“I’ll bail you out and hire you a good lawyer. Simone. Simone’s an excellent attorney.”
I knew her sister was a lawyer and assumed she was a good one, as I’d met her and she had seemed smart. “Doesn’t she do patents or something?” I countered.
“Yes, but that’s just a hobby. Her main line of work is international crime,” Chelsea responded with a tinge of annoyance in her voice. It was exactly the amount of annoyance that I always knew meant not to ask any more questions.
“Okay, but do I really have to have them up there for the entire flight?”
“Yes. At some point everyone has to take one for the team. This is your time. Just fucking go.”
I headed for the women’s room feeling a bit nervous, but also like a proud renegade who was doing everyone a favor.
Once we arrived in Mexico and deplaned, I was feeling confident if not uncomfortable. A three-hour turbulent flight is made slightly less fun when there’s a plastic bag up your coslopus. I was wearing a sundress and taking small steps, which I hoped might pass for normal. From beyond the security line I was approaching, Chelsea motioned for me to hurry up. I picked up the pace, all the while telling myself to act cool and be normal and just make it that last fifty feet. I made it only five.
In order to “hurry the fuck up,” which was what Chelsea was now saying, along with waving, I expanded my stride, which expanded the area housing the vacation contraband. In the split second I felt the Ziploc dislodge, I tried everything I could think of to keep it up there, while maintaining composure and speed. I even attempted Kegel exercises, but only ended up peeing on myself and the baggie, which flopped to the floor right in front of someone I was certain was a federale. He picked up the baggie, careful to avoid what was either my perspiration or my urine, and examined its contents.
It’s amazing the thoughts that run through your head when you’re in a foreign country, with bright lights flickering above you and a uniformed officer with a badge you can’t read staring at you and holding the Ziploc bag filled with little blue bippies that just fell out of your vagina.
I started thinking about my dog and how much I was going to miss her. She was six, so I wondered if I could cut a deal and be out before she got too old. Then I remembered how Marley and Me had destroyed me emotionally and thought that maybe being away when she met her demise would be a good thing. I thought of Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix and Anne Heche and that movie where Vince Vaughn sacrificed himself for his best friend and the brother of the woman who was his love interest and ended up in jail watching his best friend die despite his sacrifice, and I wondered if I was going to be Vince Vaughn or Joaquin Phoenix. And then I wondered how long it was going to take Chelsea to get her international legal expert sister across the border.
Suddenly the federale put the bag into my hand and smirked as he told me I was free to go.
“I am? I mean, of course I am. I didn’t do anything wrong!” I shouted as I tried to stomp away. I felt like Wonder Woman but knew I looked like Bambi, my shaky legs contradicting my false bravado.
As I glanced over my shoulder I saw the federale whisper to a compatriot, and I could have sworn they were laughing. Once I returned my gaze forward, I saw Chelsea, who looked pissed.
“Get your shit and meet me at the car,” she bellowed as she exited the building.
More terrified of Chelsea than a Mexican drug bust, I meekly climbed into the Navigator, hoping to sit as far away from her as possible. No such luck. She patted the only available seat right beside her. As I took it, I tried to look at the others to gauge the situation, but no one was making eye contact with me. This was going to be a long vacation.
“So, how’d that work out for you? Feel good about yourself?” she asked.
“No! It was awful! My life flashed before my eyes… and I could have gotten you in so much trouble! Your career, your reputation! I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well, you should be.”
“I am. But you have to admit, those federales are pretty stupid,” I offered, attempting to crack her iciness.
“No, you’re stupid,” she countered, then turned to look out the window. I thought she couldn’t look at me because she was so angry. That is, until I realized she was trying not to let me see her laugh. I looked around, confused.
“They weren’t Ecstasy,” she deadpanned, as everyone burst out laughing.
“But there was a little E on them.”
“Yes, for Excedrin!”
“I thought…”
“You thought wrong. Do you think I would allow you on a private plane with Ecstasy shoved up your cervix? If you recall correctly, your cervix has already been through enough.”
Chelsea and me when we arrived at the resort.
“So, I’m an asshole,” I stated more than asked.
“Well, yes, Stephanie. You’re thirty-four and trying to smuggle drugs in your coslopus. That is so 2008. Get your shit together.”
Chelsea knew I was heading down a slippery slope that was taking me nowhere. Anyone else teaching someone a lesson might have included a stern sit-down or a time-out, but for Chelsea, it had to involve turning me into Maria Full of Grace. It was sort of a compliment.
I love that bitch, but to this day I sleep with one eye open whenever she’s around. The best irony of all is that people sleep at Chelsea’s all the time, and everyone knows never to sleep with their door unlocked. So, in a house with six bedrooms, a house that she paid for, Chelsea really has access only to her own room.
After reading this chapter, I’ve never felt more responsible in my life. It really makes me sound like I have my shit together, and it’s only because the people I surround myself with have their shit less together. So, thank you. Steph’s performance at the wedding was something I will smile about for the rest of my life.
I would also like to add my own photo to this chapter as a warning of what someone looks like when they dance on Ecstasy.
—Chelsea
Steph in Cabo, 2007. This is what dancing on Ecstasy looks like.
Chapter Three
How to Make a Marriage Work
HEATHER MCDONALD
Ironically, Chelsea’s middle name is Joy. This makes sense, as she experiences a lot of joy in her life, most often at the expense of other people. One particular instance that comes to mind is the only time in my life I ate a pot brownie. I am not a pot smoker at all and have never consumed pot, but I rarely have the ability to deny myself a tasty treat, and if there is one thing I love, it’s extra gooey double chocolate brownies.
One weekend I was performing stand-up with Chelsea, and we joined some friends of hers in Provincetown for an afternoon boat ride. After a full meal and three cocktails in the afternoon sun on the water, nothing sounded better to me than a yummy brownie. I knew they had baked some pot in them, but I was thinking only about the effect a moist chocolate delight normally has on me, which is what I was craving after a salty Mexican lunch. So I did what I always do when a brownie pan is in my direct vicinity: like a lady, I took a knife and cut off a sliver of brownie, and then another and then another. Everyone but Chelsea and the captain were eating the brownies. Chelsea is not a dessert person and is certainly not going to waste calories on even the best high, but what I realized later is that to her, the best high is being sober when everyone else is high and laughing at their stupidity. I’m a drinker, so I had never experienced the kind of high that lasts fourteen hours, like this one did. All I could do was laugh.
Hours after the boat ride ended, we were back at her friends’ house. Chelsea walked into the room where I was lying on a couch, and looked at herself in the mirror. She was horrified by her outfit, which consisted of a tunic and wide-legged slacks, and asked me, “Why didn’t you tell me I was dressed like a lesbian? I look like Paula Poundstone.”
She did look like Paula Poundstone. She had had Johnny Kansas grab her some clothes after the boat ride, because she was too lazy to get them herself, but had neve
r bothered to look at herself in the mirror. Her comments sent me into a tailspin. I had never laughed so hard in my life, and Chelsea was on the floor crying at my reaction.
The only thing that could have brought Chelsea even more joy in this situation was if she had been able to get it on film or take an extremely unflattering photo of me, high, with my legs spread on a couch, and send it to three million of her Twitter followers, with a comment that read, “Mother of two Caucasians and one half-Asian.” Fortunately for me, she couldn’t find her BlackBerry at that moment, which happens about three times a day.
As for the actual lies Chelsea has told me, some people reading this may think I am incredibly stupid, as I am often called by Chelsea Joy herself, but the lies she told me were all lies I was elated to hear. It never entered my mind that what she was telling me, as her steel blue eyes stared straight into my chocolate almond-shaped ones, wasn’t 100 percent fact. Chelsea was not only my very generous and fun boss, she was my girlfriend, and we confided in each other all the time, so when she told me one Thursday morning that she was pregnant, I believed her.
I felt even more special when she swore me to secrecy. Of course, she was going to confide in me. I not only had given birth vaginally to two healthy boys, but was also a tender stepmother to my stepdaughter, Mackenzie. At the time, Chelsea was living with her boyfriend, Ted, who was divorced with two teenagers and pushing fifty-three.
THE GIRL WHO CRIED FIRST TRIMESTER
This is how it began. Every Thursday, Chelsea Lately provides us with an incredible spread, so we creatively call that day Bagel Thursday. One Thursday, as both Chelsea and I were scooping out the centers of our bagels—girls and gays, if you haven’t done this yet, do it! You slice the bagel, scoop out all the carb-infested middle, then toast what’s left, and pile on light cream cheese, tomatoes, and cucumbers, and a hint of fresh lemon juice. You get all the crunch and flavor with half the calories!—Chelsea casually turned to me with a plastic knife covered in cream cheese and said, “I took a pregnancy test today and it was positive. Can you pass me the lox? Why is it so orange? Never mind.”
“Wait, what? Are you serious?” I whispered.
“Yes, but don’t say anything to Ted,” she warned me.
“It’s not his?” I screeched as my pupils dilated two millimeters.
“No. Of course it’s his. I just don’t know if I want to keep it. Can you imagine if I had Ted’s baby? He won’t let me out of his sight now. Imagine if there were one of me in a baby form. Besides, I can’t do stand-up comedy while pregnant. That would be disgusting. Really? I’m going to stand up in front of thousands of people eight months pregnant jumping up and down doing my masturbation bit? I don’t think so.”
At this point I was still open to having another baby, and if I were to have gotten pregnant, I absolutely would still have done stand-up while pregnant. Why the hell not?
“Chelsea, just think of all the new material you could do on ultrasounds and having to pee all the time and the excessive weight gain. It practically writes itself.” I imagined Chelsea with a Baby Bjorn strapped to her chest and a fat four-month-old with her same huge mouth looking out at me.
“Heather, calm down. Take it down a notch. I am not joking when I say I will not give up alcohol for nine months. If I’m pregnant—”
I cut her off. “Chelsea, there is no such thing as a false positive on even the cheapest of pregnancy tests. There are lots of false negatives but never a false positive. I once used one from the Ninety-nine Cent store that told me I was not pregnant when in fact I was already ten weeks along with Drake, but it doesn’t work the other way around. You have to tell Ted. He will be thrilled!” I said gleefully, imagining gray-haired dancing babies throughout the office. (Ted has very sexy salt-and-pepper hair.)
“Oh, my God, can you imagine Ted getting all involved in designing the baby’s room, bringing swatches of cribs and shit to the office for me to look at? Could anything be more annoying?” Chelsea said as she rolled her eyes.
“You don’t get swatches of cribs, Chelsea. It’s swatches of bedding and wallpaper, but they have these round cribs so any which way the baby rolls he or she can look out at your view of the marina. Oh, you have to do a whole nautical theme for the baby’s room with old-fashioned sailboats.”
“Heather, if you tell anyone I swear I will—”
“Of course I would never say anything, Chelsea. I won’t tell a soul, but I think it’s really great. I mean just think about all the…” As I continued to speak, Chelsea just turned her back to me and walked out of the kitchen in the middle of my sentence, which is something she does to me a lot, so I don’t take it personally, but what I was going to say was “just think of all the free high-end maternity clothes you are going to get!”
More important, Chelsea and I are roughly the same size. Well, her hips are smaller, but they wouldn’t be after she had a baby. My mind started wandering with thoughts of convincing my husband, Peter, to have just one more baby, based on the fact that I could get all of Chelsea’s hand-me-downs, both maternity and post-baby wardrobe. Once her hips expanded a little I’d be able to fit into all her designer dresses and not just her tops. Also, Chelsea’s shoe size is eight and a half, and mine is nine, but many women’s feet grow when they get pregnant and never go back to their original size, so I could benefit on that end, too! I left the kitchen shaking. I was actually more excited about the new office baby than I was about my delicious toasted cheese and jalapeño scooped-out bagel.
When I returned to my desk, I looked over at Fortune Feimster, my lesbian/officemate. I was just dying to tell her my juicy secret. She loves babies almost as much as I do, but I refrained, and instead went to my keyboard and typed in “Pea in a Pod” in the search engine. I started browsing all the new maternity clothes, which were so much more flattering than when I was pregnant three years earlier and cuter than ever. If it took a few months for me to get pregnant, my baby would be six months behind Chelsea’s, and if, God willing, they were the same sex, could you imagine the baby’s duds I’d get from her? Chelsea is obsessed with morbidly obese babies; she’d be overfeeding hers like crazy, so the little fat ass would probably wear each onesie only once, maybe twice, before my normal-proportioned baby got it.
That night, before Peter had even poured my first glass of buttery chardonnay, I told him about Chelsea’s pregnancy. He interrupted me with a “Will you just calm down? First of all, we’re not going to have another baby just because Chelsea is having one, and she has said a million times she doesn’t want kids, so she’ll probably abort.”
“Peter! Shhh!” I hissed as I looked around to see if either of our boys was within earshot. “Don’t talk like that.” Then I got back on track. “She just has to get used to the idea of how cute the maternity clothes can be. Maybe E! will build a daycare center in our building. Ted would do anything for Chelsea. That would be so convenient.”
I imagined being able to use the carpool lane on the 405 Freeway every day from the Valley to the Westside legally. I currently keep a toddler dummy in my youngest’s car seat, and if I’m really running late I’ll actually take one of the children with me and have Peter pick him up later. With a real infant, I wouldn’t have to constantly be looking in my rearview window for a cop while planning my excuse. I know if I got pulled over, I would ask the cop if his girlfriend, wife, or boyfriend was a Chelsea Lately fan, and God willing, they would be, in which case I would offer up Chuy popping out of a cake for their next birthday party in exchange for being let off.
The following few days I was so distracted thinking about Chelsea’s and my pregnancies. This could be the glue that would hold us together for life. There was no way she would have more than one kid. She wouldn’t let a mistake like this happen to her again, so her child would need a friend who understood the trials and tribulations of having a parent in show business. My older son already has two best friends who are both only children. Their parents invite us to USC games and to s
tay at their ski house and lake cabin, all to appease their lonely only child. When Chelsea’s kid got to be about three or four, it would need a friend to go to the Bahamas with, and there was no way Chelsea was going to deny her child his or her best friend. Chelsea would spoil this kid rotten (see Chunk). So guess who would get to go on private jets to Atlantis, Cabo, and Aspen? That’s right, me and my cute family of then six. Sorry, single Sarah Colonna. Enjoy your time now, because it is not going to last forever, and neither will your eggs—or, rather, your one egg by the time you read this.
On Wednesday, after we finished taping, Chelsea was walking down the hall outside the writers’ offices yelling, “Who wants to go to Katsuya tonight?”
Chris Franjola rolled his chair out from his cube and shouted, “I’m free, Chelsea.”
“Yes, I want to go,” yelled Sarah Colonna.
“I wouldn’t mind a little tuna tartare,” stated Steve Marmalstein.
I love Katsuya. It’s a super chic sushi spot close to the office. My kids can wait another hour to see me tonight, I thought as I yelled down the hall after Chelsea, “I can go, too!” Then it hit me. Chelsea was pregnant, so she couldn’t eat sushi. The mercury in the fish is said to cause autism. You would think Chelsea would have known this, since she was good friends with Jenny McCarthy. Good thing I was going, so I could remind her to order some chicken teriyaki.
At the restaurant, before we’d even slid into our booth, Chelsea asked the waiter, “May I have a Belvedere on the rocks with just a splash of soda and a wedge of lemon please?”
“Chelsea, you can’t drink. The baby’s head will come out a quarter of the size it is supposed to,” I whispered as we continued to scoot down the bench farther into the booth.