Waiting for the Punch

by Marc Maron

  Next thing you know, we’re on I-95. Women, it’s never enough for them. We’re on I-95, she unhooks the fucking pole, and she’s holding the morphine bag over her head, with her gown on that’s flying up in the air. You could see her entire fucking naked, bony body, with the morphine bag whipping in the wind, and we’re passing by these guys in their Lamborghinis and shit, and I’m looking at them like, “What kind of life are you living? Look at me! I’m on top of the world here!” That was the last thing I did with her. I feel so blessed and lucky. You can’t ask for a better moment and memory than that.

  It’s beautiful stuff. The biggest things that we’re afraid of really can be the most beautiful if you look them right in the fucking eye and you don’t flinch, because there’s something really beautiful behind it, you know?

  AMAZING JOHNATHAN—COMEDIAN, MAGICIAN

  About six years ago, I got diagnosed with a heart condition. Cardiomyopathy. It’s degenerative. They said it’s because I might have had a virus when I was a kid.

  Now I’ve been given a time stamp. Two years. Maybe a year to two years. Right now, my heart is failing, and they can’t get me a transplant because I’m diabetic and they won’t give it to a diabetic.

  I have a whole thing I got to wear that is a defibrillator that’s over my heart. It’s a real pain in the ass to wear it. I got electrodes all over the place. If I pass out, this thing will detect that, and I have thirty seconds to shut it off. If I don’t shut it off, it shoots this blue jelly all over me, conductive jelly, and zaps me.

  It warns people, stay away from me. People will start to touch you and shake you, “Are you all right?” It will stop their heart and start mine.

  It’s kind of like the ultimate practical joke.

  If you ask me if I’m partying, fuck yeah, man. If I can get my hands on anything right now, I’d do it. The pain level in my hands and my feet right now, it’s so bad. From my heart not pumping blood to my extremities. My hands are always tingling. I can’t walk more than twenty feet.

  You’ll see me looking for heroin in about two months. Wouldn’t you, if you were dying?

  MIKE DESTEFANO

  I’ve got to be honest, part of this having HIV, and my wife dying of AIDS and, there’s this one part of it that I love, that I can look at anybody and say, “Really? Is that your fucking problem? Fuck you!” You know what I mean?

  “What do you got, herpes? You fucking cunt. Get a real disease!”

  “I got hepatitis.”

  “Give me your hepatitis, I’ll give you what I got.” There’s something cool about that, having the worst fucking disease.

  I’m in a hospital, I ended up with pneumonia, had nothing to do with HIV. I end up with this double pneumonia. My wife’s still alive; she’s home very sick. I’m fucking worried about her, lying in the hospital. She decides to get in the car and drive to come visit me, crashes the car on I-95. They tell me, “Your wife’s in the emergency room.” Downstairs of the hospital that I’m in with pneumonia. My wife’s down there, my wife who’s dying of AIDS is in the hospital from a car wreck that flipped over. Then the phone rings again, my mother tells me, “Dad got a brain tumor.”

  This is all in a ten-minute fucking period. This is a bad day. If someone says, “Oh, I’m having a rough day,” yeah, tell me about it. Let me fucking hear about your bad day, you fuck. I love having that power. I don’t know why, I just do.

  PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON—WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER

  I remember talking to an oncologist on the phone who was essentially telling me that there was no way my dad was going to make it, and one of the first things that popped into my mind was, “You’re telling me that frogs are falling from the sky.” I remember that kind of popping into my mind. I thought hearing that your dad is going to die is as bizarre as hearing that frogs are falling from the sky.

  SAM SIMON—WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTIVIST, PHILANTHROPIST (1955–2015)

  Cancer is a battle. I have good days and bad days. People tell me that I look great, and I don’t have looks cancer. I will be a good-looking corpse. I’ve always been good-looking. My noble features will not be affected by this horrible disease.

  I was given three to six months to live six months ago, and I just got my scans back. After six months of chemo, which is just so awful. I can’t even tell you. Right now is the best I feel, because I’m a week on chemo drugs, and then I get a week off, and over the course of that week, the last couple days I’ll start feeling pretty good, and then Wednesday morning I go in and I start the whole thing over again.

  But the scans say that my tumors have shrunk, and what does that mean? I don’t know, because my doctor refused to explain it to me. He said, “Look, we’re meeting on Wednesday. Can’t I just do this on Wednesday?”

  Does it mean they’re going to all shrink and go away? Does it mean the chemo … I don’t know, but I will accept it. He told me it was good news and he told me he was very happy with it, so I’ll just take his word for it for a week.

  Marc

  Do you think about it a lot?

  Sam

  I would say it enters my mind every three minutes. You think about it constantly. Most of the time I don’t feel good and most of the time I can’t really do anything. With dogs, I’ve had to euthanize all my dogs. People get upset about euthanizing animals, but I love my dogs, and I’ve killed every one of them. I’ve done it when the time was right, and what does that mean? It means you write down the three things your dog likes the most, and when they can’t do that stuff anymore, it’s time to put them out of their misery.

  One of my three things would be lying in bed and watching TV.

  By that criterion, I will never be euthanized, but I do wish I could do something. I can’t drive. There’s a lot of stuff I just don’t feel up to.

  I always had authority issues, and I always felt rules didn’t apply to me. I always thought I was special, and I’ve always been kind of combative. My whole life, I’ve been labeled as someone that has a bad attitude, but now that I have cancer, all those qualities have helped. My doctors, they say, “You have a really good attitude about this,” and it’s all the stuff that made me a shitty person.

  Now when this doctor said I have three to six months to live, for whatever reason, when the doctor said that, I just didn’t believe him for a second. I plan on getting better. I’m not sure exactly what that means.

  You just get thrown into this. I’ve been feeling sick for a long time. I went in and got some tests. I was misdiagnosed with a virus or something, but I didn’t get better. I went in. They found something in my blood.

  Then I meet the doctor. For the first time, I meet him, and he shows me my scans, and I don’t know what I’m looking at. I say, “Whoa, that’s really cool.” He goes, “All the white parts are cancer.”

  “Oh. Fuck.”

  “It’s in your liver. It’s all through your connective tissue. It’s in one kidney. It’s in your colon, and it’s in your lymph system.”

  As a writer, I should avoid clichés, but I was in the moment, and I said, “Is it curable?” That’s what you ask, and he said, “We don’t use that word.” I went, “Oh, fuck. That’s not good.” Because they’d be happy to use it if they cured anybody.

  I said, “How long do I have?” Another cliché.

  “We don’t answer that question.”

  I got upset. I said, “Look, I’m not going to hold you to the answer. I don’t know what these rules are. This just seems ridiculous to me. Just, as a hypothetical question, if you saw this scan on somebody, worst-case scenario, how long do they have?”

  He says, “Well, I suppose under those circumstances, I can answer the question. I would say you have between—”

  Then his cell phone went off.

  There was some confusion between him and his wife over who was going to pick his daughter up after judo class, and he straightened that out, and then he says, “Where were we? Okay.”

  That’s when he sai
d three to six months.

  Then he said, “Are you all right?”

  I say, “What?”

  He says, “Your eyes look unfocused,” and I said, “Well, yeah, that news you gave me, with your great bedside manner, that stuff you broke to me so gently. I’m about to faint.”

  TOM GREEN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR, TALK SHOW HOST

  Everywhere I go, when I’m on tour, there’s always inevitably one kid every week, and he’ll come up to me and go, “Hey, man. You know, I have testicular cancer.” I had it, and we talk about it, and it’s sort of an emotional thing.

  On the other hand, every time I go anywhere, someone else will probably yell out of a cab, “Hey, how’s your nut, Tom?” You know, “How’s your ball doing, buddy?” Which happens so frequently that you wouldn’t even believe it, and people think they’re being funny. Because I made a joke about it myself.

  I don’t think people always realize that part of the reason, I think, we make jokes sometimes about things that are scary is because we’re sort of using it as a self-defense mechanism. Cancer is scary, and crazy, and sort of surreal, and it changes you forever. You sort of realize that, you know, we could potentially be dead at any moment, so.… On one hand, you’re like, “Okay, this is great,” you know, “Let’s live life for the moment. Let’s be positive. Let’s enjoy every moment, because life is short.” On the other hand, you’re also in a panic.

  You feel that sort of very real possibility that something could go wrong with your body, which you don’t normally think about when you’re twenty-eight. We’re going to die. It’s definitely going to happen, but I always assumed it would be, “Okay, I’ll live to be eighty, like my grandparents, and I got a long time to screw around until then.” But no.

  Now I’m completely cancer-free, and there’s no issue or no chance of it returning.

  They go in from above. They don’t, like, hack apart your scrotum or anything like that. The sack is completely intact. They go in from above, they kind of reach in, and they—this is what I say—they shuck it out like an oyster, is what they do. I looked at the prosthetic balls, I looked at them. My doctor said, “You know, some people elect to do this, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s important.” I’m glad I didn’t do it. I can’t imagine having a piece of plastic in there, because you’d be squeezing it all the time, but then you’d be probably squeezing, like, the scrotal skin, would probably be getting it all bruised up. I’m glad I didn’t get it.

  The thing that happened with the cancer, which I think is something that I’m really only kind of figuring out now and I’m still kind of coming to grips with it, is that it was just a physically very demanding thing. It took a major toll on my body, on my physical energy level, and so I went from being this sort of really hyper person to being more calm. I have a bit of a lack of energy.

  I remember the first time I went snowboarding again after I got sick, and I used to be really into snowboarding and skateboarding, and we’d go snowboard all day, and I went snowboarding, I couldn’t even get to the bottom of the hill without, “I’m going to sit down, take a breath.”

  It took quite a while for me to kind of realize that I was kind of going through some stuff that wasn’t really anything about the beating the cancer, it was just, I have to kind of find a way to kind of get my body healthy again. In the last year or so, I’ve really kind of figured I have to get out there and exercise. Look after myself a bit more.

  MEL BROOKS

  You know, they say, “Well, shuffle off this mortal coil. The table is needed for somebody else. We need that table.” As long as I feel okay, as long as I have energy, and as long as I still love singing and comedy and entertainment and people, and some food. As long as I still have an appetite, it’s great.

  I mean, I’m not complaining.

  LIFE LESSONS

  “Messy for Everybody”

  Here’s what I’ve learned:

  Try to shut up and listen, and listen with your heart.

  If you don’t know something, admit it. Don’t pretend like you do. Learn.

  Don’t exhaust yourself with anger at things you have no control over.

  Most of the shit you are reacting to most of the time is stuff that your brain is making up, and you have some control over that.

  If someone needs help, try to help, if you can.

  Be honest.

  Be nice.

  Learn and know your limitations and work from there.

  Talk to people. It helps everyone involved.

  No yelling.

  Get your yearly physical.

  Try to accept who you are.

  Don’t hurt yourself because you don’t like yourself.

  Apologize.

  MEL BROOKS—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTOR, MUSICIAN

  I’ve been having fun. You know, what do you live for? Occasionally, you live for a grilled cheese sandwich, and fun.

  CONAN O’BRIEN—TALK SHOW HOST, COMEDIAN, WRITER

  I used to believe that worry was a talisman against something bad happening to you. I’m a worrier, and I’m a guy that prepares, and I’m a guy that really tries to plan it out and make sure that I take care of everything. You can do that, and things can still go to shit, so you relax a little bit as you get older because you realize it’s no guarantee against things, so why not try and enjoy it a little more?

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN—MUSICIAN, SONGWRITER, AUTHOR

  If you want to live a life, you’ve got to realize you are not going to be the writer of your own script. Life is something that happens. You don’t happen to it. It happens to you. You’ve got to allow it, in all of its often-uncontrollable chaos, to come into your life. The way you reach adulthood is, you realize that you have the power to withstand the hurricane forces that uncontrolled events bring into your life.

  What comes with those uncontrolled events? Love, happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction. You let all those things in too, which if you are a control nut, you squeeze out, because what’s more dangerous than love? There’s nothing more dangerous than that. You don’t know what the hell’s going to happen.

  RUPAUL CHARLES—ACTOR, DRAG PERFORMER, SINGER, MODEL, WRITER, TELEVISION HOST

  My acting teacher told me the best advice I’d ever gotten from anybody ever and since. He said, “Ru, don’t take life too effing seriously.” That is the key to navigating this life. Don’t take it so seriously, and that’s when the party begins.

  If you take that red pill and you start your journey, you’re going to discover, like Dorothy—all roads lead to Oz—that you get up close and you look behind that curtain, you go, “You’re the wizard? Really?”

  Then you get to know the wizard, and you go, “Okay, so everything was all in my head. I imagined this whole thing?” That’s wherein lies the party. That’s where you can really have some fun. The only thing you have to watch out for is other people who feel threatened by your party.

  JASON SEGEL—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER

  You have this idea of I need to get there, but then you find out “there” keeps moving. If your impulse is I need to get there, that’s never going to go away. It’s been the past few years when I’ve realized I’m good. Everything is going great, and let’s focus on life stuff.

  KEVIN HART—COMEDIAN, ACTOR

  I find a positive in anything negative that happens, because I know it happened for a reason. For me, I refuse to treat people like shit because I see that things come full circle.

  JIM NORTON—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, RADIO HOST

  I take pictures with celebrities. I didn’t do it for a long time and then I met Richard Pryor. He was my idol, so I got an autograph. I always regret not taking a photo, but I am happy that I got an autograph. With the photos, it became something I started to do.

  Ozzy was one of the first photos I took. I probably was with Jim Florentine. We met Ozzy. Jim’s like, “Get a picture.” I was like, “Yeah, I should get one.”

  Then it became addictive. I noticed
that sometimes I got good stories out of it, sometimes I didn’t. It just became this fun thing. And if I’m ever saying, “I feel sorry for myself, my life is not this or that,” it’s like, “You fucking cunt. Shut up, you fuck. Look at what you’re doing. You’re meeting your idols. You’re having fun. Shut your fucking mouth.” It was like a visual slap to my fucking spoiled face. You’re one of the lucky ones, man. I get so mad at myself for that fucking sense of entitlement or “I deserve more. I should have more.” To me, the photos are a way of saying, “Look at what a fun life you had there. It’s fucking fun what you do.”

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

  Your desperation has to be greater than your fear. Your desperation, your hunger, your desires, your ego, your ambitions have to be greater than your fear of complete humiliation. So as long as you have that equation correctly balanced, you’re going out there, my friend, no matter what happens. Because you have to.

  CONAN O’BRIEN

  I swear to God this is true. Get yourselves into situations where you don’t have a choice. I really believe that’s the definition of accomplishing a lot of things in this life. I have some part of me, I’m not a brave person. I don’t even think of myself as someone who has a lot of guts, but I will get myself into situations where the house is on fire, and there’s only one way out, which is through the front door. Then, people later on give you credit for going through the front door, and you say, “Well, there was really nowhere else to go.”

  In ’93 when I replaced David Letterman from complete obscurity, I got myself into a situation, and I was very aware that, “Man, this is a fucking serious situation I’m in.” The only way out was to survive it. That’s the only way out, because if I had been taken off the air after six months, I would just become a Trivial Pursuit question.