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FOOLS FOR LOVE |
CHEAP DATES, TALKING DIRTY, AND THE
PROBLEMS OF GETTING NAKED. JANEANE GAROFALO
AND DAVID CROSS SHARE THE PAIN.
Janeane: You and I had a date once, remember?
David:
Janeane: ’87, I think — when a date meant putting buffalo wings and carrot sticks on a paper plate in your apartment.
David: I went out and spent the last of my money on appetizers at some restaurant on the corner, and rushed back to the house. I guess I should say that I, like all American men, had a crush on Janeane Garofalo. Luckily, I got it over with quickly. There are a lot of guys who come into this late in life, and it’s sad. It’s like having your wisdom teeth pulled: The longer you wait, the more it’s gonna hurt. My advice is to get your crush on Janeane over with as soon as you can.
Janeane: I remember you telling me the first time you ever met me that you thought I was weird. Like a weird midget with a weird smile.
David: I did not say you were a weird midget with a weird smile.
Janeane: You did. You were drunk and I came rushing up and you were completely unnerved.
David: Well, I must have been all messed up on whatever drugs I was on. I remember you as being the first person I felt something for where the attraction came later. And even though we never went out, you got to see a bit of my bitter, jealous, pouty side for a couple weeks.
Janeane: I can’t even remember that part. It seems to so unlike you. I remember when we met I was going out with the first boy I ever fell in love with and this first boy I ever slept with, B.
David: I liked him.
Janeane: Very nice guy. Broke up with him for no good reason — just one in a long string of boyfriends I broke up with for no reason other than that they got too close. And I’m not saying I’m special or complex to have done this — but I’m bringing it up because I think you do this too, and you and I also share the experience of never having connected with anyone, and then finally finding that one person we could connect with and then having that relationship not go the way we wanted it to go. We both got our asses handed to us, basically — you, by … can we say names?
David: I don’t want to say her name.
Janeane: Use code.
David: My ass was handed to me by Papa Bear.
Janeane: And mine by Fat Man and Little Boy. For purposes of this interview, my first boyfriend will be known hereafter as the Manhattan Project.
David: So we’ve spent the better part of a decade commiserating about how we’re never gonna be in love, never gonna know that thing that they sing about, never gonna get married. And now we’ve changed. Now we’re better.
Janeane: Well, I don’t know that I’m better. I’m definitely a much more emotional girl, having been broken up with out of the blue, but I do feel ready. Yes. I’m thirty-three, and I can actually think of marrying someone and having children.
David: Same here. Until pretty recently the idea of getting married seemed to be like being split open and flayed.
Janeane: Ouch. Do you think men have a certain tendency to get involved and then pull away because they don’t want to lose what I guess is a sense of freedom? And by the way, I know I’m generalizing here, so I would just like to say that all generalizations are wrong, and therefore I will be making them anyway.
David: Me too. Well, about pulling away — speaking for myself, yeah. Also, I think men have a hard time dealing with the finality of a relationship — the idea of settling.
Janeane: You’re waiting for something.
David: Well, unfortunately in my case I didn’t realize that I was waiting for somebody until that somebody came into my life and then left because I wasn’t able to connect. And now she’s with a guy who can, and I completely understand that.
Janeane: Mr. Connection. Mr. Franz Connection.
David: Yeah. He’s all right there and I’m not. My reaction to problems has generally been, "Everything is fine. I’m fine. Things are fine…," until they’re out the door with their suitcases, and I’m thinking, "I said things were fine — what happened?"
Janeane: I’ve never had problems with communication. What I do is talk everything to the point where it might be ruined. I’ll take quiet moments or reflective moments and bring them out in the open and force the person I’m involved with to discuss it whether he wants to or not: talk talk talk talk talk.
David: That can be disconcerting to a guy. Didn’t you learn anything from Billy Joe’s "Leave a Tender Moment Alone"?
Janeane: No. I should listen and try to learn a little something.
David: Listen again, for the first time.
David: So describe your perfect mate.
Janeane:
David: And so do you.
Janeane: And I do too, sometimes, to make them feel that they’ve done nothing wrong. He has to accept that. But he has to be a guy who has a definite degree of easygoing-ness — like there are never moments when he gets suddenly serious. Especially in bed. If something goes awry, he can laugh. And I tend to prefer a guy who is not really into physical fitness, not into health.
David: What’s his background?
Janeane: Well-read, well-educated, a very good relationship with his mom, very close to his mom — treats his mom and his sisters like gold would be good. And oh my God, I can’t stand it when somebody doesn’t read the paper and doesn’t watch the news and then cops out by saying "I can’t take it." If he doesn’t read the paper but reads The Celestine Prophecy, that’s strike one. Also anybody who is a cigar-smoking, sports-bar kind of guy who pledged a frat. I know it sounds like I’m simplifying, but believe me, those three things speak volumes. Also, saying things like "What’s up with that?" or "That’s really more information than I needed" or "Don’t go there" — any of those phrases are bad.
David: Gentlemen, you’ve heard the plan. Now you know what you must do.
Janeane: But obviously I’ve been lucky enough to date men who aren’t like that. And they’ve also been willing to be very intimate and all that stuff. It’s been me that’s kept them at an arm’s length, until very recently when I realized I wanted that too. And of course any guy who gets involved with me is gonna have to deal with me saying "Why am I so fat?" every five seconds.
David: Oh, Jesus Christ, I hate that.
Janeane: My fat issues, my food issues…
David: You are fucked up with that — that is annoying. When is this going to…
Janeane: Abate?
David: Yes.
Janeane: It only seems to get worse as I get older.
Janeane: But this new person I’ve started seeing — I mean, it’s only like a month old or whatever, but he’s got all the qualities I look for. He’s not above wearing one of those gas station windbreakers or Converse high tops, and reading a comic book now and then.
David: Have you told your parents?
Janeane: No. I tend to confide in friends before family, although recently I’ve been talking to my father fairly openly. In the past few years my father and I have had a nice dialogue. But I don’t really tell my family about new boyfriends. If they happen to meet one, that’s how they find out about it.
David: I think my mom is just waiting for me to call her up and say "I’m getting married" and eighteen months from this day she’ll have a grandson or granddaughter.
Janeane: But God, it is so difficult for me to become sexual with a new person. It makes me very insecure. The whole thing. And then sometimes I try too hard to be funny in bed and then that starts to embarrass me. I see myself trying to crack wise during the throes of passion, so I’m not only aware that I’m naked, but also that I’m a hopeless hack.
David: I’ve gotten into bed with that Bennet Cerf book by my side and spent, oh, easily the first half hour of foreplay just reading jokes.
Janeane: Well, I brought the Marshall Sylver tapes into bed with me the other day — Passion, Profit, Power — and while I did foreclose on a couple of houses by the end, I didn’t feel the passion and the power that I had hoped for. I’m frequently embarrassed by emotion is my problem.
David: Well, I suggest starting off with hand jobs for a while.
Janeane: Hand jobs and blow jobs are good for stopping the talking temporarily. But during certain sexual acts, I cannot stop thinking about how ridiculous I am while performing them.
David: I could never initiate talking dirty.
Janeane: Oh my God! I cannot talk dirty — oh my God! That is such a sore point with me, such a sore spot. I can’t say anything.
David: I can’t initiate it, but when somebody starts it I really get into it.
Janeane: Oh, I cannot get into it. There’s only so many ways to say certain things, and all of them have been done to death! Like "I want you inside me." I cannot even imagine saying that!
David: Well, don’t say it in such a whiny character.
Janeane: I have to do it in a character voice. Here, I’ll do English governess: "I want you inside me!" Yes, I find accents help when talking dirty. The Korean deli owner is good. But when I have to use my own voice — no, I can’t talk dirty. And when somebody talks dirty to me, I am immediately thinking, "Oh my Lord, oh no, don’t do that, please don’t say anything else — no."
David: But isn’t there something liberating about it?
Janeane: For me, no. I have yet to really approach sex with reckless abandon. Especially with someone new. I’m too self-conscious. Like the other night with this new guy, I didn’t want to stand up naked, so I held in the fact that I had to urinate for about an hour and a half. So then I gingerly extricated myself from the bed, and the second I’m standing up, he’s like, "Hey!"
David: I think men suffer from performance anxiety in a different way than women do.
Janeane: Tell me about that.
David: Well, there’s the idea of "I’m gonna make you come no matter what happens — if it takes hot water bottles and ice cubes and candles." And you start to think, "What was that sigh? Was that an erotic sigh or a bored sigh?" And then you get so wrapped up in your head that you can’t get out of it.
Janeane: And it manifests itself by not getting hard at all?
David: Something like that. But luckily it’s only happened once — and it was devastating. It was weird. I know what it’s like to feel impotent creatively, but this one time — this was years ago, with a girl I was dating who I didn’t have much in common with, and she was really trying and it just wasn’t happening. I was fucking humiliated — more than I should’ve been. It would have been healthier for our relationship if I had let it go more, but I fuckin’ dwelled on it and it killed me and I couldn’t sleep and I felt awful. It was really bad. But it hasn’t happened since, luckily.
Janeane: I remember that girl — she had those T-shirts printed up that said I FUCKED DAVID CROSS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.
David: Mm-hm.
Janeane: Did that experience help or hurt your performance anxiety?
David: That hurt, because she sold them out on the Venice boardwalk for years and it was her most popular T-shirt, and that bothered me.
Janeane: that cap-sleeved baby T was a big seller.
Janeane: So David — do you foresee yourself anytime soon getting into another relationship?
David: I don’t know. I don’t want to force anything. That never works.
Janeane: I did that right after Mr. Fat Man and Little Boy broke up with me, and oh my God, what a mistake it was. Thank God he was such a nice guy and so funny and smart and saw what I was doing. It was just that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
David: What if you tell the person up front "I’m not going to fall in love with you"?
Janeane: that doesn’t lessen the pain of rejection. When someone says to me, after I’ve started to have feelings for him, "I just need space" and "It’s not you, it’s me" — whatever they say, it doesn’t matter what they told me up front. All I hear is that I’m not special enough and that he doesn’t care enough about me. So I think in the aftermath of a breakup it never works to force a connection with someone. It’s always bad.
David: Oh, here’s something else that’s fucked up.
Janeane: What?
David: Some of the best sex I’ve ever had has been with people who I don’t love and barely know.
Janeane: That’s not fucked up — that’s normal.
David: Really?
Janeane: Yeah.
David: Oh, that’s too bad.
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