In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re taking a look at different kinds of love. This is a story about a love that wasn’t romantic, but was very intimate. And just a quick note before we start: this is a true story, but in the interests of privacy, I’ve changed a few details.
We met freshman year of college, in a theater history seminar. It was the first day of class, and for our first assignment, our professor made each of us take the stage, alone, to “improvise a piece of inspired movement.” When it was Dave’s turn, for some reason, he looked at me and said, “Can you give me a bass line?” Without a word, I started imitating an electric bass. Dave whirled around sock-footed in his oversized jeans. It was the first of many conversations in a language only he and I understood.
A few weeks later, we wrote a parody of Oedipus and filmed it with claymation figurines we built. We divvied up the voices — Dave did everything high-pitched and British, I went with Dimwit New Yawka. I have no memory of the script, but I do remember that we ruined every take because we couldn’t stop laughing. Later, we wrote sketches for the college radio station where Dave played a goldfish named Mr. Puck-Puck and I was a pet store owner who couldn’t bring myself to sell him.
Dave didn’t drink, hated socializing and considered pretty much everyone to be a smooth-brained philistine — except for me, even though I thought it was funny to drink half a bottle of Night Train and show up at parties with my trombone. Dave never came with me. I always stumbled back to his dorm room after it became clear that solo brass bands were unwelcome at the kegger, and we’d play GameCube until three or four in the morning.
After college, we moved into a paint-chipped railroad apartment. Dave spent his days sleeping late and reading comics. I got a job as a bellman. Every night around 3:30 a.m., when I could barely stay awake during the overnight shift at the hotel, I called Dave on the lobby phone.
“Slow night?”
“You really should be asleep right now.”
“You really need a new job.”
We were still writing comedy sketches together. We wrote about medieval archers on the moon, and a time-traveling ukulele with supernatural powers. Our characters mostly had the same accents as they did in the Oedipus adaptation. And we still couldn’t get through a sketch without cracking up. But on the rare occasions when we convinced someone to let us perform, we were usually the only ones laughing.
And then, one night, we were sitting in Dave’s basement studio, playing Mortal Kombat. He’d spent the day trying to build a bookshelf, but it kept coming out crooked, and his faucet was leaking. There was a pipe under the sink exuding rancid brown goo, so he’d put a bucket underneath it, which we’d taken to calling “The Horrible Bucket.” After a while, Dave turned to me and said, “You know, sometimes I wish I could travel back in time and punch my 15-year-old self in the face.”
“Why?”
“I mean, look at this,” said Dave, gesturing vaguely to the room. “If that little shit hadn’t spent so much time seething in the corner, practicing his Joker impression, maybe things would’ve turned out a little differently for me.”
I paused the game and grabbed a notebook. “What if I play you at 15?”
“But you don’t look anything … OK, wait this is amazing.”
We wrote for three hours straight. In the sketch, Dave and I are playing Mortal Kombat on his couch, and he turns to me and says, “You know, sometimes I wish I could travel back in time and punch my 15-year-old self in the face.” So we build a time machine and head back to Dave’s high school, where he discovers me, scowling and muttering “Why so serious?”
Dave announces his intention to punch Young Dave — aka me — in the face. But the aspiring Joker turns the tables on him: “Why is it my job to fix your life?” I demand. “The way I figure it, you’re the one letting me down!” I punch Dave in the face. The lights go out.
The crowd howls and cheers.
The sketch becomes a revelation for Dave and me, and not just because it got laughs. Somehow, it makes us feel better. From now on, we decide, no more sketches about magic ukuleles and characters who talk in silly voices. We’re only going to write about real stuff. Whenever we get together, we ask ourselves two questions: “What happened this week? What was dumb or weird about it?”
We stage a recreation of my brief but eventful career as a cab driver. Dave plays a rogue's gallery of criminals, racists and drunks. There’s another one about how Dave is afraid of his girlfriend’s dad.
There’s also still one bizarro sketch in the rotation: two characters sitting on a porch in a haunted valley, fearing that they’re about to be devoured by eldritch demons. But we leave it in the set — for some reason, it plays.
We start getting booked on bigger shows. We do comedy festivals all over the country. During a trip to LA, we do a showcase for an agent, who tells us to put together a writing packet.
That fall, we hole up at Dave’s parents’ place and spend a week expanding one of our sketches into a full-length movie. I feel triumphant. Dave is pensive. I ask what’s wrong.
“I dunno. Maybe we’re rushing into this. Besides, this isn’t what we got into this for.”
“To be professional writers?!”
“No dude. This is supposed to be about us.”
I’m stunned. But Dave is serious — he quits, on the spot. I try to change his mind, but within a few months, he’s rented an apartment in Denver. He’s tired of the hustle and wants to go somewhere he can just live.
But I don’t know how to live without writing. Writing, and writing with Dave in particular, is the only way I’ve ever been able to make sense of living.
With Dave gone, I turn to my own stories. I tell them on stages and into microphones, first in the back of bars and makeshift studios in my apartment, and then, gradually, in theaters and recording studios. I do my best to stick to Dave and I’s mandate: “What actually happened? What makes it weird?”
At some point, Dave gives up on the Denver experiment and moves back in with his parents. He goes to grad school, but can’t find work when his program ends. He still calls me late at night. But I don’t pick up as often.
And then, about three and a half years ago, Dave came to visit. It had been a few months since we talked. We went for a walk in the park, and reminisced about college for a while. Then we sat on a bench. Dave turned to me and said he needed to level with me. He didn’t recognize me anymore. He felt like I’d left him behind. I told him I felt like he’d abandoned me. Within five minutes we were on our feet, ranting at each other. People walking their dogs gave us a wide berth.
When I got home, I checked my phone. There was an email from Dave that said he never wanted to speak to me again.
I think about Dave all the time, but especially around this time of year. The time we tried to write the movie. The time our story ended. This year, I decided, if I couldn’t write with him, I had to write about him. It’s what’s happening. And what’s dumb about it is: if we were writing this together, it would be way better. And way funnier.
A couple days ago, I dug up that sketch about the haunted valley. I couldn’t remember how it ended. Turns out, one of the guys on the porch realizes the other guy is a demon in disguise. He kills him to save his own life, and then starts singing a sad song because he’s all alone in the haunted valley.
I guess there’s a reason we kept it in the set after all.
