The New and Improved Oprah Husband

My wife and I walk past these hyper masculine bronze sculptures of hockey players at the Newark Prudential Center and are greeted by the Oprah people. They scan our tickets, click a clear plastic bracelet on our wrists and give us a Live the Life You Want journal and a pen. In the piping hot parking lot is the pop up Oprah Village with tents for IKEA, Charmin and O Magazine. We wait in a long line of hyped up women to pose before a sign with Oprah, that reads: Tweet a question to one of the Trailblazers and Oprah will pick her favorites to answer.

My inner critic, I’ll call him Ira, my father’s name says: “Tweet Oprah? Just because you married into money doesn’t mean you have to do whatever your wife wants.”

Inner critics play to win.

We climb into the arena where the Jersey Devils play hockey. The Charmin logo covers the men’s room sign; Charminizing the men’s room into a women’s room. My wife gleefully follows an usure who walks us to our floor seats. A giant beat is pulsating,I’M EVERY WOMAN. IT’S ALL BRAND NEW…

“Let’s hear it for DJ KISS. DJ Kiss is spinning the tunes.”

“Yo, ladies, ladies leave our knitting needles at home and let Oprah hear you.”

DO EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO BABY. WHOA, WHOA, WHOA.

There are giant jumbotrons behind the triptych stage that show the craziest fans. My wife is on her feet, gyrating, suddenly she’s one of the women on the jumbotron, Oprah wrapped in a purple satin gown descends a clear staircase like an Egyptian Queen. She looks over her sea of followers and says: “Hell-ooooooo Newark.”

A feral scream erupts from all the women in their Sunday best, “Why are you here Newark?” Oprah asks. The crowd can’t calm down to think of an answer so she asks again. “Why are you here Newark?”

Ira says, “We’re here because my son has no balls.”

My wife looks at me and smiles.

“You’re here to figure out why you’re here,” Oprah declares. Suddenly all the clear bracelets light up. Everyone gasps. The whole audience is a glowing sun.

Oprah shares her biography. The woman in front of me frantically types notes on her laptop. “When I was a little girl my grandmother told me ‘I hope when you grow up you work for a nice white family. I wish she could see me now. Because I got a lot of nice white people working for me!”

Ira says, “you are you going to be hung at the stake in a cathartic act of reparations.”

“In my vision of this weekend, I said ‘The Life You Want Weekend was for girlfriends, sisters, mothers, aunts, grandmothers and a few special men.’ Can those few special men please stand up!”

A few men pop up. I nervously straighten my back and stretch like a giraffe finding his bearings. Like buoys at sea, a black man in a fine suit, a sixty year old man with a vest with home made pins on it and Oprah’s common law husband Stedman in the front row.

“Let’s hear it for our men,” Oprah says. “We love our men.”

Speeches, exercises, catchy slogans about the heart’s truth swirl through the stadium, creating a self actualization tornado.

“We are not human beings living a spiritual life. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

HALLELUJAH everyone yells.

I said we are not human beings living a human life. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

AMEN.

Ira yells at me, “You’re Jewish. You’re Jewish.”

I get out of my folded seat because after 3 hours I’m parched, my back is stiff, and I need to think of a question to tweet the trail blazers.

All the of the Prudential Center vendors are deserted because Oprah is talking. The vendor unscrews the water cap on my four dollar bottle of water and holds it in his hand.

“Can I have the cap?” I say.

“No,” he says, “Stadium policy. They’re scared you’ll throw the bottle caps onto the ice.”

Ira says, “Oprah abides by The Devil’s policies because she’s the devil.”

I confront the vendor, “There’s no ice. I’m not going to throw a cap at Oprah.”

I hold out my hand for him the put the cap in it. We’re two men alone in a stadium with no men’s rooms.

“Sorry,” the vendor says. “I’ll get fired if I give it to you.”

On Sunday night, the closing session, the first tweet chosen for Oprah is a questions for Elizabeth Gilbert.

Ms. Gilbert, If I am taking my vision quest can I bring my husband with me?

Oprah reads the question out loud and a woman from the upper deck starts screaming, “That’s my question. Woo-Hoo” Her entire section yells, “Yeah!” “WOW!”

As Elizabeth Gilbert starts explaining that it’s better to go without your husband but sometimes husbands are good for making hotel reservations, the next question is projected on the jumbotron.

I lean into my wife and say, “That’s my question.”

My wife doesn’t understand what I’m saying. She says, “When I go to Bali I promise to take you with me.”

“No, That’s my question” I say directing her vision to the Jumbotron.”

@cuteandpowerful: #LifeYouWantNJ Mr Nepo: how do you open your heart when your inner voice calls yourself a loser and a bum?

Oprah reads my question out loud and says, “I JUST LOVE THIS QUESTION!” And I think, oh my god, Oprah loves my writing.

My wife is stunned. She pulls out her iPhone. Mr. Nepo, is a lanky broken man who could be me, an alternate universe. “Everyone of us,” Mr. Nepo says, “has an inner critic or a watcher, someone who is always judging.’ Mr. Nepo talks in a very slow and measured voice, as if Oprah could behead him at any second if he says the wrong thing. “To stop, and this is hard, to stop replaying the inner critic all the time,” he kind of lurches around the stage like he is going to ask directions but then decides not to, his soft voice which has been through chemo amplified by a cordless microphone, “sometimes we think if we play the voiced enough we’ll work it out, and really what we have to do is drop it. Just drop it.”

Oprah looks stunned, incredulous, “Just drop it,” she says. “Drop it.”

And the audience starts applauding.

Mr. Nepo adds, “As a man, in his last breaths, drops all he is carrying. Each breath is a little death, that can set us free.”

Oprah lets the moment sit and says, “That’s deep.”

My wife and I look into each other’s eyes. We are both so excited. It’s as if Oprah has blessed me, our marriage. and finally I was free from Ira’s shame. I’m not a bum.

On the train back to Manhattan I fantasize when Oprah says I LOVE THIS QUESTION, I stand up and yell, that’s my question Oprah. It’s me, Michael Dermansky, the husband from New Jersey.

I LOVE YOU MICHAEL DERMANSKY, Oprah says. YOUR WIFE IS ONE LUCKY WOMAN.

Yes, Oprah, I am ready to live the life I want.

This is the Mark Nepo footage:

It really happened. You can see my tweet on the back of the screen!