Couplehood Read online

  Your feet, however, which really need the attention, get nothing. Admit it. Your feet haven’t been scrubbed since you were in a bassinet. They’re just too far away. No matter how short you are, it’s not worth the effort. So you forget about them. “Well, they’ll get dripped on. They’ll be fine.”

  Other areas you scrub a lot, not because they’re so convenient, but because frankly, it’s pleasurable. Certain private areas—they get tremendous attention. The irony is that these are areas thought of as unhygienic, while in fact, they’re so clean you could entertain there.

  A lot of couples shower together. It’s supposed to be romantic and sensual. Truth? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Because one of you is not getting water. One of you, therefore, is not taking a shower.

  Let’s be honest; one of you is having a great time, it’s terrific. The other one is in the back going, “You got a sweater up there? Maybe a windbreaker? Something with a hood would be nice. I would get it, but my ass is frozen to the wall here.”

  Then there are people who use the shower to do everything. They shave, they brush their teeth, they do their taxes, everything.

  I can’t shave in a shower. It’s too risky. Ever see the guys who shave with an electric razor while they’re driving? What is that about? You telling me there’s no other opportunity in their day to have a razor at their throat than while doing sixty around a curve? Surely they could squeeze a moment in before breakfast. Or at least wait for a red light.

  Personally, I have to be on dry, non-moving land to shave. And even then, it’s not so easy. The main problem is I have no mirror depth perception. It’s all distorted; left is right, forward is back—I don’t know where I am. Ever try to check the back of your head with another mirror? I can’t find myself. I’ve missed by a good six feet. I go, “Oh, that’s not me at all. That’s a shower cap on a hook.”

  The best thing is to find somebody who looks roughly like you and just look at the back of his head.

  I’ve actually tried not shaving, but it turns out I’m not a Beard Guy. Certain guys look good in beards. I look, at best, like I’m on my way to something that may, ultimately, with a lot of work, become a beard.

  My beard starts to look promising, and then in four days just gets tired and stops. People see me unshaven and ask, “Oh, what is that—three days, four days?”

  And I have to tell them, “Sadly, since last summer. But thank you for caring.”

  And they always ask. They see stubble and have to comment.

  “What are you—growing a beard?”

  What if I wasn’t? What if I simply forgot to shave? Now they’re just criticizing my hygiene. Like if you forgot to shower they’d say, “Hey, did you mean to smell like that? You going for some effect or are you just woefully negligent?”

  And that awkward stage of Beard Development is toughest on your partner.

  “I can’t kiss you with that face. It hurts.”

  “It’s going to be a regular beard any day now.”

  “Let’s talk then.”

  My wife and I start each morning with the genuine intention of exercising. But in a dazzling display of mutual support, we’ve learned to talk ourselves right out of it.

  “Look, I don’t feel like working out, you don’t feel like working out—let’s just skip it.”

  “Nobody’s going to know, right?”

  “It’ll be our little secret.”

  “Right, we’ll just look the way we do.”

  “And if anybody asks, we ran.”

  The truth is nobody wants to work out. We just do it to keep up with people who look better than we do. If we all just agreed to not work out—and I mean everyone, across the board—we’d be a lot happier. We could eat cupcakes and sleep late. The problem is it would only take one guy in good shape to ruin it for the whole group. “Great, now we gotta look like this guy.…” And the next morning we’d all be back running, lifting, and sweating against our will.

  Some people talk like it’s nothing. “I’ll just lose it after the holidays. It won’t be hard—I mean I’ve only been eating like a pig these last … what is it … 3 … 4 … 20 years. I’ll have some cottage cheese for lunch, I’ll be fine.”

  We put a lot of pressure on cottage cheese. We’ve convinced ourselves it’s a Miracle Food. If it’s on your plate, you’re on a diet. Doesn’t matter what else is on the plate. It could be three cheeseburgers and a mountain of lard. Drop a scoop of cottage cheese on there—it’s a Diet Plate.

  Same with a peach half. Somehow it’s a Diet Enforcer. “Sixteen pork patties with a piano-size pile of potatoes, and a fresh peach half.” And you think, “Peach half —how bad could it be? It’s obviously a special Dieter’s Platter.”

  If you ever see cottage cheese and half a peach on a plate, for God’s sake be careful. You could literally disappear. Your body mass could evaporate into thin air—so powerful are these nutritious diet items.

  A footnote: If your partner ever suggests that they have, perhaps, gained an unwanted ounce or two, stay out of it.

  I beg you. Even if they bring it up first.

  “Do I look a little heavy?”

  “No.”

  “Seriously.”

  “You don’t.”

  “C’mon, look at this picture from last summer—you gonna tell me I don’t look thinner there?”

  “Let me see … well … maybe a little, yeah.”

  “Oh, like you’re so perfect?”

  “I didn’t say anything—you asked!”

  “Just drop it.”

  Hours later: “I can’t believe you said that.”

  Now, certain body measurements never change. Height and shoe size, for example. These are areas, that, when we were kids, kept growing along with everything else, and then just stopped. No warning. No fanfare; they just hit a number and stayed there.

  And back then, getting bigger was a good thing. You were proud to be expanding. You showed off your progress. “Look—I’m over four feet already.”

  Then one day you notice you’ve been wearing the same sizes several years in a row, and you realize, “I guess I’m done. This is who I am. Five foot ten, and not an inch more. I’m 5′10″, 9½ shoe. Forever. That’s who I am.”

  I think it would have been nice to know about it when it happened. You could have had a party.

  “Hey, what’s everybody celebrating?”

  “I finished growing.”

  “Well, congratulations!! How’d you make out?”

  “Five seven and a half, size eight in a dress shoe.”

  “Good for you.”

  Let’s

  Do

  Something

  The need to do something can kill you.

  You walk into work Monday morning, they’re all over you.

  “How was your weekend?”

  “Have a good weekend?”

  “What’d you do with the weekend?”

  “Do anything good?”

  What the hell could I do that’s interesting enough to withstand that kind of pounding? It’s a weekend, two days off. How good is it supposed to be?

  But they bombard you with How-was-your-weekends, and I feel this great pressure to have had a great weekend. For them.

  “I went skiing, let’s say. Would that be enough for you?”

  This is what they’re looking for. Some kind of action verb.

  “We went harpooning. British Columbia.”

  “We ran a test launch for the space shuttle, alright? Stop grilling me, I tell you!”

  Because, invariably, what you do is—nothing. You hang around the house. Read the paper. Take a succession of naps. And even then, people try to make it sound like more.

  “So, you relaxed? Took a little R & R?”

  “I didn’t say I relaxed. I didn’t ‘R’ or ‘R’. I just did nothing.”

  And for me, that is a great weekend. Doing Nothing. Shutting off the phones, lying on the couch with the woman of my dreams, and just rea
ding—I can’t really ask for more than that.

  I love reading the paper, and I don’t know why. I don’t even really read it. I just like to get it, hold it, and look in the general direction of the printed surface. It’s the sheer challenge of actually managing to find the time to sit down with a paper that’s appealing. That’s all it is.

  Because the content itself—I’m not all that interested.

  Truly. As soon as I sit down with the Sunday Paper, the first thing I do is throw half of it away. Lose the stock reports, lose the grocery coupons, lose the stuff for sale, and lose the travel section. (Where am I going?)

  Now you’re left with a manageable pile: Sports, magazine section, TV, and regular news.

  Here’s my thing with the news: I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, it’s just that by the time I read about something, it’s obviously too late to help. It already happened.

  Now, if you told me that tomorrow a bus was going to go sailing off the Himalayas, I would get involved. I’d pick up the phone and warn them. “Don’t get on the bus. Didn’t you see the paper?”

  But if I read on Sunday that something happened on Saturday, what can I do? At best I can call to console. “I only just now heard.”

  Once in a while, I’ll actually read the entire paper, so I’ll feel like I’m at one with the global community. I know what’s going on, I’m okay. I go to sleep. Next morning, the clock radio goes off, and the first thing I hear is, “Good morning. In Jerusalem last night, a bomb went off …” and I think, “I can’t close my eyes for a minute!”

  And I don’t understand politics. Like when warring nations call a cease-fire for the holidays. How do they do that? They agree about nothing, but they can still pull it together to go, “Look, we may have our differences, but nobody wants to work Christmas.”

  Why can’t they find another reason to hold off one more day?

  “Look, the 25th is Christmas and the 26th, I gotta return gifts, I’ll be at the stores, the lines—it’ll take forever, so the 26th is no good for us.”

  And then, just keep it going. “The 27th … umm, let’s see … you know, I’d love to resume the hostilities and slaughter your village, but I just noticed—I have the phone guy coming the 27th.”

  And if you keep your schedule busy enough, things get done and you’re saving lives right and left.

  As a couple, there’s something special about reading the paper together. First of all, for some reason, whatever section the other person is reading looks more interesting than the one you’re reading. Even if you’ve already read it, you want to see it again.

  “I didn’t realize how good that Travel section looked till I saw you thumbing through it like that. What is that picture there—Portugal?”

  I love the fact that we go through the Real Estate section every Sunday and look at pictures of places we have no intention or possibility of buying, but still we check for price fluctuations.

  “Oh, look at this—that lakefront estate in Danbury just went down to five bazillion, as opposed to the unreasonable six-two they were asking last month. They’re obviously weakening.”

  Some things in the paper are better not to share. But you don’t know which ones they are until it’s too late.

  I’m reading an article about this woman in Houston who was fired, seemingly unfairly, from a very good job. I’m reading, and quietly, to myself, I go, “Hmm … tsk … geez.”

  The Woman I Love says, “What’s that?”

  “Hm? Oh nothing, just this article. This woman, in Houston, she had a great job, and they let her go because they discovered that years earlier she had been a prostitute.… Just kind of sad.”

  She says, “Hmm … tsk … geez.”

  A minute and a half later she puts down the Travel section and says, like it’s my fault, “What is it with prostitutes?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the whole thing with prostitutes and men—I just don’t get it.”

  See, when you’re a couple, each person represents their gender. You’re the flag bearer for the whole team. And if any member of your team, anywhere in the world, past or present, does something to offend, you have to answer for it.

  “No, it has nothing to do with prostitutes, Honey, I’m just saying, it’s kind of sad … You know, here’s a woman, got her life together and everything … and then … hey, what’s that picture there, Portugal?” Then you read the Travel section together and try to get off the Houston thing.

  But there are aftershocks.

  Hours later, we’re eating, my loved one turns on me.

  “Are you chewing loudly?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’re bugging me.”

  And I’ll think, Let me see, we’re chewing, we’re eating, chicken, barbecue sauce, Texas—“The prostitute lady? That’s what you’re upset about?”

  She says, “I just don’t get it.”

  Even if you’re both lounging around, enjoying doing nothing, in a heartbeat, it can all go bad.

  “I’m bored. Let’s do something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t care. Anything. I just can’t believe we’re sitting in our pajamas. Oh, no—we’ve become one of those couples that never does anything. When did this happen? When did we become this dull?”

  And my answer is, “I’ll tell you when—somewhere in the middle of that article you’re reading. Because for a while there, we were doing fine; half-way through the magazine section, we were still happy. But because your article goes bad, it means we’re failing as a couple? We are individually and jointly dull?”

  She says, simply, “We really have to do something.”

  I Just

  Need

  Two

  Minutes

  Getting out of the house is generally harder than doing what you plan to do once you actually get out of the house. There are a thousand false starts.

  There’s the “Who has the keys?”—“You had them”—“No, I gave them to you” drama, which is always fun.

  There’s the “Did you leave the machine on?”—“It’s not working”—“What do you mean it’s not working, let me see” one-act play.

  And the ever-popular “Is it going to be cold later?”—“What am I, the weatherman? Just take a jacket and let’s go” cartoon.

  That’s one I particularly enjoy—the jacket dilemma. My bride, though a remarkably intelligent woman, refuses to accept that the weather at the end of the day is often going to be different than it is now. She becomes a child. “I’m not taking a jacket. I’ll be fine.” Which relegates me to the “just-take-it-and-throw-it-in-the-car-what-the-hell-is-the-big-deal” role.

  But there are two opposing forces working here. She doesn’t want to take the jacket for vanity reasons. It’s a wardrobe issue. The sweater doesn’t go with anything and it makes her look bulky so she’d rather freeze than look bulky and clash.

  I, on the other hand, have my own interest in mind. Because I know that later, when she’s cold, I’m gonna have to do the Gentleman Thing of taking off my jacket and draping it over her shoulders, for which she’ll love me and I will resent her deeply.

  Understand: If we were caught in a surprise hailstorm, or the country was invaded and we had to flee suddenly with only what we had on, I would have no problem. I would give her my jacket instinctively. Sure, I’d freeze, but I’d be a hero. I’d be getting something out of it.

  But here, we have a choice. It’s not hailing. We’re not fleeing. We’re standing in front of a closet with a myriad of jackets and sweaters and coats and protective gear for every potential five-degree variance—but no, “I’ll be fine,” she says.

  So we go. And of course, later, it’s freezing, and she’s huddling in my jacket, and I, who knew to bring a jacket, am wearing no jacket. And the kicker is: It’s not like my jacket looks so good on her anyway. It certainly looks worse than whatever jacket of her own she would have put on.
But somehow it’s okay, because people know what’s going on. They won’t judge her. When you see a woman with a wildly mismatched jacket draped over her shoulders, you never say, “Boy, what was she thinking? That doesn’t go at all.” You say, “Wow, isn’t he sweet. Look how he sacrificed his own jacket for her.”

  And what I’m thinking is, “I’m a schmuck. I’m a schmuck, and I’m freezing. I actually thought this through, I planned ahead, and I’m still freezing.”

  Getting dressed is a fascinating little world once you’re married. Especially for men. Because upon marriage, you lose the ability to choose clothing by yourself.

  I don’t know when it happened, but it did. I don’t have it anymore. I used to get dressed by myself all the time. I would put on a shirt and pants and go out. In public. And it was not a problem. Nobody was laughing; there was no chuckling behind my back. The fashion police were not knocking down my door. I was fine.

  Then, you live with a woman, you get as far as the door, and you hear, “You’re not going to wear that, are you? Tell me you’re not going to wear that, because I will leave you right now. The fact that you would even think to put those things together frightens me to no end.”

  And you have to think fast.

  “Oh, together? No, no, no, no, no. I wasn’t going to wear these together. Is that what you thought? That’s funny. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. No, what I was doing was, I was just showing you Clothing That I Own Currently. These are Currently In My Possession, these two items. That’s what this is: an inventory reminder for you. I’ll take them off now that you’ve been reminded.”

  I don’t even try to do it myself anymore.

  “Honey, what do you think? A striped shirt and a solid tie, or a solid shirt and pair of mukluks—what do you think? Help me out. A Beatle wig and a grass skirt, or maybe a goose-down vest and some sort of Viking helmet? Tell me, because I haven’t used that part of my brain in several years. In fact, why don’t you just choose something, lay it out, and I’ll be in the crib until we have to leave.”