Stand-up Husband Stand-up Husband Spring is in ...

Spring is in the air, and once again I'm miserable. This time, I'm going to face the problem. It's my wife and job, not me. They don't make me excited. They just make me feel like quitting. So a marriage counselor, a realtor, a two-week notice and a month of high-decibel turmoil later, it's June, and I'm waking up late and alone.

At which point, I'm seized by the terrifying insight that I'm separated from the only things I'm good at: complaining to my wife about our not-enough-sex life and writing mind-numbing speeches for pharmaceutical executives with lines like "This new formula stops coughs, cold!"

What am I going to actually do?

Well, the same thing I always do when I'm miserable: myself. And with my wife out of the picture, I don't even have to get out of bed!

When July rolls around, I start to feel like branching out. So I sign up for a stand-up comedy class. I don't want to be a comic. But I don't want to be a speechwriter. And since I've come this far doing what I don't want to do, why stop now?

I walk into the classroom and meet Tommy, the teacher, and half a dozen classmates. We settle in at our desks.

Tommy tells us, "Performers communicate on two levels: with their words and with their bodies. Let's begin by learning about our body language!"

One at a time, each stands up without saying anything while the rest of us jot down our impressions. There's the little blonde aerobics instructor in the jog bra. The pimply truant from New Jersey. The Nordic home-wrecker in the orange spaghetti-strap t-shirt. Some others. Me. And Tommy, whose face is so elastic he can eat his nose, and whose eyes bug out to the point where I assume he's on thyroid meds.

The following week, Tommy shares the findings during private student-teacher meetings.

"Here are people's first impressions of you," he starts, before handing me a sheet of paper.

My name is printed across the top. Underneath are five bullets:

? Gay

? Married

? Corporate

? Upper West Side

? Large Penis

"Someone thinks I'm gay?"

"Actually, two people," he says.

"Oh my god. Men or women? Cause it could be wishful thinking."

"I can't say," he tells me. "I'm just sharing information."

"What about 'Large Penis?' Who said that? Amber?"

Amber is the home-wrecker; one Amber-innuendo and I'm a stud again. "Or was it?a guy?"

"Whoever it was," says Tommy, "you're coming across hung. Be happy for that."

But I'm not happy. I was already a miserable human being. Now I'm a miserable gay human being, with no heterosex appeal to go with no wife, no job and no sex. Maybe that's why they think I'm gay? Because I've only been touched by a man for a month?

I decide to write it off, but realize that I can't. The other first impressions are right on. I am married. I had a corporate job. I do live on W. 83rd. And my shoes are size 12!

I never saw them looking at my feet and I never said a word, yet these people know me like some circle of stand-up seers.

It's enough to be scared straight. I walk home haunted, trying to make eye contact with any woman while making my own list of impressions: out of shape, out of excuses. When I was mastering the arts of wife-fighting and speechwriting, my body had gone to seed. It's communicating?nothing.

The next morning, I head down to the Pilates studio on W. 57th. I've heard Pilates isn't real exercise and yet somehow delivers real results. The moment I walk in I see why. I'm the only man in a roomful of showgirls. Every mat but mine is occupied by a physical genius wearing only a leotard, often with her ankles hooked behind her neck, rocking. Take away the leotards (and I do, in my mind) and it looks like a page from the Kama Sutra.

Witnessing this, I release much of the energy that I've been carrying along so effortlessly?first to the receptionist, where I buy a 30-pack discount lesson book, and then back home to self-tryst with the showgirl I remember most vividly. Then back and forth to the gym, 30 times, until late in August I'm finding that I like my actual body and I want to really share it with an actual human being.

I'm starting to miss my wife.

I'm struggling still with my routine, however, as our end-of-the-workshop performance approaches. I've never written stand-up before, and I don't know where to start.

"Write what you know," Tommy recommends. Tommy, my bug-eyed comedy Yoda.

This is obvious, yes, but contrary to personal experience. I've been writing about what I don't know for fourteen years?pharmaceutical products. But because I don't know what else to do, I take Tommy's advice.

When I get on stage and tell the audience that I know how to stay married but I don't know my wife, they laugh. They understand, in a way I've never been understood before.

When the summer ends, I'm mysteriously hopeful and magically buff. My wife and I meet at the marriage counselor's office. We've been meeting once a week all summer long and making actual progress; she's got me believing it's not all her fault.

The counselor asks us, "What have you decided? Do you want to end the separation? Or make it permanent?"

It's like being on one of those dating shows where you go out with someone new and then weigh them against your current relationship. Only we've been dating ourselves for three months, and there's a 14-year marriage on the line. We look at each other. We smile and hold hands across the couch. Partly it's pride, but the main reason I don't tell her that she's been right all along?that it is me who's miserable?is because at this moment, I'm most definitely not.