by Bobby Bones
FIGHT. GRIND. REPEAT.
AND SOMETIMES LOSE
If I had to describe my life in Austin in three words, it would be these: Fight. Grind. Repeat.
When I started doing mornings, soon after I arrived in Texas, and had to start waking up at an ungodly hour, I became very disciplined. I mean, I was never a slacker. In college I hardly had time to breathe. But this was different. The stakes were much higher and the margin for error much smaller. Like I’ve said before, the first step, foundation—whatever you want to call it—for success is being reliable and on time.
I wanted more than anything to be successful at my job, so I began a routine that I follow to this day:
Wake up at 3 A.M.
Arrive at the office by 4 A.M.
Start the show at 5 A.M.
Lunch at 10:30 A.M.
Nap before noon (if it’s not before noon, I don’t take a nap)
Work out at 3 P.M.
In bed by 8 P.M.
If that schedule sounds tough, that’s because it is. And remember, I don’t drink coffee. But I forced myself to do the right thing over and over and over again until it became ingrained in me. Every day was a fight—a fight against my own exhaustion and a fight against every other show on the air. The chip on my shoulder that I seem to have been born with only made me that much more competitive. If everyone else in radio was out to get me, I was going to retaliate by getting every listener out there on my side. Fighting every day—that was the grind. And then I just woke up again at 3 A.M. to repeat it.
My fight club mentality was good for the show but not quite as great for my personal life. There was a period in Austin of about five years that I was single. That’s one hell of a dry spell to have in your twenties. It got so bad that it became a running joke on the air; we kept a tally of how long it had been since I’d had sex. That’s right, I didn’t have sex. Not one time. In five years.
I liked to say that my hours were not conducive to a social life. Not too many girls love going to dinner at four thirty in the afternoon. But the truth is that my problem with women ran much deeper than having to ask them out for an early-bird special.
It started with an inherent sense of guilt that makes casual sex impossible for me. I have a similar viewpoint on food, sex, and anything else that is pleasurable but could potentially affect my life in a negative way. Before I engage in the act, I always ask myself, Is it worth the risk? Is it worth the worry about the potential risk? Then I weigh the rewards against the punishment.
For example, if I drink a milk shake, I’ll enjoy that milk shake for twenty minutes. But then I’m going to feel guilty about it for about five hours. When I compare those two time periods, there is no question about what I’m going to do: skip the milk shake.
It’s the same thing with sex. If I have sex with someone, it’ll be great for an hour or two—or seven minutes. But then what happens if I get the girl pregnant, or I get a disease? What if I mess with her head or lie to her? What if she falls in love with me and I can’t commit? What if I fall in love with her and she wants nothing to do with me? Seven minutes of pleasure has the potential to be followed up by a day, week, month, or eighteen years of difficulty, discomfort, or even pain. Pure logic dictates what the best decision is for me. I avoid.
I was always able to think with a clear head (sometimes too clear a head). So I didn’t have sex with a woman unless she was my girlfriend. But here’s where we get to my second problem—I don’t have many girlfriends (I’ve only had five in my entire life), because I’m as terrified of emotional intimacy as I am of getting gonorrhea.
It’s hard to be with me if you’re a girl. I’m awful, but not in the way a lot of guys are. I’m not the type who doesn’t call or leaves dirty clothes all over the place. I try to do great things for the women I do get a chance to date. I enjoy doing big, elaborate, thought-out, romantic gestures. You know, the it-obviously-took-me-a-month-to-put-this-together kind of thing.
During my first Valentine’s Day in Austin I was just so excited that I had a girlfriend, I went all out. I had started dating Wilma Flintstone (not her real name) soon after I moved to Texas (it was after her that I began my five-year stint as a celibate monk). A couple of years younger than me and really cute, she was an intern at the radio station when I was doing my show at night. Soon we started dating. It wasn’t super serious, but it was nice. So Valentine’s Day rolled around and I was raring to go. I went over to her apartment and immediately presented her with an iPod. “Oh, you got me an iPod,” she said. “That’s so sweet.” Hug. Hug. Kiss. Kiss.
She didn’t yet know that I had not only bought her an iPod but also fully loaded it with all her favorite music. But lest you think that was my big romantic gesture, I was just getting started.
“Oh, I’ve got to go out to the car real quick,” I said. “Hey, listen to Song 7.”
Why Song 7, you ask?
Well, in the middle of Wilma’s medley of favorite indie rock music it cut off and suddenly my voice came through the iPod.
“Go ahead and lock the door and come outside,” the recording of my voice went.
Wilma did just as the iPod told her to; she locked the door and went outside, where she was greeted by a trail of flowers, made to look like arrows, leading her down the stairs and straight to a huge limo I had rented. I had even put my clothes in the limo so I could make a quick change before she got down to the car. I felt like I was Carrie Underwood doing a wardrobe change during a concert as I peeled off my sweats and T-shirt and jumped into a pair of slacks and a button-up. (Although I struggled with the tie, so it wasn’t fully tied when she arrived at the car, which would have never happened to Carrie. Of course, she has dressers.)
When I plan this kind of massive display of emotion, I am the best boyfriend. But really I’m the worst boyfriend, because I’m not good at proving emotion through words. I can romance like crazy, but I can’t say those three little words: “I love you.” And because of that, no act, no matter how romantic, can ever be enough.
Wilma and I reached the inevitable I-love-you impasse the following Christmas. Because I had never said those words, and she was understandably nervous to be the first one to say them, she decided to illustrate them instead.
After finishing a pre-Christmas dinner out and returning to my apartment, both of us prepared for our gift exchange. I don’t remember exactly what I got her—probably a journal with the time and date of every single time we had made eye contact or one of my classics, The Book of Us.
Of all the things my friends have made fun of me for, The Book of Us may be the winner-winner-chicken-dinner of them all. It is exactly what it sounds like; it’s a book that celebrates all the memories I’ve shared with a woman. This is no small thrown-together book. It’s memories of first dates, menus from wonderful meals, notes written after really great times together, movie ticket stubs, hair left in the sink (just kidding about the hair. Or am I?). I did the ol’ Book of Us twice, once for Wilma. I honestly can’t remember if it was for this exact Christmas. But you get the point; I gave her the gift I had been working on for months.
Then she handed me my gift, which I quickly unwrapped. As soon as I saw it, though, I wished I had taken a lot longer. It was a picture of the two of us together in a frame covered in the words “I love you,” in seven different languages!
I freaked out so badly that I couldn’t even remember how to speak English.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said in a repeat loop as I laid the frame down and backed away from it like it was an explosive device.
With tears welling up in her eyes, she said, “I just want you to know that I do love you, and this was the easiest way.”
You want to know the worst thing in the world? It’s when someone says “I love you” and you don’t say it back.
I obviously said what I was supposed to say—in that I said, “That’s awesome.” And then I followed it up with a hug. And then a kiss. I figured that if my mouth was b
usy, that was a good way of getting out of what I knew she wanted to hear. It was truly out of one of those Southwest Airlines “Wanna Get Away” commercials. Wilma wasn’t fooled by my plan, and the fact that I didn’t say “I love you” to her became a thing. Not that it hadn’t already been a thing between us, but for the rest of our one and a half years of dating, it seemed to consume every other aspect of our relationship. It became the only thing.
There was nothing wrong with Wilma. The problem was 100 percent with me. I should have said I loved her. But as soon as a girl got too close, I started to withdraw. When we would get together, I was quiet and closed off. I would go away for periods of time. I put up all kinds of walls.
Love from another human being made me scared, mainly because I was afraid to return it. I have a real vulnerability issue. It doesn’t make sense, since by not reciprocating I pushed women away, but I worried about the power someone else would have over me if I gave her my love. Once you put it all out there, you no longer have any control. The other person may leave anyway, and I’ll be crushed by the fact that my love wasn’t enough for them to stay. I’m only safe whenever it feels like it’s not real. Like when I’m doing my radio show and I can’t see the faces of my listeners. Then I’m safe. But when it comes to one-on-one relationships—romantic or with friends—I’m just not able to fully go there. I know it stems from my messed-up childhood, and I’m sure someone could write a great country song about it. I watched my dad bail out and had a mom who was there physically, but not always there emotionally. I really didn’t stand much of a chance, I guess. And I knew I wasn’t going to get over it on my own.
I, of course, didn’t come to all this stuff on my own. When I signed my contract in Austin, it wasn’t only the first time I had a morning show but also the first time I had health benefits. Getting insurance was such a big deal to me, because I never had it before, that I actually read the brochure that HR gives you from the health insurance company explaining the benefits available to me. One of the things I saw was that I could go to therapy.
I was definitely interested in the idea of going to talk to someone but also embarrassed. I’d never talked to anyone. Not like that, not on any really deep level. It just wasn’t how I grew up. My mom and I never had a talk about the real stuff of life. Ever. Not once. I don’t know that we ever had a real conversation that involved advice or feelings. My grandmother was there for me, but even with her there was such an age gap between us that her perspective seemed about as helpful as if Abe Lincoln were laying some wisdom down. Eloquent, but not too helpful. (That being said, my grandma did teach me how to two-step. It was embarrassing learning how to “dance like they do at the VFW” with my grandma on the kitchen floor. But to her credit, I’ve been able to use that dance to my advantage many times over the years. Thanks, Grandma!)
If I were ever going to learn how to communicate like a normal, healthy adult, I would definitely need professional help. I went through a few different therapists, and none of them felt right. I read on the Internet that this was normal. (The Internet is my source for finding everything from directions to restaurants to dates to mental health practitioners.) When I finally met a therapist I really bonded with, it was life changing.
I just fell in love with therapy. Linda, my therapist, didn’t care—and I say that in the best way possible. Without a vested interest in my life, she offered an impartial perspective. I never had that before. I had people who felt sorry for me or people who wanted me to succeed. To have someone with no agenda and a lot of training in how to find meaning through words and just listen to me was a total eye-opener. I realized I didn’t need her to tell me what my faults were. By just sitting and listening to myself talk, I learned enough about myself that I could tick them off one by one. In her office I went to places I never thought of before. I parsed out my desires from my fears, assumptions from realities, and strengths from weaknesses.
In the five years during which I saw Linda, I made sense of all my issues. They didn’t go away, but I gathered some tools and understanding so I could at least try to work through my fears of getting close to another human being. For that I have to give a shout-out to my therapist. We talked for hours and hours about that subject alone. You know what, she should give me a shout-out, since those sessions were still seventy bucks an hour with insurance. I know you’re reading this, Linda. When you do your therapy book, throw my name in the acknowledgments!
As I said, there’s no magic bullet in therapy, and despite the good, hard work I did in that seat across from Linda, I was still not Mr. Open when, years later, I met my next girlfriend, Betty Boop (not her real name). I grew more when I was with her than with any other person, but even at my most emotionally available, I’m not emotionally available.
Oddly enough, I met Betty while I was on a date with another girl in 2008. She was at a bar with a group of friends, and the girl I was on a date with had some friends in that same group. Betty and I didn’t exchange numbers or anything. But in a stroke of fate, I saw her again a week later, on Halloween night, and got her number then. The other girl and I hadn’t worked out, as with most girls I go out with. (I have a lot of “one and dones” in my dating life, and they all follow a similar narrative. I’ll be out in a bar with my buddies, and since I don’t drink, I just hang out, dance, and talk to any female who will listen to me. As the night goes on, people get drunker. As girls get drunker, they like me more. So more than a few times, I’ve ended up dancing, making out, and getting a hot girl’s number, only to have her not remember me the next day. At all. Still, she’d usually feel guilty enough to go on one date, and then . . . she’d be done.)
From my first date with Betty, I knew things with her would be very different and that we were going to date for a long time. We just clicked, whatever that means. Betty, who had just moved to town to take a sales job, had no idea I was on the radio. That was really appealing to me, because I could never lose that sense of mistrust that anyone who knew I had achieved a modicum of success would never like me for me. She had such a positive vibe. We had a fantastic time. It didn’t matter what we did or where we went, it was just fun to be with her. We both smiled a lot that night and for many nights after.
During our first night out together, Betty mentioned that she loved Tabasco sauce. I like to listen to people. That’s why I’m good at interviewing people and at doing nice things for people in my life. By listening closely, I discover the little things that are important to others. There is nothing that makes someone feel more special than remembering something small and seemingly inconsequential that they said—and I like to make people feel special.
Knowing we were going out again the next week, I rush-ordered a huge bottle of Tabasco sauce that was so big it looked like a wine bottle. Then I went and bought a wooden box made to hold a bottle of wine and had her name carved into it. When I went to pick her up, I handed her the box and said, “I really had a great time on our first date, so I wanted to give you this.”
She took the box, which she clearly thought was a bottle of wine, and gave me the kind of “Oh, thanks” you do when someone’s done something kind of sweet. But when she opened it up and saw the big bottle of Tabasco sauce, she was really happy. Nailed it!
It was nice to have someone to make feel special. Being with Betty, though, I discovered something new in the kind of comfort that only a person who cares about you can provide. Betty was supportive and nurturing of me in so many ways, but I knew she was a real find after I had my wisdom teeth out.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: You had your wisdom teeth pulled? It’s not like you had your leg amputated. Well, sometimes I wish I had. See, my wisdom teeth were so impacted they had grown back into my jawbone. That’s what you get when you never go to the dentist as a kid. (It took me seven or eight years to catch up with my dental work enough that now, my teeth, some of which are fake and some of which aren’t, are great.)
In order to take out my wisdom teeth, they had t
o break my jaw, which was crazy. I was petrified, not just of the pain but also of not being able to speak, because that’s my livelihood. I wasn’t in a place yet where I could coast; I had to keep working, which meant keep talking.
To this day, I’m terrified of losing my voice. I think that’s why I’m such a germophobe. I’m afraid that if I get sick, it’s going to take me off the air. If it takes me off the air, I’m going to get fired. If I get fired, I’m going to be back home. It’s why I don’t like touching hands or doorknobs. I don’t want to lose my job.
The recovery from this dental surgery was months. I could talk, but it was one of the most miserable experiences I’ve ever had. I wouldn’t take any medicine because I wanted to be mentally there while I was on the radio. The pain grew almost unbearable when I developed dry socket, which is basically as bad as it gets. That’s when the blood clot that forms in the socket after a tooth has been pulled dissolves, and the bone and nerves it was protecting are now completely exposed. The dentist put gauze in it. As I said, almost unbearable.
Meanwhile I had to spend four hours a day talking—and not just regular talk, but loud, funny, thoughtful, and engaging talk. It was a nightmare. I don’t know how I did it and didn’t lose every listener I’d fought so hard to get. I just gutted my way through it every day at work. Then I went home and fell into bed, where I stayed for the rest of the day and night.
During those months where I had to go to the dentist almost every day Betty took care of me like crazy. She was there every day, somehow managing to do her job and be my nurse. In the beginning, when I was really sick and couldn’t do anything, she took me to the bathroom, mushed up my food, and put warm washcloths on my head as if we’d been married for thirty years.
