by Marc Maron
“No,” I said, concerned but curious.
“You want to?”
“Not right now. Maybe later,” I said. I was driving a car.
Then Frankie started to nod off. I watched his body drift and sway with the car. He was in and out of consciousness. I stopped for gas and while I was filling up the car he woke up, stumbled into the office of the gas station, and stole a stack of the station’s business cards. He started scratching out “Joe’s Shell” with a pen and putting his name on there. He thought this was hilarious. I still have one of the cards. When we were about fifteen minutes from the gig he passed out cold. When we got to Johnny Yee’s I had to walk him into the club and lay him out in a booth. The guy who booked the place, this three-hundred-pound guy in a Hawaiian shirt named Wayne, asked me if he was okay. I said I thought so but I wasn’t sure. I had never dealt with a guy on the deep nod before.
Since I was opening the show I couldn’t really keep my eye on Frankie. I got up onstage and did my time, all of it. When I introduced Frankie I wasn’t afraid of him shouting out my time. I was afraid of him not coming onstage at all. The last I saw him he was hunched in a booth. I announced his name with a slight inflection at the end—“Frankie Bastille?”—and he bounded onto the stage, took the mic, thanked me, and proceeded to do one of the most engaging, animated live stand-up shows I have ever seen. He worked the stage, he acted out his bits, and he sweated profusely, like no one I had ever seen onstage sweat. He finished and got a standing ovation.
I sat in the booth in the back baffled and amazed. All I could think was that guy is a fucking pro.
We got into the car after the show and within seconds Frankie was back on the nod. He stayed that way for the entire trip home. I didn’t want to be Frankie, but I didn’t mind being with him, watching him nod off in the car seat next to me after a killer set. That, I thought, is a comic.
The only plan I’ve ever had in life was to be a comedian. I’ve never been sure why, but as I get older I’m starting to think it was because I needed to finish the construction of myself. Why I chose comedy for this undertaking is confusing but is starting to make sense to me.
When I was a kid I believed that I wasn’t like anyone else. That everyone else knew how to get along and move easily through life. I was alone in a world with no definition, surrounded by the clutter of purpose. My life has been a series of attempts at creating a self that fit somewhere, that engaged easily with others, that people liked or could at least see. Something defined. I fed on the acknowledgment, approval, and acceptance of others. Then I resented people for accepting the charade.
I only felt comfortable with people who were missing the same pieces of themselves that I was. I’ve always been happiest around characters. Well-defined and brash personalities. Focused charisma and intensity. Rage. Humor. Flaming self-destructiveness. Missing teeth and tattoos and Baggies in the glove compartment.
The rebels and outlaws, fuckups and con men—comics—had figured it out. They knew the tricks to get by and get life and get what they needed through charm and device, without feeling the pain of not being whole or the injustice of need. They were, like all artists, masters of the mathematics of relief, which was just the sort of thing I was looking for: a book, a movie, a crazy person, a kiss, a drug, a commitment, a song, a phrase, a joke. I thought that shit was magic.
They were my people. And that’s why comedy.
3
The First Marriage
I guess we can start at the end but it’s really the middle. Let’s just call it the really bad part. My second wife, Mishna, brought it to my attention that I had an anger problem. She didn’t say it like that. What she said was, “I’m leaving.”
Then she took her vagina and left.
I had it coming, I guess. I knew from the start that all I was doing was trying to hold on to her because she gave my life purpose and she was fucking stunning. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a person. Maybe if I had just relaxed, trusted myself, trusted her, didn’t freak out, everything would have been okay, but I am not capable of doing any of those things. We were fighting the odds from the beginning. When I met her I was a miserable drunk and she was just a kid. I was also married.
My first wife, Kim, was a nice woman. I loved her. I shouldn’t have married her. I did it because I didn’t know how to break up with her. I was too scared. It was too comfortable. She was a bit naïve. I was a bit out of my mind. I thought that’s what marriage was rooted in: fear, comfort, and lies. The triumvirate. I had grown to believe that I would never be happy but if I at least were married I could rest my chaos on a firm emotional mattress, that marriage would make things okay, normal-ish. They weren’t. I felt like I was drowning in my bed.
I understood exactly what I was getting into with my first marriage. It was 1995. I was a thirty-two-year-old comic. When I met her, six years before we got married, I was just starting out. Comedians in their infancy are generally selfish, irresponsible, emotionally retarded, morally dubious, substance-addicted animals who live out of boxes and milk crates. They are plagued with feelings of failure and fraudulence. They are prone to fleeting fits of manic grandiosity and are completely dependent on the acceptance and approval of rooms full of strangers, strangers the comedian resents until he feels sufficiently loved and embraced.
Perhaps I am only speaking for myself here.
I was looking for something that would make sense of things. I didn’t know what. It was vague to me. I had an itchy soul.
My brother was getting married. He asked me to be the best man. I was all fucked-up on drugs at the time. I go to the wedding and it’s a big Jewish event. We’re all under the chuppah. My brother’s marrying this woman. She’s got a hot Jewish maid of honor who is giving me some heat. I’m looking at the bride-to-be through the haze of a cocaine and booze hangover and thinking to myself, “If she’s going to take my brother, I’m going to take her friend.” That’s sort of like love at first sight.
So I charmed her friend, aggressively. Fortunately for me, she lived in the same city, Boston. So within a few weeks, I’d moved my boxes into her apartment and terrorized her into loving me, sweetly. I was the black sheep, the brother failing rehab who had hung his hopes on a dream of show business, and was nothing but fucking trouble. Somehow, she found all of that very appealing. I was her ticket out of middle-class Jeweyness. She was my ticket back in.
I was with her for about six years before I asked her to marry me, which only means one thing: I shouldn’t have done it! If you wait six years to get engaged, you are on the fence. I should have known that. I should have known when I bought her a ring and proposed to her in front of the Phoenix airport. She got off a plane, she got in the car, I took out the ring, I said, “So you wanna break up or do this?” I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like that. And she agreed to marry me.
From the minute I got engaged to that woman I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I was not stable, I loved her but was not really in love with her, I was not a good man. I was just looking for something that would make me normal; make everything make sense. I figured: bourgeois, middle class, Jews. That should do it. Her dad was a psychiatrist. In retrospect he must not have been a very good one. I mean, he let her marry me. How did he misread the signs so badly? Or maybe I’m that good an actor.
As soon as I put that ring on her finger a switch was thrown. Rooms were being rented, bakers called, invitations sent out; family members were bickering and I might as well have been standing on a dock waving goodbye to a boat sailing off without me. Or maybe my body was on board, dead-eyed and vacant, but my mind was still on the dock, waving.
At first I thought we were going to get married on a mountain at sunset. But there were Jews involved, so that wasn’t going to happen. Her mother put the kibosh on that plan with one sentence: “Esther can’t make it up the hill.” There’s always an Esther and she’s not going up the hill.
The other switch that got thrown the moment I got eng
aged was the one in my head that dropped the needle into this groove: How the fuck did I get into this? Why am I in this? How do I get out of this? Right up to the day of our wedding I was thinking, “I can’t do this.”
As I got closer, the fantasy started to take shape: “What if I just walk out on the altar?” That would’ve been amazing.
Can you imagine if you were up on the altar and the rabbi said, “Do you take this woman?” and you said, “You know what, I don’t! HA HA HA!!!” What a cathartic, profound moment that would be. At that moment everyone you know in your life would think you were a fuckin’ asshole and you would be truly free. How often do you get that opportunity? “Yeah, fuck all of you!” You could just step out from under the chuppah, walk slowly past a crowd of stunned faces, climb onto a horse, ride to Mexico, and become a cowboy. That’s how real cowboys are made. Show up at a bar in Juarez and say, “Hola, amigo. What can I get for this ring?” Clink.
I didn’t do that. I married her. I married her for the wrong reason—because it was safe. I believed at that time that people got married when they had that moment, when they’re looking at themselves in the mirror and say, “Holy shit. I’m going to compromise my dreams, get fat, sick, old, and die. I kind of want to have someone around for that.” You don’t want to be sixty, fat, sick, and alone saying to your reflection, “Look at me. I’m a fat failure.” No, you kind of want someone around to say, “It’s okay, baby. You look great. Let’s go get some Tasti D-Lite, cowboy.” You’re thinking, “I’m not a cowboy. I missed that window. Ah, Mexico.”
We were living in Manhattan but when we got married we moved out to Astoria, Queens, to be married people.
Right away I started to bust out. I had a barrel of monkeys on my back. I liked cocaine, I liked pot, I liked drinking. I was trying to keep it all under control. I was married to a woman who wouldn’t tolerate it but it started to sneak up on me. I was going on the road hanging out with gypsies and freaks and pirates and I’d come back all sweaty and broken saying, “I don’t know. I think I caught the flu on the plane.” It was nuts.
Yes, pirates. Real pirates. I don’t know what your experience is, but if you’re on a three-day blow bender, you’re going to meet a pirate. At some point after you’ve been up for about seventy-six hours in a strange apartment or hotel room you’re going to hear yourself say to someone else in the room, “Dude, why is there a pirate here?” and that person is going to say, “Be cool. He brought the coke.” And you’re gonna say, “Okay, he’s cool, but does the talking parrot have to stay? Because I’m fucked-up, man. It’s freaking me out.”
“Marc, there’s no parrot. You have a drug problem.”
“That’s what the fucking parrot said! Are you two working together? Why don’t you both get the fuck out of here and I’ll talk to the pirate for six hours.”
I was starting to bring the drugs home. I was not a weekend cocaine user. I’d say I was more like a half-a-week cocaine user. It’s amazing how much you can rationalize when you’re on drugs. I could actually say to myself, “Look, I’m only doing blow Wednesday through Saturday.” I didn’t think I had a problem. I thought I was completely under control. I thought, “I have parameters here. I have a schedule. It’s Wednesday through Saturday.” It took me a long time to realize, “Wednesday through Saturday? You know what, Marc? Regular people never do coke! It doesn’t even cross their minds.” I would get to the drug dealer’s house early because I thought if I started early I could be done with it by nine or ten and get on with my day. Like that ever worked. Have you ever heard anyone say, “No, no, I’m good. I’ve had enough blow. Time to get on with my day”?
One day I got to the coke dealer’s house in the late afternoon, before it was dark. I was the Early Bird Special guy. When I got there he was pulling down the shades and then there was a knock on the door. A short old Colombian man with a ponytail walked in. He handed my dealer a wad of tinfoil in exchange for some cash. He was the source. I said, “Let me do some of that!” My dealer said, “Okay, just a line.”
He opened the foil to reveal what seemed to be a jewel of blow. He flaked some off the rock into two lines. I snorted them. I felt a tingling behind my eyes that spread up through my brain like a wildfire of joy coursing through my nervous system. Apparently I had never felt the effects of pure cocaine. I said, “Holy shit! Why don’t you just sell that?” He said, “Because people would never leave me alone.” Then he crushed the gemstone and dumped it into a Baggie of last night’s stepped-on crud. It was heartbreaking.
My comedy career was stalled. Dramatically stalled. I was all bloated and sweaty and fucked-up. I was hosting segments on a local TV program on the Metro Channel, which I don’t think even exists anymore. It was awful. I would interview people on the street at a desk we would haul around the city. It was a “talk show on the street” segment. It was cute but like being dead but accepting it. I was married to a woman who had just added prenatal vitamins to our kitchen vitamin lineup. I was thinking, “That can’t happen.”
I’d surrendered. I’d given up. I would lie in bed blasted on coke with my heart exploding out of my chest, next to somebody sleeping comfortably, and I wanted to wake her up to tell her I was dying but I would’ve rather just died.
I thought that was the only way to get out of my situation. I wanted my heart to explode. I didn’t have the guts to leave her. I didn’t have the guts to be honest. I was fucked. My career was done. I was bitter.
Then a miracle happened, I guess you can call it a miracle. I’m going to go ahead and call it that even though it ended up the disaster with which I opened this chapter. But at the time it seemed like a miracle, a silver lining. Maybe it was just foil.
I’m at the Comedy Cellar in New York. I’m hanging out. I’m sweating. I’m talking to a few young comics. I’m probably having one of these conversations: “Well, I think if you really want to talk about the history of it, Pryor was really the first.…” You know the rap. Holding court. And this woman comes up to me. This woman like a spirit, an apparition. I didn’t know who she was. What she was. But this six-foot-tall, spectacular-looking being walks up to me and says, “Hey, you’re Marc Maron, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am,” I say, defensive but as charming as possible.
“What happened to you? You look like you’re going to die.”
“Huh? Yeah, well … what? I’m cool, I’m good. What do you mean? What’s the deal?”
“I’m just a big fan, and I don’t know, you look like you’re in trouble. If you want to get sober I can help you get sober.”
“What? You mean like meetings, AA and that kind of shit? Like the God thing? Are you a God person?”
“I can just point you in that direction.”
“Uh, okay,” I say.
In my mind I had no desire to get sober or even live, but every part of my mind and body wanted to be as close to her as possible, so I said, “Yeah. Hell yeah, I want to get sober. I need to get sober.” But in my mind all I was thinking was, “I’ll do anything with you. I’ll go anywhere. I’m going to follow you home now even if you don’t want me to follow you home.” And I did.
We walked thirty-five blocks. I smoked. We talked about cigarettes and about addiction and about comedy and about everything else. We got to her apartment. It was a walk-up on Forty-sixth Street. I’m in her living room smoking a joint, holding a Foster’s, and saying, “So, get me sober! Come on. What do you got?”
I start going to meetings, to lunch, to dinner, to wherever this perfect woman wanted to go. I fell in love as much as a newly sober, insane, angry bastard who was miserable and married could be in love, but I was in love, which meant I was going to hang every one of my hopes on this twenty-three-year-old girl. I was thirty-five.
Of course, I was married to another woman. That put a crimp in things a little bit. Courting is difficult when it has to be shrouded in mystery and secret pager codes. There was no texting then, just pagers. So we had numbers that meant,
“I love you,” “I miss you,” “What are you doing?” I was running around the city, sweating and beeping.
Love is love and being in love is being in love. Wherever your loyalty is, whatever rules you think you won’t break in your life, sometimes you just can’t fight being in love. Some of the best memories of my life are moments like following her up the stairs of that Forty-sixth Street fourth-floor walk-up apartment. Watching her move up the stairs in a plaid skirt, watching her smoking cigarettes, and then laughing on her old couch, lying in her bed after we had sex and listening to her piss, feeling impressed and ecstatic, like, “Holy shit! Listen to that! It’s so powerful!” I told my friend Sam about my fascination with the power of her stream and he said it sounded like I was talking about a Thoroughbred horse. I think I was. I thought, “Maybe this is my chance to disrupt my bipolar Jew gene line.”
I didn’t know what to do. I’m in love with this woman, I’m married to this other woman, and I’m in trouble, so I call my two friends. That’s all I need, two. I need the main guy and the guy I go to when I drain the main guy.
The guys at that time were Sam, a bitter and brilliant writer, who was married and had just had a kid, and Dave, a comic and borderline sexual predator. I call Sam first and I say, “Dude, I’m in love. This is crazy. Things have been over with Kim and me for years. What should I do, man? This woman is perfect. I’m getting sober. It’s everything I wanted.” He says, “Man, you’re married. Be responsible. You made a commitment. Try to honor it. This thing will pass.” I say, “You know what, man? Take a day off.” Then I call Dave. “Hey, Dave! What’s going on? Take a break from pursuing eighteen-year-olds online and talk to me. I’m in love with this woman. She’s twenty-three and I’m married but I’m getting sober and I think it’s the right thing.” And Dave, thank God, says, “Ah, dude … you gotta go for it! What the fuck, man?! You only live once. This is it! This might be it!” And I’m like, “You’re right, man, thanks. I knew I could count on you.”