By this juncture, I had lost at least a gallon of water in sweat and was basically urinating out of my asshole. I won’t deny that as humiliated as I felt, I couldn’t wonder how much weight I had lost. I had to consider what my next move would be and how I would get this mess cleaned up without anyone seeing anything. I also knew that another bomb could drop at any moment. I couldn’t bear to look down. I’ve seen photos of Hiroshima, and I was not interested in revisiting the site.
There is a reason diapers are held together by tape, I thought to myself.
I got up out of the kayak and saw that my lower body was a disaster. I threw myself into the sand and rolled around in it like I had just been thrown from a burning building. Minutes later I was camouflaged well enough to make the trek into the water. My leg was throbbing, as this was the most activity it had seen in months. I hopped as quickly as I could to the ocean and then dove headfirst into a half a foot of water.
My bikini bottoms came off and I rinsed them. Then I scrubbed my whole body with sand, sea, and whatever fish were swimming by. Once I was able to comport myself with some degree of dignity, I made my way out of the water and back over to the kayak to clean up my mess.
I dragged the kayak over to the dunes about twenty-five yards away, where I had given birth to my first child. Once there, I sat down to take a break. Not only was I in a tremendous spiral of shame, I was also in a tremendous amount of pain, but the fighter in me was not going to give up until justice was served.
When I caught my breath again, I turned the kayak upside down and emptied whatever I could into the dunes. I shook it repeatedly and slammed it into the grassy sand until I got everything out. After covering my abomination with more sand, which I had to transport from the beach below using my hands as a pail, I dragged the kayak into the ocean to finish the job. Once in the ocean, I flipped it over and used the sea water to wash out any remaining debris.
Once I was satisfied on that front, I dragged the kayak back to the beach and placed it somewhere near where I found it in the first place. I looked at the two water tires, grateful that I hadn’t made the wrong decision and chosen one of them.
It was time to go back home. “Do I swim or walk? That is the question.”
I rinsed myself in the ocean one last time and then decided to walk back very closely to the dune line. My bad leg had become swollen and I needed to ice it. What I thought would be an innocent walk/swim had turned into a full-blown Ironman.
I told myself it could’ve been worse, but I knew it couldn’t have been. I focused on the weight loss. I wouldn’t be able to get a proper look at my stomach until I got in front of a mirror. I got excited at the prospect of sharing my news with everyone. Once the house was in view, I attempted to actually skip, but stopped myself when my knee buckled.
I got back to the house, walked upstairs to my room, took my bikini bottoms off, wrapped them in toilet paper, walked downstairs, and threw them in the kitchen trash. I grabbed my traveling ice pack out of the freezer and headed back upstairs to Lesbian Shelly’s room.
Just then I heard the sound of something pulling into the driveway. I ran back down, looked out the window, and saw that it was my boyfriend, Sargeant.
Well, I thought, if there’s one way to get this loser off my tail, it’s to show him my body in its current condition. I made a bold decision and opened the front door.
“Good morning, Sargeant!” I exclaimed, covered in sand, sweat, and whatever else had managed not to come off in the ocean.
“Well, good morning, Chelsea,” he replied, as he slowly took my body in. “I didn’t expect you to be up this early.”
“Oh, I just went for a little jog on the beach. I’m actually glad you caught me before I showered. I want you to know this is what my body looks like in a bikini. You’re probably used to much more well-proportioned women,” I declared, jutting my bad leg out front and center.
“Not at all.” He smiled and started walking toward me. “Every woman’s body is different. I’ve been around enough to know that.”
This guy was even more annoying in the light of day.
“I’m going to run up and shower,” I informed him. “Hopefully, we’ll get to spend the day together, as usual.”
He nodded. “I’d love that.”
I closed the door inside and headed upstairs into Lesbian Shelly’s room.
“It’s time to rise and shine! Have I got a story for you.” She lifted her eyeshades and looked at her watch, and then regarded me groggily.
“Well, your hair is wet, and I know that’s not from a shower, so I take it you’ve been swimming?”
“That’s right,” I told her. “Not to sound conceited, but this is probably one of my top ten.”
“Well, I guess so,” Shelly said. “Because you’re not wearing any underwear.”
I looked down at myself and realized I had never replaced my bikini bottoms. “Whoopsie,” I declared, then shut her door and walked back to my own room and put on a cape.
Later that morning, I waited until everyone had gathered around the kitchen table with full breakfast plates, and regaled the family with my morning’s activities. One of the other houseguests staying with us that weekend became so disgusted halfway through my description, he got up, excused himself from the table, and went outside to smoke a joint. Men like that have never understood women like me, and quite frankly, I don’t blame them.
Later that day, Sargeant drove us to the boat in his golf cart so I could head back to LA to start shooting After Lately. I casually mentioned that I left him something special in the yellow kayak on the beach. The next time I heard from him was a couple of weeks later via e-mail. Shmirving had been kind enough to give Sargeant all my e-mail info.
Me on a boat later that day contemplating what had taken place.
Later that day, Lesbian Shelly and I toasting to seeing our first black person.
As per usual, these e-mails have not been modified or exaggerated for effect. This is the kind of thing that happens in my life on a more-than-regular basis. You could say that I invite this behavior, and you would be absolutely right.
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject: RE: Hey!!!
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 5:29 a.m.
Hey there!! There have been a lot of sweet thought about you as well since you guy were here. Instant attraction in so many different ways. My sign is Scorpio… all I know is what I hear… stubborn and a passionate lover! Irving and Glen have invited me (and “another”… namely you) to join them in Las Vegas for the Eagle show which falls on my birthday, Nov 17. I would love for you to join. We must! It is weird when you meet someone for such a short time, in such a place as this… you put a smile on my face!! Butterflies like a 12 year old passing a note asking “will you go with me… check yes, no, maybe”
As far as urination, I did answer the question “Yes” when you asked… The story goes, I was minding my own business back in 1981, listening to a shitty version of “Uncle John’s Band” and sipping on my grandfather’s stolen rye whiskey while sunbathing on a rock off the coast of Maine when my older cousin decided, for no apparent reason, to relieve himself on my chest… It was quick, painless, wrm and over within 6 seconds… kind of like getting laid for the first time when I was 14, another great story!! Have a wonderful day, knock ‘em dead and “if it comes easy… take it twice”… Please let’s stay in touch… If I could wake up everyday with a “handy fix,” life would be even better”
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject: Re: Hey YOU!!!
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:05 p.m.
Fuck! The 17th is the day I am getting my vaginal rejuvenation. If you’re serious about starting to date, then I can move it up, but there is a 2 week recovery period. (No sexy time).
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject: Re: Hey YOU!!!
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 6:46 a.m.
I think you move it up… I think we would have a blast… I can take care of the rejuvenation! I am totally serious about the trip… a “peaceful, easy feelin’… and I know you won’t let me down”
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject: Hey YOU!!!
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012
Hey major—I haven’t heard from you in a couple of days. Just hoping I didn’t scare you off. Are we still good for the 17th and do you like blowjobs?
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject: Re: Hey YOU!!!
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012
Hey there ya sexy beast!!! Answers: no you didn’t… yes we are… Absolutely..100 percent… I am driving outside of Atlanta… One hand on the wheel… and now, one hand on my Johnson! A recipe for highway disaster!!! I will email with all the horny details when I get situated.
(This was when I started blind-copying half the people on my e-mail list. “One hand on my Johnson” is by far the most compelling quote I’ve read since The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson by Thomas Jefferson.)
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject:
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:34 p.m.
Here you go!
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject:
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:32 a.m.
Phenomenal!!! Please more… I would return the favor except I just got out of a cold shower and my big Johnson is more like ’lil jack… I need to let “jack and the twins” warm up a bit… To be continued!! Love ya
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject:
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 1:59 pm
Are you fucking with me, Sargeant? Why won’t you send me a photo? What gives?
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject:
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 2:01 p.m.
I would never fuck with you!!! I have been on the road for 3 days… Expect photos by days end!!! Love ya
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject:
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 2:04 p.m.
If I don’t get those photos, the 17th is off the calendar.
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject:
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 4:13 p.m.
Your such a hard ass . . Thanks for yours… They left a lot for the imagination!!
The man I one day hope to marry.
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject:
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 4:20 p.m.
Sargeant—I deleted in my excitement. Pls resend
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject:
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 1:24 p.m.
Are you joking??? I deleted on my end too.… have to wait until the next shower this eve… I’ll hook you up!!! How’s everything going… what’s new in your world?? Was just down at “your house” here on the Island, wishin we were poolside!
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject:. . . . .so, you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling…
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 7:59 a.m.
Hey… what’s goin’ on… did you forget about me?? I sent you another pic. . . . . . . it’s very sad… miss ya
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject:. . . . . so, you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling…
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 11:00 a.m.
Sorry. At the Olympics!
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject:. . . . . so, you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling…
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 11:07 a.m.
Don’t forget those who admire you most!! Have fun
The next and last time I ran into Sargeant was at a Lakers game. I was with the same lover I had taken to see Neil Young, and again, courtesy of the Shmazoffs. Sargeant came to say hello, and I introduced said lover to him. “Timing is everything, Sargeant, and I think we may have missed our window. We were close, but not close enough.”
“I’m not someone who easily forgets, Chelsea.”
Shmirving leaned in and whispered to my boyfriend, “This is the kind of shit she stirs up when you’re not in the picture.” Then he turned to me in front of Sargeant and couldn’t get through his own joke without spitting bits of popcorn into my open mouth. “Where’s a kayak when you need one?”
CHAPTER 7
MOUNT A NEGRO
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
—Mark Twain
It’s never a good idea to travel to a city whose name you don’t have a full handle on. For one to think that a city was named purely after the idea of mounting Negroes, you’d have to be playing with the same deck of cards I am: short one ace, three queens, and the entire suit of clubs.
I know this may be hard for some people to believe, but I actually try not to be a bitch in public. One of the main issues I’ve come to face-to-face with is that I’ve always been publicly inappropriate, and have actually had to learn to dial it backward. I used to get away with it because no one knew who I was; now I’m only able to get away with murder on television, and then I have to try to keep it together when I’m in actual public.
I am extracognizant of looking people in the eye, being gracious when people recognize me or ask for a picture, and leaving very generous tips to anyone in the service industry even when the service I’m being rendered doesn’t require one. A lot of people don’t tip someone at a newsstand. I do. I do this so that this person tells five of his friends what a nice person I am, and those five people each tell another five people, and so on and so on.
I’m well aware of the game “Telephone” and how quickly word travels when a celebrity is a bitch. J.Lo isn’t considered a nightmare because she’s Puerto Rican; anyone who wears headscarves along with hoop earrings, and is constantly photographed on yachts in Miami without ever being seen wet, is what constitutes trouble.
On this particular day, I was in a fantastic mood. I had just spoken at the hand, foot, and mouth disease ceremony at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Shmandy Shmullock hated the idea of being honored and asked me if there was any way I could speak at the event and make the whole thing about me. I told her that wouldn’t be a problem.
Shmandy’s hands and feet would be firmly planted in the cement by noon, allowing me to make my 2 p.m. flight to Montenegro. I was meeting my then boyfriend for what he claimed was his “close” friend’s birthday party.
As stated previously, an eleven-hour journey would normally make my heart sing. The prospect of such a long, uninterrupted slumber is a savory image, but when I arrived at the airport to check in and handed the clerk my license, it didn’t take more than a look between the two of us to realize that what was required of me was not a license, but a passport. Whoopsie.
This is when I went into bullshit mode.
“A passport? For what? To travel to a third world country?”
“To travel to any country, Ms. Handler.”
“Really? When did this start?”
“Since airlines were created, Ms. Handler.”
“Would you mind not calling me Ms. Handler? I’m not in my eighties, and I resent the implication that I’ve never been proposed to.”
“Okay, Handler,” he replied. “You do realize your passport is actually necessary in order to land in another country. Even if I were to allow you to go through security here, which I will not, you will have to go through customs when you land, and they will send you right back on the next plane.”
“You can settle down,” I told him firmly. “I’ve got the picture loud and clear.”
I moved away from the counter and then went back to him for another attempt. “You do realize I’m not a terrorist? I’m not going to blow up a plane. I have a television show. That would be a really stupid thing for me to do and think I can get away with. I’m pretty easy to find.”
“I’ve never seen your show, but congratulations.”
I moved away from the counter to call my assistant and find out why my passport hadn’t been packed. She informed me that my passport was indeed packed inside my toiletry bag inside my carry-on bag—information that had all been sent in an e-mail the night before for this very specific reason. This is exactly why I’m unable to travel alone; the minute I walk into an airport, it’s like someone has given me a full-blown lobotomy.
I remounted the ticket counter, put my leg on the luggage scale, and exposed my passport to Hot Pants.
“Here we go, little man. I’ve got the passport right here.”
He looked at me askance, read my name off the passport and tilted his head to get a better look at me. “You’re a lot smaller in person,” he announced, before handing me two boarding passes and informing me I’d have a layover in Frankfurt.
“Come again?” I asked him.
It would be an understatement to say that this particular man took pleasure in delivering this news to me. And this was someone who had no idea what even merely passing through Germany meant to me.
Only a month earlier my cousin Molly and my aunt Gaby (Molly’s mother) had tagged along with me to Berlin to film the show Who Do You Think You Are?
Who Do You Think You Are? is a genealogy show that traces your heritage and flies you to wherever your ancestors made the most noise. In my case, it took me straight to Germany to research my Nazi roots. You don’t find out where you’re going until you actually get on the plane that day, and I was secretly hoping I’d end up in a country I’d never been to—like Russia. I know Russia isn’t on everyone’s hit list, but I’m less upset with Russians than Germans, because at least they have good literature.
When we got to Germany, Molly suggested we go to a concentration camp. Sachsenhausen was an hour outside of Berlin, and we had the entire next day off from filming.
“Yes,” I told her. “I suppose you are right. Being a Jew, it is kind of embarrassing I haven’t been to one yet. But, it’s not like I haven’t read about them.”
“I bet all the people who were forcibly taken to concentration camps wish they had only read about them,” Molly replied. “You do realize that if you come to Eastern Europe and don’t go to a concentration camp, you’re an asshole?”
After spending the first day in the hinterland, where my mother was born, we were off to Berlin, and I was excited to be going to a real city. The first day we saw the Berlin Wall, the Tower of Terror, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and by the time dinner rolled around, I was suicidal. I woke up the next day feeling overwhelmed with sadness. The hotel we were at felt like a bunker, and the air-conditioning in my room was drying out my eyes, causing me an unusual amount of restlessness.
The three of us met for breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
“I really don’t think I’m in the mood for a concentration camp today,” I revealed to Molly and Gaby. “I think I’ll get superdepressed.”
“I really don’t think anyone was in the fucking mood for a concentration camp, Chelsea. Do you?” Molly asked, slamming down her orange juice. I was taken aback by her aggressiveness.
“I’m just saying, it’s fucking freezing out, and this sounds like it’s going to be a mostly outdoor event.”
“Yes, it is cold out, and it was even colder out when Jews were forced to work all day with no shoes and shaved heads and sleep in human stacks. I think you can handle an hour or two in your wool coat, pashmina, and Uggs.”
“Okay, Molly. I get it. Obviously, I’ll go. And for the record, I would never wear Uggs.”
“It’s not really about you, Chelsea.”
“I said I fucking got it!” I told her.
“And I’m warning you ahead of time, there probably won’t be a bar.”
“Perfect!” I replied. “A concentration camp without any cocktails. Sounds like another fantastic day.”
I have never had a positive experience in Germany or Germans, except my mother—she was very sweet.
I asked the ticket counter man at the airport if there were any other possible cities that would connect me to mounting Negroes. Reflecting on this exchange, I firmly believe he wouldn’t have told me if there was.
I wasn’t going to let this little prick get me down.
I consider myself to be quite independent, but only independent in the way that I am always able to find someone else to do something for me. My assistant had planned ahead for what is called an airport greeter—someone who assists a mentally incapable person through airport security and directly to the lounge, then babysits the person until the plane is ready to take off. The greeter then walks the baby to the assigned gate, exchanges a look of pity with the gate agent, and then escorts the baby to the assigned seat. Then flight attendant comes over and offers a set of pajamas.
I had to go to the bathroom and asked my personal greeter if it was okay for me to urinate. He informed me that the first class lounge was only around the corner, but I insisted on using the “people’s” bathroom in an effort to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground.
I walked into what looked exactly like what a public airport restroom is supposed to look like—a bathhouse.
As I happily trotted up to the girl at the end of the line, she very loudly asked, “Are you Chelsea Handler?”
It was very early in the day, and as I was sober; I decided that yes, I was Chelsea Handler.
“Can we take a photo after you’re done?”
“… Going to the bathroom?” I asked, wanting her to hear her request out loud.
“We can do it now,” she said.
“No, let’s wait until we’re done and step out of the bathroom,” I suggested.
I waited patiently for my turn and when it came, I walked into the bathroom stall. It was a shambolic tragedy. There was urine everywhere. Everywhere. On the wall behind the toilet, on the floor, on the toilet seat cover… and on top of all that, there was a fully soaked paper toilet seat cover also stuck to the toilet. What on earth was the point of pulling one of those paper seat covers out to sit on if you were just going to squat, anyway? It looked as if this criminal used the actual seat cover as the toilet paper. How could something like this happen before 1 p.m.?
First of all, if you are female and leave a toilet in that condition, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions:
What is wrong with you?
Seriously. What is wrong with you?
I’m fully aware this is coming from someone who lost control of her bowels in a kayak. However, I would never in my entire life leave a public restroom in the condition I saw it in that day. I wouldn’t even do that in the privacy of my own home. Well, maybe there, but I wouldn’t let my cleaning lady clean it up—not if it came out of one of my orifices. I have thrown underwear out in the garbage in order to prevent my cleaning lady from seeing them in my laundry. I have wrapped underwear in a plastic ziplock bag, put it in my purse, taken it to work, and thrown it in the trash in my office bathroom in order to avoid my cleaning lady from seeing any of my misconduct.
I wasn’t about to walk out of that stall just to have a stranger walk into it and think I was the culprit responsible for what had gone down in there. A rhinoceros would have made less of a mess. After I closed my mouth, I got down on my hands and knees to clean up another woman’s pee-pee in order to avoid the next female who used that stall from telling five of her friends, who in turn would tell five of their friends that Chelsea Handler pees standing up. What I needed was a mop, at the very least a Swiffer. Just one hour earlier, I had been standing on Hollywood Boulevard giving a speech to honor one of the most beloved actresses of our time, and now I was on my hands and knees cleaning a public restroom—like a janitor.
I walked out of the stall, washed my hands, and soldiered outside to take the photo that had been requested of me. I was hanging on by a thread.
The greeter informed me that I would be traveling on one of the new airbuses that had two stories. This information excited me. I was also excited to try a new sleeping pill my doctor had given me called Sonata.
Once on board and sitting on the upper level of the airbus, I checked my e-mail and read the first three messages.
The first e-mail was from my sister Shoshanna:
If you know any celebrity moms who would be interested in an endorsement deal and probable infomercial like Leah remini or similar person for all natural chemical free lice products to both treat and prevent lice (which is becoming a bigger and bigger problem) let me know—everything in the drugstore is filled with very strong scary chemicals and this is organic and extremely effective—this lady is trying to go national and needs a face to help get things moving—sorry I promised someone very sweet I would pass this on but ignore it if your annoyed—don’t mean to bother you with it :) SHOSH.
My reply: “Consider this igonored.”
A text popped up from a number I didn’t recognize:
Hello! My name is Mike Arancini. I just moved to West Hollywood by way of NJ 3 days ago… and got your number from your brother Roy he said if I moved here you might be able to help me with a possible job… I have a bachelors in marketing and can do pretty much anything asked of me… I’d even be willing to work for FREE for a month or more just so you can see that I’m not a deaf, dumb, retard… Do you have ANYTHING available or maybe someone I can call? I’m sorry to even bother you but I’m desperate and don’t wanna have to move back to jersey… Thank You so much!!! Mike.
P.S. Also, I’m starting a new charity for Cancer, and I know you’re mother died from that. Let me know if you want to MC an event.
My response: “I’m opposed to doing charities for Cancer, mostly because I’m a Pisces.”
I loathe bad grammar. I know this is an oxymoron, since I’m not the most terribly gifted writer or any sort of grammatical genius, but at least I double-check my work.
My day was getting worse by the minute.
The difference between a regular alcoholic and myself is that when I receive disappointing news or alerts, I withdraw from alcohol. I had a therapist once tell me to “sit with my shit,” and I believe that to be a necessary evil of being constantly disappointed. I would rather be bummed out for a day than to party like nothing happened and be bummed out for a week. I sat back in my seat and reiterated what my therapist once told me. “Welcome the pain,” I said out loud, gripping both armrests. “OK, motherfucker. I will.”
A gentleman sat down next to me, so I very perceptibly craned my head around in an attempt to guide him to the knowledge that the entire first-class cabin was empty, and the obvious move for any normal person would be to take one of the other seats rather than have the only two people in first class sitting next to each other.
“I think the plane is empty,” I told the man in what I thought was a very pleasant tone. “I think we have the entire cabin to ourselves, so you don’t have to sit here if you don’t want to.”
“This is my seat,” the man responded firmly. “1A.”
I would be the one changing my seat after takeoff.
I continued reading my e-mails, and I opened up the next one from my sister.
Attached was a letter from the assisted living residence that my father was calling home these days. The letter pointed out that he had made “blatant sexual remarks” to and “improperly fondled” some members of the staff. Further, since it was clear he was not seeing the error of his ways, he would have to leave.
I scrolled down to the bottom of the e-mail to my father’s response to learn of his thirty-day eviction: “I guess being an independent man is some kind of joke around here,” he told the staff and my sister after they gave him the news. “None of this will hold up in court,” he added.
“You need to shut your phone off,” the man next to me said, repeating the announcement.
“Excuse me?” I asked him, more than slightly irritated.
“You heard the announcement. All electronics need to be shut down.”
“Sir, I’m not sure how frequently you fly, but the notion that anything electronic is actually interfering with the radio frequency of the FAA tower is a fallacy.”
He looked right through me as he rang the call button.
“Are you going to tell on me?” I asked him, to which he didn’t reply. “I asked you a question, sir. Are you going to tattletale on me? Is that what’s happening right now?”
The flight attendant came over and looked sympathetically in my direction as the man informed her that I refused to turn off my electronics.
“Are you a Scientologist?” I asked him pointedly.
“There are rules for everyone,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Who do you think you are, Alec Baldwin?”
“Please stop speaking to me or at least stop breathing when you talk,” I said, shutting down my phone. “Your breath is hot.”
The flight attendant reassured me she’d be switching my seat as soon as we took off. Until that moment came—which was about twenty minutes later—I stared at the man next to me. He never once looked at me but kept his eyes set on the bulkhead in front of us. He was definitely a Scientologist. I looked in my bag for my sleeping pills and couldn’t find them anywhere; someone had forgotten to pack my new prescription.
Three hours later I was wide awake in 5C watching Blades of Glory and found myself pissed at Will Ferrell. I bet Will didn’t have a family like mine. Will probably sits around with his family eating cereal, playing soccer, and going for bike rides. Everyone gets along fine. No one gets caught sexually harassing others; no one asks him to ask his famous friends if they want to do ads for dandruff. But you are not Will Ferrell, I had to remind myself. You’re not even Alec Baldwin.
I had about eight more hours to fly, and I had to decide how I was going to accomplish that. Alcohol would be pointless, because my body is so inured to it that unless I am on a completely empty stomach, it is impossible for me to get drunk. I had already had two meals.
If one is to pull off falling asleep in broad daylight, one must shut of any and all electronics, pull one’s eyeshades over one’s eyes, and imagine only undulating waves and dolphins sliding up and down one’s body. I tried this three separate times.
I slouched in my seat, punishing myself even further by depriving myself of any entertainment or reading material. I just sat there fulminating about my family, my flight, and my forgetfulness in bringing sleeping pills.
I tried to figure out why I couldn’t just let little things slide. Why did I have to let the minutiae in life affect me so? It wasn’t the man at the ticket counter, or the passport episode, or the girl who wanted a photo in the bathroom, or the shambolic stall, or the three annoying e-mails from my family, or even the man ordering me to shut off my phone. It was his breath.
His breath was what sent me over the edge. Bad breath has always been my Achilles’ heel, and being able to smell someone’s breath is a pretty good indicator that it’s bad. For some reason I seem to come up against it more often than the regular Tom, Dick, or Harriet.
I got up and walked over to his seat, where I found him sleeping peacefully. I learned in closer than I wanted and announced, “I don’t mean to sound like a hairdresser, but you need a root canal.” He shifted a bit in his seat, and I hurried back to my own before he woke up and another confrontation ensued. Once safely back in 5C, I mused about my never-ending battle with halitosis.
I had someone who once worked for me who had a severe case of Type 1 halitosis. I spent hours a day deliberating with other coworkers what the best approach to this issue would be. We talked of leaving an industrial-sized case of Chiclets on his desk and then upon further discussion realized they wouldn’t be strong enough. We went from Chiclets to Altoids to tongue scraping. Was there new technology in tongue scraping? How does one approach another regarding that very matter? Who would be in charge of confronting this person if it came to an actual conversation, and how did one avoid encountering his breath during said conversation? I offered three different coworkers five thousand dollars to have an honest, caring conversation with this employee, and after serious contemplation, I was denied by all three. None of my other staff members had the guts to show up to work with either a Dentyne Ice truck or a surgical mask and have a frank conversation. The memory of this made me madder. Why was I the only one willing to take action in the world? Even Obama had become useless.
Needless to say, the rest of the trip was a disaster, and by the time I arrived in Montenegro, I had not only stopped speaking, I had stopped responding verbally. Couple that with learning that Montenegro was not in fact two words and had nothing to do with mounting anything, and you could describe my condition as going from bad to worse.
The intimate birthday of my boyfriend’s “close friend” ended up being attended by fifteen hundred of his other close friends. Where I was seated next to an African king who couldn’t geographically describe where his country was, and two Serbian prostitutes on the other side. I found out that the birthday boy was some rich banker my boyfriend had met twice. That was for whom I had traveled fifteen hours. A stranger. I broke up with Montenegro the day I left there, and I broke up with that boyfriend shortly thereafter.
My father is currently in a new living facility where the staff is ninety percent male, my brother’s “friend” is now a production assistant on Chelsea Lately, and I’m about to become the spokesperson for lice.
This is me on my way home from Montenegro.
CHAPTER 8
THE SWISS ALPS
For a long time as a child, I thought Switzerland and Swaziland were the same place. When I decided to go skiing in the Alps, I was once again mistakenly intoxicated at the prospect of interviewing tribal leaders.
The group this time was Lesbian Shelly, Sue, and myself. We needed a fourth, so I decided it best to throw in a wild card and invited my makeup artist, Gina, to join us. She is the female version of Steven Tyler but with a deeper voice and bigger lips. Gina is one of my only friends who doesn’t drink excessively, and I thought it might be a nice change of pace to have a chaperone. Gina is a bitch. She doesn’t mean to be, but she is. She acts like she knows everything, and the main problem with people who think they know everything, is that they usually know nothing at all.
I can walk out of my bathroom at work in a bathrobe with wet hair and she’ll stare at me with a puzzled look on her face and her mouth open for ten seconds until she is able to confirm the obvious. “Huh?” she’ll say, looking at me confused, and then come to the slow realization that any normal person would come to right away. “Ahhh… you took a shower.”
“No, Gina,” I’ll say drily. “I’m about to.”
Then you can watch her thoughts circle back around trying to figure out what is the truth and what isn’t. She’s not stupid. Well, a little stupid… but mostly just incredibly slow on the uptake. She reads the New York Times every day, though she is unable to really comprehend anything other than the headlines.
“Did you hear about Syria?” she’ll ask, walking into work.
“Are we going in?”
“I don’t know, but there was a big piece in the New York Times.”
“So, what did it say?”
“I don’t know,” she’ll say, exasperated. “It was pretty complicated.”
“Well, then why bring it up at all, Gina?”
She has been doing my hair and makeup every day on my show for four years and sits offstage watching the show so she’s nearby to touch me up in between commercial breaks, and is somehow still oblivious to the fact that it is literally my business to know what’s happening in the cultural zeitgeist. She consistently thinks she’s revealing huge news to me that has been made public for a large window of time. “Did you see Miley Cyrus at the VMAs?” she’ll ask in disgust, three weeks after the VMAs have aired.
“Yes, Gina. We’ve been discussing it on the show ever since it happened and have done several reenactments. You’re here every day. How did you miss that?”
“All right, all right!” she’ll say, walking away with her hands in the air. “I give up!”
It’s worth it to me to have Gina around, because from the way she name-drops and tells stories, you’d think she’s been in the business since the turn of the seventeenth century. Once she does actually get the joke, she laughs really hard with one eye closed, which gives me a lot of joy. She is also extremely devoted to me and is very tolerant of my increasingly ridiculous behavior, even though we argue on a daily basis. Plus, she’s good at packing my clothes.
This is the only photo I have of Gina looking friendly. She lived in London for a while shooting one of her hundreds of thousands of feature films, and she’ll be the first one to tell you how much the English love to take baths.
I love to ski and had yet to ski in Switzerland. An added bonus was that Zermatt is right on the border, so you can ski from Switzerland to Italy and back all in the same day. Zermatt had all the amenities I love the most: skiing, a weight-loss spa, and a casino.
There was no weight-loss spa or casino, but I told Shelly, Sue, Gina, and myself there would be.
We flew from Los Angeles to Geneva, and from Geneva we took a four-hour train ride up the mountain to Zermatt. I don’t like trains because I’m Jewish. I didn’t like this train because it went from side to side switchbacking in order to get up the mountain, which made four hours feel like four days. I do not suffer from motion sickness, but when I asked the conductor when the train was built and he told me the late 1800s, I deduced the obvious: this was a train that had transported Jews out of Zermatt during the Second World War. I could smell the Holocaust.
Lesbian Shelly told me to drink some water, citing dehydration from the plane ride as the cause of my nausea.
I hate water, especially room-temperature water. The water on the train, which had some German label I couldn’t make out, tasted like Chilean sea bass. The girls were all drinking wine and eating cheese, and the smell was making things worse. I took the hair clip out of my bag and used it to clip my nostrils together while I found an empty seat at the back of the car. The irony of being Jewish and having a strong sense of smell wasn’t lost on me.
“I’ve never seen Chelsea take a nap,” I overheard Gina say to Shelly and Sue.
“She’s just sleeping because she thinks she’s being taken to a concentration camp,” Shelly explained.
I fitfully slept most of the way on the train, because I was awoken by a voice with a violent German accent yelling out each stop on the way up the mountain. It hadn’t once crossed my mind that the main language in this part of Switzerland was German. When I was finally able to sit up, I asked Gina to give me French braids on either side of my head so I would look less Jewy. She reminded me I was half German, but like any half-black person will tell you, the stronger minority always takes over.
By the time we arrived in Zermatt, I was delirious and had a fever. There are no cars in Zermatt, so they pick you up in horse-drawn carriages and escort you to whichever hotel you’re staying in.
I walked straight into the hotel and asked to be pointed in the direction of the bar, where I ordered myself two margaritas to try to cure whatever I had caught on the train. Margaritas always straighten me out, and I didn’t see why this little episode would be any different. Plus, I hate checking into hotels, and Sue, Shelly, and Gina love it.
Our suite was designed like a giant cabin/chalet, with two stories, two bedrooms, and a hot tub on the balcony overlooking the town and a direct view of the Matterhorn.
This is what I was wearing when I arrived in Switzerland, and that’s the Mattherhorn behind me.
“There are other people out here,” Sue warned me after I stripped down and came outside in my bra and thong. “Just saying…”
I looked at the people on the balcony next to us and said hello. I was sweating and delirious and was hoping the cold air would help cool me down. I took some snow from the ledge of the balcony, packed a snowball, and smashed it into my face. Then I sat down Indian style and asked what time dinner was.
“You’re going to catch pneumonia if you sit out here naked. Come in the hot tub,” Gina instructed me.
“I hate hot tubs, and everyone who knows me knows that. Secondly, I was already hot, so why would I get into a hot tub to get hotter? Do you want me to die?”
“You’re always hot,” Gina said with a wave of her hand. “Why don’t you take your temperature and find out if you have an actual fever?”
“Thanks for your sympathy,” I said. “I would love to take my temperature, but I don’t carry a thermometer around in my ass. Do you?”
I’m against thermometers, because (1) I believe they are archaic, and (2) they’ve fucked me over in the past. Specifically, when I was eight and trying to feign illness in an effort to avoid a math test that was supposed to be given in school that day.
School was already a pain in the ass, and the very notion that we were expected to study for tests in addition to going to classes pissed me off. Pop quizzes were less of an affront to me, because at least I had no time to have anxiety about failing them. Algebra was a particular nuisance, and when I woke up the on the day of the test, I had to think fast.
“Mom!” I screamed from my bedroom.
Not for the first time my mother ignored my cries for help, so I got up and walked over to the door in order to get some better acoustics. “Mom!” I screamed again and ran back to my bed and lay down.
“I can’t move my legs,” I told her as she opened the door.
“So, you’re paralyzed?” she asked.
“God forbid,” I told her.
“Well, then, I guess we’ll need to go to the ER.”
In an effort to be more convincing and avoid an actual hospital, I told her that I felt very hot and that maybe some chicken soup would help. She left without saying anything and came back moments later with Campbell’s chicken soup, and then went into my closet where she found a pair of jeans and tossed them at me. She was testing me.
When my mom left the room again, I dipped the thermometer into the chicken soup and put on my jeans as if my legs were in fact immobile. This was before nanny cams, but I thought if she was secretly peeking through my keyhole, it was in my best interest to cover all bases. I thrust out each leg straight in front of my body and leaned my torso over my legs, like any person paralyzed from the waist down would do when putting pants on.
I heard my mother’s footsteps returning, so I lay prone on my back, struggling to zip up my jeans. I grabbed the thermometer out of the chicken soup and put it back in my mouth.
“Well, you certainly put those jeans on fast for someone with no use of their legs.” She rolled her eyes and took the thermometer out of my mouth. “A hundred and thirty degrees?”
“Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?” I responded as weakly as possible.
“Let’s go to the hospital,” she said. I weighed my options and decided the hospital would be better than failing algebra. I had spent plenty of time in hospitals, because I have a history of either hurting myself or faking hurting myself.
My father was usually the one to take me to the hospital, but for some reason he had already left for the day even though he didn’t have a real job. He was probably just picking up his breakfast at McDonald’s.
I was admitted into the ER at St. Barnabas Medical Center. After an hour and a half of getting my legs bent in several different directions and then pricked with small needles from my ankles to my thighs in neat, tiny rows, the doctor pulled out the reflex hammer. It is incredibly hard not to move your leg when someone is hitting you in the knee with a hammer, but I thought I did a pretty good job of pulling it off. After this, the doctor drew the curtain to the examining room and he and my mother stepped outside of it.
“Your daughter doesn’t need a to be in the emergency room. She needs to be in a psychiatric ward.”
The next day I woke up with dried blood all over my legs from the needle pricks but was somehow able to get up, dress myself, and go to school.
“You have a quite a vivid imagination,” my father told me, as I made myself a peanut butter and jelly bagel for breakfast.
By the end of retelling this story to the girls, the sweat from my body was melting the snow I was sitting on.
“That is one of the most fucked-up stories I’ve ever heard,” Sue told me. “You really were a nightmare.”
“What do you mean, ‘were’?” Gina asked, cracking herself up. “Ever heard of the boy who cried wolves?”
“No, Gina. But, I have heard about the Boy Who Cried Wolf. My dad was kind enough to regale me with that tale after I broke my arm that summer in Martha’s Vineyard, and he refused to take me to the hospital for two days because he assumed I was lying.”
“Well, I don’t blame him,” Gina shot back as quickly as she was able, craning her neck like a rapper.
“My forearm was dangling off of my elbow joint in the completely wrong direction. It was pretty obvious it was broken. Even my dog Mutley knew it was broken. He sat there barking at me for two days.”
“Well… you need to get in bed if you think you have a fever,” Gina snarled with one eye open. “You need to be able to ski tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m not going to miss fondue, idiot. This could very well be my last meal.”
Cheese has always been one of my greatest passions. I adore it, and if I wasn’t predisposed to obesity, I’d want a block of it every day. It was a short walk to the fondue restaurant, so I grabbed another T-shirt and a sleeveless vest and sweated profusely throughout the entire meal. The steaming hot cheese wasn’t a help to my fever, and the restaurant smelled like a fillet of feet, but I was able to power through it and use the bread squares to dab the sweat off my forehead.
When I got up to use the restroom, I felt a draft hit what felt like an exposed midriff.
“Is that a half shirt?” Sue asked, leaning across the table, smiling.
I looked down and realized I was indeed wearing a half shirt. “I don’t know how this got in my suitcase.”
“Who packed you?” Sue asked.
“Who knows?” Gina declared. “It was probably the cleaning lady from work.”
“Actually, Gina, you packed me. Remember?”
“Well, I didn’t pack that,” she insisted and then made a hissing sound. “I would never encourage anyone to wear a half shirt.”
The truth of the matter was that I had no idea where or how that shirt got on my body, but I know I got it out of my suitcase. So someone packed it, and that somebody made a fool out of me that night. (Gina.)
The next morning I woke up feeling like I had been in a head-on collision with Rebel Wilson. I couldn’t move, never mind think of going skiing.
Shelly came in to check on me and feel my forehead. My side of the bed was soaking wet.
“She says she can’t move,” Gina told her, as if I was faking it.
“I’m going to stay here with you,” Shelly said. Shelly would do anything for me and that made me want to cry, so I told her she needed to go skiing or I would cry all day.
I woke up three hours later and called down to the spa to get a manicure and pedicure. What I really wanted was a foot massage, but I was too embarrassed to ask for that directly. As I got on the elevator, I started to feel light-headed. I barely made it to the spa, and in my delirium, I thought the spa would be the equivalent of a hospital and could aid in curing whatever leprosy I had caught. Once on the table I drifted in and out of consciousness until a German man wearing a stethoscope woke me up with smelling salts after I had fallen off the table and onto the floor.
“You have a very bad fever.”
Is there such a thing as a good fever? People annoy me when they qualify a cold as being bad. Isn’t that kind of implied when you get the cold in the first place? It’s the same thing as calling someone a creepy clown. What clown isn’t fucking creepy? As if anyone’s ever said, You know that really well-rounded clown with the good body and charming personality? Well, he’s coming over for dinner.
“Ve need to get you into ze ice bath,” he told me as he and a woman helped me to my feet.
“I love ice.”
I had lost all sense of my equilibrium and had never been so incoherent. I felt like I had gotten a DUI on a submarine and then had been forced to snorkel back up to the surface.
The doctor hauled my body from the spa up to my hotel room with his arm around my waist and my arm around his shoulder. There were already hotel employees gathered in my bathroom dumping ice into the bathtub and filling the tub with water. It seemed as though I was watching a movie of myself, and I remember being confused about whether I was really sick or I had a case of Munchausen syndrome. I took off my clothes and sat down on the bathroom floor in my bra and underwear. The doctor and a woman lifted me back up and told me to put one leg in the tub.
“Should I take off my underwear?”
“No.”
“Are you getting in, too?” I asked the doctor, ready to accept the idea of rape. I didn’t have any fight in me.
“Get in ze tub!”
“I’m not Jewish,” I repeated several times before passing out. I remember noticing that my toes looked perfectly manicured. People weren’t exaggerating about Swiss spas. When I woke up, I was in my bed. I knew the girls had returned from skiing because I heard mingling in the next room.
I tried to get out of bed but was so physically weak I only had the strength to moan. Shelly ran in when she heard me. I felt so bad for myself I started crying, which made Shelly cry. We were both crying, and I was naked.
She rubbed my forehead and told me that the doctor said my fever had broken, but that I would be very weak for the next day or two and to take it easy.
“Do you think I’m allergic to trains?” I asked her.
“Maybe,” she said, rubbing my head, tears in her eyes.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Six.”
“P.m. or a.m.?”
“P.m.”
“Okay, wake me up tomorrow,” I told her and fell back asleep. I woke up fifteen hours later and heard rumbling in the main living room. It was 9 a.m. I felt better and got out of bed and walked into the living room naked in the hopes of my body appearing so gaunt, the girls would gasp.
“I’m ready to ski.”
The skiing was beautiful. Our ski guide’s name was Johann. It turns out that in Switzerland there aren’t ski guides with any other names. We skied for about three hours. Right before we were going to stop for lunch, I asked Johann if we could work on some moguls, since the conditions were so good and I was skiing so well. The greatest part about skiing there was that the runs were really wide and there weren’t very many people on them. The not-so-great part was that because of the width and light, you have no idea how steep the mountain is. That was when the snow hit the fan.
I was minding my own business skiing down a double black diamond at around forty-five miles an hour with my legs in the same position they would need to be in order to birth a midsized kangaroo. My skis didn’t come off, and from the clicking sound I heard during my wipeout, I was certain the bottom halves of both my legs had separated from my thighs and were already on the chairlift back up the mountain. Once I stopped writhing in pain and pounding my forehead into the snow, I looked up at Johann who, in perfectly low-key fashion, informed me that I had just torn my ACL and that a helicopter of Nazis were on their way to medevac me to the nearest burn unit. Then he offered me a cigarette.
To add insult to injury, I was dead sober, and I hate getting injured when I’m sober. This proves my theory that sobriety is not for me and is, in fact, for the birds. The helicopter landed and three big hot Swiss EMTs got out. One of them yelled at Gina, Shelly, and Sue—who were all filming me on their iPhones—to back the fuck away. The propeller was blowing the snow in every direction as two guys ran over to me.
“Are you in pain?” one asked. I was in pain. I was in a tremendous amount of pain, but for some reason I told him no.
“No morphine?” he asked.
“I meant, yes. I am in pain.”
“Would you like some morphine?” he asked again, pulling a liquid vial out of his ski jacket.
“Yes, and I have a very high tolerance for drugs, so whatever you normally give someone, double it.” I have never had morphine, and it had been on my bucket list since I saw my mother die. The last three days of her life were the happiest I’d ever seen her.
I smiled at the EMT. What a good sport I am, I thought. The three guys lifted me up onto the stretcher. One of the Germans attached my stretcher to his boots and skied me down to the helicopter. Once they skied me closer to the helicopter, which was noisier and seemingly much more dramatic, Johann wrapped his arms around my head to protect me from the propeller-driven wind and snow. I was more than a little turned on by this move.
I’d like to go on record and say that Germans are the worst.
Not only do I love helicopters, but we were flying right over the Matterhorn and it was an incredible view. The morphine was amazing, and I felt like I was on top of the world. I was trying to take pictures with the pilots while we were flying and they wouldn’t even smile.
The female doctor at the hospital was the biggest German bitch I had ever encountered in a medical facility—and needless to say, I’ve been to a lot. I’ve had numerous injuries as well as many elective procedures done in order to amplify my coordination. Never had someone aside from a receptionist been lacking in empathy. Why would a person get into the medical field just so they could be mean to people at work in addition to being a bitch at home?
I was left alone in an examining room long enough to call whomever I was dating at the time, then my sister, then my doctor in LA, who patched me through to an orthopedic specialist, who asked me if I could pop my knee in and out of its socket. I tried and I could, and then I couldn’t stop doing it because it was so weird. The doctor on call walked into the examining room, took one look at me on the phone, and angrily pulled the curtain shut before I could even tell her that I was speaking with my doctor.
She hissed something in German that sounded like “Schitzenschfuckle,” and stormed out.
What in the hell is the matter with these Germans? I thought. You’d think they would feel guilty about what they’ve put everyone through. I mean, seriously.
“That’s it.” I told my doctor to hold on, hopped off the table on my good leg and went after her. “Excuse me.” I hobbled over to the nursing station she was at with my bad leg in the air, and I put my hand on the wall to balance myself. “What is your problem, Fraulein? I happen to be on the phone with my doctor in Los Angeles. I’m not on a social call. You need to be a little more professional.” I handed her my phone. “Here, talk to him.”
After she hung up and handed me back the phone, I told her, “Just so you know, I’m Jewish.”
After a very nice man wrapped my leg up and put it in a nice brace, I called Shelly. When she didn’t answer, I called Gina. When she picked up, she told me that they had gone to a chalet to have a drink, and Shelly had slipped on a set of stairs and landed on her elbow. They were all at the hospital.
“What?”
“Yeah, she slipped and fell down the stairs in her ski boots.”
“Oh, my god. What the hell is wrong with us?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” she said. “It’s you two idiots. They think she cracked her bursa.”
“What is a bursa?”
“I thought it was a dance, but it’s not. It’s a bone in your elbow.”
“Oh my god. So where are you? I’m still here in the ER.”
“I don’t know. We’re at the hospital in Zermatt. Johann said the one they took you to is a two-hour drive away.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I guess yours is a bigger hospital. They thought you were seriously injured.”
“Well, how am I supposed to get back?”
“I guess a taxi.”
“A taxi?”
“Yes. It’s stupid for us to drive four hours when you can just drive two.”
“Thanks a lot. Like I know how to get a taxi in German.”
“Chelsea, you can get a taxi,” Gina assured me.
“Well, why can’t I just get a helicopter?”
“I don’t know. You can try. Shelly wants to grab a drink. She’s in a lot of pain.”
“Yeah, so am I,” I reminded her. “Well, I guess I’ll just walk back. I don’t know how to get a taxi.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“There’s no prognosis. They took an X-ray and said nothing’s broken, but my doctor in LA said it sounds like I tore my ACL. Something’s definitely wrong, but I’m just going to wait until I get back to the States.”
“So, can you ski tomorrow?”
“No, asshole, I cannot ski tomorrow. I can pop my knee in and out of its socket, and I’m on crutches. A torn ACL is what athletes get when they do a split by accident.”
In transgender voice: “Athletes?”
“Yes, like basketball players. Those are athletes. Thanks for nothing, Gina.”
I hung up the phone and looked down at my knee, which had been wrapped in an Ace bandage with a brace on top. A nice German emergency room man came over with my crutches and told me in English (but still in that accent) that there was a taxi waiting for me outside. I thought that was a nice gesture from a country that had already put me through such hell. I asked for some more morphine and pain pills, and went on my merry way.
Getting back took more than two hours, but I was on such a high at that point that I didn’t really mind. It was a beautiful day outside and it was a beautiful drive alongside a beautiful river.
Once at the hotel, I found Shelly, Sue, and Gina in our suite. Shelly and Sue were smoking cigarettes. Gina was not because she, of course, quit that forty years ago. Shelly’s arm was in a sling.
Next up: dinner.
Chez Heini is a restaurant in Zermatt that came highly recommended by our concierge. It is written up and recommended as one of the best places in all of Switzerland to get rack of lamb. Shelly had been there before, and she explained that the owner or manager comes over and sings, and the whole place turns into a party after 9 p.m.
There was some confusion over the reservation name, but once we sorted that out we were sat next to what I presumed to be a lamb oven. The waiter came over and Shelly ordered a bottle of wine for the table. I for some reason didn’t want to drink. The morphine was perfect and I didn’t want to mix it with anything, food included.
“You’re not having a drink?” Gina asked. “That’s a first.”
“This isn’t just a liver cleanse, you guys. It’s a lifestyle.”
“Well, I guess you weren’t faking it, because in four years [tranny voice] I have never seen you lose your appetite.”
“It takes a lot for me to lose my appetite,” I agreed.
“Cat-sitting for someone would probably do it,” Sue said, perusing her menu.
“Anyway, there’s no way I’m getting back on that train. I’ve been here for two days and have had two separate medical emergencies. I don’t trust these people, and I’d like to get to Italy as soon as possible. So,” I said, taking in the scenery, “we’re going to have to charter a helicopter to Florence.”
“Leave it to you to get into a fight with Switzerland,” Sue said, putting her arm around me.
The waiter came over with food we hadn’t ordered and started serving us on our plates.
We were all a little confused but started digging in to what seemed to be escargot and some sort of cheese array. Just then, a German homosexual stormed over to our table and told us to get out.
We stared at him in silence, wondering if this was part of the show. Then he stomped his foot and said it again. “Get out of this restaurant. You are not supposed to eat off those plates, you dumb women!” When I looked down at the plates I saw they had a picture of him and were also encrusted with what looked like Swarovski crystals.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you serious?” I asked him through my morphine haze.
“Get out!” he screamed. “Don’t talk out loud!”
“You brought us the food,” Sue told him calmly.
“Um, is that how you talk to women, you fucking lunatic?” Shelly asked.
“Get out!”
Shelly got up and announced, “We’re leaving.” As if it had been our decision. I was confused, and in my drug-fueled haze I was comprehending the events taking place at the same pace as Gina.
“We are leaving, you German asshole!” Shelly yelled at his face.
“What about our bottle of wine?” Gina asked.
“You get out, too!”
I had no idea if something had happened that I didn’t know about. I looked around the restaurant, which was packed, and no one was even looking at our table.
“Come on,” Sue said, helping me up. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I told them. “We didn’t do anything. I’m not even drinking.”
We were basically tossed out of a restaurant in twenty-degree weather with no transportation back to the hotel. I had left my crutches in the restaurant, and when Sue realized it, she wanted to go back and get them.
“Never mind,” I told her. “Crutches are a sign of weakness. Let that asshole realize that he kicked out a handicapped lady.”
“Like he gives a shit,” Sue said. “Listen. I’ll be the first one to admit there have been many occasions in which we deserved to be kicked out of a restaurant, but that was not one of them.”
“We didn’t even get our wine,” Gina chimed in.
“That’s not really the point, Gina,” Sue went on. “How were we supposed to know not to eat off the plates they put the food on? We haven’t even ordered anything. Was that some sort of test?”
“That was so fucked,” Shelly said. “Ow, my elbow is killing me.”
I felt absolutely nothing at that point, because I was so high and the Velcro brace I was wearing was allowing me to put weight on my foot and just swing it around without bending it. The four of us walked home in shock and with a definite feeling of shame and humiliation. Four grown women walking home in the snow.
The next morning we were up and on a helicopter by 9 a.m. “Look what this country did to us,” I said, tapping Shelly’s sling on her arm with my leg brace.
“I got injured because I’m your codependent. I knew you had hurt yourself and I needed to hurt myself, too.” Then Shelly and I kissed on the lips.
“Oh, my god.” Gina moaned. “The two of you are so stupid.” Then Sue and Shelly kissed on the lips as our helicopter took off. This was the happiest moment of the trip. Being airlifted to Florence.
About three weeks later, I came into work and Sue had printed out several reviews of Chez Heini she found on TripAdvisor. The following are some highlights:
“ridiculous” (March 20, 2013)
“distinctly average” (February 15, 2013)
“seriously overrated” (April 12, 2011)
“a very strange place” (February 5, 2011)
Needless to say, I haven’t been on a train since, and unless there’s another Holocaust, I never will be.
CHAPTER 9
TELLURIDE
It is not lost on me that my life has become ridiculous. The very idea that I am able to live and travel the way I do is absurd. Losing all capability of using a remote control, brewing a pot of coffee, or peeling an orange are tasks I remember enjoying. I knew things had really taken a turn in my life when I woke up one morning in my bed and called downstairs to the kitchen to order a nonfat cappuccino from my cleaning lady. The only thing I seem to do well is drive a car, yet I can never get where I am going, because I don’t know how to use my navigation system.
One morning, during a radio interview I was doing on my phone, I walked distractedly out my front door and got into the first car I saw. Ten minutes later, my house manager called me to tell my I had driven away in my landscaper’s Honda Legacy. I looked around the dashboard and in the backseat—where I spotted a large pail holding a pair of hedge trimmers and a square of sod. After hearing this story, one of my girlfriends suggested I see a neurologist. Another friend of mine reassured her that were I to take the day off to see any doctor, there were many others I needed to see before seeing a neurologist, first and foremost being a psychologist.
While vacationing on Shelter Island one weekend, I needed to shave my legs and decided the most practical place to purchase a women’s razor would be at the local hardware store. When I received the look from the seventy-year-old man behind the counter as he tried to ascertain whether or not I was serious (a look I encounter multiple times a day), I had to think fast and invent a believable mix-up, and I left there with a handsaw.
What I find even more alarming is how easily the human condition can grow accustomed to such luxuries as having three assistants, having an entire staff at home who do absolutely everything for you, and then becoming highly irritable when the private plane you’re flying on doesn’t have Wi-Fi, or the fact that your gardener has only one arm and you pay him full price. I should be happy to have a gardener in the first place. (For the record, I don’t have a problem paying my gardener the same price as someone who has two arms, but I am unclear as to why he refuses to let me buy him another one. Like soccer, gardening seems to be a vocation that would exponentially improve when one is supplied with the two limbs required to be good at it.)
During our Christmas break, everyone who works on my show gets two weeks off. This particular year, I would spend the first week in Whistler, British Columbia, skiing with my family, and then fly to upstate New York the following week to be taken by a lover.
While eavesdropping on a conversation I was having with my assistant Eva about our upcoming break, my writer Brad heard us going over flying options for the dogs.
“Find out if the dogs have to be quarantined in Canada, because if they do, I’d rather just have them fly to New York and meet me there.” Then I heard Brad goose-step over to Eva’s office—a sound I can identify a football field away.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he said, planting his two redheaded duck feet in front of Eva’s desk. Brad’s jealousy over Chunk is astonishingly transparent. I know for a fact that he has spent time during his commute home from work thinking of what it would be like to be Chunk. That’s fine once or twice, but any adult who consistently thinks of what it would be like to be someone else’s dog is really quite the loser.
Brad and me the previous Christmas in Telluride… The first week was friends, the second week was family.
“Why shouldn’t Chunk fly to New York? He is happier when he’s with me and I’m happier when I’m with him. And, by the way, I’m flying commercial to Whistler, then to New York, and Chunk is flying private to New York and then taking Uber to meet me upstate. I would think you of all people would respect the idea that I’m being somewhat responsible with my finances.”
“How is that responsible?”
“Only one of us is flying privately.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Hold on a second,” he said, taking his glasses off. “Are you telling me that Chunk is flying alone on a private plane from LA to NY, and there are going to be no other passengers?”
“No, you idiot. Jacks will be flying with him.”
Brad started violently scratching his arms. “So, two dogs on a private fucking airplane?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I told him, eyeing the rosacea on his forearm. “We’re still running the numbers.”
The color of Brad’s face went from light blue to white with dark blue veins, to a pale pink, and then to a Swedish fish red. He slammed his right hand on the table but deliberately placed it on his hip in an effort to control his apoplexy. His eyes rolled back, and globules of saliva gathered at the corners of his mouth. He took a long inhale through his nose in yet another effort to maintain his composure. By that point he reminded me of a retarded walrus.
“Please pull yourself together, Brad,” I told him. He took a long inhale through his nose in yet another effort to maintain his composure.
“Can you imagine, Chelsea, training your whole life to fly—hours and hours of training—and then you finally get your first flight assignment, and you get onboard—only to find out that your two passengers are a boxer and a half German shepherd?”
“First of all, Brad, I would never let Chunk fly with a first-time pilot. The poor dog is a nervous wreck. He hasn’t taken a shadoobie in front of me in over two years.”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he asked.
“Because he’s obviously scared I’m going to leave while him while he’s mid-shadoobie. Why do I need to spell everything out for you? You’re supposed to be a writer.”
“Chelsea, I don’t really see how this has anything to do with me, and your psychopathy is way off. You’re treating this dog like he has polio.”
“Tread very carefully, Bradley. Studies are showing that polio is making a comeback. And for that matter, so is Lionel Richie.”
The truth of the matter is—I believe Chunk is my mother reincarnated. My mother would have loved to go on the trips I am now able to take my family on, and she would have loved all the perks that go with becoming successful. This setup would have been perfect for her. Reincarnating as a half-German, half-Asian dog who could go with me everywhere but not have to speak to a soul would be her version of paradise.
“Brad, would you leave your own mother behind if you could afford to bring her on a family vacation with the very family she created?”
“Okay,” he said, waving his hand around. “The whole idea that Chunk is your mother is a bunch of hocus pocus. Don’t you think that’s a little insulting to your mother? That she is now a dog?”
“Let me ask you this, Bradley. What if this is the trip that sends Chunk over the rails and he stops going to the bathroom altogether, and then dies from being so backed up? How would that make you feel?”
“That would be very sad for both of you,” Brad agreed begrudgingly.
“Do you know that when I stay home in Los Angeles on the weekends, he will go the entire weekend without going number two? By the time Oscar [the dog walker and landscaper] arrives on Monday morning, he comes back with the reportage that Chunk took four dumps on his morning walk through the neighborhood.”
“You hate the word dump,” Brad reminded me.
I do hate the word dump, especially when referencing feces. Oscar apparently thinks that’s a perfect word to throw around his employer. He’s very fat, very Mexican, and has an unusually large cranium—so it doesn’t really matter what he says, because he knows as long as he maintains his body weight and head shape, it would be impossible for me to ever fire him.
“Isn’t Oscar your one-armed landscaper?” Brad asked.
“Yes, but he loves the dogs and asked if he could start walking them for extra cash. I wasn’t about to say no to a guy with one arm.”
“So, he walks two dogs with one arm?”
“I hadn’t really thought about that. Perhaps he straps one of the leashes around his waist. Again, not my problem.”
“Another amazing executive decision.”
“Brad, I’m not going to fly my dogs to another country just to have them quarantined. After Canada, I’m heading to upstate New York for a week, and it’s just not right for me to leave my dogs for that long. They have lives, too, and for me to jet-set in and out of their worlds with no warning is undignified. If I left them in LA, I would essentially be holding them hostage on two of the biggest holidays of the year: Christmas and New Year’s.”
“As if they know what holiday it is.”
“Of course they know what holiday it is. They’re not fish!”
“You can fly them on a doggy airline!” he wailed. “You do realize with a little research that you wouldn’t even have to do it yourself? You could hire someone to escort Chunk across country on a bus or a even a train?”
“A train,” I guffawed. “That’s rich. As if I would put a Jewish dog on a train. He’d go berserk.”
“Chunk has lived a pretty charmed life since you quote unquote rescued him. I think he could handle a train ride, especially since the Holocaust ended about sixty years ago.”
“Then why do you bring it up at nearly every morning meeting?” I begged to know.
“Because as a Jew,” he replied, “I think it’s important to remind other non-Jews that what our people went through was not only horrific but heroic. Only the blacks can really understand our journey.”
Cocking my head to the side and collapsing my chin in the same way one would when one is getting ready to vomit is the way I most often respond to anything Brad says.
“You don’t think Jewish people still get discriminated against, Chelsea? I’ve got news for you. You’re wrong. Even redheads get discriminated against. I know that’s hard to believe since you live in your little bubble, but things are happening, Chelsea. Believe you me: things happen every day that make me shake my head.”
“Brad, please shut the fuck up. You’re so annoying when you talk like that. I’d like to see you talk to a black person about discrimination and then get back to me. You’re one of the most translucent males I’ve ever come across, and you have somehow managed to be on two television shows and have a hot wife. Clearly, things are going well for you in the affirmative action department.”
“Chelsea, do you have any idea how unreasonable this is?”
“Listen to me, you little whiny Jew… I am growing quite tired of having to defend my parenting skills to everyone in my life. What about the fact that I am responsible enough to not have a baby? Why does no one give me any praise for that?”
“You did have a baby!” he screeched. “What about Gary?”
“Really, Brad? That’s a low blow. Even for you.”
I’m not proud of my decision to acquire my dog Gary, but I stand behind the failure like I stand by the failure of the NBC sitcom based on my life.
Gary is my biggest regret, and the story goes like this: I woke up one day on the wrong side of my newly acquired twin waterbed and decided it was time to add to my brood. If I was never going to house a baby, at least I could give back to society by rescuing a top-bred canine.
My affinity for Bernese mountain dogs hails from my affinity for anything oversized, and Bernese in particular—in my estimation—are the closest thing to having an actual silverback gorilla.
One of our production assistants at work, Blair, grew up on a farm—and I decided that that meant she specialized in animals—so I appointed her chief executive in charge of finding me a Bernese mountain dog to rescue. Under no uncertain circumstances did I want anything but a rescue dog. PETA was already on my ass for saying one night on my show that I would eat a cat.
After Blair and my assistant Karen searched high and low for hours, they revealed to me there was not a single Bernese mountain dog anywhere to rescue. Karen was promoted from an internship on the show. She is not a quitter.
“There’s got to be some somewhere,” I announced, looking at the world globe in my office.
“There are three breeders in Southern California who have babies available that we can get by the morning, but we haven’t found any rescues. It’s a very high-end breed, and not many people give them away.”
“That won’t do,” I told them. “It has to be a rescue.”
“Okay,” Blair told me. “We’ll keep looking.”
“Okay,” I told her, giving up. “Just pick up one of the ones for sale.”
Gary was a little bear.
Gary on his first night at home.
I loved him very much but in the end… not enough. Chunk and Jacks did not take to having a new brother. At first, I was disappointed in their inability to welcome a baby brother, but after a few weeks, Lesbian Shelly and I both realized that Chunk and Jacks had good instincts: Gary was an idiot.
The first night he came home he urinated everywhere: on me, on Shelly, on the other dogs, and on my shoes. I asked Blair when he would stop doing this and she told me, “When he becomes potty-trained.”
“When does that happen?” I asked, slightly annoyed that this hadn’t been taken care of on the car ride home.
“When… you potty-train him?”
“Who?”
“Anyone?” Blair was being dodgy, and I didn’t have to be a moron to sense that she was intimating that I would somehow be involved in the potty training. I had rescued Chunk when he was four—so urinating indoors wasn’t an issue, and dog or human potty training was definitely not a hobby I was looking to take up.
I was staunchly opposed to the notion of crate training, and against Shelly’s advice, I insisted that Gary sleep with Chunk and me on his first night at home. I left the two doors to my balcony open with pee pads outside for when Gary needed to urinate. When I woke up at 3 a.m. the drapes in my bedroom were gone, my duvet was half eaten, and there was vomit, urine, and dog shit all over the floor. Chunk was nowhere to be found, and I panicked that Gary may have also eaten him. I almost called the police, but instead called Shelly on her cell phone downstairs and told her to come upstairs with a Hazmat suit.
“How in the hell did you sleep through this?” Shelly asked moments later, looking around groggily.
“Do you see Chunk anywhere?” I asked her. She opened the closet door and found Chunk hiding in a corner. The fact that Chunk was able to open and shut a closet door was just another confirmation that I was dealing with my mother.
Meanwhile, Gary was rolling around in his own feces like a one-eyed gambler. “What are we going to do?” I asked Shelly.
“I don’t know. I’m putting him in his crate.”
“Do we have any medical slippers?” I asked, trying to figure out how I was going to navigate my way through the room without stepping in shit. I carefully got out of my bed and onto Shelly’s shoulders to descend down the stairs back to Shelly’s room, where I spent the rest of the night.
When our cleaning lady, Mabel, arrived the next morning, I apologized to her and explained how her day was going to play out. “Grande accidente upstairsee. Pero, no bueno. Grande oopsie whoopsie,” I explained.
“Oh, Gary,” Mabel squealed. That was one of the incentives of naming him Gary—hearing Mabel say it over and over throughout the day. She pronounced it with a wide Mexican “a” and sounded like a special Olympian every time she said his name. “G-A-A-A-R-Y, you are such a good boy, G-A-A-A-R-Y.”
Gary had more energy than a hamster after an eight ball and chewed up anything he could get his mouth around. He ran through the house, knocking anything and everything over, and he was somehow able to jump on top of the kitchen counter from eight feet away.
He was seven weeks old when they brought him home and he weighed ten pounds. The next day he was twelve pounds, and a week later he was twenty. His feet were too big for his body, so not only did he knock everything over, he constantly ran into walls and fell down the stairs. The rate he was growing combined with the lack of control he had of his own body was a recipe for disaster. He once ran down the hill in my backyard so fast his entire body flipped through the air when he tried to stop himself and he ended up doing a front handspring right into the pool. I was on my way to a friend’s movie premiere and had to jump in fully clothed to rescue him.
Needless to say, he got to safety long before I did, and by the time Shelly got home from work, I was sitting on the steps of the pool in a Dolce and Gabbana dress and heels, soaking wet, with mascara running down my face. I could barely take care of myself, and now I had somehow convinced myself a mountain dog would be a great addition to the family.
Jacks was nicer to Gary than Chunk, but after letting Gary gnaw on his face for three days straight we had to get Jacks a cone for his head, because he looked like he was decomposing. Gary was a nuisance with incredibly sharp teeth.
“Do you think Gary is stupid?” I asked Shelly one day over a Chinese chicken salad.
She breathed deeply. “I will say… that I do not think he is smart.”
Shelly repeatedly reminded me over the first few months that Gary was a puppy and we needed to remember that. She also said it would be sad for us as professional adults to not be able to handle a third dog. “We’ll look like failures,” she told me, then asked, “Who would we give him to?”
“Molly?”
“Molly would be good.”
“But we have to wait at least six months, Chelsea. He is a puppy. It can take dogs up to a year to calm down.”
Six months, five area rugs, two jackets, and thirteen pairs of shoes later, Shelly and I took all three dogs to the doggy park in our last attempt at assimilation. We had been sending Gary to doggy kindergarten every day, where they tried to exhaust his energy by strapping a weighted belt onto him and putting him on a treadmill.
On our way to the dog park, we stopped at a Starbucks for coffee and left the dogs in Shelly’s car with the two back windows halfway down. Gary was sitting in the front seat.
When we returned, Gary was gone. Chunk and Jacks were sitting in the backseat looking guilty and relieved.
“Oh my god!” I screamed. “Where the fuck is Gary?”
“Jesus Christ! The doors were locked!”
“Well, he didn’t unlock the door,” I told her. “He’s not Edward Scissorhands.”
“Chunk may have.”
“Don’t blame this on Chunk!” I snapped at her.
“You go that way and I’ll go this way!” she barked back.
We scrambled in opposite directions around the parking lot until we heard a loud crash and looked to see a minor two-car collision. Gary was standing to the right of both cars with his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging, looking as clueless as ever. At this juncture, he had grown to be one hundred pounds, yet he had managed to slip his body out of a window that was opened ten inches.
When Shelly and I returned home that night, we filled two large glasses with vodka and agreed that Gary was tearing us apart. It would have to be couple’s therapy or an outside adoption for Gary.
My cousin Molly got Gary the very next day, and my dog walker, Oscar, cried the day Gary left. “I really love that crazy dog,” he told me. So a week later, when Molly returned Gary, citing similar damage to her house, I asked Oscar if he would take him.
“I don’t have a yard for him to run in,” he told me.
“I’ll buy you a house with one.”
“What about when I’m here walking the other two dogs?” he asked.
“We’ll send him to doggy day care.”
“Where will the house be?”
“Wherever you want. I don’t care. Please, Oscar. I’m begging you.”
And that was the end of Gary living at our house.
Brad knows how painful the experience of Gary and my failure with him was and is to me. I thought him evil for reminding me of such a horrendous time. One believes one can share stories with friends and loved ones as confidants. It is disappointing when these so-called confidants use these stories against you.
“You’re a real asshole, Brad, you know that? I tried to love Gary, but something was wrong with him. He’s with someone who loves him now. Isn’t that the most important thing?”
“I believe that to be true. But money and fame have infantilized you. You can’t even take care of a dog.”
“Gary was ‘special needs,’ Brad. He is safer now in his new home. Had he stayed with me, I would have ended up accidentally barbecuing him.”
“That’s my point.”
“Technically, I still pay for Gary’s education and all his expenses, so there’s that.”
“Great, so you’re his benefactor.”
“That’s a lot more than I can say for you. You don’t even have a dog.”
“You’re getting a little out of touch with reality, and I fear you are in danger of losing not only your mind but your fan base. And on top of that, the poor dog has to run around being called Gary for the rest of his life? Was that really necessary?”
“That may be true, Brad. But your baby will most likely grow up and not only be a latchkey albino but also resent the fact that you only vacation without him. At least I have the decency to take Chunk with me.”
“We’re getting off topic, Chelsea. Chunk has traveled the world. It might do him some good to take a rest.”
“He’s traveled the country,” I corrected him.
“Do I need to remind you what happened last year during this same winter holiday in Telluride?”
The main problem with working on a television show for so many years is that the writers become like your family. Whether you like them or not, you have to hang out with them, and a familiarity develops in which everyone knows everything about each other and nothing is off the table, because like in any family it’s hard to get fired.
Chunk’s main weakness is that he’s confused. He’s half Asian and half German, so he doesn’t know if he’s a Nazi or if he just wants some dim sum. He’s skittish, he’s shy, and he’s my lover. If I could have sex with him, I wouldn’t, because I find it unsettling when I see his penis. This unfortunately happens every time he gets in a car or on a plane, because he loves to travel—even if it’s for just a couple of yards.
He has jumped out of the windows of my dog walker’s car into an intersection upon the car turning the corner to my office building, jumped off the second-floor balcony of my house upon seeing me below at the pool, has waited behind the gate of my driveway for days in a row when I’ve been on vacation, and sleeps next to the gate every night when I’m not at home. So the idea that Chunk disappears because he is running away from me is not something I’m willing to accept.
I know this because I’ve watched the surveillance videos in order to find footage to use on my show of my book agent, Michael Broussard, throwing himself and his dog over the gate. To be clear, Michael threw his dog over the gate to a taxi driver waiting for him on the other side. When I asked Michael what kind of taxi driver is trained in catching dogs, he deflected that question and instead regaled me with the difficulty he himself encountered climbing over my gate. “Chelsea, I had taken an Ambien, okay? One of the full, white, rectangular ones. You try taking a brick of Ambien and climbing over a fucking gate.”
Even that time, after the gate opened, Chunk did not leave the property. He stayed put, and I respect him for that. I do not respect him for pulling the bullshit he did in Telluride.
“I have never lost my dog, Brad. Chunk has transgressed, and I have always forgiven him. If you’re bringing up Telluride last Christmas, I would like to go on record and say that my family left for skiing that day and Chunk most likely followed the car because he thought I was in it. I had no idea he was gone until two hours later.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about! I would know if my son was gone.”
“Not if you were watching porn.”
“Were you watching porn?”
“No. I was babysitting my nephew, Jake.”
“Really, Chelsea? Isn’t Jake sixteen?”
“Well, I don’t know, but he needs me more than ever. He’s got pubic hair now.”
That was a lie; Jake did have pubic hair, but I was not babysitting him. Once I realized Chunk wasn’t in the house, Jake and I walked through the neighborhood and yelled Chunk’s name repeatedly.
During that time, three separate dogs appeared out of the woods and nearby driveways to answer my call, although none of them belonged to me. I followed one of the dogs back to the house next door and was walking up the driveway when I heard from within the house, “Chelsea, Chelsea,” and then clapping, “Chelsea! Come on in.”
I thought it rather rude that this man was beckoning me over to his house instead of walking outside like a gentleman and saying hello, but because I am so stupid, I walked through the open front door, exhausted.
“Hello, everyone,” I announced. “I am Chelsea Handler, and I’m looking for my dog Chunk. I’m not here to hang out. I need to find my dog and I’m happy to take pictures or sign any memorabilia you have, but this is not a social call or a book signing.”
A man appeared in the front hallway of the house and looked at Jake and me standing next to his dog.
“Oh, thank you so much,” he said in an English accent.
“No problem,” I said. “I’m actually looking for my dog. You haven’t seen him, have you? He’s half chow and half German shepherd. His name is Chunk.”
“Oh, Chunk. What a cute name. I’m sure he hasn’t gone very far. Chelsea always runs around the neighborhood and plays with the other dogs.”
I looked at my nephew Jake who was biting the inside of his cheek and then down at the midsized terrier who was kneeling beside me, and realized I wasn’t the only Chelsea in Telluride.
“You’re a real piece of work,” Jake told me on our way out. “Memorabilia?”
Chunk ended up being at the local animal shelter, and I would like to thank them again for giving my dog shelter after he was found roaming on a freeway.
I have learned over time to blame Chunk’s disappearances on his respect for our relationship. He knows it is shameful to empty his bowels while hunched on his hind legs, scrambling around in a circle in order to avoid eye contact with me—a move I have come to refer to as the “helicopter.” I believe he snuck outside to relieve himself when the shuttle showed up to take the rest of the family skiing. I stayed home to write, and as per usual had done absolutely nothing but surf websites looking for dolphin rape videos until my nephew alerted me of Chunk’s absence.
On a completely separate note: my mother loved the snow and disappeared all the time.
Chunk in Telluride after he was returned to me.
CHAPTER 10
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
I hooked up with a man I literally passed on the street when I was in London for the Summer Olympics.
I had been in Montreal for a comedy festival with a bunch of friends when I casually mentioned the Summer Olympics were only a six-hour plane ride away. Dave Grohl was guest-hosting my show the next week, so there was no reason I had to go back to LA. Everyone at dinner stopped what they were doing, and Sue put her hand on my hand.
“Chelsea, that’s a long flight to a foreign city that is going to be filled with tourists because of the Olympics. Are you sure you’re thinking this through?”
“Sue, is there a reason you’re talking to me like I’m an eight-year-old?” I asked her.
“Yes, Chelsea. There is. Because you act like an eight-year-old. When you travel alone, disaster ensues. You can barely use your phone or a computer to gather information and if you get into a jam alone, which you will, there’s a chance you could die.”
I wasn’t even serious about going to the Olympics, but after that conversation, I left on the next flight to London.
I was staying with my homosexual friends Kevin and Brian, who had several other houseguests visiting for the Olympics, all over the age of seventy. It was more ridiculous than I could have ever imagined.
A picture I am proud to have captured of Brian and Kevin in Mykonos.
We all went to a pub for dinner on the first night I arrived and the main topics of conversation were hip replacements, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s. When we were all home and ready for bed at 9 p.m., I realized I was staying at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel—and needed to get some air.
I was walking through their neighborhood (Bloomsbury) and locked eyes with a man—a big one. I passed him, stopped, and then turned around. He had stopped and turned around, too, so we stood there on the street staring at each other.
I took a few steps toward him, and my mouth got away from me before I could figure out anything better than “What’s up?”
“You.”
“Would you like to buy me a drink?” I asked.
“I would.”
He didn’t buy me a drink. We walked two blocks back to his place and he made me a drink. Then we had the most outrageously sexy sex I have ever had. I could never do this incident justice by trying to paint a picture, so I won’t, because (1) this isn’t Fifty Shades of Grey, and (2) I hated that book.
We had sex, danced, had more sex, and danced some more until the sun came up. Somehow, in between the time I met him and got to his place I had learned how to dance. My body was moving in ways it had never moved before, and I—Chelsea Joy Lately—had rhythm. It was the strangest night of my life, and the most intriguing part was that we barely spoke a word to each other.
He only really spoke while we were having sex, which I love. He had new material all the time—a nice respite from my last relationship with a man who would use one phrase over and over during sex. “What you’re doing feels so good.” No shit, Sherlock. Obviously it feels good. I’m the one with your erection in my mouth. I appreciate a little more originality under the sheets, and my Englishman had it. It was the kind of sex that you almost don’t have to participate in, the kind of sex that just happens to you.
This continued for a week straight. I would get back to Kevin and Brian’s house for dinner after whatever Olympic event I went to that day, and then I would very seductively sneak out of the house after everyone went to bed. Why a thirty-seven-year-old adult was sneaking out of a house filled with people who weren’t even related to her made no sense at all.
I went to London for what was supposed to be three days, but turned into eight. I spent most of the Olympics watching tennis, and when Serena Williams won the gold medal, I decided that my time there was over and that I would leave the next day. Sidenote: I believe Serena Williams is a man.
I went over to my London lover’s house for the last night, and at six the next morning, I told him I would be going back to Los Angeles later. “It was a pleasure making your acquaintance,” I said, as I got my things together. Later, as I was walking out, I asked, “By the way, what is your name?”
“Benjamin.”
“I’m Chelsea. I left my number in your bathroom if you ever come to Los Angeles.” And then I walked out the door and seductively sauntered up the street to Kevin and Brian’s. My whole body was tingling and I felt like a sexual dynamo. Kevin was in the kitchen when I came in the front door.
“Morning, Chels!” he said, handing me a cup of coffee. “For the record, you don’t have to sneak in and out of our house to go have sex with people. You’re an adult.”
“That’s good to know for my next visit,” I replied. I collected my things and ran to the car that took me to Heathrow, where I got my ass on a plane and reminisced about my most recent affair the entire eleven hours back. Going to London on the spur of moment to see the Olympics had turned out to be a jackpot.
I knew nothing about Benjamin or what he did for a living or who he was, and I didn’t want to. It was too sexy of an affair to ruin by talking, and I had a smile on my face the entire plane ride home. I felt like I had just walked out of a James Bond movie. I sat on the plane like Diane Lane sat on that train in Unfaithful and was basically trying to calm my vagina down the entire flight.
Benjamin and I texted a few times after my trip, but our communication fizzled out after a week or two. Four months later my phone rang, and it was him asking me if he could take me skiing for the weekend.
This was mostly surprising, because Benjamin was half black.
“You ski?” I asked him. “Since when?”
“Since I was a little kid, you racist,” he said in his cute British accent.
“If I was racist, I’d be whispering, no?”
“Would you be inclined to come on a ski holiday for the weekend with me or are you trying to say no?”
“Are you any good?” I asked him flirtatiously.
“I’m pretty good,” he told me. “Are you any good?”
“Well, I tore my ACL last year in Switzerland, so I would say yes, I’m pretty good.”
“That explains why one of your legs wasn’t as flexible as the other when I saw you last.”
I was sitting at my desk in my office and nearly fell out of my chair. “That’s a pretty sexy thing to say to me in the middle of the day. I don’t know if you know this but I have a very serious job.”
“It’s not the middle of the day here,” he replied. “My apologies.”
“I suppose I could go skiing with you.”
“Great. A mate of mine has a place in Yellowstone Club in Montana.”
“What state is that in?” I asked him.
“Montana.”
“Isn’t Yellowstone in Wyoming?”
“Yellowstone National Park is, but this is a private ski club in Montana.”
“Ahh… yes. I know the place.”
“It doesn’t sound like you do.”
“Are your friends going to be there, and are they annoying?” I asked him.
“Are you?” he asked me back.
“Am I going to be there?”
“No, I’m asking you if you are annoying,” he said.
“Yes,” I told him. “I’ll be there.”
“Brilliant. I’d like to take you skiing.”
“Perfect,” I said, fondly recalling Ted Turner’s autobiography profiling Montana, bison, and womanizing. “I’ll join you.” I like when a man gives me a run for my money and talks to me like I’m a prostitute.
We had picked up right where we left off in London.
I got a text from Benjamin telling me that he would be meeting me at the Burbank airport, where he had chartered a plane for the flight to Montana. This was a surprise, but I was obviously not turned off by the notion. The two of us on a plane alone together meant there would be plane penetration. I hadn’t had plane sex in a while, and this was the kind of guy you wanted to do that with. In the one week I had slept with him, he had thrown me and my body all over the place. I love that kind of shit.
His behavior during takeoff was another matter. I have some sympathy for women who are scared to fly—I do not have any for men.
When a black man gets scared and there are no police around, you know things are going south. I do not have the capacity to deal with a man who is scared—of anything. When Benjamin prayed out loud before takeoff with his eyes shut, I thought he was joking. He scolded me for making a joke about something that could potentially kill us—meaning the flight. Had I known this was the reason we were flying privately, I would have chartered my own fucking plane and met him wherever the hell we were going.
“Dying on a plane would be a great way to go,” I told him. “Don’t you think?”
“That’s a very macabre thing to say.”
“I’m serious. It would be instant and we probably wouldn’t suffer very long, if at all.”
“Stop it. God forbid any such thing should happen.”
“How is it possible that you are scared of planes? Do you not fly very often?”
“Yes, I do. I get scared every time.”
“Oh… my god.”
I took my seat belt off and went over and sat on him. I was trying to be funny and make light of what I considered to be a silly situation, but you would have thought I murdered a baby. “Are you a little scaredy cat? A little kitty cat that’s scared like a little baby boy?” I said, tickling him. I was hysterically laughing, which always makes me laugh even harder, but he was not laughing at all—which made me laugh harder, until he yelled at me to get back in my seat and buckle up. I actually thought he might hit me.
“So, I guess we won’t be having sex on the plane?” I asked him, after I wiped the tears from my cheeks. He didn’t think that was funny either.
How was he going to be able to ski if he was scared to fly? I wondered. Talk about a buzzkill—and I hadn’t even had a drink yet.
“If you’re so scared to fly, why don’t you take a Xanax or something? I have a Vicodin. Do you want one?”
“I don’t take recreational pills.”
“Well, I’m going to take one then.” I opened my purse, grabbed a Vicodin, split it in half, and popped both halves into my mouth.
“What is the point of that?” he asked.
“Because if you break it in half, it hits you faster.”
“What is the point of taking a Vicodin?”
“Because I have to watch you fly.” We hadn’t known each other long enough to have a fight, and the first one was over me buckling my seat belt and a Vicodin.
The rest of the flight was awkward, to say the least. He relaxed a little once we were up in the air, but the same anxiety resurfaced when we landed with him praying out loud and then gripping the armrests with his eyes squeezed shut. It was an embarrassment.
The house we were staying in was situated in the mountains and allowed you to ski in and ski out of Yellowstone Club—a private ski resort that required no lift tickets. When we arrived at the house, the property manager greeted us and let us know that a woman named Martha would be there shortly to prepare our dinner, then showed us to the master suite downstairs. The kitchen was on the main floor, so I immediately went back upstairs to pour myself a drink. When I returned downstairs, my London lover who was scared to fly… was meditating.
Martha arrived and was singing as she prepared our food upstairs. She sounded overweight, so I went up to check out her body. I was right; she was overweight, but not in the way that made me feel felt I wanted to tackle her. When I came back downstairs, Benjamin was still meditating, so I called Lesbian Shelly in LA and asked her to let me FaceTime with Chunk.
“I guess that means things aren’t going so well.”
“Well, he’s scared to fly.”
“What do you mean, he’s scared to fly?”
“He’s scared to take off and land,” I whispered. “Like fists-closed-praying scared to fly.”
“Oh, my god.”
“And now guess what he’s doing?
“Crying?”
“Meditating.”
“Oh, no.” Shelly was laughing for what became an irritating amount of time. “Can I please talk to Chunk?” I asked her.
As I was midway through talking to Chunk in the annoying baby-talk voice I use with him, Ben walked in the room with a bottle of wine and sat down. Chunk was licking the screen on Shelly’s iPad, and I was kissing my phone. I said good-bye to Chunk and explained to Benjamin that after I saw him meditating, I decided to call my dog.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” he asked me.
Wine is completely wasted on me. It makes me sleepy and gives me a headache, but at that point either option was more palatable than what was happening.
“I think it’s rather cute that you were on the phone with your dog.”
I wanted to tell him that I thought it was rather cute that he meditated, but I would have been lying.
I was trying my hardest to get the negative thoughts out of my mind while he penetrated me, but it just wasn’t the same as when we were in London. I could deal with the meditation, but I knew we wouldn’t be able to get past the flying issue. I was very concerned about what kind of skier he would be, and I knew I would be turned off even further if he wasn’t better than me. I took a Xanax and went to bed.
The next morning he tried to wake me up at seven.
“I can’t get up now,” I told him. “I need to sleep more. You go ahead, and I’ll call you when I’m up and we can meet on the mountain.”
I don’t like to be woken in general, and I certainly don’t like to be woken up at 7 a.m. This is why I will never have a baby or borrow anyone else’s. Sleep is my friend and is the only place in this world where I don’t get into fights with other people.
I woke up around ten and grabbed an energy drink out of the fridge upstairs. Then I came back downstairs and put all my ski gear on. I felt quite independent getting my ski socks, long underwear, ski pants, and boots on all by myself. Usually I require some help in this department. I called Ben, who gave me instructions to take a hard right out of the house until I came to a run called Rocky Mountain Fever, then take that to the base of the mountain. Once there I would take the main chairlift up, and he’d meet me at the top of Rocky Mountain Fever.
“Do I just grab a lift ticket at the bottom?” I asked him.
“No, this is a private club. There are no lift tickets.”
“Right. Okay, I’ll see you in a little bit.”
I looked outside to see where the path was to get down from the house to the mountain and didn’t see any. No worries, I thought. I tossed my skis down the side of the hill, positioned my poles so that they were parallel to the snow, and slid my ass down the hill. Once at the bottom, I put on the knee brace that was required after my knee surgery, clicked on my skis, and I was off.
I’m pretty amazing, I told myself as I sashayed down the mountain. It was very unlike me to be this independent. Not only was I unafraid of skiing without a partner, I had no anxiety about being able to navigate my way around the mountain in order to meet up with Ben. I had my phone, my fearlessness, and two single Fritos I had stashed in my jacket pocket in case of an emergency.
As I passed others who were skiing together, I felt sorry for them for being so dependent on each other.
Once I was able to eye the base of the mountain and the main chairlift, I felt elated. I skied right down and made a sharp left to cut into the singles line. Single, sexy, skiing, and headed south, I thought. I saw the run at the bottom. Here we go. I’m doing it and living it. You go, girl.
When I had advanced far enough in line to actually board the lift, I shimmied up to a couple and asked if I could share their chair.
“Lift ticket?” the ski lift operator asked me when we got to the front of the line.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Lift ticket!” he yelled over the noise of the machinery.
“I don’t have a lift ticket. I’ve been skiing here for two days, and no one has asked me for a lift ticket.” That was a lie.
“I’m staying at.…” I had no idea whose house I was staying at. “His house is up there.” I motioned uphill. “He’s a member, and I’m his guest.” The couple I was hoping to tag along with had already moved onto the chairlift and and left me behind. People behind me in line were shuffling past me, realizing long before I did that my argument was futile, and without a lift ticket I was not getting up the mountain. In an effort to use my fame as a form of expression, I took off my safety helmet.
At this juncture, it dawned on me that I was humiliating myself. I dejectedly shuffled my skis in the opposite direction of the lift, through the skiers who were all in line to get on the lift (who all had lift tickets). This involved what is essentially referred to as cross-country skiing, something I loathe. Once I got to the back of the line, it was a pretty clear shot to the main lodge in sight. Someone there would surely be able to help someone like me.
Trying to maintain the day’s spirit of self-confidence and self-reliance, I reminded myself that I was a grown woman who could handle this.
I took my skis off and lumbered through the front door. “Hi,” I said to the woman at the front desk. “What’s the deal?”
“Hi there,” she responded cheerfully. “How can I help you?”
“Well, I’m staying at a house in Yellowstone Club and I was told we didn’t need any lift tickets here to ski. Is that correct?”
“I don’t really know. You’re in Big Sky.”
“What is that?”
“Big Sky, Montana.”
“Is that in Montana?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed, excited we were finally agreeing on something.
“And where is Yellowstone Club?”
“That’s a private ski club that is next door to Big Sky. I’m pretty sure it’s that way,” she said and pointed to her left.
I followed her hand and looked out the window, seeing nothing but skiers and snow. “Do you have any idea if I can ski over there?”
“Yes, I’m sure you can.”
“Do you know how I can do that?” I asked her very slowly.
The very nice lady found another very nice lady who gave me instructions on how to get back to Yellowstone Club.
“You can purchase an all-day pass or a one-lift pass. All you really need is a lift pass because at the top of this lift, you will need to bear left on Rocky Mountain Fever. It will take you through the woods and there will be several runs to your left, but don’t take them.”
I checked in my pockets and found two hundred-dollar bills. Another reason to pat myself on the back. I separated the bills from the Fritos and thought about taking a bite of one, and then thought better of it. Who knew where the day would take me, and I didn’t want to end up like that guy who had to eat his own arm.
I bought the lift pass, thanked the two women profusely and then returned to the chairlift that had rejected me earlier.
“Hello again,” I said to the chair operator from earlier, exposing my day pass. “Guess who’s got a lift ticket?”
“You just have a one-lift pass,” he told me, eyeing my newly applied sticker.
“That’s because I’m going back to Yellowstone Club. That’s where I thought I was actually.” I didn’t know why this guy was being such a dick, since people at ski resorts are usually quite the opposite, but I somehow manage to always bring out the worst in people.
Once on the lift—alone—I called my half-black lover on his phone to ask for instructions on what my next move should be.
“I’m in Montana,” I told him.
“Right. What’s the problem?”
“Sorry. I mean, I’m in Blue Sky, Montana—ski resort. I’m not in Yellowstone Club.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I did what you told me to do and skied right out of the house and down the mountain.”
“You were supposed to cross over the mountain and go all the way to your right.”
“Well, I don’t think I did that.”
“Okay, well, can you find a run called Goldfinger?”
“They told me to take Rocky Mountain Fever. I’m just going to follow their directions.”
“Why don’t I just have someone come and get you?”
“No, no, no, it’s not a big deal. I’ll just ski over to you,” I told him. “They gave me directions. If I get lost, I’ll call you.”
It was important for me to do this on my own. My reliance on other people was driving me to drink… more… and I desperately craved being self-sufficient. Plus, there was no reason Benjamin needed to know what kind of basket case he was really dealing with. After what happened on the plane, I had the upper hand and I wanted to keep it that way.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do this run a few more times until I hear from you.”
“Cheers,” I said, and hung up.
I followed the woman’s instructions precisely and stayed left, but somehow when I skied down the mountain, I ended up at the exact same chairlift I had just come from.
I went back to reboard the same chair lift, only to be told by the same asshole that I had purchased a one-way lift ticket and not a day pass. Once again, I found myself clumsily side-stepping past the people behind me in order for me to traverse back to the original lodge and buy a fucking day pass.
Then I called Benjamin, who I was now reduced to calling Ben, to inform him that things were becoming more complicated than I had expected. I told him it would be easier for me to just ski at Big Sky for the day, as I had now purchased a day pass. He told me that was ridiculous and that he was coming to get me.
This new lover of mine was being very helpful. I found it sweet, but I was also happy that I was having such a good time all by myself and not panicking at the idea that I was definitely lost and had no idea where I was going. I tried to recall if I had taken an ecstasy tablet by mistake.
“No, it’s fine,” I told him. “I’ll figure it out.”
“This isn’t a caper movie, Chelsea.”
I ignored this comment because it made no sense at all. “Let me just meet you,” I insisted.
I felt we had already spoken too many times that day for two people who barely knew each other, and I hung up the phone.
I got a map when I purchased my second lift ticket of the day. The chairlift operator was more sympathetic this time around. He told me there was a wooden fence that ran the length of the property separating the two resorts and that if I followed the fence, there would eventually be an opening. “Or you can hop over it, but I didn’t tell you that,” he said. “If you see a parking lot, you’re going in the right direction.”
Two runs and thirty-five minutes later, I was at the bottom of a run facing a parking lot.
I saw something peeking out of the snow across the parking lot and it looked like the top of one of those wooden livestock fences. I looked at the empty parking lot, which had been snowplowed and barely had any snow on it, and thought, Fuck it. This is going to have to lead somewhere.
I just had to get to the other side of the parking lot. At this point I didn’t give a shit about ruining the bottom of my skis. I had never skied on cement, and I have to say if snow didn’t exist, people would have ended up skiing on pavement. It was a lot of fun.
The terrain gradually turned from pavement into four feet of snow. Luckily, I wasn’t going fast enough to do anything more than shock myself when I plowed into the fence. In conjunction with this discovery, I looked up to discover that a couple of feet to my right was a DO NOT ENTER sign. This is usually the indicator for me that I’m headed in the right direction.
I leaned on the fence and tried to figure out how I was going to get over it and on to the other side, where I could see a road and a house. I tried to lift one leg up with the ski on, but I would have to have been able to do a back flip and have a leg attached to one of my ears.
I decided that I was going to get over that fucking fence. I unclicked both of my skis and did what every ski guide tells you not to do in deep snow: I stepped out of the skis, took one step, and dropped to my waist in snow. This is exactly the kind of shit that always happens to me, I thought. There was no one in sight, and I was submerged in snow. This had basically turned into the female version of Into the Wild. “Help!” I screamed.
It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but by grabbing the fence, I was able to pull myself up until I was spread-eagled facedown on the bottom wooden beam of the fence.
From that position, I grabbed both skis and poles and tossed them as close to the road as I could. Then I managed to maneuver myself so I was sitting on top of the fence. I took stock of my situation. There was about six feet between me and the snowplowed road. I had to get myself from the fence to the road without drowning in the snow. I lunged as far forward into the snow as I could. I landed face-first but close to my poles, which I used to get myself up. I then trudged onto the road.
I looked around for somewhere to sit but there wasn’t a chair in sight, so I just fell over on my side in the middle of the road and lay there like a melting snowwoman. I tried to think of a worse experience I had had in life, and all I could come up with was a James Franco art exhibit.
I collected myself and stood up. I wiped all the snow from my body and my ski bindings and made sure my boots were secure, and then I got my shit together.
Through the trees on the other side of the house I could see people skiing, and it was clear what needed to happen. I pushed off with my poles in order to get into the deeper snow, and once I hit it, I took off through the backyard of this person’s house, going past all their back windows rather fast. The house was huge, so I just kept my eyes straight ahead and prayed to god if anyone was home they didn’t watch Chelsea Lately.
The terrain changed slightly, and the surface underneath suddenly felt quite unfamiliar. I realized after looking behind me that I was skiing over a tarp-covered pool. The woods were straight ahead, and I kept my speed up in order to get the hell out of this person’s backyard. I ducked when I hit the trees and got through to the other side. I saw signs lining the run that read YELLOWSTONE CLUB.
“I made it!” I yelled to the sky. “I made it!” I got down to the bottom of the run, where the chairlift attendee confirmed I was in fact in Yellowstone Club. The main lodge was just one lift away. I could smell a margarita. I took out the two Fritos and noticed they had a pungent aroma. I put my hand back in my pocket and pulled out a bud of weed. I hadn’t skied since the season before, so the pot must have been in my ski jacket for many months. I liked this prospect. A lot.
By now, it had started to blizzard, so I asked the next person I saw to take a picture of me. This is it:
I found Benjamin at the bar in the main lodge where I had a margarita and a bite to eat. Feeling warmed up from my adventure, I asked if we could take a few runs together.
Benjamin was very concerned about me, and knowing what I knew, I felt he had every right to be. I gave him the breakdown, which was wildly amusing, especially since the outcome was so positive.
Once we were back on the chairlift to go to the top of the mountain, Benjamin went radio silent.
“What’s your story?” I asked, as I saw his fists close and eyes shut. “Uh-oh.”
“Please don’t speak until we’re off the lift,” he told me.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “What’s the problem now?”
“I’m scared of heights, Chelsea. I’ll be fine once we’re off the lift.”
“Why would someone who’s scared of heights go skiing?”
“I like to face my fears, Chelsea. Please… stop… talking.”
“No problem.”
We had just gotten on the lift and had at least twenty minutes to go before we got to the top. Having had a long history with myself, I knew if I had found a bud in one pocket, there would be a lighter in another pocket, and you know what? I was right. I took the little map I had grabbed earlier, ripped it in half, and rolled myself a joint. Benjamin didn’t say a word until we got close to the top, which he must have sensed, because he opened one eye to confirm our location. I’m not exaggerating when I say that he was violently shaking by the time we were getting ready to disembark.
Once we were off and skiing he was a completely different person, and he was actually a really good skier. But that didn’t matter. It was over for me.
That night at dinner, he suggested we go helicopter-skiing the next day. For those of you who don’t know what that is, heli-skiing is where they take you in a helicopter and drop you at the highest point of the mountain, and then you ski down. I nearly spit out my wine.
“Benjamin,” I said, as delicately as possible, “I have to be honest with you. I don’t have enough drugs to go heli-skiing with you.”
“It’s important to face your fears,” he informed me.
“Yes, I’m sure that’s true. But isn’t it pointless if your fear never subsides?”
“I suppose you have a point, although I won’t stop trying.”
“That’s admirable,” I told him gently. “But it seems like the only two things you and I do well together are dance and fuck. So let’s just do that.”
That was the last time I saw Benjamin, but I will never forget that day as one of the best of my life. After everything that happened, I didn’t cry, I didn’t get scared, and I was confident even in my darkest moments that I was a grown woman who would get myself out of a bind without very much help. I had no idea one could ski over a pool, and I had no idea I could actually dance.
This is the thank-you note I sent Benjamin a week later:
Dear Benjamin,
Thank you for taking me skiing in MONTANA. But more importantly, thank you for giving me rhythm. I haven’t stopped dancing since I met you, and people are loving it.
XX, Chelsea
I still have never been to Yellowstone National Park. I may never go.
CHAPTER 11
TRAPPED IN BEL AIR
I woke up on a Sunday morning in my bed and felt something sharp in my underwear. When I put my hand down there to see what it was, I found my Invisalign.
It was Emmy weekend. The previous night I had gone out with three of my girlfriends to one of the Emmy parties that are thrown every year.
I had left the party around midnight and came home to my house, which was empty because my lesbian was off gallivanting with her new lover (also a lesbian).
After I danced alone in front of the mirror in my bedroom for close to forty-five minutes, I decided to go through all my old photo albums, and I found some very insightful pictures.
At around 1:30, I felt my Xanax kicking in, and like any responsible adult I got into bed. Then I heard my driveway gate open, heard a car in my driveway, and saw the beams of light eking through my window shades. It was exactly the way I’ve always seen my life ending—being murdered and raped in my own home—after dancing alone.
This is proof that I did indeed graduate from high school and that my brother Glen was the founder of Al Qaeda.
Proof that I was in fact bat-mitzvahed…
… and proof that I did actually break my arm. If you look closely in the left corner, you can see the cast.
At two, I was already grabbing life by the balls, or at least by the ball.
Proof that I had some serious problems very early on. Age eight.
This is it, I thought. This is the end. I pulled down my eyeshades and willed myself to go to sleep. If I’m going to get raped and killed, I was intent on sleeping through it.
The next morning when I woke up alive, I ran through the sequence of events trying to figure out why my Invisalign was in my underwear. I deduced that I hadn’t in fact tried to go down on myself but had put my mouthpiece in my underwear as a protective shield/bite plate against whoever was going to attack me.
Every Sunday morning I play tennis at ten, so I had no time to ruminate—it was onward and upward. I sauntered downstairs and fed both dogs. I didn’t notice any foul play until I walked outside to my driveway and saw that my car was missing.
Aha! I knew I wasn’t crazy. Someone had actually broken through my security gate and stolen my car. I would have to call the police after tennis and file a report. I reasoned that the lease was up on my Bentley, so the responsibility of finding the perpetrators might not even be on my shoulders. I walked down the driveway and across the street to play tennis on my neighbor’s court.
When I returned from tennis, I noticed that my friend Shmitney’s Mercedes SUV was in my driveway behind where my car would normally be. I hadn’t noticed earlier, because I must have been more focused on the fact that my driveway had been vandalized. I realized that she must have left her car at my house the night before when she came over to get ready with me. My driver, Billy, had picked us up from the house and taken us to the party. Shmitney’s SUV was blocking the only other two modes of transportation available: Lesbian Shelly’s Mercedes, and her Harley-Davidson.
I called Shmitney, wondering how I was supposed to get out of my house if she was blocking the only car left in my driveway and my Bentley had been stolen. She didn’t answer her phone, which she never does. Instead, she will text you back while you’re in the middle of leaving her a voice mail, and tell you that she’s in a business meeting or in therapy and will call you in an hour.
When she did call me an hour later, we reviewed the night’s events, and then she asked me why I had left the party so early.
“Because no one at the party was dancing,” I told her.
“So, where did you go?” she asked, laughing.
“Back to my house. So I could dance in peace.”
“That was for the best,” she admitted. “By the way, I have your Bentley.”
“You have my Bentley? Why?”
“Because I came back to your house last night after you left me at the party, and every door was locked and you were already sleeping.”
“That’s fine,” I said, relieved I didn’t have to interact with the FBI. “But why wouldn’t you just take your own car?”
“Because my key was in your house and the doors were all locked.”
“Then, how did you get the key to my car?” I asked her.
“The key was in your car.”
“The key was in my car?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, that does sound like something I would do, and stealing my car sounds like something you would do.”
“Aaaahhhhh!!” she said, cackling. “Do you need your car?” Shmitney laughs all the time when no one else is laughing. I do this, too, but I find it more annoying when she does it.
“Well, I’ll need my car at some point,” I told her. “But I guess I can just bring your car to you and switch it out. I’m hungry and I want a margarita.”
“Great. Why don’t you head over here and we can grab lunch?”
“All right,” I told her. “I’ll do that.”
“OK, great. Would you want to go spinning before? There’s a class that I love which is just around the corner.”
“No, Shmitney. Are you not listening to me? I already played tennis today. And I wouldn’t want to go spinning even if I hadn’t played tennis.” This must have been the tenth time Shmitney had brought up spinning in the past three months. I had explained to her on several occasions that I prefer one-on-one supervision when any sort of coordination is involved.
Shmitney’s problem is that she doesn’t listen and she never shuts the fuck up. She is running on fumes and can’t sit still for longer than ten minutes. She also eats chicken like Brittany Murphy’s character in Girl, Interrupted. She is constantly gnawing on chicken or salmon, and she always smells like one or the other. She loves to go to Alanon meetings, and talk about Alanon and talk about sobriety and talk about enabling and all the other fascinating things that go along with that.
She excels at overexamining every part of the human psyche, and she will send me daily healing messages from some book called The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency.
I’ve had to tell her repeatedly to stop sending me daily messages about patience and loving myself. “I don’t mind them once in a while,” I warned her. “But it can’t be a regular thing.”
If Shmitney had her druthers, she’d spend all day in transcendental meditation doing EMDR therapy to retrieve the childhood she claims she lost to alcoholism and drug addiction. I don’t believe she has ever done drugs, and I know for a fact she doesn’t drink a respectable amount of alcohol, not enough to have ever had a “drinking” problem.
“Why would I make that up?” she’ll ask me defensively, when I tell her that she knows nothing about drugs or alcohol except for what she’s gleaned from her alcoholic family members and myself.
“I have no idea, Shmitney,” I’ll tell her. “I don’t know why anyone would pretend to do drugs.”
“Chelsea,” she’ll exclaim. “I didn’t drink because of my sitcom. I didn’t want my eyes to get puffy.” For those of you who aren’t familiar with Shmitney’s sitcom, it was on NBC for two seasons and it was called Shmitney. It wasn’t great.
Regardless, anyone with a real affinity for alcohol doesn’t just stop drinking for nine months at a time because they’re on TV. Maybe once or twice a week, but a nine-month run of sobriety isn’t practical or plausible for someone with a real hankering for cocktails.
We hung up, and I went downstairs to my kitchen to look for her car key. I’m well aware of the fact that I’m not good at finding things, but her key was nowhere to be found. I looked through everything in my kitchen twice and then I ate a banana. In my ongoing effort to become more self-sufficient, I had ceased having my cleaning lady or any other employees come to my house on the weekends, so there was no one to help me look. I did one last sweep, cognizant of the fact that I had forgotten what I was looking for after the second sweep.
I called Shmitney again and asked her if she had gone anywhere in my house besides my kitchen. “Did you go upstairs?”
“No, I left it on your kitchen counter. It’s a single Mercedes key.”
“Oh, thank you. I thought it would be a Volvo car key. How stupid do you think I am?”
“Pretty fucking stupid. Just keep looking. It’s somewhere. I left it somewhere in the kitchen.”
“That doesn’t sound like you. That sounds like something I would do.”
“It’s there somewhere. Just call me after tennis,” she said, trying to get off the phone.
“I just finished tennis!”
“OK, let me call you back,” she said.
“No!” I wailed. “It’s fine if you have my car, but I need to know where your key is, Shmitney. Who takes someone else’s car and then blocks the only other car in the driveway and doesn’t leave the fucking key to their car? Tell me. Who? Who? Shmitney? Answer me!”
“Let me make sure I don’t have it. I’ll call you right back,” she said.
I looked around my house and wondered what I should do next. I walked outside to my pool and threw a tennis ball across my backyard. Neither dog flinched.
I walked back inside and saw the empty dog bowls on the kitchen floor. I picked them both up and loaded them into the dishwasher. There’s no reason I shouldn’t use this opportunity to do some housework, I thought. When I couldn’t find the dishwashing detergent, I took the bowls out, went into the laundry room, and threw them into the washing machine. I added some laundry detergent and hit “spin cycle.”
I looked at my pool and thought about jumping in, but I didn’t feel like putting on a bathing suit or getting my hair wet. I decided to roll a few calls instead. I called Brad and invited him and his wife, Shannon, to brunch with the caveat that I would need a ride to the restaurant. They were busy and instead invited me to the Santa Monica Beach Club, where they were members. Beach clubs don’t have enough diversification for me. “No, thanks,” I said and hung up.
It then occurred to me that I didn’t need a bathing suit in the privacy of my own home, and I that I could swim nude if I wanted to. But skinny-dipping alone sounded like something Shirley MacLaine would do, so I sat in my backyard on the cement ledge that separates the pool from the lawn. I called my sister Simone to get an update on her single life, and I was getting a play-by-play of her latest online lover when my sprinklers went off.
“Aaaaahhh!” I screamed, as the cold water sprayed me in the face and left my whole body damp.
“What’s wrong? Is it a snake?” Simone asked, panicking.
“Nothing,” I said, walking inside defeated. I stayed on the phone and went upstairs to change my clothes. The sound of the sprinklers always make me have to pee, so I went into my bathroom, sat on the toilet, and peed. That was when I realized in the middle of all of the mayhem, I had forgotten to take off my underwear.
“Oh god,” I moaned. “What the fuck?”
“What’s wrong now?” Simone asked, in a slightly more irritated tone.
“I just peed and forgot to take off my underwear.”
“Are you outside?”
“No! Why would I be outside?”
“I don’t know, Chelsea. It wouldn’t be that outside the box for you to be peeing outside at your own house, no pun intended.”
“What is wrong with me?” I wailed, trying to remove my underwear, while sitting on the toilet and listening to her story. She finished and then told me that Rex was in NYC for the week and that she was going to dinner with him on Wednesday. “I may get a hotel room,” she said. “For me and Rex.” My newly divorced sister was officially juggling men, and that made me have to get off the phone.
“Can I call you later?” I asked, looking around my bathroom and landing on a big framed quote that read, WHAT MATTERS MOST IS THE COMPANY YOU KEEP WHEN YOU’RE ALONE.
Molly called me moments later. “Everything OK?” she asked.
“Why?”
“No reason. Just wondering whatcha’ doin’?”
I knew Simone had called Molly, because there is a round-the-clock guardian conservatorship between Molly, Shelly, Simone, and about thirty others. Molly, Sue, and Shelly are the serving board members, and there are different tiers beneath them in case any of them are out of town. They work in shifts and they think I don’t know about it, but I do. They check in on me on a regular basis, because everyone knows if I were left to my own devices, I could die.
Gina had spent the day at my house yesterday getting me ready for the Emmy parties, which was silly since I didn’t really need hair and makeup for the parties. I’ve never been nominated for an Emmy in my life, and I was going only to a party for the Emmys, not the actual Emmys. Then Shmitney came over to tag Gina out and babysit me for the rest of the night. Sundays are usually Molly’s shift when Shelly is out of town.
If I am left unattended for too long, people start showing up at my house, so Molly’s call wasn’t completely unexpected.
“Well, Molly. Not to sound like an alarmist, but Shmitney stole my car and said she would be here about an hour ago, but she is a liar. I need to get to Hotel Bel-Air.”
“Do you need me to come and get you?”
“Are you coming to brunch?”
“I can come to brunch. Can I bring Kerry?” Kerry is Molly’s sister and also my cousin.
“Yes.”
“So, should we come get you?” she asked again.
“I don’t know because she won’t answer her phone, but she keeps texting me that she’s fifteen minutes away.”
“Well, I’ll come over that way and if she gets there first, then just call me.”
“OK.”
I hung up the phone and checked my texts. There was one from Shmitney.
“Do you want to come over and go on a bike ride?”
“No!” I responded. “Where the fuck are you?”
“I’m fifteen away,” she texted back. “Had to drop off my friend from Spin class.”
I almost ate my phone.
There was no way Shmitney would make it from Burbank all the way to Bel Air in fifteen minutes. I drive like a maniac and have never made it from Bel Air to Burbank in fifteen minutes, and I happen to drive there almost every day for work.
Even though I lie compulsively, I don’t appreciate being lied to, especially when it involves what time I’m going to be picked up. I don’t like being late, and I don’t like being picked up late.
I went into the kitchen to look again for her car key and then saw Shelly’s Mercedes key. I was such an idiot for not putting this together before. Mercedes-Benz has been ahead of the curve since they were making ovens for the Holocaust. It was highly probable that the key to Shelly’s Mercedes would also work in Shmitney’s Mercedes. I was wrong. Strike four.
I needed to find the number to Hotel Bel-Air and see if they could pick me up. I looked through my kitchen cabinets for a phone book and gave up on that project shortly after I started. Instead, I decided make better use of my time.
I made the executive decision to use my time wisely and make an online dating profile for my makeup artist, Gina. If my sister was having such success online, then there was no good reason Gina shouldn’t also be reaping the benefits of Internet penetration. I got my computer and went over to my purse on my dining room table. I got my credit card out, sat down, and got focused. This was going to take awhile.
My makeup artist Gina hadn’t been penetrated in something like five or ten years, and I could hear it in her voice. I desperately wanted her to meet someone, or at least get felt up. She’s one of those people who thinks she’s too cool to meet anyone online, so I was going to have to take it upon myself to do the legwork. Plus, she’s a terrible speller, so if she ever could be convinced to date online, she would only attract other elementary school graduates. I looked on Match.com’s questionnaire page, and it seemed a little too gay to me, so I Googled “popular dating sites” and clicked on the first one that popped up.
I filled out all the pertinent information required to join the site and gave my e-mail dress as the contact so that I would be the one filtering any matches and corresponding with potential candidates.
First, I had to come up with what is called a profile headline in thirty-five characters or less. After that came a series of questions that included multiple options to choose from, or I could ignore that part and write my own answers. I opted to utilize my creative writing skills.
Profile Headline:
Fifty, fun, flirty, fresh, fish lover, fruit lover, famine hater, looking for laughter, sex, and fresh food.
About Yourself:
Love to laugh, and love to be in funny situations. Like my morning coffee with the paper and like to mingle.
About Yourself:
Animal lover, have 2 dogs, 2 chickens. I ride horses every morning at my neighborhood barn, but haven’t ridden a man in years. I also love to cook, travel, ski, hike. Love the outdoors. Love to garden. Am not a great speller.
Habits and Lifestyle:
I have been married and have a 14-year-old son. Have a good relationship with my ex and we share custody. I’m a professional makeup artist and hairstylist with a steady job that I love. My boss says I come across as a bitch, but that I am really not. Looking for a solid guy with a solid career who also likes good wine, food, movies, travel. I work out regularly as well. Love to spin.
Type of Relationship I’m Looking For:
Would like to find a quality person to spend time with. Not looking for marriage but want to be in a serious, committed relationship.
Religion:
Other
Ethnicity:
Raised in California.
Heritage:
Italian (I’m adopted).
Smoker:
No
Drinking:
Not often, but enjoy wine with food.
Height:
5’9”
Marital Status:
I have already covered this above, and if anyone reading this is indeed married, please do not contact me.
Employment:
Fully self-sufficient—but could get fired any day.
Education:
Makeup artist
Children:
One son (14).
Body type:
Tell ya later.
My phone rang, and it was Shmitney.
“Let me guess. You’re fifteen minutes away,” I told her.
“Aaaahahhahahh! You are such a child. Do you want me to pick up anything on the way?” she asked. There was nowhere to shop between my house and hers.
“I’m going to take an Uber. What’s their number?”
“Shut up. I’ll be there in like twenty minutes. You can’t handle Uber. There’s a better chance of you picking up a weekend cashier’s shift at Walmart.”
“Well, maybe if you would get your bony ass over here and stop saying you’re fifteen minutes away, I wouldn’t have to say things like Uber or Groupon!”
“Aaaaaaaaaaah!” she howled and hung up on me, again.
I looked back at my computer and the next step was to fill out what Gina was “seeking.”
Seeking:
A man who reads, likes to travel, and has his own life. Someone who loves to laugh, and can make himself laugh, because I’m not funny at all.
Age Range You Are Seeking:
18–99
Seeking Height:
4’–7’11”
Weight:
Nothing over 200 pounds unless you are over six feet.
Ideal Man:
Athletic, financially sound, outdoorsy, masculine. No wimpy bullshit.
There were too many questions and I felt like I had already summed up the basics, so I skipped to the end.
Ideal First Date:
Waking up early on football sunday, making my signature homemade chili recipe, and getting to suck dick while the game is on.
I would have to have Molly upload Gina’s photo later that afternoon, but at least I would be able to get her profile up and running.
I needed to get out of my house, so I grabbed my sunglasses and the paper, and walked outside to my driveway. It was then that I realized it would have been nearly impossible to get my Bentley out without having first moved Shmitney’s Mercedes. One would have had to physically pick up my Bentley and throw it over Shmitney’s car.
I walked down my driveway and down to the corner of my street, where I found a nice, cool spot in the shade, and sat on a corner of the cement perimeter of someone’s garden bed. Just as I flipped the paper over to read the Sunday Review, a pickup truck blaring heavy metal music made a sharp right turn at about thirty miles an hour driving over the puddle that I hadn’t noticed was directly in front of me. The puddle was brown—and then so was my face. I sat on the corner, stunned, as I typically do when I’m humiliated—wondering if someone was filming me. I don’t mean to sound like a narcissist, but I have a hard time believing these kinds of things happen to other people.
I got myself together and hiked back up my incredibly steep driveway in what was now boiling hot sun. I walked inside and back up to my bedroom to wash my face and change my clothes for the second time that day. It wasn’t even 1 p.m.
My phone kept dinging, and it was notifying me that I was getting several “winks” for Gina’s profile. It was already working. Gina was going to find love because Shmitney stole my car.
I called Shmitney again to ask her if she was even coming at all. She didn’t answer but texted me back: “Fifteen away.”
I walked back down the driveway and back to the corner I had been assaulted on to survey Gina’s future paramours. The men responding weren’t exactly winners, and every one of them had facial hair and was holding a fish. I thought it was impressive that in the time I had created Gina’s profile, these guys had managed to go and catch a striped bass. They were seriously trying to impress her, and even I had to have compassion for them.
My phone rang again, and this time it was Molly. “Is she there yet?”
“No. She’s been saying she’s coming for three hours.”
As we were talking a red SUV turned on my street, zipped past me, and then turned around and headed back in my direction. Once in front of me, the car stopped and the driver turned the engine off. “Oh, shit.” Someone was going to shoot me right here on the streets of Bel-Air. I froze. I couldn’t believe I was going to get shot right on the corner of my street while innocently reviewing a dating site. I put my hands in the air and waited to be shot in the face.
A woman got out of the car, and a nine-year-old got out of the passenger seat. A family shooting spree.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said, as she closed her car door. “I really hate to bother you, but we live up the street and I promised myself I would never do this, but my daughter’s a huge fan. I would never normally do this. Would you mind if I got a picture of the two of you?”
I asked her daughter what her name was. She told me her name and then asked me what mine was. I glared at the mother as I took my glasses off and fake-smiled. This woman had just used her innocent daughter in a ploy to get a photograph with someone on the E! network, and she wasn’t even Armenian.
Once our photo shoot had concluded, I lifted the phone back up to my ear.
“Are you on the street?” Molly asked me.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m not really sure.”
“OK, I’m on my way,” she told me. “Go back to your house.”
“I’m going to end my friendship with Shmitney when she gets here,” I told Molly as I followed her instructions and headed back toward my house.
The next text from Shmitney sent was this: “I have Ramona in the car. Can she stay at the house with your dogs?” Ramona was Shmitney’s new pit bull puppy and—a nightmare. What white person gets a pit bull? On top of that, she had taken the dog to a vet earlier in the week and found out that Ramona was possibly half Great Dane. Only I would have that luck, so I didn’t believe her when she told me that, either. This fell right in line with her tall tales of being a drug-addled teenager in recovery.
Her bringing Ramona over meant that I would be walking down my driveway once again. My driveway is like a miniature version of the stairs at Machu Picchu.
This is how I was sitting moments later when Shmitney pulled up, laughing riotously:
“How do you drive this beast?” she yelled out my car window, trying to pull up my driveway, lurching the car forward and backward as she waited for the gate to open.
“That’s not really the point,” I told her, punching in the gate code. “The point is, it’s Sunday, and every Sunday, I go to Hotel Bel-Air for brunch and have my margarita there. Today is Sunday, and I don’t want that dog in my house.”
“And how is it possible that you don’t know how to make a margarita?” Shmitney yelled.
The half Great Dane/half pit bull dog jumped out of my car and onto my driveway, and lunged toward me. I couldn’t run from the dog fast enough because of the steepness of my driveway, so I ended up falling into the embankment between my driveway and my gate. This was exactly where I had seen the snake in my driveway a year earlier. Shmitney was filming all of this on her iPhone while hysterically laughing.
Ramona wouldn’t stop licking me while also gnawing on my hand that was trying to push her away from me. Shmitney’s dog was just as much of a lunatic as she was. I hate that dog.
Shmitney had put the car in Park, and she stood at the side of my driveway filming me at close range. I finally was able to get myself back up on my feet with no help from her. I pushed her out of the way, got back in my car, and drove it up my driveway, since driving up my driveway happens to be one of the few things I excel at. I went inside to my backyard and closed all of the doors I normally keep open for my dogs when I’m not home. My dogs will easily attack an intruder—as long as they’re not sleeping.
I told her I didn’t think her dog would survive in my backyard and that I didn’t trust pit bulls.
Then Ramona peed on my boot. I didn’t change this time.
We met my cousins Molly and Kerry at lunch at Hotel Bel-Air, where Shmitney and I proceeded to argue about what had taken place that morning and whose version of events were accurate.
“You have no idea what I was dealing with,” she told my cousins, explaining that her friend she had taken to Spin class was in AA, and apparently freaked out when she heard she’d be having brunch with me.
“I’ve got one alcoholic who’s in recovery and one who needs a margarita,” Shmitney told them, holding her hands to her head. “I felt like I was on the set of Sophie’s Choice.”
“My mom’s going on a road trip,” Molly announced, taking off her sunglasses.
“And she asked us to get her a gun for protection,” Kerry interjected.
“Wait, what?” Shmitney asked.
“Oh, dear.” I took a sip of my margarita. “What’s her problem now?”
“Well, she says she’s out of money. She’s sold all of her furniture, and the lease to her apartment is up,” Molly informed me.
“She says she’s excited about moving, but we don’t believe her,” Kerry added.
“We’re wondering if you can just ask her to stay at your house as kind of like a groundskeeper while we try and get her a new apartment. All the kids are chipping in and we can afford something, but we don’t want her to leave in the first place, because we’re worried she may not come back, especially since she’s asking for a gun.”
For the record, my aunt is exactly the type of person who would drive off into the woods and shoot herself. She is not even sixty, but has nine children, three grandchildren, and a pain in the ass of a husband whom she can’t afford to divorce—so they just live apart and don’t speak. She is my mother’s sister, and she told me when I moved to LA that if I wanted to make it in show business, I was going to have to drop some weight. She also let me live with her for a year until I could afford my own apartment.
“Well, we can’t let her do that,” I told my cousins. “She may never come back.”
“We already suggested that she be your groundskeeper, but she said she doesn’t want any more handouts from you. She feels like a loser.”
“But what if we make it a job?”
“She said she will not move in with you. She claims she really wants to go on this road trip.”
I picked up my phone and called my Realtor, Anne. I told her we needed a house in the Valley, and being that it was Sunday there would be plenty of open houses.
“We’re going house hunting!” I exclaimed in delight, hanging up the phone. Finally, the tides were turning.
“Well, we don’t really need you to buy her a house,” Molly said, exchanging nervous glances with Kerry.
“No, Chelsea. That’s a little ridiculous. We are happy to pay for an apartment,” Kerry agreed.
“No, I’m in the mood to house-hunt. Let’s do it.”
“This is perfect. Chelsea has two margaritas and wants to go house hunting. I’m not going to miss this for the world,” Shmitney announced.
“You want to make a bet?” I said. “You are on probation! You are not coming anywhere with us, and to be quite honest, I’m not sure our friendship is strong enough to survive this.”
“Well, then, I guess now’s a good time to tell you that I had the key the entire time, but I didn’t want you to freak out.”
Molly jumped up and pinned my arms to my side while Kerry and Shmitney sat hysterically laughing.
If I wasn’t at the Hotel Bel-Air in plain public view, I would have choked her, but instead took my iPhone and smacked it into the side of my own head.
“You are infuriating,” I said, as menacingly as I could with Molly sitting on top of me.
I ordered some margaritas to go, paid the bill, and Molly, Kerry, and I drove to the valley.
This is the house we found that day, and my aunt moved in thirty-five days later. She never went on that road trip, and we never gave her a gun.
Later that night while I was online responding to some of Gina’s suitors, I got a video from Shmitney of her urinating in my driveway the night of the Emmy party when she came back to my locked house and stole my car.
SHMITNEY’S VERSION OF EVENTS
So I get to Chelsea’s house at like 2 a.m. Her door is locked and my key is inside. I decide not to knock because Chelsea sleeps in a white ’80s Cross Your Heart bra, and I’m too tired to process that right now. I also just really want to get out of there because Chelsea’s house is a hazard. She has two-ish dogs: Chunk, who’s become a complete asshole since he got a million Twitter followers; and Jacks, who just had surgery and has a cone on his head… and sometimes another one who looks like Falcor on crack. When they run to the door it’s like the zombies from the
Thriller
video are coming at you. Other possible dangers include Chelsea’s lesbian roommate, who is very strong (I learned that the hard way) and snakes in her driveway… some real and some imagined by Chelsea.
Basically, I just want to get the fuck away from this house of cards that Chelsea calls a home.
My car is blocking in her other cars, and the only car that could be liberated from this mess is the Bentley. On an optimistic whim I check to see if it’s unlocked. Not only is it unlocked, but the key is in it. This is either a trap or a miracle.…
So I took it. I’m from Washington, D.C. Where I come from, if you want someone else’s car, you take it.
I wake up Sunday morning with three missed calls from Chelsea, two of them FaceTime invites because she has no idea how to work her iPhone. When we finally connect, she yells, “I’m trapped in my house and I need a margarita!”
First of all, it’s noon. And second of all, we know Chelsea is a Luddite, but to not be able to make her own margarita is just pathetic. The only thing sadder than needing a margarita at noon is not being able to make one yourself. Especially considering the fact that her fridge is stocked with Skinny girl Margaritas. She can’t even make a
premade
margarita.
The problem is that Chelsea has been infantilized by having assistants for so long. Everything is done for her, so she doesn’t know how to do anything herself anymore.
For example, in her fridge she has clear Tupperware containers of cut-up fruit and vegetables, and they’re labled with little signs that say
PINEAPPLE
and
WATERMELON
, etc. I started getting really worried about her when I realized that she can’t even figure out what pineapple looks like.
So I tell her I’m on my way over, because honestly, I’m worried about her safety. If you think Chelsea is a danger to herself drunk, you should see her sober. I rush over to her place to find her, middle finger blazing, waiting outside of her house, angry and moist. It becomes abundantly clear that this is the longest Chelsea has waited for anything in years. She was reading the newspaper, yet another sign that she can’t do anything herself. She thinks people still get the news from newspapers. In the past forty-five minutes she had been humiliated by getting splashed with mud, being asked for a photo by someone who didn’t even know who she was, and—to honor the comedy “rule of threes”—my puppy got out of her car and instantly peed on her foot. Which Chelsea probably thought was pineapple.
She also claimed to buy someone a home that day, but knowing Chelsea, she accidentally went to the Valley, got drunker, and bought a house so she wouldn’t have to drive back. By the way, Chelsea still has an AOL account.
A week later, Kerry, Molly, and I surprised my aunt with her new house—one of the best days of my life. My aunt was in tears when she asked me if this meant she now had to be nice to me.
“No!” I said, jumping up and down, bawling. “You never have to speak to me again.”
With that chapter over, it was time to focus on Gina’s love life. I received several responses to Gina’s profile on her new dating site. It became a bit annoying when my phone would go off every time someone “winked” at her. The problem was the men who were responding. All the responses I had gotten regarding Gina’s new online profile revealed a common theme. Every guy was on a boat, some with handlebar mustaches, some without, but all holding large fish on fishing poles.
I sat there for a week trying to convince Gina that all these men were going out of their way to catch fish just to woo her because that was in her profile, but she didn’t budge.
“I’m not going out with a man who has a handlebar mustache. Why do they all have facial hair? Did you write that I wanted that?”
It was a fair question, especially since many of them were actually bald. So in an honest attempt to double-check my work, I logged back on to her profile to see if I accidentally put “bald” under Likes. I then discovered that I had signed Gina up on a fisherman’s website: Seacaptaindate.com. Whoopsie.
I revealed this news to Gina as delicately as I could, while also admitting that I didn’t have the emotional capacity to enlist her on another dating website. I had invested a week of my time and energy into carefully eliminating all red flags and potential rapists. “I just don’t have it in me,” I confessed. “Every time one of these losers winks at you my phone beeps, and I have no idea how to disable that feature. If you want, I’m happy to buy you that horse you’ve been riding. And whatever happens behind closed doors is your business.”
Gina ended up getting her horse after all, and since then they have been in a monogamous relationship.
My sister Shana and me on our front lawn. Happier times. 1979.
Martha’s Vineyard with my two lesbian sisters
This is a picture of me, age three, that I took with me when I was nineteen and left New Jersey for California. I put it in one of those cheap little plastic picture frames that have magnets on the back, and have stuck it on every refrigerator in every apartment or house I’ve lived in since. About a year ago, it fell off the refrigerator when I was looking for some chicken wings, and I noticed my mother’s handwriting on the back. The right hand corner was dated July 4, 1978, and it said:
The face of an angel, the mind of a devil, and a heart of gold.
Your mother will always love you.
Love, Mommy
HOT TRAVEL TIPS
Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to be topless for emergency dental work when abroad.
It is possible to chip your tooth while eating gummy bears when a plane is landing.
Dolphin rape is a very real thing.
There are certain countries (France) that have microwaves that actually air-condition the food instead of heating it. Be aware of this when handling quiche or pizza. There is nothing more frustrating than taking a bite of what you think is going to be a warm piece of quiche and then chipping your tooth.
Mixing Metamucil with vodka will be successful in helping you go to the bathroom, but your timing should be strategic if staying with a friend. Once you clog someone’s toilet, they have a hard time remembering anything about you other than you clogging their toilet.
If you don’t already know how to surf, don’t try to learn. It’s humiliating.
Kobe beef is not named after Kobe Bryant. Do not make this mistake.
When going through security, always pretend you are innocent and frail, even if the person perusing your passport or boarding pass has an afro
and
a ponytail.
If you are a drinker, always use a pseudonym when booking hotels. None of us ever really know what kind of mess we’re going to leave behind, and there’s no sense in getting banned from a resort you respect.
It’s safest not to travel during a leap year.
The saying that money doesn’t buy you happiness is true. But it sure as fuck helps.
When hooking up abroad, be aware: any man who tries to convince you that most guys have one ball will most likely have only one ball himself. One ball is as likely as a blind robber—a gay one.
And last but not least, go for it. Go wherever you can afford to go with whomever you can get to go with you.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Michael Broussard, Beth de Guzman (my very patient Asian editor), Lionel Richie, Shelly Youree, Sue Murphy, Simoney Baloney, Molly Burke, and Hannah Banana Kampf. Chunk. And to my dear lover-girl Mary McCormack for my favorite quote of the century. When her four-year-old daughter asked to go in the ocean when they were strolling down the Santa Monica Pier, she said “The ocean is broken.”
Other Books Starring Chelsea Handler
Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me
Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang
My Horizontal Life
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Most Frequently Asked Traveler’s Questions
1. Out of Afrika
2. Into the Bush
3. Camp Dumbo
4. Rejection in Botswana
5. Mombo Camp, Botswana
Travel Etiquette
6. The Bahamas
7. Mount a Negro
8. The Swiss Alps
9. Telluride
10. Yellowstone National Park
11. Trapped in Bel Air
Hot Travel Tips
Acknowledgments
Other Books Starring Chelsea Handler
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Chelsea Handler, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
A Chelsea Handler Book/Borderline Amazing® Publishing
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
hachettebookgroup.com
twitter.com/grandcentralpub
First ebook edition: March 2014
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ISBN 978-1-4555-9972-1
E3
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Most Frequently Asked Traveler’s Questions
1. Out of Afrika
2. Into the Bush
3. Camp Dumbo
4. Rejection in Botswana
5. Mombo Camp, Botswana
Travel Etiquette
6. The Bahamas
7. Mount a Negro
8. The Swiss Alps
9. Telluride
10. Yellowstone National Park
11. Trapped in Bel Air
Hot Travel Tips
Acknowledgments
Other Books Starring Chelsea Handler
Newsletters
Copyright
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)
Поиск книг
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте
Саморазвитие
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
Отборные классические книги
Классика
ВКОНТАКТЕБиблиотека с любовными романами, которая наверняка придётся по вкусу женской части аудитории
Любовные романы
Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров
Фантастика
Самые популярные книги в формате фб2
Топ фб2
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