People I Want to Punch in the Throat (3 page)

“Have you seen a picture of him?” my mom asked.

“Well …” Shit. I hadn’t. I started to think of all the reasons he’d given me for not sending a picture: his camera was broken, he didn’t have a scanner, he never takes pictures, he didn’t have a stamp to mail me a picture from college … I was getting catfished, before catfishing was a thing. “No. But it doesn’t matter what he looks like. It’s. Not. A. Date.”

“Well, how will you recognize him?” Mom asked.

“He’s meeting me here in the hotel lobby. He’s going to wear a dark green Kenneth Cole jacket so I’ll be able to recognize him.”

“Okay,” my dad said, “let’s just break this down. You’re going to dinner—dutch—at TGI Fridays with a Chinese guy from Queens named Ebenezer who has a pager and will be wearing a dark green Kenneth Cole jacket and will meet you in the lobby at six o’clock tonight?”

“Yes, that sounds right.”

“And you swear you’re not desperate?” C.B. cackled.

“Go put on your nice Christmas sweater, C.B. The one that matches Mommy’s! You’re going to look adorable on Santa’s lap. I hope they buy the picture so Mom can put it in with her Christmas letter this year.”

“Well, if you’re not desperate, Jenni, then can you tell us why you’re meeting this stranger?” my mom inquired.

“I don’t know. He’s just someone I like to talk to. He listens to me and he laughs at me and he makes me laugh. He’s fun. I just thought it would be cool to finally meet and put a face with the words. Maybe it’s desperate, but it’s better than waiting on line at Macy’s for three hours to see a perv in a Santa suit!”

“Okay, okay. We’re just a little worried. Girls end up dead from meeting men online. I saw it on
Dateline
,” Mom said.

“I’m pretty sure he’s not going to kill me. If anything, I think he’s going to stand me up.”

“Why would you think that?” my dad wondered.

“I dunno. ’Cause he’s kind of a jerk.”

“Wow. He sounds like a keeper!” crowed C.B.

“Hey! Let me know how the romantic horse-drawn carriage ride through Central Park goes, C.B. You know Mom and Dad will snuggle you in between them, right?”

“We’re doing
that
tonight, too?”

“I bet you wish you had a ‘keeper’ to meet now, don’t you, C.B.?”

“You’re a grown woman. We can’t stop you, but at least leave us his pager number and whatever description you have of him,” my dad said.

Dad got the safety issues out of the way so that Mom could focus on the important task at hand: “What are you wearing tonight?”

Yeah, so this is the part of the story that gets a bit embarrassing (as if it hasn’t already been embarrassing). I wore overalls to our non-date. There were several factors that went into picking out my ensemble for that night. It was partly a “fuck you” to Ebenezer for being such an asshole and making me feel like shit by emphasizing a bajillion times that we weren’t going on a date. As far as I was concerned, he didn’t deserve a nicer outfit. It was partly an ironic thing. I thought it was funny that the girl from Kansas would wear overalls. It was exactly what a snooty New Yorker would expect a Kansan to wear. It was subtle and deep all at the same time. And it was partly a comfort thing. I do enjoy
TGI Fridays’s potato skins, and overalls are the perfect pants when you’ve got a potato-skin food baby to hide.

I should have known that night as soon as I saw Ebenezer in my hotel lobby that I was in trouble.
Damn
, I thought.
He’s really cute. Who would have thought? Shit, maybe overalls were the wrong choice. Eh, fuck it. It’s not a date!

If I knew then that I would eventually end up marrying this man, I might have paid closer attention to some of the hints to his personality traits that would one day drive me batshit crazy. For instance, I might have noticed that he was huffing and puffing from running twenty blocks uptown because he was too stingy to pay for subway fare. (Cheap bastard.) When I commented that his green jacket made it easy to find him, he bragged that he’d had that jacket since high school and had no intention of ever buying another one until he could afford a North Face, which wasn’t really that expensive when you consider it as an investment for when he scaled Mt. Everest someday. (Cheap bastard mixed with label-whoreish ways and visions of grandeur.) The biggest warning, however, came during dinner. “I live with my parents,” he stated proudly.

“What? You never told me that.”

“It didn’t come up.”

“Because you’re twenty-five. I didn’t think it needed to ‘come up.’ I just assumed you lived on your own.”

“Well, you know what they say about people who assume …”

“So, when will you move out?”

“I don’t know. What’s the rush? There’s no rent, plenty of food, and my mom does my laundry.”

“Ugh. Your mom still does your laundry? Can’t you at least do your own laundry?”

“Why? She enjoys it.”

“She doesn’t enjoy it, you asshole.”

“Whatever. Hey, check’s here. Do you have exact change? I want to put it on my credit card so I can get the points toward my North Face.”

After dinner Ebenezer offered to show me the sights of Manhattan. “I thought you weren’t a tour guide,” I teased him.

“I have a few places I could show you.”

We walked around the city and he shyly took my hand, while
at the same time
he checked out the rack of some bimbo who walked by us. Yeah, like a full-on fucking head turn. I about broke his hand. “What? I’ve just never seen boobs that big on an Asian chick before,” he said. “Do you think they were real?”

“I should get back,” I said. I didn’t want to buy my own dinner or compete with skanks with big boobs. I didn’t care how much he made me laugh or how much fun we had together; it was disrespectful and I was tired of his assholey ways.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because you’re being a dick. I don’t even know why I came. I worked so hard to make this happen when you clearly did not care. So, I’m done. You’re off the hook. You don’t even need to walk me back to my hotel. I can get there on my own.”

“Hold on,” he said. “I’m sorry. I was just nervous, I think. I’m having fun with you and I want you to stay. I have something I want to show you. Will you hang out a little longer?”

“What do you want to show me?”

“It’s a special place to me. It’s close by. Come on.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward Central Park.

At close to midnight.

As we walked deeper into the park, I finally asked, “Where are we going?” I tried not to let him know I was getting a bit
nervous. My gut was telling me to knee him in the crotch and run.

“I told you I just finished shooting my first feature-length film, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I want to show you where I filmed my favorite scene in the movie. It’s just a little farther.”

Finally we stopped on the path. “We’re here,” he said.

“I can’t see anything,” I said.

“Well, right through those weeds and stuff is the pond. The pond is my favorite spot in the whole park. Let’s get closer—you can hear frogs.”

All I could think was,
Are you fucking kidding me? You want me to get closer to the pond? Shit, I
am
going to end up on
Dateline. (I just want to go on the record right here that if my daughter ever does something this stupid, I’ll kill her myself.)

“I’ve heard frogs before. I’m from Kansas,” I said.

“Yeah, but the water is so pretty in the moonlight. Come on.” He tugged on my hand.

Red flags, flashing alarms, code blue—all of it was going off in my head.

“Stop it!” I yelled. “Let go of me!”

“What’s wrong, Jen?” Ebenezer asked, genuinely confused.

“You can’t kill me! I won’t go down without a fight, and if I can’t stop you, I’ll at least hurt you!”

“Holy shit, what is your problem? Why would you think I want to kill you? You’re insane!”

“
I’m
insane? You’re a stranger who brought me to the middle of a deserted park in the dead of the night, and you keep pushing me toward a pond so I can ‘hear frogs’? I’m about ready to scratch out your eyes.”

Ebenezer took five steps back from me. “Okay, settle down,” he said holding up his hands in surrender.

“I want to leave. Now,” I hissed.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

We walked in silence for a bit until my heartbeat slowed down and I determined Ebenezer was not going to kill me and dump my body in the pond. (By the way, this would be the first of many, many times I was convinced the Hubs was trying to kill me. In his defense, I bring out that instinct in many people, so he’s forgiven.)

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s fine. I didn’t think that one through. I just wanted to share that place with you. Want some ice cream?”

“Yes, please!” Because ice cream always solves everything.

When he dropped me off at the hotel that night, he didn’t even try to kiss me. I was positive he was still thinking about the fact that I’d threatened to scratch his eyes out less than an hour before. A little while later he called my hotel room.

“Hello?” I whispered, trying not to wake up C.B., who was in the next bed.

“What are you wearing?” he asked.

“Fuck you,” I said. “Pajama overalls.”

He laughed. “I had fun tonight.”

“Me too,” I admitted.

“I’ve got a problem, though.”

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“I’m woozy,” he said.

“Well then, sit down! Put your head between your knees—”

“Hey, dummy, I’m woozy, because of you.
You
made me woozy tonight. I knew this was going to happen if we met.”

“Oh,” I said stupidly. I had no idea how to respond. All of my life boys and men have played games with me. I’ve always had to guess:
Does he
like
like me or does he just like me? Is he flirting with me or is he being nice?
I’d never had anyone be so frank about his feelings. “That’s nice,” I said, like an idiot.

“Yes. It
is
nice. So … you want to talk about
Star Wars
some more?”

Yes! Finally a topic I knew how to handle! “Okay.”

After we’d spent an hour whispering on the phone, C.B. sat up, threw a pillow at me, and yelled, “You’re an adorable Ewok and he’s Luke Skywalker! Darth Vader is awesome and Leia is overrated! Fine. Whatever. Just please go to bed, you psycho!”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ebenezer said.

And we hung up.

We’ve been together ever since, because I saw right through his gruff, dorky exterior and realized I’d be a complete fool to let this guy go. After all, there aren’t too many men out there willing to put up with my brand of crazy.

Fifteen years later I know now that Ebenezer was afraid to meet me and that’s why he was such an asshole. Don’t get me wrong—he is a very blunt person with hardly any filter and couldn’t tell a white lie if his life depended upon it (
never
ask this man if your butt looks big unless you can take the truth). He had a crush on me and knew I didn’t feel the same way. He thought it was ridiculous to even meet, because it would just confirm his feelings and then he’d be stuck pining for a girl who lived in Kansas.

So there you have it: the most romantic love story you’ve ever heard. Basically we were two weirdos (future crazy cat lady Jen and parents’-basement-dweller Ebenezer) who found love chatting
online in the Wild West days of the Internet when most people were creepers looking for cybersex.

For many years we were kind of ashamed to admit how we met, and whenever people would ask us, we’d always say, “A mutual friend.”

We just never said our mutual friend was AOL.

I think every woman wonders at some point in her marriage,
Who the hell am I married to?

The difference is, I wondered this on the morning of my wedding.

After several years of dating, the Hubs finally popped the question. In those days we were living in his hometown, New York City. Once I had the ring on my finger, I let him know that I’d had a good run in the big city. I’d put in five years, but I was tired of rubbing up against strangers’ junk on the subway and fighting off vermin for the last loaf of bread at the grocery store. I was dreaming of more square footage, drive-through everythings, and a yard that someone else would mow. I convinced him we should move to the suburbs of Kansas, buy a McMansion, and raise our future kids in a planned community just down the street from my parents … and my brother … and my grandparents … and my aunts and uncles … and my cousins. I still can’t believe he agreed to do it. But he did. We bought our first house in suburban Kansas one month before our wedding.

When our wedding day arrived it dawned overcast and
slightly dreary. Many of the older women in my family assured me that a rainy wedding day is a “lucky” wedding day.
Uh-huh. Sure it is
.

I tried to go about my pre-wedding details and not worry too much about the dismal weather and the havoc it would wreak on my hair. I went to my hair appointment that morning and paid a professional handsomely to flat-iron the shit out of my mane. I had her firmly attach my veil and spray the whole mess with shellac so as to prevent as many frizzies as possible. Then I headed to my parents’ house to finish getting ready.