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Too Hot For Radio: Maeve Dunigan "My Husband, I Vow to Honor You Always Unless..."
00:23:39
A story is about games and game playing. This piece is by writer Maeve Dunigan and read by Susie Essman, the longtime stand-up comic who spent many years yelling at Larry David while playing Susie Green on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Plus, host Aparna Nancherla talks to writer Meg Wolitzer about her love of word games.
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- [00:00]
Meg Wolitzer
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Aparna Nancherla
This is Aparna Nancherla, and it is time for Too Hot for Radio, the show that steals the most wicked tales from selected shorts and gives them new life for sweet little pervs like you. What some might see as public radio Sloppy seconds we see as our podcast Potent premieres. And tbh, we'll take things as sloppy as we can get. And speaking of sloppy things, relationships. As you know, relationships have many phases. When things start out, it's light and easy and fun, like a kid's board game, let's say, Candyland. Then, as you want to know more and more about the person, you start asking questions, like some happy little sessions of Trivial Pursuit where all the answers are right. Soon, though, you may feel like you're in a long cooperative game like Settlers of Catan. The rules are weird. None of your friends get what you're doing. There's a lot of wheat for some reason. From there, the miscommunications start, just like in every game of Pictionary, because that's a cat. How is that a cat? Then you start fighting over rent, over property ownership, over houses, which of course, duh, Monopoly. Then comes suspicions and accusations. Clue. And if you don't break up, you can't help but play Sorry like all the time. Except no one's saying it. From there it's all tic tac toe. No winners, no losers, just a long detente. X's and O's once meant kisses and hugs. Then they're just marks on a page, indicative only of a growing codependency. And finally, just like with chess in a relationship, it's eventually check mate, no hotheads, no need to play codenames. You've already realized that this week's story is about games and game playing. This piece is by writer Maeve Dunnigan. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker and in McSweeney's, and her first collection of humor pieces and essays, Read this to Look Cool, will be published in 2025. And we don't want any tears or bad sportsmanship. So let me give you our standard content warning. Warning swears. That's it. But coming from the mouth of Susie Essman, it feels dirtier. Like she means it. That's right, our reader was none other than Susie Essman, the longtime stand up comic who spent many years yelling at Larry David while playing Susie Green on Curb youb Enthusiasm. She has also had recurring roles in series including Broad City and Hacks. And because the title of this story is really a punchline, I'm not going to tell you what it is. I'm going to let her reveal it. Also, this episode is kind of a crossover, as we'll be talking to Meg Wolitzer about this story. She's a novelist and the regular host of Selected Shorts, the show, which provides Too Hot with its cornucopia of highbrows demismut. On top of all of this, she is an avid Scrabble and Words with Friends player, so she surely knows about the feeling described in the story.
- [03:29]
Susie Essman
My husband, I vow to honor you always. Unless we're playing Scrabble, in which case I'll destroy your ass. I can't believe that our wedding day is finally here. I'm so lucky to be standing with the man of my dreams, surrounded by friends and family. My partner, my cutie, my beloved. I vow to support, honor and love you always. Unless we're playing a game of Scrabble, in which case I will ruthlessly wipe the floor with your sister. We met on the playground. 29 year olds with no clue where the future would take us. You pulled my hair and stole my toys. But even then, I knew that you were the one. We overcame our childish fights, and soon you were my best friend. That same year, I was given a Scrabble Deluxe edition rotating wooden game board. And for the first time, I experienced the sheer joy of. Of shredding you to pieces when I played Giraffe on a triple word score for 78 points. I vow to make sure the house is always stocked with your favorite snack. White Cheddar Cheez Its. I vow to rub your back when you've had a hard day. I vow never to pass judgment on you unless that judgment is I'm better than him at Scrabble, which is less of a judgment and more of an objective thing. I mean, I am amazing at that game. I remember when I was in the hospital. You sat at my bedside every day, all through the night. Even though I was ghostly pale with ratty hair and sunken eyes. You told me that I was beautiful. You were my light in the darkness. You told me jokes and drew pictures of me. You brought me my favorite game. We played Scrabble right there on top of the hospital blanket. And even though I was the weakest I've ever been and practically hallucinating from the drugs, I still beat you by 22 points. Eat shit, Mark. I vow to make you breakfast in bed. I vow to keep your secrets. I vow to never, ever cheat. Even though you constantly accuse me of rigging the game to get better tiles what you fail to understand is that I don't need better tiles. I will win with whichever tiles I pick. I'm just that good. I'll never forget when you proposed to me on that white sand beach in Aruba. You knelt down as the sunset looked in my eyes and told me that you wanted to be with me forever. All I could think about was the time you had the letters to spell forever. Seven letter word, 50 point bonus, but somehow you didn't realize it. Then, to make matters worse, you just spelled of. I mean, a complete garbage showing. As usual. I love you with my whole heart. And I guess part of loving someone is loving their flaws, which in your case, is sucking complete ass. At Scrabble, I vow to be your wife forever. I vow to stand by you no matter what. If I've learned anything from this complex, mystical game we call life, it's that there are no winners or losers in love. Scrabble, though, is a completely uncomplicated game. Scrabble has a winner, and that winner is always me.
- [06:59]
Aparna Nancherla
That was Susie Essman performing. My husband, I vow to honor you always. Unless we're playing Scrabble, in which case I'll destroy your ass. By Maeve Dunnigan. Hi, Meg. I'm so glad you could join us.
- [07:16]
Meg Wolitzer
Hi.
- [07:17]
Aparna Nancherla
And I know you're the regular host of Selected Shorts, so we do work on very interconnected podcasts. But that does not mean I'm not going to play a little hardball with you today. So, for my first gotcha question right out of the gate, why do you like Scrabble so much?
- [07:34]
Meg Wolitzer
Oh, that is quite a question. I am obsessed with Scrabble. I think it's because what I used to do as a child is play Scrabble with my mom all the time. We loved Scrabble. I got it from her. I got. I. I think there might be a Scrabble gene. I don't really know that the Genome project is working on this particular finding, although I really think they should put a lot of money into it. I just grew up with words, and the way letters could be rearranged to make new words thrilled me then and thrills me even more.
- [08:07]
Aparna Nancherla
Yeah, of course. Just a timeless art. And we just heard Susie Essman read the Maeve Dunnigan story, which is, of course about Scrabble. How much did you relate to this piece in hearing it?
- [08:20]
Meg Wolitzer
Oh, I really related. I mean, I play online Scrabble, so this is with strangers a lot. And you can feel the competitiveness and also the rage from total strangers. It'll be like eight in the morning and I'm just waking up and I'm, you know, feeling like a new day is starting and I'll play a game and I win and the other person says cheater, and I'm just like cheater. And you know, and we're immediately in this kind of competitive caveman's dance. So I. I'm often the recipient of it more than actually being that way myself. Although I really do like to win. I like to play, I like to win. I don't like to start the day until I've won one game. So that can. Sometimes that's terrible because that can take a while. It's sort of like gamblers waiting, you know, till they do well and then they're suddenly broke. It's not quite like that for me, but I do enjoy winning. And like, then I existentially think, why? Why does it matter? I have no idea.
- [09:24]
Aparna Nancherla
In terms of as a player, are you trash talking? Are you gloating when you win? Do you feel like you're you game playing habits translate to any other areas of your life?
- [09:33]
Meg Wolitzer
I'm like, I'm like really modest. I'm like, thank you so much. Oh, that was a good game. You know, I really like. I know I'm not. And I think probably if you sort of look at it psychoanalytically, you know, I'm hiding my excitement because it just feels aggressive in some way. But games that have. Apparently there's a new Scrabble now, and they were putting out a new Scrabble that was less competitive, so that young people who are less competitive in theory wouldn't feel like it's this old days of gotcha. Ah, you know, like in the story. But I like the old winner and loser kind of thing. I mean it, because it's all in, quote, good fun. I don't know if there's bad fun, but I would probably like that too. I enjoy winning. I enjoy being beaten in a good game too. I just like a good game.
- [10:30]
Aparna Nancherla
It does sound like if you start every day with a win, you probably have a pretty high win percentage. It sounds like. Do you ever play against other writers?
- [10:38]
Meg Wolitzer
I thought you were going to say it sounds like you have a really short work day. Like what I do, I play with a couple of writers. In fact, I think the only people that I sort of have a somewhat regular game with are writers. You know, you just know that they're taking a break from their work. One of the writers I play with sort of travels A lot. And when I see that she's made a move, like in the middle of the night, like if I wake up early and I check my phone and that's sort of pathetic to see if there's been a move, I'm like, oh, she's in another time zone. I wonder where she is. But yeah, I mean, you get the sense if also people are kind of constantly making a turn that maybe their work is, you know, going slower than they would like it to be. Or, or maybe I'm just speaking for myself.
- [11:31]
Aparna Nancherla
Well, I mean, I do think the nice thing about using Scrabble or Wordle or Words with Friends to procrastinate, it is a word based. They are all word based games. So it's. It doesn't feel like you're really getting that far away from, you know, what your craft. Do you ever feel like these word games influence your writing in any way?
- [11:52]
Meg Wolitzer
Well, my new novel is only two letter words. No, because, you know, the two letter words in Scrabble are everything. Like somebody early on said to me, if you master the two letter words, like, that's how you win. And I didn't know any of them. You know, I mean, I knew two letter words, but I didn't know that AA was a word or OI was a word. And now there are some new ones and, and even some not new. But since I started playing Scrabble like Z a Z for pizza, as if I'm waiting for teens somewhere. Hey, hey, Mitch, should we get a za? You know, no one is saying this and yet Scrabble thinks it's part of, you know, part of the vernacular. So I'm fine with it, but you just have to learn them. I actually just went to a party of a friend who's a Scrabble player and I gave her a tea towel. I guess that means a dish towel. A tea towel. They said tea towel with two letter words on it. But as my son said, and he's a Scrabble player too, because I believe you have to train your children young. You know, that tea towel is going to be outdated in like six months because they're going to put in new words like vax. This is a three letter word, but vax entered the lexicon of Scrabble not that long ago. Hot Vax summer. Remember that, that dream that we had?
- [13:16]
Aparna Nancherla
Well, this feels like good inside info. Do you have any other secret Scrabble tips for our listeners?
- [13:22]
Meg Wolitzer
Oh, yeah, I have a really good one. I have a really important one, but it's going to cost you a little extra. I mean, we can't just give this one out there. Well, I learned early on at, at a tournament a mnemonic device to know what letters get an ae after them and work. So okay, what you remember, the mnemonic device is night swam. Night with a K. Night swam. So all the consonants in that quote phrase night swam can take the letters ae after it and they are good words. So K, A, E, nae, gae, all of them are good. So if you remember night swim and you have an ae, you can put any of those consonants from night swim before the ae and this really will actually appreciably improve your game.
- [14:12]
Aparna Nancherla
Wow. See, this proves to me that I do not have the right mind for word games because I am even that tip. I'm like. Wait, what?
- [14:21]
Meg Wolitzer
You don't like it? Are you not? Are you not? I mean, you're. It's interesting to me. So you're not a word game person.
- [14:27]
Aparna Nancherla
I do like them. I. I just wouldn't. I have a proficiency for them. I wouldn't say I'm, you know, my win percent. I'm not starting every morning with a win.
- [14:38]
Meg Wolitzer
I'm not, you know, I'm really not starting every morning with a win. That sounded so obnoxious now. It sounded like the woman in this story. I like to. It's so. It's really kind of pathetic, maybe even tragic that I like the little burst of energy when you win. And why, I mean, it's so. It's like the most. It's sad. It's like a sad little thing because this game so doesn't matter anywhere. It will never be recorded except in your heart. But it just gives you a little, I think a little endorphin rush. It must be chemical. I don't know.
- [15:12]
Aparna Nancherla
No, for sure. I think my version of Scrabble is the crossword because I do feel like I do this crossword compulsively and I feel like, well, better for me to be addicted to this than, you know, Instagram.
- [15:25]
Meg Wolitzer
No, I. Yeah, I do. I don't do crossword puzzles so much anymore. My mother at 94 times herself and does like the, you know, every day and does the Thursday and Saturday. The Thursday is hard but also fun because it has a trick and the Saturday is the hardest. And my husband does the Thursdays and Saturdays and my mother and my husband and I at night we go over like, we study spelling bee and connections and wordle and we compare notes on our progress and prowess. And again, this Is like, why, you may ask. I don't know.
- [16:08]
Aparna Nancherla
Yeah, it's a bonding. It's a way to form community. It is.
- [16:13]
Meg Wolitzer
And I think we all. We're all writers and we love words. And to me, like, I remember reading a book, that wonderful guy. What was the name of that book that. That writer who. Who saw numbers. Who saw numbers as all having personalities, and he could sort of picture them kind of moving and doing things. I don't feel that letters have personalities, but there are letters, of course, in the Scrabble game that you hate to have. And I find weirdly, like, if I have a U, can a V be far behind? And, like, they're together on your rack and doing nothing. Good for you. And you want to kind of trade them in. But I'm very seduced by letters and their possibilities and how they can move around. I love anagrams. I love finding them, you know, so spelling bee is essentially anagrams.
- [17:09]
Aparna Nancherla
Yeah, definitely. And to ask a more general question, you. You have been hosting selected shorts for a couple of years now. So we know you love short stories, hopefully, but you don't. You don't tend to write as many of them. Is there any particular reason it's not the medium for you?
- [17:26]
Meg Wolitzer
Well, I have written some and I don't. I mean, I guess I feel that while of course, there is a difference between the short story and the novel, I love fiction. So I'm a fiction freak. I mean, I really will go anywhere for a wonderful piece of fiction, whether it's a story or a novel. I think that I started off writing, you know, my first thing that was I had some stories published, actually. I had a story in Seventeen magazine when I was a teenager, and it was easier with my school life and then in college to write something short. It fits in more. But I was reading a lot of novels. I was an English major and writing novels also. My mother is a novelist and a short story writer is, um. I don't know. I mean, I was. I think I was reading at that time in college more novels than stories. And I started wanting to write a novel, and that just became the thing that I mostly did. I miss writing stories. I'm actually writing one now. But even as we speak, I'm just, you know, writing. I'm also playing Scrabble. No, I'm not doing any of that. I love them both. But I started off really, you know, getting known as a novelist, and that is something that I just seem to stay with more.
- [18:50]
Aparna Nancherla
Well, as far as hosting the show, Goes, is there anything surprising you've learned from it? I guess I should ask this conscientious question as a, as another host.
- [19:00]
Meg Wolitzer
Well, one thing. And I want to hear about your hosting, and I want to hear any tips you have, because you are, unlike me, you're a performer. And I, I guess that's the thing. One thing that I've learned is how great the performers are and how as a writer, I can really get a lot of tips from them about reading my own work. Because I, you know, I've joked about this on the show, but there's a way in which when I read, read aloud, I go into this kind of default voice. Hello, she said, you know, like, my voice goes into this fake place that I don't know how to stop. And I see these actors, and they are wonderful. And one thing they do is they, they seem to. They don't seem in such a hurry to have it be over with. Whereas I think writers are like, sometimes, or at least speaking for myself, there's a kind of, let's get this done without me fucking up. And that's me, really. That's not anyone else. But I, I think I've read too fast. And now I'll write in big letters at the top of my page, slow, slow. And. Yeah, you know, is that so do you have any, any tips you'd like to share?
- [20:14]
Aparna Nancherla
No, I think that that is a big insight in, in terms of. I do think actors are really good at letting things breathe and, and that is finding a way to take your time and sort of settle into whatever you're reading, whether that's a story or a script. And I, I tend to have the, the other extreme problem where I'll almost read too slow, and then they'll be like, can you, can you pace it up?
- [20:41]
Meg Wolitzer
Oh, really?
- [20:42]
Aparna Nancherla
I think there's a happy medium probably in there. But yeah, I think kind of intuitively finding your way through, through a story is, I always find helpful of, like, what. How am I connecting with this as a reader and kind of trying to bring that to whoever's listening to me. Read it.
- [21:00]
Meg Wolitzer
Yeah, I mean, I really like to actually listen in the way I remember listening when I was younger. Like when you have stories told to you, which is, of course, what happens on selected shorts. But when you're a kid and somebody reads to you, you know, that kind of absorption. I love listening that way now. And, and if you do, I think for me as a host, my responses are rather than just sort of reflexive or knee jerk, I really am trying to listen as if I've never heard a story in my life. Like, what. What can I find here? What did I notice? And it sort of reminds me of being in school, even being in college. So I. I'm very happy to be reconnected with that self that used to just love to read and listen. And we so often don't get time for that anymore.
- [21:56]
Aparna Nancherla
Yeah, I agree. And I do think, yeah, just the art of storytelling and oral storytelling in particular is so. It goes so far back deep into the history of humanity. So I think there's definitely something there. But I could honestly talk to you forever. Those are all the questions I had. Unless there's something you wanted to add.
- [22:16]
Meg Wolitzer
No, I think you're a great host yourself. I'm just looking around for host tips because that's the newest part of my life, really. And, you know, I'm learning on the job. And everyone at the show has been so warm and welcoming.
- [22:33]
Aparna Nancherla
Oh, my gosh. Well, they're so lucky to have you. Yes. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me about Scrabble and everything bigger than Scrabble. And there you are, my little hot heads. Game and love. And triple word scores, too. Our thanks to Meg Wolitzer for stopping by. And before we sign off, if you'll allow me to revisit our central metaphor once more, to say, life is like most modern board games in that I do not understand the rules. Our show is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Mary Shimkin. Our podcast producer and editor is. Hello, I'm Colleen Pelissier. This episode was recorded at Symphony Space in New York City by Miles B. Smith. Matthew Love is our consulting producer. Our theme music is by Poddington Bear. I'm Aparna Nancherla. Thanks for joining us for selected shorts, Too Hot for Radio.