by Ben Karlin
There was a class trip down to Washington, D.C. It was supposed to be the highlight of the year. The lead teacher on the trip, Mr. Matossian, told us it would be the “greatest experience of our lives.” He made it clear that by the “greatest experience of our lives” he didn’t mean our lives so far. He meant this would be the peak of our lives, and that everything after this would be pain and disappointment.
We were quite excited. The year before, according to rumors, a boy had been arrested for defacing the Lincoln monument with a turd doodle. The cops, Lincoln fans, beat the boy with phone books. Only because Mr. Matossian had certain contacts in the law enforcement community was the boy released without charges. We were all eager to be beaten with phone books and then rescued by Mr. Matossian. I was also eager to put my finger in the girl the whole day’s ride down to Washington. She made a big announcement about how she couldn’t believe she had to sit next to a loser like me, but she’d also brought a blanket and as soon as our bus pulled out of the ShopRite parking lot, I went to work. The trip turned out sort of boring, but that was by far the greatest bus ride of my life. Maybe that’s all Mr. Matossian meant.
But a strange thing happened afterward, or rather, the next fall, when we attended high school. We suddenly weren’t doing that thing with my finger anymore. We lost contact with each other. I asked her what had happened, but she seemed not to hear me. She looked at me as though she’d never seen me before. At first I wondered if I was witnessing the onset of some kind of cognitive dysfunction, but it later occurred to me that, against all scientific probability, or at least in contradiction to my limited sense of these matters, she had been, in fact, using me. After further research, the idea that women sometimes use men, and not just vice versa, became quite apparent to me. Some of this research was personally quite painful, but I’d be lying if I said that, given the chance, I wouldn’t conduct my studies all over again. Some pain doesn’t hurt at all. It tingles.
Case #17
The preemptive dump, which can only be viewed as an evolutionary defense against the emotional calamity known as rejection, was first brought to my attention by a three-hundred-pound county shot-put champion nicknamed “The Sheik,” though I believe he was of mixed Swiss-Swedish descent. The preemptive dump was just a folk tradition at that point, and had not been subjected to the rigors of science, but I immediately saw its potential for widespread, or at least repetitive, application. We were in the locker room after track practice, and The Sheik stood at the mirror pinching great gobs of zit pus from his neck as he explained the process:
“It’s always the same, dude. You can see it in her eyes. She’s ready to dump your ass. You ask about Saturday night and she says she’s not sure. She might have to help her family get ready for her father’s wake. That’s when you make your move. Tell her it’s over. Tell her to get lost. I mean, fuck that shit, right?”
I have initiated the preemptive dump on a few occasions, including once with a college sweetheart we’ll call Melissa, though her name was actually Malissa. There are a lot of things I could tell you about Melissa, but suffice to say we were young and I was a boy and she was girl and I had a penis and she had that thing that just wants a penis to be in it immediately. I told her as much and she looked at me oddly. So, thinking of The Sheik’s advice, I dumped her ass, whereupon she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but please step away from my carrel.” I winked at her, and silently thanked my tremendous friend.
Case #37
A confession: the numbers I’ve been assigning these cases are random, or not even random, but designed to make people think I’ve had more experience than is perhaps, technically, true. Why would I do that? To serve science, that’s why. There are no ethics when the truth is on the line, and if I have to lie about how much I’ve gotten to get people to take my findings seriously, I will not hesitate. Still, do not be mistaken. I have not fared so poorly for a man in my condition.
This case in point, one to tantalize the pure math crowd, takes the form of a problem first advanced by my mentor Wallinger after a few games of racquetball, a long steam, and a half carafe of aquavit had, as they say, loosened his tongue.
“Tell me, buddy, how can a be lucky enough to be even in the same fucking equation as b, if a can be described as mostly balding with soft furry titties, weird leathery patches on his inner thighs, and horned yellow nails curling from his feet like the claws of some fat, wheezing griffin and b stands for the few women you’ve, sorry, I mean, a has been with, nice girls who aren’t even desperate teenagers from former Soviet satellite states? I mean, how does that happen ever?”
It’s an important question, and it is a shame Wallinger’s long-suffering wife, Gwenda, booby-trapped his Rubik’s Cube before he could examine it more closely. Until now the best minds have only been able to posit the conjecture that I, or, I mean, a must go down on the nice girls for hours and then listen rapturously to endless litanies of their fears and desires, however trifling or superficial.
There is some statistical truth to this, but there are more variables to consider. Some women dig a guy with furry titties. And I am a better-than-average listener. I once listened to a woman describe her relationship with her sister for over an hour. These facts cannot be ignored when advancing a unified theory of dumping, or really, a theory of anything. That shit was boring.
A Case for Further Study
My son was born nearly three years ago. Many are the nights I will return from a grueling day at the lab and he will be there, sitting in my wife’s arms. He will stare at me unflinchingly while slipping his hand into my wife’s blouse and massaging her breasts. “Go away,” he will intone. He was weaned a long time ago. He just likes to feel her up. I am very worried for him, for I do not think he understands that eventually he will be unable to do this, that my wife will, in effect, dump him, disallow these fondles and caresses, much as she was eventually forced to do with Larry, our super, during a confusing time I’m not sure I fully understand. The potential ramifications are quite disturbing, and somehow I can’t shake the image of those poor Stanford students all those years ago. Most of them recovered, but a few did not attend top law schools.
It’s partly my fault, I know. I should never have had sex with my wife. But I worry for the future of science, and our planet. The time has come for us to put petty grievances aside and join together. We must pool our knowledge for a better understanding of the neurological, ecological, and biochemical effects of dumping in all its forms. We must also explore alternatives to human intimacy. Some of these alternatives will reveal themselves after the scientific method runs its course. Other alternatives, such as being afraid to commit and having a very large dog in your apartment, have been with us forever. All avenues must be explored.
We need a unified theory of dumping and we need it now. Otherwise, we will have learned nothing from the eons of heartbreak our species has endured, and we will remain disastrously unprepared for what promises to be a very complicated dating future, where in all likelihood one’s sexual success will depend entirely on the slant of one’s gills.
Contributors
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert is the host and executive producer of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central.
Marcel Dzama
Winnipeg-born artist Marcel Dzama’s art has appeared in hundreds of international exhibitions. In 2006, the IKON Gallery in Birmingham, UK, presented an early career retrospective of his work entitled “Marcel Dzama: Tree With Roots.” A collection of his work, The Berlin Years, was published by McSweeney’s Books in 2003. He has designed CD covers for Beck and the Weakerthans and illustrated a children’s book in collaboration with They Might Be Giants. Dzama currently lives and works in New York.
Will Forte
Will Forte has been a cast member on Saturday Night Live since 2005. He voiced Abe Lincoln on the series Clone High and appeared in the film Beerfest. He also wrote and starred in the film The Brothers Solomon.
Bruce Jay Friedman
Bruce Jay Friedman was born in New York City in 1930 and started his career as an editor and magazine and short-story writer. Friedman has published eight novels and four short-story collections, as well as a half dozen plays. His screenwriting credits include Stir Crazy (1980), Doctor Detroit (1983), and Splash (1984), which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman, published in 1997, contains fifty-seven of his stories, and Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos, a collection of Friedman’s best nonfiction, was published in 2000. Sexual Pensees, an erotic memoir, was published in 2006. His newest collection is entitled Three Balconies.
Matt Goodman
Matt Goodman graduated from high school in the spring of 2007. He is currently enrolled at Swarthmore College. Goodman was the editor in chief of Sonny Paine, a high school literary journal published by 826NYC, a nonprofit writing organization for children. Goodman is also an 826NYC volunteer. Check it out: www.826nyc.org.
Alex Gregory
Alex Gregory has been a New Yorker cartoonist since 1999. He lives in Los Angeles and has written for various television shows, including The Late Show with David Letterman, The Larry Sanders Show, and King of the Hill. He has a wife, two daughters, and is an accomplished pilot. The people who harp on the fact that he has never flown a plane or successfully operated a flight simulator are just jealous of his innate flying skills, so if you ever find yourself on a plane he’s piloting, just sit back and relax. It’s all going to be fine.
Marcellus Hall
Marcellus Hall is an illustrator for publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is a songwriter and musician who, with the bands Railroad Jerk and White Hassle, has released albums and toured North America, Europe, and Japan. More about Marcellus Hall can be found at www.marcellushall.com.
Todd Hanson
Todd Hanson is not only sexy as hell, he is part of one of the most respected comedy voices of his generation, thanks to his central role for nearly two decades now as a writer and editor at The Onion—America’s Finest News Source. Other than that, he has never accomplished anything in his entire life. He lives in Brooklyn with his two cats, James Boswell and Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is the author of the novels A Long Way Down, How to Be Good, High Fidelity, and About a Boy, as well as the memoir Fever Pitch. He is also the author of Songbook, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and editor of the short-story collection Speaking with the Angel. Hornby is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award, and the Orange Word International Writers London Award 2003.
A. J. Jacobs
A. J. Jacobs is the author of The Know-It-All, a memoir of a year spent reading the Encyclopedia Britannica in its entirety as well as The Year of Living Biblically, about his attempt to follow all the rules of The Bible. He is the editor-at-large at Esquire magazine. He sometimes writes about himself in the third person.
Barbara Karlin
Barbara Karlin was born and raised in New York City. Though she no longer lives there, her heart still resides with the Yankees, the Village, and Fifth Avenue. She currently lives in Boston with her spouse, Linda George. She is the proud parent of three wonderfully interesting and attractive children, any one of whom would be a great catch. She is the grateful owner of two very independent Cairn terriers.
Bob Kerrey
For twelve years prior to becoming president of the New School, Bob Kerrey represented the state of Nebraska in the United States Senate. Before that he served as Nebraska’s governor for four years. Educated in pharmacy at the University of Nebraska, Kerrey served three years in the United States Navy. He is the author of When I Was a Young Man: A Memoir. In May 2005, Kerrey received the Robert L. Haig Award for Distinguished Public Service from the New York State Bar Association, and an honorary doctor of laws degree from New York Law School.
Damian Kulash, Jr.
Damian Kulash, Jr. is the singer for the rock band OK Go, who’s most recent album is Oh No. He has won a Grammy, been published in The New York Times, gotten arrested on Disney property, and ridden an elephant. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two dogs.
Sam Lipsyte
Sam Lipsyte’s most recent novel is Home Land, a New York Times Notable Book for 2005 and winner of The Believer Book Award. He is also the author of The Subject Steve and Venus Drive. His work has appeared in The Quarterly, Noon, Open City, N+1, Slate, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Tin House, Esquire, Bookforum, The New York Times Book Review, and Playboy, among other places. He teaches at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
Rick Marin
Rick Marin is the author of the bestselling memoir Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor. He has also been a reporter at The New York Times, a senior writer at Newsweek, and a pseudonymous advice columnist on men for a major women’s magazine. He and his wife, Ilene Rosenzweig, live in Los Angeles with their two boys, Diego and Kingsley.
Tom McCarthy
Tom McCarthy is an actor, writer, and director. He wrote and directed the BAFTA and Independent Spirit award-winning The Station Agent, as well as the soon to be released film, The Visitor. He has appeared in such films as Meet the Parents, Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, and Flags of Our Fathers, as well as HBO’s The Wire. He lives in New York.
Jason Nash
Jason Nash is a writer, actor, and comedian. He is also the creator and cohost of the comedy podcast Guys with Feelings (guyswithfeelings.com). Nash was a cast member of the VH1 sketch show Random Play and has appeared on Comedy Central’s Reno 911 and The Andy Dick Show. He is a cast member on Comedy Central’s Lil’ Bush and also provides writing and voices for the animated shows Supernews and The Superficial Friends. Jason lives in L.A. with his wife, son, and dog Hudson.
Bob Odenkirk
Bob Odenkirk has written for Saturday Night Live, The Ben Stiller Show, Get a Life, and numerous other TV shows and pilots. He created and starred in Mr. Show, which ran on HBO for four years. He also produced and directed the series Derek and Simon: The Show for the website SuperDeluxe.com. He has directed the feature films Melvin Goes to Dinner, Let’s Go to Prison, and most recently The Brothers Solomon.
Patton Oswalt
Patton Oswalt is an actor, stand-up comedian, and writer who has appeared in shows such as Reno 911 and The King of Queens. He also provided the voice of Remy in the 2007 film, Ratatouille.
Neal Pollack
Neal Pollack is the author of Alternadad, a best-selling memoir in which he reveals that parenthood will not stop him from being a grumpy stoner. He’s also written three books of satirical fiction, including the cult classic The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature and the rock ’n ’roll novel Never Mind the Pollacks, and he’s edited Chicago Noir, a book of short crime fiction. Pollack’s fiction, nonfiction, humor, and essays have appeared in every English-language publication except for The New Yorker, and he also writes for about a hundred websites. If that wasn’t enough to make you fall in love with him, he’s also one of the creators of Offsprung, an Internet community and humor magazine for parents or people who might someday be parents. Pollack lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Regina Allen, his son, Elijah, and his dogs, Hercules and Shaq.
David Rees
David Rees is an artist and writer whose comics include My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable, My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable, and Get Your War On, which appears in Rolling Stone.
Andy Richter
Andy Richter went to film school and studied improvisational comedy in Chicago. He television credits include Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, and Andy Barker P.I., among others. His films include Elf, Talledega Nights, Semi-Pro, and a few without Will Ferrell. He lives in Los Angeles with all those other assholes.
Rodney Rothman
Rodney
Rothman is the author of Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement. He is the former head writer of The Late Show with David Letterman. He was also a writer on Fox’s Undeclared. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Best American Non-Required Reading, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and Men’s Journal.
Dan Savage
Dan Savage is the author of the nationally syndicated advice column Savage Love. His books include The Kid, The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family, and Skipping Towards Gomorrah. He lives in Seattle.
Adam Schlesinger
Adam Schlesinger is a songwriter as well as the bassist for the band Fountains of Wayne, whose albums include Utopia Parkway, Welcome Interstate Managers, and Traffic and Weather. Schlesinger has written songs and composed music for films such as That Thing You Do! and Music and Lyrics.
Andy Selsberg
A long time ago, Andy Selsberg was a staff writer at The Onion. More recently, he has written for The Believer, GQ, and The Oxford American. He teaches English at the City University of New York and lives with his fiancée, Izzy, and a troublemaking cat.
Tom Shillue
Tom Shillue often performs stand-up in front of large crowds of laughing people. You’ve probably seen him in lots of TV commercials. He’s had his own Comedy Central stand-up special, and his live comedy CD, Overconfident, could probably be found at iTunes or his eponymous website.
Paul Simms
Paul Simms is a writer and director. He created the show NewsRadio for NBC and has also written for Late Night with David Letterman and The Larry Sanders Show. Simms has also contributed pieces to The New Yorker.
Eric Slovin
Eric Slovin is a writer and comedian in New York. As half of the comedy team Slovin & Allen he has made many television appearances including a half hour Comedy Central Presents. He worked for three seasons as a writer for Saturday Night Live.