Twenty-one Truths About Love Read online

  NOVEMBER 16

  6:15 PM

  Things that people have said to me this week that I don’t understand

  “That pass-interference call in the end zone was bullshit.”

  “Something something something IPO really took off.”

  “This is clog weather.”

  “The mill rate in this town is ridiculous.”

  “You realize you’re playing Nickelback. Right?”

  “You’d only last about two days on Naked and Afraid.”

  “What’s up, jabroni?”

  NOVEMBER 16

  9:25 PM

  Problems with being the boss

  Kimberly thinks she’s the boss.

  Steve should be the boss.

  I never wanted to be a boss.

  NOVEMBER 16

  10:05 PM

  My original vision of a bookstore owner

  Read good books

  Recommend good books to smart people

  Dine with authors

  Be rumored to be working on a novel

  What being a bookstore owner actually looked like today

  Basic accounting on an Excel spreadsheet that I don’t fully understand

  Asking three teenage girls if they could please not vape in the store

  Finding books for customers based upon color, size, and cover art

  Removing a half-eaten muffin from between two Nelson DeMille novels

  Telling customers over the phone when we close

  A hell of a lot of vacuuming

  NOVEMBER 17

  5:35 AM

  Things I’m opposed to that I wish I wasn’t

  Public nudity (mine only)

  Changes I would make to my appearance (in order of importance)

  Back hair

  Lose 20 pounds

  Lose 10 more pounds

  Full head of hair

  Smaller ears

  Six inches taller

  Replace missing pinkie toe

  Neck mole

  Eliminate hair on the tops of my toes

  Whiten teeth

  Items left off this list because I can’t put them on the list

  Penis

  NOVEMBER 17

  11:45 AM

  Problems with my penis

  I honestly don’t know how it compares to other penises when erect except for porn penises, which I pray to God are not normally sized penises.

  I don’t know how large a penis needs to be in order to be a satisfactory penis.

  I don’t know if different women have different definitions of a satisfactory penis size.

  I can’t trim or shave my pubic hair because that would imply that I care when I really shouldn’t unless Jill cares but I don’t know if Jill cares.

  NOVEMBER 19

  3:30 PM

  Reasons I quit teaching

  Kids didn’t love me

  Teachers didn’t like me

  Principal hated me

  Couldn’t continue to witness bad decisions at the expense of children

  Couldn’t stand one more minute of professional development that was neither professional nor developmental

  Couldn’t stand reading bad writing

  Real reasons I quit teaching

  I wasn’t a good enough teacher

  It hurt my heart to watch kids waste so much time and ability

  Reasons I became a teacher

  Understood the job

  Dad suggested it

  Always liked school

  Mr. Sullivan

  Summer vacations

  Teaching revelations

  Teaching is the only profession that you spend at least 15 years observing before trying to do it yourself.

  I wouldn’t be a teacher if Dad hadn’t suggested it.

  I still think of myself as a teacher even though I’m not.

  There will always be too many kids in need of saving.

  If the only reason I became a teacher was for the summer vacations, that would’ve still be reason enough.

  Reasons I opened bookstore

  Love reading good books

  Love browsing bookstores

  Thought it would be easy

  Stupidest thought I’ve ever had

  Owning and operating a bookstore would be easy

  Hardest thing about owning and operating a bookstore

  Everything.

  Also …

  Making a profit

  Managing employees

  Explaining to employees (employee) that proselytizing to customers is not okay

  Watching great books go unread and terrible books sell like hotcakes

  Reshelving magazines

  Teenagers

  NOVEMBER 19

  8:50 PM

  60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll of women given a choice of 6 things to change about their man

  His temper (29 percent)

  His friends (11 percent)

  His mother (9 percent)

  His sense of humor (8 percent)

  His physique (7 percent)

  His hygiene (2 percent)

  Jill’s comments about this poll

  “Their man? Seriously? How old is this poll? Or better, how old are the pollsters?”

  “60 Minutes and Vanity Fair are bizarre bedfellows.”

  “If you need to change your husband’s temper, you need to change your husband.”

  “Does changing your husband’s sense of humor mean giving your husband a sense of humor or fixing the one he already has?”

  “I can just hear it: ‘You’re leaning a little Seinfeld. I’d really like a little more Bill Hicks, with maybe a dash of Attell.’”

  “I guess if I had to choose, I’d change your mother, but more for your sake than mine.”

  “Those numbers only add up to 66%. Where the hell are the other 34%?”

  My thoughts on Jill’s comments

  She didn’t want to change my physique. Or more correctly, she didn’t list changing my physique in first position. I silently cheered inside until self-doubt overwhelmed me and I wondered if she was just holding back and trying not to hurt my feelings. Then I felt bad that my wife doesn’t like the way I look and is forced to pretend that she does for my own sake. All of this happened in less than a second.

  Who are these men with tempers, and what the hell does that look like?

  She noticed that the poll only added up to 66% way too quickly.

  Me not noticing that the poll didn’t add up to 100% might explain why the bookstore isn’t making enough money.

  Who are Bill Hicks and Attell?

  NOVEMBER 20

  2:20 PM

  Comments made to Kimberly today

  “Stop suggesting Bibles to the customers.”

  “Sharon’s sweaters are fine.”

  “You can go home early.”

  NOVEMBER 20

  5:40 PM

  Facts about Jesus that I told Kimberly to annoy her

  Jesus was Jewish.

  Jesus was a socialist.

  Jesus was a refugee.

  Jesus was anti–death penalty.

  Jesus was anti–school prayer (Matthew 6:5).

  Jesus was opposed to the accumulation of wealth.

  Jesus was silent on the issues of homosexuality and gay marriage.

  Jesus was a brown-skinned Middle Easterner who wore sandals to the dinner table.

  Jesus was a friend to prostitutes.

  Dan’s Laws of the Universe

  Scripture is the basis of all religious belief. It is also the last thing in the world that will change a person’s belief once that belief has been falsely cemented.

  There is an inverse correlation between a certainty of a person’s religious belief and their actual knowledge of Scripture.

  NOVEMBER 20

  8:10 PM

  Update

  Bill Hicks is a stand-up comic. Wikipedia says his material is “steeped in dark comedy.”

  Dave Attell is a stand-up comic. Wikipedia says
that “Patton Oswald and Bill Burr have hailed him as the greatest off-color comedian alive.”

  I know who Patton Oswald is.

  Now I know who Bill Burr is too.

  Facts about my marriage

  Jill is always talking about stuff that I know nothing about but wish I did.

  Jill was the girl in high school who had seen every Saturday Night Live ever made, sewed her own jeans, and was listening to punk before anyone knew what punk was.

  I feel like I’ve told Jill about every cool thing that I’ve ever done but she has barely scratched the surface with me.

  I was married to Jill for almost six months before she told me that she was once a fire spinner at Burning Man, which is cooler than anything I’ve ever done in my entire life but was an afterthought for her.

  There will always be a part of Jill’s life that will remain a secret to me because you can only tell your second husband so much about your previous life with your dead husband.

  Jill is cooler than I will ever be, which once thrilled me but now makes me feel so fucking insecure.

  NOVEMBER 20

  8:56 PM

  Numbers for the day

  Customers: 5

  Books sold: 2

  Toys sold: 3

  Other items sold: 0

  Estimated profit: $52

  Estimated profit after paying Kimberly’s salary: - $13

  NOVEMBER 21

  2:20 AM

  Stupidest List Ever

  Bank

  Liquor store

  Citgo

  7-Eleven

  ATM

  NOVEMBER 23

  10:30 PM

  Thanksgiving Observations

  When did canned cranberry sauce get replaced with twigs-and-berries shit?

  Potatoes and stuffing always taste better out of a box. People are just too damn pretentious to admit it.

  Jake prays before the meal. Earnestly. I expect him to be struck by lightning every time. I’m only a little disappointed, dear Lord, when it doesn’t happen. Amen.

  Sophia does not pray earnestly like her husband. She might be faking it completely. I think she thinks Jake is a dick when it comes to prayer.

  Turkey is the shit. It’s wasted on Thanksgiving. We shouldn’t save it only for meals eaten with people we don’t always like.

  Four empty wine bottles? Plus beer bottles? Who did all the drinking?

  How can people care so much about a football game when they hate both teams playing?

  “We don’t hate the players. We hate the laundry,” is just the kind of stupid thing Jake likes to spout off as if he’s saying it for the first time in the history of the world when I know damn well he’s heard it a million times on TV because it’s way too clever for him to come up with on his own.

  Jake was a lot more likeable when he was a kid.

  Someone needed to tell Jill’s brother that working for your dad’s company does not amount to financial wizardry or entrepreneurial achievement. It’s called nepotism.

  Apparently (or at least according to Jill) I didn’t need to be that person.

  When your wife is pissed at you for your “rude-ass remark” to her brother who she never sees but also desperately wants to make a baby, you will have sex that night despite her anger.

  Angry sex is not as unpleasant as you might think.

  Things that Jill probably thinks I’m a dick about

  Whole Foods rants

  Tipping

  Sneakers only

  Clarence

  Hatred of parades

  Her brother

  Not converting to Judaism (maybe)

  Peter (maybe)

  Jake (but maybe justifiably)

  NOVEMBER 23

  11:20 PM

  What I don’t understand about Jake

  He owns a sheet-metal fabrication business, but he definitely didn’t grow up wanting to work in sheet-metal fabrication.

  He always liked Darth Vader more than Luke Skywalker, even before we knew Darth Vader would kill the Emperor and save the galaxy.

  He really likes jazz.

  He wears a necktie to holiday dinners even though no one is making him wear one.

  I thought he was going to be a rebel.

  He seems happy, but he’s a tie-wearing conservative who works in the sheet-metal fabrication industry.

  The teenage version of Jake would like this version of Jake.

  Addition to Dan’s Laws of the Universe

  If the childhood version of yourself would hate the adulthood version of yourself, you suck at life.

  NOVEMBER 24

  12:05 AM

  Star Wars Stuff

  I tell people that I’m a Han Solo guy, but I’m actually a Luke Skywalker guy. I think Han Solo is kind of a dick.

  Darth Vader killed billions of innocent people then saved his only son. This did not make him a good guy. Just a selfish practitioner of nepotism.

  Chewbacca and the droids are brilliantly designed characters. They aren’t reliant on aging actors, so they can appear in Star Wars movies forever.

  Luke Skywalker’s plan to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt was the most ill-conceived plan in the history of the galaxy. Get everyone captured (including yourself) so the job becomes exponentially more difficult?

  NOVEMBER 24

  12:20 AM

  Jill’s sentences before falling to sleep

  “Happy Thanksgiving, honey.”

  “Sometimes it’s okay to just let things be. To keep the peace. You know?”

  “Tomorrow. Okay? I ate way too much.”

  “Jake seemed a little off today. Right?”

  “I missed the canned cranberry sauce too. That nuts-and-raisins stuff was bullshit.”

  “Good luck tomorrow.”

  NOVEMBER 24

  7:45 PM

  Worst things about Black Friday

  Working

  Jake’s not working

  It feels like no one else is working

  Stupidest customers of the year

  Kids everywhere

  Kimberly (also every other day)

  “No, we don’t gift wrap.”

  “No, we don’t gift wrap.”

  “No, we don’t gift wrap.”

  “No, we don’t fucking gift wrap.” (in my head)

  Not thinking of offering free gift wrapping.

  Best things about Black Friday

  Most money made since I bought the store

  It ended

  Other worst things about Black Friday

  Sales down 30% from last year’s Black Friday

  Steve caught an old lady trying to steal half a dozen magazines and had to call the police

  I hid in the office while Steve handled the whole incident

  NOVEMBER 25

  11:25 PM

  Revised List of Ways to Keep Jill from Getting Pregnant

  Fake orgasms

  Blow jobs only

  Number of actual beginning-to-end blow jobs I have received in two years of marriage

  0

  NOVEMBER 26

  9:25 AM

  How I ended up at Gillette Stadium

  Jake’s buddy Shep had an extra ticket.

  The Patriots are “only playing Miami.” (no idea what this means)

  Steve and Sharon agreed to cover the store.

  Mom made it seem like a big deal to spend the day with Jake and his friends.

  “Tony wanted nothing to do with this game.” (no idea what this means either)

  Tailgate attendees

  Jake

  Shep

  Teja brothers (2)

  Eddie the Norwegian (can’t tell if he’s really from Norway or if they’re just fucking with me)

  NOVEMBER 26

  10:55 AM

  This guy named Shep

  Works for a Medicare advocacy organization

  Does not strike me as the nonprofit type

  Cousin-in-law of Tony (who wanted nothing to do with this game) />
  Drunk within an hour of arrival

  Likes to verbally abuse strangers twice his size in Miami football jerseys

  Makes a damn good twice-baked potato

  “You don’t like football? Why are you here?”

  Made a reference to Sisyphus that I think only I understood

  “At least you drink beer. Can’t say the same for Matty.”

  Brought salad

  Doesn’t look like the salad type

  “Why are you always writing shit down?”

  I think he’s a libertarian socialist, which shouldn’t be a thing.

  A really likeable asshole

  NOVEMBER 26

  11:45 AM

  Why I’m always writing shit down

  “I want to write a novel someday.”

  “It’s all grist for the mill.”

  “My memory is shit.”

  Real reasons for lists

  Compromise at first with therapist because journaling sucks

  Finished with therapist but lists became a habit

  Thinking on the page

  Makes sense of things

  Putting things in lists puts them out of my head and lets me sleep

  Addition to Dan’s Laws of the Universe

  A habit is just an obsession that pretends to be intentional and controllable.

  NOVEMBER 26

  4:45 PM

  Things I don’t understand about football

  “This is a meaningless game,” but everyone wants the referee to die.

  Why does a football fan prefer to watch the game from really far away in 14-degree temperatures with no clean bathroom for miles?

  The tailgate food is very important, very planned, and very plentiful, but it is cooked on a grill that appears to have never been cleaned and caught fire at least once over the course of the day.

  Not “covering the spread” (whatever that means) can make an otherwise normal man punch a plastic chair at least a dozen times.