TIRE FIRE
First Time's Not The Charm
The following was originally written and performed for the March 2016 installment of the TALES OF OUR FOLLY storytelling show (more here). I’ve revised the text slightly to reflect the passage of seven years, the change in medium, and also bc I’m an incessant tinkerer and yesterday’s choices aren’t today’s choices.
Most things in life, you’re not expected to be perfect the first time you try them. Whether it’s the first time you’re hitting a ball with a bat, or having sex with another person, humans are wired to expect it’s probably not gonna go great, and what’s more, to accept that that’s ok.
Now, there’s a chance - a chance - that you’re uncorking some natural talent to share with the world that first time. But it’s a slim chance. Really, about the best you can hope for is that the rest of your team, or your sex person, has your back. They may be let down by how things went, but in the best cases, they’ll temper that disappointment with the understanding of “Well ... it’s his first time. He tried.”
(And just so we’re clear, I’m not here to talk about losing my virginity. You’re not ready for that magnitude.)
Now, if what I’m saying is the rule - first time out, it’s ok if you’re not great at something - then the one activity that’s definitely the exception to it is proposing marriage to the love of your life.
In theory, it’s the first time you’re doing it. And it’s supposed to be just perfect. And I suppose it can be perfect that first time out the gate, if you put some thought into it or, I don’t know, pay attention to your loved one’s feelings or wishes.
Also an option: hope real hard you’re uncorking some of that natural talent - like I said, there’s a slim chance.
Either way, the situation you probably don’t wanna be in is the love of your life says something in passing that mildly stings, to which you respond (or, more accurately, blurt) MARRY ME.
Let’s back up.
I was living in New York at the time, my wife (SPOILER) was not yet my wife, and not long before this story starts, we’d moved in together for the first time, into a little apartment in the Financial District.
Now, my girlfriend as she was at the time, is a very smart, very together lady, and had been hesitant about moving in together at first. Because moving in together can be the next step, or it can be the last one. The plateau. The move that says “Look how grown up we are, moving in together. Now let’s hold it here for the next five, ten years.”
She had zero interest in that plateau, so was reluctant to move in with someone she wasn’t engaged to. Totally valid. BUT. Prior to that, I’d had the singular experience of living with a serious significant other who not only wasn’t a good match for me, but whom living with only brought our bad-match-ness into sharper relief. So while I respected my girlfriend’s hesitance at our moving in together without being engaged, I was just as strong in my conviction not to get engaged to someone I hadn’t experienced living with.
But I didn’t like the idea of the plateau either, and in all honesty, I knew she was great, and marrying her felt like a matter of time; I just had to know the basics of what living with her was like. How we were together under one roof. Who put the cap on the toothpaste, or which way we hung the toilet paper.
So, we moved in, and all went fine. Little things here and there - socks on the floor, dishes in the sink, nothing incorrectible or insurmountable.
At the time, she was working in film production, so her hours were stupid-longer than mine, and would often crash out super-early to start the next day equally super-early.
With my evenings left open, I would go out drinking with friends, and by the end of the night, invariably find myself drunk enough to get real over a cigarette with whomever I was drinking, “Dude, she’s the best. She’s the best. The best. I’m so gonna marry her. No, shut up. Sh-shut up. Shut — I’m gonna marry this lady.”
Those shut-ups, by the way, were over nobody’s protest. Everybody knew I was gonna marry her. My mind was made up. It was my conviction it wouldn’t be more than a few months of us living together before I was ready to make my move.
And that bore out to be true - everything except the “ready” part.
So, it was May when we’d moved in, and, now it was August, and she had a rare night off, and the rarer energy to do something about it. We went to the movies, we went out for a burger and a beer, and a beer, and a beer, and eventually, a lovely night having been had, we called it a night, and grabbed a cab back downtown.
And in the cab, she asked me this: “Which of our friends do you think is going to get married next?”
Now, you may be thinking this was a loaded question, and who knows, maybe it was But, benefit of the doubt, we were a little buzzed, and she was making conversation.
She said she thinks it’s gonna be Cory and Betsy, who were friends of ours, but they’d been coupled-up less than half the time we had, so when she said she thought they’d be next, I gotta admit, I was a little bit stung.
(I didn’t admit it to her, I mean I gotta admit it to you, a group of randos nearly 20 years after the fact.)
How could she have said Cory and Betsy? How could she not think it’d be us? It had been on my mind enough to tell my drunk friends all about my intentions. Had I been so secretive about it that she couldn’t figure out what was on my mind? Had I been too covert in my planning and scheming which, to be fair, has involved no actual planning or scheming?
Cory and Betsy?! The fuck? (Sidebar: Cory and Betsy have been married for fifteen years now.)
“You know,” I said to her, rebuilding my jenga’d ego one word at a time “if I could afford a ring, we’d be engaged already.” She told me that’s a real stupid reason not to ask someone to marry you.
Huh. So. This is interesting information.
I immediately began to formulate a strategy:
Change the subject
File this away
Tomorrow, once sober, start acute, Ocean’s Eleven-level planning to pull off the ultimate wedding proposI’m fucking with you, it was go time.
No ring? We’re doing this. Right there in the cab. Let’s fkn go.
I used to wear an Irish wedding band which I’d had for years. So, it being the closest thing available in the cab, I took it off my finger, reached across to her, and said “Tanya, will you marry me?”
I don’t remember how long passed between my asking and her answering - it must’ve gone on and on - but she took the ring, she put it on her finger, and she said yes.
Right there in the back of the cab.
Nope. We’re not done.
You all know that the first rule of salesmanship is “take yes for an answer,” right? Well, where were you in 2006.
Because, since it was imperative that she know she means more to me than this $15 piece of sterling silver she’s just accepted, I go on.
I let her know that that was not the ring, obviously. If we were gonna do this - and we were gonna do this - we were gonna do it right. I wanted her to know the ring she’s just gotten is a placeholder. A placeholder.
Now, you may not think it, but when you’ve been drinking, “placeholder” is a tough word to reach for. Doesn’t seem like it would be, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t produce “placeholder.”
No, I said to her that she should consider the ring on her finger to be ...
… a Promise Ring.
Yeah. Like the Jonas Brothers. Or like 14-year-olds give each other so they feel ok about doing hand and mouth stuff.
Well. She looked at the silver on her finger like it was a rat, slid it off, and handed it back to me.
So, this was going great.
She told me if that’s the idea, thanks, but just the same no thanks. If I wasn’t serious, we should just stick a pin in this till I was ready to be.
“No no no no no! Placeholder!” Fucking there you are, Placeholder. You know you’re elusive as shit? “Not promise ring, placeholder!” Yeah, this pitch was heading in promising directions.
And as I watched all the grand designs I’d been making up as I go fall to dust, I took back the ring, and was suddenly very aware of our surroundings.
I’d chosen as my arena the back of a New York City cab. And I thought, this poor New York City cab driver, who’d had to listen to me fumble my way away from the finish line.
And then I realized this is a New York City cab driver; I wasn’t the fourth-biggest disaster he’d heard that night. Somehow, knowing that my abject failure wasn’t even interesting abject failure, made it worse.
Sobering silence as we got back to our corner, paid the driver, and got out. And somewhere in the hundred or so yards from the corner to our front door, I grew the conviction not to let the night end this way.
So I stopped her in front of our building. It was late, we were the only people on the street. And I got down on one knee.
Now. We lived on Maiden Lane, which, if you don’t know the Financial District, is three long blocks east of Ground Zero.
And our building - you know how sometimes they mash two addresses together with a hyphen between the numbers? Yeah. Our building was 9-11.
And we lived on the 13th floor.
And in front of all this is where I decided, on this state-of-the-marriage-arts night, to get down on one knee.
I offered her the ring again. I asked “Tanya, will you marry me?”
And she said “Yeah, ok.”
Now, before you judge her for a lukewarm response, please remember, in the ten minutes leading up to this, she’d been proposed to roughly sixty times, each time sweatier than the last.
So she said “Yeah, ok.” And she took the ring.
The rest of the night is none of your business.
The next morning, we woke up. A little hazy, a little hungover, and for the first little while - could’ve been ten minutes or an hour, I honestly can’t tell you - neither of us said anything about it.
Finally, she asked, “Are we gonna talk about this?” And I was right there with “Yep.”
And it was on. We were engaged. We’d made up for lost time and a couple of colossal missteps in the proposal - doesn’t matter whose fault they were, that’s behind us - and we did it.
We had gotten our asses off the plateau.
One last word about my incredible stealth in putting this whole thing together. Not long after my meticulously mapped-out back-of-a-cab shock-and-awe surprise attack had been sprung, she told me something:
Those nights where she would work stupid-long hours and I’d be out convincing my dumb drinking buddies I was gonna marry this woman? Yeah, she told me every single one of those nights - every single time - I would come home, slip into bed, and quietly whisper to her:
“Honey. Honey …
… I’m gonna marry you.”
Now, quite a few years later, we live in Los Angeles, we have this house, and this dog and this amazing ten year old, and I’m not saying things are only that way because I didn’t take the time and effort to plan that proposal … but here we are. And it turns out if you’re supremely lucky, all of this can happen even though I didn’t plan the proposal.
It was my first time trying something, and in the moment, I was an absolute tire-fire at it. I wasn’t lucky enough to uncork any particular natural talent for it.
But I was lucky enough to have someone who’d answer “Well … he tried.”