Dear Bill,

love the blog. I’m writing to you to ask for your help with some girl problems I’ve been having.

I was going to marry this real nice girl my mother adopted. But then I fell in love with this other girl, who works in a factory. I did some prison time because I helped her get off an assault charge when she stabbed one of her coworkers. The day that I get out, I go to meet her, and we have a really great time – but then when I have to leave to go to work, she accuses me of not really loving her, and asks me to run away with her to live on the road. Then my boss shows up and starts flirting with her (and she doesn’t seem to mind). So I fight him, and he kicks my ass, but her dodgy gangster friends distract him and I stab him in the heart.

Then I’ve to go on the run. One day, everyone else is out on business and they leave me guarding the stash house. This guy turns up – he’s the champion bullfighter of Seville – and it turns out he’s been carrying on with my girl! She’s been seeing him behind my back! So I fight him, and he kicks my ass, but her dodgy gangster friends come back just in time to save me for getting murdered. She says she doesn’t want me around any more, and I refuse to go – I’m staying with this girl even if it kills us both, because isn’t that what love is about? But then I hear my mother’s really sick, so I go back home to be with her for a while.

That’s where I am now. I haven’t been in contact with the girl since, but I know they’re all going to a big bullfight in Seville next week. I’ve been thinking maybe I’ll go too, follow her around for a while, and maybe murder her if she won’t take me back. I just don’t know Bill, what should I do?

Yours,

-Nervous in Navarre

Opera characters need to work on their communication skills.