Yes, Amy Schumer is funny, but she’s also brave.
Sharing self-deprecating stories about oneself and one’s past relationships and awkward sexual encounters with aplomb for an audience of millions is a position few would relish being in. And yet, Schumer has dug even deeper for her first book, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, which features personal and observational stories from the comedian’s trove of life experience.
In one such story, Schumer, who has been dating furniture designer Ben Hanisch since 2016, recounts an abusive relationship with a former lover identified in the book as Dan.
“It proceeded to get worse and worse, and I started escaping the apartment whenever I could. I’d go to Starbucks, lock myself in the bathroom, and sit on the floor and cry,” she wrote, according to E! News. “I knew I should go back to the East Coast, but I thought no one would ever love me as much as he did. I believed he was just as passionate about me as I was about him, and that if I did a better job of not making him mad, we’d be fine. I really felt he loved me. And I really loved him.
“I think somewhere in the course of our relationship, I started to confuse his anger and aggression for passion and love,” she continued. “I actually started to think that real love was supposed to look like that. The more you yelled at each other, the more you loved each other. The more physical an demeaning it got, the more you were really getting through to each other. And the more I was willing to stand by him, the more he’d understand I truly loved him and that we should be together forever.”
Lessons learned from past relationships are a running theme throughout Schumer’s book. In another excerpt released before the book’s publication, Schumer remembered how a one-night stand with a British sailor helped her come to terms with a break up with an ex, who later turned out to be gay.
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo is available now.
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