When you first find love it makes you skip to the post office or wink at a German shepherd. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you will do both at the same time. You have met a person who shares your love for Rufus Wainwright and you wonder how the light and your love have coordinated a meeting to illuminate her so perfectly.

But after a while, out of nowhere, she’s clipping her toenails and eating a corn dog at the same time and it makes you wonder what the motherfuck happened. The laughter is replaced with discussions of pubic hair on the soap—even the liquid soap. You’ll find yourself asking things like, “Why do you like Lou Dobbs so much?”

You start to resent that she likes to spend her evenings alphabetizing the coat hangers. She tells you that you have dandruff in your beard and you tell her that her mustache is coming back. The only time you hold hands is when you’re both reaching for the Ketel One at the same time. You know she secretly visits Shia LaBeouf’s fansite and she is aware that you have no problem sneezing into an old sock. The caked-on, filthy, Thai-ridden dishes in the sink wait like orphans for someone to take care of them. She tells you that you’re too fat to take up skateboarding. You tell her that her that her armpits look like Ani DiFranco’s when she wears a tube top. When you decide to venture out and revive what little is left of this so-called partnership, there is always that recurring argument about how many times she’s told you that she hates caramelized onions. You confess that her tattoo of whatever Smurf that is on her lower shoulder is bad for dog-style lovemaking. The check comes. You ask her what four percent of $76 is so you can tip the waitress. She says that joke never gets old or funny. You walk back to your apartment where her cats have somehow learned how to roll their eyes at the very entrance of the two of you. She has control of the TiVo, she watches The Bachelor, and you sit and wonder how to get on that show.

That’s how love goes.

ZACH GALIFIANAKIS
Tasteful flower border by Jim Krewson