But she doesn’t.
She revives me.
Jen has a soft, sweet voice. It has a thread count of six hundred. It’s a voice that always seems like it’s telling you a secret or saying, “I’m gonna make tea.”
Jen and I lie on the couch and she orders me a chicken kebab platter and scratches my back, and we snuggle with our cat, Mazzy, and watch a documentary about murder.
And that’s what love is.
And it all takes place…
On the couch.
I meditate on this couch/cat fantasy as I squeeze into my JetBlue seat. I notice a baby across the aisle screaming at the top of his lungs. And in that moment, and I can’t defend this, but I think, That baby doesn’t need to be anywhere. I’m wearing noise-canceling headphones. Which apparently aren’t enough. You need baby… canceling… headphones, which are… condoms… I guess.
We gotta get babies off planes. We got rid of smoking in the eighties, we could get rid of babies now. Or bring back smoking and get these babies some cigarettes because they’re so stressed out.
After an hour that feels like ten, I land in New York and take a cab to our apartment. I melt into our beloved couch and it hugs me.
I say, “Clo [her name is Jen]—people with kids are miserable.”
Jen laughs.
And I laugh.
We laugh as one.
Then she says: “But if we had a baby, I think it would be different.”
I inch away from the couch, spooked as though I had seen something supernatural but knowing that what I’m seeing is perhaps the most natural life progression of all.
I whisper to myself, “She got bit.”
I return to the couch and speak with the professional calm of an FBI agent during a hostage crisis. This is my Waco. I say, “Clo—I was very clear when we got married that I never wanted to have a kid.”
Which, by the way, gets you nothing. Being very clear is apparently useless.
She says, “I was very clear that I didn’t want to have a baby at the time but that I might change.”
I say, “I was clear that I would never change.”
She says, “If you don’t want to have a baby, maybe I’ll have one on my own and we can stay married.”
I say, “That’ll be a good look. Just you and me and this kid that’s a cross between you and some grad student jacking his way through SUNY Purchase. You can’t just have a kid on the side. You can’t tell the neighbors, ‘It’s fine! We keep him in the shed!’ People do it, I’ve seen the documentaries, but those aren’t my role models.”
Jen says, “A baby wouldn’t have to change the way we live our lives.”
I say, “Did you get less smart? You used to be so smart. You’re a poet. You’re a deep thinker, and what you’re saying right now is factually incorrect. It wouldn’t change the way we live our lives except for the part of my life where I fundamentally don’t want to have a child, which is all of it. Do you really want another me? Just this miniature fidgety, loudmouthed, attention-starved sleepwalker?”
Jen says, “The baby won’t be like you. The baby will be like me. Quiet and shy. Like a cat who reads books.”
I say, “Clo, first of all, cats can’t read.”
Jen says, “No one knows for sure.”
There’s a long pause.
Too long.
A unique detail about being married to a poet is that often she’ll say one line, and then there’s a lot of space.
I’ve never wanted to have a kid for seven specific reasons.
I.
SEVEN REASONS
1
I LOVE MY MARRIAGE
I feel lucky to have found my wife.
I never thought I’d meet anyone who’d put up with me. I thought I’d find someone who would pretend to be okay with me and then try to change me, fail, and then divorce me. But that didn’t happen. Jen loves me back. One time Jen was rubbing my neck and I said, “Do I feel more tense than usual?” and Jen said, “You’ve been 80 to 100 percent tense since the day we met.” And I thought, She really gets me.
When Jen and I first met, our work schedules didn’t match. Jen worked nine to six in an office building overlooking the Hudson. I was on the road about 70 percent of the time doing shows. To make matters worse, when I was in New York City, I was performing at night. So I… stay with me… showed up at her job every day without an invitation—for two and a half weeks.
In current times this would be called “stalking.” At the time it was called “stalking.” I wouldn’t recommend this tactic unless you are completely willing to go to jail and/or get married.
So I would show up at Jen’s work every day with flowers and I’d pop into the conference room or her office.
Jen would be mortified. She’d whisk me outside to Pier 60 and we would make out on the promenade. The first time this happened, Jen’s phone dropped out of her pocket mid-kiss.
Prank Calls from Fish
The first time my husband kissed me my cellphone fell out of my pocket into the Hudson River and to this day I still receive prank calls from fish.
Jen is a poet. She’s always published under a pseudonym. It’s “Allen Ginsberg.”
Actually, it’s “J. Hope Stein,” but I’ve coaxed Jen into revealing her pseudonym for this book, which means she plans to switch to a new, even more secret-y pseudonym upon its publication. So good luck tracking that down. Jen is very private. Until now she has never shared her pseudonym with family or friends, which I find maddening, so I created a pseudonym of my own who is an online superfan of her pseudonym and writes love letters to her pseudonym.
His name is Embir Bones. I’ve created a Gmail address for Embir Bones, and I write J. Hope Stein emails from that account. At one point I sent flowers from Embir Bones to J. Hope Stein and my follow-up email read:
Did u get the flowers? Was that ok w ur husband? I googled him. He’s a comedian. I’ve never heard of him. You need to lose that zero and get down with Embir.
Jen replied:
Mr. Bones,
Yes, I did get your flowers—beautiful! My cat Mazzy especially loves them since they remind her of when she was a street cat.
My husband is very secure in our relationship.
Sincerely,
J. Hope Stein
I don’t mean to belabor this point, but a pseudonym has always seemed absurd to me. If I wrote poems as beautifully as she does, I would buy a billboard in Times Square that said CHECK OUT THESE FUCKING POEMS.
But she doesn’t.
Jen’s publishing philosophy:
you can publish when you’re dead,
says the tree.
One night Jen came home from a poetry reading. I asked her how it went and she said, “There was no microphone and because my voice is so quiet, no one could hear me.”
So for our first anniversary, I bought her a microphone and portable amplifier to bring to her readings. On the box I placed a card that read “Dear Clo, Your voice needs to be heard.”
I am obsessed with Jen’s voice, and I’m one of the few people who gets to hear it.
Jen is an introvert.
I am an extrovert.
An extrovert is someone who gets energy from being around other people, and an introvert doesn’t like you.
Well, she might like you, but her husband will have to explain why we’re leaving the party. That’s my role in our marriage. I’m Jen’s social bodyguard. When Jen is socially past her point, I need to come up with an immediate excuse for us to leave, and often the excuses are less than convincing. For example, I blurt, “WE HAVE A CAT!” and then we exit.
I didn’t enter the marriage as an extrovert. I was an introvert who, when married to an even deeper introvert, was forced to find my inner extrovert. Someone had to. Otherwise how would we leave the party?
Whenever I make these excuses to leave social events, I can see a certain look on the listener’s face. I’m not fluent in face, but it’s something like, This guy
is an asshole.
And that may be, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that I am an excellent social bodyguard for my wife, who is a quiet and shy cat who reads books.
Jen is truly one of a kind. Nearly every aspect of Jen is anomalous. I travel for my job and she likes it when I’m away. I get tickets to cool events, she likes to stay home. She likes salad. She’s not eating it as a punishment for eating pizza. She enjoys lettuce as food. Solitude is her oxygen and salad is her sunlight.
Which is all to say—I love my marriage.
And I’m not saying it’s perfect. I think all marriages have an undercurrent of tension at all times because you have two people experiencing many of the same events at the same time, and then you have two completely different memories of the same event.
A few years ago we were in a hotel elevator in Chicago, and I remembered that on the lobby level there was a café that Jen had loved a few years before.
I said, “I just remembered you loved the café at this hotel!”
Jen said, “Who did?”
And I thought, Oh no.
Because the subtext of “Who did?” was:
A. That wasn’t me.
B. That was another woman you were dating.
C. I’m not happy about this.
We got to the lobby, and the elevator doors opened and Jen said, “Oh, yeah. I love this café!”
And I thought, I nearly died in the elevator. I almost had a heart attack two minutes ago and you just casually remembered that I was right.
So now—whenever we have a shared memory that isn’t exactly the same—one of us says the phrase “Who did?” which is our way of saying, “We’re both probably wrong.”
I love my marriage.
And I don’t fall for those wedding clichés where people say, “Two become one.” But I do feel like, if you’re lucky in a relationship, there are moments… and I mean… moments.
Like, this is a moment…
That was a moment.
There are moments where you feel as if your souls are colliding in a way that no two souls have collided in the history of humankind. And you think, How did I get this lucky?
Jen and I hate going to parties, but we love driving away from parties. A few years ago we went to our friend Katie’s birthday and this lady got up and gave a speech, which isn’t a thing. That’s why I remember it so well. She said, “Last year Katie and I went scuba diving and her oxygen tank got stuck on the rocks and I wriggled it free and I may have saved her life. I saved your best friend’s life.” Jen and I locked eyes from across the room and telepathically projected the sentence:
We’re gonna talk about this for years.
And we have.
Here’s how it comes up. Whenever Jen and I do something sweet for each other. Like, for example, I have a serious sleepwalking disorder that requires me to sleep in a sleeping bag (more on that later). Anyway, sometimes she’ll zip me up in the sleeping bag and she’ll say, “It’s time to put you in your pod.”
I’ll say, “Thanks.”
And she’ll say, “I saved your best friend’s life.”
It’s never not funny. It has literally never not been funny. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want that to change. I don’t want a third person showing up and saying, “What about me?!”
I’d say, “We don’t even know you!”
Which is all to say I’m married to someone who gets prank calls from fish and has visited a special little café in Chicago twice whether she remembers it or not. I’m married to the Clark Kent of poetry who has saved my best friend’s life and for many years shared with me the solidarity that we would never have children. I didn’t want to lose that. I didn’t want that to change.
2
MY BODY IS A LEMON
I’ve never felt that there should be more of me in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I think one of me is funny. But I believe in survival of the fittest, and I am not the fittest. I have the body of someone who’s just about to embark on a robust exercise regimen and then doesn’t.
And I also have a long medical history. I had a malignant tumor in my bladder when I was nineteen. I was lucky. The doctors caught the tumor early, took it out, and it hasn’t come back, but every year I’m reminded of it because I go for what’s called a cystoscopy, where a doctor takes a rod that’s about as long as a tennis racket and as thick as a Twizzler with a camera on the end, and he sticks it through your urethra to look into your bladder… while you’re awake.
Or I should say, “While other people are awake.” I get knocked out for it.
But I didn’t that first time. When I was twenty, my urologist, Dr. Kaplan, put me in a chair with those leg stirrups and he applied a local anesthetic and some jelly that was quite cold. The moment the scope made contact with my body, I shouted. Dr. Kaplan seemed shocked. Not concerned but shocked. And all I could think was, You stuck a meat thermometer into my penis and you didn’t think I was gonna shout? Who is your clientele?
But Dr. Kaplan was unfazed. He said, “Relax ya butt!”
And I said, “You relax your butt!”
By the way, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to convince someone to relax their butt, one thing I’d suggest not saying is “relax your butt.” I think it has almost a reversing quality. If butt relaxation is your endgame, maybe throw a curveball like “relax your ears!” The person might get distracted and think, Hey, my butt feels pretty loose! and then whatever you’re trying to get into that person’s butt will just slide right in there.
Which is all to say: I get knocked out for this annual procedure.
Last year was particularly eventful because I had gone for my physical and, since I was nearing forty, they suggested a prostate exam, which, you probably know, is a finger in the butt and one in your mouth if you’re close with the physician. (That’s what I was told.)
But I couldn’t handle it. My doctor went for it and I politely dodged his finger and said, “Oh, no thank you!”
So, before I went for my annual cystoscopy, I said to Dr. Kaplan, “Hey, while I’m under, would you mind also sticking your finger in my butt?”
Dr. Kaplan replied, as though I had asked him to pass the salt, “Yeah, I can do that.”
I thought, I might be a medical genius. I never went to school for this, I barely finished Our Bodies, Ourselves, and I just invented the urology twofer. Which, if it catches on, should be renamed “the Birbiglia Bonus.”
So I had cancer. I have a life-threatening sleepwalking disorder. I wrote a book about it called Sleepwalk with Me. I even made a movie out of that, but just because you make a movie about something doesn’t mean it’s cured. If you haven’t read or seen Sleepwalk with Me, it’s based on a true-life incident thirteen years ago where I sleepwalked through a second-story window at a La Quinta Inn in Walla Walla, Washington. When I say “through” I mean through the glass. I dreamed I was on a ship and there was a guided missile that was targeting me. In order to save all the people in the boat, I sprinted towards the window (in my dream and, as it turns out, in real life) and smashed through the glass. I landed on the front lawn, took a fall, got up, and kept running! And I lived—which is why it is humorous now. I actually drove myself to a hospital in Walla Walla and got thirty-three stitches in my leg. A shard of glass was a centimeter from my femoral artery and, had it struck the artery, I could have bled out on the front lawn of the motel and died. I was diagnosed with a rare condition called REM sleep behavior disorder, so now, every night when I go to bed, I take a very strong narcotic and then slide myself into a sleeping bag and wear mittens so I can’t open the sleeping bag.
And that’s my life!
There are details in my life that are both setups and punch lines. My sleep physician recently explained to me that, had I been killed in the incident in Walla Walla, the police would have classified the death as a “pseudo-suicide.” It’s a deeply terrifying feeling when your subconscious and conscious mind have diametr
ically opposed goals.
I make a lot of jokes about my sleepwalking, but it’s a very serious condition. There are people with this disorder who have, in rare instances, been known to kill the person they’re in bed with while remaining asleep.
I don’t think that’s a great quality in a dad.
So I had cancer. I act out my dreams. My health isn’t trending upward. Last year when I went for my physical my doctor took blood and he called me with the results and said, “You’re prediabetic, you have high cholesterol, and you have Lyme disease.”
I thought, One at a time! Everybody’s gonna get a chance!
My doctor put me on antibiotics for the Lyme disease. Then, regarding the diabetes, he said, “Is there anything in your diet that might be spiking your blood sugar?”
I said, “Sometimes I eat pizza until I’m unconscious.”
He said, “I think that might be it.”
So I had Lyme disease, I’m prediabetic, I’m generally devoid of joy.
I really am.
Sometimes I’ll watch these action movies, but I don’t relate to the hero, which I think is sort of the idea. I relate to that other guy. The buddy. The guy who gets shot and then the hero says, “Stay awake, bro!” But I don’t want to stay awake.
I make a lot of jokes about sleepwalking, but it really is a battle for me to get out of bed in the morning because I take Klonopin, which knocks you the hell out. It can cause “paranoid or suicidal ideation and impair memory, judgment, and coordination. Combining with other substances, particularly alcohol, can slow breathing and possibly lead to death.” Other than that, it’s great.
I once asked my doctor if I could stop taking the Klonopin because of the dangerous side effects and daily hangover, and he said, “Look, Mike, you jumped through a window in your sleep. You’ve made your sleeping bag.”
The New One Page 2