Waiting for the Punch

by Marc Maron

  Jacking off is a great way to get rid of anxiety. It’s not sexual, and knowing that is very helpful. There’s something going on inside of me and it doesn’t even have to be that it’s deep-seated in who I am. Fuck it. It’s just anxiety. You’re feeling bad. Take a fucking breath.

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN–MUSICIAN, SONGWRITER, AUTHOR

  I had a classic thing happen to me in New York City where I got caught in a classic New York City con game.

  Guy came up to me on the street. Said he was from South Africa. Came into town, taxi driver picked him up, got dropped off. Lost a briefcase. It’s at Madison Square Garden. It’s filled with money. And I’m going, “Oh, how can I help you?” This leads to a variety of other circumstances where I finally end up on a street corner with a guy who says, “I’ve got a gun in my pocket.” I finally realized, “I’m caught in something here.”

  I ended up walking away anyway, but I said, “Hey, why am I the guy, that out of the thousands of people on the street that day, somebody looked at me and said, ‘That’s my man!’” I said, “Okay, I’m putting something out here that’s great sometimes but not so great in everyday life.” I’m kind of stupid this way.

  MARC

  William Burroughs said, “You can’t beat the mark inside.”

  BRUCE

  No, you can’t. You can’t, and it took me a long time to realize that a part of me was that person and then to start to build the boundaries that not only were good for me but were good for the people that were around me because I wasn’t doing them any service either. That was kind of the beginning. It was an adult thing to do.

  You’ve got to learn the no word.

  You’ve got to learn how to say, “No, I can’t.”

  For me that was really hard because I had heard “No, I can’t” so often when I was a child. I said, “I’m not going to say no to anybody. When I grow up, I’m not going there.”

  JUDD APATOW

  I’ve had therapists who’ve said, “Everything that happened to you happened in the first three years of your life.” It may just be the way your mom looked at you. I don’t know if that’s true.

  I do know that in every situation that I walk into, it doesn’t matter whether things are going well for me in life or careerwise or not, I feel like the weirdo. I feel like the awkward guy picking up my kids from school. I feel that way on the set of my own movies. I never feel like I own the moment. I just feel like a punch could come from any direction, even if I’m everyone’s boss.

  When I’m at a party or somewhere, there’s a part of me that wishes I could run out and sit in my room and watch The Merv Griffin Show alone.

  Marc

  Why are we so afraid of joy?

  Judd

  That’s the question. I’ve thought about it a lot. I think it’s because we think right behind joy is a knife that will cut our throats. If we really feel it, it’s almost like a laugh. Your chin goes up, and your throat is exposed. If I laugh too loud, someone will slit my throat. That’s the terror of joy. If I enjoy this as completely as I want to, it’s going to hurt when it goes wrong. The mistake is it hurts already. Shutting yourself down is what really hurts. It doesn’t actually make sense, and you have to think about it all the time to know that’s what’s happening. That I’m not actually enjoying this.

  You’re not present because you’re waiting for a punch. That’s how I feel. I feel like I have my dukes up all day long looking for someone who’s going to punch me, and here’s the thing, no one ever punches me.

  JEN KIRKMAN—COMEDIAN, WRITER

  I have to go to Australia on Friday and I’m convinced I’m going to die because I get anxiety attacks on airplanes. Being there, I feel like I’m going to be like, “I’m in Australia. I can’t leave. I can’t just get on a plane.” I get agoraphobic that way. Panicked. Because I know I can’t control it and I’m not afraid like the plane’s going to crash or I’m dying or anything. I just don’t like being in situations that I don’t decide to be in. I have to go.

  Marc

  That’s why you don’t want to have children.

  Jen

  Yes. I’m working on so much shit that by the time I grow up and get my shit together I’ll be like, “Oh, I can’t wait to enjoy this adulthood a little bit.”

  I feel like if I was listening to me, I’d be like, “I cannot stand this girl right now.”

  Marc

  The thing about talking about this kind of stuff in an honest way is that not many people do it. There will be judgers, but there will also be people that are like, “Oh my God. No one ever says that. I feel exactly that way.” Conquering my fear of flying taught me a lot about conquering fears in life because it is really the core of that panic disorder. Because if you’re afraid of flying, you get onto that machine and you’ve got to fly somewhere. You have absolutely no control over any of it. It becomes a metaphor for life. You don’t know how to fly a plane; if something was to go wrong, there was nothing you can do. Literally, either you choose to live in the panic; which 99 percent of the time will turn out to be a waste of fucking time and energy, or you fucking let go and say, “You know, it’s out of my hands.”

  JUDD APATOW

  I enjoy therapy, but I know that I don’t do as much work by myself as I should to keep present. I’ve always known that if I meditated for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes at the end of the day, my life would be completely transformed. I’ve never done it once. I can go ninety seconds, and I will feel better even on ninety seconds, but I won’t do it. The part of me that won’t allow me to do it is the part that wants to watch The Merv Griffin Show.

  Marc

  The part waiting for the punch, waiting for the knife.

  Judd

  I’m protecting myself. I’m saying to myself, “If you meditate, you’re going to think about how none of this shit makes sense.” I guess a Buddhist would say, “No, if you meditate long enough you would know that it all makes sense,” but there’s a part of you that’s like, “No, it doesn’t because no one said life was fair.”

  You’re going to look into the dark abyss in your quiet meditation and realize there’s nothing fucking there.

  BOB ODENKIRK—ACTOR, WRITER, DIRECTOR, COMEDIAN

  I am pretty crazy too. I’ve got a lot of rage. Frustration, rage. It’s one of the things I’ve been facing up to, and I’ve always known this as true. So many things about yourself that you someday have to confront are things that you always knew. Then the day comes, and you’re like, “Argh! Damn it! I thought I wouldn’t have to!”

  KEN JEONG—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, LICENSED PHYSICIAN

  My dad told me I was a perfect person except for my anger, whether it was chemical or Korean. He goes, “Ken, you’re a good guy. You’re perfect except for you have temper.” He would always tell me that even when I was eight years old.

  One of my best friends does a great impression of me being mad. I’ll be like, “THIS IS HORRIBLE! THIS IS HORRIBLE! THIS IS FUCKED-UP! I’m sorry, man, I’m so sorry.”

  That is me in a nutshell. I’m the self-aware angry guy.

  In med school I was really angry because I didn’t know if this was the right path for me. I think anger comes out of feeling trapped in life. I don’t know. This is based on my own experience. When you feel like you don’t have any other options, or this is your only way out. Maybe it’s out of anxiety or frustration, but I remember being very mad in med school a lot because I felt like, “Is this really the path for me?”

  DAVE ANTHONY—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR

  Do you know what emotional geography is? Maybe it’s just a fucking term I made up. My feelings until I was about thirty-two—until I got therapy and got my shit worked out—were only anger. Just different levels of anger. There was no happiness. I basically had no other feelings. Some people are happy, and then “I’m okay,” and then “I’m mad.” For me it was like, “I’m really not angry,” “I’m kind of angry,” “I’m very angry.” That was my r
ange.

  Marc

  Have you ever had that anger where you’re trying to behave and own your anger, so you just shut down completely and tear yourself up on the inside?

  Dave

  Are you kidding? I call that “my twenties.”

  I was living in New York and I took a trip out here with my girlfriend at the time, and we were driving. National parks, nature, I love that shit. We were driving to this place called Red Rock outside of Las Vegas, and you have to get there when the sun’s setting because that’s when the rocks are red. I misjudged the drive and so it was clear we were going to miss it by forty-five minutes. I will not say a word for like an hour and a half. I was fucking mad, for like an hour and a half, and she did nothing wrong and she thinks that I’m now going to kill her or something.

  Then we get there and I’m still mad. We miss the sunset, then we go to Las Vegas, and then I’m like, “Well, I’m over being angry,” and she’s like, “Okay, well now I’m in a different place.” You don’t just turn it off for other people. That’s my whole fucking life. That’s what I always did. I’m like a psycho, and then I’m like, “Okay, I’m not angry anymore,” and she’s like, “Well, now I am, lunatic.” That’s everything, that’s my whole deal. When you get to a point where you realize how taxing it is and how exhausting it is, you don’t want to do it anymore.

  Marc

  And realize how much of it you make up.

  Dave

  You make up all of it, it’s all bullshit, because it’s all conversations in your head that haven’t happened. I went through a period where I had to realize it was all conversations in my head. It’s that thing where you’re having this argument in your head, and then the person knocks on the door and walks in, and you’re like, “What the fuck about Japan?” and they’re like, “I don’t know what’s happening.” “We’ve been talking about Japan for an hour!” I see people do it and I’m like, “You’re having a conversation in your head.” Once I realized I was doing it, I made a conscious effort to stop it. Once you stop it, you go, “Oh, this is so easy to not do it.” It is a choice.

  The other thing was me being a victim. The classic time I remember I was at the gym, I was jogging, and there was some sort of poster about Nepal, and I was like, “Fuck, it would be so great to just go to Nepal and just check out that country and just see the Buddhist monks and just the mountains and everything,” and then I get to, “I’d probably get kidnapped by Muslim terrorists and they would hold me hostage and then they’d eventually just cut off my head.” Then I just stopped and I was like, “What the fuck just happened? Seriously I just took the most awesome fantasy and turned it into me getting my head cut off!” So crazy.

  That was the minute when I was like, “Oh my God, I’m a victim.” It goes all the way back to your childhood of bullshit and it goes piling on top of itself and it became me.

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

  I built a thing where I would survive alone. I didn’t trust anybody after my parents left and after I had some very close people who died on me. I said, “Whoa, this world will kick your ass and turn you inside out. I don’t trust anything or anybody that I haven’t built myself.”

  So you go about building, building, building, building, building, building, building and you keep the world at large at bay. That’s how you live. You believe not only that’s how you live now, that’s how you can live forever. Then you reach a point where you realize, yes, you have built yourself a fortress and you are locked inside. All by your little, lonely self. That’s when you realize, “I’ve got to go outside. I’ve got to go outside. But I don’t like it outside. I don’t like what’s outside. I don’t trust any of the people outside. I only trust myself, when I’m doing what I do. I don’t trust the world at all. The world is dangerous and scary.”

  But you’ve got to go. You’ve got to go.

  MARGARET CHO—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR

  It all has to do with eating disorders, which has been my major problem, which is why I was an alcoholic and why I took drugs and everything. It’s because I have a crazy eating disorder. I think because my mother’s anorexic, and I was brought up with it. If you felt fat or if you got a little fat, you were almost unlovable and invisible and a worthless person. When I get right down to all of my issues, that’s still that, I think that is the deepest one.

  MARIA BAMFORD—COMEDIAN, ACTOR

  I think it is genetic because I have an aunt who is bulimic. It’s not my fault.

  NIKKI GLASER—COMEDIAN, TELEVISION HOST

  The very end of high school, things were changing. I was about to go to college. I got nervous because a boy liked me. For the first time ever, a guy that I liked, liked me, and I got nervous about it. I was excited, and I just didn’t eat for a day because I was nervous, just nerves.

  The next day, someone was like, “You look great.” It must have shown right away, and I was like, wait, I just didn’t eat as much yesterday. I’ll just keep doing that, and that’s what just started it. I lost so much weight in a month, I started not being able to stand up, and then I would have to just stand for a couple seconds to catch myself so I wouldn’t pass out. It started getting really scary.

  Everyone was like, “You don’t look good,” and I’m like, “I’m not trying to look hot, that’s not the thing.” At first that was the thing and then you can’t stop, and you’re like, well, this is not the thing because I do not look good. That’s my problem with women’s wear, is that our jeans are all so tight. Men are now wearing tighter jeans, so you’re getting a sense of it. When you are a little bit heavier than you usually are, you feel it everywhere. That’s why it’s so nice to wear boyfriend jeans. For a woman, it’s so great, because you don’t feel fat every fucking day that you’re a little bit bloated or whatever.

  MELANIE LYNSKEY—ACTOR

  My mother had a lot of eating issues when I was growing up, and that’s a tough thing to be around. It’s really an intense thing to see someone not like their own body. And then also to have a lot of weirdness around what you’re eating, when you’re eating. It’s so hard to get rid of it. And I think that’s why now I’m like, “I’m going to eat a fucking cookie.” Once I stopped being so obsessive about my thinking about eating—and my eating—just the freedom from that was overwhelming. It feels really nice to not think about food all the time.

  I weigh a lot more than I used to because I don’t think about food all the time. I used to be very skinny, but you would never know because I hated my body and walked around in big clothes. What’s the point? You can never escape it. You’re with yourself all the time. And also, you have to eat. It’s the most inescapable thing to have an issue with.

  I was bulimic for ten years. I was never a binge-y bulimic. I was too ashamed to binge eat. But I had such a strict diet and then if I ate anything over it, I would get rid of it. I was just obsessive about my eating. I got in a relationship when I was twenty-one and I really opened up to this person. He said to me, “That’s so violent. What a violent thing to do to yourself.” And I never really thought about it like that. I remember when I was twelve years old and I read about it, I was like, “Oh, great idea.” He started crying and said, “That breaks my heart that you would do that to yourself. It breaks my heart that you can’t experience something delicious.” We’d go out to dinner and I would eat a salad with no dressing. That’s all I would eat.

  He started—it sounds weird and controlling—he would make me eat something and not let me know what he was putting in it. He would make something and say, “Stay out of the kitchen,” and I would eat it and I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom. I started eating pasta and things with oil on them and I freaked out for a few months. And then I was like, “Oh, I’m not getting really fat. Food is delicious. And I feel fucking happy. This is nice.” Then I relapsed for a while, for a few years. I guess when I was around twenty-five I was just done. I still had a lot of feelings about my body, but it just got better and better. Sometimes I look at
myself and think, “Well, that’s kind of sexy. So round and bouncy.” It’s like, what’s wrong with that? I don’t know why I was denying that for so long. I was so excited to see all my ribs? Really? Not everyone’s supposed to look like that. It’s beautiful when everyone looks different.

  WILL FORTE—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER

  Definitely there is some OCD in my system. For a long time, I just thought that, “Oh, that just affects the things that are very clear.” Like checking the stove, checking the faucets before I go out, making sure the doors are locked.

  Then, after a while, you realize, “Oh, these things are also present in other parts of my life.” Then, as you get older, you realize, “Oh, this OCD stuff affects how I am in relationships.” Like leaving a party, it takes me forever to say good-bye because I want that closure on every person. I need to say good-bye to them. I want the happy ending of a movie in every conversation that I’ve had. It’s a sickness, a polite sickness.

  Marc

  If you leave a party, and you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t say good-bye,” you got to go back, run back in? “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”