Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living

by Nick Offerman

  14

  Romantic Love

  Engage in romantic love. It truly makes life worth living. Romance affords you the opportunity to do a lot of “giving,” which I believe I have read is said to be better than “receiving.” Trust me, once you give of your time and care to your loved one, you’ll be doing a-plenty of receiving, if you follow me. If you don’t follow me, I’m saying you’ll be having a bunch of oral sex performed upon you.

  One might examine the example of a triumphant marriage set for me by my mom and dad and determine that I was hopelessly lost to a life of romance from the outset. I’m not talking the saccharine stuff of Disney films. I’m referring to down-to-earth everyday give-and-take. A bouquet of sweet Williams gathered along the fencerow on the way home to Mom. Making sure Dad got the bone with the marrow at dinner (which he shared with me—good man). Little, commonplace gestures that say, “I’m thinking of you.” The reason some may see my sappy side as a liability is that when faced with a decision, I will damn near always choose the more romantic (foolish) choice.

  To wit: A mere couple of months into our courtship, my wife, Megan, took a major plunge by coming to my family’s annual fishing week in remote northwest Minnesota. I was pretty nervous, as the accommodations are pleasant but spartan, and Megan would be meeting most of my family for the first time. These cabins are for fisherfolk and hunters, not vacationing legends of the entertainment world, so I wanted to go the extra mile or three to make it nice for my new lady. We arrived to a beautiful afternoon, light on the mosquitoes, and were happy to see the gang. I suggested we take the pontoon boat out across the lake to get a romantic view of the sunset. Megan agreed, so we snagged a bottle of wine and puttered away. For those who don’t know, a pontoon (aka “party barge”) is a good-size rectangular floor, say ten feet by eighteen feet, floating upon two pontoon floats, like two long cylindrical skis, with seating for twelve or so, and a nice-size but not overly macho motor (thirty-five to fifty horsepower). It’s the minivan of the lake.

  There is a retractable awning on the pontoon for shade, rendering the vessel a very comfortable place from which to catch one’s limit, or just enjoy a cold can of suds while taking in some of the cheese curds one collected on one’s way through Wisconsin and admire the majestic scenery. Or, say, shut down the motor, drift, and soak up the sunset with your new crazily foxy bombshell. Traditionally, and in order to comply with the law, a boater will turn on small lights at dusk so that other watercraft can see him/her and thereby prevent collisions from occurring. I understand the prudence in this rule, so I flipped on the “parking lights” and we had a glass of wine and discussed our burgeoning feelings, as well as my brother-in-law’s penchant for the black Russian cocktail, while the sun set beautifully over the pine forest in which the cabin resort sat. If I do say so myself, this was a pretty devastating atmosphere of amour in which I had festooned our evening. Romeo-wise, I was looking pretty savvy.

  By the time the breeze picked up and blew us directly into the far shore opposite our dock, it was fully dark and time to head in for some late-night snacks and euchre. When I turned the key to fire up the motor, the silence that greeted me was one of the most violent sounds I’d ever not heard. I knew immediately what had befallen us, thanks to a storied history of misunderstanding motor vehicles throughout my youth. I’d left the maritime equivalent of the parking lights turned on without the motor running (silence is romantic), and the battery had been drained past the capability of answering our ignition needs.

  This was very bad. The lake was completely dark. A brisk breeze was blowing us against the shore directly across the lake from our destination. There was nary a light as far as the eye could see, as this whole side of the lake was a preserve used by the Boy Scouts, who were fully absent at this time. In short, I had no choice but to attempt to compel the pontoon the mile and a half back across the water. But how? I screamed a few times at the top of my lungs for my brother, who was no doubt five beers into a euchre game back at the cabin. Christ almighty.

  I searched clumsily through the storage areas beneath the bench seats and burst into (inward) tears of thanks when I came upon a pathetic, warped canoe paddle. It was incredibly lightweight and curved so severely that if I had a pair of them I could have made a kick-ass rocking chair with some exciting action. But given the circumstances, I had never seen a more beautiful wooden implement in all of my life. I proceeded to sit on the front center of the pontoon and set to paddling for all I was worth (not much at that moment) for about three hours, directly into the wind, while Megan poured swigs of wine into my mouth and sang a progression of songs into my ear, songs of love like Randy Newman’s “Real Emotional Girl” and “Marie”; Tom Waits’s “Johnsburg, Illinois” and “Ruby’s Arms”; and her showstopping version of “Danny Boy.” The bees of love came swirling around me in a swarm of passion, coalescing in the air before me like a large cartoon fist before soundly bludgeoning me into servitude.

  I couldn’t stop and rest because of the severe headwind, so I set my jaw and paddled like a Phoenician, literally guiding myself by the Big Dipper until we floated safely into the dock. Standing on the dock, spent, under the stars, my then-girlfriend told me she loved me. Using my gifts of stubbornness and mulish stamina, I had achieved a romantic triumph that I might hope to repeat in our years of bliss, but preferably by less taxing means. When we arose the next morning, my family was disappointingly nonplussed at the recounting of my Homeric episode, refusing to believe that I hadn’t killed the battery on purpose to provide myself a juicy opportunity to impress my lady. That hurt, but not nearly as much as what happened next. My dad took me out to the pontoon and showed me where the top pops off the motor and one could use a pull rope to start it up, in case the battery should die. The Offermans, ladies and gentlemen.

  * * *

  Inexplicably, but thankfully, Megan stuck with me. It wasn’t long before Cupid sat me down and said, “You know what’s up, right?” and I said, “Yes. Your work here is replete and seamless, and I will answer it.” Megan and I had openly discussed the plan to one day marry, so I didn’t feel terribly sweaty about making a proposal happen at first. After some water had passed under the bridge, however, it became clear that I should get the ball rolling, maybe after a year together. One day we were walking down Beverly Boulevard in LA, and I was pulling my Swiss army knife out of my pocket, as is my habit, and I also accidentally pulled out a quarter, which went tinkling onto the sidewalk. As I abruptly took a knee to retrieve the coin and replace it in my pocket, inadvertently striking the exact posture and gesture of a man traditionally proposing marriage, even down to the hand in my pocket, Megan facetiously said, “Oh my, god, honey!” and I, ever game, played along as though I had awkwardly lost the ring. “Oh, uh . . . ,” I stammered. “I was just—I think I lost. A nickel.”

  Hilarious! We laughed long and hard and pressed on to our destination, while in the back of my mind a switch had been thrown. The placard beneath that switch read, “Many a true word is spoken in jest.” (I don’t know who writes the copy for these switches of mine, but they need to update their vernacular, bro.) The story of my “muffed proposal” made the rounds, and everyone agreed that it was a terrific chuckle. The foundation of the humor was to be found in our confidently solid romance. Acquaintances would sometimes exhibit alarm that I might “play so fast and loose” with a lady’s expectations, but I would never risk hurting Megan’s feelings, and she knew that, so the subject remained ripe for further ribaldry.

  About this time, I was getting incredibly excited about a trip to Paris that we had coming up. Around the set of Will & Grace, I mentioned that it might be even funnier to extend my run of proposal comedy in the City of Lights. Without missing a beat, the costume designer (the sublime Lori Eskowitz) handed me a selection of gorgeous engagement rings of the costume jewelry variety, which I gratefully and surreptitiously pocketed.

  Cut to: Gay Paree! Holy shit, you guys
, there is a city in France called Paris, directly south of Amiens; it’s on the Seine, and you should totally go check it out. We were absolutely swept away by the romance and beauty and history of that magnificent burg. Paris is indeed for lovers. We thrilled at buying crepes with butter and sugar from a street vendor and then just sojourning about the arrondissements (neighborhoods arranged in a spiral pattern by number), soaking in the architecture, the people, the museums, the food, the flowers, and I was especially freaked out by the Art Deco designs of the Paris Metro stops done by Hector Guimard at the turn of the twentieth century. So much so that I did some homework and sought out a couple of apartment buildings he had also assembled. Such beautiful and highly crafted work!

  We were high on the hill of Montmartre visiting the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur, then just swooning at the majestic views of the city from this, the highest point. At the base of the ancient stone steps leading to the church, I suddenly dropped to my knees again and this time pulled out a pretty bitchin’ diamond ring. I launched into “Megan, you know I love you”—but my words were cut short when I bobbled the ring and it flipped a few times in the air before neatly dropping into the ancient iron gutter grate over which I was kneeling. Ever willing, Megan did not bat an eyelash, saying, “Oh my god, Nick, what was that?”

  “Um, nothing, I—I mean, I just dropped a twenty-centime piece. . . .”

  Terrific. We had a nice laugh and then continued touring that historic hilltop, which once housed the studios of artists like Picasso, Dali, Modigliani, Monet, van Gogh, Mondrian . . . not a bad lineup. I’m telling you, Paris is totally worth it; I don’t know why nobody ever talks about it. It’s in France, everybody.

  Some of the finest gustatory experiences in the world can also be found in this foxy bitch of a European capital. We got some good tips from friends on some places to dine, including an incredibly romantic café on the left bank of the Seine. So romantic that it felt like we were sucking on one string of spaghetti together in Lady and the Tramp, and our postdinner stroll along the Seine was a dream. We crossed the river on the resplendent Pont Neuf bridge (so pretty—why has no one used it in a movie?! Woody Allen, please check it out!), which, thinking back on it now, was like an unrealizable fantasy of what I’d always thought a love trip should be. In the middle of our crossing, I took Megan by her two arms and placed her just so. Then I backed up about five steps to take a gallant, rolling start into my kneeling, but as I began to step to her, I unfortunately tripped and barreled straight into the bridge’s side wall, catching the rail soundly in my gut, which folded me over the wall, sending the impressive diamond ring in my hand catapulting into the night air. Flipping cinematically end-over-end, catching the lights of the night city in its several expertly cut facets, the ring plummeted, as if in slow-motion, disappearing into the murky waters of the Seine. Can you even imagine how embarrassing this was for me?! Two incredibly expensive diamonds lost, not to mention I’d twice made a complete botch job of proposing to my devastatingly beautiful girlfriend. Megan and I laughed again, sincerely enjoying the now-running gag, but not so much as to take away from the sheer bliss of our romantic evening.

  Near the end of our trip, after we had visited the Louvre Museum extensively and I had successfully photographed myself shirtless amongst the centaurs in the sculpture garden (those Louvre security guards are no joke—hey, somebody should totally set a movie there! It would be cool!), we figured that no trip to Paris would be complete without ascending la Tour Eiffel. It was later in the evening, which turned out to be a good move, as the daytime tourist crowds can be a bit much around the Tower. We rode to the top in an elevator, and it’s really about as breathtaking as you might imagine, both for its sweeping views and (for me anyway, probably more than milady) the engineering and scale of this one-thousand-foot tower. I do love to see how we humans put things together. As you might have guessed, since comedy does tend to come in threes, I was feeling so swept away by this romantic pinnacle that I dropped to one knee and casually dropped the third and largest ring through the grated floor of the Eiffel Tower, where it plummeted some 900 feet to the park below (never fear, I had carefully scouted the area to ensure I wouldn’t accidentally plant it in someone’s cranium when it fell).

  Megan was gratifyingly entertained by my buffoonery, something I continue to appreciate to this day. This brought to a close my famous hat trick of bungled proposals in the most passion-inducing city I’ve laid eyes on. I can’t believe nobody knows about Paris. You should Google it!

  These japes were good, clean fun, but the onus was rather on me now. If I was willing to joke so freely about the subject, then it was only appropriate that I man up and deliver the real goods at some point. Make my leavings or get out of the water closet, as it were. Some months later I managed to pull off the real thing in London, on another lovely vacation. I had secured a custom ring (with my paycheck from acting in a Fox pilot), made with a modest but beautiful stone in a “gypsy setting,” a favored detail, which I had previously ferreted out of my beloved. We were walking through Regent’s Park and we came upon Queen Anne’s Rose Garden (which I had secretly selected from several proposed locations by our local guide). As we strolled along hand in hand, I shit you not, all of the insects were buzzing and courting in the air all around us. The birds and chipmunks were giggling and fluttering about, and the ducks in the stream were coupled off, engaged in some heavy petting. As I slowed to a stop upon a little wooden bridge and pulled “my insurance” from my pocket (a heart-shaped box carved in walnut, which hinged open to reveal the ring perfectly inset) and dropped to one knee, all of nature seemed to begin copulating around us, beating the very air into a syrup of carnal ecstasy. Pairs of pretty sparrows furiously sixty-nining pinwheeled through the air like feathery fellating fireworks. The calla lilies were nodding approval at me as they began to gently butt-fuck one another. In hindsight, I may not have been completely right, as my heart was beating out of my chest. Something magical was certainly in the air. Spoiler alert: SHE SAID YES. The best part of my blissful life was now promised to continue, by mutual agreement between myself and the cause of said bliss.

  * * *

  Naturally, it wasn’t long before we began a series of discussions about throwing ourselves a wedding. One of the first events we’d attended as a couple was Debra Messing’s beautiful wedding on the coast above Santa Barbara, which was an absolute fairy tale. The breathtaking scenery was complemented by the large gathering of family and friends, a group in which I was flattered to be newly initiated. The one brief moment of displeasure occurred when a paparazzi helicopter suddenly appeared to snatch photos and video of the resplendent fete. Enormous efforts had been expended toward maintaining the secrecy of the particular details surrounding the nuptials, but, alas, there always seems to be some asshole willing to sell out one’s privacy and comfort for a buck. The rest of the evening went off without a hitch, and I was powerfully excited to meet the cast and producers of Will & Grace for the first time.

  Of course, the topic of the evil helicopter later came up in our own summit for the planning of our own wedding, and so we began to devise methods by which we might successfully avoid such an interruption from the parasites that pathetically invade people’s privacy for a paycheck. I am still enamored of my first pitch, but I understand why it would have been a bad idea. The notion was this: Megan was nominated for an Emmy for the fourth year in a row (of an eventual seven), and I suggested that we ditch the Emmys and hold our wedding in secret during the awards ceremony. You have to admit that no one would have seen it coming, plus all the scumbags would have been otherwise detained, carnivorously trying to nab a shot of a Doris Roberts’s nip slip on the red carpet.

  Megan liked the idea but ultimately decided it would have been disrespectful to play such a trick on the academy and the Will & Grace family, so we came up with the next-best ruse. Inviting our immediate families to town to attend the Emmys was easy, and we had recently purc
hased our first house together in the Hollywood Hills, so we simply invited twenty of our family and friends over for a casual “dinner” the night before the Emmys.

  Our guests arrived and had a lot of ooh-ing and ah-ing to do at our new digs. (I call it “the house that Will & Grace built,” because at the time, Megan was in charge of things like the mortgage, and I was in charge of expenses like supplying the household with toilet paper. I also believe the purchase of beer fell into my bailiwick. So, we were both contributing.) Nobody designs an interior like milady, so our guests were well preoccupied with cocktails and visual splendor when we announced, “Now, friends and loved ones, will you please step into the yard, because this is our wedding.”

  Mothers wept. There was joy and also jubilation and some tears from the coterie in general. The evening was quite magical, with the entire ceremony taking place in front of our spectacular, sweeping view of Los Angeles as our guests looked on. There was more crying, which I hope and believe were tears of happiness and not “What the hell is she thinking?” My favorite part of the evening was how gorgeous my wife looked, as well as her willingness to make such a promise to me, to stick together as long as we were both still hanging around this big blue marble. A vow of this ilk is literally once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, and I think a person’s odds of being lucky in that department increase drastically if the person means that simple vow when he or she makes it. Life is unpredictable. We have no way of knowing what might befall us in the next five minutes, let alone thirty years down the road, but the weight a marriage vow carries is that in the face of that very uncertainty, two people are willing to promise to stick it out together. That’s my favorite part.

  As I mentioned previously, my sensei, Shozo Sato, came to town and performed a wedding tea ceremony as part of the proceedings, which was also exceptionally special to both Megan and myself. He mixed a special bowl of green tea from which Megan and I sipped, as well as our parents. If you ever have the opportunity to experience a Japanese tea ceremony, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Sato-sensei is a master of the form, and it was a great privilege to have our hearts joined by his ministrations. The simple grace with which I had seen him excel through art and life for the fourteen years I had known him was one of the most touching ingredients in the bouillabaisse of our evening. A beautiful and rousing mariachi band finished off the perfect recipe for our tiny secret wedding, and I reckon it looks like it worked, since we’re about as sappy for each other today as we were on that night ten years ago, if not more so.