I'm Having More Fun Than You (21 page)

Some guys become completely helpless once they get married, not so much because they ask permission from their wives, but because they rely on them to script their every move. I was hanging out with a female friend of mine, and her husband kept texting her, asking her what she was doing and complaining about being bored. His wife actually had to suggest that he make plans with friends and even offered to call them herself. So basically she was setting up a playdate. Seriously, dude? What did you do when you were single? Just do that, except don’t have sex with anyone but your wife!

Since serving in Brian’s wedding party, my responsibilities as his Best Man have continued. Last year, he and Blake had to go to separate weddings on the same day. I happened to be going to the one that Blake was going to, so I essentially served as her “date” for the evening—sitting next to her and getting her champagne and generally looking out for her. She promptly got hammered, spilled a drink into her purse, and had to throw rocks at Brian’s window when she locked herself out at the end of the night. Mission accomplished.

HUSBAND AND WIFE

The turnout for my ten-year high school reunion was surprisingly high. A few people got inappropriately shitfaced, but the highlight for me was running into my first girlfriend from middle school and meeting her fiancé. After all, when we dated for about a week circa 1991, who would have thought that, so many years later, one of us would be embarking on an amazing phase of life filled with thrills and new adventures—and the other would be getting married.

About a year and a half prior to my ten-year high school reunion, I attended my five-year college reunion. During the festivities, I wandered into a tent for those who graduated in the ’80s, and noticed an unusual number of super hot chicks—which was surprising, because that’s not exactly what Penn is known for. Then I realized that none of the name tags that the really hot women were wearing listed a graduation year. And that’s when it hit me: these were actually the alumni’s wives. Apparently, the Latin on my diploma reads, “Bachelor of Science in Economics with a minor in Marrying Well.”

If I could make but one desperate plea to married people, it would be this: Please
do not
get a joint email address with your wife. Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with you? Grow a pair and keep your own email address. It’s not like sharing a car; it’s free! There’s no reason I should ever get an email and be confused about whether it’s coming from my buddy or his wife: “Hey Karo, let’s get fucked up tonight, you asshole! Warm regards, Kristin and Jonathan.”

As I’ve already mentioned, I believe married people should not be allowed in bars. On top of the issue of forcing guys to look for rings on the fingers of girls they’re kicking game to, married people are simply taking up valuable real estate. Engaged people aren’t exempt either; what are you doing here anyway? Go home and pick out place cards or some shit. I don’t even think married people should be allowed on Facebook, let alone in bars. If I ever see in my news feed that Jane Smith went from In a Relationship to Married, the next line better be: “Jane Smith has deleted her profile.”

PREGNANT PAUSE

Just as I began to make peace with the fact that all my friends were leaving me behind by getting married, they took things to a whole new level and started popping out babies. I’m convinced that everyone’s doing it just to placate their parents. My mom has never put any explicit pressure on me to get married and have her grandkids, but I can tell by her tone of voice that she’d appreciate it if I’d at least
try.
Whenever I mention the fact that I’m nowhere close to being ready, she just gives me the
look
—that look that says, “I raised you and put up with all your bullshit and you can’t do this one lousy fucking thing for me?” Nobody likes that mom look. It just makes me feel bad about everything I’ve ever done in my entire life. But not quite guilty enough to actually do anything about it.

An executive I’ve worked with in LA recently had her first kid. Every time we see each other now, she has this glow about her that comes with being a new mother. Single guys, of course, have the opposite feeling. Any morning we wake up and
don’t
have any children is a cause for celebration. I had a pregnancy scare once. A girl I was dating came over to my place and said, “I’m late.” Confused, I looked at my watch and said, “Actually, you’re early.” Two hours later I was trying to decipher the cryptic results of a pee-soaked stick. It was negative. I breathed a sigh of relief. After all, the pregnancy test alone cost $21.99.

Gadi, my Israeli friend, just married a chick with an eight-year-old son. His wife is gourmet and Gadi and the kid get along great. Still, I don’t think I could ever date a girl with a kid. I mean, if a relationship is gonna have an immature whiner who vomits without warning, it’s gonna be me. Let’s face it: I won’t even date a girl who lives more than a quarter mile away from me. I won’t date a Red Sox fan, a smoker, someone who doesn’t watch
Lost,
or someone who doesn’t drink. Hell, I won’t even date a girl with a roommate, let alone one who sleeps in a fucking crib.

NINE LONG MONTHS

The weird thing is, I’ve started to feel sympathy pains when my friends are pregnant. Though when I say “sympathy,” I mean I feel bad for myself for having to endure such nonsense. Listening to my pregnant friends update me on the status of their unborn children is just torture. How long will it be until someone just says fuck it and creates a Facebook page for their fetus? Sonogram for a profile picture. Favorite movie:
Look Who’s Talking.
Interests: Mitosis. Birthday: Hopefully soon.

Even if you’re single, being pregnant takes you out of the dating pool. You’re not even eligible for consideration. I once called my gym to schedule a massage and the receptionist offered me a choice of three female masseuses. I half-jokingly asked her which one was the cutest, and she replied, “Definitely Amber.” When I showed up a week later, I saw that Amber was pregnant. Very pregnant. Like eleven months pregnant. Either the receptionist was fucking with me, or she didn’t realize that pregnant by definition means “not cute.”

How come babies are never born in the afternoon? Every time I hear that someone had a kid, it’s always at like four in the morning. I mean, I was born at 8:10 a.m. and I haven’t gotten up that early since. Seth is the first of my high school friends to have a kid. His son, Logan, was born at close to midnight, which is at least a little more reasonable. It’s really weird to think about how old Logan will be by the time I actually have kids myself. I really look at each of my friend’s newborns as a potential babysitter.

OH BABY

The only thing worse than getting updates on my friends’ unborn children is getting updates on their
born
children. My old boss on Wall Street used to tell me that his daughter would always get into this jar of candy they kept in the kitchen, so he finally put it on top of the fridge where she couldn’t get to it. However, when he and his wife weren’t watching, the daughter peeled off the bath mat from the tub, brought it into the kitchen, and pulled all the drawers out of one of the cabinets, creating makeshift steps to climb onto the counter. Then she used the bath mat as traction to climb onto a small shelf, and from there she jumped on top of the fridge and got to the candy jar. The whole time I was thinking, “That’s not a three-year-old, that’s a velociraptor.”

Because I’ve been writing my
Ruminations
column since my freshman year of college, my fans and I have literally grown up together. I share momentous events in my life—graduating from college, moving to Los Angeles—with my readers, and they do the same in their emails to me. Earlier this year, a longtime fan wrote me to say that she’d recently taken to reading my column while breast-feeding. Ugh. I thought I’d at least be turned on that somewhere out there a chick is enjoying my work with her tits exposed. Instead I couldn’t drink milk for a week.

Babies love me. Babies always smile and laugh when they see me. But I don’t think it’s because I’m good with kids. I suspect they just think I’m funny-looking. Whenever I hang out with my young cousins who live near my parents in New York, it always makes me think about how great it would be to be a dad…if I only had to be with my brood in twenty-minute intervals and never when they pooped themselves or cried.

As a comedian, I obviously travel a lot. I’m on a plane like every week. The one thing I fucking hate more than anything is when families ask me to switch seats on a flight to accommodate them. “What’s that you say? You want me to switch seats with you because you’re separated from your kid? Well, let me see if I can make myself clear: Go fuck yourself. Listen buddy, I booked this flight online, chose exactly the seat I wanted, and printed a boarding pass at home. Now you want me to sacrifice my own comfort just because you forgot to pull out? Not a chance. I don’t give a shit if you and your wife and your newborn baby are sitting nowhere near each other. You should have thought of that ahead of time.”

END OF AN ERROR

Of the four couples that Brian and I wagered on, only two got married; one couple is still not engaged, and the other broke up. Despite the adrenaline rush that must have both influenced and resulted from my cousin Rob proposing at the marathon, he and his fiancée subsequently broke off their engagement. In fact, I know about a half dozen people who have gotten divorced, separated, or un-engaged in the past year alone. Most are understandably upset. But the way I think about it, I can’t even fathom making a commitment of that magnitude in the first place. So if you’re my age and have already broken such a commitment, well, that pretty much makes you the coolest person I know.

My friend called me recently and asked if I knew any lawyers for her sister. I began racking my brain for all the guys I know who both went to law school and don’t have a girlfriend. Turned out she didn’t want to set her sister up with a lawyer, she wanted a referral for her sister, who was getting divorced. I said I could do that, too, but still secretly only referred her to my lawyer friends who are single.

One of my buddies who is on his second marriage was recently complaining to me about how fucking crazy his ex-wife is. But as he was going off, I couldn’t help but wonder how he didn’t figure this out ahead of time. I’m sorry, but if you date, live with, propose to, and marry a chick, yet still don’t realize she’s totally psychotic, you have no one to blame but yourself. And your idiot friends who knew all along but didn’t tell you.