You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up Read online

  ALSO BY ANNABELLE GURWITCH

  Fired!: Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, and Dismissed

  For our parents, who put up with us when we were kids.

  For our kid, who puts up with us now that we’re parents.

  In loving memory of Dr. Columbus McAlpin, who

  saved our son’s life, our sanity, and perhaps even our

  marriage.

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. Let Us Now Praise Lactose Intolerance

  2. A Saab Story

  3. A Tale of Two Kitties

  4. 28 Days Later

  5. Hungry Like the Wolf

  6. The Years of Living Sleeplessly

  7. The Eighteen-Year Plan

  8. Back to the Pussy

  9. Slouching Toward Cooperstown

  10. They’re Not Our Fathers’ Fathers-in-Law

  11. I’m OK, You’re the Problem

  12. Anything Goes

  13. Future Shock Spouse

  14. The State of Our Union

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  “Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.”

  —CALVIN TRILLIN

  He Says

  When I was twelve, my sixth-grade English class went on a field trip to see Franco Zeffirelli’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. From that moment forward I dreamed that someday I’d meet my own Juliet. I’d marry her and I would love her with the same passion and intensity as Romeo. The fact that their marriage lasted fewer than three days before they both were dead didn’t seem to affect my fantasy. Even if they had lived, I don’t think their relationship could have survived. Let’s face it, being that emotionally aflame, sexually charged, and transcendentally eloquent every single second can really start to grate on a person’s nerves. However, if I could find someone to love just a fraction of the way that Montague loved his Capulet, then marrying her would be worth it.

  This proved to be a long, futile, and often pathetic search until I met Annabelle. I thought I had finally found my own gorgeous, talented, hyperarticulate Juliet. Unfortunately, much of my romanticism has been lost on Annabelle because she isn’t exactly the world’s most romantic person and doesn’t get overly sentimental unless it’s about her cat and certain cuts of beef.

  In our relationship I’m the one who remembers and makes plans to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and even Valentine’s Day. Given her very busy schedule and general forgetfulness, I’m lucky if Annabelle is even in town on my birthday, let alone remembers the actual date. In order to get a present from her, I have to pick out what I want (say, a vintage watch) and then buy it, bring her the receipt, and she’ll reimburse me for it. This is why I was taken aback last year when Annabelle bragged about how she’d picked out the perfect Christmas present for me. She kept going on and on about how much I was going to love this gift and how she had really stepped up for me this time. Well, Christmas came and went, so sometime around March I finally asked her about the “perfect present” that I’d never received. She very offhandedly replied that the online company she’d ordered it from said the item was discontinued. That was as close as I’ve ever been to receiving a gift from Annabelle.

  Basically, we have different marital needs. Annabelle craves a probing intellectual discourse of ideas with an academic who’s willing to change the cat litter. I yearn for a marriage that is a romantic inspiration, a celebration of passions, and a terrific long-term opportunity to try out some really kinky Kama Sutra-type stuff. If you’re not married to a person who rocks your world, what’s the point? Marriage must go beyond the mundane and reach for the romantic. I don’t simply want a convenient shared communal experience, a way to split the bills and grocery shopping. I can take care of myself, thank you very much. I cook, clean, do my laundry, and buy my clothes. It’s true that marriage does tend toward the domestic and the pragmatic, but I want to be married for what I don’t have, for what is missing in my life, that is, a person who gets who I am and is a really good kisser.

  Yes, people love to claim that you and your spouse must be “best friends” in a marriage. Maybe that’s true. Annabelle and I go out to dinner, see movies, travel, play tennis, e-mail, tease and kid each other, but at the end of the day, instead of hugging or shaking hands good-bye, as I do with all my other “best friends,” I prefer that Annabelle sit on my face.

  The only things that Annabelle and I can agree on is all the stuff we don’t like: American Airlines, ourselves when we’re around our parents, cloying romantic comedy movies about gorgeous wedding planners who help everyone get married but can’t find a guy themselves, and when these same characters suddenly start singing and dancing to a clearly choreographed number that’s somehow supposed to look spontaneous. We really hate that.

  Yet my love for her is like a pilot light that refuses to dim. I love the way she smells, laughs, and the cute little sounds she makes when I snug-up next to her in bed at night. There is something about her that turns me inside out and inspires me. Since we met, she has been my muse. She’s my raison d’être in a life filled with chaotic uncertainty, constant insecurity, and very questionable green-lit movies. This is why I married her.

  I believe that Annabelle and I, like millions of other people, are standing at a new frontier of marriage. My wife informs me that there are more than three thousand analytical-therapy-inspired self-help books that claim to shed some light on this subject. I have tried to read some of them, but only get agitated and throw them across the room. I like to think of the authors of those books as the Daniel Boones and Davy Crocketts of the new frontier of marriage. And if they are Boones and Crocketts, then you should think of Annabelle and me and our book as the Donner Party. I hope our book will serve as a happy guide for the many people traveling up the same twisting, winding, rocky slopes of marriage as they do their best to avoid the paths we have taken so they won’t get stuck with us on some freezing wintry mountain pass. It’s in this spirit that we want to make you laugh and perhaps even learn from our profound lack of wisdom and warped perspectives. Because when it comes to being married, Annabelle and I are the Gurus of Wrong. Enjoy!

  She Says

  Tolstoy once said that it is easier to love all mankind than one man at a time. I don’t think he was referring to marriage, but he might as well have been.

  I was not the kind of girl who dreamed of growing up, getting married, and settling down. I never played dress-up weddings. I never pushed baby dolls in carriages. I pranced around in a homemade Star Trek uniform and had trolls whose hair I brushed until it stood on end, then I set them on fire and tossed them into traffic just to see them get crushed. I was that kind of girl. OK, I did have Barbies, but Babs was neither a wife nor a mother. She lived in a Malibu dream house and if the little accessories that came along with her were any clue, then it would be fair to say that she spent most of her time trying on tight-fitting polyester outfits and packing for overnight trips in teensy bags big enough to hold only tiny panties and a toothbrush. Where was she going? I didn’t know, but I was happy she didn’t have sweat glands and I liked her freewheeling style. I wanted to be just like her, only in thrift-shop clothing.

  So it was a surprise for me even to decide to get married. Twice at this point! As a testament to how much I suck at relationships, when my first marriage broke up, my family took his side. In taking the plunge the second time, I didn’t have a plan really—I just hoped to land somewhere between The Way We Were and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  Jeff and I reside in a household situated smack in the middle of that hazy divorce-riddled DMZ of the two-working-parents family. Holding a marriage to
gether is getting harder and harder. For the first time since World War II, the number of couples who reach their twenty-fifth anniversaries, a milestone for sure, is declining. Fewer and fewer people are even getting hitched to begin with. In fact, single-headed households now outnumber the married in the United States. Complicating matters is the fragile state of the economy. Thus far, New York has seen a 20 percent increase in divorce filings, while Florida has seen an 18 percent drop-off, presumably because precipitously low property values make it harder for couples to extricate themselves financially from their unions. What does this tell us? Is it just a bad millennium for connubial bliss? More likely, this trend can be explained by studies that refute the accepted but antiquated notion that marriage makes you happier. Luckily, Jeff and I weren’t that happy to begin with, so we’ve soldiered on and bumbled through thirteen years of marriage.

  First among our missteps is our ongoing debate over the purpose of marriage itself. While Jeff looks at marriage as an extension of romance, I am a romance refugee. Prior to our union I spent an enormous amount of time on what I believed was a quest for romantic love that I now see as attempts to get laid. When I consider all the time I wasted thinking about getting laid, trying to get laid, and actually getting laid, it’s mind-boggling. Not to mention the time I spent trying to get away from the same people I had just lain with once that pheromonal dopamine rush wore off, often immediately after the laying. This experience has made me deeply suspicious of that intoxicating and overemployed emotional state to which Jeff aspires, known as romantic love. I have had fleeting but powerful romances with several works of Russian literature, a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes, and the word palanquin. Furthermore, I often believed myself to be in love with scores of men I didn’t particularly like and who didn’t like me, much less speak the same language. Besides, talk about a revisionist romantic, Jeff might talk a good game about the fun things we do together, but he actually stopped playing tennis with me because he says I’m not competitive enough for him. He forgot that detail, so I win. Who’s not competitive enough now? Huh?

  At the risk of sounding like a piker, I look at marriage as an expression of our love, yes, but also as a joining together to deal with practical things such as raising children, caring for aging parents, and securing long-term health care insurance. Is there anything that kills an erection quicker than the phrase “long-term health insurance”? However, the horror of these all-too-human experiences is mitigated (somewhat) by sharing and surviving them with someone you deeply love. Look, I sat on a lot of guys’ faces, but I wouldn’t have picked up for any one of them four times in two months after dental surgery, as I did for my Jeff this past summer.

  Jeff and I aren’t marriage boosters. I would never dream of telling anyone they should get or stay or stop being married—unless they were attached to the idea that they were going to live “happily ever after.” Then I’d tell them they were out of their minds. Wouldn’t just “ever after” make more sense—“and they lived ever after”? It’s worth noting that contrary to the fairy tales popularized by Disney movies, the centuries-older Tales of the Arabian Nights concludes with a far more practical message for children. Those folk tales end with the warning “they lived happily until there came to them the One who destroys all happiness (presumably death).” Much more realistic.

  In the end, if Jeff and I do manage to make it to that elusive silver anniversary, this volume will stand as a testament to our love. On the other hand, if we should ever separate, after reading this book, no one will be surprised!

  What is it that keeps us together? Is it our son, whom we both madly adore? Our profound soulful connection? The deep empathy that we feel for each other? That Jeff has better health care coverage than I have? Or just plain exhaustion and inertia? Not sure. I often think about the scene from Goodfellas when the Robert DeNiro character tells the Lorraine Bracco character to walk down the alley ‘cause he’s got some great dresses for her. “Go on, go on,” he urges her. But sensing the danger in his voice, she turns and runs. I liken our marriage to more of a walk down that alley than a walk down the aisle. What if Lorraine had kept walking? True, she probably would have gotten whacked anyway, but before she died, she just might have lucked into some great dresses.

  Jeff says we’re the Gurus of Wrong. I think that sounds pretty good—at least we’re achieving at something, even failure. Jeff hopes you might learn something. I’m not sure about that, but if you’ve ever wondered if anyone else is as confused, demoralized, or befuddled about marriage as you, take heart. We are. It’s in that spirit I offer our story.

  “Marriage is like that show Everybody Loves Raymond, but it’s not funny. All the problems are the same, but instead of all the funny, pithy dialogue, everybody is really pissed off and tense.” —Paul Rudd in Knocked Up

  marriagonomics

  The number of marriages in the United States has averaged 2.25–2.4 million every year for the past twenty years, but a third are remarriages. So maybe it’s just those serial marriers who are responsible for keeping the number consistent.

  forget the seven-year itch

  University of Wisconsin researchers have now published findings that suggest the spark actually fizzles within three years: “Folks start getting less happy at the wedding reception” (Professor Larry Bumpass).

  familiarity breeds contempt

  It’s not just anecdotal anymore—less really is more. A paper titled “The Lure of Ambiguity,” written by Harvard, MIT, and Boston University scholars, makes it clear that in repeated studies, the more people knew about each other, the less they liked each other.

  what i did for love?

  75 percent of suicide attempts are due to relationship problems

  11 percent of the murders in the United States are killings by intimates

  but will be we be fit enough to survive marriage?

  Charles Darwin came to marriage with some trepidation. Of course he studied it carefully, cataloging the pluses and minuses of the connubial state. His list included the following:

  PROS:

  Constant companion and friend in old age

  Object to be beloved and played with

  Better than a dog anyhow

  Someone to take care of house

  Charms of music and female chitchat

  Picture self with a nice, soft wife on a sofa with a good fire

  CONS:

  Freedom to go where one liked

  Not forced to visit relatives

  Perhaps quarreling

  Expense and anxiety of children

  Cannot read in the evenings

  Fatness and idleness

  Less money for books

  1

  • • • •

  Let Us Now Praise Lactose

  Intolerance

  “Kissing is a means of getting two people so close together that they can’t see anything wrong with each other.”

  —RENE YASENEK

  Like the universe, every marriage has a beginning, whether it’s the “Big Bang,” the hand of God, or J-Date. There are places in the world where marriages are still arranged by one’s family. We find this practice mind-boggling since we get panicky when our parents pick out a restaurant for us. When, how, why, and where two people first meet and become a couple can often be indicative of what kind of marriage they might someday have. For instance, there are plenty of marriages that begin and end in bars. Our meeting was definitely a precursor to the type of chaotic, unpredictable, and lactose-intolerant married couple we would eventually become.

  He Says

  It was 1989 and I was a young writer living in New York, working at MTV in their unofficial “Indentured Servitude Writing Program,” so when I got a call from the Fox network to write a made-for-TV movie, I leaped at the chance to go to Los Angeles. The good people at Fox were kind enough to put me up at the Oakwood Apartment complex: furnished apartments decorated in late-1970s putrid—shag carpeting, avocado-painted kitchen, and a s
wimming pool full of hairy Iranians in Speedos. The next thing I know, I’m meeting with the producers Bob and Lou, who are jumping out of their skins to pitch me their “can’t miss” movie. They have no plot, no characters, and absolutely no ideas. All they have is a title: Cooties. Bob and Lou have come to movie producing from marketing and are convinced that as soon as I come up with a concept, a plot, characters, and dialogue, and then make it really, really funny, they will deliver a veritable Cooties empire of Cooties toys, Cooties video games, a Cooties hotel-restaurant-casino, and a Cooties family theme park. We’re all going to become very, very rich from Cooties! Clearly, Bob and Lou are clinically insane, but they’re footing the bill, so I go back to the Oakwood to contemplate Cooties: The Movie.

  A week later, Bob and Lou call to see how the script is going. I excitedly tell them that they “better hurry up and buy those Cooties theme park tickets, because I’m on a roll!” I haven’t written a single word. Relieved by my lie that the writing is going so well, Bob and Lou invite me to join them at a Rosh Hashanah party. As a rule, I don’t do Jewish New Year parties (they tend to be a little too Jewy for my tastes), but Bob and Lou promise that there will be some cute girls, so I figured why not Jew it up for a night? As soon as I walk into the party, I see her at the stove cooking potato latkes. I’m immediately hit with an overwhelming sensation that I’m looking at my future wife. Armed with the confidence of this prophetic vision, I charge over and commence flirtation with Latke Lady.