He Said-She Said Episode 1: The Merits of Pleasure Delaying

Welcome to the first ever He Said-She Said. In this series, we will explore a number of issues where Emily and I have clashing points of view or two sides to the same story. We choose a topic together and then write our respective views separately from one another, having no knowledge of the other's specific focus points. Any crossover is purely coincidental (and for this particular He Said-She Said, remarkable).

Tonight's topic: Delayed gratification.

He Said:

"(Love is)...the sour and the sweet. And I know sour, which allows me to appreciate the sweet."

-Vanilla Sky

I don't think there's much worth having unless it's worth waiting for. Two things often said about me (Not by me, mind you, about me):

1. I'm a pleasure delayer.

2. I don't do anything unless I can do it all the way.

Few would argue with the virtue of only doing something if it can be done right when applied to the BIG things. Would any wise person half-ass an entire film production? Of course not. As we grow and mature, we learn that instant gratification does not satisfy for anything that really matters.

But what about the menial? The everyday things, like eating, showering, watching television?

For example, if I buy a new video game that I've been dying to play (which usually means I've already been waiting months, if not years, for it to come out), I'll come home, put it aside, and make sure I've finished everything else that needs to be done that day before I break it out and play. That way, I can  think about it all day and build my anticipation to a fever pitch, and then when I do finally give in and play, I won't have any nagging responsibilities floating around, subtracting from my enjoyment.

A younger, less wise person would no doubt burst in the door and rip open the package and park himself right in front of the television for hours, putting off things like multiplication tables and chores (because only a child would behave this way) until later. Maturation and wisdom teach us that my way makes the pleasure even better when it comes.

This is where Emily and I differ. I say a healthy dose of delayed gratification can lift the minutia of the everyday grind into a host of little pleasures.

Let's start with a pretty obvious one. Around Thanksgiving of '09, due to our busy schedules, we got behind on watching The Office and 30 Rock, two shows we both love. (Also, I know watching television isn't exactly part of "the grind," but it's a good example to start with.) Rather than just pick up with the show after the Christmas break when our schedules had slowed down, I insisted that we wait until we had caught up on all missed episodes first.

"But I want to watch it NOW!" Emily raged, sounding more than a little like Veruca Salt.

 

Skip to 45 sec. to hear Emily.

"But Emily, my dear, you see, if you just wait and catch up on what we've missed first, the rest will be so much more rewarding. We'll appreciate these more if we have the full understanding of what came before them and led up to them. This is something that adults learn: if you wait and do things right, the experience is so much better."

She threw a tantrum, but I held fast, and she thanked me in the end.

Another example that one would think would be confined to our childhood days is the classic, time-tested, "Don't spoil your dinner." Emily's "philosophy," lacking the refinement and depth of appreciation possessed by me, is: "If I'm hungry, I should eat NOW." So what if we're about to have a delicious and expensive dinner in just under an hour. 

"But I'm hungry NOW." 

"If you just wait for dinner and eat it on an empty stomach, you'll enjoy it so much more. Embracing your hunger will only increase your appreciation for what you have."

"I don't understand these words. Me hungry. Me eat."

A steak eaten on a partially full stomach simply cannot be fully appreciated.

Let's take it a little further out there. I'm a shower man. (I don't mean this in the not-a-bath-man sense, I love a good bath too.) What I'm saying is, I love showers. It's quite possibly my favorite time of the day. This is why I fantasize not about having a mansion with vaulted ceilings and several Mercedes in the driveway, but rather about having a large, wide-open shower room with multiple, warm and wonderful shower heads.

There's literally nothing like a hot shower after a cold day. There's no other feeling quite like it. I like to go out of my way to create and enhance this experience, if possible. If it's cool, I'll sit around in my underwear for awhile and get nice and chilled before finally surrendering to a hot shower. It makes showering, what is otherwise a menial task, a wonderful experience. Harnessing all I can of my God-given physicality, I am able to take something menial and turn it into something pleasurable. It's what makes showering in the winter so much better than in the summer.

Emily, on the other hand, would just rather never be cold. She has no use for even a moment of discomfort. She'll stay bundled up right to the very ledge of the tub. She'll run the hot water before getting in to make sure there isn't a second of cold time between being dressed and being in the water. If she has to stand in the cold bathroom for even ten seconds, she acts like a cat held over water. I mean, I get it, it's uncomfortable being cold, but Emily, you can never appreciate a good hot shower like I can.

These are only a few examples, but I think my point is clear. By embracing the fringes of our physicality (read, our humanity) even in everyday situations like eating and showering, we can highlight and increase the potency of pleasure in our lives. It takes some small sacrifices, but it's worth it.

She Said:

He’s doing it again. We’re headed down the snowy roads of Western Kentucky on our way to his family’s Christmas celebration in Bowling Green. We’ve had a delightful, four-hour, Christmas carol-filled drive from my parents’ place in Indiana, and now we’re ticking off the last few miles to his aunt and uncle’s neighborhood. Any minute now we’ll be wrapped up in blankets and sipping hot chocolate on the couch with family all around. Any minute now we’ll be warm and cozy. Any minute now we’ll be happy. Right now, however, the windows are down, snow is blowing into the car, the heat is off, my teeth are chattering, and Jonny is grinning maniacally.

Is he a sadist? I wouldn’t go that far.

Did I do something that requires polar discipline? Not even close.

Is Jonny planning to carve ice sculptures with his hardened nipples in some sort of radical, experimental art project? Probably not.

Is he out of his mind? This is my best guess.

The reason the windows are down, the snow is blowing in, the heat is off, my teeth are chattering, and Jonny is grinning is because he is so excited to use his uncle’s enormous, steamy shower (a whole room unto itself) that he plans to increase the pleasure of his bathing experience by prolonging the pain of pre-shower existence. The colder he is now, the more he’ll enjoy the shower, the theory goes.

I would be ok with this, I suppose, if he did it on his own time far away from me—if, say, he were to tell me about it over breakfast along with Premier League soccer transfer news while I divide my distant thoughts between my cereal and Lavar Burton.

Yummy

That would be an acceptable living situation. Right now, he’s dragging me into his twisted world, and I’m finding deep wells of sympathy within myself for Lorena Bobbit. This is life with a pleasure-delayer.

Consider: When I take a shower, I turn on the water full blast for a good 20 seconds before I get in, just to ensure that the initial cold water from the pipes has time to drain completely. I close the window and door and trap the steam into my den of comfort. I keep myself wrapped in blankets until the last possible second; then I throw them off and step into the stream of water in one, fluid motion. I turn up the heat a few more notches. Since I prevent myself from getting cold before the shower, do I fail to appreciate the warmth? Are my showers miserable and laborious? Do I count down the seconds until I can get out? No, sir! I enjoy the shit out of my showers, and I submit my father’s 1993-2002 water bills as corroborating evidence.

Jonny calls his little disorder “delayed gratification” and likes to pretend that it’s an issue of patience, as though if I could get over my MAJOR character flaw of preferring comfort to discomfort, raindrops of gold would fall from the sky, water my fields, and produce gold corn and potatoes in harvest time. I know better. It’s not about patience at all. If it were, perhaps Jonny would exercise a bit more of his treasured virtue when he waits for me to curl my hair before parties. Perhaps he wouldn’t purchase a little birthday gift for himself just TWO DAYS before his real birthday instead of waiting to see if perhaps someone close to him might have already purchased that particular item for him and was excitedly waiting to give it to him. EVERYONE ON THE PLANET knows that you don’t buy anything for yourself in the entire month leading up to your birthday. Patience? Please. Ask any woman who has ever willingly (and inexplicably?) united herself with a Walls man if her situation requires a touch more patience than that of her peers. Walls women are paragons of patience.

No, the real issue is this: must we be miserable before we can be happy?

Jonny says yes. I say he’s insane.

I get where he’s coming from though, what with that string of girlfriends he went through before me (zing!).

All the same, Jonny, you’ve got a real point there. After all, you never listen to Nevermind without first going through Staind’s greatest hits. You wouldn’t dream of biting into a succulent lobster tail without downing a bowlful of your detestable baked beans beforehand. You regularly watch Bicentennial Man and Bicentennial Man: Special Edition back-to-back before going to the theater for a new movie. Oh wait, you don’t do those things? You mean you avoid Staind, baked beans, and Bicentennial Man because you don’t see the point in willingly wasting even ten seconds of your life on worthless tripe? Hmm.

The seconds of our lives tick by. Right now, I have fewer seconds than I had before I started arguing with Jonny about pleasure-delaying. I won’t freeze myself before a hot shower, I won’t eat steamed cabbage before chocolate, and I won’t spend another minute defending a position that is so obviously correct. There are too few seconds out there to go around purposely squandering them on discomfort. Uncle Tom’s shower be damned, I’m rolling up the windows.