by Rob Delaney
The following essay didn’t make sense for the book, but originally appeared on the VICE website and was a “hit” with the all-female crew who worked with me on this book. They wanted it in the book, so here it is. My most explicit and passionate thanks to Julie Grau, Laura Van der Veer, and Maria Braeckel, who helped me address all of my problem areas.
problem areas
Hi everybody! How’s it going? If you’re a woman, I hope your answer is “I’m fucking starving!” Bikini season will be here before you can say “Jamochachino Surprise,” so you better be torturing yourself and focusing your meager intellect and out-of-control emotions on shedding those pounds, girlfriend! I saw an article in a magazine yesterday that highlighted “four problem areas” a woman can have. Are you shitting me? I’m assuming that article was written by a woman, because if you think you’ve only got four problem areas to worry about, you’ve gone so deep into the “Red Tent” of feminine insanity you might never come back.
I don’t have a dedicated bank of super-servers in rural Washington State to store a giga-list of everything that could be or probably is wrong with your body, so I’ll just name a few:
Saddle bags, upper-arm fat, cottage cheese thighs, midriff-bulge (aka F.U.P.A aka “gunt”), flat chest, asymmetrical breasts, butt-beard, bacne, pit-cheese, cankles, surprise tampon string cameos, eczema, ham spatula, ashy elbows, feet of any kind, hairy knuckles, beef knuckles, uncle’s knuckles, vaginal halitosis, bald spots, loaf latch, sideburns, flat-bottom, creeping jimson weed, dowager’s hump, treasure trail, Pepperidge Farm, razor bumps, leakage, phantom dangle, and panty dandruff.
I know it wasn’t easy to read that list since you likely recognized between twenty-two and seventy items from your very own body. Jesus Christ, that’s got to be discouraging. You probably feel like some sort of crippled, cupcake-hunting whale, listlessly bobbing in the ocean off the western coast of Mexico, hoping some merciful Ahab will happen upon you and order his big black Queequeg to hurl a harpoon into your heart, ending it all. (Unless there’s some sort of afterlife situation, where women who didn’t subject their appearance to enough scrutiny are punished for eternity, which, if we’re being honest, is probably exactly what happens.)
“Why me?” I can hear you screaming. Well, if you’re not too ashamed to leave the house, head down to your local library and pick up a Bible. You don’t have to read too far to get to the part where Eve (the first woman to both perspire AND fart when nervous) pigs out on a massive fruit buffet, angering God. As a result, God calls Eve a “fat bitch,” orders her to “put some fucking clothes on” (Genesis 3:16), and decrees that henceforth, all women’s bodies will essentially be lumpy torture-machines existing to satisfy men, assuming they can keep their “crazy pussy hair” under control (Genesis 3:20–22).
The Bible is loaded with great advice, and it’s important we remember that makeup companies and the media and plastic surgeons are not foisting some made-up idea of what’s “beautiful” upon women. These laws come straight from the mouth of Dr. Samuel F. Godburgers Himself, issued as He shrieks across the sky astride His prayer-powered Truth Rocket. And the fantastic news is that God’s first “Message to the Ladies” appears in the Old Testament, a text vital to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. So don’t be acting like you ain’t heard, unless maybe you grew up in Asia, subscribing to some religion that dilutes its firepower among 330 million Gods (why so many Gods? With that many Gods, there must be Gods named like, “Rick,” or maybe a God of hot turkey sandwiches? Why not?). Or even worse; maybe you were raised in a religion that doesn’t even have a God to give a shit about what you look like in a bikini. It sickens me to imagine.
I can hear some of you women disagreeing with me. You think the Bible is a dusty five-thousand-year-old comic book written by men. You believe that today’s arbiters of tastes and trends are cash-vacuuming soul murderers who subsist on your fear. And you might even think you can hear the board members of Procter & Gamble and the bearded polygamists who wrote the Bible high-fiving through a hole in the space-time continuum and having a good laugh.
But that would be crazy.
Eric would have an easier time starting a sleepover camp for infants than 2 guys named Sid. @robdelaney “Do you have this in beige?” - old people @robdelaney “Socks… they’re like… soft little canoes for your feet.” - Don Draper, having a stroke @robdelaney Need special medicine for our son’s kidneys but we can’t afford it because we bought printer ink last week :( @robdelaney If you don’t react when the Dr. hits your knee with the mallet, the Hippocratic Oath says he has to kill you with a shotgun right then. @robdelaney I just “favorited” a picture that a friend posted of a bruise on her thigh, in case you thought the internet wasn’t important. @robdelaney It’s 2012, aka the future. Don’t ask me to print shit out, sign, scan, fax, etc. You’re not the CIA. Dial it down, Patty Printsalot. @robdelaney Did you know that you’re allowed to pull over a cop on your birthday? Try it! @robdelaney My favorite Spice Girl was Coriander Connie. (She was crushed by a falling air conditioner before their first album came out) @robdelaney I bet Patrick Swayze’s “Ghost” ghost & Bruce Willis’s “6th Sense” ghost make beautiful pottery together in movie heaven. @robdelaney As a kid, I’d pull a girl’s hair to let her know I liked her, but now that I’m older & wiser I simply hit her with my car. @robdelaney NOTHING says “I am batshit, incapable of relationships, bad with money & cannot be trusted” like colored contact lenses. @robdelaney If a cop busts you with a prostitute, slip an engagement ring on her finger & be like “Joke’s on you, bro; we’re in love!” @robdelaney Imagine how hard you’d cry if you found out your mom had been eaten by a wolf WHILE you were chopping onions. @robdelaney 4 out of 5 dentists agree my cousin Sheila is remarkably ugly. @robdelaney Today’s the day I finally get my shit together @robdelaney I might not be the “best” father in the world, but I’m also bad with money & know how to beat a polygraph. @robdelaney My brother in law won’t go to Hooters with me tonight because his wife is “having a baby.” #lame @robdelaney Condoleeza Rice went by Condoleeza Couscous in college. @robdelaney Seriously, get off the computer once in a while… smell the roses… volunteer… show your balls to a turtle… make a ham fort… @robdelaney When I see someone pushing a dog in a stroller I understand why the news is filled with murder. @robdelaney Mitt Romney help me a black man tried to give me health insurance i am hiding w my family in basement come get us @robdelaney The thing I love about baseball is that it has all the excitement of football, packed into 162 4 hour games. @robdelaney “I hate this quilt.” - my wife, a person capable of hating a quilt @robdelaney Just heard a little kid tell his dad he
acknowledgments
OFTEN while writing this book, I said to myself, “This is harder than raising a child.” I meant it and I still feel that way. The first draft was a brutal and lonely experience, miles away from a comedy club stage where people respond immediately to what I say.
My most heartfelt thanks goes to my publisher and editor, Julie Grau, who asked me to write this book and whose words were like water to me when I was choking on dust in the desert. You’re magic.
Glowing, pulsing, and humming thanks also goes to Laura Van der Veer, who guided me through the trenches with her story savvy and kindness. Without Julie and Laura, this book would be garbage, and I would be in prison in Ecuador, maybe.
Thank you to my beloved manager of five years, Kara Baker, who found me as a misshapen lump of clay in the back room of Rififi and fashioned me into the smooth cog that I am now. You are a legitimate bad-ass and I am grateful we’re doing this together.
Thanks too to Dickie Copeland, the person I exchange more emails with than anyone else in my life. You are very good at what you do and let us not forget it was the day you entered my life that things started looking up.
Thank you to Sarah Silverman, whose memoir showed me that it’s okay to go deep, acclimate, and then go deeper.
Thank you to Matt Pike and Josh Homme, whose m
usic I listen to before I go on stage and when I write and when I drive and when I cook and when I do everything.
Thank you to Bill Cosby for sitting down with my wife and me and explaining the necessity of placing my family above my career and keeping it there. You are my hero.
Thank you to Teju Cole, Caitlin Moran, and Charles Portis, whose beautiful, vital books I read aloud to my wife as I wrote this one. You made us happy and you made us think. You made me appreciate the incandescent privilege of being able to put a book in people’s hands.
Thank you to my dad, who read to me one thousand times as a child and sends me books to this day.
Thank you to my sister Boogums. I’ve been crazy about you since you were born four years and eleven months after me. I am so proud of the woman you’ve become. You make everyone you know smile; it’s almost weird.
Finally, thank you to my wife Leah. I still am routinely flooded with gratitude that we found each other. You are brilliant and beautiful and I would marry you again right now if I fell into a wormhole or “time-walked” into the past somehow by mistake. You helped me write this book and I am in love with you. Thank you for making our sons, Cantaloupe and Podcast, in your cutie-pie tummy.
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