Beijing Blitz

Lover #1 : OMG. Stay for me. Don't leave! How could I possibly live without you? My life will be miserably bereft without your beloved presence. I will watch the door patiently waiting for your return!
Lover #2 : Get a grip. I'm only going for a week.

Melodramatic. And certainly exaggerated.

But I've seen fellas weeping and wailing for a separation just slightly more than a month. Sure, it happens more when we're ingenuous schoolkids, where a week seems like a month - and a month certainly seems like forever and after. Remember when love-lorn teenagers forcibly separated by provincial borders would be cause for a clinical state of depression? I've had similarly besotted classmates back in school who've put their studies on hold just to be with their significant paramours - unwilling to be separated even for a moment.

But has it changed that much?

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder.


Hello? Hello? Hello?
Du... Du... Du...
Methinks that's a crock. Absence is just plain that. Absence. Nothing else. Let's face it, life goes on even without the presence of a loved one. New lives get intertwined with ours as we continue in our own separate ( steadily more disparate ) paths. Sure, the little threads we call love might still remain but the seemingly unbreakable connection gets inevitably unwound with the passage of time.

Unfortunately not everyone has the will and patience to stitch the severed connections together.

So when Charming Calvin was asked to consider an extension for his stay in Beijing - and he put that loaded question to me, I found myself wavering with a reply. Yes, another Beijing Bombshell. My immediate answer would be selfish and self-serving of course - but forcing me to make a decision for someone else ( despite the inalienable fact that I'm a monstrous control freak! ) would be a serious anathema to my right-wing liberal ways.

So let's just say I wouldn't whine, weep and wail for an immediate separation if he stays. Neither of us are crazy/hysterical enough to sever intimate connections over one more year apart. Diplomatic ties would be continued of course.

But I'm not made to be a sailor's wife patiently walking the widow's walk forever watching for the ship to return. Let's face it, I don't really believe in long-distance relationships. Always thought it utterly doomed to failure. And let's face it, I'm far from your celibate saint either. Next time I see a cute guy I'm vaguely interested in, I don't know if I'd be able to resist holding out a friendly hand with my call number scribbled on a cheap napkin.

Okay, that sounded a thousand times meaner ( and sluttier! ) than originally intended. So to relieve the pain of the blow, listen to this instead.