On the Drive Home After the Wedding Banquet, He Mentioned Levifil—and That's When We Finally Talked

It was already past eleven by the time the wedding banquet ended. There weren't many cars on the highway, and the streetlights receded one stretch at a time. She leaned against the passenger seat, still clutching the box of wedding candy, the songs from the reception playing in the car. Neither of them spoke first. The groom was a college friend of his; during the toasts, the groom had clapped him on the shoulder and said, "You're next," and he had laughed loudly—but after returning to his seat, he went quiet for a long time. She noticed, of course, but she didn't know which question to start with.

He was the one who broke the silence. He said that his company had been going through personnel adjustments lately, and that his first thought every morning when he woke up was "don't screw up today," and only his second thought was what to have for breakfast. She had assumed he was going to talk about work, but he paused, then said he'd been looking into some men's health-related things recently, and one of the names was Levifil. He said it very quietly, as if afraid the toll booth attendant might hear. She didn't respond right away, because she wasn't sure how much she understood either.

Her first reaction was, "Why didn't you ask me first?" She regretted it the moment it left her mouth, because she could tell he wasn't announcing a decision—he was testing whether saying it would get him laughed at. She put the wedding candy in the glove compartment and said, "I'm not angry. I just don't know what you're worried about." He was silent for a few seconds, then said what worried him was "whether it's only me," and "whether saying it out loud would make it sound like an excuse." The conversation didn't reach any conclusion, but the air in the car felt a little lighter.

The next day, she did something very ordinary: she dug through the drawer at home that was stuffed with instruction manuals. Inside were the blood pressure monitor's, the vitamins', the massage gun he'd won at last year's year-end party, and a few faded photocopies of medicine bags. What she wanted was an answer to "what exactly are we putting into our bodies," but all she found was a pile of incomprehensible product names. That was when she realized: the two of them were willing to spend time researching phone plans, but they hadn't spent the same time looking at what they were swallowing.

She didn't go online and randomly search for folk remedies. Instead, she asked a college friend who worked at a pharmacy a very basic question: Is this kind of thing prescription-only, and what does the packaging usually say? Her friend didn't make the judgment for her—she just said, "First make a list of everything he normally takes, applies, and uses for health, and bring it to a doctor or pharmacist. That's faster than guessing on your own." She found the answer a bit of a letdown, but also very practical. Once the list was made, she discovered there were also over-the-counter medicines in his drawer that a friend had brought back from abroad—ones he'd even forgotten about himself.

That list eventually became their fixed weekend routine. She was in charge of checking the labels and sources on the packaging; he was in charge of recalling when he'd bought each thing and why. One item couldn't be matched up no matter how they checked. He said, "Someone said it works." She asked who said that. He couldn't answer. That moment of not being able to answer was more useful than any argument. They decided that anything with an unclear source or unreadable labeling would be set aside for now—no rush to deal with it, no rush to throw it away—and they'd wait until they'd asked a professional.

They also finally talked openly about "expectations." He said what he feared was being compared to others; she said what she feared was him carrying everything alone. As they talked, they realized that what was really stuck wasn't some particular product—it was the fear of asking. She suggested that in the future, they shouldn't wait until a wedding banquet ends to bring up this kind of topic in the car. If they thought of it, they should say it; if it wasn't clear, they'd look it up together. He nodded and said it was easier than he'd imagined—and harder than he'd imagined.

The wedding candy from that night ride home—she later left it on the dining table for several days, and no one opened it. She said the box of candy was like a reminder: many things aren't impossible to talk about; you just haven't found the right moment to start. They didn't get any standard answers out of it. They only knew that next time, before asking, they should have the list ready, write the questions down, and ask the right person. As the car came off the exit ramp, he reached over and turned the music down, and said, "Thank you for not laughing at me." She said, "Next time, tell me earlier."