A Sentimental Man

"I am a sentimental man,
Who always longed to be a father.

That's why I do the best I can,
To treat each citizen of son of Oz
As son or daughter.

So, Elphaba, I'd like to raise you high,
'Cuz I think everyone deserves the fly.

And helping you with your ascent,
Allows me to feel so... parental.

For I am a sentimental man."

That's how my favorite song from "Wicked" goes. Yes. I'm a 31-year-old straight guy, and I have a favorite song from "Wicked". Wanna fight about it?

My favorite song from that show is not in the "Wicked" Easy Piano songbooks that pony-tailed tweens used at creative arts summer camps for a few years so that they could sing "Popular" and "For Good" at low-budget showcases and talent shows the world over.

"A Sentimental Man" didn't turn into a smash hit, and it isn't very memorable, or complicated, or vocally or musically interesting either, I suppose. It isn't particularly long, so it's easy to forget. One minute and seventeen seconds, the way Broadway legend Joel Grey does it anyway. Back when I worked in the creative arts, I tried to find the sheet music to the song so I could sing it at an outdoor cabaret, but I couldn't locate the music. So I sang Eric Idle's "The Galaxy Song" from "The Meaning of Life" instead.

That's life sometimes.

It's funny, because "The Galaxy Song" is a funny song, about the dimensions of the universe and the insignificance of our mortal toils and foibles, and it's sort of a modern interpretation of a patter song, the type I love to sing in G&S operettas, and, to many folks who know me, that's the sort of song they might use to identify me. But I think, to those who really know me best, "A Sentimental Man" says more about who I am, what I feel inside, how I operate, what I value and what I long for most.

Tomorrow night, at 7:00pm, my wife and I are to arrive at the hospital so that she can be induced. If all goes as it should, the twins should be making their appearance on Thursday the 15th. And my life will change forever. Because, of course, it will no longer be my life.

Well, that changed some time ago, I suppose. On October 22nd, 2006, under a chuppah covered in radiant sunflowers, I married my best buddy. A girl whom I turn towards in the car or on the couch or in the bed and sometimes just look at, because I like the way it feels. I like to look in her eyes, or at her cheeks, or her lips, or her chin. She's shorter than me, by a decent margin, and, when we hug, I like to hold her head against my chest. I love the shape of her head-- I know that sounds goofy, but sometimes I'm like that. Her head feels great against my chest and in my hand.

From that day forward, it was no longer my life. It was ours. And now ours is getting a wee bit bigger.

I had a terrifying moment of insecurity last night. As my wife and I dined in the restaurant where we had our first date, as we ate our meal alongside her father, an intelligent though disheveled psychiatrist, I suddenly felt very small in his shadow. The shadow of his expectations and his value system, and his romance with formal educational success, of which I had not very much to speak of. I'm a reasonably talented writer, but I couldn't tell you what a gerund is. To me, it sounds like a weapon used against Jews in the Holocaust.

Speaking of Jews, I felt excluded-- muted-- as my father-in-law and my wife discussed Torah portions as if they'd both just read them yesterday. I can tell you what a Torah looks like, and I know how heavy one is to carry, but that's about it. And I shared my feelings of intellectual insecurity with my wife as we lay on the couch together after the meal was over and her father meandered his way back to his hotel.

"What am I going to be able to teach them?" I asked her, "What am I going to be able to help them with?"

"You're going to teach them about how to be good people," my wife said, which, I have to say, didn't make me feel much better.

There's an insidious air of intellectual superiority about my wife's side of the family. Conversations always seem to revolve around mocking or critiquing "simpler" people in their neighborhoods or schools or workplaces when they lived in upstate New York. My father-in-law is keen to present himself as the one who's always correcting other psychiatrists medical errors, or mis-diagnoses, or over-prescribing tendencies where he works, and my mother-in-law is always one to express judgement over how other people live, but she'll be the first one to correct you if you try to do it. And maybe they do it to cover up their own flaws, or maybe they don't know they're doing it. Or maybe it's just my perception but, as many a psych patient has told me at work, "My perception is my reality".

I wish I could tell you that my terrifying moment of insecurity passed after a good night's sleep, but it hasn't. And I can't lie to you. When I first married my wife, I was petrified that I wouldn't be good enough-- not for her, for she had affirmed, by slipping that orange blossom-engraved ring onto my finger, that I was her beloved, and she was mine-- but that I wouldn't be good enough for her parents. Now I'm scared that I won't be good enough for my children.

"I guess what I am is going to have to be enough for them," was the shaky conclusion I came to last night, as my wife rubbed Hydrocortisone cream over her impossibly huge belly and its accompanying itchy stretch marks, "because I'm all they've got."

And, in the end, maybe being a sentimental man will prove to be of infinite and inestimable value to the life and heart and values and experience of a child.

Children.

Nerd in the Alley

When I was in middle school, I discovered sarcasm, and instantly I knew I had turned from a sweet boy to an asshole. Puberty’ll do that to ya. Just look at Haley Joel Osment.

In high school, I knew I was a schmuck. I quoted George Gobel in my senior picture, for Christ’s sake. Like that was going to get me pussy.

Later, in college, I was pretty sure I was just a loser—with a little bit of theatre fag thrown in for good measure.

When I met my wife, I was nearly convinced that I was a doddering idiot.

Then, when it came time to drive up to Providence for the first extended stay with the rest of her family, I was sure of it.

Certain members of my wife’s family may be socially retarded (Mrs. Apron’s terminology) or bizarre or dubiously-gazed-at in public, but one thing is for sure: when it comes to intelligence, they’ve all asked for, and received, seconds. And heaping portions, at that.

Ask my father-in-law a simple question and you will get an answer that may span the course of eleven minutes' time and you’ll need several advanced degrees to understand maybe a third of his response. Sure, he won’t make eye-contact with you while he’s giving you this answer, and you may lose some of it in mumbles, but it will be… um… really smart.

Really.

My brother-in-law is, well, not particularly worth conversing with. I once rode a bus with him and his attempt to flirt with a beautiful Asian girl he had been chatting up ended briskly when he turned to me and said, in a tone-of-voice approximately 96 decibels too loud:

“DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE CHINAMAN AND THE JEW?”

But he’s seriously “intelligent” in that traditional sense of the word. Physics and whatnot. Whatever.

When I met my wife’s family for the first time, almost eight years ago, I was very much intimidated by their combined intelligence. My mother never went to college. My two sisters barely graduated, for different reasons, and I am… well… hovering somewhere above the average helipad.

Or maybe it didn’t have anything to do with actual or perceived intelligence. Maybe it was the geek factor. Or is the dork quotient? Or the nerd number? Well, whatever it is, or was, they had a lot of it, and I was worried that I perhaps didn’t have enough.

“I don’t think I’m dorky enough to be in your family,” I said, forgetting for a moment that I steadfastly refused to wear shorts until I was seventeen.

Musically, there is no question that I have no business being a member of this family. Her father is a bassoonist and clarinetist. Her mother is a harpist. Her brother is an almost savant-like pianist. Her sister plays trumpet. Before her neurosurgery, my wife played bassoon as well.

Me? Oh, um, I took piano lessons from a drunk lady for three years and learned nothing and I know five chords on the banjo. Pass the veggie burgers.

“You sing and act in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas,” my wife reminded me in a reassuring tone, “what could be more musically dorky than that?”

On Friday night, as we were out driving, I found myself explaining the meaning of the sea shanty “Bully in the Alley” to my wife.

“Well, you see, when the whalers would be off the boat on shore they would go drinking, and, invariably, one of them would get too drunk and would harass passing women and such, and his friends would say, ‘Fuck this,' and shove him in an alley, and so that’s where the song comes from—he’s the bully in the alley.”

My wife stared at me. And, with that stare, I knew I had finally achieved the zenith of dorkdom.

I belong.