Comedy Minus Time: Misadventures in Romance, Marginal Comments, and Other Non-Sequiturs

By Adam Martin and Isabella Carapella

Adam Martin considers himself an aging, melancholic millennial and survivor of romantic misfortunes. In a contemporary, self-aware collection of writings that innovatively plays with time and perspectives, Martin shares personal anecdotes, therapy notes, and satirical examinations of masculinity in pop culture that offer insight into his unique view of life, his relationships, and others around him.

In an entertaining journey through his coming-of-age years while enduring a pseudo conservative Christian upbringing, Martin recounts stories from ghosts of girlfriends past, beginning with his first kiss in elementary school when a classmate puckered up and planted one on his cheek, much to his dismay. As he details how he was introduced to the game of Truth or Dare as an uncertain prepubescent boy, moved on from a suffocating cheerleader and first crush, and navigated through several relationships in college and beyond, Martin shares reflective side comments while revealing candid insight into his one-of-a-kind experiences as he tries to secure romantic stability while maintaining his sanity and true self.

Comedy Minus Time is the satirical narrative of an aging millenial’s perspectives regarding the anxieties and mishaps surrounding his romantic relationships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Feb 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665735544

Adam Martin

Adam Martin is a recovering curmudgeon who has been fructifying his life after years as a world-weary twenty-something. After bouncing from university-to-university and job-to-job, he decided to put all his chips in on his prose writing skills. His writing is inspired by his realization that life is too short and precious to be unhappy for very long.

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Copyright © 2023 Adam Martin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Interior Image Credit: Isabella Carapella

ISBN: 978-1-6657-3555-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-3554-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022923493

Archway Publishing rev. date: 02/10/2023

Writing this book would not have been possible were it not for the support of Agnes, Agatha, Jermaine, and Jack, whose friendship, above all else, remains factual.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue

Cracked Rear View

Chapter 1

Bad Self Portraits

Chapter 2

Era Vulgaris

Chapter 3

We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank

Chapter 4

Tell Me I’m Pretty

Chapter 5

There Is Nothing Left to Lose

Chapter 6

There’s Nothing Wrong with Love

Chapter 7

Beneath the Skin

Epilogue

Is This It

Endnotes

INTRODUCTION

As any self-respecting former almost-scientist would do, I had to sit down and look at some data. It had been roughly nine years since I had dated anyone for longer than three months, which was, in itself, an empirical revelation and statistical near impossibility. After my most recent breakup, I felt compelled to really engage with the source material of my romantic misfortunes in a way I never had before, in the hope of discovering something I had never really known before. What follows is a roughly chronological, thorough, but not comprehensive account of my past relationships.

If this ends up being any good, a great deal of credit is owed to BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, writer Joanna Calo, and illustrator/production designer Lisa Hanawalt. The brutal honesty embodied by all characters, particularly Diane Nguyen (especially in the episode Good Damage) struck me like a lightning bolt and empowered me to write about my own experience. Also, special thanks to Dan Harmon for creating the immersive and surreally real world of Community and for breathing air into the incomparably meta and loveable Abed Nadir. It should go without saying that fellow Community actor/Renaissance man Donald Glover is an inspiration to everyone who has watched, heard, or read any of his work and appreciates his commitment to authenticity to his self and visions. Much the same can be said of Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill, among countless other popular culture touchstones that have been built upon personal truths more than the explicit goal to become popular.

But if this ends up being a sophomoric, whiny piece of prose dripping with unchecked privilege and fails to resonate with those who read it, none of the aforementioned artists and works of art played much of a role in the following musings and writings. It will have been a self-contained, underwhelming brooding apparatus—or SCUBA, for short.

PROLOGUE

CRACKED REAR VIEWi

Prologue.jpg

Y ou had already committed to emotional processing through writing a week or two prior, and the similarities between your experience and Forgetting Sarah Marshall ¹ were uncanny. ² Flying to Hawaii by yourself on the weekend of Saint Valentine’s Day on the heels of a rough breakup was not an homage by design but one you grew to thoroughly appreciate. Fate, destiny, and providence were empty concepts to you, but what a hilarious coincidence this was becoming. You embraced the ridiculousness.

At one point, you had even used the name of the Sarah Marshall protagonist, Peter Bretter, as your moniker on a dating website. Although this trip started out as a desperate last-minute attempt to make the most of a long weekend, the line between coincidence and perceived destiny obscured constantly.³

Once aboard the plane for a few hours, you were handed a seemingly standard declarations form. Any fruits? Been around animals or livestock? Have you traveled to the land of the coronavirus during the last two weeks? And then came the punch in the kisser: reason for visit.

Thankfully, someone had taken the liberty of saving all passengers the time and the agony of having to write out the commonest answers to this question—this⁴ may have well been a question on Family Feud. You can just hear Steve Harvey saying,⁵ With the scores tied, we now go to sudden death. Only the top three answers on the board. We surveyed one hundred people in the audience. We want to know, what is a reason you might go to Hawaii?

1. Wedding Proposal

2. Honeymoon

3. Anniversary

Somewhere after Independent Study of Marine Biology and Sporting Event, you found the generic Tourism bubble and filled it in. Because you had already leaned into the whole Sarah Marshall⁶ motif, you found this amusing and stored this data in a file titled Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, where it fit quite nicely. You also couldn’t help but chortle at the thought of someone trying to nervously hide their answers from their unsuspecting partner while bubbling in #1. This is going to be a good trip, you reconcile in that moment.

Although you had neither been dating a TV star nor been burning her pictures on the stove, you were in pretty rough shape. Psychologically, you were in a pretty similar rebound state as Pete, but your execution was as fruitless as his was comedic. At least you didn’t have to endure Billy Baldwin’s one-liners from Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime reruns over the Pacific. Cue the wildly inappropriate Seinfeld-esque music.

Your two most recent exes remained stateside, but both would be texting you in the next forty-eight hours. Had you not already been in the headspace of rehashing relationships past, this may have seriously upset the flow of your trip, but as it stood, these outreaches would only fuel your creative process.

Whereas Jason Segel’s Bretter⁷ was working on A Taste for Love, you had been channeling some of your lifetime of good damage by taking pen to the page. Part therapy, part drunken dare to write extensively in the second person, you were trudging through the quagmire of romances long expired for a publishable narrative. You hoped to strike the same heartfelt but comedic balance as your favorite vampire-themed puppet musical. And in the vein of the play on words that humanized Dracula in Bretter’s title, you searched for a title to similarly capture the essence of humor and heart. That film was a true embodiment of the aphorism that comedy is tragedy plus time. Relying, then, on some algebraic sleight of hand, you supposed your story would be one of comedy minus time.⁸ Not forsaking the funny parts, but still, at its core, about a set of perceived tragedies, you had the crux of your title: Comedy Minus Time. The misadventures in romance, marginal comments, and non sequiturs would come later in the writing process.

1

Bad Self Portraits

ii

Chapter%201.jpg

T he first page of the first chapter of the first volume in your failed romances begins, accordingly, in the first grade. It happens when a classmate plants your first kiss squarely on your cheek. ⁹

You tell on her, not so much to get her in trouble¹⁰ but because you aren’t sure what else to do. When the lunchroom staff inquires whether you wanted her to kiss you, you really aren’t sure what to do.

Imparted with all the knowledge, wisdom, and life experience afforded to you by reaching the third grade, you attempt to dive into your next nonplatonic endeavor. After confiding your feelings to a male friend¹¹ you thought you could trust, the little rat goes and spills the beans of your affection directly to the girl you kind of like. When she confronts you regarding these alleged feelings, you deny everything and use the memorable phrase why that little … in describing your friend to this girl. In recanting your affection, you inevitably say things that hurt her feelings because she just thought you liked her—and she probably liked you a little bit too. But alas, there is no joy in Mudville this day. And fortunately for you, there are no real consequences for your actions. But, there is no real breakup because there is nothing up from which to break.¹²

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Through the fifth grade, you are not particularly popular, electing instead to focus your efforts and energies on the rigors of a public elementary school education at the expense of popularity (not that you have much of a choice in the matter). You ascend to the middle school level of education before anyone invites you to hang out independently of a school or athletic function.

In fact, you reach eighth grade before attending a social gathering with members of both sexes. Since you’re too young to drive yourself, your mother chauffeurs you to the party. As she pulls into a parking space, she slowly turns around from the driver’s seat and solemnly advises you and your brother:

No means no means no.¹³

The brevity of this statement stems from a crippling inability-turned-family-practice to have deep conversations regarding any topic of any real import.¹⁴

In many ways, your parents are gender prototypes frozen in time from the 1950s. Your father fancies himself a hybrid of Robert Young’s titular patriarch from Father Knows Best and Tim Allen’s Mike Baxter from Last Man Standing.¹⁵ Indispensable as much as he felt infallible, Dad’s viewpoints aren’t so much perspectives as they are objective truths in his eyes. Mom, on the other hand, could have filled in on set as June Cleaver without ever reading a script or stage notes. Near as you can tell, she has grown to dutifully accept this role more than enjoying it exactly—a fate less unique to her and more a symptom of prevailing social norms with which your parents govern their lives and yours.¹⁶

You wish your mother had issued these words, to have known their meaning just a few short years prior to her pre-party warning. If you had possessed the syntax of verbal sanctuary at that time, then perhaps you could have used them in your defense. But it was too late. Your mother’s assessment that you would be an aggressor was tragically misplaced, and instead, you were more likely to have benefited from using her words as a shield rather than channeling ugly patriarchy to dismiss them in pursuit of sexual conquest.

Night has fallen and covered the landscape with an anonymity afforded only by darkness. Given your generally strict upbringing, one of the most enjoyable consequences of spending a night outside of your home is the opportunity to stay up past your bedtime of 8:00 p.m. sharp. It also means that on nights spent elsewhere, you are intoxicated with the slaphappiness of fatigue when the hour hand of the clock encroaches on delirium.

On this particular night, you are introduced to a game called Truth or Dare.¹⁷ Initially scared of the dare category, you opt instead to answer questions (mostly) truthfully about yourself to fall in line with the norms of the game. But the waning hours of the night act as alcohol on your prepubescent mind, lowering your inhibitions in favor of curiosity.

You are selected by someone older—someone you very much look up to and trust. Despite being nearly incapable of emotional expression, you had explicitly told him you loved him, although you