How to stop your wife from telling unfavorable stories about you

To prevent Marri Coen from saying uncomplimentary things about my drinking habits in the future (especially to the whole world):

I would just like to point out that I love Marri Coen. More than life itself. No snarkiness, faux coolness or anything uncomplimentary. She is the perfect girl. So much for that.

Perfect girl= Marri Coen.

Story over.

No more drinking stories. For the honeymoon phase of the 'Honeymoon Years' blog

a brief history of love-- Part I

A Brief History of Love is a novel by Nicole Krauss, who is married to Jonathan Safran Foer who is also a novelist. Both of them sell a lot of copies, and are very 'hip' in the fiction world. Being on the outskirts of the world of fiction, I am well aware of their much touted hipness. Neither of them however seem like they are good ol' fashioned novelists like Ernest Hemmingway, or Fitzgerald or Faulker. They do not seem to have drinking problems, or depression, or mommy issues, or sex with bulls. They're very New York. They live on the Upper West Side and watch the Daily Show before going to bed. They probably wear socks during sex. In other words, I am not talking about Nicole Krauss in this post.

This is an introduction to the history of Marri Coen and Ari's love. I will break it down in a logical manner for you.

Freshman Year: We lived on the same hall in Clark. Marri lived down the hall from me. She used to be a jock. I used to be the foreign kid. As everyone knows (from a cursory viewing of American tv) female jocks are not friends with male foreign kids. However, Marri's sunny personality, and my innate smoothness with the ladies was made apparent by a succession of conversations that went like this;

Ari: Hey Marri
Marri: Hey Ari
Ari: How was the game?
Marri: It was ok. We lost 1-0
Ari: Again?
Marri: Sorry
Ari: Ari, Marri, Sorry
Marri: It rhymes.
Both: hahahaha...

-- some of you may not know this, but I am taking a class on writing dialogue this semester. I am doing very well in it.

--Our conversation, thusly presented above, was repeated throughout the year; it always involved Marri in a yellow towel about to take a shower. Marri is very good at taking showers. It is a speciality of hers. This process of repeating a conversation is known as 'repetition'. It is a technique much favored by novelists and film makers--look at Yossarin Yossarin, or Tora! Tora! Tora! It is a great artistic technique and is good with the critics.

It is my belief that this repetition is where the roots of our love were planted. As with architecture, any building must have a solid base to endure-- the repetition of this conversation provided the bricks on which the great Coen-Sen love affair was then erected. Get it, erected? God, not only am I romantic but also erotic. I'm number One. I'm number One.

You're a lucky lady Marri Coen. Just saying.

Secret Wives

Despite my great love for Marri Coen, I have something of a wandering eye. It is not a great fault, but it is difficult to force a man to choose just one woman for the rest of his life. Women, of course, must be happy with one man. That is absolutely okay. No problemo dudes and dudettes.

In this post, I would like to introduce you to some of my secret wives. I love them just as much as I love Marri Coen, though of course not in the same super-committed way.

This is my secret wife Gaya. Gaya is 5'2", though she insists that she is much taller. Do not believe her, Gaya has a truthiness problem. Gaya likes cigarettes (sometimes), Bollywood, women's issues in Algeria, and tabouli. Sometimes, Gaya pretends to be a health-kick. When she does this, we should all smile indulgently, and pat her on the head. She really likes this.

Sometimes, I write Gaya poetry. This makes her my muse. It is not very good poetry, but I blame my muse for that.

This picture was taken by Marri Coen by the way, thereby proving that she approves of my illicit affair.


On the right here is Danielle. Sometimes I call Danielle, 'Crystal', but this makes her sound like a stripper, so I don't much like to do it. Danielle likes doing the dishes. She also plays soccer when she is not working out. Soccer is a British game in which you run around for a long time, then lose 1-0.
Danielle also likes to eat sprouts and other roots that taste terrible. This is one of the flaws in her character.
Danielle is a little bit like my mother. She yells at me about my attitude, dressing habits, health, sex life, smoking etc. Sometimes I call her 'Mom'. This makes our relationship a little bit Oedipal. Oedipal is a Greek work that means 'creepily weird'. Sometimes, Danielle is 'creepily weird'.

This is Sidney. We do not know where she is, or even if she exists. Sidney is what is known as a 'myth'. A myth is an imaginary story/creature that no one knows much about.

No one knows very much about Sidney. Besides being a myth, Sidney is also a conundrum.

Someday, the nuns will know what to do with a problem named Sidney. The answer is marrying Christopher Plummer.





This is my real mom, Melissa Louie. I used to love her very much, but she cut all her hair off.

Melissa is also known as Missy. So when she gets called to the bench by the judge, he says, 'Approach the bench Miss Missy.' Then the judge guffaws. Of course, this is a hypothetical situation. Mom doesn't get arrested that often.

Mom is an alcoholic.








This is Heidi Klum.


I wish I was married to her.


She has a restraining order against me. I blame her husband
for it. His name is Seal. That's a stupid name.

fascinatingly, the maternal urge wells up in me

For those of you who are worried: I will not let Marri Coen name our kids. We have not discussed this, but our children will be named, 'Apostrophe', 'Whoosh', and 'Sweet Lion Lemonade'. It is a decision I made a long time ago.

I will love 'Apostrophe' the most. She will have a natural feeling for words and language, and will compose beautiful poetry. Just like her dad, she will go to an overpriced liberal arts school and then graduate to an MFA program in poetry. Of course, she will want to live in a little studio in Brooklyn. And she'll be a poet, so she won't have any money. So she'll ask her parents, Marri Coen and me, to give her money to support herself. She'll wear black. In retrospect, I think I hate her themost.

'Whoosh' will be a failed sports-star. He will be a second-string shooting guard with no passing skills. In college, he will play intramural B-league. He will not really get a job, but will pretend to spend his life getting ready for law school. He will waste my money.

'Sweet Lion Lemonade' will be the baby of the family. She'll have blonde curls, just like her mother. Or whatever color hair her mother has, I'll be dammed if I know. Sweet Lion Lemonade Coen-Sen will be the prettiest girl in all of kindergarten, and I will lock her up in her room on her twelfth birthday and sit outside it with a shotgun till she's ninety-five. No one's touching my daughter. Except for Apostrophe, Apostrophe will be one of those artsy girls who has sex with everyone. That should upset me, but she's just taken one too many 'loans' for me to care.

On looking over the matter, I think I hate all our kids. I'm going to push to have absolutely no kids. I hate kids. Kids smell bad, cost money, and have sex with ruffians.

Blogging is awesome !! Our relationship has never been this communicative or good.

introduction to marri coen

This is a picture of Marri Coen. Marri Coen and I got married a year ago, and wanted to share with our friends our thoughts on the married life. Welcome to our blog! Feel free to post your comments at any time.

This is how I proposed to Marri:

Me (on one knee): 'Marri Coen, will you do me the honor of marrying me?'

This is how Marri remembers it:

Me (drunk): 'Let's go upstairs and get married'

-- Marriage is about compromise. We each have our beliefs and thoughts, often they are different and variant. For example, I am a Democrat and Marri Coen is a Republican. In many couples this could cause tremendous stress to the relationship, but we have learned that being married does not mean we have to share the same beliefs. Just being together is enough for us.

Toodles!