I used to try to talk to my boyfriend before bed. “Pillow talk” is what, I believe, this specific conversational period is termed by romantics. It’s the time when, after a hard day’s work or play, you are supposed to tell your troubles to, or perhaps share a philosophical pondering with, the soul mate who lounges beside you. Then, after you’ve each mended the others troubles with a little wisdom and tenderness, you fall into a blissful sleep with your sweetie.
I used to try this, but it was sort of hard because my boyfriend was usually busy reading the New Yorker or Esquire and not paying any attention to me. “Baby doll,” I’d say, scooting in close and wrapping my arms around him to make sure he knew that I was there and cared about him. “Do you know what a brilliant person I think you are?” He’d flip to the next spread of Jessica Biel and pause, I assumed, thoughtfully, and then say, “I love you too. Can you move your hand? It’s in my way.”
Once or twice, I tried getting into a fight over this, raising my voice, and telling him that he was being disrespectful and not paying enough attention to me. “Most men would love to have me in bed with them at night,” I’d say. “They’d love to have an actual woman here instead of looking at stupid pictures in their stupid magazines.” Of course, whenever I’d try this, he would inevitably have chosen New Yorker for his reading material that evening, and the pictures would be of things like ranchers in Wyoming or Ralph Nader. “I do think I’m lucky,” he’d say, perplexed. “Why else would I be lying here with you?”
“But I want to spend some quality time talking to you,” I’d say.
“We’ve spent all day together,” he’d answer. “What else do you want to talk about?”
The problem was that he was right. I didn’t have anything left to really say to him, but there was something sacred about those last few minutes before sleep. I didn’t mind reading in bed; I enjoyed it myself. I just wanted a little closure to our day, some small period that was uniquely ours.
Enter Kevin James. We’d discovered that we liked the sitcom King of Queens one day while whiling away a hangover in front of the television. Then, much ashamed and trying to pass the whole thing off as a joke, we’d gone as far as to rent a season of it at the local video store. After watching almost an entire DVD’s worth of the fat man, we decided to take him to bed. There was still one episode left on the disc, and rather than stay up or save it until morning, my boyfriend suggested that we watch it on my laptop before falling asleep. We did just that, and a strange thing happened. He began talking. Not much, and certainly not often, but whenever Mr. James’s character Doug Heffernan did something that reminded him of himself, he’d give me a knowing nudge and wisely explain the motives for the TV stars’ actions. “See,” he’d say, “Men always think their own farts smell good.”
I didn’t agree with most of his pronouncements, especially the ones where he saw something of me in the character of the uptight and unpleasant wife, Carrie, but we laughed at the show’s jokes and by talking about the characters, we found that we were really talking about ourselves. “That is just what you do when you get mad,” he’d say as Carrie backed a meek looking Doug into a corner.”
“It is,” I agreed. “You should cower more next time. Act more the trodden husband a la Doug. Maybe I’ll feel sorry for you.”
We haven’t discovered any great truths about each other through these bedtime sitcoms. The characters of Doug and Carrie aren’t really much like us at all. But sometimes, if we stretch our imaginations, they act like us and reveal certain faults of our own. And because those faults are endearing on the show, every once in a while, we’ll find them endearing in each other. Doug and Carrie haven’t stemmed many fights between us, but there have been a few.
