Gerbils in the Head

Neal Brennan and Jake Johnson shared a joke about my people

Talk To Your Boys (our book!) is almost finished and this is the main reason I haven’t written much here. Juggling an editorial job, the kids, the dog, and my car getting wrecked out of nowhere in May has been a lot. Fatigue has seeped into my marrow.

But don’t worry, the book is nearly finished and Christopher and I will be sharing more peeks into or research soon. But for now? Gerbils. Gerbils, Neal Brennan and Jake Johnson.

Let me introduce the players in this little story:

1. Neil Brennan. A comedy writer best known for co-creating Chappelle’s Show, Brennan became a household name years later with a groundbreaking Netflix special called 3 Mics where he stood at three different mics for three different purposes: one-liners, narrative comedy (typical stand-up stuff), and sometimes-painful confessions about his own mental health and past traumas.

   Now he has a podcast called Blocks, where he interviews entertainers and comedians about their mental and emotional blocks. It’s lovely and raw and so funny.

2. Jake Johnson. You know him as Nick Miller from New Girl and slobbish Spider-Man in Into The Spider-Verse (the best superhero film ever made), and many other little passion projects. He is, as they used to say, an actor’s actor and one of the funniest guys to ever be on TV. Like, Rob Reiner-level funny.

Back to the gerbils.

“We don’t know each other well,” says Brennan, introducing Johnson on Blocks, “but we know each other, I think. I get it,” he tells Johnson, who laughs.

“Same,” Johnson replies. “I didn’t know you, but I felt like, oh you’re one of my guys.”

We all have those moments — or I hope we do — where you meet someone and your little brain waves start to sync with their little brain waves; jokes flow freely and you both hate all the same people in the room. It’s magical and often a little dysfunctional.

Then Brennan says something sort of heart-stopping to Johnson:

“It doesn’t look like it’s easy to be you.”

When Johnson asks why, Brennan points at his head, running his finger in a circle at the temple. “Because of the fuck*n gerbils upstairs.”

Johnson laughs.

“I know a gerbil head when I see it,” Brennan says, laughing, too.

Don’t get it?

This isn’t derogatory commentary about being crazy, as much as this looks like that old gesture. In fact, it undermines an old story about people like us being nuts, while recognizing the work we’re always doing up there.

Have you ever tried to sleep in the same room as a hamster or a gerbil? It’s not a cute little furball snoring teeny snores from the corner. It’s nearly incessant clatter as they run on a wheel, stopping only to tap tap tap on the little metal ball at the bottom of a drip waterer.

Sometimes, when they stop running, centrifugal force hurls their bodies to the top of the wheel and then down again. It’s violent and embarrassing, but gerbils don’t mind. Gerbils court chaos, even when you’re trying to sleep in the same room.

When a '“gerbil head” spots another gerbil head in the wild, it can be magical, but we don’t always look how you might expect (stained clothing and bad haircuts).

In reality, we often look like one of them. The other ones. The ones who hop on single-speed bikes and ride into town with a basket, which they fill with fresh bakery bread and a hardcover novel, and then ride back to a house that looks like a Nancy Meyers movie.

So how will you know a fellow gerbil head? They have chaos in the eyes. They don’t rest, even when the body is still.

They may appear to pay attention, but they’re actually doing math — a math so complicated, it doesn’t even involve numbers

It’s a math of feelings, regrets, and plans for the future. A calculation of the time it will take to get home, if they can make that meeting and whether they really want to attend that meeting at all. Who called that meeting in the first place? Oh yeah, I did. The variables in this math stand for their boss, their spouse, the special ed teacher who didn’t show up for that IEP meeting, the boy who really seemed to love them but changed his number after Daytona Beach spring break 1997, and the guy who walked past them on the treadmill this morning who may or may not have heard them fart.

On top of all of that, they’re probably also wondering if they remembered to buy laundry soap, how long it would take to dash over and get yet another matcha, and when they last changed their tampon.

Gerbils.

Instead of smiling sweetly when the boss or the school principal makes an announcement, the gerbil head will open their mouth and say something so utterly chaotic, so pleasantly deranged, you know you’ve met one of your people. One of our people.

If I’ve ever grabbed onto you and let you in on a secret after barely knowing you, you’re probably one of us. If I’ve ever DMd you during a meeting asking you to look at my face and tell me if my neck waddle is worse than usual, it’s because I know you’ve already got the chaos, too. I want you to join mine. I know you can handle the job of totaling the increased drape of my neck flesh while also listening for your turn to present the quarterly sales numbers.

If you’ve got gerbils in the head, come over here to our side of the room. Leave the Chip and Joanna Gaines-types over there with their clean countertops and matching socks.

Because you’re not alone. We, too, just thought of the perfect opening for that awful chapter we’ve been refusing to write or realized what ingredient has been missing from that one recipe. We are repeating the words in our heads again and again, hanging onto them until we can take out our phones, open the notes app and jot that little thing down.

And, like you, we’ll never write it down. That’s because the gerbils don’t stop for the Notes app. The gerbils don’t stop for anything.

I can’t speak for you, but my gerbils aren’t mental illness — they’re not even dysfunctional (necessarily). They’re what make us possible. That spinning … it’s not always easy, but it’s also not a sign that we’re broken or unlovable or too much to handle. This is who we are, and, frankly, I’m into it.

Also read: I Used To Be A Girl Who Wrote Poems That Boys Saved