The Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells Podcast is Live—Hear the First Story

I started a storytelling podcast, and you can listen to the first story!

I’ve wanted to start my Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells podcast since February, but I got weaker, fatter, and lazier since the pandemic started, so here we are eight months later. But it’s fine because at least I didn’t get too lazy to start it at all. So here is my first story: Telemarketer-Style Headphones Twinsies: A Love Note to My Girlfriend.

I wrote this story and performed it for Anie on "Valenday," which is one of many shortened words in her lexicon I've adored and adopted, and they've now become a new language for us. Before Anie, I’d basically never had a girlfriend. I’d always attributed that to me being unwanted because of my past diseases and their resulting effects. Who would want me? Nobody, and I accepted that and that was ok. And then Anie arrived, as did "din" consisting of steak and "brocc" and many other new words.

You can listen to this and all future Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Deezer, JioSaavn, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Spreaker, or your favorite podcast platform by way of the RSS feed.…at least, I think that’s true! I hardly know what a podcast is, know even less on how the technology works, and wrote that because I think I’m supposed to! However, I’m certain you can just listen to all the stories right here on my website. After I publish each podcast story, I’ll share it here immediately after, so you don’t have to go far. In fact, if you subscribe to my blog by email then you’ll automatically get notified each time I share an update.

Another thing I think I’m supposed to say is: please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts! How do you do that? Psh don’t ask me, but I know algorithms prefer content with the most reviews so that would help Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells reach more eardrums.

Whichever avenue you choose, if you listen to my story then thanks for giving it a whirl. I will record more stories, which will have better sound quality once I buy a dedicated podcast microphone. And transacting for that just involves clicking buttons, which, in fact, covid has made so many of us better at.

All that said, here is my first story. I’m excited to share this. Thanks for reading and listening. Below the podcast player is a photo related to the story which is kind of a spoiler as to what happens after the story ends, so avert your eyes if you want a surprise. Below that is a transcript of this story. I hope you enjoy.

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Transcript of Telemarketer-Style Headphones Twinsies: A Love Note to My Girlfriend

Note: Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells is best when heard, not read, because of the emotion the art of oral storytelling evokes. If you can, I encourage you to listen to the audio. 

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

Dear Anie,

I don’t know if you remember, but a month after we met you made me miss a Christmas party. We’d spent our lovely fifth date exploring downtown Silver Spring in Maryland, and then landed at your apartment. We began talking around 5 p.m. What felt like an hour later and thus time for me to leave for the party, I checked my phone and saw that it was 11. During those six hours I’m sure we told many stories, but mostly I remember your lexicon. You used the word “sitch” any chance you could, even when the word “situation” wouldn’t make sense. And your word “Valenday” saved you from having to utter one more syllable. However, I haven’t yet heard you create a term that captures the way time felt warped to me that night. It was like my past no longer existed...you know, that one in which I could only imagine meeting a gal who would lead me to believe there was nothing else in the universe outside the walls of your seemingly clean apartment if not for its endless—as you call them—”junk drawers.” I was equally unaware of a Christmas party or any other point in the future which time accelerated me towards. It was just you and me synthesized in a moment.

Before you, I’d never synthesized with anyone. In fact, for the entirety of my adulthood until I met you I thought I was stuck in the feeling of being lovestruck. A woman would show interest in me, and then three minutes later I would believe I was in love with her. Eventually, she’d lose interest and I’d feel soul-crushed… but then not long after I’d fall in love with another woman, and on and on. I used to consider my ability to fall in love within three minutes of meeting someone a curse. Now, I think all those imposter loves led me to understand how harmonious I feel with you.

When I returned home from the Christmas party-less night, I had to write about you and how you led me to believe that time could stretch or even stand still. I wrote that you were an “admittedly lazy non-writer who likes movies and sports and drives a Honda Fit.” I wrote that you and I laughed together with great ease. I wrote you were “even-keeled, used the term ‘it's fine’ for many of life's inconveniences, and used lots of exclamation points in both writing and speech.” 

Over the next couple weeks, you would tell me about your job researching applications for chemical-based patents. The chemistry exceeded my comprehension, but I gathered that one chemical synthesized with another to make a brand new whole. I laughed when you told me about your skepticism regarding the artificial sweeteners you’d been researching. I responded that I was nearly addicted to Coke Zero. There’s no way you’d know this about yourself but soon you’d join me on NFL Sundays with that shiny black aluminum can in hand. It’s not that you enjoyed it more than a Coca-Cola Classic; rather, you just liked copying me, as I liked copying you. We would become Osprey travel bag twinsies and telemarketer-style headphone twinsies. You’d start awakening early like me, I’d start talking like you, and we’d start borrowing the same books from the library, yours on Kindle and mine through audio on my twinsie headphones.

Your sweet voice hovered in my mind, and sometimes I’d call instead of text just to hear it. “What’s for din?” you said once. “Steak and brocc,” I responded because by then I’d become fluent in your language.

I’m now thinking about another of our early dates. We met at the National Arboretum. Before beginning our walk around the gardens, I agonized about whether to use my crutches. I assumed they would disqualify me in your eyes, but I also accepted that that was ok. The crutches were a part of me, and I was done hiding. So, I reached into my backseat to retrieve them. You watched me secure them around my forearms. I told you simply that I use crutches sometimes on long walks to ease the ache around my left hip bone which was surgically removed as treatment for bone cancer. And then you said something that felt blissful to me: you said, “It’s fine!”

You did not run away. You did not reject me. You did not opt-out.

What we had together felt obvious to me, and I wanted to name it. So on my birthday just before New Year’s 2019 I told you, “I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but...you're my girlfriend!"

You interjected. “No! ...You have to ask me!"

I said, “Do you want to be my girlfriend?"

You said, “Yes.”

I’d basically never had a girlfriend before. I’d always attributed that to me being unwanted because of my past diseases and their resulting effects. Who would want me? Nobody, and I accepted that and that was ok. Perhaps as a defense mechanism to others’ impending rejection of me, I even thought romances should last exactly one year. At the one-year anniversary of meeting, the couple just splits, no hard feelings. Or, at the one-year anniversary each party could opt-in and continue for another year, but the default setting was that everyone opts-out. Based on this trailblazing opt-in opt-out system of love, surely someone would accept me on a one-year loan, right?

After you said “yes” to considering yourself my girlfriend, I entered into my gcalendar the one-year anniversary of our first meeting. Only instead of entering it as a one-time event, I scheduled it to repeat every year, forever. With you, I didn’t want to opt-out, and now I can’t fathom opting out. I can’t imagine speed-crutching ahead on a hike, then pausing to wait for you and not seeing you approaching, steady and even-keeled.

Here’s the thing, though: we didn’t continue onwards, at times accelerating forward and at other times seemingly stuck in eternity together, because you lack the judgement that disqualified me in others’ eyes. We continued onwards because we are like those chemicals: we synthesized into one whole. 

We’re still continuing onwards, and there’s no stopping this acceleration so long as I have anything to do with it. So Anie, here’s the sitch: on this Valenday, I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but you’re going to spend the rest of your life with me. I just have to ask you to marry me first.

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]