Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me, Page 3

  “You want me to do what?” I asked, incredulous.

  “You gave me that stupid vibrator for my birthday and I think I hurt myself. I need you to reach into your coslopus and see if you have the same injury. I’m telling you, I’m really worried.”

  “Why don’t you go to the gyno?” I asked.

  “You got me into this mess with that thing,” she not so calmly replied.

  Chelsea had been very good to me, so I couldn’t really say no to anything she asked. “Right now?” I asked.

  “Yes, right now!”

  “Okay. Just a sec. Let me put you on speaker.”

  And so I did. With Chelsea on the other end of the line, I pulled down my pants and started feeling around.

  “What exactly am I looking for?”

  “An injury. Some scraping, chafing, possible scabbing, and definitely something bulbous.”

  “Bulbous?” That sounded odd and certainly couldn’t be good.

  As I stood there, my foot on my desk, my hand inside myself with such intensity one would have thought I was spelunking, I sensed I had a responsibility to figure this one out. It was like a Nancy Drew mystery, but more awkward, and so gross.

  “No, no scraping, chafing, or scabbing,” I said, relieved.

  For a moment I was overwhelmed with guilt. What if my prank birthday gift had permanently maimed my friend? The one who had done so much for me? I felt horrible. Until I felt something. Something bulbous.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “What?” Chelsea asked.

  “I feel something bulbous.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Way up there.”

  “Then you need to go to the doctor and get to the bottom of things.”

  “I’m on it.”

  I hung up and immediately dialed my gynecologist. What the hell could be going on up there? Could excessive masturbating really do something like this? Cause a “bulbous” growth? Had I given Chelsea and myself self-diddle cancer?

  Later, as I lay there in the stirrups, my super hot gynecologist investigating the situation, the last thing on my mind was asking him for the fifth time if he was still married. Instead, I just rambled.

  “And I don’t know what could have happened. I mean, it just appeared out of nowhere. I’m not even having sex… with anybody. Am I dying?!”

  My super hot gynecologist emerged, doing his best to conceal a chuckle.

  “That’s your cervix.”

  “My what?”

  “Your cervix. You’re perfect.”

  Later that afternoon, when I met Chelsea to deliver the good news, she was laughing before I even sat down. That bitch had gotten me good. She knew what I’d find, that I would have no clue what it was, and that, in a panic, I’d race to my super hot gynecologist and make a fool out of myself.

  “I’ll bet you asked him again if he was still married.”

  I had asked him, but I wasn’t going to give her any more ammunition.

  It turns out Chelsea had gone to her gyno before calling me. And when she found herself in the same exact humiliating position of being told that what she was feeling was one of her internal accessories, she decided right there in those stirrups that it was the perfect opportunity to humiliate someone else. All she thought as the speculum was being removed was, “Who else can I make this happen to?” I wasn’t mad at her; how could I be? How often does someone convince you to give yourself a pap smear while they’re on speakerphone?!

  A short while later we found out our friend Rose was getting married. We were happy for her. What we were not happy with was that along with her engagement came her conversion to a born-again Christian who never missed an opportunity to pray for our lost souls, make us attend pre-wedding prayer circles, and host four different showers. That her wedding was going to be a monster became obvious when she invited us to be bridesmaids by presenting us with handmade papier-mâché greeting cards that carefully explained in calligraphy what our responsibilities were and how grateful to Jesus she was for us.

  “Who is this Jesus character?” Chelsea asked the group. I choked back a fry, shushing her. This Jesus stuff was serious to Rose, who was suddenly oblivious to the fact that Chelsea was and had always been Jewish.

  Rose explained that she was concerned about how she was going to pay for her lavish wedding.

  “Removing the word lavish might do the trick,” Chelsea suggested. “You could do something simple and still have it be really nice.”

  Rose quickly dismissed that idea. “Chelsea, people are expecting big things from me.”

  When Chelsea and I left, she pointed out that Rose was expecting people to think big things about her. Rose liked to be the center of attention, and while we loved her, it could get really annoying. Nonetheless, we accepted the honor and did our duties with smiles painted on our faces. We also decided that in order to help her out, we’d pay for her wedding dress accessories, and we informed her of this via a lovely note on a generic, store-bought greeting card.

  Chelsea said I had better penmanship, so I had to write it, but what we didn’t realize at the time was that I wasn’t good about reviewing my work for punctuation errors.

  Later in the week, we watched Rose try on wedding gown after wedding gown until she found “the one.” It was very pretty and very expensive, which was something we discovered when she turned to us as she was purchasing it.

  “Okay, so you don’t have to make the first payment for thirty days. Then you’ll just make subsequent payments every thirty days for the next six months.”

  We could literally hear the seamstress’s pins drop.

  “O… kay…” I mumbled in complete shock and disbelief, not knowing how to respond to this turn of events. Chelsea yanked me into a dressing room as Rose reviewed veil options, which were also part of our new budget.

  “What is she talking about?!”

  “I have no idea!” I shouted back as I removed her vise-like grip from my forearm.

  “It’s obviously something you wrote, because I don’t recall telling her I had an extra three grand lying around to pay for her dress! We’re waitresses! What is she thinking?!”

  “I don’t—”

  “You need to fix this. You need to say something.”

  “Me?! Why? You’re the strong one! I’ll just cave and end up paying for the honeymoon, too!”

  “Well, I’m not going to do it, because I’ll make her cry, so you’re going to have to.”

  Contrary to what people might think, as much as Chelsea loves fucking with people, she has a big heart, one that prevents her from wanting ever to truly hurt someone’s feelings. And this was one of those situations.

  Later, after I spoke with her, Rose was hysterical as she reviewed the card for fifteen minutes. “See, right here.” She pointed to the minuscule black mark between the words dress and accessories. “There’s a comma after dress. I just don’t know how I could have misunderstood that. I’m so ashamed,” she wailed.

  I couldn’t take it. “Chelsea wrote the card!” I bellowed, at that point not wanting to be the bad guy.

  Chelsea was not pleased with me for selling her down the river, not so much because I was inept, but because Rose made her attend extra prayer circles to pray for better lines of communication in their relationship. I should have known it would be but a matter of time before I had to do my penance.

  A few days before the wedding, Rose announced that she had a surprise.

  “You’re pregnant!” Chelsea exclaimed.

  “No, that’s not something Jesus would approve of,” Rose replied.

  “I can assure you that if there is indeed a Jesus, he’s not up in heaven strategizing about your wedding,” Chelsea commented. I didn’t have a fry this time, so I laughed into a pillow.

  Rose put in a CD, then ceremoniously stood and announced to me, Chelsea, and the other two bridesmaids, Shannon and Theresa, that she was going to perform an acoust
ic version of Shania Twain’s “From This Moment On” at her reception.

  Three of the bridesmaids’ responses were: “That’s great,” “Good for you,” and “How romantic!” Chelsea’s response was to walk straight out of the room. Rose couldn’t sing. “Tone deaf” would have been a compliment. Nonetheless, we listened as she rehearsed, secretly wondering how she could be so oblivious to the fact that she was going to make a complete ass out of herself at her own wedding.

  One night, after another of Rose’s mandated dress rehearsals, I was in the restroom trying to figure out how to balance on my head the flower wreath she’d chosen for each of us when Chelsea popped in.

  “We have a situation,” she said, throwing her wreath into the sink.

  “Did Rose find Jesus again?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is it?” I asked.

  “You know how she can’t hit the high notes—or any other notes, for that matter? Well, she doesn’t want to embarrass herself, so she wants someone to perform with her.”

  “Shut up!” I said, not buying it.

  “It’s true,” Shannon added, her flower wreath dangling by a bobby pin. “She was in tears.”

  “We took a vote, and you have the best singing voice, so you have to step up,” Chelsea explained.

  “You think I can sing? I never really thought I could.”

  “Yes, you can, especially in the upper registers!”

  “I don’t know,” I said as I thought about it. I wanted to help out Rose, but I was terrified of speaking in public, much less singing.

  “Why didn’t she ask me herself?” I asked, suspicious.

  “Because it just came up and it’s almost her wedding day. She has a lot on her plate! Are you going to help out your friend or not?” she snapped, irritated.

  “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  “Good decision. As soon as she starts the song, you’re supposed to enter from the hallway,” Chelsea instructed. “She wants you to really belt it out, especially the high notes. Don’t worry, you’re going to be great,” she said as she slapped a CD into my hand. “Now, you’d better get rehearsing. You don’t want to screw up her day.”

  When the blessed day arrived, the ceremony was long but lovely, and included several references to Chelsea’s friend Jesus.

  “Who’s Jes—”

  I elbowed Chelsea in the ribs, while trying not to laugh in front of two hundred spectators.

  By the time the reception was in full swing and the moment of the performance upon me, I felt prepared. I’d spent every spare moment learning the lyrics and making sure I’d gotten the melody right. Chelsea had even taken me to a karaoke bar to practice, so I felt confident I was going to be an asset to the team—until Rose began singing and I walked out onto the floor behind her, belting out the song. I couldn’t tell which one of us sounded like a dying hyena, but I was starting to suspect it was me.

  That’s when I saw Chelsea, Shannon, and Theresa lose their shit. They separated from each other and split off into opposite corners of the room. I locked eyes on Chelsea, who was beet red and laughing so hard she was shaking the ficus she was attempting to use as cover. Was this a setup? Was I even supposed to be out there? I got my answer when Rose turned to me with a confused, deer-in-the-headlights look.

  Leaving the floor at that moment would have embarrassed everyone, so I kept singing, trying as hard as I could to make it look like this was all part of the plan, and so did Rose, who wasn’t about to let anyone think things had gone awry on her big day.

  Later, after Rose saw her wedding video and realized what an awful singer she was, she thanked Chelsea for having me take one for the team. Chelsea told her she should probably thank Jesus instead, because she didn’t intend to save Rose from anything. Her sole purpose was to get back at me for the whole dress/punctuation mark fiasco, which she did, because I couldn’t hit the high notes either.

  Chelsea, Shannon, and me at the ceremony, moments before I sang onstage.

  Several years later, Chelsea had successfully climbed to the top of her career. I was still doing the old climb and slide, did not have my shit together, and was kind of depressed. Chelsea suggested a night on the town to shake things up.

  We were at a bar and she had just gone to the restroom when some ancillary friend of a friend, Chuck (a drug dealer), announced that he had Ecstasy. I had never done it, but when I saw how excited some other people got about this news, I knew I wanted to.

  “What does it do? What does it feel like?” I asked.

  “You lose your inhibitions and are just happy,” Chuck suggested.

  “I’m in!” I exclaimed. Chuck handed me a little blue pill, which I immediately popped in my mouth.

  “You should probably take a couple more, since it’s your first time,” Chuck said, grinning lasciviously. So I did. Why wouldn’t I trust a drug dealer?

  Chelsea returned to the group just as the happy pills were starting to kick in. I began smiling and petting her like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, so she immediately knew something was amiss.

  “You did what?!” she asked in a tone more protective than pissed, illustrated by the smack in the forehead she gave Chuck for giving me a tab of E. “Stephanie, you can’t handle Ecstasy.”

  “I need this, Chelsea. I need to, you know, be happy for a minute. I’m not like you. I wasn’t raised a Jew in a big city in New Jersey with things actually happening for her. I’m a guilty Catholic from a freak-ass small town in Wisconsin who needs something to happen for her. Please don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad,” she replied, then smacked me in the forehead when I told her I’d taken three. “Just stay with me,” she commanded. “Do not leave my side, and do not kiss me on the mouth.”

  “You got it,” I promised, then kissed her cheek, told her how much I loved her, and danced off into the middle of the crowd.

  I was transported into a world where I didn’t care about anything other than smiling, laughing, dancing, drinking orange juice, and telling my friends and random strangers how much I loved them. The happy pills were like fairy dust, their magical components capable of taking every dark thought I had and shooting them over rainbows. That was my perspective.

  While I was busy being enamored of all things breathing, and imagining a world made of unicorns and gumdrops, Chelsea was being a solid Marine who wouldn’t leave a man behind. Later, at nine the next morning, she broke into Chuck’s apartment through the kitchen window and dragged me out. After we got to her place, she sat me down and played a video she had taken when we were all at Chuck’s apartment. She had left me there for the night when it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere that didn’t involve penis, but made sure to be there bright and early the next morning.

  “This is what you did last night. Are you proud of yourself?” she queried, then continued when I found I couldn’t speak. “Under no circumstances is it okay to do naked cartwheels in front of anyone,” she firmly stated. “I don’t care how much Ecstasy you took. And Chuck? Really? He has the complexion of a rhinoceros’s ass.”

  “But I had fun, right?” I asked.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “It sort of is—”

  “Look at yourself. You look like you belong in a women’s shelter.”

  She directed me to the full mirror in her bedroom, which was covered with Post-its filled with obscure words she’d copied from the dictionary in an attempt to expand her vocabulary. Damn, that girl was always trying to better herself. Between gelid and myocardial infarction, I saw myself.

  “Oh, my God!” I shouted. Apparently sometime before or after participating in my own rendition of Cirque du Offensive, I had slept with Chuck, who did have the skin of a rhino’s ass, which had apparently been rubbed all over my body. All night.

  She shook her head, disgusted as she applied antibiotic ointment to the myriad wounds covering me.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Be sorry for yourself. If you were still in yo
ur twenties, maybe this would be acceptable.”

  I considered this as she put a Dora the Explorer Band-Aid on my chin, the only kind of Band-Aid Chelsea uses. “You’re right, CJ. Thanks.”

  “No problem, honey bunny. Now put on a bra. We’re going running.”

  “I was thinking maybe I’d journal or something.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave you alone with your thoughts right now.” She sized me up then grabbed two bras from a drawer and threw them at me. “Jesus, when did your boobs get so big?”

  As we ran that morning she grilled me about my career and love life, which were at that point both turning up big fat goose eggs. Even though she was doing what she always did, trying to cheer me up and help me pull my head out of my ass, it didn’t work. The downward spiral continued, with a lot of partying, which led to a general lack of productivity. Chelsea was unimpressed with my lack of progress reports and suggested one of her vacations, which anyone with a pulse would enjoy, to help get me out of my funk.

  “That sounds amazing!” I exclaimed, then proceeded to ask her who was bringing the drugs, specifically the Ecstasy.

  “Really, Stephanie? After everything we talked about?”

  “It’s vacation! Come on, people are going to love it!”

  Chelsea stared at me for a moment then let out one of those guttural sighs signifying supreme annoyance. She said, “I’ll take care of it,” and walked away.

  On the day we were leaving, as I was about to enter the Santa Monica hangar where Chelsea had chartered the flight, she approached me with a very delicate matter.

  “What are you saying? You want me to be your drug mule or something?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she calmly replied.

  “But I thought you said you—”

  “If you want them, bring them.”

  “I’m willing to do that,” I quickly responded.

  “Here’s a bunch. Now stick ’em up in there,” she said, handing me a Ziploc bag filled with little blue pills and directing me toward the women’s room.

  “Wait, what if I get caught?”