Significant Other

Living in casa de los locos is never dull. And never quiet....Ever.
Unless we're all unconscious.
It's not just the kids and the eardrum splitting din they create.
My partner in life, the man I chose to spend forever with, is the progenitor of all this noise.
Let me tell you about this man.

I met Marc when I was a nurse at NYU and living the sweet life of a single twenty something in New York City. Too bad that's not how I saw it then. I lamented being single at 27 (gasp) and didn't take enough advantage of all the amazing things I could've done with all my free time. What the hell did I do with all that free time? I worked night shifts so was probably psychotic most of the daylight hours that I wasn't in a benadryl induced coma. I lived on 85th between Central Park and Columbus. Prime real estate. Brownstone building straight out of the Cosby Show. In theory.

I lived in that one bedroom apartment with a roommate and our bedroom was actually in the basement level of the building. So living room, tiny kitchenette on first floor and then you go down a spiral staircase into a dark, moist bedroom. That I shared with a roommate. And her various significant others. One time we noticed a putrid, sulfuric smell that was getting worse by the day. No matter how long we left the windows open or sprayed air freshener- it lingered. Finally, the super came and diagnosed the problem as "dead rat in wall". He explained that when an animal dies, its body decomposes and smells really bad. I thanked him for the news flash and asked how to remedy dead rat in wall. He sniffed around the walls and found the rat grave. He drilled a hole in the wall, widened it with a superintendent tool and then throw up in my toilet. He was able to remove the dead rat and apologized profusely for the mess he left. He was a bit under the weather, apparently.

Anyway, my roommate invited Marc over for dinner one Friday night. I was dating someone else so was blissfully blasé about any new men in my apartment. This particular guy was noticeable though. Just because he looked pretty unconventional. He came over for shabbat dinner wearing denim overalls (never acceptable unless you're a toddler), timberland boots, a red wool cap backwards and a hoop earring. Think lead singer of "Come on Eileen" video. But the real kicker was when he told me he was at Columbia getting a PhD....in yiddish. My response was quick and insensitive (an overriding life theme) - "why? ... thats dumb". Apparently, thats when he knew he wanted to date me. Message to single women- speak your mind, the right guy will love you for it.

I didn't see Marc again for a few months. We met again on a hot summer evening on Broadway in front of a kosher BBQ place. He was noticeably thinner, with shorter hair. He traded the denim overalls for DIY denim cutoffs. And a white tshirt with the gay pride logo on it. Well, that was a surprise because I totally didn't get any kind of gay vibe from him. Again, I just asked him "whats with the shirt?". He told me his stepfather got it from a thrift shop. "Why?" he asked. I explained that its a gay flag.
Completely non-plussed and confident (an overriding life theme for him)- he just laughed and said "oh. well I'm straight- you?"..... I then invited him to come for lunch the following week with some other friends.

He somehow found my phone number and left a message a few days later confirming that we were still on for lunch. I mentioned that I wanted to go to a Sri Chinmoy concert on Central Park Friday night but nobody wanted to join me. Sri Chinmoy is a Buddhist spiritual man who chants/heals and has a following of mostly women who dance a lot. Marc immediately said he would love to go hear Sri Chinmoy! What an amazing coincidence. So we went. It was super weird and fun and not at all for us. In fact, Marc would never in a million years have gone to something like that. He later told me that he would have gone to a lecture on Japanese astrophysics if I had asked him to. Message to single women- a good man will sometimes do things that he's not interested in if it means being with someone he loves.  Because it's not all about him.

So, we had fun. We learned we both have asthma, like Fleetwood Mac, are deeply Jewish, love to read, come from divorced parents, celebrate dysfunction and have only sisters. I never commented on his style- until he got henna tattoos on his neck. That's where I drew the line. He removed them with so much isopropyl alcohol, he had second degree burn. Thats true love. It burns.

So he came for lunch, met friends, we played football in Riverside Park on a perfect fall day. The next day, he called and left a message playing Neil Young on guitar for about 10 minutes on my answering machine. Thats it- nothing but the music. It was nice to come home after a 12 hour shift to that. He then called daily. Message to single women- it's not just stalkers who call every day. Sometimes the one will call you often because he wants to see you and doesn't care about the rules.

He gave me an Ernest Hemingway book "1000 Days of Solitude" and inscribed it and said its his all time favorite book. I read the first few chapters and told him it should be called "1000 Days to Get Through"because it was so fucking boring. He laughed. He showed me his writing. His voluminous amount of short stories, songs, and his pHD thesis. They were amazing. Except for his thesis. That was painful to read and I stopped after the dedication. He introduced me to Mordechai Richler, Paul Auster and Phillip Roth. He introduced me to Blue Rodeo and Lucinda Williams.

It was always so easy with Marc. So calm. ZERO drama. On our 3rd date (2 weeks since we met on Broadway), he told me he had no interest in being friends with me. He had enough friends. He wanted to date me and probably marry me. So if I didn't feel the same, tell him now because he wouldn't waste my time anymore.....Thats Marc. Direct, brutal, no bullshit. We were engaged 10 weeks later.

Because I only knew Marc for 10 months before we got married, I didn't know all of the little things that make him tick. Or should I say "tic". He has this thing that I call his Tourettes. He finds words that "are delightful" to him and repeats them, with different accents throughout the day. Mostly in his head but in the comforts of our home, out loud. My kids parrot this and I have to admit I have found myself doing it too. It's one big asylum.

He wears wool hats indoors all year long. He likes the way it makes him feel. Very safe.
He wore the same pair of brown pants for an entire 16 week semester and then when I threatened to burn them while he was still wearing them, he tossed Brownie down our garbage disposal.
He sleeps with a tshirt covering his eyes because that way Jason from Friday the 13th can't see him.

He is a man of EXTREMES. If he loves you , he will go to the moon and back and kill people along the way for you. If not, you're dead to him.

He can be moody and get quiet and then he gets his bitchface on and I have to field questions of "Is Marc OK?". Yep. He's OK. He just doesn't feel like being loud and extroverted right now. He doesn't hate you. He's not angry. He's in his own head. Leave him alone.

Marc is the most generous man I have ever met. He hates bullies. He cries easily. He loves his family more than himself. More than work. More than God. He has the fashion sense of a homeless man. He wouldn't notice if I shaved my head and tattooed my eyelids. He calls every article of women's clothing "dresses". He makes an obscene amount of noise in my house and adds (creates?) chaos. He forces me to be social. He makes me laugh every single day. He's one crazy dude and his mind can be a dark, tangled mess......

But he's always home.