The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

by Nick Offerman

  N: That loss was a nadir.

  M: Oh man. We should have kept the blanket. And the red shoes. I think someday, somehow, they’ll come back to us.

  N: I’d like to see you in just the blanket and the red shoes.

  M: How about just the red shoes?

  N: I’ll take it.

  M: So we sat there with our blanket and listened to Glen Campbell. I don’t know if everybody’s dream concert would be Glen Campbell, but that was another thing. Nick and I have a similar sensibility. That’s an important quality in a relationship—liking the same things. I know there are many a couple who are very happy despite having different interests, likes, and dislikes. But for me, it sure makes it easier when you can really enjoy the Bachelor franchise together.

  So Glen Campbell played, and he was great. Then after Glen Campbell, because it was the Fourth of July, the LA Philharmonic, or parts thereof, played all of these very rousing (Sings) “Ba ba, ba ba ba, ba ba ba ba ba BA!”

  N: John Philip Sousa.

  M: We’d met in April. This was July Fourth. We’d been making out for, like, two months at this point. At the high point of the fireworks, at the ultimate moment of this night, I turned to Nick, brought him close, and whispered in his ear, “I want you to be my boyfriend.”

  Because as strange as it may sound, we weren’t even officially boyfriend and girlfriend. I hadn’t even gone that far yet. And the next night, July fifth . . .

  N: There were more fireworks. (Laughs)

  M: He was introduced to m’puss.

  N: And now you’re reading our book. Welcome.

  M: To be followed with a giant photograph of my puss.

  As I am a happily married person, many single friends and acquaintances have asked me for advice on how to meet a mate. Upon investigation, I learned that many of the aforementioned friends had been trying to find consensual attraction using online dating services. You know, like Tinder for straight people, Grindr for gay men, and that new one called Attractor (for lonely farmers, I assume). One pal who shall remain nameless (Luis) was weighing the idea of attending a local baking workshop, where the attendees were purported to learn to bake “amazing cookies.” I said to him, “Let me stop you right there . . . Of course you should go to that.” The best way to find a mate who will stick is for them to see you doing something that you love.

  Elsewhere in this volume you will have read about how far “up” I married, so you will have to agree that I stand as conclusive proof of this idea. To refresh: When I first met Megan at rehearsal for a play we were both in, she had just finished the first two seasons of Will & Grace and was about to win her first Emmy. I was literally living in my friend’s unfinished dirt-and-stone basement in exchange for turning it into a habitable space so that it could be rented to civilized humans. I could flagrantly and flamboyantly urinate in the middle of the room and by the next day you couldn’t tell where it had occurred. Yes, I agree that is awesome, but that was really the only good thing about living there besides the price. Clearly we were existing at very different levels of prosperity, as measured by personal hygiene, if nothing else. But when I met Megan that first day, I was also helping the theater company carpenter build a stage in its new warehouse building, so I was wearing a tool belt and I was covered in a patina of sweat and sawdust and satisfaction. I have to believe that whatever glow she saw coming off of my ursine features must have played a substantial role, even subliminally, in her eventual decision to roll the dice on a relationship with me.

  So I told my friend, of course you should go to a cookie-baking class, because, number one, you will be walking into some cool loft space that will be warm and sweetly redolent of baking cookies. Number two, there will be no married people there, but there will undoubtedly be other single people hoping to assist their own mating games tossing around phrases like “mouthfeel” and “eggbeater” and “moist batter.” “Make sure you have greased your muffin cups.” Come on, Luis! At some point in the proceedings you are sure to participate in the group chewing mouthfuls of glorious cookies, smiling at one another and saying, “Mmmm,” and nodding. If you can’t engage a new love friend out of that scenario, then I don’t know what to do with you.

  And, worst-case scenario, if you don’t find your true love there, you will have merely succeeded in tricking yourself into baking amazing cookies. That’s the best part of this technique. Get out of your house, get off of your phone, then go and participate in things that thrill you. Maybe it’s a softball team, maybe it’s playing bluegrass music, maybe it’s a flooring seminar at the home improvement center (just embonered myself)—it doesn’t matter what it is, so long as you like it. When people see you doing something you deeply enjoy, they see you at your most attractive.

  Don’t go to events where the stated objective is to find romance. A spark is much more likely to catch fire when the participants are not lined up scrutinizing the hearth for the first hint of smoke. To my recollection, I have been on only two actual dates in my life, pre-Megan, yet I have had a healthy and fruitful record in relationships with ladies, ending in this current bountiful harvest of eighteen years and counting. The vast majority of these romantic liaisons, including my marriage, were born in the theater, where we were able to very deeply observe one another engaging in a very vulnerable version of something we love: acting.

  You know, that’s not bad since I’m currently in this advice-giving mood. Looking for love? Head to the theater. There’s theater everywhere, and you can audition for shows, sure, but there are a million other things you can do. Build scenery, design and sew costumes, hang lights, create special effects, help in the lobby, help with advertising and promotion, raise money, write and perform music—shit, you can sweep! You’d be surprised how many establishments in life can be infiltrated if you stand around until you can sweep or take out the trash. I see it all so clearly now. Theater is the answer. Or cookies. Boom.

  The secret is to take a good look at your inner garden and see what you can nourish, be it fruit or vegetable, weavable or smokable, and then cultivate it. Like a real garden, it will take patience and learning. Whatever takes root, water it, encourage it to grow and flower and fully bush. Luscious fruit comes in many forms. Go do something delicious and see if you don’t end up getting kissed to boot.

  Nick: Families is the topic.

  Megan: We both have families. So technically we have that in common. But we have really different families.

  N: I come from a big family. On my mom’s side, she was one of four kids, so her parents and three siblings formed a pretty large extended family, all living in the town of Minooka, Illinois. Growing up, there were about twenty-four of us, and now that number is up into the thirties. Every household was pretty similar—very hardworking, salt of the earth. Everyone in the entire family is a public servant—teacher, librarian, nurse, paramedic, farmer—with the exception of my brother, who brews beer, and is thus considered the king of the family. I’m the only black sheep.

  M: I’m an only child. My whole family is dead—except for my mom, who’s ninety-six, and my father’s brother, my uncle Taylor, who is eighty-seven or eighty-eight. They’re both wonderful. And I have a few cousins, some of whom are acceptably within the parameters of sanity. But the hilarious part of Nick’s and my family dynamic is that Nick’s family is, by and large, normal, whereas my family were all completely insane. So that’s a jumping-off point. And Nick’s family are also alive, so that’s a plus.

  N: My family is very Midwestern. They’re very hardworking. They have an amazing work ethic and sense of neighborliness. Everyone takes care of one another, both within the family and within the community. Whatever few hardships they have are born of perhaps repressing emotion and the occasional overindulgence in food and drink.

  They work hard, but they don’t talk a lot about their feelings. There’s a great familial love, which gives a great feeling of security
.

  M: Nick’s family is really nice. And they’re all funny, which you won’t be surprised to hear. Plus they’re readers—his sisters, Laurie and Carrie, are a librarian and a teacher, respectively, and Nick’s mom, Cathy, is a voracious reader. That’s something I can really relate to, because I like to move my eyeballs across a typed page as well. Aside: That’s not a good phrase. Correction: I like to read.

  N: (Laughs) I’ll take it. I, too, like to read! I like to move my eyeballs across the page!

  M: That does sound like something you would say. (Laughs)

  Two things. I’m fifty-nine, so you wouldn’t think it was that unusual that a lot of my family are gone, but it’s been the case for lo these many years. My father’s side of the family were all clearly certifiable. So that was never in question. But I’ve recently come to find out that my mother’s side of the family—with a few notable exceptions, which include my mother’s mother, otherwise known as Granny—were also completely insane. Funny story.

  N: I should mention, though, that my dad’s family experience was closer to some of the aspects of your family experience. His parents were divorced . . .

  M: Oh my god, what? This book is going to go through the roof! Your grandparents were divorced?! I can’t compete with that . . .

  N: My granny was a pretty sad character. She was an alcoholic, and very lonely.

  M: Okay, everyone in my family is either an alcoholic and/or has some kind of substance abuse problem except for my mom and, like, two other people. It runs the gamut in my family. Suicide, sociopathy, incest . . . it’s a scream. It’s the stuff of comedy. Of the comedy book we’re writing together.

  N: (Laughs) I wasn’t competing . . .

  M: . . . You’re just trying to get in on the action because your family is like a Norman Rockwell painting.

  N: By comparison, the happy hobbits of the Roberts family . . .

  M: (Laughs) The basic bottom line is that our families are very different. And yet we kind of grew up in the same environment. Even though Nick is twelve—I’m going to say eleven and a half—years younger than I am, he grew up in Minooka, which was a small farm town at the time, and I grew up in Oklahoma City, which is the capital of Oklahoma, but when I was growing up, it had a small-town vibe that was similar to Nick’s upbringing. Not quite the same, of course, because Nick actually worked on his uncle’s farm. I did not work on anyone’s farm, unfortunately. I went to private school for twelve years and went to the mall.

  N: With regard to the marriages I grew up under the influences of, it was Grandpa Mike and Grandma El, who ran the farm and were the source of all the fun. We had enough people to play softball together, and we’d have huge family meals. It was a great example. And seeing how each of my mom’s siblings, and my own parents, handled their families taught me a lot of lessons in terms of communicating and getting along with people. They were never overt: I didn’t go to college thinking, “I’m well equipped to get along with others!” But in hindsight, I realize I do get along with others well. I thank my mom and dad and larger family that I can get thrown in with a group and get along with everybody, pretty much.

  M: Nick’s parents have a really great relationship, and it’s so nice to see. His father is cute and romantic with his mother. He’s always talking about how pretty she is and putting his arm around her. It’s very sweet, and I think that Nick gets some of his romantic side from that.

  My mom was very supportive of me when I was growing up, and always tried to maintain a positive attitude. My father was an actor who never had much success. He was mostly busy drinking and cheating on my mom, although that wasn’t his professional trade. His trade was acting, and he did a few things here and there, but mostly theater around Oklahoma and Texas. He was a contract player at Paramount in the 1950s for a brief time, but he never got a big part, although he is in the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone—he’s a reporter, and he has maybe one or two lines. But he never managed to really get a toehold.

  N: That’s like a sci-fi story to me, though. You could be saying, “My dad spent a couple years as a Knight of the Round Table. He just jousted against . . .”

  M: (Laughs) Well, he was very exotic. He was very actory and flamboyant. When I was in second grade, he bought a 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III, and he would drive it around Oklahoma City wearing an ascot. And he was a straight guy. Or straight-ish. I can’t believe he didn’t get murdered. So that was an accomplishment.

  My mom spent a lot of time trying to encourage him, encouraging him to follow his dreams. And once it became clear that I had been born in a top hat and tap shoes, she was extremely supportive of me as well. I started ballet at six, and anything creative I wanted to pursue, she would encourage. I think she had a slight touch of the stage mother, but not nearly as bad as some mothers have it. I was in a ballet company from eighth through twelfth grades, so I saw a lot of stage mothers. I would say she was in the thirtieth percentile.

  N: Knowing your mother, I would say she would be effective without being obnoxious.

  M: Yes, although she did brag about me constantly. People still tell me that she’d stop them in the Crescent Market and talk about me to whomever she could get her hands on.

  N: One difference between Minooka and Megan’s neighborhood in Oklahoma City is that the Crescent Market was carpeted!

  M: Red carpeting with a fountain inside! It was pretty fancy.

  N: They had, like, nine kinds of sardines.

  M: Look, it was swanky.

  N: It was the bomb.

  M: I think because my dad could be, shall we say, unpleasant to be around, I spent most of my childhood upstairs in my bedroom with the door closed, making up dramatic dances. My parents had a couple of records of instrumental movie themes. I’d put on a record and work on one song until I had it perfected, and then I’d show it to my mother. And it would invariably involve me dancing around, having a mad scene, and then dying of love. Which is basically what I do in my day-to-day life now.

  Even though I was doing all of that, I was doing it alone. I had friends on the block, but I spent a lot of time alone. I was extremely shy and inhibited for many years, well into Will & Grace. It took me a long time to shed my self-consciousness and inhibitions. It seems hard to believe, yet you must believe me.

  I had this burning desire to express myself in a creative way at a very early age. I knew every song on the radio. Every time a song came on, I’d sing along. I can still sing every lyric now, even if I haven’t heard the song in a million years. As for dancing, occasionally I’d go-go dance on a stool for my mom and my dad, which is just as crazy as it sounds. On a stool. I’d do the pony.

  While all this was happening, I was also afraid of everything. Because of the way my father was, I never felt like I could do anything right. Everything I did seemed to throw him into a rage. So I tried to be perfect and never make any mistakes. You know, the usual.

  I said that my father being an actor was exotic. And it was. Everyone in Oklahoma thought my father was exotic. But my father would have been exotic in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. He was also extremely funny when he wanted to be. And in an unexpected way. He’d take chances with his humor—he’d do a bit and he’d commit to it. Which is something Nick does, too. He’ll F with people and really dig in without any fear. Even with total strangers. I can’t do that. I’ll start a bit and then immediately say, “I’m just kidding!”

  But Nick grew up in a small town, and his father wasn’t a flamboyant, extroverted actor. They had five movies on VHS—which ones were they?

  N: Sound of Music, Singin’ in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Bridge on the River Kwai, and The Quiet Man.

  M: But they had this one video . . . (Both laugh) There’s a home movie of Nick at a family function—someone is panning around, and they’re all shyly smiling at the camera. And then there’s Nick, bouncing back and fo
rth from one hip to the other, both arms up, pointing at his head, at his face, like, “Look at Me! I’m Here! Here I Am! I’m Doing It!”

  But he didn’t know what he was doing. He was trying to do showbiz, I think. But he didn’t even know. It was like Helen Keller: W-A-T-E-R! But he didn’t know what he was doing. He just knew that he desperately needed to express himself and be recognized.

  N: I think it’s an interesting contrast. You say you never broke the rules, Miss Goody Two-Shoes. . . .

  M: Never colored outside the lines . . .

  N: Partly because you were terrified of discipline.

  M: Discipline in my house was not like discipline in other houses. Just irate rage, just rage and screaming.

  N: A drunken rage was a substitute for discipline.

  The more Wendell Berry that I read, and the older I get and see how people are, the more I am grateful to my parents and really respect them. Because it’s not like it was easy—they worked their asses off at being these two apple-cheeked Midwesterners, out in the middle of the country, with a house my dad fucking rolled there on a flatbed. They raised four kids. I remember one time my dad was yelling, which was rare—he’s very taciturn—and he stormed out the front door, which was rare, because we used the back door, in the kitchen, and I remember my mother standing there watching, crying. And I thought, “Holy shit, Mom’s crying about something with Dad. That’s fucking crazy—I didn’t know that was an option in this house.”

  M: That blows my mind, that it was a crazy isolated incident for you.

  N: I thought, “What’s going on? I didn’t know they had that channel.”

  M: That was, like, THE CHANNEL at my house. There was only one channel.

  N: Just imagine, you and me, in our twenties, with four kids. (Laughs) I’m sure we’d give it a hell of a good go, but it really makes me respect them and their efforts. They were so amazing. I required the most discipline, by far, of the four of us kids . . .