to bed a new fan of Tom Lehrer. Anyone who can write, "If a person feels he can't communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it," is my kind of guy.

Y'all know what I mean, I'm sure.

Snazzy, Brassy and Razamatazzy

We started with three dames, one guy and finished up with four dames, one guy. Estrogen flowed.

From a table all the way in the back of Metzger, we sipped Hugl Rose while destroying the Restaurant Week menu course by course. That it was done to a killer soundtrack by Mr. Fine Wine only guaranteed that there was no place I'd rather have been, despite the RW hordes.

Crab croquettes rested on a wave of honeyed skyr (the Icelandic dairy product that's not sure if it's a cheese or yogurt) that had me wanting to lick the plate while Pru announced about her pierogi with peas, quark and mint, "I could eat an entire bowl of these."

My roast chicken alone was out of this world, but the rye berries and pops of pickled celery elevated it to fancy chicken, while Beau's ramp tagliatelle starred black trumpet mushrooms, black garlic, breadcrumbs and a cured egg yolk and could not have been any fresher tasting. Queen B swooned over her enormous wiener schnitzel, while Pru was bested by a massive pork chop with spaetzle and pork jus.

Metzger is not for the faint of appetite, even with so-called RW portions.

Much of the dinner conversation was given over to the impending visit of Burger, a family friend of Pru and Queen B's whom I've already met several times, enough times to eat multiple meals, take him on one of my death walks and go dancing with him (the others having opted out). With his return this time, we discussed ways to amuse him without leaving him so worn out he requires a nap after every activity (aka middle aged man syndrome).

Desserts of mint panna cotta and dark chocolate tortes took us into the dining room's busy hour as the place filled up around us with intentional Restaurant Week patrons. We, on the other hand, had been unaware walking, rolled the dice won handily.

For me, the musical high point of the evening was hearing through the grapevine from one of the owners that as long as Metzger is open, Mr. Fine Wine will be playing. Period. As if I wasn't already a devoted fan of the kitchen, no restaurant in town has a soundtrack that can compare.

It was only once the dessert plates had been cleared that we looked at the time and realized we had more than enough to order another bottle of Rose and linger to the vintage soul music playing. Our server looked askance, as if she'd never heard of people ordering wine after dinner, but brought it anyway.

It's certainly not the first time I've walked out of a restaurant with a corked bottle in my bag and I feel quite certain it won't be the last.

Our evening's preliminary entertainment was "Dames at Sea," a 70s spoof of glitzy Busby Berkley-style musicals like "42nd Street" that Swift Creek Mill Theatre had last staged 26 years ago.

Hmm, let's see, 1992, I was living a wholly different life than today but I'd also never seen "Dames at Sea" and I love a good dancing-focused musical. This one had the all the usual tropes: fading star, wide-eyed kid fresh off the bus from Nowheresville, a couple of  peppy sailors and a chorus girl with a heart of gold.

I can't help but appreciate a musical that begins with an overture and the 8-piece orchestra added much to the musical numbers such as "That Mister Man of Mine," with the Pru-appropriate lyric, "He wants me back but he can't afford me." Few can, my dear, very few.

"When it comes to naval affairs, I've been compared to John Paul Jones," says Mona, the aging diva, who only liked men of experience and rank to steer her rudder. Pru and I concurred on the value of such a stipulation.

The second act was even more fun than the first, set, as it was, on the USS Courageous with a sign near where we were seated that read, "Poop Deck" with an arrow pointing off stage away from actors in lederhosen and dirndl skirts tapping their hearts out.

Let's just say that a good time was had by all.

Naturally, we closed out the evening on Pru's screened porch at the manse, a given because of the temperate weather and how long it had been since we had a good catch-up session. Joining tonight's rap session was a newcomer and former Church Hill resident who's recently moved out past Varina.

It was fascinating watching her take in our whirlwind of a conversation with its constantly changing focus (if you can't keep up, just excuse yourself and go to bed) and emphasis on experiences and opinions.

Next thing I knew, Beau was pulling out an old photo of himself - easily 40 pounds heavier and without the magnificent swoop to his hair that he now dazzles strangers and friends alike with - and talking about how he ended up a svelte, stylish man about town. Spoiler alert: Pru had a hand in it, having somewhat tactfully suggested that he could dress more to his advantage with a few changes.

We stayed far later than probably any of us intended on a school night, so the thunderstorms were just starting to roll in as I left Church Hill and drove home through deserted streets that will soon be even quieter as the students in my neighborhood clear out.

Even better, my conversational affairs are soon to go from idling back to 100 mph with May kicking in. Can. Not. Wait.

Don't Dance All Night with Me

Hush, hush, keep it down now, voices carry. All across Church Hill.

When the evening starts at 5 and doesn't end until after 2 a.m., there's plenty of time to range from baby octopus stew to an amplified discussion of male archetypes and take a detour through a ghost story.

Things kicked off at Pru's manse on the hill, where she, the woman who bore her and her swain Beau welcomed me into the fold. It's so frequent that I'm their fourth that people are going to start taking  us for some sort of polyamorous, multi-generational swingers.

I think I'm okay with that at this point.

We landed at Nota Bene shortly before the dinner rush began but only after Beau managed to take the longest possible route to reach a place barely a mile from the manse. I blame all those years living in Ladysmith for his lack of city savvy (witness his horror at once seeing a rat the size of a cat in the Fan).

As if Nota Bene doesn't have enough to offer, they've added one of my very favorite bartenders to their staff, a fact that immediately derailed our wines plans, rerouting them to cocktails. My choice was a Sherry Daisy, a delightful sipper of Amontillado sherry, peach shrub and Rothman and Winter peach liqueur with an orange twist.

Arriving in a long-stemmed coupe glass - as did Beau's gin-based Fall Cocktail - Pru immediately invoked "The Thin Man" as we sipped with all the sophistication of Nick and Nora Charles.

Scanning the specials board for options, the owner sidled up and, without saying, "Psst!" whispered, as if offering black market goods, "Pro tip: get the baby octopus stew."

Since it was already under consideration, along with the radishes with bottarga and two orders of sugar toads with bagna cauda, we took her advice, throwing in an order of braised fennel and housemade bread for sopping for good measure.

And that was just to start.

The baby octopus stew - a long-simmered melange, spicy, tomato-based and chock full of chickpeas and octopus - only got forked up by Beau and I, with Pru explaining that she objected to eating such intelligent creatures.

Far more disturbing, in my opinion, was a reference from one of their favorite Italian TV shows, in which a man had been instructed what to do with a live one: beat it with a stick until it's dead and then cook it all day long. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to have to beat my dinner into submission.

Although a wiser quartet might have stopped there, sated and happy, we pushed on, ordering torchio pork ragu, a sausage and broccolini pizza, a special of rare hanger steak and another of head-on shrimp. As Beau so succinctly put it, "I've never had anything that isn't stellar here," a fact that contributes to Nota Bene being on my birthday progressive dinner route every year since it opened.

It was an obscene amount of food laid out on our table with enough leftovers to take back to the manse for an entire meal.

But not before we dropped down the dessert rabbit hole with a savory local goat cheese custard for Beau, biscotti and sweetened, whipped ricotta cheese for Pru and a piece of chocolate almond cake dusted in confectioner's sugar and big enough for 3 for yours truly. Only the queen abstained from a  sweet course, no doubt because she's wiser than we are.

By the time we stopped eating, it was time to high tail it to Colonial Heights for a play, assuming we didn't nod off based on the feast we'd just had. The valet, an older man, took off running to fetch Beau's car and when he returned, I complimented him on how spry he was. Huffing and puffing, he smiled and said, "I...(wheeze)...am.. (gasp)...spry!"

Beau tipped him nicely for his effort.

Walking into Swift Creek Mill to see "The Woman in Black," the usher looked at Pru and I and observed, "You two look fabulous!" Taking our seats, I heard a man's voice behind me saying, "Miss Karen, we have to stop meeting like this. People will think we're in love!" and turned to see the manager of the Byrd, Todd and his lovely wife. Since this same crew and I had just seen Todd Wednesday night for "To Catch a Thief," I could see his point.

Besides, if people are going to think I'm in love, I'd prefer it wasn't with a married man. A minor point, but an important one.

Meanwhile, a flirtatious woman from Dinwiddie sitting next to Beau struck up a conversation, curious about the Byrd Theater and how difficult it was to park there and clearly eager to make Beau's acquaintance. Granted, it was probably tough to guess his status given that he'd arrived with three women, but, as Pru pointed out, he was also the youngest man in the room by at least a decade.

It pays not to be old, bald or gray sometimes, assuming you want to be hit on by women from Dinwiddie.

During the play's introduction, we learned that the building has long been haunted. A little girl's ghost has apparently been seen running through the theater and, back when it was a gristmill, a miller boy hung himself in the basement and his ghost hangs about, too.

At intermission, the bartender told Beau that she'd once had a glass thrown at her and no one else was in the room. The Swift Creek crew thinks most of the ghosts are former Central State Hospital patients, no doubt because it makes for a good story.

The play, London's second-longest running, had at some point been turned into a film which all three of my companions had seen, so I was the only one in the dark. Hell, Pru and her Mom had also seen the play performed in Bermuda years ago.

But that's my role in this little group: to always be the last to know.

The three-person play was a play within a play, with the shifting roles of the two main actors being the most compelling aspect of it for me.

As we headed back up 95 behind a guy not only swerving but with no lights on, we discussed the paranormal aspects of the play and Pru brought up the woman from Dinwiddie, asking Beau if she'd said she worked at Central State.

"I didn't actually commit any of what she said to memory," he said, proving what women have long said about men's listening skills.

We landed on Pru's tricked-out screened porch, albeit with a new outdoor heater as a concession to the season, for a post-play porch party from which the Queen excused herself, pleading age and a need for sleep, even as flutes of Simonnet Cremant de Bourgogne Brut Blanc were being poured for the three of us.

Pru's seven hour porch playlist began with "Moon River," moved through the Brass Ring and caused Beau to bring up the subject of sequencing. Both he and I could see the potential pleasure in rearranging the song order to achieve best possible flow, while Pru saw such a task as tedious and time-consuming. I pointed out that some would say that the online Scrabble games she devotedly plays would be far more tedious, leading us to agree to disagree.

We all waste time in our distinctive ways.

Because Beau had forgotten the Nota Bene leftovers in the car, he was sent to fetch them and when he returned, he shared that he could hear every word of our conversation even at a great distance. Seems that in the still of the night, at least in Church Hill, voices carry and some topics should be kept to a lower decibel level.

Conversation was all over the map, with Pru describing a woman as, "Good hair, bad skin, great big tits and low self esteem," a summary that had Beau admitting he'd never noticed her rack. The subject of staving off - "Staving, it's a good word" - arose, as we got into semantics, like we do.

Time after time, we realized how raucous and raunchy our conversation was getting and tried to reel it back in so as not to over-share with the neighborhood. We failed repeatedly.

After Pru posed her main concern ("How are we going to find you a man?" and went on to suggest I use a clipboard and take a fake survey from every man of a certain age I saw in an attempt to identify a possibility), we moved on to an issue near and dear to her heart: why don't I like "bad boys" and how could I stand "good boys"?

The resulting conversation was wide ranging and I soon realized that our definitions of good and bad boys were at the heart of our disagreement on the subject. The way I see it, there's a line in the sand and that line is thoughtfulness. If a man can cross that line, he's not thoughtful, so he's a bad boy. Her definition had more to do with the recklessness of bad boys and the blandness of good boys.

Potato, potahto, we weren't seeing the same distinction. She thought a bad boy could be thoughtless and still appealing. I didn't see it. The funniest part was when Beau tried to convince her he was a bad boy, an effort so earnest I commented on how adorable he was.

"Adorability is not a bad boy quality," Pru announced, effectively shutting down his hopes of being anything other than a good boy with great hair.

So maybe the first question on my fake survey needs to address that. Has anyone ever told you that you're adorable?

No? Next!

Take My Advice and Live

I'm in a coma, stuffed to the gills with more food and musical theater than one person should try to consume in an evening.

The four of us had good intentions, really we did. All we wanted was to try out a new restaurant and see a play and instead we finished the evening reeling from an obscene amount of both.

Sorry/not sorry.

It only took us three U-turns to arrive at the front door of Brenner Pass and whatever I expected it to look like, it wasn't a spacious restaurant in a glass-fronted new building, though I immediately liked the comfortable chairs and distance between tables.

To celebrate Beau's new job, I was tapped to pick an appropriately celebratory wine and don't you know I went right for pink bubbly.

Boasting the best possible description ("harmonious, fresh and youthful, sunshine and happiness in a glass," to which Pru quipped, "Sounds like you. Maybe you should put that next to your picture on your blog"), Tissot Cremant du Jura Rose was dry and lush. Beau was especially taken with the nose of red fruits.

When our server couldn't quite manage to get the cork out, a pinch un-corker showed up and did the job effortlessly, commenting that it should not be a noisy affair. I shared that Holmes says it should sound like a woman's sigh, but he said in wine circles, it was said that it should sound like a nun's fart.

"Well, whoever says that must not hang around many Catholics because some nuns' farts are anything but!" Pru corrected him. The woman is a font of information.

After toasting the man of the hour, we dove into Gruyere fondue for four - each of us with a different colored tip on our fondue forks - dipping bread, potatoes and speck, along with cornichons and pearl onions for tartness to cut the richness.

Not the lightest start to an Alpine meal, but an appropriate one.

Since it's tomato season, I couldn't resist tomato and bread soup made with heirlooms, smoked pork and the masterstroke of aromatic fennel mascarpone. I might have wished for a tad more bread, but that's just me.

Trout Grenobloise was glorious, done with vermouth, lemon and parsley with three piped stars of potatoes dauphine for garnish. Beau's paccheri bolohnese bianco was comfort food at its finest with smoked pork, trumpet mushrooms and grace notes of sage.

"I want to crawl in this bowl of pasta," he announced, but we overruled him.

I was too full to taste either the bacon and Reblochon croquettes or the Tajarin - tagliorini, chicken liver, thighs and skin with dandelion greens - but not for lack of desire.

Meanwhile, while discussing men, I'd brought up the subject of non-alpha men and Beau didn't hesitate to include himself in that group.

"I'm the alpha male in this relationship," Pru stated emphatically for the record. Duh. Nothing new here, keep moving along.

By the time we got to dessert, the dining room had completely filled up and servers - including one in cute black tights - were buzzing about like bees. We may have felt uncomfortably full, but damn if we were going to forego dessert in a restaurant with a dedicated pastry chef.

We didn't have time to wait for a souffle, so I instead chose the gianduju tart, a dark chocolate ganache with hazelnut over swipes of salted caramel, while Pru swooned over baba au rhum, a delicate sponge cake taken over the top with orange blossom mascarpone.

And there you have it, a meal that both starts and finishes with mascarpone. There ought to be a law.

We left Scott's Addition impressed and overly full with just about enough time to get to Swift Creek Mill Theater by curtain time, but only if Beau sped, which he happily did. Actually, everyone but me in that car has a lead foot, so I just buckle up and hope for the best.

Tearing down I-95, someone worried about the possibility of the law pulling us over. When someone envisioned the cop asking the speeder who's having a baby, I reminded them that there wasn't a live egg in the car and Beau roared with laughter.

You never know where your jokes will land.

We landed at the theater with a few minutes to spare before "The Musical of Musicals, the musical" began. The director explained that there'd be strobe lights but that they were startling, not dangerous. Kind of like how you want new life adventures to go.

This was a musical for fans of musical theater, divided into five scenes, each paying homage to different songwriters and rife with overt and sly references to the songwriters' plays.

To keep things simple, the plot remained essentially the same in each: someone couldn't pay their rent.

So for "Corn," a tribute to Rodgers and Hammerstein, there were references to "Sound of Music," "Cinderella," "Oklahoma," "Carousel," "South Pacific" and "The King and I" and young June being forced into marriage with her landlord because she couldn't pay her rent.

Also, ears of corn dropping down from the rafters and lots of corny songs like "I Don't Love You." So very un-Rodgers and Hammerstein.

My favorite was "A Little Complex" in the style of Stephen Sondheim, which meant mocking his way with internal rhymes, non-rhyming lines, bizarre plots and deep characters. There was plenty of "Sweeny Todd," not a little "Into the Woods" and an hysterical reference to "Specific Overtures."

"Dear Abby" paid tribute to Jerry Herman with a larger-than-life diva a la "Mame," "Hello, Dolly" and god knows what else with boas, brassy showstoppers and classic tunes like "Did I Put Out Enough?"

Define "enough."

During intermission, we got off on a tangent about the paisley zipper-front dress Pru was wearing. I told her I'd worn a  zipper-front dress to a party in the late '80s and a guy had walked up to me and unzipped it.

When I got amazed gasps, I shared that I'd once gone to a dinner party and the guy next to me had pulled out handcuffs and cuffed me to him for the evening (claimed he'd lost the key). And, no, my husband hadn't been pleased.

Somehow the discussion got off on men wearing women's clothes, prompting Pru to ask of us, "Do you know how many men have worn my clothes?"

Actually, no, I didn't, but apparently it began when she was 11 when a neighboring football player put on her pantyhose and blossomed from there. When she asked, "Do you have any idea how many men have been in my closet?" I knew I'd led a sheltered life.

Act 2 began with an Andrew Lloyd Webber's tribute couched in "Phantom of the Opera" and "Jesus Christ, Superstar" and necessarily involved mocking his penchant for spectacle (golf announcer: "The audience applauds at the set change") and hubris ("I'll do for you what I did for Jesus").

And when the phantom is unmasked, it turns out he was born a cat. Get it?

The final scene used Kander and Ebb's plays such as "Chicago," "New York, New York" and "Cabaret," all of which necessitated slutty showgirls, German (and pig Latin) accents and a song called "Color Me Gay."

Oh, yes, plus jazz hands and the most fantastical conical sequined bras ever.

The four cast members all had fine voices and excelled at a variety of roles, making for a thoroughly satisfying, if a bit overwhelming, tribute to many of the great musicals of the audience's lifetimes.

Not that this was a young audience by any stretch of the imagination, so we left thoroughly stuffed with musical theater references and tried parsing them on the drive home.

Impossible. Color us way too full on theater to think.

Flirt, Swoon, Use Your Womanly Devices

When your evening begins somewhere luxe, you don't anticipate it ending in an industrial corridor.

Our quartet arrived in the rain at Spoonbread Bistro, were shown to a table in the center of the room and immediately began social intercoursing, at least until we noticed the restaurant steadily filling up. Pros all, we knew it was best to order before the masses did.

The Four Graces Pinot Blanc wet our whistles and amuse bouches of spicy pimento cheese tarts whet our appetites. My companion's order changed once our ginger-bearded server announced that softshell crabs were in the house, while I stuck with a gift-wrapped salad and scallops with corn pudding and bacon drizzle.

The scared and profane part of the discussion began when the friend eating frogmore stew admitted he had shown up for Easter dinner with nothing more than a bouquet of flowers and a cherry pie, completely unaware that Easter was a gift-giving holiday.

Au contraire, he discovered, as we heard tell of Easters past with presents as varied as a BB gun and a Matchbox racetrack because apparently not everyone celebrates resurrection simply with black jellybeans.

And P.S., if anyone's going to bring me flowers and pie, please make it blueberry.

Tonight, mine was the rare case of dessert remorse because the 24k gold leaf carrot cake with maple icing my companion ordered was downright spectacular, certainly more alluring than the chocolate I'd opted for. Will I never learn?

We had no remorse about our choice of entertainment with "Something's Afoot," a murder mystery musical spoofing Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" that, according to director Tom Width, Swift Creek Mill had produced 25 years ago. Not to point out the obvious, but I did a lot of things in 1992 that I'd just as soon not repeat now (one incident involved lemon drops and that's all I'll say about that), but Swift Creek had no such compunction.

Adding drama to drama, he also told us to check out the creek because the water coming down from under Route 1 was battling with the roiling water from the rain on this side, making for some mighty agitation. Of course I trooped outside during intermission with my willing accomplice to see nature's churning spectacle.

The story of guests being invited to an English lake country manor house for a weekend was all kinds of fun with French malapropisms ("Quelle fromage!"), a maid with a pitch-perfect Cockney accent, multiple unlikely death scenarios (poison dart, missing step, falling shield) and near-constant laughter at the top-notch cast's delivery.

Jacqueline Jones was made for the role of Miss Tweed (in a tweed suit, natch), all efficiency and suspicion, while it was impossible not to keep an eye on John Mincks' every move (casually at the fireplace adjusting his junk after fondling a fellow guest) as the crafty nephew trying to secure his inheritance.

Not for a second did the play let us forget it was all one big device, never more evident than when one guest tells another, "We'll leave as soon as it's climatically possible."

The four of us left once the play was smoking its metaphorical cigarette, only to get right back off the highway when we saw a sign for a crash ahead. The nearest exit took us on a soul-less stretch of road that put me closer to Philip Morris than I'd ever been, involved some screaming at a perceived dangerous moment (it wasn't) and, at one shoddy point, was described as resembling a cow path.

Big deal. Once you've been serenaded about getting a rash from a man with a ginger mustache, it takes a lot more than Commerce Road to sour your night.

Besides, no one wants their evening to end before it's climatically optimal.

Resistance is Futile

Where better to discuss 45's latest embarrassment than on the way to Colonial Heights?

If I'm not mistaken, the round table discussion (or should that be rectangular car discussion?) got off the ground because of the awkward bully handshake he's been thrusting at world leaders lately by refusing to let go, but moved on to hanging up on the leader of the easiest-going nation around before we found a way to name it.

The consensus was that these past three weeks have given new meaning to the term "mind-boggling," spurring the backseat to relate it to shaken baby syndrome - boggled adult syndrome. It may not be contagious but it's clearly widespread.

And each of us deals with it in our own way.

I go out with friends and do things I enjoy as a way of banking good memories for the dark days when the regime's control is complete and such things are no longer possible.

It hurts my optimist's heart to write such things, but there it is.

What our quartet hadn't counted on when making plans for tonight was that for some lovers and would-be wooers, tonight was the main event because Valentine's Day falls on a school night, making our four-top stand out in a room full of couples dining at Chez Foushee.

Or maybe they thought we were swingers. We're not.

"I can personally vouch for the Sancerre," the Francophile noted and no one was going to argue with a personal recommendation.

In what has to be one of the most unexpected dishes on a Valentine's Day specials menu, fried chicken livers were right there next to a far more quotidian sauced fillet mignon with crabcake blah, blah, blah.

You can be damn sure the livers came to our table, along with multiple bowls of a sublime parsnip bisque heavily stocked with wild mushrooms, a platter of broiled local oysters under a mounding sauce of parsley, bread crumbs, butter and Pernod and - because it's irresistible and no one was offering to share - multiple brussels sprouts salads laden with candied walnuts, Bleu cheese, pickled red onions and swimming in red wine vinaigrette.

I told the group that chicken livers always took me back to Barbados because I'd over-indulged in them on my first night on the island and now the two are inextricably linked in my memory. Turns out one at our table calls Barbados his favorite Caribbean island, so he opened up the conversation by soliciting my opinion, which pretty much matched his for all the same reasons.

Over dinner, the word geek squad (all of us, really) went down the linguistic rabbit hole trying to figure out why, if vegetables can be cruciferous, do we call raw vegetables crudites? Shouldn't the root word be the same, making them crucites instead?

Legalities cropped up when the doting boyfriend told me that if, god forbid, his intended should vacate this mortal coil, he would be incapable of sorting through her bedroom so it would fall to me to sort through everything in her inner sanctum.

Well, of course I agreed to be executor of her bedroom, even before she sweetened the deal, saying, "You'll have to imagine me telling you from the beyond how cute you look in certain of my outfits so you should take them for yourself. You should bring a suitcase, wait, you can just take mine."

Shoe fetishes and dressing room etiquette were discussed over four supremely decadent desserts and I'm ashamed to say I was in the two-person minority who couldn't finish theirs, although I'm convinced that the sticky toffee puddings weren't nearly as dense as the double chocolate mousse tarts with praline sauce the rest of us had attempted.

Dessert failures always have an excuse, don't we?

We left behind couples still celebrating romance and staring into each other's eyes to trek to Swift Creek Mill Theater to see "Deathtrap" because sometimes murder is the result of love we had tickets.

Director Tom Width began the evening by telling us that when Swift Creek last produced "Deathtrap" in 1989, ambulances had to be called twice (no one died, mercifully) and once the ice bucket onstage was appropriated so a female in the audience could barf into it.

Small wonder they wanted to produce it again.

Except, of course, that we're no longer the sensitive souls we were in the late '80s, having upped our tolerance for dishonesty, hypocrisy and breaking the law significantly since then. The past three weeks alone have helped immeasurably with that.

I immediately recognized the playwright's name, Ira Levin, because of his book "The Stepford Wives," which, like every other feminist-minded woman with a reading list, I'd devoured and reviled for its misogynist themes.

But "Deathtrap," a one set, five character thriller, I wasn't familiar with.

Which turned out to be a lucky break for me because I was completely sucked in by the plot, of which I had no knowledge. Hell, I was so enmeshed in the thriller thread, we were halfway through before I recognized the gay theme.

Even better, it was written in 1978, making it chock full of dated references a millennial might have to go home and Google, like the Merv Griffin Show, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon or fear of obscene phone calls.

Meanwhile characters mentioned Women's Lib, middle aged suburbanites talked about "smoking grass at a party," writers debated manual versus electric typewriters and someone was derisively accused of "preaching" ecology.

Maybe they were preaching it because they worried that one day there'd be ecological imbeciles denying climate change.

Perhaps most tellingly, the biggest issues were changing cultural norms. "I know what gay means! Elizabeth told me!" or "Everybody's opening up about everything these days!" sounded positively archaic to modern ears.

Positively modern to archaic ears, on the other hand, is when you stand up to leave for the loo and are told that while they hate to see you go, they love to watch you walk away. Their fulsome appreciation didn't fool me, I knew it was the Berlin tights.

Everybody opens up about everything these days. I'm just enjoying it now before 45 bans that, too.

Sad Drinks Free, Glad Pays

Short of being wooed myself, what better use of my time than nine little stories about love?

That taking them in required a drive down soul-sucking I-95 was only a minor inconvenience since He-Who-Just-Gave-His-Girlfriend-A-Ring did the driving, although he also showed up without cash, leaving me to foot the minuscule bill for our intermission desserts.

On the other hand, he, a talented photographer, was good enough to snap photos of me afterward in front of rushing Swift Creek and the measuring marker in the water.

Mid-pose, I heard my name called, only to see a woman I worked with 15 years ago, whom he quickly pulled over for more watery pictures.

Swift Creek Mill Theater's production of "Almost, Maine" was introduced by the artistic director as including, "Live! On stage today...the Aurora Borealis!" followed by a corny joke about what a bitch it had been to wrangle the star cluster's agent into letting it appear.

On the plus side, each scene ended with a projection of the splendor of the Northern Lights appearing on the back of an empty stage to punctuate the romance or heartbreak.

Ideal for those short on attention spans (although the crowd was the usual mostly blue hairs), the play presented nine vignettes that were imagined to have happened around 9:00 on a cold winter evening in Almost, Maine - not a city or town, but part of Maine's "unorganized territories," a term I'd never even heard before, but which apparently still exist in under-populated states.

Thank goodness I can go to the theater for well-acted love stories and walk away with a minor civics lesson.

Even better was how frequently a vignette would end and one or the other of us would say to the other, "Boy, that was clever!"

The play was full of whimsy - a woman carried the pieces of her broken heart in a bag; the "other shoe" literally falling from the sky when a husband and wife acknowledge their relationship is kaput; a guy who falls to the ground repeatedly when he falls in love - but at its most appealing when someone spontaneously kissed someone who wasn't expecting it (I can attest, this has been known to happen) or blurted out "I love you" to a stranger ("We call that a very warm Maine welcome").

Some scenes were downright poignant, like when a guy runs into his ex at a bar where sad people drink for free and says, "Driving away a girl like you makes me a villain, so I marked myself as a punishment."

Only problem is he misspelled "villain" as "villian" when he tattooed it on his arm and he's about to find out that the empathetic waitress' name is - wait for it - Villian.

Even sadder was one where a woman, Hope, returned via taxi from Bangor years later to finally accept the marriage proposal her former boyfriend had extended the night before she left for college.

Because she doesn't immediately recognize him, he's able to expound on the hurt of dashed hopes in a sadly dispassionate manner that only adds to her loss.

In one particularly literal vignette, a woman shows up returning all the love her boyfriend had given her, dumping brightly-colored bags of it on the floor and demanding, "All the love I gave you? I want it back!"

You can do that? Now there's a concept I never even considered.

There were lots of awkward relationship conversations just like in real life and just as many sight gags by the time the play ended with the same couple with whom it had begun.

The surprise was that she'd gone the distance for love, only to come right back to him, making the playwright's message pretty clear. Kiss often, love freely and confess your heart when you must, even when it's not answered.

And forget that business of finding the other half of your heart. It's all about compatible eccentricities. No, really.

Bottom line? Love, actually, is a combination of misfires and bull's eyes. So shoot already.

The Fourth Was With Us

Call me oblivious, but I'd never noticed the swift creek at Swift Creek Mill Theatre before.

It's not like I hadn't been there, I just hadn't heard the roar of the creek that I did today, undoubtedly a result of the almost non-stop rain we've had since Prince died. And roaring is no exaggeration. The original gristmill must have been wildly productive with that kind of water behind it.

Foto Boy and I were there for "Little Shop of Horrors," which, like the creek, I hadn't seen before. Oh, sure, I'd seen the 1986 film version but the play? Never.

And the eight-month run at Swift Creek Mill in 1986? That was the year I landed in Richmond and was far too busy adjusting to life in the county after Dupont Circle to pay attention to the local theater scene. Today allowed me to correct that.

Our pre-show lunch of salads, Nicoise and Cobb, at Garnett's ran long and as we slid into our seats a few short minutes before curtain, the woman next to us observed, "You're late!" and then smiled to show she was joking.

Everyone's a mother (or grandmother) at Swift Creek it seems.

Everything about the play was fun and well-executed, from helium-voiced Audra almost unrecognizable in a blond pageboy wig as Audrey, to Ian's earnest and nebbishy Seymour to Adam's shape-shifting takes on too many characters to count - the abusive dentist, the Life magazine reporter, the bum barfing on the street, Mrs. Luce - to the do-wop girls acting as a Greek chorus in bouffants, everybody hit their marks and projected energetic devotion to the comedy horror story.

Director Tom Width ably filled in for the actor who usually plays shop owner Mr. Mushnik, giving us a different "Little Shop" than most people have seen.

It was also a thrill to hear Audra and Ian sing "Suddenly Seymour," a song I've heard plenty of times at the Ghostlight After Party and any number of theater parties, but never live as part of the show.

Let's just say I can see why certain boys love to ham it up singing it after a few drinks.

And when all was said and done, the action wrapped up with a gaping Audrey II advancing on the theater audience while leaves and branches dropped down from the lighting to engulf us.

What else would we do during intermission but trek down to the creek to admire its high water and relentless rushing despite the enormous tree trunks clogging it? When I requested that Foto Boy snap me in front of this watery marvel, he tells me his cloud is full.

Do I even have a cloud, I ask of him. "No, of course you don't, you're Karen," he says. Which means if, as the cast sang, the meek will inherit, chances are slim I'll be getting any of that action, either.

Not meek
Don't have a cloud
Slow to notice a creek
Living out loud

Surely there's a song in there, right?