The Luv Doc: Work to Do

Dear Luv Doc,

That bit last week about city slickers driving around in oversized trucks was baller! Twisty mustaches?! Hilarious. Sometimes I feel like you're reading my mind. It's like we're sharing a brain. You voice my thoughts like I am an open book or I still have notes on my forehead that my mom stapled there when I was a kid. The main difference is that you have a wide captive audience; all I have is my wife, kids, and the remaining remnants of my social life. My wife has learned to shut it down by withholding sex. When I do see my friends, some of them appreciate hearing my observations, but that's probably because the more I talk, the more they drink. My kids are forced to listen to hapless scaled-back "family show" versions of my thoughts simply because they lack a driver's license. I hope they have a good EAP one day. Facebook, I do have FB – that's true. Anyone who knows is "unfollowing" me yet has kept me as a FB friend just to be nice. Have you ever noticed that David Lee Roth kinda looks like Darlene from Ozark? And Eddie looks like Wyatt? Shoot – that was for Facebook. Anywho, I was wondering … What is your real job anyway?

– An Open Book

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I think everyone would agree I don't have a real job, but I have a lot of work to do – excuse me … "we" have a lot of work to do – given we share the same brain of course, which in a sort of Wachowski sisters/alternate reality/string theory/multiverse way is very likely spot-on. So, aside from our completely unfounded assumption that our pop science/cultural references are both obvious and universal, we have a frustratingly annoying way of expressing intimacy and connection that involves pretty much anything but direct, earnest communication. This often leaves those who we love most feeling like they don't truly know how we feel about them – even though it seems plainly obvious to us. Why else would we ridicule them mercilessly about their most minute faults? That would be unconscionable to do to someone we didn't care about.

I'm sure you (we) have experienced this as often as I (we) have: In a moment of extreme mental fatigue or perhaps chemically induced blissfulness, we state something plainly obvious to someone, like, "You're very thoughtful," or, "I couldn't do this without you," and the person we've directed these simple, obvious comments to gets misty-eyed at this rare moment of sincerity – perhaps initially doesn't even trust that it's real at all. Their heartfelt reaction surprises us so much that we in turn feel awkward in a "are you fucking stupid?" kind of way. Deep down, though, we really know who is stupid, don't we? We know who's been missing the boat. Or maybe shitting the bed. We have a lot of work to do on that.

In fact, we have a lot of work to do on learning to effectively communicate how we truly feel about anything – especially if that feeling is negative. We have spent our whole lives figuring out how to deftly juke any emotion that can't be easily expressed through laughter or ridicule, and while we are sometimes a hit at dull cocktail mixers, in quiet elevators, and at circumcision ceremonies (and we both know we said "circumcision ceremonies" because we are not entirely sure of the plural form of "bris" – plus, tbh, we have never even been invited to a bris even though we are secretly sure that we would slay in that environment, which is surely the primary reason we haven't been invited), we are a tremendously annoying shitshow when people are trying to get serious shit done. Speaking of serious, we could seriously work on trimming down our frequent, gratuitous use of lengthy parenthetical asides that completely cock up our syntax and very likely give our proofers eye twitches on a weekly basis. That's pretty fucked up.

So yeah, even though we don't have a real job, we have a lot of work to do. Now, regarding the David Lee Roth/Darlene similarity: We get it. All blondes are basically identical. And we're right: Give Wyatt a tight perm and he would probably play a blistering hammer-on solo that would make David Lee Roth's panties slide down his ankles (while Jason Bateman masturbates in the corner, of course). Yet, as delightful as that sounds, we need to shake that thought out of our heads because we have work to do.