Skyscrapers and Coat Closets Part Deux, concluded from Part Un
Well, you can imagine my frustration. My current crush and only hope for a boyfriend on the horizon was a drug dealer (DD). Here, in the prime of my twirties, I really thought that I'd grown out of my scum-magnent stage. But how else could one explain the fact that the current crush was locked in Shop Girl's bedroom and had been for 40 minutes?

Setting: Crammed-full-with-cotton-trenches-and-denim-jackets coat closet. Yours truly and Shop Girl conducting emphatic whisper debate regarding what to do with DD in bedroom. (While we all must maintain our moral fiber, sometimes it's hard to let a would-be boyfriend go.)
Shop Girl: I don't want any part of any drugs near my Dior. Get in there and get him out!

Me: But I haven't had a boyfriend in over a year. And have you heard him speak? Ah... that voice. Swooning. If coat closet weren't so full, I might have collapsed.

SG: What voice? Is he British? (It seems we all have our weak points, felon or no.)

Me: No. But he's a total Tom Brokaw sound-a-like. Which is better than being British.

SG: Are those heels making you dizzy? You can't tell me...side-tracked for a brief moment by satin trench, and slightly agitated that she hadn't found the BR gem herself, she stalled but quickly rebounded to crisis at hand... Whatever. Thug love is out. Everyone's going squeaky clean, the DD must go -- TB or no.

As sad as it was to say good-bye to my Tom Brokaw sound-a-like, she had a good point. Sheryl Crow is dating Lance Armstrong. Angelina Jolie is now über-mom, and Madonna is reportedly fining anyone on her tour $5 for each cuss word. Far be it from me to turn naughty, just when everyone else was going clean. Plus, as Shop Girl says, do what you do well. It just turns out that 'quirky prude' is my forte.

So, after mapping out our plan of door knocking down (a butter knife opens all the doors in her house), we exited the safe haven of the coat closet and skyscrapered over to the crime scene. We buttered the lock, held our breath, did a lipstick check (you never should waste an opportunity to make a good impression - even where narcotics are concerned), and teeter-tottered into the room. At first we didn't see anything, which only further infuriated Shop Girl. She's very protective of her spring skirts and dresses, but there's just no getting near her new white Yanuks. Darting from bedroom to dressing room to bathroom, I started to feel sorry for the felon/love-of-life. She even picked up a Dr. Scholl, which I could only assume would be used as a weapon as it would have looked plain dowdy with her dress.

But I, I was the wiser. You see, I may not know a thing about druglords and kingpins. And I may be the fashion 'victim' from time to time. But there are some things on which I am positively expert. And so as Shop Girl darted to and fro, I followed my nose to find my crush-of-all-crushes/Tom Brokaw sound-a-like to the floor beside her bed with a Supreme Pizza Hut pizza watching Saturday Night Live. He looked up at me teetering on my skyscrapers and smiled a happy/guilty smile. He held up a slice to me and said, "Hey there hottie. You want?" And with that, I nodded and collapsed down beside him. "We missed you." "Yeah, sorry about that. I got hungry." I smiled. "It happens," I said as I took a big bite. Love was in the air.

Shop Girl arrived on the scene moments later. Looking down on us, she quickly surmised the situation. She didn't say it then, but I knew what she was thinking. This guy is a nut job. Who orders pizza at a cocktail party and sneaks it into the bedroom to eat by themselves? Then she thought a little further, and realized that she's the one who gets me all dressed up to go out when at the end of the night I end up in the exact position I was in then. And even though I knew she approved on some base level where friends accept each other's persnickety habits, she simply rolled her eyes before turning and skyscrapering back to her banker-crush-of-the-night.

And that, my loves, brings us full circle back to me. Elated, giddy, glowing me. I'm crushing like crazy and loving every minute of it. For once, I'm going to try to keep all my daydreams of the altar at bay and just go with the flow. And I have to say, that life without the daydreams isn't so bad. The real stuff is actually quite good. Better than that, it's divine.

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