Marzipan in my pie plate

You hear your friends talk about such things, but you never in a million years imagine that someday you'll find yourself in a BDR. But love makes us do crazy things sometimes.

I have to face it. I have to deal with it. I have to say it, name it and move past it.

I am in a Buffy Discordant Relationship. More than one of them, in fact. So, let the healing begin.

What makes a BDR? It's when one member of a couple (or one or more of a group of friends) has seen more episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer than the other. It's dating someone who had the foresight to watch all seven seasons of the supernaturally addictive Sarah Michelle Gellar drama when it was actually first aired and then being utterly unable to discuss the show with them for fear important plot points will be revealed. It means stepping gingerly around "spoilers" innocently dropped into conversation. It means, occasionally, running from a room at an otherwise sedate party with your hands clamped over your ears, screeching "la la la la! I can't hear you! La la la la!"

I am in a BDR and I have run, clamped and screeched.

I've been involved in a regimen of therapy for several months now, purchasing the DVD sets as they become available and devouring entire seasons of the show in a single weekend. In fact, over the course of a few weeks, I blew through seasons one through three and then had to sit in a dark room, quivering and avoid contact with Slayer devotees for almost 10 days until the fourth season hit stores.

And once that season was viewed -- in a particularly intense two-day Buffy-binge during which I neither went to work or, in fact, showered -- things went a little wobbly.

You see, I had enough information to discourse thoughtfully on the pros and cons of Angel and Riley (advantage Riley, in my book; give me whitebread, blond and ab-endowed over tortured, broody and brunette any day). I could discuss with some authority the dramatic merits of the Master story arc as opposed to the Initiative season. I had just enough information to be dangerous to the innocent longtime fans with whom I was involved.

I discovered this in the most frightening manner possible: talking about the show with a friend in a moving vehicle. We were, I thought, on pretty safe ground, the relative lethality of demons against vamps, maybe. And then he said it -- I've thankfully blanked on the actual words. "Things get really interesting in season five, especially after [blank] [blanks]."

"[Blank] [blanks]?!" I squealed. "How could [blank] [blank]?! What do you mean [blank] [blanks]?! [Blank] can't [blank]!" I wailed. I whimpered.

He nearly drove off the road.

It was a wakeup call for me. I apologized, gathered the CDs off the floor and stacked them back on the dash and vowed to redouble my efforts to avoid matters Sunnydale-related in all future social settings. This weekend, after being stalled by long-neglected work and other obligations, I am pleased to say I finished off season five in one hellgod-and-monster marathon.

I now know why [blank] [blanked], and that particular episode is sure to become one of my favorites. It made me cry, as did the one where [blank] discovered that [blank] was the [blank]. I knew it was coming -- those damnable Internet message boards and their siren songs! -- but I still clutched my pillow tight when [blank] [blanked] off the [blank] and [blanked] to save [blank] and, not incidentally, the [blank]. Again.

And tonight, Derrick and I watched the first episode of season six together, after he first consented to simply cuddle quietly and let me digest and enjoy what he's already seen three times in reruns. My friend Jeffrey will be pleased to learn that I now understand his oblique "marzipan" reference.

And all of my friends -- who for years begged me to take up watching the show and who patiently waited until I discovered it on my own -- will be delighted when October rolls around and the seventh and final season of the show makes its way to DVD. I'll watch it all right away, I promise. And then we can catch up on nearly eight years of deferred conversations. We can stop walking on eggshells and vampire dust and chat openly about all the Scoobies. I'll dazzle you with my Mayor trivia and my Quark-as-principal impersonation.

And we will be BDR no more.

The suspense is killing me. I hope it lasts.

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