All-Star Marriage Therapy

Judy and I had been together 14 years, since high school. We bonded, like most teenagers do, over a shared sense that we were not like most teenagers. We shard a set of interests which we imagined to be profoundly unique and contradictory. We liked punk rock music and the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. We loved fancy restaurants and Taco Bell. We played noisy, distorted lo-fi covers of Beach Boys songs in her parents’ garage.

Like many teenage romances, it was intense and fraught with gut wrenching heartbreak from which we thought we would never recover. But we always did. We maintained a relationship through college an hour apart, and in spite of numerous breakups and short stints with other partners, we had been together ever since. Time and time again we found reasons to fall out of, and then back in, love.

As we grew older the pattern of breakups evolved, but never stopped. The fights became less intense, less passionate. The spans between them became longer, but so did the duration apart. When we were teens we sometimes broke up and one of us would call back crying hours later, begging for forgiveness and another chance, which was always granted. As we grew older into young adulthood, the hours-long breakups sometimes stretched to weeks at a time, but we always ended up together again.

Eventually, Judy and I got married. For 3 years after that, we didn’t have any “episodes”. We were young and happy and still had no idea what we were doing with our lives. Gradually though we had a couple of kids, both found jobs we liked. Those jobs gradually became careers, which, along with the children, gradually became all-consuming, to the exclusion of inconveniences like maintaining a marriage.

And sure enough with all of the pressures of career and family, the fighting started again. And when it did, it was no longer the impassioned-shouting, gut-wrenching, door-slamming variety. It was the sobering sit-down-at-the-kitchen-table “this isn’t working out” variety. We’d grown apart and would only occasionally catch a glimpse of the things which had held us together for so many years.

Christmas Day, Alan called. Alan and I had been great friends in college, but now only rarely had the opportunity to talk. An academic late bloomer, Alan embarked on a PhD program at the grand old age of 30, to great success, many years after I had become disillusioned with my own academic ambitions. Now with a full-on doctorate in molecular biology, Alan was traveling the world taking post-doc positions in one exotic location after the other. As we spoke only rarely, I knew only what I could piece together through social media. Alan’s life was a blur of academic papers, conference talks and a never-ending series of girlfriends, all fitting the same prototype: short, slim, with dark curly hair and a slightly crooked nose.

The call from Alan had become a yearly ritual: he was back in the city, staying with his parents for Christmas. And that meant that like clockwork, by the 27th, he was eager to get a respite from meals with relatives and catch up with old friends.

We met at The 8Track, a local bar where Alan and I had spent many long nights together when we were younger. Any other Thursday night and the 8Track would be packed, but as it was the day after Christmas, we were among the only customers. The normally dark bar area was lit up with harsh fluorescent lights. The wall speakers, ordinarily blaring raucous lo-fi tunes, were modestly sputtering out some soft, shoe-gazey slop. The only other people at the bar were a snuggly couple and a handful of lonely alcoholics.

When Judy and I were 22, the summer after we graduated from college, we took a road-trip to Vancouver. Being young and poor at the time, we couldn’t afford decent food or staying at hotels every night. We drove for 5 days straight, taking turns driving & sleeping, picking out CDs from an overflowing binder, eating at diners, visiting roadside monuments. We spent every moment, waking and sleeping, within feet of each other. And it was the happiest I can ever remember us being.

When we finally arrived in Vancouver, greasy hair and generally filthy from days of road-trip hygiene, we treated ourselves to a night at a hotel and a meal at a proper sit-down restaurant. It was a second-tier hotel, old and tattered in retrospect, but at the time, a royal palace. The hallways were dank and smelled vaguely of mold, but we had a bed with a mattress and over 12 channels of television to watch (“Free HBO", the sign outside emphasized).

Finally, after hauling in our luggage, showering, and indulging in a half of an episode of a reality show that I would later Google but would never be able to identify (A huge family in a creepy old mansion? With an ocelot for a pet? And a business restoring antique phonographs?) we made our way to the restaurant across the street from the hotel.

We began fighting almost immediately. I like to say now that it started with a disagreement over something on the menu, but honestly–and I’ve racked my brain so many times over this–I cannot remember why it started. And it’s not that with the years gone by, I can no longer remember why we fought. Hours after it happened I had no idea what had started it.

Whatever started it though, I do remember quite clearly what followed. It all came out. Among other things: her nervous habits; my perpetual tardiness; the scent of her hairspray; my beloved cargo pants. We fought into the evening and back to the hotel room. Drinks were spilled and clothing was thrown. And though all I wanted after 5 days on the road was to spend one night on that heavenly mattress, I stubbornly slept on the floor.

The next morning Judy called her mother, who arranged for Judy to fly back home. I made the drive back all alone. We did not speak for 5 months. That was the longest we’d ever been apart.

The door of the 8Track opened and two young women made their way in. Any other night here, you wouldn’t be able to see or hear the door opening from our seats at the other side of the bar. But tonight it was as noticeable as if somebody was walking into your living room.

The women shook flurries of snow off their jackets and made their way to the bar. The first to sit was tall & slender, pretty but awkward; her friend was short, slim, with dark curly hair and a slightly crooked nose.

The two women were young, probably only a year or two out of college. Now firmly into our 30s, both Alan and I understood well that in the context of this bar, in the context of these women, we were old. And certainly on any other day of the year we would not be the most interesting men at this bar.

Alan turned towards the two women. “Merry Christmas”, he said, raising his glass in their direction. They nestled their heads together and giggled, not responding. Alan held his glass up towards the women for a second too long before putting it back down on the bar and turned back to me, shrugging.

Alan continued to tell me about his research. He droned on excitedly about the work in his lab, which I would later understand to be “CRISPR” technology (Alan is now fabulously wealthy), but which at the time was only distracting me from enjoying an overly-hopped beer with an old friend. “This is gonna change the world, man”, he said as he gesticulated wildly, twirling invisible strands of DNA with his extended fingers to which he bound imaginary proteins using his fists.

“Excuse me,” the shorter of the two women interjected, leaning over the bar beside Alan and raising a glass, “Merry Christmas”.

On Christmas Day, the evening before I went out with Alan, Judy and I had one of those kitchen-table talks. We both confessed that the relationship needed work. But we were both unwilling to find the time or effort. “I just can’t…” Judy sighed with fatigue. I disagreed, “I think we can,” I said, but I was unable to explain how.

Marriage takes work. That, we had discussed many times before. But talking about it is not doing the work. I made a series of half-hearted suggestions on how we could change, but we both knew that none of them would really change anything. “I really think it’s over this time,” Judy called after me, as I went up the stairs and went to bed.

Alan introduced himself, then me, to the woman now standing beside him, Becca, and to Jenny, the friend still seated at bar. Jenny made her way over to us and sat her drink down next to mine. Alan and Becca engaged in a series of clever, rapid-fire exchanges, the kind that really only happens when characters meet in a bar in a movie.

Jenny was overly eager to please, but not quite as capable of clever banter as her friend. And though happy to have the attention of a pretty young woman, I was not nearly as willing as Alan to engage in conversation with her. My mind was preoccupied with my conversation with Judy, and in spite of Jenny’s interest, I was guarded and disinterested.

My disinterest, however, only fueled the fire–the cooler I acted, the deeper she dug in. She laughed awkwardly at my cool responses, touched my hand when she talked and made coy sideways eye contact at every moment I would allow.

Alan & Becca meanwhile hit it off to full effect. They worked through their drinks at twice the pace Jenny and I did. There was laughing and touching and both were fully unaware of anybody else in the bar until–after a short whisper in Alan’s ear–Becca looked up at Jenny. “Come on”, she gestured, “let’s go back to the apartment”. Jenny and I glanced at each other. I smiled politely and shrugged.

Alan & Becca sat piled on the couch, her legs draped across his lap, her hand stroking the back of his head. Jenny and I sat opposite them, each in our own chair, in reserved, uncertain poses, my drink held properly with both hands in my lap. I attempted to engage the whole group in a conversation about a new brewery that had just opened up down the street, but on the sofa, Alan & Becca had locked eyes and turned off the outside world. “Your eyes… are magical”, I overheard him say softly as she giggled. I rolled my eyes, but Jenny didn’t see. So I waited a moment, captured her glance and I rolled them again with extra emphasis. Jenny laughed. I smirked and shook my head.

This climate continued until a break in the conversation when, without words, Becca stood up, glanced coyly at Jenny and I, then took Alan’s hand and slowly led him to another room. Alan looked back at me with a goofy smile as he was led away. The door closed behind them.

It became very quiet as Jenny and I sat alone in our chairs, which were turned towards each other at 45 degree angles, like an interview talk show, as though we were to converse with each other while the audience listened on. I looked at Jenny and smiled politely. “So,” I asked, “what do you do… for fun?”

“I’m in a band, actually”

“Really?”, I asked perking up.

“Yeah, I sing – it’s a cover band.”, she confessed. Then, after a short pause, she added “a Smashmouth cover band”. She wiggled her eyebrows comically. I snorted through my mid-sip beer and laughed. For the first time all evening I let my guard down. I felt a small but genuine connection to Jenny. “Okay”, I thought, “she’s funny.”

I quickly switched to a deadpan expression: “I bet you guys do a wicked cover of All-Star”.

She locked eyes with me and matched my serious expression. Slowly, her lips curled into a half smile. She stood up and faced me and began to croon: “Sooooooomebody once told me the world is gonna roll me, I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed.”

I laughed as she tore into a rousing rendition of “All-Star”.

“She was looking kind of dumb, with her finger and her thumb…”

My smile faded and I watched nervously as she continued.

“… In the shape of an ‘L’ on her forehead”

She rocked her hips back and forth as she sang, her eyes locked on mine. She was dead serious. Slowly, with the music, she lifted her arms.

“So much to do, so much to see…”

She began to unbutton her shirt. I froze in terror.

“… so what's wrong with taking the back streets?”

I shifted uncomfortably back and forth in a full-on panic as the bottom button came undone revealing a slender frame and a tattered gray bra.

“You'll never know, if you don't go, you’ll never shine, if you don't glow”

Her bra flung open and fell to the floor. Her breasts and her pointer fingers shot towards me as she broke into the chorus:

“HEY NOW, YOU’RE AN ALL-STAR, GET YOUR GAME ON, G—”

I fell out of the chair and stumbled towards the door. I was out of the apartment, down the stairs and out on the sidewalk before “all that glitters is gold”. The next day, I made an appointment with a marriage councilor for Judy and I. We celebrate our 20th anniversary in March.

Judy and I had been together 14 years, since high school. We bonded, like most teenagers do, over a shared sense that we were not like most teenagers. We shard a set of interests which we imagined to be profoundly unique and contradictory. We liked punk rock music and the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. We loved fancy restaurants and Taco Bell. We played noisy, distorted lo-fi covers of Beach Boys songs in her parents’ garage.

Like many teenage romances, it was intense and fraught with gut wrenching heartbreak from which we thought we would never recover. But we always did. We maintained a relationship through college an hour apart, and in spite of numerous breakups and short stints with other partners, we had been together ever since. Time and time again we found reasons to fall out of, and then back in, love.

As we grew older the pattern of breakups evolved, but never stopped. The fights became less intense, less passionate. The spans between them became longer, but so did the duration apart. When we were teens we sometimes broke up and one of us would call back crying hours later, begging for forgiveness and another chance, which was always granted. As we grew older into young adulthood, the hours-long breakups sometimes stretched to weeks at a time, but we always ended up together again.

Eventually, Judy and I got married. For 3 years after that, we didn’t have any “episodes”. We were young and happy and still had no idea what we were doing with our lives. Gradually though we had a couple of kids, both found jobs we liked. Those jobs gradually became careers, which, along with the children, gradually became all-consuming, to the exclusion of inconveniences like maintaining a marriage.

And sure enough with all of the pressures of career and family, the fighting started again. And when it did, it was no longer the impassioned-shouting, gut-wrenching, door-slamming variety. It was the sobering sit-down-at-the-kitchen-table “this isn’t working out” variety. We’d grown apart and would only occasionally catch a glimpse of the things which had held us together for so many years.

Christmas Day, Alan called. Alan and I had been great friends in college, but now only rarely had the opportunity to talk. An academic late bloomer, Alan embarked on a PhD program at the grand old age of 30, to great success, many years after I had become disillusioned with my own academic ambitions. Now with a full-on doctorate in molecular biology, Alan was traveling the world taking post-doc positions in one exotic location after the other. As we spoke only rarely, I knew only what I could piece together through social media. Alan’s life was a blur of academic papers, conference talks and a never-ending series of girlfriends, all fitting the same prototype: short, slim, with dark curly hair and a slightly crooked nose.

The call from Alan had become a yearly ritual: he was back in the city, staying with his parents for Christmas. And that meant that like clockwork, by the 27th, he was eager to get a respite from meals with relatives and catch up with old friends.

We met at The 8Track, a local bar where Alan and I had spent many long nights together when we were younger. Any other Thursday night and the 8Track would be packed, but as it was the day after Christmas, we were among the only customers. The normally dark bar area was lit up with harsh fluorescent lights. The wall speakers, ordinarily blaring raucous lo-fi tunes, were modestly puttering out some soft, shoe-gazey slop. The only other people at the bar were a snuggly couple and a handful of lonely alcoholics.

When Judy and I were 22, the summer after we graduated from college, we took a road-trip to Vancouver. Being young and poor at the time, we couldn’t afford decent food or staying at hotels every night. We drove for 5 days straight, taking turns driving & sleeping, picking out CDs from an overflowing binder, eating at diners, visiting roadside monuments. We spent every moment, waking and sleeping, within feet of each other. And it was the happiest I can ever remember us being.

When we finally arrived in Vancouver, greasy hair and generally filthy from days of road-trip hygiene, we treated ourselves to a night at a hotel and a meal at a proper sit-down restaurant. It was a second-tier hotel, old and tattered in retrospect, but at the time, a royal palace. The hallways were dank and smelled vaguely of mold, but we had a bed with a mattress and over 12 channels of television to watch (“Free HBO", the sign outside emphasized).

Finally, after hauling in our luggage, showering, and indulging in a half of an episode of a reality show that I would later Google but would never be able to identify (A huge family in a creepy old mansion? With an ocelot for a pet? And a business restoring antique phonographs?) we made our way to the restaurant across the street from the hotel.

We began fighting almost immediately. I like to say now that it started with a disagreement over something on the menu, but honestly–and I’ve racked my brain so many times over this–I cannot remember why it started. And it’s not that with the years gone by, I can no longer remember why we fought. Hours after it happened I had no idea what had started it.

Whatever started it though, I do remember quite clearly what followed. It all came out. Among other things: her nervous habits; my perpetual tardiness; the scent of her hairspray; my beloved cargo pants. We fought into the evening and back to the hotel room. Drinks were spilled and clothing was thrown. And though all I wanted after 5 days on the road was to spend one night on that heavenly mattress, I stubbornly slept on the floor.

The next morning Judy called her mother, who arranged for Judy to fly back home. I made the drive back all alone. We did not speak for 5 months. That was the longest we’d ever been apart.

The door of the 8Track opened and two young women made their way in. Any other night here, you wouldn’t be able to see or hear the door opening from our seats at the other side of the bar. But tonight it was as noticeable as if somebody was walking into your living room.

The women shook flurries of snow off their jackets and made their way to the bar. The first to sit was tall & slender, pretty but awkward; her friend was short, slim, with dark curly hair and a slightly crooked nose.

The two women were young, probably only a year or two out of college. Now firmly into our 30s, both Alan and I understood well that in the context of this bar, in the context of these women, we were old. And certainly on any other day of the year we would not be the most interesting men at this bar.

Alan turned towards the two women. “Merry Christmas”, he said, raising his glass in their direction. They nestled their heads together and giggled, not responding. Alan held his glass up towards the women for a second too long before putting it back down on the bar and turned back to me, shrugging.

Alan continued to tell me about his research. He droned on excitedly about the work in his lab, which I would later understand to be “CRISPR” technology (Alan is now fabulously wealthy), but which at the time was only distracting me from enjoying an overly-hopped beer with an old friend. “This is gonna change the world, man”, he said as he gesticulated wildly, twirling invisible strands of DNA with his extended fingers to which he bound imaginary proteins using his fists.

“Excuse me,” the shorter of the two women interjected, leaning over the bar beside Alan and raising a glass, “Merry Christmas”.

On Christmas Day, the evening before I went out with Alan, Judy and I had one of those kitchen-table talks. We both confessed that the relationship needed work. But we were both unwilling to find the time or effort. “I just can’t…” Judy sighed with fatigue. I disagreed, “I think we can,” I said, but I was unable to explain how.

Marriage takes work. That, we had discussed many times before. But talking about it is not doing the work. I made a series of half-hearted suggestions on how we could change, but we both knew that none of them would really change anything. “I really think it’s over this time,” Judy called after me, as I went up the stairs and went to bed.

Alan introduced himself, then me, to the woman now standing beside him, Becca, and to Jenny, the friend still seated at bar. Jenny made her way over to us and sat her drink down next to mine. Alan and Becca engaged in a series of clever, rapid-fire exchanges, the kind that really only happens when characters meet in a bar in a movie.

Jenny was overly eager to please, but not quite as capable of clever banter as her friend. And though happy to have the attention of a pretty young woman, I was not nearly as willing as Alan to engage in conversation with her. My mind was preoccupied with my conversation with Judy, and in spite of Jenny’s interest, I was guarded and disinterested.

My disinterest, however, only fueled the fire–the cooler I acted, the deeper she dug in. She laughed awkwardly at my cool responses, touched my hand when she talked and made coy sideways eye contact at every moment I would allow.

Alan & Becca meanwhile hit it off to full effect. They worked through their drinks at twice the pace Jenny and I did. There was laughing and touching and both were fully unaware of anybody else in the bar until–after a short whisper in Alan’s ear–Becca looked up at Jenny. “Come on”, she gestured, “let’s go back to the apartment”. Jenny and I glanced at each other. I smiled politely and shrugged.

Alan & Becca sat piled on the couch, her legs draped across his lap, her hand stroking the back of his head. Jenny and I sat opposite them, each in our own chair, in reserved, uncertain poses, my drink held properly with both hands in my lap. I attempted to engage the whole group in a conversation about a new brewery that had just opened up down the street, but on the sofa, Alan & Becca had locked eyes and turned off the outside world. “Your eyes… are magical”, I overheard him say softly as she giggled. I rolled my eyes, but Jenny didn’t see. So I waited a moment, captured her glance and I rolled them again with extra emphasis. Jenny laughed. I smirked and shook my head.

This climate continued until a break in the conversation when, without words, Becca stood up, glanced coyly at Jenny and I, then took Alan’s hand and slowly led him to another room. Alan looked back at me with a goofy smile as he was led away. The door closed behind them.

It became very quiet as Jenny and I sat alone in our chairs, which were turned towards each other at 45 degree angles, like an interview talk show, as though we were to converse with each other while the audience listened on. I looked at Jenny and smiled politely. “So,” I asked, “what do you do… for fun?”

“I’m in a band, actually”

“Really?”, I asked perking up.

“Yeah, I sing – it’s a cover band.”, she confessed. Then, after a short pause, she added “a Smashmouth cover band”. She wiggled her eyebrows comically. I snorted through my mid-sip beer and laughed. For the first time all evening I let my guard down. I felt a small but genuine connection to Jenny. “Okay”, I thought, “she’s funny.”

I quickly switched to a deadpan expression: “I bet you guys do a wicked cover of All-Star”.

She locked eyes with me and matched my serious expression. Slowly, her lips curled into a half smile. She stood up and faced me and began to croon: “Sooooooomebody once told me the world is gonna roll me, I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed.”

I laughed as she tore into a rousing rendition of “All-Star”.

“She was looking kind of dumb, with her finger and her thumb…”

My smile faded and I watched nervously as she continued.

“… In the shape of an ‘L’ on her forehead”

She rocked her hips back and forth as she sang, her eyes locked on mine. She was dead serious. Slowly, with the music, she lifted her arms.

“So much to do, so much to see…”

She began to unbutton her shirt. I froze in terror.

“… so what's wrong with taking the back streets?”

I shifted uncomfortably back and forth in a full-on panic as the bottom button came undone revealing a slender frame and a tattered gray bra.

“You'll never know, if you don't go, you’ll never shine, if you don't glow”

Her bra flung open and fell to the floor. Her breasts and her pointer fingers shot towards me as she broke into the chorus:

“HEY NOW, YOU’RE AN ALL-STAR, GET YOUR GAME ON, G—”

I stumbled out of the chair. I was out the door of the apartment, down the stairs and out on the sidewalk before “all that glitters is gold”. The next day, I made an appointment with a marriage councilor for Judy and I. We celebrate our 20th anniversary in March.