This is a call to all my fellow lovers of B101 in Philadelphia: the greatest station for adult contemporary music of all time. If you’re not from the Philadelphia area and aren’t sure what qualifies as adult contemporary, then whatever radio station syndicated Delilah is your equivalent. It’s a place that blends The Carpenters with Celine Dion and Elton John with Hootie and the Blowfish. You’ll hear great vocals and slow to mid-tempo beats and you’ll be better for it.
I’d love to share such beautiful music with the man I love but, sadly, I married a Radiohead fan and someone who has a playlist called “Party Mix” that could only be appropriate if the party in question was an emo funeral.
When you say you love Bruce Springsteen and your partner responds, “Me too — my favorite album is Nebraska,” the difference in taste is made clear very quickly. I should have known from that “Party Mix” that he’d never come to the party the way I’d hoped. But early on, I was too much of an optimist.
We don’t go to that many concerts given my 9:30 PM bedtime so I assumed the fact that we were going to see Darius Rucker, a.k.a. Hootie, at all meant Jeff would appropriately come to that party. I even gave him a pass when Darius started with various country songs that Jeff didn’t know and didn’t care about… fine. But when we realized we were going to revisit Cracked Rear View in all its glory, I assumed Jeff would channel the enthusiasm we all had in 1995 and pep up. I kept elbowing and shout-whispering “isn’t this amazing???” and got a soft “yeah” in return. I yanked him up during “Hold My Hand” and tried to force some clapping along with the crowd but settled for a half-hearted sway that, in retrospect, may not have been of his own will but rather just me shoving my whole side into him and his body absorbing the hit and bouncing back.
So there we were, at an outdoor concert with a cold beer in hand and “Only Wanna Be with You” playing live, and the man I married couldn’t tap a single toe. I’m not asking him to be a fan; I’m expecting him to be a human.
What I thought at the time might be a situational issue has turned out to be a far bigger crisis of core values: the delta between our respective levels of enthusiasm is massive. Jeff can be an Eeyore (his mother, as every good mother should, said “I’ve never known anyone who is less of an Eeyore,” but that’s such a lie that even Jeff, in a sad Eeyore tone, had to admit it was false), but most of the time, let’s be real, he’s Owl. Whereas I’m straight up Rabbit with a Tigger rising. I bring all caps and heavy punctuation and, dare I say, a flair for the dramatic to most things and Jeff prefers the all-lowercase, single-word response. Most often, he’s “ok,” sometimes he’s “awesome,” and I’m always annoyed with the exchange.
For example, I share an article link to something I’m excited about.
He replies “oh fun.”
I say “Great punctuation there.”
He says “lol”
Me: “Next time I share something with you, find some fucking enthusiasm please!”
Him: ok
In October, my favorite Irish comedian/human being, Joanne McNally, just happens to be coming to Philadelphia for three nights. To me, this is a sign from the heavens and something that I am actually open to staying up until 10 PM (or even 10:30!!!) for. I tell Jeff and he says he’s not sure he wants to go because he may not be able to understand her accent. You can see how it netted out:
The tickets have been purchased, and I have to live for weeks with the guilt of knowing that I’m bringing a dud audience member to Joanne’s show. And in my eyes (and those of my mother) there’s nothing worse than being a dud.
The thing is, Jeff is capable of enthusiasm. He actually has an alter-ego: Jeff 2000. Fueled by whiskey and red wine, Jeff 2000 is so joyous and fun he walks the actual line of annoying (please note: Jeff 3000 is the version that’s crossed the line into annoying and I hate). Jeff 2000 shows up, plays darts suspiciously well, and will actually do a tiny bit of karaoke (he can only sing Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” but that could be way worse).
Jeff 2000 has crazy piercing eyes that are like anthropomorphized exclamation points and he talks a little faster and in a higher register than any other version of Jeff. I first met this version when Jeff brought me to his alleged “book club” that I joined and couldn’t tell you a single book that was ever read, or even assigned. It was such an incredible contrast to someone I thought just lived on a spectrum between thoughtful/sweet and total grump — like a whole other dimension, like when I took multivariable calculus and discovered there were shapes and planes that existed that I couldn’t even fathom. Jeff 2000, like a hyperbolic paraboloid, exists in the reality of the world, but not in my personal reality of things I can understand, conjure, produce, or predict.
This past Sunday was our anniversary — of both the day we met and our wedding — and regular Jeff, who I truly love, showed up at dinner. And, exactly as advertised, his brief but perfectly worded card for me was punctuated: two periods and a lone comma.
When my mother met Jeff, she pulled me into the bathroom in the middle of dinner and said “I like him a lot, do you like him?” I said “of course” and she responded: “Then I hope you like him exactly as he is, because at his age, you can’t change him.” I actually did change some surface-level things: he wears better clothes, watches Love Island, and gets up earlier.
So she must have been warning me about the toe taps.
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