Bad Habits (14 page)

I asked myself one simple question: “What do I want to do?”

And then the answer came. I wanted to be Wonder Woman. Not literally, of course (okay, maybe a little) … but I wanted to go to Hollywood and host, act, and do something big to help the world like Wonder Woman does.

I picked up the phone book and opened to “commercial agents.” (I still can’t believe Google didn’t exist then.) I landed on an ad for Faces International. It had a picture of a girl who looked like me and the caption said something like, “We take your face to Hollywood.” Since I had no idea where else to start, this sounded like a great idea.

I took the bus downtown and headed over to the agency. When I walked in, there were many hopeful Chicagoans sitting in the waiting room primping themselves with the hopes of being plucked out of their suburban lives and asked to move to Hollywood because of their cool face and specialness.

I watched a movie in the waiting room. It was a piece produced by Faces International. It went on to say that one of the last Chicagoans who came from Faces International went on to do a commercial. Then the movie showed a little boy saying, “Yummy!” in front of a bowl of cereal.

I felt like I was in good hands with Faces International. The office looked really professional, so I didn’t feel like I was going to be told I needed to sleep with the owner.

“Jenny McCarthy, you’re next,” said this very sleekly dressed woman.

I sat down next to the woman and she asked about my financial situation. I told her I was $20,000 in debt from college and needed direction on how to go to Hollywood and fulfill my dream.

She said that Faces International charged a fee to put your pictures in the magazine. If I couldn’t cover the fee, I wouldn’t be able to make it into the magazine’s next edition that was going to the top Hollywood casting offices.

“How much is it?” I asked.

“Well, we have to select you for a full page. But you can purchase a half page for $2,500.”

“What? I don’t have $2,500!”

“Well, I’ll put it this way. Think of how much it would cost you to go to Hollywood, plus the cost of getting your headshots done. Faces International will shoot your pictures for you and send them there, and in the meantime you can stay in Chicago.”

“But how am I supposed to come up with $2,500?”

“Do you have room on your credit card?”

“I don’t have a credit card.”

“Well, maybe it’s time to get one.”

Sadly, I left that bitch’s office in search of a credit card. She got to me.

She sold me on the dream and how commercial I looked.

I went to the grocery store and looked for a brochure from a credit card company. I filled one out and prayed to God they would have compassion on my $20,000 college tuition loan.

A few weeks later, my very first credit card came in the mail. It had a $5,000 limit. Credit card companies’ favorite people are the ones who are in debt because we can’t pay shit off quickly.

My parents had no idea they had just cosigned their credit to me, but I figured I would pay it off right away with my first job.

C
lick, click
.

I was at my first photo shoot with Faces International. Modeling wasn’t something I had ever tried to do, so needless to say, I stood there like I was having my mug shot taken. The photographer tried to get me to relax, but I was having a really hard time.

And then I remembered Ed McMahon. Around this time
Star Search
was on and there was a modeling competition in every show. I could picture the future sluts posing for their modeling round, so I began to imitate them.

“That’s it, Jenny,” said the photographer. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

I finished the day with a feeling of accomplishment. I felt like I was going to be doing this again.

When I showed the sleekly dressed woman from Faces International my pictures, she
oohed
and
aahed
. I thought my dream of helping my parents someday was about to become a reality.

The sleekly dressed woman said to me, “The owner of Faces International is here. Let’s go show him these photos. He’s going to be blown away.”

We walked down the hallway and entered an even fancier office with an Italian guy who looked like The Situation.

He took a look at my pics and said, “You really got it. We want to choose you for the full page.”

I jumped up and down screaming as if Ed McMahon had just told me that I got five stars.

Then he explained that for that full page I had to pay $5,000.

“Five thousand dollars will max out my credit card. I can’t.”

“You’ll get noticed faster with a full page. Trust me. You’ll be working in Hollywood in no time.”

I was at a crossroads.

I really had no other options at this point and needed to take a leap of faith. I held my breath and handed them my credit card. I prayed to God this was going to work.

When I got home, I watched my mom make dinner for everyone. I watched her cook four things on the stove at the same time. Her hair was disheveled. When I looked down at her feet, I realized that she had been wearing the same gym shoes for at least ten years. She always made sure the needs of her four girls were taken care of before her own. In this moment, watching my mom, I was filled with the most gratitude I had experienced in my life thus far. My heart filled with love and appreciation for this woman who busted her ass to take care of all of us.

As a teenager, I was embarrassed of those gym shoes that she wore; but looking at them in that moment made me want to put them in a shrine.

My mom deserved to be spoiled someday. She deserved really great shoes, and I hoped to God I would help her get them.

Two months later, I was checking the mailbox daily to see if the Faces International casting magazine had arrived. I couldn’t wait to see myself in print. I was even more excited to show my parents something good I did. Day after day I waited. Then one day my mom shouted, “Jen, something in the mail came from Faces International.”

I ran downstairs from my bedroom, skipping every third step to get there as fast as I could. I turned the corner like the Road Runner and my mom held out an envelope. I grabbed it and walked into the next room.

Once I was alone, I looked down at the envelope and was concerned. This was a normal, letter-size envelope—not a catalog.

I opened the envelope and pulled out a letter. “We are sorry to inform you that Faces International has gone bankrupt and there will be no catalog and no refunds. We apologize.”

I fell on the floor.

This couldn’t be happening. This was my one shot. I put everything into this. It was my leap of faith. I couldn’t believe I had been totally scammed. I felt so stupid. I had charged $5,000 on to my first credit card and had no way of paying it off. I also forged my parents as cosigners, so they would be held accountable if I couldn’t pay it. I felt like a lowlife piece of shit. I ran to my room and did my usual scream-cry into the pillow.

Do you want your milk in a bag?”

The Polish woman wearing a babushka just smiled at me and didn’t answer.

That was my signal.

I knew I had to pull out the single Polish sentence that I mastered while working at this mom-and-pop Polish grocery store. It was my one “ta-da!” that really added flair to my job description … or so I thought.

“
Chcesz mleka w torebce?
”

“
Tak!
”

I double-bagged the milk because I’m that kind of a person. “
Dziekuja
,” I said, which means “thank you” in Polish.

The woman hobbled out of the store and I was sad to see her go. That was the most excitement I had experienced in four hours. The workday was a slow one.

I plopped on my little stool by the register. I was so bored that I even ran out of daydreams. I would spend hours organizing all the inventory and lining up all the labels. I was like that crazy husband that Julia Roberts tried to escape from in
Sleeping with the Enemy
. Everything was pristine when I was there.

At the grocery, sometimes hours went by with no customers. My eyes would begin to drift down and look at the rack of dirty magazines that we sold. It always grossed me out when someone would buy one. I was such a bitch about it that I would throw the magazine at them instead of putting it in a bag.

But on this excruciatingly slow day, I thought I would take my usual casual peek inside one of the
Playboy
magazines. It was the classiest nudie we sold and didn’t show women spreading their legs enough to see their next egg. I looked inside it and thought,
Why couldn’t I do this?
The woman I saw in there looked happy as a Playmate and she didn’t have that slutty scowl like some other women in other magazines.

I imagined posing for the magazine, accepting my money, and then handing over the naughty little keepsake to my boyfriend, as if it were a personal gift made just for him. Then I envisioned his mother finding it in his bedroom, telling my mother, and then being disowned so quickly I snapped out of my little fantasy and put the magazine away.

I was making $3.75 an hour at the grocery. Paying my college debt off at this rate would take a lifetime. Figuring out a quick way to make cash was in the forefront of my mind daily.

I jumped off my stool, remembering that I hadn’t checked my lotto numbers for that week. I pulled out my quick pick and checked the numbers. I sat down to compare them and as I approached the last number, I started to scream. I won one hundred bucks.

Maybe this was a sign. Or a new career path: gambling. I put my ticket in the machine and collected $100.47.

I was alone in the store, so I did a happy dance behind the cash register. I was lost in the moment as I watched myself in the mirror trying to do my best moonwalk.

Then two scary-looking dudes walked in the store. I watched them go in the back and grab some liquor.

I had hoped that was all they wanted, but I had a feeling that something bad was about to happen.

Then the two men walked to the cash register and slammed down the case of beer. My hands started shaking as I fumbled to press the right buttons on the register.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of them pull out a gun.

“We’ll take everything you got in the register.”

My heart started beating out of my chest. I heard a voice in my head that said, “Just stay cool.”

I opened the cash register, emptied out everything, and handed it to them.

“You guys got a safe?” they asked.

“I don’t know. I’m just the cashier. We get only two customers a day, so I don’t think we would have one.”

Staring down the barrel of a gun forces your brain to quickly review everything you have and haven’t done in your life. Besides not wanting to die because I hadn’t accomplished anything yet, I knew that being Catholic and not confessing my sins, especially the big ones in college, meant that I was going to join Satan in Hell. I wasn’t about to let that happen.

Then one of the bad guys began to walk around the counter to where I was standing.

I began to shake. He walked in front of me to lift the cash drawer to see if there was any more money hiding there but there wasn’t.

The other bad guy started getting agitated. “Come on, man, let’s go.”

“All right, all right.”

The bad guy started walking away from me when he noticed my purse sitting behind the counter. He bent over and picked it up, and the men bolted out of the store.

I stood there in shock.

A customer walked in about a minute later, and all I could do was stand there frozen.

“What aisle are the canned tomatoes in?” she asked.

A tear ran down my cheek.

Words wouldn’t come out.

Now that the bad guys were gone, my thoughts didn’t consist of “I almost died.” They were more along the lines of “Those motherfuckers stole my winning lotto money!”

Once again, I scream-cried into my pillow at home. Nothing seemed to be going right. And to make matters worse, I smelled like Polish sausage.

I fell asleep that night with hopes of finding a way to get to Hollywood and make my parents proud.

C
lick! Click! Click!

The next morning, I had JoJo take Polaroid pictures of me next to the garage. We took almost fifty of them.

JoJo was really supportive of my determination to get into show business.

“You look really dumb standing next to the garage door. This is never going to work.”

“Well, I don’t know what else to do.”

“Who are you sending these to anyway?”

“I called the Better Business Bureau to get a list of legitimate agencies and I’m going to mail them out. I’m not getting scammed this time.”

“This is really bad. There’s chipped paint on the garage door right behind your head, and when you turn around, I can see your bathing suit is going right up your butt.”