Episode 333 - Daniel Smith
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Guest:How are you, what the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck, buddies?
Guest:What the fucking ears?
Guest:What the fuck, Nicks?
Guest:What the fuck, uh, Navians?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:This is Marc Maron.
Guest:This is WTF.
Guest:All right, I guess right out of the gate, I should say congratulations, President Obama, on your second term.
Marc:And congratulations, America, for getting that president.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:What else is going on?
Marc:I am here on lunch.
Marc:I ran over to my house from the set so I could get this done.
Marc:That's where I'm at, though.
Marc:It's the last week of shooting.
Marc:I'm not freaking out.
Marc:I'm not freaking out.
Marc:I'm not anxious.
Marc:Anxiety.
Marc:Anxiety.
Marc:That is today's topic.
Marc:Well, it's today's guest's topic.
Marc:That's for sure.
Marc:My guest today is Daniel Smith.
Marc:He wrote a book called Monkey Mind.
Marc:It's a memoir about anxiety.
Marc:And as you could imagine, we have a lot in common.
Marc:Well, I would say the old me.
Marc:I don't know about you, but I believe that I have...
Marc:high levels of anxiety.
Marc:I think I'm a horrendously anxious person.
Marc:I don't think I ever properly medicated that problem.
Marc:I don't think I would properly medicate it.
Marc:That's just who I am.
Marc:I think I tried to medicate my anxiety throughout my life, alcohol, drugs.
Marc:uh cigarettes coffee very few people realize that coffee is a an anti-anxiety medication because you go right from anxiety to like i can't even breathe to uh i'm exhausted that's how coffee treats anxiety a lot of people are like hey what are you anxious you jumpy you sweaty you drinking a
Marc:Because I haven't entered that level of paralysis to where the anxiety just gets to such an amazing frequency that I sweat all the liquid out of my body and I have to take a nap.
Marc:But I talked to Daniel a bit about this, and I really think that my problem primarily is anxiety.
Marc:I was always a kid, and this was always embarrassing, and I don't know that I've admitted it here on the show before, and brace yourselves, but I had pit stains as a very young man.
Marc:Yeah, I'm putting that out there.
Marc:Yeah, there's a lot of shame involved with it, a lot of embarrassment.
Marc:Do you know what it's like to be in seventh grade and have sweat stains in your armpits when you get to school?
Marc:Do you know what that feels like?
Marc:I went through such a horrendous time with my perspiring when I was a kid.
Marc:I mean, I went to special doctors.
Marc:We got special shellac-based doctors.
Marc:anti-perspirants literally it was I was paralyzed with shame this was a on a list of things I was ashamed of in junior high but sweating sweat stains I didn't know any other kid who had sweat stains and I used to get these massive pit stains that would dry and then you'd have the white ring of salt around the arm it was that bad starting in like junior high school
Marc:How fucked up is that?
Marc:I was a freak.
Marc:I was paralyzed with embarrassment about that.
Marc:What kind of kid gets pit stains?
Marc:I'll tell you what kind.
Marc:An intense, self-conscious, constantly full of dread kid.
Marc:Me.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:Look out, I just shit my pants.
Marc:That's justcoffee.coop for reals right in that cup.
Marc:You can pick some of that up at wtfpod.com.
Marc:But getting back to pit stains, there was a series of doctors I went to with the problem.
Marc:I was given prescription antiperspirant.
Marc:It was suggested that perhaps I should have my sweat glands taken out.
Marc:I can't even tell you what I went through with that.
Marc:I would go out at night or I would... Even now, I don't have them anymore...
Marc:But if I play guitar, if I put a guitar around my neck and I'm in front of anybody within 45 seconds, I'm perspiring.
Marc:But I think when I was a kid, it was all anxiety based.
Marc:I remember having a tremendous amount of anxiety, just complete panic, dread and fear of what I assumed would happen, which was never good.
Marc:And I never medicated it.
Marc:I mean, I used to do a lot of blow.
Marc:I think part of the reason I did cocaine was for a Ritalin effect.
Marc:I think that I just get so jacked up that I would get my brain into a state of over.
Marc:What would you say?
Marc:You know, just over amped and I would feel normal.
Marc:I mean, everything was very clear and very intense and I had a profound understanding of all things, but I felt normal.
Marc:But anxiety can be paralyzing.
Marc:I mean, I've had all of it.
Marc:I have had tingling sensations in my hands and feet.
Marc:I'm getting them now.
Marc:That's how that's how attuned I am to anxiety that if I focus on something in my body, I have actually imagined things on my penis that were not there, but I imagined them into existence.
Marc:Like, I think that I shouldn't have had sex with that woman because now I've got a thing.
Marc:And then there's like no thing there.
Marc:So then I poke it where I thought a thing was.
Marc:And I keep poking.
Marc:I keep thinking about it.
Marc:I keep worrying about it.
Marc:It wasn't even that specific.
Marc:And eventually I would have created a problem for myself.
Marc:That's an embarrassing trip to the doctor.
Marc:I've had complete tingling sensations in my feet, in my hands, in my head, dry mouth.
Marc:I've gotten to the point where I've made myself sick from anxiety.
Marc:And again, never medicated it.
Marc:And I think I say this to Daniel in our talk, but I believe that I was never depressive.
Marc:I was always an anxiety person because I think if you let anxiety get out of hand and you go from anxiety to panic to dread to just overwhelming darkness will come down on you and that will feel like depression.
Marc:But the seed of it was panic.
Marc:fear, anxiety, dread.
Marc:That is what would manifest itself as depression.
Marc:When I've had depression, I was just overwhelmed with dread.
Marc:So you're asking yourself, well, Mark, you seem so healthy now.
Marc:You seem like everything's okay with you.
Marc:Like when I listen to you now, it feels like I'm not listening to the same person anymore.
Marc:You sound calm, balanced, grounded, and humble.
Marc:Well, then you are not hearing me correctly.
Marc:That was the thing with me is that the anxiety was all about what might happen or what wouldn't happen.
Marc:My anxiety would manifest itself in negative ruminations that my brain thought like, oh, my God, I'm terrified.
Marc:I got to do that thing tomorrow.
Marc:And then my relief for that feeling was, well, it's going to suck anyways.
Marc:I'm going to blow it.
Marc:The worst is going to happen.
Marc:Always the worst was going to happen.
Marc:That was my panic and dread.
Marc:But that was my also my spiritual foundation.
Marc:My spiritual foundation was thinking the worst.
Marc:In that way, anything that happened had to be better than that unless I was dead and then it wouldn't matter.
Marc:There's some practical self-help advice for you.
Marc:Don't do it.
Marc:To be honest with you, I think I medicate my anxiety with nicotine lozenges and coffee.
Marc:And if I'm really pressed to the wall, like if I'm really in trouble, I'll just, you know, sit myself down and masturbate.
Marc:that'll get me through.
Marc:So that combination, nicotine, caffeine, masturbation for the extra, you know, taking that serotonin, dopamine, whatever the hell that thing is that happens in your brain chemicals when you have an orgasm, nothing beats that.
Marc:Can I have that all the time?
Marc:I don't think that would be good.
Marc:I don't think that'd be a good way to go.
Marc:I don't like, even if they had the technology to that, you could just plug yourself in to something in your pocket.
Marc:That looks like a phone that made you feel like you were having an orgasm all day.
Marc:It would be impractical for a lot of reasons.
Marc:No one would get any work done.
Marc:And my podcast would be something like this.
Marc:Oh, Oh God.
Marc:Oh God.
Marc:oh god oh god hey oh god let's do this no no no oh no no no oh god yeah and that's i mean you don't really get anywhere with that you may feel good but you know you're not going to be popular really you'll just be that guy why is that guy doing that over there oh he's got one of those things you know the new orgasm box yeah well it's not very practical i mean he does he know he's he's in a coffee shop
Guest:Outro Music
Marc:You can bring that mic pretty close into you.
Marc:Can you hear yourself all right?
Marc:Yeah, I can hear myself okay.
Marc:Well, you sound pretty good.
Marc:I got a voice for radio.
Guest:You do?
Guest:Are you anxious?
Guest:I'm less anxious than I thought I was going to be.
Guest:Is that a question you get a lot?
Guest:Every time I do a radio thing, man.
Guest:Every time I do anything.
Guest:Or I get, you know, I hate what I get.
Marc:Is it an on-air question they usually ask?
Marc:Is it sort of an icebreaker with you?
Guest:It's the first question that they ask.
Marc:Now I feel like a hack.
Guest:We can take it back, man.
Marc:No, let me do it a different way.
Marc:You know, it's weird.
Marc:I would never imagine you're as fucked up as you make yourself out to be in your book.
Marc:Just by looking at you and seeing how you entered the house, I thought, this guy's got his shit together.
Guest:You know, I can hide it pretty well.
Guest:I'm also not anxious to talk to you for some reason.
Guest:I figured... You know, you do these radio things that are like 10 minutes long, and those scare the shit out of me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But this is like a conversation for an hour or so.
Guest:There's nothing...
Guest:You know, and if I do get anxious after a little while, I'll get less anxious.
Marc:But I mean, how is you're Jewish, right?
Marc:I'm Jewish.
Marc:Now, what is it?
Marc:How does Daniel Smith happen as a Jew?
Guest:Has it changed?
Guest:Gamalski.
Guest:Oh, I got it.
Guest:I think we went to Ellis Island.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My great grandfather.
Guest:And they were the name was Gamalski.
Guest:Gamalski.
Guest:Gamalski, which is from what's now Belarusia.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And ski, the suffix ski means from the town of.
Guest:So from the town of Gomol.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Wherever the hell that is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the story is that, it was the Godfather story.
Guest:It was like, they're like, oh, no, Gomolski, and they crossed it out.
Guest:Too much.
Guest:Too much.
Guest:Smith.
Guest:Smith.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:But then someone wrote to me, because I wrote that in a New York Times piece recently.
Guest:I did a piece about Jews and anxiety.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, well, that's an interesting thing to me that your book, Monkey Mind, A Memoir of Anxiety, is like, I mean, as a Jew, the anxiety thing, first of all, the one thing that blew my mind about your book was that I don't think people really assess it as a deeply problematic mental disorder.
Marc:Like, I don't think, I think that, like, everybody's like, I got anxiety.
Marc:I'm anxious.
Marc:I mean, you know, and especially as a Jew, it's sort of like, of course you are.
Guest:That's part of what we are.
Guest:Yeah, but they also medicate the shit out of themselves.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they get diagnosed far more than people ever have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's not like, you know, the 1940s or 50s where you're like, oh, he's neurotic.
Guest:I'm going to get psychoanalyzed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now you have to, in order to get the Xanax or the Ativan, you go to a psychiatrist and they're like, you have panic disorder.
Guest:You have anxiety disorder.
Marc:you have this or that now in your experience and what you've been through did you find that that was enough for you i mean do you find you know i i know that you say in a certain way in your book but see like i know i have anxiety and after reading your book and the reason i wanted to talk to you was that i don't i don't think that i ever was diagnosed with it or that i realized what was going on with me because my anxiety would get would amplify to a degree of paralysis that looked like depression
Marc:Like if you let anxiety play its course and you get overwhelmed by anything, everything, you know, you're exhausted.
Guest:Yeah, and depression, and the worst kind of depression I'm told is an anxious depression.
Guest:Like if somebody is catatonically depressed and they go through like electroshock therapy or they get their medication right just enough so they can feel again and they start getting jittery and nervous and anxious, that's when they kill themselves.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Like that's the most dangerous time is when they come out of the really catatonic depression.
Guest:Because you're catatonically depressed, you can't really find the energy to do anything.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But like a lot of times I thought like I was maybe, you know, diagnosed as dysthymic or whatever.
Marc:But I realize now that it's just panic and that the other side of panic is just sort of like exhaustion and dread.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's all big mush.
Guest:Of mental craziness.
Marc:But did you think that was it enough for you that this anxiety idea or was there a time where you insisted like it's got to have some root behavioral root or some legacy of bad parenting that like did you ever go the Freudian way?
Guest:I never really went the Freudian way because my mom was a therapist and she wasn't Freudian.
Guest:And I never really was very interested in knowing the narrative behind it.
Guest:I just wanted to feel fucking better.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't want to.
Guest:I didn't really want to know where it came from.
Guest:I mean, I have anger at my mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who who who's in the book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And who was really anxious for years, decades before she went back to school to become a therapist.
Guest:largely because she had gone into therapy to deal with her anxiety and was like, oh, I could be good at this.
Guest:And one of her shrinks suggested you can be good at this.
Marc:So she was smart and one step ahead of her therapist.
Guest:But her therapist pulled her into the profession, which I'm not sure the ethics of that.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know.
Marc:I think the ethics become vague with therapists now that aren't licensed as doctors and other things anyways.
Guest:But I'm only now looking at...
Guest:what role my mother's behavior might have played in my anxiety.
Guest:Just now.
Guest:After the book.
Marc:Just now.
Guest:After you finally get your act together.
Guest:While I was writing the book, I should say, is when I started to look into that.
Guest:Before that, I just figured, all right, I'm a Jew.
Guest:Everyone I know in my life, everyone I know in my family is anxious.
Guest:I'm going to be like, this is why I'm anxious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a religious thing.
Guest:It's a tradition.
Guest:It's a great tradition.
Guest:It's the Talmudic tradition to question everything.
Guest:Being uncomfortable.
Guest:Yeah, but I also didn't think that it was me.
Guest:I thought it was just a fluke for a while.
Guest:I was like, all right, so I'm going through this period of anxiety.
Guest:I'm feeling like shit.
Guest:I'm paralyzed.
Marc:But when did you first notice it?
Marc:As a kid, because my anxiety played itself out when I was younger as just constant dread.
Marc:Dread.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Dread.
Marc:Of what?
Marc:Of death?
Marc:Of anything?
Marc:Of anything.
Marc:Just sort of like, oh, I got to do that thing.
Marc:How come I don't have friends?
Marc:Is it going to be okay at this party?
Marc:Am I going to be able to... Just anything.
Marc:Just any task where I was expected to perform caused me dread.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's not, it can't be just plain old dread.
Guest:It has to be dread of something.
Guest:I mean, dread has to take that.
Guest:No, I think- Of failure, of rejection, right?
Marc:Of something like that.
Marc:Yes, yes.
Marc:Is there a longer chapter?
Guest:There's probably a lot more of, yeah, just of humiliation.
Guest:Yes, oh yeah, that one.
Marc:Yeah, and yet you became a performer.
Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, I think that part of the reason I became a performer was to force myself into situations where I would master this thing.
Guest:And also probably where you didn't feel anxiety.
Guest:In LA, I was just hanging out with a couple of friends from college who I used to do improv with.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I started doing improv, I had been writing for the first time and I was like, writing is miserable.
Guest:Writing makes me anxious.
Guest:You could always look back.
Guest:You could always look forward.
Guest:And someone's like, you should try out for this improv called false advertising.
Guest:And I did it.
Guest:And they let me in.
Guest:And I found that before performing, I was in the bathroom.
Guest:I had terrible stomach issues.
Guest:Diarrhea?
Guest:Oh, the worst.
Guest:Yeah, just terrible diarrhea beforehand and afterwards when I dreaded what I might have done.
Marc:Well, that was the reward diarrhea.
Guest:That was the reward diarrhea, right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But on stage, it was zen.
Guest:Even if it was fucked up.
Guest:Even if it was terrible.
Marc:Because you're present.
Marc:Because you're present.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So as a kid, so you come from what?
Marc:Middle class Jews.
Marc:Your mom's a therapist.
Guest:Long Island.
Guest:Yeah, just the standard.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:Yeah, it's like the standard.
Marc:Which town?
Guest:Plainview.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Exactly like it sounds.
Guest:And what'd your dad do?
Guest:My dad was a lawyer.
Guest:My dad died.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:He died when?
Guest:When I was in college, he died of cancer.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I remember you talking about that in the book.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But okay, so as a kid, when did you first start realizing that this was paralyzing you?
Guest:When I lost my virginity.
Marc:I mean, I know that story.
Marc:I mean, tell me that story because it was bizarre, and I think it would have been most other people's dream story.
Guest:Well, I was a nervous kid before then.
Guest:Like, I remember going off to sleepaway camp for the first time, and my parents dropped me off in their wood-paneled station wagon.
Guest:I have one of those, yeah.
Guest:You don't have one still, do you?
Guest:No, the family had one.
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Guest:They gave them out to Jews.
Marc:And then after the middle class Jews got done with them, the Hasidic Jews seemed to have bought them all.
Guest:They got vans, man.
Guest:I live in Brooklyn right next to them.
Guest:Those guys are bad.
Guest:I'm going to get in trouble, but they're bad for the Jews, those guys.
Guest:No, you're preaching to the choir.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:And I think they're all on welfare, I've heard.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah, because they're studying Talmud, so they don't work.
Marc:So not only do they not believe they're living in Israel, they don't believe they're living in Brooklyn.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:And they wall themselves off.
Guest:And they're always, my wife said the other night, she's like, why are they always out?
Marc:You go out at two in the morning.
Marc:They're wandering around.
Marc:What is that about?
Marc:though i don't know what it's about i don't know what they do they make me uncomfortable i stayed at a hotel in brooklyn that was owned by them and like i have this weird thing where you know if i look at them closely you know uh their features and things you take away the hat and the curls and the beard and they don't even look jewish to me like there's some weird i mean i i don't have a conspiracy behind it but i don't know if it's from uh you know intermarriages or or what but they i i don't know and they're they're they're i i hate to generalize they're rude they usually well they are
Guest:They are.
Guest:They're rude and they, yeah, and they have buses that just spew exhaust.
Guest:And did you hear about this thing about the circumcisions?
Marc:No.
Guest:They have a ritual where they, I don't know if all of them do it, but where when they cut the foreskin of a newborn, the moil will suck the blood out of the baby's penis.
Guest:That's bad for the Jews.
Marc:Any blood sucking or babies.
Guest:Baby blood jobs are terrible for the Jews.
Marc:Even if it's just partial.
Marc:And it means that they're doing it to a part.
Guest:And kids got herpes and died.
Guest:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Some kids got herpes from these rabbis and died.
Marc:But you're telling me that they, I thought you're not saying that they take the piece of the foreskin and suck it.
Marc:You're saying that they put their mouth on the dick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the baby dick.
Marc:And to suck the blood.
Guest:And suck the blood out of the baby dick.
Marc:And some kid got herpes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And died.
Guest:And a couple of kids have gotten sick, but it's not illegal.
Marc:But this sounds like Semitic urban legend.
Guest:No, there was just an article in the Times about how the Board of Health, I think it was, someone associated with Bloomberg administration said, all right, we're not going to take this ritual away from them and make it illegal.
Marc:No more rabbinical baby blowjobs.
Guest:But no, not that.
Guest:You have to have a consent form.
Guest:If you sign a consent form, you can let a rabbi suck your baby's penis.
Guest:After he cuts it.
Marc:You should, shouldn't that be illegal just across the board?
Marc:Well, I mean, I think there's an argument to be made that, you know, I mean, certainly circumcision should be a choice, but I mean, within our religion, it's a ritual.
Guest:I'm not just talking about, I mean, I'm talking about the sucking.
Guest:You're talking, yeah, I think that it's a- That should be illegal across the board.
Marc:Grownups putting their mouths on infant penises is generally, it is illegal.
Marc:Yeah, I'd say.
Marc:I mean, I think they found a loophole here.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Anyway.
Marc:But no, explain to me why you think they're bad for the Jews.
Guest:uh uh exactly the reasons that you say i mean they're they isolate themselves they uh they're often very rude i'm gonna get myself in so much fuck i'm scared i'm scared of the jews man i already got a bad email from i shouldn't say this i already got an email from someone having when after i wrote that piece for the new york times called do the jews own anxiety when i said no and this guy's like you're you wrote me a you're an anti-semitic you're a self-hating jew so what
Marc:i hate that criticism i'm like of course i am and that's what propels me you know this idea that the jewish tradition of of of uh you know uh of competitiveness yeah that the reason the jews are are you know uh you know stereotypically smart or industrious or in high positions or or managing money or show business or whatever is because of the uh the the importance they placed on education and on the the tradition of like we were always isolated we couldn't find you
Marc:We were always moving.
Marc:And I think, well, that's one.
Marc:The other is we're self-hating because we're never good enough for our mothers.
Marc:I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.
Guest:And wait, you think the self-hating is motivating?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah, I could see that.
Marc:Of course it is.
Marc:I mean, self-hating comes from feeling that you're not good enough.
Marc:And being not good enough is part of a Semitic expectation that runs within that tradition.
Marc:It's like, why didn't you get an A?
Marc:How come you couldn't be as good as what's-his-name?
Marc:Jacob has got a new job.
Marc:Of course, I'm being- Steven and Rachel.
Guest:But that's going away.
Guest:That's going away.
Guest:It's like now the Indians own that, I think.
Guest:Because when you were growing up, when I was growing up, we were probably moving past it.
Guest:We're talking about Philip Roth's generation when they were trying to assimilate and that whole tension about, do you go with-
Guest:the tradition of your family and with the old rituals and the old ways?
Guest:Or do you go off and make yourself American and individualistic and ballsy and gutsy and do crazy shit?
Guest:And that tension and wanting both things at the same time, isn't that the essence of Jewish anxiety?
Guest:Of that generation of Jewish anxiety?
Guest:Of Jewish anxiety as it's been represented that we know well in entertainment, like Woody Allen and all that.
Marc:Right, but I think so.
Marc:But I think that the legacy of that, when it's not tethered to trying to pass or assimilate, is just expectation, is that there's still a sense of entitlement to the religion, whether or not you come from our generation or not.
Guest:Oh, it's the chosen people.
Marc:But not only that, but you sort of insulated.
Marc:I mean, the example of the Hasidim and whatever industriousness that they are doing as a community within their community, they're almost tribal in how they take care of each other.
Marc:But with the Jews that are one or two generations away from assimilating or moving to the suburbs, there's still this sense that as a Jew, you're supposed to achieve.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But also, and I'm thinking about this more and more these days, that they still want to kill us.
Marc:I think that's never that far away.
Guest:I mean, I grew up on Long Island surrounded by Jews.
Guest:I went to fucking Brandeis University.
Guest:I live in Brooklyn now.
Guest:I think I know why the Hasidim trouble me so much, the Brooklyn Hasidim.
Guest:Because I look at them and I feel...
Marc:i feel like they're lesser i feel anti-semitic when i look at them that they're they're ugly and they smell and they got shit in their beards well i mean i do a bit about that i do a bit about that well my angle is this like you know i do have that i don't know if it's contempt but there's there's a bit of fear and certainly a lot of judgment but maybe some of that is is is actual jealousy that they you have tradition they have ritual uh they never wake up in the morning and say what the fuck am i gonna wear today no
Marc:I mean, there is a commitment to religion and to community that they do experience, but they've chosen to isolate themselves and pretend like it's mid-century 1850s in Poland or whatever.
Marc:But I think that the other side of that is that they're making Jews look bad.
Guest:Yeah, because if I was an anti-Semite in Europe, I would look at them and be like, they have to go.
Marc:Well, that's exactly what they did.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I know.
Marc:And they were the ones to some degree, but they were also the aristocratic class of Jews, too.
Marc:So it was an across the board thing.
Marc:So you thought maybe that Hitler should have negotiated with the aristocratic Jews and they could have agreed on getting rid of the chassids because they were annoying to everybody?
Guest:I'm not going to take a position on that.
Marc:I think that's very diplomatic.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:We're already in the soup, aren't we?
Guest:Oh, my God, man.
Guest:This was, who knew?
Marc:No, but I agree with you because I try to assess my own connection to Judaism constantly.
Marc:You know, I was bar mitzvahed.
Marc:I was, you know, middle class American Jew.
Marc:You know, and there is that thing where, you know, you learn your lessons along the way where, you know, there was this idea, like when you first realized that Jews were mafiosos or that, you know, I worked at a, you know, where, you know, you think about, you know, Meyer Lansky and Longy Zwillman, Bugsy Siegel.
Marc:I mean, that Jews were bad guys, too.
Marc:And there's that whole sort of like weird, like, oh, you know, really?
Marc:And then and then when I worked at a deli in Boston, you know, I worked I worked, you know, as this Jewish community.
Marc:But there were these old guys, you know, that my grandfather owned a hardware store.
Marc:I mean, they're the Jewish exceptionalism.
Marc:You know, for some reason, it still sticks in your head, even though, you know, I know a Jewish plumber or Jewish cop and there were Jewish boxers in the early 1900s.
Marc:I just I don't know where that propulsion comes from.
Marc:And I think that we crave it.
Marc:I think we crave the the association.
Marc:I think that at some point your anxiety as a Jew must have been a badge of honor.
Guest:Well, yeah, except that they kept pulling me back in.
Guest:Speak of mafioso, I didn't think that I wanted to hang out with more Jews, and I ended up going to Brandeis, which was exactly like staying on Long Island.
Guest:I didn't want to go there.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because I thought that college was about expanding your horizons, meeting people who are different than you.
Guest:And my mother, this is actually when I started to think about my mother's influence and my anxiety.
Guest:She said, you should apply.
Guest:You should apply to Brandeis because you need another safety school.
Guest:And I was like, all right, I'll just apply to shut her up.
Guest:And I applied, and then they gave me a full scholarship.
Guest:And I was like, all right, well, I can't.
Guest:The anxiety scholarship?
Guest:The anxiety.
Guest:Yeah, the Meyer-Schwartzbaum neurosis.
Guest:The nervous juice scholarship.
Guest:The nervous juice scholarship.
Guest:And we ended up going down to Georgetown University.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I wanted to go there.
Guest:And my mom looked at all... You know, those giant crosses that look like they actually have actual people on them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she's like, this is... And there were priests walking around.
Guest:This is not going to fly.
Guest:And they weren't going to give me money.
Guest:So I just went to Brandeis and it was immediately...
Guest:miserable and felt that I had gone because I'd somehow incorporated my mother's will for me like I had no I had no instinct I had no guts I had no balls I knew what I wanted yeah but instead I I was just like alright I'm gonna lie down and let mommy tell me what to do right and and that impulse has been throughout my entire life just let someone else make decision because I have no access everyone says like follow your gut I have no access to my gut I like if I feel a feeling in my gut about what to do my brain immediately starts
Guest:just chimes in and I don't know what it is anymore and questions it and I lose all access to instinct.
Marc:Yeah, my gut is... I've learned not to necessarily trust my gut.
Marc:That there has to be some negotiation between my gut and brain because my gut generally just wants to feed whatever is needed at the moment.
Guest:It just wants to put your penis in holes.
Marc:Yeah, that.
Marc:Metaphorically and literally.
Marc:So you can't always honor that because we know immediately after that it might have been the wrong hole.
Guest:But...
Guest:But the reflective instinct, I mean, I know it sounds like a paradox.
Marc:You seem to play all the different angles, and then you start spiraling.
Marc:You spiral.
Marc:That's my gut, but there's also this, but what if this happens?
Marc:So you're counterintuitive about your gut, and then the next option that reveals itself, that's not your gut, then you're counterintuitive about that, and then it just keeps cycling.
Guest:Yeah, you just start orbiting around like crazy, and you can't get out of the orbit.
Marc:So let's get back to the, because I think that what's interesting about what appears to me to be a boundaryless mother, which is not unusual within Jews, certainly.
Marc:But usually the smothering mother or the mother with high expectations who has no boundaries, then you just become kind of an appendage of theirs, an emotional appendage.
Guest:Her love was very powerful.
Guest:Let's put it that way.
Marc:Yeah, you know, sometimes, you know, I question, you know, love versus, is it love or is it some other form of anxiety?
Marc:You know, I think that, you know, in looking at my own childhood, I know my parents were concerned and they were worried, but they were not nurturing people.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Well, my mother was very, very nurturing.
Guest:Well, that's a different thing.
Guest:Yeah, and I never really experienced it as smothering, although giving an anecdote about college where I couldn't hear my own will from my mother's.
Guest:I'll give you an example.
Guest:I just was talking on the phone with my middle brother, David.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is he the one I met?
Guest:No, you met Scott, who says hi, by the way.
Guest:Okay, good.
Guest:No, David is a middle brother.
Guest:He's a film editor.
Guest:And he's experienced anxiety as well, but I didn't put him in the book because he's a lot more shy than the rest of us, a lot more reserved.
Guest:He probably didn't want the public exposure.
Guest:And my mother called me and she goes, do you think that David feels bad because you didn't expose his anxiety in the book?
Yeah.
Guest:She's like, cause you left, you basically left him out by not talking about his own, his craziness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, mom, you've been, that's, that's nuts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's nuts.
Marc:And how did she feel about her, your portrayal of her in the book?
Marc:She was freaked out at first.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and she, and she read parts of it to her therapist and her therapist said, you come out in this book as someone who struggled and, and who's intelligent, but who worked really hard in an honorable way to try to overcome their own suffering.
Guest:And I think she comes off better than me, possibly, in the book.
Guest:I think she comes off really well.
Guest:I hope she does.
Marc:What just struck me as interesting is that, you know, given the analysis that we just did of the generations of Jews who, you know, there's the assimilation Jews, which you're saying is the basis of...
Marc:of of the the the anxiety uh mode but you know your mother's generation is the the analysis generation yeah so they were actually enabling a uh a continuance of anxiety mode but it was no longer tethered to this need to achieve but yet we had this residual anxiety so then because i find the therapist you know if if
Marc:It's a racket on some level because they have a lot invested in you needing them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So there's very few times.
Marc:I really wonder how many times a patient or a therapist has heard, hey, I think we're done.
Marc:I really do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's one of those professions where if they actually achieved everything they want to achieve, they'd put themselves out of business.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or just to say, you know, just shut up.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Just stop fucking whining and give me 150 bucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They they the most therapists I've gone to have not helped me because they have no plan.
Guest:They've studied a lot of different shit and they have a bunch of different techniques.
Guest:But generally what they're doing is sitting there and listening and not giving any direction.
Guest:And a therapist that's going to help anxiety for me has to be a little bit more pragmatic actually has to have techniques.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Those guys, that's not bullshit.
Guest:Like the whole cognitive stuff.
Guest:I think it's the only real one.
Guest:For me, it's the only real one.
Guest:I mean, now I'm starting to understand a little bit more about how psychoanalysis could help.
Guest:But I don't want the psychodynamic because...
Guest:I don't want to pin my life down to a narrative.
Guest:I feel like if I make a narrative for myself, then you have locked yourself in.
Guest:I read a writer who was talking about how she doesn't want to write any more personal autobiographical essays because she takes her memories, which are in flux and which are contingent, and she locks them down into a single story.
Guest:And then it's all fucking locked up in her head.
Guest:And now from that point forward, that's how that stuff happened.
Guest:The way she wrote it is how it happened.
Guest:And it seems like psychodynamic, that might happen.
Guest:right but make yourself a story i know but but even you know memories that you keep in your head are are revisionism yeah but you can keep revising them you know like it's not official they're not like you know you didn't sit down with a therapist you're like my mom did this yeah my dad did this right and you know i don't trust i don't trust memory right no no i don't either i wrote a memoir and and you know you can't trust everything as literal truth because it's my it's my memory i didn't write everything
Marc:And also I think memory is more, I imagine because it's part of our human brain and we need to adapt to survive that, you know, memories, you know, they pick and choose, you know, how to best assist you in adapting.
Marc:So your memories are, you know, either you're going to be the winner or you're going to be the loser.
Marc:But what really happened very quickly fades.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And yet I guarantee you if this book keeps doing well, someone will go back and fact check every little thing.
Marc:But you were a fact checker.
Guest:That was the worst.
Marc:But wait, let's go back before we get to that.
Marc:Oh, should we go to the virginity?
Guest:The virginity thing, because like- Yeah, that's a good story.
Guest:All right.
Marc:Let's do it.
Marc:So I remember- This was the birth of your awareness of anxiety.
Guest:My birth of my awareness.
Guest:I remember going to camp when I was 10, and my parents- Now we're back on the wood-paneled station wagon.
Marc:Yeah, that's fine.
Marc:We can loop around.
Marc:Look, I remember when my parents first dropped me off at camp, I cried.
Marc:Did you just cry, or did you like-
Marc:I freaked out.
Marc:I got nauseous.
Marc:I felt like I'd been abandoned.
Marc:It was horrendous.
Marc:Did you stay?
Marc:I did.
Guest:My parents dropped me off, and I actually dug my fingers into the cushions of the back.
Guest:They had to use two counselors to pull me out by my ankles.
Guest:And my parents were going off to vacation.
Guest:They were on their way to the airport.
Guest:Of the car?
Guest:They had to pull me out of the car by my ankles.
Guest:Your parents just let them do that?
Guest:My mom was really upset.
Guest:My dad was like, we have...
Guest:We have plane tickets.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And my mom said, we can't do this.
Guest:And I basically, you know, I fucked up their vacation.
Marc:So you didn't stay.
Guest:I stayed.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I mean, I fucked up their vacation because my mother was miserable the whole time.
Guest:Worrying.
Guest:Yeah, worrying about me.
Guest:And I stayed for two weeks and I was miserable the entire time.
Guest:Like a sense of dread, of doom, of I cannot handle this.
Guest:This is awful.
Guest:And even though I knew that they were going to come back, I never had any fear that I was going to be abandoned.
Guest:Was it Jewish camp?
Guest:No, it was a 4-H camp.
Guest:It was like- So you were on Mars?
Guest:Yeah, it was on Long Island, though, man.
Guest:There were tons of Jews there.
Guest:It was filled with Jews.
Guest:And, you know, I could hang with the goys, man.
Guest:I mean, they're- No, no, I know.
Marc:I mean, I grew up in New Mexico, but there was- Yeah, I know.
Marc:I definitely went to a Jewish day camp.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And then I remember my first sweep away camp was definitely not a Jewish undertaking.
Marc:It was in-
Marc:Northern New Mexico.
Marc:They had guns.
Marc:There was shooting.
Marc:There was fishing.
Marc:There was horseback riding.
Marc:If I framed it properly, it would be anti-Semitic.
Guest:Have you ever shot a gun?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want to shoot a gun.
Marc:My dad's got guns.
Marc:They were around.
Marc:In New Mexico, there were guns around.
Guest:I feel like that would be great for me.
Marc:Yeah, you can do it.
Marc:Just shoot.
Marc:Why haven't you looked into that?
Guest:I've looked into it, but I don't like leaving my apartment very much.
Marc:Really?
Marc:I mean, I go out, but I- Well, I don't think you should have a gun, but I think there's places you can safely shoot a gun.
Guest:Yeah, I can go and shoot a gun.
Guest:And this buddy I'm staying with in LA, he said it'll take me to a range and shoot.
Guest:But I feel like the power would make me maybe feel better.
Marc:Yeah, no, I think it's a real release, and also it gives you a sort of a, there's a buzz to it, but it also gives you a deeper understanding of just how easy it might be to shoot somebody, including yourself.
Guest:Yeah, and you get to shoot, be like, I'm shooting, I'm a Jew, and I'm shooting.
Marc:Right, you're right.
Marc:It feels good.
Marc:See, now you just scored points with Zionists.
Guest:There we go, man.
Guest:You're back in.
Guest:I'm back in.
Guest:By the end of this interview, we'll see where I am.
Guest:So, so, so I, you know, I had this crazy stuff with camp and if a doctor tried to give me a shot, I would hide on the table and throw, just throw shit.
Marc:Out of fear of the pain.
Guest:Out of fear of the pain.
Guest:Yeah, I guess the pain.
Guest:Or feeling out of control doesn't hurt that much to get a shot.
Marc:No, it doesn't.
Marc:But it's still a needle.
Marc:It's still a needle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then when I was 15, I started working at this independent bookstore on Long Island called Bonmark Books.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And it was a crazy place.
Guest:It was run by this old couple and their middle-aged son.
Guest:The old guy was a retired English professor.
Guest:The old lady looked like Ruth Gordon.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:Did she talk like her?
Guest:She made wines out of rose petals and played the lute.
Guest:Like old bohemians.
Guest:Yeah, like kind of old bohemians, except the old guy, he just hated everyone.
Guest:Any kids who came in, he would try to push them out of the store.
Guest:So I started working there, and about a year into working there, this woman comes in, and she gets hired.
Guest:And it was mostly guys who worked there, sort of like geeks, comic book geeks, guys who love sci-fi.
Marc:And you were comfortable with this place?
Guest:I was very comfortable at this place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I felt really at home there.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was discovering books.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was loving just going around the stacks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was used books?
Guest:Mostly used books.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Some new.
Guest:And I had a really strong sexual experience there, I'm just remembering, where I was shelving the Harlequin romances.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you know how like when you're an adolescent, just the picture of something can make- Yeah, God, I miss that.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I really do miss that.
Guest:What it takes now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But thank God that's readily available as well.
Guest:When I was in my 20s, I had a psychiatrist who was like, you've been on this antidepressant for a while.
Guest:Are you having any sexual side effects?
Guest:I was like, I'm 22.
Guest:I have an erection right now.
Guest:Just by you mentioning that.
Guest:Just by mentioning any, you just said the word genital.
Guest:So yeah, so I'm working at this store.
Guest:What was the Harlequin thing?
Guest:Oh, so I'm looking at the cover of, I'm shelving the Harlequins and like alphabetizing it.
Guest:And it was like a bodice ripper cover with, who was that male model with the blonde hair?
Guest:Fabio.
Guest:Fabio and some really beautiful buxom woman.
Guest:And I was standing on like a stepladder
Guest:And thought I was going to have an orgasm.
Marc:Really?
Guest:At the age of 15, just looking at the picture.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:It was really powerful.
Marc:Now, how about as a Jew and speaking to another Jew, when did you become a compulsive masturbator?
Guest:As soon as I could.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As soon as I could.
Guest:I mean, and there was that great period that people don't talk about this a lot.
Guest:And I think they should.
Guest:There was a great period in a boy's life where you could masturbate and and have orgasms one after the other.
Guest:But there's no ejaculation.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's clean.
Marc:Yeah, it's clean.
Guest:And then there's one after the other.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Credible.
Marc:Yeah, and then there's that one day where a little bit comes out and you're like, what is this about now?
Marc:That's the worst day in a boy's life.
Guest:Yeah, it's like, oh, now it's making glue.
Guest:Now it's, yeah, yeah, and then you have to get in the shower, and the shower makes it sticky, then you can't clean it up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's the worst, that was the worst day of my life.
Guest:It's when he started ejaculating.
Guest:The single worst day of my life is when I ejaculated for the first time.
Guest:I used to go into pools and press my groin up against the jets.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:at camp and i'd stay there for like 45 minutes pretending that like i was just hanging out i was like i didn't want like i had a cramp yeah yeah the counter was like so why aren't you i was like i just have a cramp yeah my eyes are rolling back in my head yeah yeah yeah those are the best man yeah water was good water was great very good yeah and this is why this is another reason yeah this is the again the separation of the uh the jew and the gentile at camp yeah
Marc:the jews still in the pool for a specific reason yeah and the and the gentiles off competing in like yeah yeah like rowing why race if we got these jets it's the dumbest thing to race if you have the jets you can fuck the pool and you guys are what trying to hide the fact that you want to fuck each other you could fuck the
Guest:pool cleanly for an hour yeah yeah yeah and that's exercise yeah sure your body your tents i'm exhausted so i'm working at this bookstore yeah and uh this is not this is i'm just realizing this interview is not going to help book sales at all sure it is and i'm going to walk uh and um this woman comes in and she might i mean she seems to be really old right because i'm i'm 15 16 at this point but she's uh she must be in her 20s or early 20s and she's blonde and
Guest:And she's kind of overweight and she's got a sexiness about her.
Guest:I know this because my oldest brother, who I take all my cues from and everything when I was that age, sees her and he's like, oh, he's like, I would fuck her.
Guest:I was like, oh, then I would too.
Guest:But she was very strange and everyone in the store, they hated her.
Guest:They just thought she was a mooch, which she was.
Guest:Why'd they hire her?
Guest:Because they didn't do the hiring.
Guest:The owners did the hiring.
Guest:But the owners liked her.
Guest:The owners, I guess, thought that she'd be good.
Guest:She was smart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She loved children's books.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was really enthusiastic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She'd always, like, mooch off people's food, and she was gay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But she was married to a man.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And this freaked out, I think, the guys in the store because she was odd.
Guest:She was kind of like an other person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was the only one who was nice to her because I felt really bad for her.
Guest:And you're how old?
Guest:I was 15.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I felt really bad for her.
Guest:And she was sweet in her way, although she made me really uncomfortable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think she felt really alienated.
Guest:She had just graduated from college, I think.
Guest:The story she told me were that her parents were born-again Christians.
Guest:They'd kicked her out of the house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a Philip Roth story.
Guest:It's like a Philip Roth story, except like when she was good.
Guest:She was a goi, she was a shiksa.
Guest:And she loved women, she loved having sex with women, but she married this man because she wanted to have kids.
Guest:She always talked about having kids.
Guest:And so she would confide in me constantly and always say shit like, I can't believe that you're only 15, you seem so much older than you are.
Guest:Which was a real, it jazzed me.
Guest:I mean, it was cool.
Guest:It creeped me out a little bit, but it was also true.
Marc:But you were jerking off to her, right?
Guest:I was not jerking off to her.
Guest:No, I was not attracted to her at all.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:In fact, I was kind of repulsed by her.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I was kind to her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I felt bad and because there was a kind of nice sparkle to being thought mature.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, oh yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I am mature for my age.
Guest:Everything I thought about myself of someone who had some access to literature at a young age.
Guest:And always people say, you know how old Jewish answer is like, he has wise eyes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:His eyes are so wise.
Guest:Old soul.
Guest:Yeah, you have an old soul, which doesn't mean anything.
Guest:And it means nothing.
Guest:So anyway, this went on for a while.
Guest:She got pregnant.
Guest:And then had this awful miscarriage where she called me to come to the emergency room to hold her hand while- You're the guy?
Guest:I'm the guy she called.
Guest:I pedaled my bicycle over there and held her hand while cysts exploded in her uterus.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:And so I went through all this crazy shit with her and felt kind of cool about it because I was like, I'm a grown up.
Guest:I can handle it.
Guest:And also being an anxious person, I'm really good in emergencies.
Guest:Like I love- That's where you lock in.
Marc:You lock in.
Marc:You're free of self.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like being on stage.
Guest:It's like performing.
Guest:You're free of self.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I should have been a surgeon or something like that.
Guest:And shortly thereafter, she leaves.
Guest:She quits and she disappears.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And over the course of the next year, I start smoking a lot of weed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And grow my hair long and going to a lot of fish concerts.
Marc:Because of your brother too?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a lot of weed around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I would smoke weed with my brother's friends.
Guest:Fish concerts.
Guest:Tons of fish concerts, man.
Guest:So you miss the dead.
Guest:No, no, I went to about six or seven dead shows and Jerry Garcia Band and all that stuff.
Marc:Hippie Jew.
Guest:Hippie Jew, yeah.
Guest:Hippie Jew, eating veggie burritos in parking lots.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And one day, about nine months or a year after she leaves, this woman comes back into the store and I'm still working there.
Guest:And she goes, what are you doing next weekend?
Guest:And what are you doing in the future?"
Guest:I was like, well, I'm going up to upstate New York to go to this concert show with my buddy, Justin.
Guest:She's like, oh, I'm going up there.
Guest:I went to college up there.
Guest:Do you want a ride?
Guest:So we're like, yeah, because we could save money and use that money to buy more weed instead of paying for Amtrak.
Guest:So we took a ride with her and we had a buddy who went to college up there and we were going to stay with him in his dorm.
Guest:And she's like, so what are you doing tonight?
Guest:And we're like, oh, probably just going to get high and watch a movie.
Guest:And she said, do you want to go to a party?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, all right, we'll go to a party.
Guest:Grown-up party.
Guest:Grown-up party.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a gay men party.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:I don't think I'd ever met someone who was out as a gay man at this point.
Guest:I'm 16.
Guest:And so me and my two friends, we go to this party.
Guest:We pick up a lot of booze.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's a lot of weed at the party.
Guest:And we get really high and we get really drunk.
Guest:And she starts seducing me.
Guest:And you're surrounded by gay men mostly.
Guest:Surrounded by gay men.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is wild.
Guest:Yeah, when you've never been in that situation.
Marc:Never been in that situation before.
Guest:And you're fucked up.
Guest:And I'm just totally fucked up.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And we're having fun sort of, but it gets a little weird.
Guest:Like she does this belly dance for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like with the cymbals, like clang, clang and all that shit.
Guest:Puts on music.
Guest:And then she, I just go to take a leak and I turn around there.
Guest:She's in the bathroom with me and just kisses me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she smells like smoke and I'm like not into it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she's like, are you surprised?
Guest:I was like, no, no.
Guest:No, I'm not happy about it.
Guest:But I'm like, and I just don't know what to do.
Guest:Like, I'm also, I'm a really good kid.
Guest:I don't like, like I'm polite.
Guest:That's the Jewish thing also.
Guest:Like, I don't want to say no.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Marc:I feel bad.
Guest:That's why I didn't have girlfriends in high school really.
Guest:I don't want to hurt her with my boundaries.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Which is the worst thing.
Guest:So later in the night, she comes up to me and she's like, I'm going out and I'm going to go to a bar.
Guest:I'm going to pick up another woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm going to bring her back.
Guest:Do you want to stay?
Guest:And I was like, all right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I didn't want to, but I felt like I had to.
Guest:I had to.
Guest:But you had to for a lot of reasons.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:But what fucked me up most about it is that they then left me in the apartment for, I don't know how long.
Guest:With a bunch of gay men.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Everyone left.
Guest:Everyone left.
Guest:It's a strange apartment.
Guest:They went back.
Guest:They're like, they weren't invited to fuck the two women.
Guest:So they're like, they went back to the dorm.
Guest:Was anybody like, this is weird.
Guest:We got to see it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my friend said to me, well, this is the thing that screwed me up for months afterwards.
Guest:My friend said to me, you sure you want to do this?
Guest:And I was like, no, but I think I'm contractually obligated as a human male, American male, to do this.
Guest:They're like, are you sure?
Guest:And I was like, no, I'm going to do it.
Guest:So everyone leaves, everyone leaves, and I just stay in the apartment and watch the Cosby show for I have no idea how long.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I hear, at some point I hear, Dan, Dan.
Guest:And so I turn off the TV and I'm so fucked up I don't know if that's what's, if I'm really hearing it.
Guest:So I like open the window and I look out, I don't see anything and I go, I turn the TV back on and I hear it again, Dan, Dan.
Guest:And I go to the front door and I open it and there's no one there.
Guest:And then I don't know how much longer the two women come back and I have sex with them both.
Guest:And then I go back
Marc:What do you mean that you just go, what?
Guest:So they come in.
Guest:So there's the woman who I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who I'm not attracted to.
Guest:And then she brings back this woman who I still fantasize about.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this is 18 years ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was beautiful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like brown skin.
Guest:There's like soft brown, like wavy hair.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She takes one look at me and I don't know how much I weigh now, but at that point I weighed like 115.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I was a scrawny, big-nosed, Jewish suburbanite kid.
Guest:Yeah, with long hair.
Guest:At this point, I think with long hair still.
Guest:And she looks at me and the woman laughs.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:And then they just start making out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there are these bags of paraphernalia, like dental dams, condoms, rubber gloves, like latex gloves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who would you, why would you need, like, unless you have an open wound on your fingers, why would you need latex gloves to have sex?
Guest:So was there part of you that sort of like, what's going to happen?
Guest:I had no idea what was going to happen.
Guest:They start making out and then I have to, I remember this.
Guest:I remember that they both got naked and I had to have sex with the one I didn't want to have sex with in order to get to the one I did want to have sex with.
Guest:And it was just like, and the horrifying thing about it was that I was able to do it even though I didn't want to.
Guest:yeah like it was kind of like the way the way i've thought about it is it was kind of like raping myself yeah you're being a little hard on yourself i mean you know you were ready to go you were i was ready to go but i wasn't but i but i had no i was unattracted to this woman yeah that happens i know and that and yet you can do it yeah that's crazy that you can still do it i don't i don't know that i could now but you know with some effort you can pretty much fuck anything i don't have to be anywhere till uh let's see what we can let's do run an experiment controlled experiment
Guest:and uh i can get i can get another book out of that man doing marriage podcast your first gay experience my first gay experience right here live what the fuck indeed yeah and uh and so then i then i had sex with the other one and uh and the other one was laying that's the weird thing about threesomes i've only had a couple in my life but there's always someone just hanging out
Guest:just hang yeah yeah and you're all naked so you're fucking the one you don't want to fuck and the other one's sort of what touching her what are they gonna do like read a magazine they could be kissing them or something they can kiss in it yeah they can be kissing them i think she was just touching herself and kind of watching right right she was probably laughing at me because it was just oh yeah you were just struggling through it i was just struggling through it in my first time yeah i was bony and sharp angled and weird yeah
Guest:But I'm told I did very well.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:And the second one screamed.
Guest:That was nice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you did both of them.
Guest:I did both of them.
Guest:And nothing was inserted in you?
Guest:I don't think anything was inserted in me.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I did one of them from behind and the other one regular missionary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they called me a cap.
Guest:And I went back to my friend's dorm and I scrubbed myself with soap.
Guest:I tried to insert soap into my urethra.
Marc:Because this is post-AIDS or no?
Guest:This is 1995.
Guest:So hypochondria is consumed.
Guest:But there was tons of latex.
Guest:It might as well have been that, what's that scene from, is it Naked Gun where he's just like full body condoms?
Guest:There was so much, there was so much protection that it would have been impossible for me to get AIDS.
Guest:And yet for months thereafter, I was like, I'm dying.
Guest:And by the way, like therapists love AIDS.
Guest:They love AIDS panic.
Guest:No, AIDS panic in particular.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it's so easy.
Guest:You just get a test.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And either you die or you go on drugs or the panic's gone.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I was convinced.
Guest:And I also obsessed over those voices because I was so horrified.
Guest:I wasn't horrified as much by I was going to die of AIDS by the fact that I had ruined a first time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They're all ruined.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:But in my mind, they had this perfectionist tendency that like there should have been.
Guest:Do you remember the show Dream On?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a scene in Dream On that I was obsessed with after this happened where the main character Martin's talking about his first his first time.
Guest:and how nothing has matched up to that since then and he's like he's in some girl's basement and there's like kittens attacking his feet and she's you know she's 16 he's 16 and they can hear like the father's foot falls upstairs and there's like a yes poster on the wall and everything's beautiful right and I was like that's the way it's supposed to be yeah you create a memory so you're beating yourself up about it which is horseshit but there's a reason for this man no one talks about the loss of male virginity no one talks about how like most loss of male virginity is like um
Guest:what's that crazy movie uh that takes place in texas where like they bring the retarded guy to have sex oh last picture shows like the last they're all like that's how it feels internally yeah it's all last picture show like that's the mood of men losing their virginity but no one talks about or else it's the it's a sort of like you know it goes better than that it's not you know sort of like you know a bunch of people forcing a retarded kid to have sex with a fat lady in the back of the car right
Marc:Right, but that's how it felt like to me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, but I mean, there's also the other one where it's, you know, you're a hero.
Marc:I mean, that's a very dark, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:My first time was incredibly traumatic because it didn't go well.
Guest:Oh, did you, you mean you just came quickly or you couldn't?
Marc:I came quickly.
Marc:It took a while for me to overcome the fear of putting it in there.
Marc:I mean, it was like, you know, it plagued me.
Guest:But that's what I'm saying.
Guest:I feel like the majority of young men who lose their virginity, it goes, even if it goes well, it goes bad psychically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But do you ever, does anyone ever talk about loss of virginity?
Marc:Well, I really don't know how, I mean, I don't know if it's easy to generalize.
Marc:Like, I think if you were to tell your story with a slightly different spin, people would be like, that's fucking awesome.
Marc:You not only showed up to do it, and you didn't come too quick, but you fucked two women.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you know, from all stories I've ever heard about a man losing his virginity, you have nothing to complain about.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:And I was really happy for it once I started going to bars and telling stories to friends.
Guest:But like before that, for a couple of years, I didn't have sex with someone else until like middle of college.
Marc:Well, how much of a hypochondriac were you?
Marc:Because my anxiety manifested itself like that exclusively for years.
Guest:It wasn't.
Guest:My brother, the one you met, Scott, he has been a hypochondriac badly.
Guest:Like in the back of ambulance and having a heart attack where they think they're like, you're a schmuck, you're just having a panic attack.
Guest:But no, for me, it was almost purely manifested itself in the you ruined what was supposed to go a certain way and now everything else in your life is going to go badly.
Guest:It was that insane.
Guest:It was like there was a script
Guest:Okay, that you fucked up.
Guest:Yeah, it kind of feels like an upper middle class, middle class Jewish suburbanite thing.
Guest:Like, there's a plan.
Guest:You're supposed to do this, this, this, and this.
Guest:And you fucked up this benchmark.
Guest:You get into a good school.
Guest:You have sex with one Jewish girl.
Guest:You have sex with Rachel in her basement.
Guest:And it's lovely.
Guest:And her nose pokes you in the eye.
Guest:And then you go off and you're still friends with her.
Guest:You go to her wedding later on.
Guest:She marries a lawyer.
Guest:She marries a lawyer.
Guest:You're not married.
Guest:yeah but there's still something there yeah but a lawyer does good work and for a while for a while right right but he gets kind of fat and bald but you stay friends um didn't go that way i was obsessed that i was upset with this perfection thing that they're supposed to be for especially with first times like it's supposed to go well i don't know why i've always i'm losing that now i'm i'm i'm more broken now so happily
Marc:Well, no, but I mean, I think a lot of times, you know, just with age and wisdom that starts to relieve itself, you would hope.
Marc:So you're saying that from this event, what characterized your anxiety was essentially that, you know, your expectations were always dashed because they were really unmeetable.
Marc:That you thought everything was supposed to go a certain way and you would improvise that way immediately and it would never go that way.
Guest:There was a script.
Guest:Life was supposed to go according to a certain plan.
Guest:I might not be able to articulate that plan, but I knew that there was one.
Guest:And you weren't doing it.
Guest:Life wasn't doing it.
Guest:oh no i wasn't doing it exactly because i berated myself right mercilessly for that so how did this you know did you tell your mother about this and i told my mother so the so the woman uh um drives us home at so we go to the fish show the next day right oh so you still you still take the ride home so the fright well i have to because i still want to be polite and and your skin is like you know you've taken the layer of skin off from washing yeah i just scrub myself
Marc:The Brillo.
Guest:Well, the next day we go- The Silkwood shower.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I go the next night to the Phish concert upstate.
Guest:My middle brother David's there and his friends, and I just brag.
Guest:I'm just like, yay.
Guest:And I don't think at that point David had lost virginity, and he was my older brother, so he was like,
Guest:He was not happy about this.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:Because think about the story.
Guest:It's like my little brother showing me up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I go to the show.
Guest:And then the next day, she picks us up to take us home.
Guest:And in her mind, we have formed a relationship.
Guest:Because again, I'm not 16.
Guest:I'm like 30.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My soul is 30.
Guest:You're sure.
Guest:We're 80.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she's like, what we should do is we should get, we stop off at a rest stop.
Guest:You're a team now.
Guest:We're a team now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We're boyfriend, girlfriend.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Even though she's married.
Marc:And she wants to go get girls now.
Marc:So you had every guy's dream, really.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:She wanted to be your partner and she would get girls and you would have threesomes for the rest of your life.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That was not your plan.
Guest:I don't know what.
Guest:I know one thing she wanted, which was to send a postcard to the guys I work with who hated her saying that we had fucked.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:and that i remember now she's crazy person now yeah and now the panic sets in and so the whole ride home i'm but it's a different kind of panic now it's like a fatal attraction panic yeah right like now like i you know my boundaries are so uh uh fragile that now like i'm i'm permanently attached to a crazy person organs on the outside yeah it's just yeah she can there can be rabbits and pots in any minute yeah um and i and i'm going to be exposed to someone attached this yeah this crazy she's gonna ruin your life
Marc:Everything's going to be ruined.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're going to be AIDS ravaged together in some apartment with- No baby?
Guest:You didn't think maybe she's pregnant?
Guest:No, I never did think- Oh, but okay.
Guest:Before we go, I'm going to jump to a coda, which is the fucking best.
Guest:I'm in college-
Guest:And I'm living with a bunch of guys off campus, and it's the middle of day, and I'm watching TV and smoking a cigarette or something.
Guest:And I'm watching the local news.
Guest:And this is up in Boston.
Guest:This is like 200 miles away from everything.
Guest:Where is it?
Guest:Where is it?
Guest:Is it Waltham?
Guest:Waltham, yeah, outside of...
Guest:Outside of Boston, like 10 miles outside.
Guest:And I'm watching a local news and they start a segment about women who sell their eggs for money.
Guest:And they do an establishing shot of this woman pushing a kid on a swing.
Guest:And it's the fucking girl.
Guest:And she's living three miles away in the town over from me.
Guest:It was nuts.
Guest:And for a second, I was like, holy shit.
Guest:She's fine.
Marc:That's my kid.
Marc:Oh, no.
Guest:For a second.
Guest:And then I'm like, no, no.
Guest:There was so much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was so much latex again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I get home, and she drives me home, and I'm trying to contain my absolute panic about...
Guest:And I'm not articulating anything in my head.
Guest:It's just pure, raw panic.
Guest:Just a muddled mess of anxiety.
Marc:You're fallen.
Marc:Exactly, exactly.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:It's nothing more specific than I'm fallen and I'm ruined.
Guest:And I get home and she drops me off.
Guest:We live in this court in this cul-de-sac.
Guest:And I pick up my bag and I go inside and the house is really quiet.
Guest:No one's there except my mom who's upstairs.
Guest:She's upstairs.
Guest:She's on her bed folding laundry.
Guest:And I walk up and she goes, how was the weekend?
Guest:And I immediately start weeping, crawl into her arms and start and tell her everything.
Guest:This is 36 hours after I just got laid for the first time.
Guest:I'm in my mother's arms while she's rocking me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and and and and and chanting those that fucking bitch that fucking bitch i knew it you were raped it's not your fault you were raped which did not which did not help no and then the panic just mounts and then i go back to my room and from that moment forward is when the anxiety became truly acute yeah it was that was you were now married to anxiety i was now married to anxiety for the rest of my life oh god but i had a great story to tell
Marc:Yeah, no, I mean, there's definitely more.
Marc:Now, your mother's, like, her office was where?
Guest:Her office was downstairs in the house.
Marc:So it's in the house.
Marc:It's in the house.
Guest:So you see people coming over all the time.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I used to watch them out the window.
Guest:I used to listen through the grate.
Guest:There was an air vent right next to my dad's nightstand, and I used to, like, hang off the bed and listen to sessions.
Guest:And you were in college when your father died?
Guest:I was 19 when he was diagnosed.
Guest:He had had cancer when I was in high school.
Guest:He had colon cancer.
Guest:And they cut out a piece of his colon.
Guest:And he went through chemo.
Guest:He didn't go through that chemo, actually.
Guest:They were like, you don't need it.
Guest:And then we were in college.
Guest:And I was in college.
Guest:And I was a sophomore.
Guest:And I got a call from him Thanksgiving.
Guest:And they're like, the cancer's come back.
Guest:And it was everywhere.
Guest:It was like in his lungs, in his heart, in his brain.
Guest:And he died nine months later.
Marc:And how did that, you know, what did that do to your condition?
Marc:I mean, you know, to the family dynamic.
Marc:It made me feel much better.
Guest:I loved, I mean, I felt guilty about it, but I was happy to have this thing.
Guest:That he had cancer.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it sounds awful.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I was sad, but it was a real thing to be upset about.
Guest:It wasn't just like,
Marc:Isn't that that is a weird thing about because, you know, well, it's crazy, but it's like, you know, when you as somebody who is accused of being a heady person or being in your head too much, I don't know that people really understand what that's like to be crippled by an inability to be empathetic appropriately.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you can't.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's just because, you know, there's just too much panic going on.
Marc:And and and when something happens that you're forced to get out of yourself.
Marc:Not out of selflessness or out of just genuine human decency, but just out of crisis.
Marc:It's the best.
Guest:You're relieved.
Guest:It's the best.
Guest:I used to go visit my father in the hospital, and I loved it because I would do whatever was needed.
Guest:If he needed a pillow, I would fucking go to every floor to get pillows.
Guest:I would come back with like 10 pillows.
Guest:If he needed the nurse to do something, I loved having a mission.
Guest:I loved having something dramatic.
Guest:I remember in high school, a friend's father was diagnosed with lung cancer and died.
Guest:And I felt jealous of the kid.
Guest:I was like, I wish someone in my family would get sick because there was no reality to death.
Guest:I didn't know what that meant.
Guest:I didn't know what it meant until I was touching my father on his deathbed and saw him take his last breath.
Guest:That's when I was like, oh, wow, this fucking shit's real.
Guest:Did grief engage?
Guest:I don't know if I grieved until later.
Guest:I think the grief was...
Guest:There's this David Foster Wallace story about this guy writing from after he's killed himself, like from the afterlife, about the horror of living, being unable to live authentically.
Guest:And that's what it felt like.
Guest:It was like I couldn't grieve without watching myself grieve.
Guest:And knowing that at the age of 20, the grieving was going to make me look a certain way to people, maybe more attractive to girls.
Guest:It would give me the ability to isolate myself and go to the library and read without people thinking that I was being a dick.
Guest:I had trouble actually experiencing what felt to me like authentic grief.
Marc:Now, was there ever a point during this that, as an intelligent person, where you were concerned about being, for yourself, not to others, but to be that aware of how this would play out and how you looked, was there ever a point where you're like, I'm a fucking sociopath?
Guest:No.
Marc:Like this is a problem.
Marc:Why don't I have an emotional range that would enable me to function like a person who cares about things other than myself?
Guest:I wish it had been that intelligent of a self-inquiry.
Guest:It was mostly social anxiety and dread and anger, like a lot of anger.
Guest:At what?
Guest:At the world for not recognizing me, for women not loving me, as being awesome, as awesome as my mommy said I was.
Guest:I don't really know.
Guest:Does an adolescent, a teenager know why they're angry?
Marc:I don't think I did.
Guest:Maybe I wasn't nearly self-reflective enough at that age.
Guest:I just felt locked into my own head.
Marc:Well, from my own experience that if I really track my anger, it was really because of my parents' fear, which was not necessarily love, I was denied a certain ability to develop an authentic sense of self.
Marc:So like, you know, in the sense that, you know, the boundaries were so blurred and there was not a lot of discipline or guidance.
Marc:So, you know, what I was angry about is what you're talking about.
Marc:It's sort of like if your parents or your mother, you know, doesn't actively say you're your own guy now, either emotionally or literally.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, you sort of incomplete, you know, you don't, you know, there's no, there's no separation.
Marc:And if your mother's a nut job or selfish or whatever, you know, just that fucking anger of these needs not being met anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When you don't even know how to identify that.
Guest:But you didn't, I doubt you articulated all that to yourself as, as, as cogently as you did right now.
Guest:You probably were just pissed and acted out.
Marc:Yeah, no, absolutely.
Marc:Yeah, I was angry at them because, you know, I needed to, you know, I wanted different parents.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I was, right, right.
Guest:And I was angry at my mother, but I never really blamed her.
Guest:Like, if there was going to be someone at fault, it was going to be me.
Guest:Because I saw that my mother actually did try to get me to separate, like do things to separate.
Guest:And that my inability to feel separate was because of me, was temperamental.
Marc:Well, let's get to where, you know, like, where did the shit hit the fan?
Marc:I mean, so, you know, you become, you know, you go to college, and I assume that was, you know, a chore.
Guest:Well, that was the second sort of grand flourishing of my panic was when I went to college.
Guest:But anybody has that, right?
Guest:I don't think to the extent that I did.
Guest:The thing about that is that I think a lot of kids who go to college experience a rush of anxiety.
Guest:Well, freedom, but also you have to shit next to people.
Guest:And freedom is terrifying.
Guest:Freedom is anxiety, as a lot of people have said.
Guest:And so a lot of people go to college for the first time.
Guest:They might not act it, but they're terrified.
Guest:Yeah, I was terrified.
Marc:Because then all of a sudden you have to construct a self that functions in that paradigm.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's awful.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's awful.
Guest:And, and I, and I, and I think it's an epidemic and there's epidemic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You would, but, but I think that's also, you know, I'd like to think that too, but I think that certain people who are going to be listening as talking about this stuff, it's like, Jesus Christ, these guys are overthinking everything.
Marc:Well, fuck them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's who I am.
Marc:Well, how long did it take you to get there?
Marc:I mean, I'm in the same place.
Marc:I'm like, look, this is it, man.
Marc:I mean, this is who I am.
Marc:And I do the best I can with what I got.
Marc:But I mean, just because you guys aren't fully aware of everything that's going on inside of you at every moment.
Guest:Just the past six months is when I started.
Guest:My wife...
Guest:My wife has trouble with my anxiety.
Guest:Jew?
Guest:Understand it.
Guest:Jew.
Guest:Oh, how'd you like that?
Marc:How do you look at that?
Marc:Look at that.
Marc:It all ended up on top for you.
Guest:But she looks like a shick son.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:So I got the best.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But she has trouble with my anxiety and I get self-protective about it.
Guest:I get defensive.
Guest:Like, no, this is, if you dislike my anxiety, you dislike me.
Guest:Because this is part of who I am.
Guest:This is part of the identity.
Guest:But it's only been in the last six months that I could say, you know, fuck you.
Guest:This is, yeah, I overthink things and this is what it is.
Marc:Yeah, but see, like, as a person who is recovering from this illness, which is this anxiety, this paralyzing anxiety, not only defines who you are as an intellectual and driven you, that at some point you have to realize, like, this has a negative effect on other people who I love.
Marc:Well, yeah, you can't love when you're really anxious.
Marc:So that in and of itself, I mean, that becomes sort of like, I need to get there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, the woman I'm married to, I had been with her when I was in my early 20s when I graduated from college.
Guest:She was living in New York and she was friends with my brother's wife.
Guest:They worked together.
Guest:And I was, I just started working for the Atlantic Monthly Magazine when they were in Boston.
Guest:And I came down for a party.
Guest:And that was like the third part of anxiety when I was, right after college, I was a mess again.
Guest:Because again, transition.
Marc:We can go back to college before we get to the woman.
Guest:I was talking about love, I thought.
Marc:No, yeah, but I mean, but let's, you know, let's break it.
Marc:Because I'd like to get an arc into how, you know, we're both not fucking contemptible, you know, self-involved Jews.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I told you I didn't want to pin my life down to a narrative.
Marc:No, I know, but we would like transcendence for the sense of, you know, for the people that, you know, who might be interested in relate to what you're saying, I'd like to offer some hope at the end of this thing.
Guest:I'd be nice for them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is there a hope?
Guest:Well, yeah, there is.
Guest:Like, I don't, I mean, you say that anxiety is good for, like, for motivating someone as an intellectual or as a writer, as an artist.
Guest:If it doesn't cripple you.
Guest:If it doesn't cripple you.
Guest:It's a fine line.
Guest:But I do better writing when I'm not anxious.
Guest:I've learned to work through the anxiety because you can't not otherwise you're not going to make money and pay your rent so what happens at college in college I get to college and I'm absolutely paralyzed again grabbing the chair again grabbing the seat of the station wagon except at this point I know I can't I know I can go home my mother says I can come home if I want to but I know at home I'll be miserable
Guest:in addition to humiliated.
Guest:So it would be a worse deal.
Guest:But again, I call my mother from the pay phone outside the student center every day crying.
Guest:I'm trying to hide the tears.
Guest:I'm trying to hide my popping Xanax from my roommates.
Guest:I get really hostile toward people.
Guest:If I come across someone there and they're like, how you doing?
Guest:I don't know how you doing.
Guest:Why you fucking asking me that?
Guest:Yeah, I know that one.
Guest:Yeah, I know you do.
Guest:And...
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, what do you mean by that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember someone said later on when I joined the improv troupe, a guy in the troupe, he said to me, so are you intimidated?
Guest:I go, not by you.
Guest:And they were like, whoa, the guy's so angry.
Guest:I'm a mess.
Guest:I'm calling home every day and I'm making my mother miserable because she's in a bad spot.
Guest:She's my mom, but she's also a therapist, but she can't be my therapist.
Guest:It's unethical.
Guest:But being my mom is not using the skills that she has.
Guest:So then then I apply to start writing a column for the college newspaper and I get it like a humor column.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And immediately, immediately my anxiety goes away.
Guest:Like I feel confident.
Guest:I feel good.
Guest:I feel wonderful.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:It was like it was like a switch.
Guest:I had done nothing except found some some channel.
Guest:Something you like doing.
Guest:I hated doing it.
Guest:I still disliked it, but it was still something.
Guest:It's something that I valued, but I didn't like doing it.
Guest:I mean, I liked coming up with jokes, but everyone else would dash off their column.
Guest:It was Brandeis University College newspaper.
Guest:Twelve people read it.
Guest:I would spend a full 10 days conceiving of, writing, revising 10 times, neglecting my work in classes, doing this thing, and it made me miserable.
Marc:Have you looked at those columns lately?
Guest:Yeah, they're not bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're not bad.
Guest:I mean, it's juvenilia, but there's some good jokes.
Guest:I did one about people throwing up in the dorms.
Guest:I did one against fraternities, you know, like the standard shit.
Guest:So there was like a pattern developed to the anxiety.
Guest:So after that, I was okay.
Guest:I felt better.
Guest:I still was angry at people and still yell at them if they talked to me.
Guest:But then I went home over the summer and I had nothing to direct my energy into.
Guest:And I was, again, miserable and anxious.
Guest:And then I'd go back to school.
Guest:And for a time, I'd be miserable and anxious.
Guest:And then I would feel and then instantly I would feel better.
Guest:So this sort of seasonal thing took over.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And then I stopped writing and joined this troupe.
Guest:The improv troupe.
Guest:The improv troupe.
Guest:And they were, you know, when you say I was in an improv troupe in college, it sounds like I was in an acapella group.
Guest:It was like a lot of people do it.
Guest:No, I know what it is.
Guest:But there were serious performers in there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like Brandeis actually has a good theater program.
Guest:And there were half of them were improv guys who hated theater.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Who just liked being funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And half of them were theater people.
Marc:Didn't even go on to being funny people professionally.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, a friend of mine, Benari Poulton, who's here in L.A., is a really great comic.
Guest:And another friend of mine, Mary Faber, who was on Broadway and is now out here auditioning for pilots and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, a few of them went on.
Guest:And...
Guest:That was great for the anxiety.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:It was incredible.
Guest:I mean, it was terrible for the diarrhea.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's not unusual, though, necessarily.
Marc:For a performer.
Guest:Performer's diarrhea?
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I don't get it.
Marc:I never got that.
Guest:Really?
Marc:No.
Marc:I never had physical manifestations of stage fright or anything else.
Marc:Do you still get anxious before you get on stage?
Marc:I don't really.
Marc:It depends how prepared I am or what I want to do out there.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:If I know what I got to do, then I don't get that anxious.
Marc:At any given point in time, I'm working for an hour or so of stuff that I like doing.
Marc:But like, like tomorrow night I got to go on and I'm, you know, I want to do new stuff and explore some things.
Marc:So yeah, I'm anxious.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was going to ask you about that.
Guest:Like if you, if you're developing new material, cause I'm thinking about turning the, the book into a, into a stage show because I miss, I miss being up there.
Guest:And the idea of going up with material that I don't have locked in now having written for 10, 12 years scares the shit out of me.
Guest:I don't know how to do it anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I'm sure I do to some extent, but I don't want to just make an outline of the stories.
Yeah.
Guest:I know, but I get an image of the men's room in the theater and how much time I'm going to spend in there before it.
Guest:And I was like, what's the point?
Guest:As a writer, I can just, if I have diarrhea, I can just go down the hall and have my own stuff.
Guest:Yeah, I don't have to be in there and it's sort of like showtime.
Guest:Yeah, like why do that?
Marc:Because you love it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But no, but so being up there, being up there, you're right.
Guest:It shuts off the past and shuts up the future, shuts off the future.
Guest:They say that anxiety is future oriented and that depression is past oriented.
Guest:But my anxiety has always been tied to regret.
Guest:I shouldn't have done that if I hadn't have done that.
Guest:Yeah, you like to beat the shit out of yourself.
Guest:I'm so good at being the shit out of myself.
Guest:Yeah, it's bad.
Guest:So good at it.
Guest:And the zen of being in the moment, like anything that allows you to do that is fabulous.
Guest:So I meditate now as much as I can.
Guest:But I don't do that either as much as I should, even though I know it helps.
Marc:Yeah, I do.
Marc:I used to do a bit about that, about how self-aware meditation, where someone tells you you've got to breathe from your stomach.
Guest:and the first time i meditate i'm like you know it was like i sit down it's quiet and i just started to breathe and then i started to say how the fuck do you breathe from your stomach yeah yeah constantly doing it i don't think i'm doing it but zen monks do that man like they like check their postures all the time and worry about their posture and do you stop have you stopped doing it yeah i don't i don't do anything yeah so so in college once i started i don't do you don't do anything
Marc:No, I try to run and exercise and eat a lot of nicotine and drink a lot of coffee.
Guest:Coffee is bad, but I do it too.
Guest:But performing helped me.
Guest:Yeah, it really helped me.
Guest:And then I left college and life took over and I descended into anxiety again because I didn't...
Guest:And college is easy, man.
Guest:You write fucking papers.
Guest:Yeah, it was not easy for me.
Guest:College was horrendous.
Guest:It was horrendous, even though you know what you have to do.
Marc:I still don't think I could write a paper.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, I was very good at writing, you know, 10 pages of opening paragraphs.
Guest:The opening things are great.
Guest:It's so much fun writing beginnings.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's why I just kept writing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I never get to a point or.
Guest:You should be an aphorist.
Marc:Yeah, I should be.
Marc:You're absolutely right.
Marc:I've got journals and journals.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Aphorism.
Guest:Do it, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is there a market for that?
Guest:It's not big money in aphorisms.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So let's get to where the turn of the screw was that made you change.
Yeah.
Guest:I had started working at The Atlantic, and I really wanted to write.
Guest:I hadn't written since that column in college.
Guest:And I had read an article about electroconvulsive therapy, about electroshock.
Guest:And at 21, I had no idea that they were still doing it.
Guest:Not only that they were still doing it, but that A, they were doing it a lot.
Guest:B, that it was considered to be a really useful form of therapeutics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And C, excuse me, that there were people who really hated it and thought it was awful and evil.
Guest:So I started looking into it just on my own and, again, found something to channel my anxiety into and felt not anxious.
Guest:At this point, I wasn't doing anything for my anxiety.
Guest:I was just sort of hopping around from thing to do to thing to do and periodically feeling miserable.
Guest:And so I just worked on this.
Guest:And I came to the managing editor, a really brilliant editor and writer named Colin Murphy.
Guest:And I said, who I was intimidated by.
Guest:And I was like, I have this idea.
Guest:And he's like, that's actually...
Guest:like surprise, he was like, that's actually a really good idea.
Guest:Go write a proposal.
Guest:So I went off and I interviewed all these people and I felt like a real journalist, like, you know, a guy with a hat on.
Marc:The historical arc of electroconvulsive therapy and why it went out of time.
Guest:The historical arc, why people still protest against it, which types of people protest against it, what is the science of it, why is it that electroconvulsive therapy is still so controversial even though the psychiatric establishment basically thinks of it as this lifesaver.
Guest:and so I wrote this proposal and learned how to write through the process and then they agreed to let me do it right so the Atlantic Monthly was letting this 21 year old write a feature article and I went off and I spent all my nights all my days all my nights and rather all my weekends because I was still working full time doing this at the same time I'm falling in love with the woman who's now my wife she moves up to live with me in Boston I published the article when I'm 23 I think and uh
Guest:It's like 9000 words.
Guest:Huge thing.
Guest:And there's a huge fear.
Guest:It was like the beginning of Internet commentary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So people start going online saying Daniel Smith's article is going to ruin the lives of people by telling them that electroshock is good.
Guest:Whereas really electroshock destroys people's memories, leads to suicide.
Guest:Daniel Smith is evil.
Guest:He's an idiot.
Guest:Here are all the things he got wrong.
Guest:He should go back to school.
Guest:And I descended and people were calling.
Guest:People were protesting online and in letters.
Guest:And I just descended into horror because all I wanted was a fucking clip.
Guest:You're a pariah.
Guest:I was a pariah.
Guest:An international pariah.
Guest:It was like writing about abortion.
Guest:i mean i had no idea that i knew but i didn't really i wasn't prepared yeah and the guy who was running the magazine was a guy named mike kelly who was the first journalist to die in iraq yeah he used to write for the new yorker and he's like ah he's like this this great like uh this this kind of bruiser of an irish guy really cool guy and he's like don't worry about it man he's like he goes i wrote this piece in the new yorker and everyone thought i was a i was a racist asshole and i know i'm not and uh and so don't worry about it that didn't help at all
Guest:So I was just I was a wreck and the anxiety so consumed me that I couldn't be like a good boyfriend.
Guest:My girlfriend had moved in with me and and having my anxiety visible to her was horrifying.
Guest:I felt like what symptoms exactly.
Guest:Just being paralyzed, like being being weak in front of her, being afraid to actually confront all this coming home, being distracted.
Guest:You know, that glassy look in your eyes where you're sort of like you're locked in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also she tried to help you and you said you can't help me.
Guest:And then I would get angry at her for not being able to help me.
Guest:Or we'd go to a movie and I'd have to leave because I had a panic attack, right?
Guest:So I felt like a pussy.
Guest:And she wanted to help me and she wanted to love me and she couldn't.
Guest:And so I hated for that and I hated her for seeing me like that.
Guest:There's no winning in those situations.
Guest:There's no winning.
Marc:The battle is all within you.
Marc:So you push people to the sidelines of watching you destroy yourself.
Guest:It has nothing to do with her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it really is, it makes it absolutely impossible to be empathic or to love anyone when you're that anxious.
Guest:It's like, I keep thinking it's like that guy in the diving bell and the butterfly.
Guest:Like, it's just that syndrome of being locked into your own head.
Guest:Yeah, I know it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because in the heart, that's the horrible thing about it.
Marc:It's the worst.
Marc:Because people are going to take the hit for you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, it's like, you know, fuck you, help me.
Marc:And then they try to help you.
Marc:It's like, that didn't fucking help.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You don't know how to help me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I love you.
Guest:I love you.
Guest:Help me.
Guest:Help me.
Guest:Get out of my face.
Guest:You're not helping.
Guest:I'm humiliated.
Guest:I don't want you.
Guest:And so I kept doing that.
Guest:I'd be like, I really, I love you so much.
Guest:I just want to be with you.
Guest:And then the next week or the next day, I'd be like, I'm not sure I want to be in this relationship.
Marc:Yeah, because you don't like, you know, like even if you want that to be a reality, your brain will not enable it.
Guest:yeah and i was too big of a pussy to just to let her go right dude that's the right thing so you just you just melted it down i just waited yeah i waited until she dumped me and then you went see i knew it yeah i'm alone yeah and she dumped me and then and then the worst part is then you probably have this experience then you're miserable and they're like so relieved and happy and they're off like oh yeah they fly to europe and do best time of their life best time of their lives and you call them crying and they're like i miss you and they're like i'm sorry i can't hear him at a party yeah yeah yeah or a guy answers the
Marc:You're the guy I answered the phones.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And it was the worst.
Marc:But you're also talking about, like, paralyzing self-involvement.
Marc:I mean, you know, to just characterize this as anxiety is not the full picture.
Marc:I mean, you know, I know that, you know, that has a lot to do with it, but selfishness is selfishness.
Guest:Well, no, but I think the selfishness and the paralyzing self-involvement is a consequence of the anxiety.
Guest:I would call the anxiety the experience, the feeling, and the self-involvement is the kind of the outgrowth, the symptom of all that.
Marc:But you live a life where you constantly need relief from yourself.
Marc:So everything around you, whether it's a writing or a person or a meal, needs to give you relief.
Marc:And that's really the only way you could see it when you're in that place.
Guest:Yeah, but I'm trying not to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I'm trying to see that living in the fears where you have to do shit.
Marc:I'm just saying that I would hope that you would read this book and that like I read it and that you can see that anxiety is this paralyzing mindset or mental illness that it would be easy to rationalize it and not get help for it.
Marc:But I think it's important to acknowledge that it is a bit of a gray area.
Marc:The idea that, you know, I have anxiety, that's why I'm an asshole.
Marc:And the other side of it is like, because you're sitting here telling me in retrospect that I was a pussy.
Marc:So there would be a cognitive approach to that, which would be, you know, shut the fuck up.
Marc:You know, be, you know, be, you know, act like, even if you don't feel it, act like a goddamn man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fucking treat your fucking girlfriend better and quit whining.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's why I don't really even use the word disorder in the book, and I try not to use it because it absolves you of actually acting.
Guest:Like, yes, it is an illness and is a disorder, but when you say it, like, when you use those words exclusively, you're almost giving yourself license to be a prick and to be selfish and self-involved.
Guest:Anxiety is a real thing.
Guest:But it is a gray area.
Guest:It's a gray area with how you live your life.
Guest:It's a gray area with depression.
Guest:It's a gray area with self-involvement.
Guest:It's a gray area with confidence.
Guest:It's all wrapped up.
Guest:It's just life, man.
Guest:And your duty is to still be good to people and nice to people and still behave well despite this shit.
Marc:That's the job.
Marc:And also try to experience some genuine empathy and selflessness.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But that's the lifelong job.
Marc:So that's the wall you hit.
Marc:This woman leaves in the electroshock therapy article.
Marc:You know your pariah in your mind.
Marc:Yeah, and you're just falling and then she leaves you and where the fuck were you then that must have been the end of I was on the bed in my apartment watching Pearl Harbor over and over again.
Guest:That was a shitty movie and just weeping that movie did not fucking help was so bad and just just weeping and masturbating and staring at the wall and
Guest:And then I quit The Atlantic.
Guest:And everyone's like, why are you quitting The Atlantic?
Guest:I was like, so I want to be a writer.
Guest:They're like, that is so brave.
Guest:But I quit because I couldn't fucking be around people anymore.
Guest:I couldn't be paralyzed in front of people anymore.
Guest:I was sweating.
Guest:I had a really terrible sweating problem.
Guest:I was a mess.
Guest:And I'd show up at my girlfriend's apartment crying.
Guest:And she'd be like, this is not.
Guest:I can't help you.
Guest:I loved you.
Guest:But you fucked things up.
Guest:You drained me.
Marc:You drained me.
Marc:I'm a husk of a person.
Guest:And now I don't have a job.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm living alone in Boston, which is, yeah, I didn't want to be there.
Marc:It's a pretty city, but it's not, you know, it's very segregated and weird.
Marc:It really is a weird city.
Marc:It's very conservative in its own way.
Marc:Not in like a red state way, but in sort of a Boston way.
Guest:In a set in its old fucked up ways.
Guest:Yankee Boston.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I started going to this therapist and he had been trying for months now since the shock therapy came out to get me to to question my thoughts, to be mindful of what's going through my head when I'm being anxious and to apply logic to it, sort of run the reality tests on these things.
Guest:Cognitive therapy.
Guest:And I was like, no, I'm not going to do it.
Guest:But what about my mom?
Guest:What about my dad?
Guest:You know, what about my upbringing?
Guest:What about the narrative and all that?
Guest:And he's like, we can do that if you want, man.
Guest:But, like, the house is on fire, right?
Guest:It feels like the house is on fire.
Guest:I was like, yeah.
Guest:He's like, so why bring in the fire marshal to find out what started the fire?
Guest:Don't you want to put the fucker out first?
Guest:And I was like, that's really smart.
Guest:And so I got to... I love that.
Marc:There's one kernel of him like, well, you know what I mean?
Guest:It's a good metaphor.
Guest:Yeah, it was a great metaphor.
Guest:And I...
Guest:I remember hitting bottom yeah I remember being this was the third really paralyzing episode of anxiety in my life the first being after losing my virginity the second being going to college yeah and the third extended one being after the article came out yeah
Guest:And I remember getting to a point where I was like, if this is it, then I mean, I wasn't really suicidal, but I remember thinking this is I can't do this for another 60 years, let alone another six months.
Guest:Exhausting.
Guest:I'm so tired.
Guest:And I would wake up.
Guest:paralyzed and anxiety and you're like oh fuck yeah yeah and you muddle through the day and by the end of the day and writing too which i didn't know how to do yet and the end of the day you just collapse in exhaustion you wake up anxious again so i just gave in i was like just i went in there i was like all right i'm ready just tell me what to do
Guest:And this guy was, he was like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting.
Guest:He like worked in this MGH clinic, Mass General Clinic off in Charlestown.
Guest:I used to walk over there and this really humble guy, family guy with a red beard.
Guest:And he starts, he just tells me things to do.
Guest:If you're anxious, you're thinking something in your head.
Guest:You might not know it, but some thoughts go into your head.
Guest:So if you wake up anxious, you're thinking, my life is ruined.
Guest:I've ruined these subjects of these articles.
Guest:I've ruined their lives.
Guest:I'm a bad person.
Guest:Your job is to identify that thought and run it through the reality mill.
Guest:And he was great about it.
Guest:I'd be like, he'd be like, all right, so let's do it, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'll be like, all right, so I'm anxious.
Guest:I'm not going to be able to fulfill this assignment.
Guest:I will therefore not be able to pay my rent.
Guest:And it would end with me usually sucking dicks behind Fenway Park and then dying homeless and again of AIDS.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um the aides came back and i'd be like and brian would be great he was he would be like all right he's like so how many long island jews do you know who end up uh sucking dicks behind fenway park i was like all right not many he's like okay it's possible there might be yeah there might have been one henry he had other problems henry schwartz he had other problems he's like now if you if you stop working because of your anxiety and stop paying rent what do you think would happen
Guest:He's like, do you think there are people who would support you?
Guest:Like, can you move back in?
Guest:He's like, yeah.
Guest:Do your brothers have some money?
Guest:He's like, yeah, they'd probably give me some money.
Guest:So do you think you'd have to suck dicks?
Guest:No, I guess not.
Guest:I was like, but he's like, but there's a possibility that you'd have to suck dicks and that you'd die of something.
Guest:So let's say that happens.
Guest:Like, what are the odds of that?
Guest:I was like, well, one in a million.
Guest:And he'd be like, well, then I die.
Guest:It's like, well, then you wouldn't be anxious anymore.
Guest:No more pain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we'd laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was great.
Guest:It was like putting percentages on shit and using humor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Using humor because anxiety is the only funny mental disorder.
Guest:Like you can't laugh at catatonic depression.
Guest:You can't laugh at schizophrenia.
Guest:I mean, you can, but you have to be really good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But anxiety is absurd, man.
Guest:It's nuts because it's just absurd, crazy, you know, the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you just learn to pull back the curtain and see the smoke and mirrors, you can practice that.
Guest:And that made me feel better.
Guest:I moved to New York.
Guest:I got a contract for my first book, which is about hearing voices.
Guest:I started working on that.
Guest:I started dating.
Guest:I started enjoying myself.
Guest:And I wasn't anxious.
Guest:I remember the moment when I realized that I was okay.
Guest:I was about to go out and meet a friend.
Guest:And I was cutting an English muffin and a sliced English muffin.
Guest:And I and I slipped off and I sliced my thumb down to the bone.
Guest:And I looked at that and I was like, all right, that happened.
Guest:That's how it was.
Guest:I was like, holy shit.
Guest:Like, I'm not I know I'm not going to die.
Guest:My job now is to go to get stitches.
Guest:Wow, it's really just all about perspective, isn't it?
Guest:Like what perspective you put on the facts that are around you.
Guest:But that's it.
Guest:But why is that so hard to remember?
Guest:Why is that every day so hard to remember?
Guest:Because your brain is wired a certain way.
Marc:Mine or everybody's?
Marc:Yours.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:It's just like, you know, I'd like to believe that, you know, everybody is as miserable as I am or that if they just dug a little deeper, they'd be as cynical or as bitter as me.
Marc:But the truth of the matter is, is that, you know, some people had, you know, relatively supportive parents and they're not wired the same way.
Guest:Yeah, but I think I think way more people are like you than you think.
Marc:I know that because I can see how many people listen to the podcast.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:No, but I'm saying that it's it's I don't know if it's a majority.
Marc:And I do think a lot of people suffer this way.
Marc:And one of the primary reasons that they suffer this way is that they are afraid to talk to people about it.
Marc:And they are afraid to, you know, to experience fear in front of somebody else.
Marc:or or have that you know that that moment where they feel connected i think one of the biggest uh horrors of this illness that you're talking about are these symptoms is that we're ashamed of them yeah and and we know that they can be destructive and a lot of times it forces people into isolation either among people or or literally isolated we're like you know nobody understands you know what i'm going through and i can't function
Guest:my brother David the one I said I was talking to when I was on my way here and the one who kind of is more reserved he was saying that I had the book launch the other day in Brooklyn and he said that afterwards he was talking to some people about anxiety and everyone there like all these friends who haven't previously spoken about their anxiety were telling the stories of what medications they've been on their therapist and he said he's like for the first time in my life he's like because of your book like I'm actually telling people about this stuff
Marc:So let's talk about getting the girl.
Marc:Now getting the girl.
Marc:Well, you got the girl.
Marc:I got the girl.
Marc:The one that you were in love with who left you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a rare thing.
Marc:For now.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You could always ruin that.
Guest:Yeah, we could always ruin that.
Guest:The stakes are a little higher now.
Guest:We've got a kid, so even if she leaves, she's connected forever.
Marc:What made her believe you that you were better?
Guest:I'm very articulate.
Guest:Charming.
Guest:I'm very charming.
Guest:I have a giant penis.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:We had been apart for a few years.
Guest:And I learned something about anxiety and love in that time.
Guest:Exactly what we're talking about.
Guest:That you can't love someone if you're paralyzed with anxiety.
Guest:That you're locked into your own head.
Guest:It obviates empathy and therefore it obviates love.
Guest:It obviates real connection.
Guest:So I knew that I would have to do something about that.
Guest:And she moved back to New York after I did.
Guest:She moved back from Boston to New York and ended up living very close to where I moved in Brooklyn, just by happenstance.
Guest:And she was hung up on some other guy, and I had a girlfriend.
Guest:And then some time went by, and I had a dream about her.
Guest:And I have no...
Guest:I had a dream about her, and I woke up from the dream, and I had her in my mind, and I couldn't get it out of my mind.
Guest:I was not still in love with her, I didn't think.
Guest:I figured it was like I'd eaten something, a shitty burrito or something, and that it would go away.
Marc:Were you sure that what you did have was love?
Guest:In the past?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I knew that I was drawn to her in a way that I'd never been drawn to anyone else.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Something about her has always felt like home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the only way I could really articulate it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I called my friend.
Guest:After a week, I couldn't stop thinking about her.
Guest:I called my friend Kate, and I was like, I don't know what to do.
Guest:And she's like, you can't fuck with this girl again.
Guest:You made her life really miserable once.
Guest:You can't come back into her life now and court her again if you're going to do the same shit.
Guest:You have to be sure this is real.
Yeah.
Guest:We went out to talk at a bar in New York in Tribeca, and there was a guy there, a writer she knew at the bar, who had had a similar experience where he had been with this girl, this younger woman, and then he left.
Guest:He dropped out of the relationship, and a month later woke up and was like, fuck, what did I do?
Guest:I'm in love with that girl.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and she was with someone else by then yeah and i was like what'd you do he's like he's like i just sat he's like what you need to do is dig a trench he's like you dig a trench and you stay in that trench for as long as it takes and you might never get her and in fact being in the trench means not expecting to get her but just being kind being with her being a friend to her and hopefully she'll come around because the other guy is just he's just a passing fad and you're there you're a rock yeah um
Guest:So it's like, I'm going to dig a trench.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I dug a trench and only took like a few weeks.
Guest:Good trench.
Guest:It was an easy trench, man.
Guest:It was the best.
Guest:It was the best war experience ever.
Guest:And she, you know, she said, she's like, how do I know that you're not crazy still?
Guest:And I was like, well, when we first kissed again, when we, you know, re-first kissed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, well, I am.
Guest:But I'd learned to compartmentalize the anxiety.
Guest:I realized if I felt a stab of anxiety that it had nothing to do with her.
Guest:It was not because she was near me.
Guest:It was not because she was viewing my anxiety.
Guest:And I was able to tell her.
Guest:I could be honest about it.
Guest:She knew.
Guest:She knew what she was getting herself into, man.
Guest:She had read the contract.
Guest:She had read the fine print.
Guest:And I had the comfort of her knowing that I was an anxious dude.
Guest:And also I knew that I was going to assiduously watch myself so that I wasn't going to let that anxious part infect the part that wanted to love her.
Guest:So this was your marriage vows?
Guest:This is, yeah, you read vows.
Guest:I'm not going to let my insanity fuck up our marriage.
Guest:You can now put the ring on her finger and kiss her.
Guest:It's very romantic.
Guest:And I don't know if I've always, I've done it pretty well.
Guest:I mean, there have been times, it's still hard for her because the anxiety still makes it hard for me to like, I'm a writer, right?
Guest:So I have to self-motivate.
Guest:And if I'm anxious, it can be hard to self-motivate.
Guest:And we have a kid, we have a five-year-old.
Guest:So she could be like...
Marc:get off your ass and i was like i'm anxious so it's shut up yeah shut up and i don't care if you're anxious well see it's it's like it's good that you're at that's a tremendous amount of progress for somebody as self-involved as you were is that when you can actually you know listen to a woman yeah that isn't your mother yeah you know tell you to do something and not snap back like a child and but also just you know go like oh she's right yeah i do snap back in my head
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:But only during, you know, during the bad times.
Guest:But I did.
Guest:I learned.
Guest:I learned.
Guest:And there we were.
Guest:And so you're doing all right?
Guest:Doing okay, man.
Guest:It's been crazy going around.
Guest:I'm used to being in a room by myself.
Guest:But I need to get out of New York, I think.
Guest:I need to get into a place that's a little less crazy.
Guest:I need to meditate more.
Marc:But you can be there for your kid.
Marc:You find that you're experiencing real empathy for both of them and that little selflessness.
Marc:Yeah, I'm doing all right.
Marc:And it doesn't have to be crisis for you to be out of yourself.
Guest:No, I'm doing all right.
Guest:Well, great.
Guest:I think I'm going to be okay.
Guest:Congratulations.
Marc:Man, yeah.
Guest:Are you on medication?
Guest:Yeah, Lexapro.
Guest:It works?
Guest:I don't know if it's doing anything.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I don't know if it's doing anything, but I'm too afraid to go off it.
Guest:Thanks, Daniel.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:That's our show, my friends.
Guest:I'm sorry I'm so jacked up, but I've had about three gallons of coffee, JustCoffee.coop, available at WTFPod.com.
Marc:What's also at WTFPod.com is a myriad of things.
Guest:Is that the right way to use that word?
Guest:Get on the mailing list.
Guest:Check the episode guide.
Guest:Get the app.
Guest:Get the premium app.
Guest:Leave some comments.
Guest:Buy some merch.
Guest:Kick in a few shekels.
Guest:Get some JustCoffee.coop.
Guest:Go there and enjoy it.
Guest:Listen to the podcast right there on WTFPod.com.
Guest:Do it, you guys.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I need to be on Madison.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Philadelphia Helium Comedy Club, December 6th through 8th.
Guest:I got to get back to set.
Guest:Did I mention that?
Guest:Take a break.
Guest:Daniel Smith was fun, though, wasn't he?
Guest:That was fun.
Guest:What else is going on?
Guest:Did I tell you everything you need to know?
Guest:Oh, Obama is president still.
Guest:Boomer lives!