Dirty Daddy: The Chronicles of a Family Man Turned Filthy Comedian (27 page)

I don’t know if I’ve made it completely clear, so I’ll reiterate it just once more—I am single at the time of this writing. Although I’ve been receiving some very hopeful texts. I still believe I can find someone who understands me. Isn’t that the core of most good relationships? We just want to be understood. And we must also desire to
listen
to the other person. What’s that like?

Another way to go is to look for someone who doesn’t speak your language at all. A few years back I went to Ukraine to shoot a TV show pilot about helping guys get mail-order brides. That was the opposite experience. Not one woman understood me there. It was kind of a dream. I got the same kind of reaction that I get when a woman who speaks English listens to everything I say to her: blank stares.

I was amazed how many American men wanted to bring home a bride who spoke no English. On one hand I understand it, but then on the other hand, it’s hard for me to relate; I’ve always been such a head-y person. Obviously not now, with this book and all. With therapy and counseling as tools to help a relationship work, communication is key. With two languages being spoken and neither person knowing the other’s, you are reduced to hoping for good connected sex, and beyond that, a few good meals and perhaps enjoying puppet theater together. What have I been talking about . . . Sold.

Maybe Jim Cameron was right. An
Avatar
love relationship may be the perfect one. Communication can be best without words. Words are what mess everything up. Texting doesn’t seem to be helping either. I’m looking for a woman with no thumbs. Also would rule out the possibility of her hitchhiking to get away from me.

Some of the best moments in every relationship I’ve ever had actually required
no
words. Maybe if I’d never spoken at all, painted my face blue, and just thrown in an “I see you” every couple days I’d be married right now. That would be a dream. I could say one of my lame jokes, like, “Honey, you’re looking a bit blue in the face tonight.” She would just stare at me with no response.

If there’s one thing that tests a relationship more than anything else, it’s kids. Kids change everything. It’s hard to keep the romance alive through the years when you’re raising kids. There are only so many dead bolts you can put on your bedroom door. Peepholes, security camera, electric fencing . . . I’m embellishing. I’d never put a peephole in my bedroom door. That’s just creepy.

Then there’s work and the strain it can put on a relationship. It’s a vicious circle. I find that in my hardest-working periods my relationships take a hit—whereas when I’m in between projects, even though I’m always working, I’m more inclined to spend time seeing if this new relationship could be “the one.”

There’s that wonderful period that usually starts when you first meet someone and then miraculously it sustains itself. I haven’t been so fortunate as to have that last for all time. “All time” is a bit dramatic. “All time” means you’re with someone until the end of at least one of your lives. I think a lot of young girls do fantasize about being with their guy forever. But do they understand what that means? Till old age, till one day you’re sitting on the couch with your man watching your favorite TV show—and his eye falls out. I’m ever the romantic.

But if you have found “the one” and you’re both reading this together and you are in perfect sync, you are very lucky. Either you’ve both perfected denial or there is an unspoken agreement that one of you completely controls the other person—and they dig it.

I’m looking for my emotional and intellectual equal. Truthfully, I’ve stopped looking; I’m creating one with my own DNA in a lab. I’ve decided to make a female clone of myself rather than keep looking to meet someone. Because I listen. I’ve
heard
what all my past relationships were telling me. As we broke up, they all imparted upon me the same wisdom, all saying in their own way, “I wish the best for you.” One of them said that by saying “go fuck yourself,” but that was just her way of being playful.

Falling in love is the magic time in a relationship. We all love falling in love. It’s fun. Everything’s more fun when you’re in love. Flowers, chocolates, expensive shoes, diamonds. Until women actually quote Marilyn Monroe’s rendition of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

If someone’s singing that to you every day in a happy positive voice, your radar should go off. You’ve just been told that you are not this girl’s best friend. Diamonds are. Shoulda noted that when you saw her on Craigslist or JDate.

I think about relationships a lot. It frustrates me that people who fall in love, myself included, can’t cultivate that love and let it grow. I once said to a good friend of mine, “I’m fifty percent responsible in my relationships.” His reply was, “No, each one of us is one hundred percent responsible.” He’s right. You can’t blame anyone. Because you were there too. A’ight, I hear you, “it was all my fault.”

I wish it could all be that fun gooey shit it’s supposed to be that fills us all with butterflies and gets our hormones happily raging. But I think the difficulty of modern-day relationships is also partly cultural. People get bored and let in a bunch of bullshit from our reality-show-driven culture and just give up.

Everybody wants everything
now
—like Veruca Salt in
Willy Wonka:
“I want it
now
!”
—
and if they’re not getting what they think fills their bottomless well immediately, they flit off to a better offer. I’ve never done that. When a relationship of mine ends, I need some time to be alone, get back to myself—move back in with my mother. Take her out to dinner: “Freud, party of two, please!”

I know this chapter may be causing blue balls in some of my homeboy fans who thought this was gonna be fifteen pages about pussy. What can I say? I’m not great when it comes to having a purely sexual relationship. Oh wait, they don’t exist, do they? I am so looking forward to my eighties. I am gonna get laid so much in my eighties.

When I’m eighty-four all I’m gonna do is have sex. Dirty sweaty veiny old-people sex. With the most beautiful, highest-tech machines on the market. That’s right, I got it all planned. It’ll be the year 2040 and I’ll have the hookup! I’ll be getting me some old-man techno pussssayyy!!

Sorry, needed that outburst. Forget everything I just wrote. In 2040 I’d like to be spooning in bed with someone I love. Please submit your applications in double-spaced writing. John Stamos need not apply.

In today’s culture, nobody wants to work on a relationship anymore. It was different for my parents and their generation. My parents couldn’t afford to break up. Sixty-three years together.

When it comes to money, I think there are two situations where money helps keep a couple together: either they have
no
money and hence nowhere to go, or they have insane amounts of money and . . . hmm, actually, now I can’t think of any circumstance where incredibly wealthy people have stayed together happily, but I know they must exist. I’ve seen them walking around in Louis Vuitton stores.

I don’t mean to paint a negative picture of marriage and relationships. I mean to write about it. It’s hard to find true and lasting love in this day and age. Our values are backward. I’ve known a lot of beautiful women who just wanna be with their hedge-fund guy who’s buying a missile silo. And why not? I can’t disagree with them. If I was a hot woman I’d . . . no, let me stop myself there—if I was a hot woman all I would do is stay home and masturbate all day. But that’s just me.

Okay, now I am concerned, and rightfully so, that this could be perceived as misogynistic and coming from a place of nonresponsibility. I love women, I hold them up high. And then I look up their dresses. Cleansing breath.

I think I need to print a separate copy of this book for my kids and loved ones to read. I mean, an R-rated movie is not supposed to let people under seventeen in without parental supervision—but that’s not enforced. Does anybody stop a twelve-year-old from reading this book? I don’t think so. I think
Fifty Shades of Grey
may be in some libraries. If it is, it’s probably never been returned.

I once cohosted
The View
and they had me interview the author of
Fifty Shades of Grey,
E. L. James. That was a mistake. I told her I couldn’t put her book down because it was stuck to my hand. She laughed. And then after the show she took me to her dressing room, made me put on a one-piece zippered-up gimp suit, and hung me upside down until I succumbed. That’s not true. That never happened. But I still have the butt plug she signed for me. That book is about a type of deviant but romantic relationship that I’ve never had—but if I had, it would definitely fall into this chapter.

I think now’s another good time for a disclaimer. I’m venting a bit because I’ve sometimes felt burned in this arena of love. Like most people, I’ve had some negative times. I ended a couple relationships. And startling as it may seem, I’ve been broken up with a couple times. Even after a first date, someone’s going to either get a second chance or get rejected. We’ve all been on both sides and both sides hurt. But enough about my vulva. Same joke, different private part. Pointless. Why can’t I keep a relationship going with clever banter like that, right?

I’ve always let relationships last too long. Getting better at it. I’m a Taurus guy, not that there’s full validity to that—but I just don’t like to leave. I always want it to work. But when it doesn’t anymore, people need to split. It’s tricky. Tricky, tricky, tricky tricky tricky tricky tricky. Run-DMC knows what I’m talkin’ about.

We learn from all of our relationships and we learn from life, from all the people we meet. I’m still learning. There are a lot of good people in the world. You just don’t always feel it going to bars. Or parties. Or family functions. Or watching
The Bachelor
. I’ve only seen that show once, and I like that there’s a rose in it. That’s so romantic, to show some guy giving a girl a rose in front of ten million people.

I know there are a lot of good, smart, kind people out in the world. I see humankind’s glass as being more than half-full. Though sometimes the water in the glass looks a little cloudy, with Sea-Monkeys floating in it. They’re just brine shrimp, you know. Yikes, and my mother got them for me as “pets.”

My problem as a modern-day human is that I sometimes can’t take the materialism of it all, and how, more than ever, material things seem to have replaced a life of love and actual happiness. I mean, I get it, I like
stuff
too. I like traveling well. I’m a bit of a spoiled bitch, actually. Stuff’s pretty and it’s a fun distraction, and I don’t want to come across as a hypocrite—so there, I said it: I like nice stuff—and I cannot lie. You other brothers can’t deny. I’m Sir Mixed-Up-a-Lot.

I love good fashion. I even like Louis . . . C.K. . . . He’s the best.

As for the other Louis, Louis V—it’s fun to have nicely made stuff, but I don’t want that stuff as much after I hear about it on a loop in a rap song. And am I wrong, or do all their zippers suck?

I’m fortunate I can sometimes buy nice things for someone I love. I just don’t like feeling like I’m buying a car when all I’m doing is picking out a purse or a rolly bag. I trust I haven’t lost any of your attention. I know how many of my fans go into a Louis store. “I seen ’em!”

I have another theory at this moment in time—a two-and-a-half-years relationship theory. That’s how long my several relationships have lasted since I was divorced—back during Prohibition . . . The magic of falling in love happens—that part is the best. It’s before you’re both concerned with things like “Wait, this isn’t gonna last forever? Fuck, not again.”

I’ve often wished I could’ve frozen my relationships in the falling-in-love stage. Magically suspend that time and make it last for the whole thing. There should also be no option that your marriage could have an end point. But crap, it happens. It takes special people to somehow find each other and know, and continue to know, that they belong together. Forever. I love meeting people who have that precious gift of lifetime love. I meet less and less of them these days. I look for ’em. Couples in love. They’re fun to be around. Usually for about an hour.

In my life, after a breakup, it makes it harder and harder to let yourself fall in love again. They do call it “falling.” And when you fall, someone’s supposed to catch you. But if you break up, the one person who should be there to catch you, your significant other, can’t
be
that person. Because you’re broken up. No one prepares you for that. Some people try to be friends after a breakup. But if it was a romantic breakup, you’re just trying to follow a script that doesn’t for me feel real; it’s not organic.

Two and a half years. I envy people who are still together after many years. That’s who I should dedicate this book to. To the guy who read this book and then gave it to his wife, and she read it and still doesn’t hate me. Damn, I love that couple. Seriously, let’s double. Well, it’ll be just me and both you guys, but I got dinner, and who wants to go for ice cream after!?