My Own Personal Opera & Biking to Italy

I have been cast to play myself in a brand new opera whose plot eerily resembles the last chapter of strife in my love life. It is written in the highly dramatic style of the great Romantic operas, and the love triangle is murderously melodramatic.
Before running off to my true love, I must escape the evil clutches of the former lover. Here ensues a full operatic diatribe between us, replete with glissando runs and castigating gestures. Singing out my grievances directly to him feels appropriate, as does the thunder of his response - calling all low strings to make us shudder! I'm enthralled by the darkness of the scene and the surprising richness of his voice - think "the castle" of Bram Stoker's Dracula- and laugh at the opera out loud as my ludicrous imagination becomes transparent as a dream. Certainly in real life I romanticized the ex as dark and mysterious, but in truth his voice was quite ugly in argument and I'll be damned if there was any castle.
The scene ends with nothing more than a shouting match and my character is swept into the arms of her beloved. Enter pinnacle of triangle. (It's worthy to note that no one else saved me.
I ran away from the evil one on my own.) Disappointing dream land did not clearly cast my husband in this role - instead it gives me a blurry face, an unimportant personage. Even so, I feel that he does represent him as he gives his solo and calm washes over the dream. Clouds part. The end.

-

I live in New York City. My best friend has become obsessed with a rich stylist from Central America who has invented a new liquor. We are working on branding and selling the new intoxicant - refrigerators full of the stuff - when the boss reveals that he's got AIDS and is going back to Venezuela to kick the bucket in the company of his family. My friend is distraught. I look out into the courtyard of our apartment building, at the grid of bricked up chimneys and stairwell windows, and see a prison forming. I realize I would be wasting my time to stay any longer.
I set out on my bicycle heading east. There's a tunnel that reaches all the way across the Atlantic. Cars and buses making their way through, dangerously. I decide to bike to Europe, then, since I have nothing else to do and I'm eager for adventure. I have no supplies, not even water. No passport, no nothing. But I enter the tunnel anyway. The road splits every hundred miles, taking one lane up to a rest area at surface level. There they are, the golden Mickey D arches, floating over the pure ocean. Ugh, I think, thank god I'm leaving America! I set back down to the tunnel and hundreds of miles feel like city blocks. Before I know it I've arrived at the office of my old professor in Florence - red eyed, exhausted and in need of a place to crash. They seem confused about my proclamation of having biked to them, suspicious almost. I'm so high on endorphins it doesn't matter what they think. I look out the window here and see a tree against the backdrop of a beautiful arched old doorway and know I've come to the right spot.
Brava, says the professor, but you should have been wearing a helmet. We'll see to it that you get a proper motorbike while you're here - and an iphone (seriously, brain).