Waiting for the Punch

by Marc Maron

  He had such a feeling that he should have everything. He was so charming. He would ask to be upgraded to first class and people would upgrade us. I don’t know how he did it.

  Marc

  You are impressed with this guy!

  Natasha

  I’ve looked him up. I can’t find him anymore.

  He was just so funny. I never heard someone saying you had to take a certain route so you could smell the roses.

  Marc

  No, it’s sweet, in a way. You were able to forgive all of this insanity. I am glad that he just took you for a ride for a little bit of money, in retrospect.

  Natasha

  Not much money.

  Marc

  His lie was enchanting to you. You’re like, “This is it.” Even when you got there and realized it was a lie, he sort of committed to behaving like that. You’re like, “That’s pretty good.” Right?

  Natasha

  Yes. The problem was, when you are lying like that at that level, every day you are telling lies, you get mad for no reason.

  I remember I was wearing these shoes once, when we were in London on our way back. He was like, “Why are you wearing those in the daytime!” He got so mad and wouldn’t talk to me. He was so crazy. For me, I was always begging him not to be mad. It was really sad. We get back to New York. We had no place to stay. We had no money. I lost my waitressing job, everything. We were living deep in Queens. Then he left me for this girl in Brooklyn who had an inheritance. He probably knew he had limited time left with me.

  It took me two or three years to recover in New York. He was always an influence in my head, I think.

  MICK FOLEY—PROFESSIONAL WRESTLER, STAGE PERFORMER, AUTHOR

  I stayed in character as my wrestling persona, Cactus Jack, for six months in Texas with my girlfriend. I had no way of letting her know that the guy she met was a character. I didn’t know how to break it to her because she was attracted to that character.

  Marc

  You were having sex as Cactus Jack?

  Mick

  I was. Indeed I was. She started catching on because I am a nice guy. It wasn’t that I would be mean to her. I was just a little out there as Cactus Jack. Then I got a phone call. I remember she specifically said to me like, “Jack.” She called me Jack, didn’t know my real name. She just said, “I know.”

  I said, “Know what?”

  She said, “I know.”

  “What do you think you know?” She wouldn’t say what she knew.

  A few days later, a week, a lot of time has passed. I got a phone call and she said, “I need to talk to you.” I said, “Can you tell me over the phone?” She said, “No, I need to talk to you in person.” I was twenty-four, what else could it be?

  Marc

  You thought she was pregnant or something?

  Mick

  Yeah. Turns out she needed to borrow $300. I said, “Yeah, yeah.” Not that I made a lot of money. That was about all I made in a week, but I said, “I can lend you money.” Later that night, I said, “I can’t do it. On my way over here, I promised God that if you weren’t pregnant, I wouldn’t have sex with you for a month.” She looked at me. She said, “You’re kidding me.” I said, “No, I’m not kidding.” I was in character.

  She said, “Jack, God doesn’t make deals.” I screamed in my Cactus Jack voice, “Well, he made one with me!”

  She said, “I thought this crazy thing was just an act, but you really are out of your mind.”

  It was that bond I had with myself playing this character, the promise I made. Cactus Jack would not have sex with her for a month.

  Maybe I caved in after three weeks.

  NICK GRIFFIN—COMEDIAN, WRITER

  I have a hard time enjoying people’s company for any extended period of time and I know that, so I don’t want to extend it. I’ve said it a million times. “Look, I’m not very easy to get along with and I keep to myself and I’m pretty committed to what I do.”

  Marc

  What they hear is, “I love you, move in.”

  Nick

  It’s the absolute truth. Eventually they wonder, “What happened? What happened?”

  “I gave you the whole poop up front and now you’re saying what happened? I told you what was going to happen, it’s happened, and now you’re upset that it’s happened? That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  DONNELL RAWLINGS—COMEDIAN, ACTOR

  I love everybody. White chicks, at one point in my life, they were a lot of fun. They were easy. I like the white chicks that work for nonprofits. There’s something about the peaceful bitches. I mean women, I’m sorry. Women that are like, “He’s going to be my experiment.” I don’t want you to really accept me 100 percent. I want you to dabble in it. I want the dabbler. They’re all about saving trees, whales, pit bulls, the Earth.…

  Marc

  … Fucking a black guy once.

  Donnell

  Yeah, once. Once. Dabble. Dabble. Dabble. Dabble. Then they find the person they’re going to marry.

  Marc

  Yeah, right, of course. The Jewish guy.

  Donnell

  Yeah, the Jewish guy. Yep. I know the system.

  CHELSEA PERETTI

  I am starting to really think that I genuinely have a major fear of commitment. I choose people that always have a glaring flaw or a glaring thing that would make us incompatible, like that anyone could just …

  Marc

  I’m sorry. Didn’t you go out with Jim Norton?

  Chelsea

  Yes.

  Marc

  That is not glaring. That is glowing like white-hot fire lights.

  Chelsea

  Me and Jim were friends for many years, and we always cracked up. It sounds stupid, but we laughed. We had long conversations. We’d go have dinner, and then there became a point where I was like, “Maybe this is something more.”

  BOB SAGET—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER

  I’ve had some relationship problems in my life personally because what I’ve learned about myself is you throw one rock at me and I got a thousand coming back at you. I’ll bring catapults. I’ll bring artillery. I’ll hire people. They don’t even do anything wrong. They’re just people. They’re just human beings.

  People of my ilk should be watching James L. Brooks’s As Good as It Gets as many times as we possibly can because the Jack Nicholson/Helen Hunt relationship kind of says it all. It’s like, why would you say something like that? It’s just a guy who’s so narcissistic and so insecure and hurt, he’ll just do something that fucks it up for somebody that he cares about. It can really fuck up a good relationship. It’s anger issues and it’s also hurt and it’s not being allowed to do what you want to do and it’s also not owning your stuff. Not walking around feeling guilty, whether it be Catholic or Jew guilt.

  I think the solution is to shorten the window on the angst. Shorten the argument, shorten the reason for it. Say what you want to say. I have a friend that always says this to me: “Just do a puzzle with a friend. Just do whatever you can do, shiny objects in front of yourself, change the subject in your mind.” Go do something. Something. Play Zelda. Do anything.

  Marc

  When you lock in, do you have that moment where you feel the effect of what’s aggravated you and then it’s just like a switch turns?

  Bob

  A switch turns and the bottom of the elevator drops out. There’s no rescuing anybody. Everybody’s getting taken in.

  It’s incorrect behavior, but you can fix it. I guarantee you can fix it.

  MARIA BAMFORD—COMEDIAN, ACTOR

  I think I still have looked at relationships as a self-esteem-building thing and it’s like, “No, I’ve got to really be on board with myself and my life and not try to invite anybody into it.” Also, I’ve got to really like and respect the person, instead of just thinking, “Oh, I’m going to help him,” which is horrible. Nobody wants to be helped.

  You should want to be with somebody
you admire. You say, “Oh, this person is really neat and a wonderful person.” Not, “They’re neat, they’re fine, but I’m going to teach him a thing or two about a thing or two.” That’s totally controlling and totally manipulative, and also a put-down to the person.

  RON FUNCHES—COMEDIAN, ACTOR

  You can never change a person. You can never. Whoever they introduce themselves as is who they’re going to be.

  People can evolve. People never change. Evolving means that they still have their standard base. You can see where they’re coming from. You’re not going to do a 180.

  That’s a lesson I learned from my mom the hard way with the guy she was dating. She was hoping that she could change him.

  RACHAEL HARRIS—COMEDIAN, ACTOR

  If anybody’s really too together and I never see them lose it, I don’t trust them. Only until I see you totally fuck up, and behave really badly, like, say something shitty to someone awful, then I breathe a sigh of relief, and I’m like, okay, they’re normal to me.

  Marc

  I say, “I don’t know if someone loves me unless I can make them cry.”

  Rachael

  I’m the crier.

  Marc

  That’s what I mean. It’s like, “Fuck you, you don’t love me. If you cared about me you would fucking understand what I’m saying.”

  Rachael

  Right, and then I say, “Yes, I do, I do, I do.”

  Marc

  “Okay, you do, you do, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Rachael

  Right, and then once you said you were sorry, then I’m like, “Ahhh! I’m in.”

  Marc

  Yeah, it’s over, locked in, and there you go, and that’s how it goes, round and round.

  PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

  The fights you have are never about the thing you’re fighting about. It’s always about something else. It’s about a story. It’s about respect. It’s about recognition, something deep.

  MARGARET CHO—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR

  My mother has an eating disorder and always did. My father was a terrible womanizer. She blamed her body issues on his cheating. They have a great relationship now, but they really were bad for each other. He was a sex addict, and she was emotionally crazy. Now I’m both of them. I think I’m always heartbroken, eternally heartbroken, which is why I think people are attracted to me because my heart is always open, very open all the time. That’s just because I’m so smashed up.

  Marc

  I find that too. I know crazy people are drawn to me like a magnet, because I’m wired that way, and you’ve got to figure you are as well. I realized this recently in life, that because I grew up with a manic-depressive father with anger problems and completely selfish parents in general, I’m wired to accommodate those people. People who other people say, “That guy’s fucking nuts,” I can have him talking like a normal person and feeling sort of heard very quickly. They’re drawn to me. I have that gift, which is horrible.

  Margaret

  Mine is I don’t know they’re crazy until way too late. I kind of allow them in. I just let people in.

  DAVE FOLEY—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR

  My first wife, I loved her when we first started dating. She was actually a girl I wanted to ask out and then I lost my job and I couldn’t take her out so I didn’t ask her out, and then in the meantime my best friend started dating her. They started living together, but while they were living together, she and I were getting closer and closer.

  Then I started feeling like I was falling for her and because one of those nights where I said, “You know what, maybe we should stop hanging out so much because I’m starting to have these feelings and you’re my best friend’s girlfriend,” she showed me her tits and I realized, “Maybe he’s not my best friend.” So then I wound up stealing my best friend’s girlfriend.

  Once I got into this relationship with her, I realized almost immediately, “Oh my God…” But in my head I’m like, “Well, I can’t just break up with her. I can’t. I just ruined my friendship. This has to mean something.”

  From then on, it was just me trying to find a way out of it in a decent way.

  JUDD APATOW—COMEDIAN, DIRECTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER

  After my parents got divorced, I thought, “I’ve got to get my shit together, I’ve got to get something going in this life, I really need to take care of myself.”

  When your parents get divorced, they just make terrible mistakes, and they fight, and you see that adults have very real flaws. I think my instinct was, “Oh my God, maybe they’re wrong about all sorts of stuff they’ve been telling me. If my mom thinks my dad’s the devil, and if my dad is enraged at my mom, then maybe some of this advice they’ve been giving me is wrong about things. I don’t think he’s the devil. He’s very nice to me.” It just completely threw me.

  It’s important that you believe your parents, like they know what they’re talking about, and there’s a comfort knowing they’re sane. When you see them at a terrible moment, at their worst, and they’re screaming at each other and it’s really madness for a couple of years, my first reaction was, “I don’t believe anything. I can’t rely on these people because they can’t rely on each other.” They’ve bailed on each other and in some way I felt bailed on, like, “Oh, our whole family isn’t important enough for you to figure out how to get along. One of you is going to leave and I’m going to see the other one randomly.” It was terrible.

  RACHAEL HARRIS

  I’ve told everybody I know, “Never get divorced.” Work through it, if it’s possible. Divorce was so hard. But over the years, things happen. People grow apart. You know, he’s not here to talk about it, and to tell his side of the story, but I will say that for me, the hardest thing was knowing that it was the right thing to do. Staying was awful. The thought of leaving was hideous and awful, but the thought of staying was worse.

  MELISSA ETHERIDGE—MUSICIAN

  It was horrible to have a breakup in public. Yes, it was horrible to feel like I let down a whole community because here I was regarded as this—there’s this perfect relationship, I’m out, we have children. That about killed me when I thought, we’re going to divorce and I’ve just shown the world what a gay family looks like and now we’re going to end it. That just about, that broke my heart even more than really losing the relationship because I really needed to be out of that relationship. But just that I felt like I let down so many people, that was difficult.

  JUDD APATOW

  When your parents get divorced, life collapses suddenly. “Hey, Judd, could you come down in the living room? We need to talk to you for a minute. Mommy is moving out.” You think, “Something like that is going to happen again. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but I better be ready for it.”

  Staying ready for it is what detaches you from life. For me, that’s been the great lesson of marriage, and my beautiful wife and beautiful daughters. They will not accept that. Daddy needs to be here, and needs to be happy and connected and present. It forces me to do the work, not be the guy who wants to detach.

  CINDY CRAWFORD—MODEL, ENTREPRENEUR, ACTIVIST

  I was twenty-six when I got married. I was young. I didn’t think I was young. But I was young.

  I was with Richard for six years, but I was only married for two years.

  We’re friendly now, but it’s almost like he’s gone back to being “Richard Gere” again, like a stranger, because we don’t really see each other that much.

  I think part of the problem in our relationship was that we were a lot of other things, but I don’t know if we were ever friends. Like peers, because I was young and he was Richard Gere. Then as I started growing up and growing into myself, it’s hard to change the dynamic of a relationship once you’re already in it, you know?

  I’ve been with my husband Rande now almost twenty-five years and I think why Rande and I really work is that we were friends first. I never pretended to like baseball or meditation
or whatever the version is, because I wasn’t trying to win him over.

  It’s that thing where you’re on that first date and you’re like, “I love that.” Then six months later they’re like, “Let’s go to the baseball game,” and you’re like, “I hate baseball.” They’re like, “What?”

  When you are with a friend you never do that and you really show your flaws from the beginning. I wasn’t trying to impress Rande. We got hooked up. We had to go to a wedding together, but not as dates. He was just chaperoning me because I didn’t want to go alone. We met and he didn’t want to really go out with me because he was dating another model. My friend whose wedding it was said, “Well, you can go with one of these three guys.” I knew the other two and I was like, “I’m not going with them, so I’ll take this unknown Door Number Three.” It was Rande, but he was late picking me up. I was like, “You’re late.” I was yelling at him the first time I met him, which was good because then when I yelled at him later on, he’d already seen that side of me.

  TOM GREEN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR, TALK SHOW HOST

  When I got cancer was exactly the exact same time that Drew Barrymore and I started dating. I was doing the movie Charlie’s Angels. We lived together for about two years and dated for two and a half years and it was great for a good chunk of that. Then it wasn’t great and then we broke up.

  Marc

  She seems like a pretty nice person.

  Tom

  Yeah.