Dear Stuart,
I don’t know why today is the day that I need to write some things down for you in this so public a forum, but today is that day. Maybe it’s because you’ve been working for a few weeks and it’s been yet another change, yet another development. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent all my downtime today thinking of fun things we could do on our Friday night. Maybe it’s because this weekend marks six months of marriage. Maybe, though, it’s because every week, you find a new way to make me laugh until my sides hurt, and last night it was that thing you did where you met my nose with yours and then jerked your head back and forth so that you looked like a woodpecker on my nose and it’s just so goddamned funny that I’m laughing right now, remembering it.
I just never thought that life could be this beautiful and more importantly, I never thought that even the difficult parts, the mundane parts, could be this full of joy and hilarity. Every morning, I bounce out of bed while you’re showering and pour you a cup of coffee from our demonically retarded coffee machine (WHY, WHY does coffee always leak when I’m pouring? Why, Black + Decker, WHY?) and deliver it to you in the steamy little bathroom. I start making our sandwiches for the day, glad to know that every evening you’ll exclaim what a masterpiece it was even though it’s the same sandwich every day. We have breakfast at our dining room table, cereal or toast and jam and coffee and tea and it’s all so very mundane and normal, and yet it’s the most beautiful time of the day.
I kiss you three or four times before you go down our stairs and it never feels like enough. We text throughout the day, funny stories about the department store or crazy Tobey or the Mafioso and it brightens my day, every time.
I love how you put up with my obsessive plan-making, which changes every minute but is always done with nothing but excitement and anticipation. I love how you cherish every minute of our weekends, I love how you’re always smiling when I see you. I love how your upper lip curls when you’re frustrated, I love how you call me a nooly when I’m being crazy. I love lying on the futon in the office while you type at night, I love the way you always find me and wrap sleep-heavy arms around me every morning, right as the alarm goes off.
I love, too, the way you put up with my flaws. I’ve said I was going to do the mounting pile of dishes for three days now. For three days now, I haven’t done them. You know very well that if the tables were turned, I’d be righteously indignant. Not a peep of righteous indignance out of you, and that’s love. Because those are a lot of dishes. I love how you’re so slow to irritate, slow to find fault, because you really do believe the best in me even when I’m behaving at my worst.
I also really love the way you call me “small one”.
I love your eyebrows, I love your beard and its stubbornly inconsistent growth patterns. I love it when you catch sight of yourself lately and say, “wow! I look thinner!” because I know how hard you’re working and I’m so intensely, stupidly proud of you. I love playing tennis with you and kissing you at the net every time one of us has to go up there to retrieve yet another failed ball. I love watching movies with you and the way you slide over to snuggle under my neck during the commercials.
I’m writing this and not editing it because I edit everything else I write but this will be something that I post here, selfishly written just for you, just because I love you, just because it’s thursday and you’ve changed my life today like you change my life every day and because we’re meeting on the first car of the N train in 20 minutes and like every day, I can’t wait to see you again.
Love,
your Nooly
My headache has been around all day, and at the five hour mark, it became a Headache, and we all know that capitalized nouns are proper nouns and proper nouns are unique things and unique things need names, so I asked Biscuit to name it.
“Emma!”
Which I disagreed with, so I invented an Overwhelming Sense of Malaise for him to name instead, thinking I’d just switch the names and throw away the Malaise, but he tricked me, Biscuit did, so now I have an Overwhelming Sense of Malaise named Morris.
So Emma and Morris are rattling around in my head and while it’s getting kind of difficult to see through the fog of pain and ennui, I just realized that with names that pretentious, the bastards are going to want to go to the Ivies so here I am, a single mother of two snobbish preppy Unpleasantries, with a pile of bills and constant requests for more Izod shirts.
Some days are just bad.
It was with my own diminishing interest that I read your column in the April 11th New York Magazine. I have a couple points that I’d like to hash out, just to stand up as the voice of some of us “young marrieds” out there.
I’ll be the first to admit that marriage is an incredibly important relationship. It’s earth-shaking, it takes adjusting to, it’s hard and beautiful and it’s worth every minute. And as with any life-changing step, it has reverberations throughout every avenue of my life. And then I read your column, and suddenly, I’m backpedaling up a steam. Marriage, it seems, isn’t THIS big of a deal. It’s not ruining my social life and my friendships. I mean…
Sexless pariah?
About to reject my friends?
Never able to go out without my husband?
Always leaving early?
The brunt of domesticated jabs?
I’m not any of those things. And I’m young, and married. Right smack dab in your spotlighted demographic. We even live far enough away that going out sometimes is a hassle. And yeah, sometimes, we don’t. Sometimes, we stay home and watch a movie, or exercise together, or get a good night’s sleep.
But rejecting them because they don’t fit into my little married twosome, or being rejected by them because I don’t drink enough, smoke enough, or stay out late enough? If this is the experience of the average young and married New Yorker, then tell me – exactly how shallow are that average New Yorker’s friendships?
My friends haven’t rejected me, and I hope they don’t think I’m subtly rejecting them. The friendships in my life (and, I’ll venture to say, in most people’s lives) exist on a basis of mutual love and understanding. They love me and understand that while my life has changed, they are still important to me and I will make every effort to spend as much quality time with them as I have, and that I do that willingly and not out of some couple-time replacement therapy. I understand that loving them, and making the commitment of friendship that I’ve made, means that I need to see my personal time as more precious but just as flexible. It means that I make time for them because I know that nourishment is what sustains friendships, and that friendships are what sustain me.
Do they view me as a sexless pariah? Am I suddenly unable to discuss my marriage with my friends and trust that they’ll be just as fair and impartial to the man I love as they were to any other relationship I dissected with them? I certainly hope not. While the terms of discussion have changed – none of my friends are going to suggest I get a divorce if I mention a domestic squabble – I’m just as able to talk about my relationship as I was in the past. My friends and I hold true to the same set of guidelines; just because we vent about our partners doesn’t mean we’re ceding executive control over our decisions, and any advice is offered thoughtfully and lovingly. And really – sexless pariah? Am I the only person in my group of friends to be in a relationship? Are they all twelve? Or do they also know the terms of endearment, that is, that every relationship has its sexiness and its mundanities? Is this even an issue, to anyone but the supposed young marrieds in your article?
Here’s the thing, though, Ms. Sohn. I could understand everything about your article, I could write off the unfairness to most marriages and friendships as catchy magazine writing and dramatic flair. I’m sure you actually do have a lot of good friends who understand that you’re married and are even going through their own transitions.
But your interview subjects really break my heart. You know people whose friends continually mock them for cooking a good meal for their partner? Isn’t that what our mothers called jealousy and told us to ignore? You interviewed someone who complained that her married friends can only stay for dinner and don’t smoke pot? And these people call themselves friends? That’s not friendship, that’s sad. True friends do not exclude their married friends, or insecurely anticipate their own eventual rejection. True friends do not stop enjoying someone’s company because they quit smoking or because they live farther away.
Because really, and surely you know this, true friendship isn’t based on convenience. True friends do require care and attention, but the moments when they really shine are when you need them the most. And in any new relationship, in any time of sea change or transition, that’s when you need your friends to be their truest, to call on all of their reserves of selflessness and understanding. That’s when they know to make one-on-one plans with you, to ask if a weekend lunch is better than a late-night pub crawl. That’s when they can help you dissect the crux of a marital spat without making you feel like they hate your partner. That’s when a true friend can celebrate your life, instead of holding you accountable to the change of terms.
Your article went halfway. In all your neat explanation about how marriage makes both the married and the single sides of a friendship lose interest, you didn’t get to the most important thing about marriages and friendships. It’s this: if your friends aren’t doing all those things that come naturally to true friends, perhaps the problem is not the marriage. Perhaps the problem is the friends.
If there’s any proof that images are misleading, it’s the fact that you can’t see my sunburn in this photo.
It was tennis on Saturday and a two hour walk on Sunday. It goes from the top of each cheekbone to meet on the bridge of my nose. It’s the first blush – literally – of summer.
And try as I might, I couldn’t capture it. But maybe if you look closely, you’ll see what I mean.
As of yesterday afternoon today, Biscuit, Stuart, Shiv, The Kate, and myself officially signed up as Team The Tribe (Jason, SIGN UP), walking and quoting Eddie Izzard in the same life-affirming breath! It’s a sight to see! We’ll be a powerful walking army of tens of thousands! And we’ll raise millions of dollars! And fight for a cure! and we’ll …
… well, the whole entire WALK will be tens of thousands. And while the whole event usually raises over five hundred grand, we’re aiming our sights a little lower. But we’re definitely fighting for a cure. And our little Team The Tribe, while probably no more than ten or so, will be TEN STRONG! VERY VERY STRONG! And probably very very achy, after six miles. But also VERY VERY HAPPY! To be doing our part. Will you do yours?
I’m urging you, as blog readers and friends and shiny huggy lovely people the world over, help out. Head over to Amazon. Give us a couple bucks, or twenty. Give what you can spare, and know that it’s for a wonderful cause, because it’s for the people that you love in your life, and also for the people that others love, and for people that others have loved and lost.
Let’s end this thing, okay?
Red ribbons and battered sneakers and new-millenium fundraisers, RAWR!
Does anyone else out there thing there should be a Poke function when you’re on hold for more than 5 minutes?
Like, some sort of electronic zapper, controlled by a specific number or numbers that the cusomer can press, something that delivers a harmless but irritating jolt of electricity to the customer service representived ostensibly solving your problem and NOT blogging/talking to his girlfriend/playing Quake Online, a jolt that tells your caring customer service representative that YOU ARE STILL ON THE GODDAMNED LINE AND YOU’VE HEARD ONE TOO MANY DUNCAN SHEIK SONGS AND YOU’RE MAD AS HELL AND YOU’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE?
Does anyone know if this software is in development? BECAUSE I HAVE PUNCHED EVERY FATHOMABLE COMBINATION into my telephone keypad and I’M STILL SITTING HERE. ON HOLD.
I’m not one of those people who routinely links to funnily inane things on the internet. That said, please check out:
karaoke for the deaf, performed by HBO Comedy’s The Hollow Men.
And do yourself a favor – watch it two or three times. It JUST gets funnier.
Stuart and I went to Rhode Island last weekend, traveling by that great equalizer, Greyhound. As if Port Authority isn’t disorganized and chaotic enough, the “depot” in Providence is more like a hut by the roadside, downtown. When we arrived ten minutes early for our 4 PM departure, there was an idling bus and a lot of silently confused, semi-queueing people. You know that line that forms when no one’s QUITE sure of the outcome of standing in a line? It was one of those lines. Complete with those two or three opportunistic leeching assholes that stand AROUND what is clearly a quasi-line, and who will attempt to nonchalantly step into the queue they weren’t standing in, when the starting gates open. I HATE THOSE ASSHOLES. Oh, wait, where was I? Right. Rhode Island.
It was surprisingly chilly for the given temperature, and everyone started grumbling shyly at each other when it was 4:10 and no one had come from anywhere to tell us anything official. Was this the bus to New York? We certainly thought so. Where was the driver? Who knew. Was this a sign of the apocalypse? Probably.
Finally, after two or three harried Greyhound “employees” had rushed by to no avail and with no answers, my generously patient and kind husband took it upon himself to go into the small depot building, mysteriously full of people just standing around staring at screens, and get some answers. Other people had seemingly tried, but they’d come out just as mystified and blank-faced as those of us standing in the “line” (but not nearly as faux-nonchalant as the line-cutting twatheads hovering around us).
And I stood there, sharing sympathetic grimaces with my co-line-standers (and throwing glancing glowers at the hovering fuckwits) for another five cold, windy, and confused minutes. Until Stuart came out of the bus depot.
And boy, DID HE COME OUT OF THAT BUS DEPOT OR WHAT.
The door swung open, and out walked my husband in his long black wool coat, with his short black beard and determinedly-knitted-together eyebrows. And he was followed by NO LESS THAN FOUR GREYHOUND EMPLOYEES, in various stages of determination and grumpiness. He was followed by FOUR GREYHOUND EMPLOYEES, who walked in a V formation behind my handsome and triumphant husband, and I could see in their walk that they’d been TOLD, and I could see in his walk THAT HE’D TOLD THEM.
I cannot even tell you the pride that welled up in my chest. The visible stirring of my fellow sufferers, at seeing this confident and conflict-solving man emerging with the guilty party all but trussed on a stick and carried across his victorious shoulders. He’d TALKED TO THEM. And he’d MADE THEM COME OUTSIDE AND DEAL with the two waiting buses and the twenty waiting customers. And there they were, walking behind him, walking behind the man WHO’D SINGLE-HANDEDLY SOLVED GREYHOUND’S DISORGANIZATION AND SLOTH PROBLEMS. At least for that day, anyway.
I’m telling you, that moment, it was in slow motion. I saw, frame-by-triumphant-frame, a procession of victory. The victory of paying customers over the daily injustices and indignities of long-distance travel in America. It was in slow motion, just like that scene in Armageddon where Bruce Willis comes out of the rocket hangar WITH THE MEN WHO WILL SAVE THE WORLD, and they are all stepping in time to HIS UNQUESTIONABLE GENIUS.
We, the patient waiters, we the toilers under the tyranny of Greyhound, we all but cheered when Stuart emerged from that depot with those bus drivers and organizers, who finally put us on the correct buses that we’d paid good money for, all thanks to MY HUSBAND and his polite yet insistent DARING. And I don’t know about everyone ELSE in the line, but I’VE NEVER WANTED TO SHAG ANYONE SO BADLY IN MY LIFE. Lucky me, I married the guy.
Who is, by the way, SO much hotter than Bruce Willis.
Ed note: yes, there was another post here for about ten minutes. The reason for its disappearance is because I realized I wanted to rework it into a longer piece. Don’t worry, before long, it might appear around these parts! Sorry for the glitch!
