The Douchebag Bible (48 page)

more security than I have now. The rest I spend

making sure that my family—my wife and my

brother—are taken care of. I’m not nominating

myself for sainthood here. I’m just trying to make

something clear to you: I’m a working man. I don’t

get endless respect for minimal effort. I work 7 days

a week trying to ensure that me and my loved ones

have a future.

And in the process I’ve helped others (people

who are like me). And I’ve made money. But what

have I done to myself? I’ve stunted my growth as a

person to keep myself entertaining. I’ve trained

myself to feel constant anger because that’s what

sells. I’ve lived so publicly that I can’t even have a

private thought anymore. Everything is Tumblred,

Tweeted, Facebooked or YouTubed. I used to just

look at my wall or ceiling and think about life. Now

all I do is stare at my phone or my computer,

wondering what I should tweet next. What little real

thinking I do is geared towards being entertaining.

Every idea I have is boiled down to it’s most basic

essence so that it can be easily digested by a mass

audience. I’m the reverse Pinocchio! I went from

being a real boy to being a puppet—which truly is

counterproductive to the emotional journey that is

my life's ultimate goal: find an ideal, and find a

reason to care about the world and everyone in it.

Find some way to reconnect with your humanity.

Shed this aloofness.

How long can I do it? How long can I make

videos for you and for all the others? Well, I will

continue to do it until I no longer have the fire in my

belly to say what I have to say. My passion ebbs and

flows, but it’s never receded entirely into

nothingness. If that happens, I’ll stop and find

something else to do.

4. HUSBAND

I'd say I was a total failure in that regard if not

for my wife, Holly. I have very bad social anxiety,

especially when it comes to crowds, but oddly I

wasn’t nervous in the days leading up to our

wedding. We had a small guest list compared to

some (about 100 people) but it was still big enough

to warrant a small panic attack. Yet, I wasn’t nervous.

My stomach felt fine. My pulse was normal. I didn’t

feel stressed.

But about five minutes before I walked down

the aisle to take my position, my stomach felt like it

shrank to the size of a dime. My lungs stopped

working. My heart began throbbing. My legs got so

tense they were hard to bend at the knee. I guess my

nerves caught up to me.

Galen, a good friend of mine, saw my distress

and pulled me aside for a quick pep talk that

consisted of this: “No one looks at the men at these

things. No one gives a fuck about you. Everyone’s

looking at the women and their colorful dresses.

You’re just some piece of shit they don’t care about.”

This calmed me down enough to get me out there.

And before long, my shyness melted away through

the sheer socializing power of booze.

Holly and I are a good team. I don’t really know

how to write about our relationship. I feel that it

could be a book unto itself if I wanted it to be. I will

say that she is the only person who stands by me for

all that I am. Everyone else backs away from certain

aspects of my personality, no matter how charmed

they are by others. She’s the only person that accepts

every facet of my being. And I accept all of her.

She has trouble being herself around other

people. She puts up a front, and most people like

that front. But I know the real Holly—and I’m glad I

do. She has a great sense of humor, a great sense of

play and is very devoted to me and to us. I like the

fact that even after four years with me, she is still

very attached, still gives me a lot of affection, still

accepts a lot of affection from me. I have done a lot

of things wrong in my life, but making Holly my life-

mate was not one of them. She is, I think, the best

decision of my life—the only decision I've ever made

that
truly
improved the quality of my existence.

A lot of people seem curious about my

marriage, particularly due to my staunch atheism,

but I would say that just because I recognize no gods

doesn't mean I can't appreciate ceremonies and

their real world significance to flesh and blood

human beings. Marriage is a ritual. It’s an act of

consecration that goes beyond the mere “religious.”

It’s a set of regimented behaviors and legal bindings

designed to make a declaration to yourself, your

friends and family, and above all to your partner,

that you dedicate your existence to them.

It’s not all about love. Love is just part of it. It’s

about an alliance of two people. It’s the statement

that you and your partner vow to put the interests of

the couple above the interests of the individual. It

says to the world, “We are each other’s property, and

so we are both owners of a new joint entity, an

amalgam of two people, now brought together and

made one.”

That’s how I view it, anyway.

It's funny, because for a long time I let other

people convince me that I couldn't love. I’d been told

before that I’m not capable of loving someone. That

I am like a reptile. Cold. Unfeeling. Dark and

unsympathetic. There is truth to some of that, but I

am capable of love. Perhaps I am too capable of love.

I have a wife, and I love her. I also have another girl,