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My car runs outside the convenience store where Todd works. I’m there to pick up my friend and roommate from the evening shift, but the moment finds him stalled between his ride home and the gritty brick outside of the store. It has become the apparent site chosen by Brandi, our mutual friend who showed up before me, for a verbal showdown between her and Todd.

In a convenience store parking lot.
In front of my car.
Whose engine is still running.

A miserably cold drizzle softens my view of the two combatants through the windshield as they begin their rounds of gesturing. The ember of a cigarette as it flies around in Brandi’s hand gives me the image of a crazed air traffic controller. They’re also yelling, of course, but I can only hear the occasional stressed tone over the late-night jazz on the radio. I’m not interested in their argument, anyway.

Reason is on my side to flash the headlights or honk the horn—anything to make Todd take a rain check and get in the damn car—but I sit back and wait it out. If I know my friends, it will be a while; but I shouldn’t interfere: me, the car, the bricks have all become unfocused objects in their scene of “Them: There and Now.” Some might say they are being inconsiderate, but they’re only exhibiting a symptom of the incurable social disease known as drama.

An obnoxious, but all too common, little virus, drama seeks to incapacitate whatever truth it finds in the system. Truth, in its purest simplest form, is an irreducible element capable of being easily digested and processed. But drama attacks truth, engulfing it in a toxic mixture of emotion and bullcrap in an attempt to mutate it into a “half truth” or asphyxiate it entirely. It breeds on the very conflict it creates, and although I can’t hear what they say, I can see tainted truths from Brandi and Todd smashing into each other and scattering the drama like a kicked dandelion.

Brandi takes a final drag on her cigarette and casts it down on the lot. I have a brief jolt of hope that their discussion is over, but she fishes another clove out of her purse and lights it. She’s never finished talking until she’s finished smoking. I sigh and take a glance out of the driver’s side window, just in time to see a girl walk out of the building next to the store. Its simple vinyl siding and promises of food almost make it look like a mom and pop café, but the buzzings of neon and debauchery through the windows prove it a bar.

The girl is in a fur-lined top with a short skirt that won’t be considered practical here for months to come. No jacket. She’s looking for something tonight, and it certainly wasn’t where she just came from. But the night is still young; she’ll undoubtedly find what her disease is commanding her to. When she rubs up against a partner on the dance floor, her drama will release chemicals that will give her feelings of worth, of satisfaction. Sneaking out his house and screening calls for a week will be a small price in comparison; she won’t regret it. The more the truth becomes a chore to swallow, the better it seems to taste, like a never-ending jawbreaker that’s too big to spit out.

It’s been over half an hour as I take a look at the gas gauge. How much fuel is consumed when your car is idling? Are the terrorists winning as I sit here and contemplate?

I chuckle to myself. If I ever found myself infected by drama at least I know I could fight it with comedy. The only known antibody against the sickness, it toys with drama, surrounding it and eventually rendering it ineffective. Sometimes the truth is salvageable, but comedy can be just as cruel to it, burying it in frivolousness and absurdity.

I make a note to be careful with comedy, but I doubt I will ever have to use it. I have always been an observer, acute and detached; drama has never seen me as its target. I have always been able to see its effects without worry. I can even sit in a theater, a hotbed of drama, and sit indifferent as those infected around me get their fixes off of false happy endings and pseudo-tragic heroism without having to put on a short skirt and finding it themselves.

I am immune to drama, as if it has chosen me to document it. It is why the girl walked out when I turned my head. It is why my friends have been performing in front of me.

My friends. I had nearly forgotten about them as I look up and see them still talking. I swat at the key chain, watching it swing like a pendulum. A smile forms as I imagine the dumbfounded look on Todd’s face if I just backed out and left him to walk home. He’d probably bound after the car after the initial shock, leaving Brandi to look upon the scene and smirk.

Yes, I am immune.