I Know What I'm Doing (3 page)

I had just remembered an acting teacher I had in college who encouraged us to runway walk in class to help make us less self-conscious. One time she said, “You girls can’t break through in an acting scene if you can’t love yourselves!” She plugged in a boom box and shouted with love, “Now walk! Walk sexy! Walk funny! Just walk to the music!” She hit play and the sounds of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop” filled the room. Even though I have suffered actual real chemical depression fixed only by lots of therapy and Prozac, when I need a pick-me-up, fake modeling in my room to pop hits of the 1990s is a good quick fix.

I stumbled to my purse to find my iPod and scrolled to Madonna’s “Express Yourself.” Even my guy friends—who didn’t get the full effect of long hair whipping around their confident shoulders—got into the spirit and let their shirts billow in the breeze as they did their best to fan dance.

What you need is a big strong hand to lift you to your higher ground

Make you feel like a queen on a throne

Matt sat at the table making origami with his napkin. I grabbed his arm. “Come on, Matt! Fan dancing!”

“That’s okay. You dance. I’ll watch.”

That was our thing. Matt sat out what I enjoyed and just watched. We did our own thing. In fact, we really had no-thing that we did together, except arrive and leave in the same car and . . . be engaged. But I didn’t know then that if you’re going to have a husband—it’s best to find one who wants to fan dance with you.

I jumped in with everyone else taking turns pretending to model, striking poses until it was too much for us—it turns out that drunk people plus high winds and long hair near fan blades is just as dumb as drunk people setting off fireworks. As Margaret and I cleared the dishes, she said to me, “It’s great that you are so comfortable with who you are that you don’t need your husband to join in and fan dance. He really seems to admire and appreciate who you are and accept you.”

I knew so little then about what makes marriage work that I accepted what Margaret said without pushing myself to think,
I don’t want to be
accepted;
like I’m a cancer diagnosis or the fact that 1 percent of the population has all of the world’s wealth. I want to be
joined
.

You shouldn’t get married just because you don’t want to die alone. You should get married because you don’t want to go through
life
alone. I work for a living onstage. I don’t want a passive audience in real life. I want someone up there with me. I want someone to push me out of the way and say, “This is
my
fan dance, bee-yotch!” I mean, I guess I could always marry a gay man. But that wouldn’t be fair to him.

Anyway, back in our psychologist’s office, Dr. Bones told me that lots of couples feel this way. Many couples don’t have everything in common but they find things that they like to do together. The way I see it, this is not a solution. This is the problem. Married people who want you to stay in their cult or therapists who want your money next week will always encourage people on the brink of divorce to stay together. They say things like, “All marriages are like this. It takes work.” But some couples don’t just not have the same hobbies; they don’t have the same values, goals, and, ultimately, respect for who the other person is. Most people don’t look that closely under their own hoods. They wait until the engine feels like it’s falling apart and all the amateur mechanics in their lives just assure them that all they need is an oil change. The unhappily married people know that that’s the wrong diagnosis. They know that their muffler is about to fall out and cause a hugely embarrassing incident in the driveway. They don’t need an oil change. Or a hobby. They need a divorce.

The only person who looked me in the eye and told me the truth back then was an elderly Armenian jeweler who runs a shop on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, California. I don’t remember his name or the name of his store. But I remember how his pupils bore through my soul—or maybe it was just that weird big magnifying glass he had over his left eye.

I’d gone to him because for months the finger I wore my wedding ring on was insanely itchy. I’d tried everything: topical Benadryl, cleaning my rings nightly, and scratching my finger like a meth addict. The skin was raw and constantly peeling. I knew that Matt didn’t cheap out and he thought he bought me a real solid white-gold ring but I wondered if maybe the person who sold it to him was some kind of scam artist who only claimed it was real gold.

I didn’t want to hurt Matt so I didn’t mention that I was having doubts about the realness of the ring, but one Saturday morning I snuck off to What’s-His-Name’s Jewelry Shop. I asked the old man to please test the rings and let me know if they were authentic. I left them for the week, telling Matt that I was having them professionally shined. In those seven days, my finger cleared up and my skin no longer looked like shredded cheese. That’s all the proof I needed that something was indeed wrong with the wedding band. I went back to Can’t-Remember-His-Name’s Shop and showed him my finger. “Look! All better! So, what did you find with the ring? At least we have the receipt and we can go back to this shady ring salesman and tell him the con is up!”

The elderly man handed me back the ring. He said, “It is a hundred percent real. There is nothing that should cause allergy in that ring.” I stood quietly, probably looking confused because he continued, “Miss Jen, it is not my business but I am very much into how our emotions cause our wellness and our sickness. And if I may be so frank, I don’t think the ring is the problem. I think it’s you. You don’t want to wear that ring anymore. Anyway. No charge.”

That Armenian jeweler was absolutely right. I didn’t want to wear that ring or what it symbolized anymore. This jeweler had more insight into me after five minutes in his shop than any therapist could with five years on their couch. The old man would probably make a terrible therapist because his greatest joy seemed to be dispensing advice without charging—that, and he could never tell clients that their time was up because every clock in his shop was broken.

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IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR (BUT WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE?)

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

—GEORGE BURNS

L
et’s talk about this preexisting condition called Family. We’re not working on farms anymore—there’s no need to stick around your old hometown and have your family as your “best friends.” I would totally get married again if someone really needed me to, but I would never want to go through another wedding—a wedding that involves, literally, everyone and their brother attending. What’s romantic about making out with someone in front of your uncles? I think the sexiest man in the world is the guy who could approach me at a bar and say, “Hi, I’m an orphan.”

I was always very uncomfortable with the concept of having a mother-in-law. No woman ever says to herself,
Well, I’ve met the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. But you know what else I need? I’m going to need a sixty-five-year-old woman to come along as sort of a package deal. I want her to insist on going to Target with me and getting oddly competitive during adult yoga class at her local YMCA during the Christmas Eve day class
.

If the mother-in-law isn’t a total judgmental nightmare, then she’s the overenthusiastic type. It’s a way of controlling her destiny as she feels that the cycle of life is continuing and her son doesn’t need her anymore. Wanting to bond over pinot grigio brands (but just one glass!) is a mother-in-law’s way of saying, “He may enter your vagina but he EXITED MINE and without ME there would be no HIM and whether you like it or not that very fact makes me ever present in this threesome you never asked for. Cheers!”

My mother-in-law loved me from the moment she met me. It didn’t feel right. It felt like she was just in love with the concept of having a daughter-in-law. She didn’t really know me. I was convinced if she really knew me she would hate me.

I know I sound so ungrateful by complaining that my mother-in-law liked me too much. My friend Shannon would say, “You’re lucky. My mother-in-law never knew that her own son was an atheist because he was afraid to tell her. And now that we’re getting married by a justice of the peace she thinks I turned her son against God. Like I have that kind of power! Or I’m some Antichrist. If I had any power, I would turn him against her but SO FAR MY SPELLS HAVE NOT WORKED.”

I’m like a cat—except that I have no desire to drag my tongue across fur of any kind or eat wet food that smells like a rotting ocean floor without a spoon. The way in which I’m like a cat is in its early and final years. I’m either very skittish and run from people who want to get on a snuggling-and-patting level with me the moment they lay eyes on me for the first time—or I’m like a cat who has weeks left to live . . . when I feel overwhelmed I want to hide under a porch and hiss at anyone who tries to get close to me. My mother-in-law would call me more often than my own mother did to tell me that she missed me. I always wanted to say,
Miss me? You didn’t even know that I existed for the first fifty-nine years of your life!

Whenever I gave in to a request to hang out with her or talk to her, it seemed to keep her satisfied for a while—until she got bored of holding the ball in her mouth and would nudge me to start playing catch again. Her inner dog was too overwhelming for my inner cat. I finally had to acquiesce to allowing her to Skype with me once in a while so that I didn’t seem like a total bitch. I always thought during our Skype sessions (which consisted of a four-minute delay as two women who barely knew each other just said “Hi” and waved),
Someone is going to have to whip a boob out for this to get interesting.

But of course my mother-in-law is not to blame for anything going wrong in my marriage. I’m the last person to tell you what
to
do when getting married, having a ceremony, or combining families, but I can tell you what NOT to do.

SOME ADMITTEDLY FUCKED-UP BUT HONEST ADVICE FOR COUPLES BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER THEIR WEDDING

1. When registering for gifts don’t become an asshole. Don’t monitor the Crate & Barrel website and get mad at your friend Susan because she only bought ten out of the twelve nut bowls. “But there are twelve kinds of nuts and they need their own bowl!” Let it go. This is about love, not nuts. What a couple does with their nuts in their own home is not Susan’s problem.

2. When you are picking out items to put on your registry—just remind yourself that it’s okay to take part in this ritual but don’t think you have to become someone you’re not. I registered for a gravy boat. I’m a vegetarian. But I thought,
A home needs a gravy boat
. Why? Who said that? You don’t need fine china if you know you’ll never use it—except once, ironically, when you and your spouse order pizza.

3. If it’s your wedding day and you have explosive diarrhea but you haven’t eaten anything, find your friend who is the most in love with her husband. Take her into the bathroom. Apologize for the smell. And ask her, “Did
you
have explosive diarrhea on
your
wedding day?” If she says no, please consider that these aren’t the good kind of nerves but rather your body trying to tell you that you don’t want to get married.

4. If you ignored the explosive diarrhea and are now walking down the aisle and you’re crying but you think it might be because you’re scared and upset, consider turning around and taking a moment outside to collect your thoughts or maybe take up smoking.

5. If you make it all the way to the altar and during your mother’s reading of some poem that you picked out for her to read you just start thinking,
Oh my God. I’ll never kiss another man again
, ask yourself if you’re just freaking yourself out or if that really bothers you. If it bothers you—run.

6. If you are at the altar thinking,
I can’t run. That is rude
, don’t worry about manners. It’s harder to get divorced than it is to run away down the aisle. And you’re giving everyone in that room a story to tell for the rest of their lives.

7. If you’re at the altar thinking,
I can’t run. What will my family say?
ask yourself,
When I’m home deciding whether or not to buy a new couch, or whether to get Chinese or Thai takeout do I call up my cousin Sheila and ask what she thinks?

8. If you are the disc jockey at your own wedding because you found the idea of making a mix “fun”—maybe you should just throw a cocktail party sometime instead of legally binding yourself to another person.

9. If you are happy that you decided to go through with your wedding, have sex with your spouse that night. In fact, go in a broom closet and hike up that dress, or pull down those pants, and go for it. Do not fall into the trap that modern couples fall into, telling themselves, “We’ve had sex before. It’s not like we’re losing our virginity tonight.” No. Have sex that night. You will always look back on it and think it’s weird that you decided to drink together until five a.m. instead. Your friends thought it was weird too.

10. Lastly, be grateful that your friends and family came to your wedding and bought you presents but don’t be afraid of your basic instinct to say, “FUCK BRUNCH.” Family will pressure you to attend a “morning after” brunch as a way to—I don’t even know what. Keep the party going? Get closure on the events of the day before? Make a married couple spend time with their families and some mini-quiche first thing in the morning? And sober to boot? Go tie some cans on your car, write “Just Married” on the windows, and get going on your honeymoon. And as for your friends and family, as Marie Antoinette said, “Let
them
eat brunch.”

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