America, You Sexy Bitch (3 page)

But does that American Dream still exist? Will my kids have the same broad opportunities I had? I like to think they will. I like to believe that America is still a place where dreams, even stupid ones, are achievable, not just for the lucky few, but for anybody willing to put in the necessary hard work and take a chance. The problem is, I’m not sure I believe it. And I have a sense a lot of people out there don’t believe it either. So that’s also part of my journey with Meghan.

Meghan and I are meeting in San Diego, California, where my mom and her lesbian partner, Sandy, are staying for the month. Sandy is
not
my mother’s wife, at least in the legal sense, because although they have been together almost twenty years, they cannot legally marry in Florida, the state in which they reside most of the year. I probably don’t need to point out that twenty years is a lot longer than many straight marriages last.

Sandy has seen my mother through some terrible health issues. Nursed her through cancer, radiation, and dozens of operations. She’s been there for my mom in a way that my brother and I have not. Except for some financial aid from my brother and me, Sandy has been my mother’s sole support for all these years, the person who has given her everything she’s needed to survive. Sandy is, in every sense of the word except the government-sanctioned one, my mother’s spouse, and that the government has the ability to deny their relationship is beyond wrong. It’s immoral. Marriage is not about which partner has which genitalia, it’s about upholding all those vows politicians are so fond of breaking. Why would Republicans, the party of individual liberty, have a problem with two people marrying who are committed to each other? Why would anybody?

Meghan is driving down from Los Angeles to meet me at Mom and Sandy’s rental, and I am a little nervous. It’s weird bringing a
new woman to meet your mother when you are already married. Especially when you are going to be travelling in an RV with said woman for a month. It’s also weird trying to explain it to your wife.

Martha was surprisingly cool about the idea right from the get-go. It didn’t really occur to me to think that she wouldn’t be, but if the situation were reversed, and she were hitting the road with some cute, younger guy for a month, I might not have been so accommodating.

Part of me wonders whether I should be insulted that Martha is so relaxed about all this. I mean, why isn’t she worried that something might happen between Meghan and me? Yes, I’m getting a little pudgy, yes, my hair is thinning, yes, I have bad feet. But any single woman in her twenties would be lucky to have me. Why? Because I have panache. And Crocs.

The Crocs were a last-minute purchase made right before I left. My kids, ten and eight years old, are into Crocs and they wanted me to get a pair too. And because I am the world’s best father, I agreed, selecting a green-and-black pair. If you are unfamiliar with Crocs, they are rubbery sandals that all self-respecting adults tend to avoid because they look stupid. But I figured they would be a good footwear choice for the trip since they are comfortable, durable, and do not require socks. Socks are a traveler’s bane because they create lots of dirty laundry. Any footwear that saves on the number of socks I have to pack is good footwear. Plus, they look cute on me. So cute, in fact, that I think Meghan will probably have an even harder time keeping her hands off me when she sees me in them.

Which means Martha should be doubly concerned about me going on this road trip. I introduced her to Meghan a week or so before we left. Meghan was in New York for meetings, so we arranged a lunch—just the three of us—at a café on the West Side. The lunch was the least amount of awkward that such a lunch can be.

“So, honey, this is the woman I’m going to be living with for a month.”

“Whatever.”

Why does she trust me so much? Men should not be trusted in these situations! Does she think I am somehow not man enough to cheat on her during this road trip? She probably
does
think that. And she is probably right. Damn her.

Meghan arrives at Mom and Sandy’s a few hours after I do. She is late, caught in traffic. Over a text message she apologizes and warns me that she is a “hot mess,” which is a term she uses to describe anybody or anything that is unkempt, bedraggled, or drunk. When she finally shows up, she does kind of look like a hot mess. She’s wearing an outfit I can only describe as “nouveau
Flashdance
” : an off-the-shoulder gray sweatshirt, black headband, and black leggings.

The conversation is kind of stilted at first. We talk about politics a little, and my mom’s sexual history a little—this is not a conversation I initiate, by the way, because that would be weird—my mom’s health (poor), Sandy’s grandson (a genius), the problem with Florida (everything), and all manner of topics large and small. Mom thinks judges are legislating from the bench. Sandy thinks there’s too much religion in politics. I make a joke about them being elitist liberals for serving sparkling water, which goes over very well, and also a joke about how I used to get a lot of ass before I was married, which does not. Everybody is lovely to everybody else, but the whole thing is odd, neatly summarized by my mother, who says after about an hour of small talk, “So I still don’t understand exactly what it is you’re doing.”

I don’t either, Mom. I don’t either.

Yet here I am, three thousand miles away from home, about to embark on a cannonball run across the United States in an effort to figure out what the hell is up with Lady Liberty. It is a noble endeavor, I think, albeit a half-baked one. What do we possibly think we can accomplish doing this other than having a helluva good time? I tell Meghan the trip will only be a success to me if one of us gets arrested.

“It’ll be you,” she says.

“I don’t think so.”

After the tension in the room has dissipated a bit, I make the choice to do something I almost never do, which is to allow myself to go barefoot. The reason I almost never do this is because I really do have bad feet. My toenails have that gross foot fungus that makes them thick like Ruffles potato chips, and the bottoms of my feet are all dry and crinkled. But I figure if we’re going to be traveling together for a month, I might as well just throw caution to the wind. My Crocs are not off my feet for a minute before Meghan looks down and says, “You have the gnarliest feet I have ever seen.”

Well, excuse me, Miss Perfect! If I wanted criticism about my appearance from a female, I could have stayed home with my wife. Maybe I’m making a terrible mistake here. Maybe I’m about to hit the road with somebody I can’t stand. My mom is right: What
are
we doing here? Needless to say, I never allow Meghan to see my bare feet again. This whole idea is a hot mess.

 

 

 

Meghan:
I never imagined that the first man I would officially bring home to meet my family over a Fourth of July weekend would be Michael Ian Black. My family has met my boyfriends before, in a sort of roundabout way, but I have never brought a man home to meet them and spend the weekend at our cabin in Sedona. Before we started off on this adventure, I only had a vague knowledge of who Michael Ian Black even was—in college the VH1 show
I Love the ’80s
was particularly popular, and I remembered seeing him do commentary on it during the weekly group viewings in my dorm lounge area at Columbia University. Now here I am, sitting next to a virtual stranger with his tour manager friend, Stephie, in the backseat, driving along the same dusty highway to Sedona that I have driven thousands of times before.

I spent what feels like every weekend of my childhood trekking up on Friday afternoons and coming home on Sunday evenings to our cabin. I am trying to concentrate on how wonderful and tranquil our place in Sedona is, to calm my nerves instead of focusing on the fact that I am bringing complete strangers who not only my family doesn’t know, but I don’t know, to our cabin. After spending time with Michael and his family in San Diego, I still wasn’t feeling exactly comfortable, and I think they were just as skeptical about me as I was about them. Neither Michael nor I were exactly letting loose and being ourselves yet, and on top of everything else we were having a complicated time explaining to everyone just what the hell we were doing together this summer. If I were Michael’s mom, I
would have given me the third degree too. I mean, what exactly was I doing with her happily married son on a road trip for the summer? By the end of that visit it was pretty apparent to everyone in the room that Michael and I really only had a #twitterelationship.

Even by my impulsive standards, starting at my family retreat, was up there with weirdness. I spent much of my formative years hiking, fishing, watching scary movies, and making forts with my siblings at our cabin in Sedona. Our cabin is tucked away in a canyon and is especially private and secluded, something I used to hate, but now relish. After the election, it was where we all hid out, recovering in the aftermath of Obamamania. If I ever decide to get married, it would be on the banks of the creek where I used to catch crawfish, the hundred-year-old willows shading the ceremony and my dad walking me down the sage-covered aisle.

I’ll admit, though, it was a bit of an odd childhood spent in Sedona, with the likes of Henry Kissinger, Don Imus, and Warren Beatty passing through my memory like famous ghosts, gnawing on my father’s unsurpassed grilled dry ribs on the deck. But mostly Sedona was a safe haven where, no matter the good times or bad, we could reconnect as a nuclear family and keep the prying eyes of the media world at bay.

I glance over at Michael. He’s wearing two-tone Crocs and linen pants. He looks ridiculous; he should really be wearing jeans and cowboy boots, or at least just jeans. A cool chill passes over me as I imagine Michael getting out of the car and meeting my mom. Famous families in America are notoriously guarded with their privacy, political families are borderline militant with their privacy, and my family is no different. Everything about this scenario goes against the grain of how I was raised to protect the inner circle and our privacy, and at the last minute I am overcome with anxiety about the ridiculousness of this scenario. A scenario that I am completely complicit in creating.

I have never minded taking risks when it comes to my own life—at times I have even relished testing the boundaries of the things I
can get away with—but I’m feeling stupid and guilty that I might be putting my family in the path of someone I barely know and have reasons not to trust; he’s exactly the kind of Left-leaning comedian who loves to skewer people like us for gatherings just like this. What am I doing bringing this random guy and his road manager into the McCain lair, simply with the intention to observe and judge? What the hell have I gotten myself into? No, seriously.

 

Michael:
Some clarification: although I have said that we’re traveling the country by RV, that’s not entirely true. Our first few stops will be reached by airplane, then we will pick up the RV and meet our peculiar RV driver Cousin John, in Austin, Texas. Neither Meghan nor I are well-organized enough to choreograph this dance, so we’ve also hired my friend Stephie to accompany us as tour manager. With our input, she’s been putting together the itinerary, booking hotel rooms, contacting various people we want to meet, badgering Congressmen, and making the trip actually doable instead of the absurd Ambien-fueled fantasy it started as.

I met Stephie a couple of years ago when my friend Michael Showalter and I hired her to be our assistant on a TV show. She was just out of college then, an aspiring writer and producer. The word most people use to describe her is “adorable,” because of her small size and big, moony eyes. My nickname for her is “Nermal.” Regular readers of “Garfield” will recall Nermal as Garfield’s nemesis, an impossibly cute kitten. That’s Stephie: impossibly, annoyingly cute.

In many ways, she is Meghan’s opposite. Meghan is brash and outrageous. Stephie is demure and shy. Meghan is a honky-tonkin’, gun-totin’, whoopin’ and hollerin’ cowgirl. Stephie plays videogames and eats raw spinach out of a bag. As of this point, they have only spoken by phone. When they actually meet this morning, I am worried about how they will react to each other. I’m not sure how my little Nermal will do in a cat fight.

“Hiiiii!” squeals Meghan when we find Stephie at the airport, wrapping her in a hug. I’ve known Stephie for three years and have
never hugged her. I don’t think I’ve ever even touched her. Because girls other than my wife scare me.

They start gabbing right away: How fun this is going to be, how excited they both are, Stephie’s fiancé Chris and their wedding plans,
blah blah blah
girl stuff
blah blah blah.
They’re just falling all over each other, instant BFFs. This is bullshit. Stephie’s
my
friend!

I pout my way to the parking lot, where we pile into an SUV. The plan is to spend the night in Sedona, the Arizona Hamptons, that New Agey, feel-good, richy-rich Sun State oasis where the McCains have their country compound. Meghan keeps warning me that the house in Sedona is nothing fancy, but I don’t believe her. “Nothing fancy” in her world is, I suspect, something pretty f-ing fancy in mine.

Arizona is gorgeous. Even when it’s 108 degrees, as it is now, it’s gorgeous. There’s just something about the vast red desert and crumbly distant mountains that stills the mind. Everything out here is baked down to its essence, an entire world lived in a microwave oven. As we drive, I notice that it looks cloudy towards the horizon. Maybe it will rain, but I don’t think so. I don’t think it ever rains here. No wonder there were so many gunfights back when this was the Wild West; people must go crazy in these conditions. All this sun is just unnatural. It’s beautiful, yeah, but I can’t imagine living here. What are we even supposed to do while we’re here other than die from dehydration?