If you are like most people who have absolutely nothing else going on in their own lives, you’ve probably been wondering about what’s been going on with me and The Guy I went to Ireland With. By way of background, The Guy I Went to Ireland With and I went to Ireland in August where, after surviving the Airport Incident, I managed to have a great time, despite some mild to medium stress and tension arising out of the unfortunate events having to do with The Guy I Went to Ireland With’s insensitivity.
But that’s what the people who speak English fluently call “prologue”.
This is an “update”.
So The Guy I Went to Ireland With and I have been seeing each other since the Spring and if you’re like me, you like to celebrate the passage of the seasons and your six month anniversary by compiling a list of your love interest’s personality flaws.
“You know what’s annoying about you?” I asked him one night and when he was positively stumped, I shared my findings. Because The Guy I Went to Ireland With is Always Late. I mean, he wasn’t late when we started seeing each other, but as we relaxed into a relationship, I’ve noticed a pattern. Like, we’ll decide to meet for dinner at 8. At 8:01, I’d be sitting at the designated restaurant with a napkin tied around my neck, clutching a knife and fork in either hand, prepared for mastication. At 8:15, I get a text from him, letting me know that he’s on his way. This is always confusing to me, because if he is on his way at a time later than he is supposed to be here, how is he going to get here on time? It’s a mystery, but admittedly I don’t know how time travel works.
There are some other examples of his lateness, each meriting a post or a short screenplay of its own, but I just don’t have the time to get into it. Because I have appointments and don’t want to be late. So let’s just agree that He is Always Late and that I have really great hair.
As a result of the lateness, I had to develop some coping strategies. Like lying, for example. “Why don’t we meet at 7?” I’d ask, planning to serve dinner at 7:30. This strategy had some obvious advantages. Like deceit. The disadvantage was that it involved math, and by the time I did the calculations as to what time the actual event was versus what time I had to lie about, I felt that I had expanded enough mental energy to launch a few missiles and/or to prove/disprove the Theory of Relativity.
Obviously I couldn’t maintain that kind of high-wire balancing act, so I settled into a tried and true strategy of Silently Seething. The interesting thing about the Silently Seething strategy is that although, as the name implies, it involves a lot of seething in silence about the lateness, it also comes with exciting outbursts of j’accusations and indictments at top volume.
Ok, now that I’ve set the stage, let me explain what happened last weekend. By the way, there is absolutely no point to that last sentence and if I were a better writer, I’d just edit it out, but now that I’ve written it and then written about it, I just can’t seem to let go. Or writing about the sentence. OMG, what if I can’t finish this post because I’m stuck on this shit now?
So last Saturday we were supposed to go to a party in New Jersey. The Guy I Went to Ireland With was going to spend the day working in New Jersey, close to the party location, then get back to NYC, pick me up and drive us back to New Jersey. We planned to meet at the parking garage at 5:30 pm.
By 4:30 pm, I was Silently Seething. Because I knew, KNEW, I tell you, that The Guy I Went to Ireland With was going to be late. And there I would be, in my party dress and perfect hair, stranded by the garage, waiting for him. The air would be filled with desperation and rage. Everyone passing by would feel sorry for me, with the possible exception of those who would be absolutely taken by my hair. Oh, I’d also be wearing boots. I didn’t mean to imply, by focusing on dress and hair, that I was barefoot. Writing is hard. I don’t know, maybe I should just edit that sentence out from a few paragraphs ago.
How long could something like this go on, I wondered. How long would I allow myself to be treated like this? Sure, I love The Guy I Went to Ireland With, but is love enough to overcome the lateness, which is shorthand for “I don’t care about you and possibly hate you”? I didn’t know. But I was pretty sure that by the time he finally did get there, 10, 15, half an hour to forty five minutes later, we were going to have a pretty animated conversation. “Why is your time more important than mine?” I’d ask and as he gathered his thoughts, I’d launch the ever-popular “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t make me wait!” I was ready.
Unfortunately, we never got to have this conversation. Because The Guy I Went to Ireland With had a diabolical plot to destroy my plans by being on time. And I was late. But those are details and apparently the devil is in them and I have enough problems without having to deal with Satanism at this stage in my life. What you should take away from this post is that I have really great hair and am a wonderful person. (Oh, and he was going to write about this from his POV, but, well, he’s running a bit late with it. Go figure.)
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