Love Vulgarly Lost?

A Play In 3 Acts

By FFBear

Act the First:

Aaaah, the cradle of our youth, the 1960's, the Jefferson Airplane gives a free concert outdoors at New Paltz State Teachers College in the shadow of our beloved Gunks, those near vertical cliffs where we learned to climb & were forced to become Vulgarians when some schmuck from the Yale Mountaineering Club fell to his death & forgot to activate his emergency rescue beacon on the way down. It was then that the Appalachian Mountain Club tried to force it's authority upon us & in the spirit of one of our great nation's founders Patrick Henry famous for those immortal words " Give me liberty or give me death.", we decided that liberty was better than death & said "Fuck You" to the Appies who were perfectly capable of killing themselves without our help. They had some gall to try to tell us who could lead what climbs & who could not when we all climbed better than any of them.

 They had a rescue team too who came to rescue my girlfriend, Blonde Betty, on a fine summers day before the schism. She was a good climber but with poor taste in alternate boyfriends. We were climbing the Pink Laurel, so called because there isn't any pink laurel anywhere on the climb. Anyway I led the difficult first pitch & then belayed her (don't get dirty thoughts in your mind) as she quite handily did the crux move & arrived at the belay ledge ( remember what I said about that word, although the other interpretation has in fact happened any number of times). Well the second pitch is actually easier but it's a fairly long overhanging traverse with no intermediate protection which means you would take a long swing if you fell off. However, it does have big bucket handholds.

Act the Second:

Just as she was about to start the traverse who should appear at the base of the climb. no not Santa & his 8 tiny reindeer, but her alternate city boyfriend to whom she had the nerve to divulge our location when in fact we were intending to spend the weekend together. I should have untied from the rope right then & there & soloed the last easy pitch leaving her stranded , but no I'm really a nice guy at heart, so with our new found audience she started across the the traverse. Unfortunately part way across she froze in terror & I could not talk her into moving either forward or backward as her strength quickly ebbed from hanging onto the overhanging wall. She finally fell off the rock face took a long swing & banged her head into an outcropping of, no not marshmallow, but rock! Not a good situation! The face was so overhanging at this point that I had to lower her all the way to the ground & the arms of her city boyfriend. 

Tadaaa, enter the Appie Rescue Team who put her in a litter called an ambulance & drove her to the hospital for a checkup. What a revolting situation, but what about me? In their quest to be heroes they forgot that I was still on the cliff face with no second to belay me & no one to drop me a top rope. After considering this situation for a few minutes I decided that I had just been double fucked.

1. I just had to lower the present love of my life into the arms of her alternate boyfriend, who up until a few minutes ago, I didn't even know existed.

2. I was now stranded on the cliff with nothing but a loose rope for a belay. Figuring the trailing rope would be sort of comforting I just climbed the last easy pitch with a phantom belay.

Act the Third:

Here we are back at Charley's Trail Inn, our breakfast, lunch. dinner & beer swilling hangout. My mood is glum when in walks Blonde Betty with the City Schmuck. Hooray, it turns out that she is hardly injured at all. If she hadn't been spirited away so quickly, she could have saved herself a trip to the hospital. So were drinking beer when Blond Betty says she would like to go back to New York City. Well I didn't like this idea very much since it was only Saturday & we would miss a whole day's climbing on Sunday. However, She did seem a little rattled & as I said before "I'm really a nice guy at heart." (Act the Second), so I said Ok I would take her home. She said no, she wanted to go home with City Schmuck. I replied "I brought you up here & I'll take you home." She still insisted on going home with City Schmuck. This got me really pissed off & even though I'm a really nice guy at heart, you don't want to get me really pissed off. Well the situation got tenser & tenser & then Blonde Betty, City Schmuck, I & a coterie of my friends moved out into the parking lot to see them off in City Schmuck's MGA sports car. God, in retrospect how I wished I had surreptitiously taken the distributor rotor out of his car. Well we all can't be perfect! By now my temperature was at the boiling point so before they got in the car I offered him my right hand in gesture of friendship, my left hand held a glass of beer. As I shook his hand I threw the glass of beer in his face, to his great surprise & my friends amusement. You would think that he would have been enraged & engaged me in mortal battle for the fair damsel, after all I had besmirched his honor. But no, he just sputtered a little & then got in the MGA while Blonde Betty got in the passenger seat. What a wimp! By now I was like a raging bull. He started the engine (ah, he still had a distributor rotor) turned the car around & proceeded to drive out of the parking lot. As he went by me I put my foot through the hard plastic side window of the MGA. Unfortunately for me & Blonde Betty too, it happened to be the passenger side window. Let's be reasonable here folks, City Schmuck was trying to get out of that parking lot as quickly as possible & I really didn't have time to run around the car & kick in his window. Well needless to despite the fact that I attempted to fight for her honor I did not score any points that day on the field of love. Was I acting vulgarly that day, did I become the first Vulgarian right then & there? I don't think so, after all this was only a personal duel & had nothing to do with the greater issues of

 Truth Justice & the American Way

The End