I'm Having More Fun Than You (16 page)

BOOZE AND CONSEQUENCES

You may remember Christina from
Ruminations on College Life
as my friend who cut her head out of a picture in which she held a drink in each hand, because that was the most sober picture of herself she could find for her med school application. Now that she’s an anesthesiologist, several nights a month Chris has to be on “back-up call,” meaning she doesn’t have to be at the hospital, but she has to be ready to get there at a moment’s notice if needed. Back-up call can be torturous, however, because essentially it’s a day off, but you can’t get wasted, which defeats the purpose. Christina reluctantly occupies herself with sober activities on these days because it was her lifelong dream to become a doctor. Personally, I just couldn’t handle it. Still, there’s something comforting about knowing that if I go out drinking but choke on an ice chip, there will be sober albeit bitter people like Christina available to nurse me back to health.

Doctors can be useful in other ways too. One of my weaknesses is that I am prone to particularly vicious hangovers. Since I hit my late twenties, when I go out hard on a Saturday night, I’m hungover until about Wednesday. Christina has promised me that the next time we party together, in the morning she’ll give me a “banana bag,” which is an IV in my arm full of fluids and multivitamins that they give alcoholics, and that doctors administer to themselves to cure hangovers. I don’t know what’s weirder—that I’m really looking forward to getting hungover, or that this is the first thing I’ve ever seen on
Grey’s Anatomy
that is actually true.

The final sign of voluntary alcoholism is denial. The morning after a bender, I feel like shit. I try to go through the motions of my day, but end up lying in my bed in the fetal position, reduced to eating one nibble of toast every fifteen minutes. Then, mercifully, about two hours later, I throw up everywhere. And when I’m finally done vomiting
Exorcist-
style with no regard for life, limb, or porcelain, I mutter to myself, “Must have been some bad toast.”

These days, I find myself actually scheduling my hangovers. My dentist’s office recently called me to set up an appointment a month away and I said, “Well, that morning doesn’t quite work for me. The night before I have a wedding, so the next day is blocked off for a hangover that I just can’t work around.”

After my last major stand-up tour wrapped up, I suffered for weeks with a nasty cough. I finally dragged myself to my doctor in West Hollywood, who proceeded to prescribe me acupuncture. After trying to explain to her that normal people from the East Coast don’t believe in that hippie shit, I relented and made an appointment. While he was sticking me with needles, the acupuncturist noted that my liver was slightly swollen and suggested that it might be caused by “emotional pollution.” “Nah,” I said, “it’s probably the binge drinking.”

I DRINK, THEREFORE I AM

I’ve always wanted to film a documentary where I go thirty days without drinking alcohol and see how much weight I lose, how much money I save, and how many girls I’m suddenly unable to speak to. It would be called
Sober Size Me.
When I described this idea to a friend of mine recently, she called me childish. I respectfully disagree. Alcohol’s effectiveness as a social lubricant is well documented, and the vast majority of networking and courtship takes place in bars. Each weekend we dutifully traipse from the shittiest dives to the trendiest velvet ropes in search of a spot where everybody knows your name—but forgets it by morning. Maturity and drunkenness are not mutually exclusive in my opinion. In fact, the older one gets, the more important it becomes to get rip-roaring shitblasted on occasion. It’s like chicken soup for the soul. Except, you know, the soup gets you really fucked up.

Our taste in alcohol reflects the phases of life. In high school, partying meant waiting until one of my friends went on vacation with his family, and then throwing a bash in his vacant backyard. Soon, we’re stealing anything we can from our parents’ liquor cabinet—God forbid we should go to the mall without a flask full of Rumple Minze. The indoctrination continues in college. Each spring, universities across the country hold various festivals that in reality consist solely of undergrads trying to get as fucked up as possible—as they tend to do whenever a tent, band, or carnival ride is involved. We develop a taste for cheap beer, boxed wine, vodka in a plastic bottle, and liquor with gold flakes or cinnamon chunks floating in it. After college, the drinking does not subside, but its effects must now be concealed. Business-casual-clad graduates trudge to work every morning knowing, if they must do it, which bathroom stall is the best one to boot in. We become somewhat more refined (I don’t remember much of 2002 owing to a torrid love affair with dirty martinis), then more picky (these days, I pretty much only drink Goose on the rocks), until finally we’re older, more mature, and imbibing upmarket, unidentifiable brown liquor served in snifters.

In a sense, though, DBD is more than just a personal admonition—it’s a universal motto for all those who rightfully believe that your twenties and thirties should be a cherished time. A time spent finding yourself. Drunk. And in the beds of strangers. But drinking isn’t always about excess and irresponsibility. Countless relationships have been forged over cocktails on a first date. Groundbreaking ideas have been spawned after a few beers. And I’m not just saying that because I’m wasted.

I recently woke up on a Saturday morning feeling very strange. I was unusually refreshed, but couldn’t figure out why. Then I suddenly realized it—I wasn’t hungover. Unfortunately, while abstaining the night before had made me feel physically better the next day, in my mind something felt amiss. The thing is, when someone asks me if I’d like a drink, I often hesitate for a brief moment before deciding. In that moment, the angel and the devil argue as I subconsciously extrapolate that one drink into the fifteen drinks that will inevitably follow. If vomiting and/or hooking up with a wideclops is an acceptable next-day scenario, I quench my thirst with a cold Amstel and let the bloodbath begin. After all, when you’re trying to live the dream, the worst thing you can possibly hear is a buddy proclaim, “Dude, you missed a great night.”

M
y twenties were not an unbroken string of weeklong binges and one-night stands. Even I, champion of the freedom and independence that accompany bachelorhood, have succumbed to the Dark Side and been in serious relationships. I understand if it’s difficult for you to picture me with a girlfriend. Sometimes I don’t know how it happened myself. When I observe my friends’ relationships, they seem to occur instantaneously—my buddy mentions a chick he banged and next thing I know they’re moving in together. But when I have a girlfriend myself, time seems to stand still. In those weeks and months when a casual hook-up slowly evolves into a full-fledged burden, I begin to get a much clearer picture of what is expected of me as a boyfriend: sharing (don’t like it), compromise (not good at it), and sacrifice (not worth it). I like to think that I do provide a valuable service, though. I’m sure my ex-girlfriends have, by now, realized that dating me is as hard as it’s gonna get. I’m kind of like the heavy doughnut that baseball players swing to prepare before stepping to the plate for real. I hope they’ll thank me some day. Nonetheless, when I look back, my time in the relationship trenches has taught me to appreciate being single more than ever. The grass is only greener when you can fuck whoever you want.

A BRIEF HISTORY

My early relationships were a mixed bag. I dated my girlfriend in high school for only a few months before she broke up with me. I never did get a reason and haven’t seen her since the day we graduated. Sometimes I imagine that I’ll run into her somewhere random and she’ll give me the “it wasn’t you, it was me” explanation. But knowing what I know now, it was probably me.

Things went a bit better with my girlfriend in college. We dated for a little over a year before I broke up with her. College relationships are tough to gauge in hindsight because everything takes place in a vacuum and we were really drunk for most of it. I’m not even really sure why I broke up with her, though I’m willing to bet the potent combination of cockiness and callowness that all frat boys possess had something to do with it. She’s now married with her first child. So I guess I dodged a bullet on that one.

After graduation I was single in New York for a few years before I met my next girlfriend who, for the purposes of this book, we’ll call Amanda. (For those of you scoring at home, in
Ruminations on Twentysomething Life
and in my column, Amanda is only identified as “Girlfriend.”) As my first relationship after college and still the longest one I’ve ever had, I consider my time with Amanda to have been especially eye-opening. Alas, after a year and a half I moved to Los Angeles, she moved to Atlanta, and that was that. Again, if you’re scoring at home, that brought my record in break-ups to one win, one loss, and one tie.

I found myself single again for a couple of years, this time in Los Angeles. One day I got a call from Amanda, who told me she was moving to LA. A few weeks later, I ran into her at a local bar. Incredibly, that night, only about five feet away from Amanda, I ended up meeting a girl we’ll call Claire and subsequently started dating her. It was almost as if a symbolic torch had been passed from Amanda to Claire: “I put up with this neurotic asshole on the East Coast; I now bequeath that honor to you on the West Coast.” Though she still lives in LA, I haven’t seen Amanda since that night. I broke up with Claire nine months later, and that’s when the itch
not
to get married began.

When all was said and done, I spent about seven years of my twenties single and three years in relationships. I had plenty of time to sow my wild oats and fuck indiscriminately, but also learned what it means to be a boyfriend and attempt to care not only about myself. And while I have fond memories of both Amanda and Claire, there were certain aspects of both our relationships that soured me on having another one for quite some time. They, on the other hand, got over me quite quickly.

FIRST KISS TO LAST CONDOM

I was introduced to Amanda through a mutual friend from my Wall Street days, and the first time we ever hung out was with a bunch of people at a dive bar on the Lower East Side. Our first kiss was a drunken dance floor make-out session that portended our reputation as quite the inebriated couple. As it turns out, Amanda not only doesn’t remember our first kiss, she doesn’t even remember being there that night. Very romantic.

I also hooked up with Claire the first night we ever met (seriously, who goes on dates anymore?). Our relationship evolved a bit slower than mine did with Amanda. For one, Claire is a lot younger than me; coincidentally, we both went to Penn, but she had only recently graduated when we met. In truth, the age difference didn’t really matter, but it was odd being in a relationship when one of us was still so immature, constantly drunk, and spending too much time on Facebook—and the other had just graduated.

Of course, the progression from just meeting someone of the opposite sex to being in a serious relationship with them is a long, difficult, and confusing process. I generally classify two people as “hooking up” once there has been an exchange of three consecutive, successful late-night texts. Thus, the hooking-up stage essentially means you have a “preapproved booty call.” What I find amusing about this stage is that the guy always naturally assumes there’s no way the girl he’s hooking up with is hooking up with anyone else, yet he wouldn’t think twice about hooking up with someone else himself. Essentially, we hold women to higher standards than we do ourselves. Which seems about right.

Once you hang out with the person you’re hooking up with under one of the following conditions—outdoors, during the day, or sober—you’re now “seeing” them. Seeing someone is basically equivalent to what my parents would call “dating”—more serious than casual, less serious than exclusive. Though for practical purposes, all “seeing” really means is that you’re no longer completely embarrassed to be spotted with the other person in public.

The next stage is being exclusive. Now the difference between seeing someone and being exclusive is purely sexual. One night you’re going at it in bed and the girl whispers, “You should put a condom on now.” And the guy replies, “Oh shit. I don’t have any more.” He then pauses, shrugs his shoulders, and asks innocently, “Can we just do it anyway?” The girl ponders her options for a moment before finally responding, “Well, are we exclusive?” To which the guy says urgently, “Fine, sure, whatever!”

THE G-WORD

It’s always important to know where you stand in a relationship. Like let’s say I was with a girl for six months or so, and then all of a sudden we found ourselves stranded on a deserted island. And these crazy, violent, savage natives attacked us and captured us and tied us up and started threatening, “We’re gonna kill your girlfriend!” I’d be like, “Whoa, please, listen, just calm down! First of all, she’s not my girlfriend.”

After being exclusive, though, the next stage is in fact officially becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. A lot of people get confused here. How can you be exclusive but
not
be boyfriend and girlfriend? Well, the distinction is simple: when you’re exclusive, you’re only sleeping with one person, but you don’t yet have the complete 24-hour obligation to deal with all her bullshit. My friend Holly was driving with her dog once when a bee got in the car, sending both Holly and the dog into a hysterical panic. As she swerved in and out of traffic while trying to simultaneously swat the bee and calm her dog, Holly decided that her next course of action should be to call her boyfriend. What the fuck is he supposed to do about it? Just pull over, bitch!

Women are like biologists, always wanting to classify every little thing. When I discuss these “stages” of relationships in my stand-up act, I’ve actually seen chicks taking notes. They want a clear delineation of what’s going on. Guys, for the most part, act a lot more on instinct when it comes to defining their relationships. The first time Claire left me a voicemail and said, “It’s me,” I knew we had leapt to the next level. Later that week she went out while I stayed home, but when she couldn’t find her friends at the bar, actually called
me
for help. Shit, that means it’s serious.

PARENTAL CONSENT

Once a couple goes from just casually hooking up to seeing each other, that’s usually where the guy’s and the girl’s views of the relationship start to diverge a bit. The girl starts telling her mom about all of our dates together; meanwhile my mom has no clue this chick even exists. My mom is pretty much on a need-to-know basis until the day before my wedding, when I’ll be like, “Mom, get a dress!”

One time I called a girl I’d hooked up with and she happened to be at her parents’ house visiting. I heard her mom walk in and the girl say, “Oh, hey Mom, I’m just talking to Aaron.”
I’m just talking to Aaron?
She already told her mom about me? Besides the fact that I wasn’t sure if this girl’s name was Jennifer or Jessica and she was listed in my phone as Sergeant Sloppy Tits, how did she even tell her mom we met? Because I’m pretty confident she didn’t say, “Well, Mom, I was at this bar downtown, totally wasted, and when they turned the lights on at 3 a.m., Aaron was the closest guy to me. Turns out he was just as drunk as I was so I ended up going down on him.”

My mom, of course, has a checklist of all the requirements she believes the right girl for me should have. These days, however, I can tell she’s really widening the net. If I tell her I met a girl who doesn’t meet any of her criteria, and is in fact the polar opposite of everything she ever wanted in a daughter-in-law, Mom still looks at me, smiles, and says, “She sounds wonderful.”

Everyone’s parents also have that one friend of yours whom they want you to end up with, even though it’s never going to happen. For my parents, it’s my friend Marcia, who happens to be happily married. But my parents have not given up hope. “How’s Marcia doing?” they’ll ask. “Have you spoken to Marcia recently?” “You should probably fuck Marcia.” Dad!

Whenever my sister Caryn or I bring home a significant other to meet the family for the first time, my parents like to fire a few shots across the bow to see if the newcomer can hang. My dad loves to cook and is a Food Network fanatic, so he’ll analyze what a girlfriend orders at a restaurant and question her choices: “Sea bass, huh? What, you don’t eat steak?” Little does she know that, as long as she responds with conviction, there are no wrong answers. Though if my dad has a few drinks in him, there are really no right answers, either.

My parents didn’t meet Amanda under the most conventional circumstances. It was after a show at a comedy club in the West Village. Amanda was drunk. My dad was drunk. Even my mom was drunk (the rule said “two-drink minimum” and she always follows the rules). I had just spent the last seventy minutes onstage talking about sluts and blow jobs and then had to introduce everyone while standing outside on the sidewalk. The three of them were so hammered, tired, and cold that the pleasantries only lasted a few minutes before my parents left. In other words, my plan worked perfectly.

THE FIRST YEAR IS THE HARDEST

Some describe the first few months of a relationship as the “honeymoon period” because everything is fresh and new and easy. That’s generally been the case with me, though things tend to take a turn for the worse pretty quickly. I can pretty much divide all of my relationships into three stages: the first few months are bliss, the second few months are a little rocky, and the last few months are spent trying not to get punched in the balls.

When I’ve been dating a girl for six months or less, I spend my time watching out for guys like, well, me. Because even the most sophisticated bachelors will still consider my girlfriend available. I know when
I’m
hitting on a girl at a bar and she tells me she has a boyfriend, if I can fight the urge to simply walk away, I’ll ask how long they’ve been dating. If she says, “Five months,” I’ll be like, “Five months? Oh, phew. I thought you said you had a
boyfriend.
Sorry, that doesn’t count.”