374: Somewhere Out There

David Kestenbaum

I'm sure this story seems strange to you, but to me, it was just-- you know, this was just like another day in the physics world.

David Kestenbaum

There was always a time of day when someone made a pot of very strong coffee, and afterwards, everyone drank the coffee and then didn't quite want to work yet. And so we all stood around and talked about various things. You know, and there was a blackboard or a whiteboard or something there. And we were talking about how nobody really had girlfriends.

David Kestenbaum

I guess it's sort of a variation on-- you know this thing called the Drake equation?

David Kestenbaum

That is a way to estimate how many planets are out there that have intelligent life on them.

David Kestenbaum

So we started to do the calculation on the board. And, uh-- can you look up what the population in Boston is?

David Kestenbaum

So you start with 600,000, which sounds great, except that half of them are guys, right? And I'm only interested in girls.

David Kestenbaum

And then I want people-- let's be honest, probably within 10 years of my age or something, right?

David Kestenbaum

I'm actually looking at some numbers here. Looks like-- looks like if you go from 20 to 40, you're talking-- that's still like 35% of the population, a third or something.

David Kestenbaum

Ouch.

David Kestenbaum

Then you start applying stuff like, you know, how often are they single?

David Kestenbaum

Yeah, see? It's getting scary now, right?

David Kestenbaum

In the whole city of Boston, right?

David Kestenbaum

That's just like a needle in a haystack.

David Kestenbaum

She's not married, either. And so we start to draw it for her, and then we started to say, well OK, half of them are men, so we'd circle half. And then we'd say, well, what's the age group you're interested in? And then we'd sort of circle a smaller subset. And then she had all these other requirements, like the guy had to be taller than her. And she's pretty tall.

[LAUGHTER]

That really limited things. And then she said he had to be smarter than her. You know, and she's a Harvard physics professor, so that was even smaller. And basically, we got down to there being nobody.

[LAUGHTER]

She's alone.

David Kestenbaum

Yeah. I don't know why. But you know, at the beginning of every mathematical proof, people often write, "Assume that there exists X." Assume we have an infinite surface bound by something, or whatever.

David Kestenbaum

It's like, assume there exists some girlfriend. There's totally that act of faith underneath it, yeah. But I had a more scientific view, which is that there are people out there who might be right for me, not just one person. Like that seemed like in a silly novel or something. You know.

David Kestenbaum

I don't believe there's just one. If there were just one person out there, good luck. They could speak Chinese, you know?

[LAUGHTER]

And they probably do, right? What are the odds you're going to find them and a translator? You got to believe there's more than one person.

Alex Blumberg

It was definitely early on in our relationship. And I think it was our first big fight.

Alex Blumberg

How great it was that we were in love. [LAUGHS] And how happy we were to have found each other. And it felt so fated, you know?

And she asked, do you really think that we were the only one for each other? And I said, I don't know if you're the only one for me, but I think that you have to be at least one in 100,000, is what I said. Which I thought was-- in retrospect, now that I'm telling this story, that sounds really bad.

[LAUGHTER]

Alex Blumberg

At the time, I thought it was a romantic statement. Because one out of 100,000-- what is there, like 6 or 7 billion people on the planet?

Nazanin Rafsanjani

He picked 100,000, which probably doesn't make any scientific sense and also made me feel bad.

Nazanin Rafsanjani

I know it's ridiculous to think that there's one person out there for everybody, but it definitely feels that way, right? When you're, like, falling in love. And it's not like I actually expect him to believe it, but he wouldn't even say it. [LAUGHS]

Nazanin Rafsanjani

Like he wouldn't even just say I was the only person for him. Like he couldn't even--

Nazanin Rafsanjani

Yeah, exactly. He had to get all scientific. Like he couldn't just lie for a second.

[LAUGHTER]

It's just like a fundamental difference, you know? Like to me, it makes me feel good to think that we're the only ones out there for each other. And to him, I think it makes him feel bad. I think it freaks him out. I think the idea that, like, I'm it, in the whole world, makes him feel really-- I don't know. It just seems impossible and stupid, and not-- and also, just like, it's a lot of pressure.

Nazanin Rafsanjani

Right. Right. Exactly. But like, you know, there's like 100,000 people. It's not that terrible to love something that can perish. [LAUGHS]

Eric Hayot

And then there was the really-- there was this fast part where he's reading the scroll. It was like-- [SINGING]

Oh, now I'm not going to remember the rest. I don't know where it goes. I thought I could handle it. But it's something like that.

Eric Hayot

And I had no idea what those sounds referred to. I'd actually never heard the objects that made those sounds. And then on the tape, there'd be this-- "Tsung, xie, xie, tsung, xie, xie, tsung." And then I was supposed to start singing, right?

He would also sing, like, "Nong-er, ning-er, ning-er, nong. A-long, dong, dinger dong." And so all this stuff. And I was like, I don't know what that is, but OK. And I knew I wasn't supposed to sing it, right? But I kind of-- so then we walk in, and there's an instrument going-- not exactly "Nong-er, nong-er, ning-er, nong," but something like it.

[INSTRUMENT PLAYING]

Eric Hayot

I mean I remember-- I just could not stop looking at her. And it was incredibly intense. I remember, I couldn't stop staring at her. And I mean, this is a ridiculous thing to remember. Her back was very, very, very straight. Just something about her posture was incredibly compelling to me.

And she just looked very beautiful, and she was incredibly beautiful. And so I was sitting on the other side of the room, trying to figure out how I was going to get to meet her, knowing that my Chinese was not adequate to the task of actually having a conversation with her.

Yuanyuan Di

I'm not used to seeing such a tall and a big person in my life, so I felt a little intimidated by having to look up all the time. So yeah, it's the first time in talking to a foreign-looking and a foreign-speaking person. I was a little nervous, yeah.

Eric Hayot

She was doing this very Chinese thing, which is to order crazy amounts of food, just crazy amounts of food. I mean, like 10 dishes for two people. I mean like an enormous amount of food. And also, the weirder and more exotic stuff is, the more kind of you're showing your hospitality.

Yuanyuan Di

And I ordered something, some kind of a bird, either a pigeon or even smaller bird, that is maybe deep-fried with every part on the table? And for Chinese people, lot of people do eat every part. The feet, the head, the eyes, and so on.

Eric Hayot

And so I was just eating stuff, and I had no idea what I was eating. And so at one point, I put this thing in my mouth.

Yuanyuan Di

And he just casually carry on the conversation and put the head into his mouth.

Eric Hayot

And I bite down, and it's hard. And I think, oh, no. Like, what is this thing? And then I thought, well maybe it's like an M&M, and if I suck on it, it'll disintegrate. You know, because I had no idea, right? So I kind of, you know-- [SUCKING NOISE]-- suck on it for a while.

Yuanyuan Di

I was thinking, wow, he must really like it. I don't eat head. I know my mom eats, but I absolutely hate it. I don't even want to look at it.

Eric Hayot

And so I'm like, oh, I'm going to have to take this out of my mouth. And you know, that's not great. And so I take it out of my mouth and I put it on the plate, and I point at the dish it came from. And I say to Yuanyuan, "What is that?" And she says, "Oh, it's blah, blah, blah," right? This word that I had never heard.

And I say, well, what's that? And she says the word or the thing that it is. And at precisely the instant which I grasped that word, I have this kind of total epiphanic clarity of the object on the plate in front of me, which is the head, with beak and eye, of a bird.

Right? Like this just terrifying thing that I had sucked on, let me just say. So like, whatever brains were in the bird, I ate those, right? And so, like, all of that came to me.

And I freak out. Just saying over and over, in a really high-pitched, kind of squealy, frightened voice, "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," in English.

Yuanyuan Di

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," many, many times, repeatedly, one after the other. And his hands just sprung up in the air and down. And I didn't know what was happening. I was just thinking, why was he so dramatically upset with the bird head?

I had no idea. So if you don't eat it, you just don't put it in your mouth. But why so scared?

Eric Hayot

And I remember, at the time, that she was not nearly impressed enough by my having walked through the flood. I remember thinking-- like, she saw me, and she was like, oh, hey, how are you doing? And I'd been trying for literally two hours to get to her, right? And she was just like, oh, good to see you.

But that desperation of, like, needing to find the person. I remember that twice, really intensely, both on the day of the flood and the day of the train station, just the sense that you have to find this person. And you know, that kind of is overwhelming.

I'm teaching Proust this week, and so there's this moment in Proust where Swann is falling in love with Odette. But the way he realizes that he's falling in love with her is he goes to the party that he's supposed to meet her at, and she's already gone. And then he drives his carriage through Paris, and he's going in and out of all these restaurants, and stuff. And it's all about how the act of looking for her causes him, in some sense, not only to recognize that he's in love with her, but also actually to kind of really fall in love with her.

Eric Hayot

I certainly had kind of dreamed, imagined, fantasized, whatever, about getting together with her. I also knew that, you know, it was two years, and that we hadn't talked.

Eric Hayot

You know, that's a really good question. You know, I don't know. No. I mean, I guess looking back now, no, right? I don't think that-- if you'd asked me that at the time, I would have denied it vociferously.

But I mean, what could I know? I mean, what did I know? I knew her smile. I knew, like, the angle of her back. But I honestly hadn't really thought it out too much. I was pretty focused on finding her and hadn't really thought past the finding her.

And so I had her phone number. So I called that number, and I got a "this number's been disconnected" message. Right? Though I barely understood, so I had to actually call three or four times to listen to the message, the person speaking.

And so then I was lost, right? I had no way to find her. And so I guess I decided I would go and look for her.

Eric Hayot

And I start explaining, you know, who I am. So I'm like, excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you. And there's like four or five people there, and they're all smoking. They're all drinking tea. It's kind of classic Chinese afternoon, no one's working, kind of thing. And one person's kind of dealing with me, but everyone's just totally paying attention, because it's weird.

And I have the photo, and I have Yuanyuan's name. And I'm explaining that I met this young woman a couple years ago in Tianjin, and I was singing Chinese opera. And like, oh, you sing Chinese opera? I was like, well, a little bit, and I'm not very good at it. And they all laugh. And this is like part of my trick.

Eric Hayot

And they really, really like seeing foreigners sing Chinese songs, to the point that there was a show on television every year called Foreigners Sing Chinese Songs.

Eric Hayot

Like a special, yeah. Like the once-a-year special, Foreigners Sing Chinese Songs. And, you know, there's no equivalent of that in the United States. And so there's this fascination, and the fascination is two-fold, right? The fascination, first, comes from a sense of a kind of cultural inferiority, especially at the time, which any Western investment in things Chinese was taken to be a sign of respect.

And then, but also very clearly a sense of, like, watch the monkey sing a song. I mean, you know, it doesn't matter how well the monkey sings. Because if the monkey's singing a song, that's already impressive, because it's a monkey and it's a song, right?

So knowing what I did about how much Chinese love Peking opera, and these people I'd never seen-- so I figured if I could make this happen. And I end up singing for them.

Eric Hayot

[SINGING OPERA]

Yuanyuan Di

He said his name. I thought, couldn't be. But how could he know my phone number? How could he even call me? That's impossible.

I tried to ask all these questions, but he clearly lost almost all his Chinese language. So he couldn't really explain things. So he said, could you meet me? I said yes, when? He said, tomorrow? I said, sure.

Eric Hayot

She just did not help me, like, at all. I mean like at all, at all. And so I would try to do these things that were like-- OK, so this is a perfect example of why things were confusing.

So we're walking down a street. I nudge her with my shoulder, the way that you do, like, when you're flirting with someone, right? She-- I only find this out later, because we talked about it. She thinks, oh, like, he's kind of a clumsy walker. I should move further away from him. I nudge her again. She thinks, oh, maybe he's trying to tell me I should walk on the other side of him, and she switches sides.

So she's, like, totally incapable of reading the codes. I mean, just like last week, we were watching a movie where some guy nudged some woman, and I was like, hey, see that? See that? That's how it works. That's how you know, right? But she had just no capacity.

Yuanyuan Di

I sensed that he wanted to kiss me, but I was not ready, or shy, or just tried to shy away. So I just tried to pretend I didn't pick up the signal, I guess.

Yuanyuan Di

No.

Yuanyuan Di

Yeah.

Yuanyuan Di

First thing came to mind was crazy. I wouldn't do the same. Yeah. I thought, why would you go through all this trouble? Because people are everywhere. Why do you want to go through the trouble just to find one particular person?

If this is a-- reverse the story, I was in Eric's position, I wouldn't do the same at all. Still, it's kind of a puzzle to me. [LAUGHS] I wouldn't go to a huge city trying to track down one person. I just think that's too much work. He's more romantic than I am. I'm more practical.

Yuanyuan Di

I think there's a saying in Chinese. It's [CHINESE]. It means what is meant to be is meant to be. You don't have to look really hard, especially when it comes to relationships. There's a specific time and location that are meant for the two of you to meet to get together, and you just have to wait for your turn. And that's something you cannot request, basically.

Eric Hayot

And I think we lived on that, and it helped us. And it helped us be brave. You know, and reinforced to us, to each other, this sense of the magic of our relationship, and the sort of fairytale nature of it. And I think that we needed that more. Right? Like you think, like, oh, you know, a story that starts that way, how could it end up badly?

Eric Hayot

Which is the story of struggle, and pain passed through and fought through and overcome. And you know, that's a story that you don't tell in public. Because no one ever asks, how did you two stay together? Everyone always asks, how did you two meet?

Mike Birbiglia

When I was a senior in high school, I had my first girlfriend, Amanda. And this was a big deal for me, because it was that first time you fall in love, where you're like, oh, there is someone for me. You know, this is it. I've found her.

And she was great. She was so beautiful, and she played tennis, and she wrote for the newspaper, and she was a bad girl. And I was a kind of dorky nerd, kind of an outcast. This was at a boarding school that I didn't board at. I was only there because my family lived nearby.

And she had major street cred. She had been expelled from her previous school for dealing acid. I remember at one point, she said it was totally messed up, because it was actually this other girl who was dealing acid, and I was framed. And I was like, awesome.

I thought it was one of those things where we were opposites, and we knew it, and that made it more exciting. Like, where she wanted to be a writer and in student government, and I wanted to know what it was like to be cool.

Well, I find that when you fall in love, you tend to overlook certain red flags. One of them was that she was a liar. And I don't mean that in an offensive way. At boarding school, lying is something of a way of life.

I remember, there was this one guy in my class. He was a legendary liar. His name was Keith Robbins. And he used to lick his fingers like a bookie. He would go, "Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Nice."

And he would lie about things that weren't important. Like he'd be like, "Yeah. Yeah. Nice. My uncle's Tony Robbins, motivational speaker. Yeah. Nice." And I found out later that that wasn't even true. But even if it were, it wouldn't be that impressive, you know? And so you didn't bother protesting it. You'd just go, "Oh, OK, Keith."

The other red flag was that Amanda used to say really mean stuff to me, and then she'd say, "Only kidding." She'd be like, "You're not good at anything. Only kidding." "Nobody likes you at all. Only kidding."

The final red flag was that she told me not to tell anyone she was my girlfriend. She had another boyfriend at home that she was in the process of breaking up with. And it was over, but if it got back to him, you know, it would be bad.

So she would go home every weekend and visit him. And at one point she said she had to go home more frequently because his parents were sick, so she had to console him in that. And I thought, well, you know, the guy's parents are dying, so I ought to be understanding.

I also put up with it because I couldn't believe how lucky I was just to be with her. Like in retrospect, I understand how selfish she was. But at the time, I didn't know that.

When you're in a relationship with someone who's selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it's like this souped-up shine. And you feel like you're in the club, and you don't even know what the club is. You just know you want to stay in it.

We'd been going out two months, and we went on Christmas break. And she invited me to meet her parents in New Hampshire. And this was very exciting. This was going to be my big moment. It would vindicate me and legitimize me as the main boyfriend.

And so I drive my mom's Volvo station wagon from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. And I meet her parents, and it's going really well. And then this guy shows up, and his name is Scott. And then the three of us are hanging out. And it dawns on me that I'm hanging out with my girlfriend's boyfriend.

And it's going OK? He seemed like a good guy. He was an all-state wrestler. And he was remarkably nice. I could totally see what she saw in him.

And there was some consolation, because every time he would go to the bathroom or go into the other room, she would be very affectionate towards me. She'd kiss my neck, or say something in her sweet voice. But then there was a moment where I was in the bathroom. And I thought, what's happening in the other room?

The date took a strange turn when Scott suggests that we go hang out at his house. And so we go, and I meet his parents. And it's a very strange thing, meeting your girlfriend's boyfriend's parents for the first time. Part of you is angry, for obvious reasons, and then part of you still wants to make a good impression. As a side note, they seemed in perfect health.

I drive home, defeated. And I sort of knew that at this point, this was her life, and I was like her secret life, like on Maury Povich. So I was like, this is it. I'm gonna stick up for myself. It's either him or me. And I convinced myself that given that choice, she would go with me, because what we had was so special.

So when we got back to school, I called her and I said, "We need to talk. Let's meet at the hockey game." And she says, "Great." So I go to the hockey game, and she's not there. Hockey game ends, still no sign. I have that pit in my stomach, you know, like, this was going to be my moment. And I was going to tell her that she had to pick me, or that's it.

And so I start walking around the school, to the library, the cafeteria, the places she might be. And I ask people where she is, and finally someone says, "I saw her with Keith Robbins down at the tennis courts." I remembered earlier that day at lunch, Keith had said to me, "I'm sleeping with your girlfriend. You know that, right?"

And I thought, well, first of all, I hadn't even slept with my girlfriend, so that would be insane. And second of all, he's a liar, so he must be lying. I remember I said to him, yeah, I know.

But at this moment, it dawns on me that Keith was her new second boyfriend, and I was done. And it was that horrible lonely feeling where you're walking around someplace, and there are people all around, and there's only one person you want to be with, no matter how mean they've been to you. I just wanted to hear that "Only kidding."

I remember people were coming up to me, and I couldn't even hear them. I couldn't even tell them what had happened. Because even though I was being dropped, the relationship itself was based on a secret.

And that spring, I graduated. Keith was expelled for making fake IDs in his dorm room. He had built a life-sized license from Arkansas that people stuck their face in. And he would photo it and then laminate it. He later took a job at Goldman Sachs. That detail seems made-up. It's actually true.

And Amanda was expelled the next year for dealing Ritalin. At boarding school, you can't go to the graduation if you're expelled. It's one of the shames of being expelled. And it's very strict. And I found out later that Amanda actually did show up to the graduation in a disguise. She wore a wig and sunglasses.

My friends laughed about this, the way that friends do to make you feel better when you've had your heart broken. But I could relate to her doing that. Because sometimes when you want to be in a place so badly, you'll do anything.

Eric Hayot

And then on the tape, there'd be this-- "Tsung, xie, xie, tsung, xie, xie, tsung."