You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up

by Annabelle Gurwitch

  the single life

  In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the New York Times reports, the proportion of Americans in every racial and ethnic group who have never married has grown by double digits. Married couples slipped into the minority in the United States in 2006. Census reports found that 49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples—with and without children—just shy of a majority and down from more than 52 percent five years earlier.

  location, location, location

  What’s the best place to get a date? In a survey asking couples where they met:

  38 percent met at work

  34 percent met through friends

  13 percent met at a nightclub

  2 percent met at church

  1 percent met because they live in the same neighborhood

  1 percent of people who meet at gyms end up dating

  aging up

  In 1900, the median age of people getting married in the United States was twenty-six for men and twenty-two for women. During the period from 1950 to 1960, it fell to twenty-three for men and twenty for women. Since 2005, the median age at marriage has remained at twenty-seven for men and nearly twenty-six for women, an all-time high, according to census data.

  the x factor

  A nasal spray, Factor X, is being marketed as a product designed to help men pick up women. The Web site features “real life” testimonials:

  “I used to have lots of trouble attracting women. I wondered why other men managed to find women so easily. Factor X changed all that; now I actually choose whom I would like to date. It’s a miracle!”

  —Pete (name withheld because he doesn’t really exist)

  The spray delivers what’s been called the love hormone: oxytocin. Factor X claims to raise your dopamine level by 500 percent, allowing you to exude charm and raise your confidence level, in turn leading others to trust you and then presumably beg you to undress them.

  * A showmance, like an office romance, occurs quite often in show business, where you can find yourself easily confusing your real life with your on-screen life. Which is why it’s never a surprise to read that Renee has fallen in love with Jim Carrey, Jack White, Bradley Cooper, or whomever she’s working with at the time.

  2

  • • • •

  A Saab Story

  “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”

  —H. L. MENCKEN

  “Marriage: souvenir of love.”

  —HELEN ROWLAND

  Some couples meet, fall in love, and get engaged in a whirlwind of passion and romantic expediency. We call these predivorce engagements. Other couples linger together for years, but never manage to get engaged. We call these people too happy to get married. Our relationship trajectory from dating to engagement was neither too abrupt nor too drawn out, but it wasn’t a Goldilocks “just right” either.

  He Says

  I had only one problem with Annabelle’s suddenly liking me after five years: I didn’t trust her. I kept waiting for her traditional kiss me-dump me scenario to play out. So this time around I was cautious. I withheld more than I normally did when I’m crazy about a girl and applied the brakes on my customary steamrolling train of emotional needs, so that when the inevitable arrived and Annabelle stopped kissing me long enough to tell me she just wanted us to be friends, I’d be prepared. There was only one slight problem: it never happened. I was as shocked by this as anyone. Annabelle had become the pursuer, the aggressor, the one pushing the relationship agenda, making sure that I was into her as much as she was into me. She was now the one in the insecure emotional driver’s seat. I felt like a cornered rat, albeit a really lucky cornered rat.

  Honestly, I hadn’t had an actual girlfriend since the middle of the second Reagan administration so this was very unfamiliar territory for me. How would I know for sure after all this time that Annabelle and I were really right for each other? I had always felt deeply romantic about her, but what would happen now that we might actually have sex? Since my last committed relationship had ended (during the Iran-Contra affair), I had dated almost every woman in the free world and realized that when it comes to sex, each one presents her own labyrinth of likes and dislikes, do’s and don’ts, and don’t-you-even-think-about-its. Some don’t like oral sex. Some refuse to do certain sexual positions. Some like a finger in their ass; others will turn around and literally punch you in the face if you try. It’s not that I’m the Marquis de Sade or anything. I’m more like his kinder, gentler Jewish first cousin, Steven de Sadderstein. So I invented the Perv-O-Meter, a scale that registers how far someone was willing to venture with me into the “realms of the senses.” Scoring varied from girl to girl. Amelia, my college girlfriend, was a bisexual, kleptomaniac, and pathological liar, but managed to balance it very nicely by also being a nymphomaniac. She scored a deviant 10 on the Perv-O-Meter. New York Nicole wore a Hudson River’s worth of patchouli oil, bathed in lavender, and scented her apartment with strawberry incense twenty-four hours a day. It was like being in a Turkish whorehouse—unfortunately, minus the whore—and scored an aromatic 2. Oklahoma Gracie fucked me in gravelly alleyways outside Chicago’s Wrigleyville bars—a painful, yet well worth it, 8.5. So where did Annabelle fit on the Perv-O-Meter? Well, without getting into too many sordid details that will lead our child into years of therapy, Annabelle, although not a bisexual collegiate nymphet, tallied a passionate, inventive, and quite skillful 9. And what’s more, as far as I could tell, she hardly ever lied or stole anything.

  Another thing I couldn’t be sure of was how comfortable or willing I would be to spend the night in someone’s company. Let’s face it, it’s very telling if after being really intimate with someone that you want to stick around to see them in the light of day. For me, having sex with conflicted intentions of becoming serious always went straight to my enlarged, remorse-producing “guiltrious” gland. The by-product was an onset of the PEBs, or Post-Ejaculatory Blues. The PEBs made me restless and self-conscious, rendering it excruciatingly difficult to spend the night. (This is not anything that I’m proud of.) Consequently, I came up with the Cuddle-lator. The Cuddle-lator was the amount of time I stayed in bed after sex before I made up a lame excuse and left. Kayla, the supercute feminist who corrected me if I called any female older than eleven a girl and not a “womyn,” scored over forty-five minutes on the Cuddle-lator. Megan, a terrific Chicago actress who lived on top of a jazz club where the thump of the bass shook the walls, got up to almost an hour and a half. Kinky yet kooky Janet, who was training to be a therapist but nevertheless once stalked a good friend months after they broke up, made it to only ten minutes because I was actually afraid of her. Consequently, I was thrilled when Annabelle’s Cuddle-lator calculation was off the charts! Not only did I not want to run off in the middle of the night, I had a hard time leaving Annabelle’s side in the morning. It was warm and sweet and minus the pangs of guilt, fear, or self-loathing I had felt with others. OK, yes, occasionally I might sneak downstairs and let out a couple hundred farts into her leather sofa so she wouldn’t hear them. I figured that was a better plan than letting them loose in the bed and revealing the ghastly flatulence machine I truly am. There’d be plenty of time to cross that bridge to nowhere.

  Then, a month or so into our fledgling relationship, I arranged to introduce Annabelle to all my best buddies from college. While they had all heard me nattering on about her for years, they had never actually met her. Unlike my writing partner, a woman who didn’t quite trust her, my guy friends didn’t trust me. They had seen many of my past crushes explode in my face, and here was the mother of all crushes. Let’s just say they didn’t exactly believe my claim that Annabelle was now into me. Yet when they met her and saw her genuine affection for me, they were overjoyed for both of us. My close pal Rick took me aside after Annabelle had gone off to the bathroom and politely told me, “She’s amazing. Don’t you dare fuck this u
p or I will be forced to beat the shit out of you.”

  Later that night as Annabelle and I were making out in my Saab outside her apartment, she got very serious and declared that she thought we should move in together. She made some very credible arguments for this. We could split the rent on my house, we wouldn’t have to waste any more time negotiating whose place we’d be staying over at, and by cohabiting we’d quickly find out how compatible we actually were. She reminded me that Rick had bragged that he had recently gotten engaged and moved in with his girlfriend after less than a month of dating. I respectfully suggested we should take some time for reflection to digest what was happening in order to make coherent decisions and plans. Also, let’s face it—I still hadn’t farted in front of her. I assured her that Rick would beat me up if I didn’t make good on this relationship so she had nothing to worry about. Annabelle backed off a little, but in the way a lioness backs off the prey she’s stalking in order to give it an illusion of safety.

  About a month after that we took the Saab up to San Francisco because Annabelle wanted me to meet her sister’s family in Tiburon, a suburb just over the Golden Gate Bridge. We amused ourselves during the four hundred miles by improvising and acting out a story that had us laughing our heads off all the way to San Francisco. It was the most fun I ever had with someone with my pants on. I imagined that this kind of spontaneous creativity and inspired intimate amusement was to be a lasting cornerstone of our relationship and looked forward to every second of it. (We never did anything like that again.)

  Our good time stopped very short when we found ourselves lost in San Fran looking for, of all things, the Golden Gate Bridge. Annabelle insisted she knew where she was going, but we just kept getting more and more lost, leading us not to Tiburon, but to our first major fight. I asked if she knew which street led to it, and she said that she didn’t go by street names, but by landmarks and some kind of internalized homing sense. I told her that her method was actually quite stupid. The longer it took to find it, the more frustrated and defensive she became. And soon we were squaring off at each other. My sarcasm was “unhelpful and rude.” Her ineptitude was “astonishing and pathetic.” We finally called her sister’s husband for some directions that used actual street names and intersections. However, by the time we found the Golden Gate Bridge and got to Tiburon, we were more than an hour and a half late and not speaking to each other.

  I had no idea that her sister had made a grand Shabbat dinner in my honor. I also had no idea that Lisa was not only Annabelle’s older, very successful sister, but also Northern California’s reigning queen of Judaism. I pretty much detest organized religion so when Lisa directed her seven-year-old son to chant the Kiddush wine prayer, I began to get itchy. The kid performed what seemed to be the entire Old Testament before we were allowed a sip of wine. Keeping me from wine when I needed it most was grating, but when I looked over at Annabelle, I saw she knew exactly what I was thinking and was feeling the same thing herself. Suddenly the fight about being lost melted away.

  On the way back to LA, I felt very close and loving toward Annabelle. Things really were going incredibly well with us. I told her that I had thought it over and was ready for us to move in together. But she had changed her mind. Annabelle had given moving in some thought as well and now felt strongly that we shouldn’t live together until we were officially engaged. Engaged? Annabelle turned very serious and told me she wanted “more.” You mean “more” than the sweet, blissful, joyous, worry-free, sexually mind-blowing love we were currently enjoying? If I couldn’t make a commitment to “wanting more” right then and there, she continued, I should get out. Get out? It took me five years to get in! I wanted to enjoy the scenery a little. Annabelle was not moved. Rick, my friend who had threatened violence if I screwed up with her, was about to send out wedding invites and here I was hesitating about becoming engaged.

  It took almost two months to find the right ring for Annabelle. I rationalized that the time it took to find the ideal engagement ring would make me feel better about rushing things, which was true, but not as crucial as the fear that if I gave Annabelle a ring she didn’t like, she’d reassess our entire relationship and find me unsuitable to be her lifelong mate. It’s not that she’s superficial or materialistic; she’s just very particular and extremely judgmental. Ironically, by the time I was about to propose, my buddy Rick and his fiancée had already broken up, moved out, and called off the engagement. I carried the ring in my pocket for a day and a half, waiting for the right moment to pop the question. Then it hit me what to do: Annabelle never, to this day, gets into a car without checking herself out in the vanity mirror. So I taped the heart-shaped ring box to the vanity mirror. It was set. All Annabelle had to do was get into the car, pull down the visor, look at herself, and bang—we’d be engaged! Here it was, the moment I had been waiting for since I saw Romeo and Juliet in sixth grade. My heart was pounding as Annabelle got into the car, buckled her safety belt, and did not check herself out. I couldn’t believe it! Now what? Drive off and leave the ring taped there? I had to think quickly. “Do you have a zit?” I asked, pretending to see one. Annabelle freaked out. “Where!?” “There, on your chin.” Still she did not look in the vanity mirror. “You know how cruel it is to point out that I have a zit, like that?” Annabelle was getting really pissed off and my perfect proposal was going to hell, and fast. “Maybe it’s just a shadow, I don’t know; take a look for yourself.” Finally, Annabelle pulled down the vanity mirror and examined her chin. Amazingly, she was now so concerned about her nonexistent zit that she didn’t see the engagement ring box taped haphazardly right in the middle of the mirror. “I don’t see it!” She meant the zit. “It’s green,” I said of the zit, but meaning the ring box. “It’s green and in the shape of a fucking heart!” “What are you talking about? I don’t see anything!” she screamed. This was now spiraling out of control. If my proposal went any worse, we’d end up breaking up instead of engaged. Finally, Annabelle noticed it. “What the hell’s that?” She seemed completely mystified and annoyed by the whole thing. As she untaped the box, I scrambled outside to her side of the Saab, got on my knee, and asked her to marry me. For the first time that I could recall (and the last time), Annabelle was speechless as she processed what was happening. She started to laugh/cry and as we were hugging and kissing half in and half out of my Saab, I think Annabelle choked out a “Thank God I love my ring.” Which I took as a yes.

  Later that night I confessed about the fart couch that I had been visiting on an almost nightly basis for the previous five months. She told me I was being ridiculous and that I could fart in front of her and even in bed if I had to. And thus, it began … Annabelle having no idea at the time that permitting me to let it rip in front of her was akin to opening up Pandora’s box, only with lots and lots of gas.

  But before we moved in together, Annabelle, without saying a word to me about it, quietly got rid of the fart couch.

  She Says

  I had only one problem with suddenly liking Jeff after all these years: I didn’t trust me either. Sure, I thought I had fallen in love with Jeff, but even so I was worried about my poor judgment and fickle nature. Then something unexpected happened that further sealed my conviction. The night I met Jeff’s college buddies I fell in love with them too. Friends since school, they were all great guys—smart, charming, funny, and fiercely protective of Jeff. They immediately won me over. Sometimes it helps to see things through someone else’s eyes. Jeff was no longer just this random guy who had waged a kooky, corny poetry campaign to win me over—that might have been enough to get me in bed in the past—now I saw him as a devoted and loyal friend who had earned himself devoted and loyal friends. I loved them for loving Jeff, I loved Jeff for loving them, and I wanted him to love me as much as he loved them. I knew I had to make this work.

  While Jeff was busy measuring our compatibility on his sexual barometer, I was working on what I thought was important: convincing him that I was seri
ous about us. I wanted to do something big and bold, but I’m not good at that kind of thing so I reasoned that I’d make a small gesture, and what says I’m a caring, responsible individual more than buying your beloved an oven mitt? This attempt at trustworthiness produced unexpected results, which actually led to my high score on the Perv-O-Meter. You see, Jeff’s participation in improv groups during and after college has left an indelible stamp on his personality, whereby socks, cutlery—inanimate objects of any kind—have personalities, nicknames, and voices to go with them. The oven mitt happened to be in the shape of a lobster claw, and on Jeff’s hand that claw morphed into a character that came to be known as Lobster Boy. Lobster Boy started making regular tantric appearances in our bedroom, and it was the most fun I had ever had with my pants off.

  Jeff seemed pretty happy too, and after only a month of me actively not breaking up with him and applying continuous pressure directly to his penis, Jeff no longer doubted my sincerity. It had proved much easier than I had anticipated. Then I needed to determine if Jeff could survive my own system of relationship measurement, which I call Annabelle’s Derang-O-Meter. Could Jeff stand prolonged exposure to my particular brand of crazy on a long-term basis?

  I’d like to note for the record that there have been many accomplished and fascinating women throughout history who certainly rate mention on the Derang-O-Meter. If the scale runs from 1 to 10, then here are some examples:

  Catherine the Great, crazy for power, slept with horse: solid

  7 Joan of Arc, crazy for God: a memorable 8.5

  Sylvia Plath, crazy for being crazy, but a brilliant scribe: a nicely baked 9