I Like You Just the Way I Am (15 page)

When the article ran, Baz and I were broken up on good terms. Out of respect for Jason, we stayed out of each other’s lives, save for the occasional text when either of us had work news or access to a killer sample sale. I assumed she’d read my story the way I naïvely assumed the entire world read my story. Also, because I texted her when it went up. She responded, saying that she would check it out and that she hoped I’d changed her name.

It only occurred to me later that she never followed up with me. I attributed it to her being busy and/or intimidated by my incredible gift for writing, and that she shrugged the whole thing off.

Ten months later, I was forced to infer that Baz
had
read the post. Also that she chose not to write back because she decided she fucking hated me.

*   *   *

Everything I know about
developing healthy relationships with other women I learned from my mother, which may be why I thought it was a “fun” idea to write an article about Baz with absolutely no permission whatsoever—like a girly bonding thing. I was wrong. I told my mom as much when she came to L.A. to visit me with her husband, John.

“Mom,” I said. “You’re the reason I can’t have normal relationships with women.”

“No, I’m not!” she responded, giggling. “It’s because we’re so hot and all other women are jealous.” Moms really do know how to put things in perspective.

After years of short-lived romances with weird guys she easily talked into piercing their ear cartilage, my mom finally found a guy she could live with without mentally castrating. She and her husband, John, made it to their eight-year wedding anniversary and drove up from San Diego for the weekend to flaunt their success. As a little midday treat, I thought it’d be fun to take them for mani-pedis. After breakfast, I offered up the plan, praying my mom wasn’t going to embarrass me by still being in her weird toe ring phase. John agreed to join but was only willing to get a manicure with “no buffing and absolutely no clear polish.”

Around noon, we jumped in my car and drove to my favorite nail spot on Beverly Boulevard, Hand Jobs. It being my favorite nail spot has little to do with how well the girls do nails and more to do with the fact that it’s situated next door to the best coffeehouse in the city. The salon owner, a crazy Korean lady named Linda, is a total starfucker who speaks to me only when I’m with Jason. Of course, she doesn’t actually call him Jason. Simply, “Amewica Piee!” I once caught her Googling images of him in the waxing room while chanting under her breath, “Amerwica Piee, Amerwica Piee,” like she was about to have an orgasm. The store is covered in framed posters of ’80s French manicured acrylics holding roses, and the bathroom always has an open Tupperware container half-filled with banana leaves and minced meat sitting near the sink.

The easiest route from my house to the nail salon takes me straight past Baz’s apartment. And to be honest, even if it weren’t the easiest route, I probably would have driven by anyway, because I had tourists with me and Baz’s place was on my “Jenny’s Legends of Hollywood” tour. It’d been almost a year since I saw Baz face-to-face, and I hadn’t thought much about her in as long a time. (Except for a couple months earlier when I wrote that essay about hiding in a trunk to meet her. And, of course, when I’m taking anyone on my “Jenny’s Legends of Hollywood” tour.)

As we drove down the hill at a cool 10 mph, I motioned to my left, pointing out Baz’s top-floor unit. My mom rolled down her window, trying to get a better look. Then, almost like the Jaws on the Universal Studios Tour, Baz appeared on the opposite corner, walking her dog.

“Oh my God! That was Baz! Did you just see her?” I craned my neck to get another glimpse.

“I saw her,” John said.

“Where? I was looking at the apartment.” My mom spun around in her seat like she’d just missed a humpback whale breach.

“Should I go around the block?”

“No,” John answered before my mom could say yes.

“You’re right. We can’t get greedy. That was an amazing sighting, and I have to tell you guys, it rarely happens for first-timers like yourselves. Consider it an anniversary mitzvah.”

“It didn’t happen for me,” my mom pouted.

“I’ll buy you an iced coffee,” John teased.

As we pulled up to the salon, even from the outside, Hand Jobs looked packed. Linda stood at the entrance and squinted at me like she’d never seen me before in her life.

“Hi, Linda! Remember me? Jenny? Three manicures and two pedicures, please.”

Linda pretended not to speak English and motioned for us to sit down. After fifteen minutes, my mom and I were seated in the giant pedicure chairs that Linda was too cheap to fix the massage features on, while John went next door for coffee.

“Two iced coffees, black!” I called out to him, vacillating between two equally cyanotic shades of OPI.

Just as I relaxed into my seat, my phone rang. It was Jason. I was excited to share the news.

“Hey, baby! Guess who we just saw walking her dog on the way here? Baz! Can you believe it?! I told my mom it was like seeing Moby Dick. I honestly haven’t seen her in forever! How wild is that? And, baby? She has a short butch haircut again.”

Jason was boarding a plane for New York, so he cut me off and told me he’d call when he landed. I told him I loved him, to have a safe flight, and that I couldn’t believe he and Baz ever dated.

My mom snuck off to the bathroom, no doubt to remove her toe jewelry before I gave her shit. As she scampered past, I glanced over at the door to see if John was back with the coffees. Standing in his place, however, was someone else. Someone who upon second glance looked a lot like Baz.

“Baaaaz!”
Linda cried out, like she was being reunited with her mother, whose visa finally came through.

My mind melted into the hot water soaking my feet, and for a moment I was unable to speak.

It took a few seconds for Baz to notice me, but when she did, I preemptively blurted out a loving hello. Baz looked at me like I was Hitler raping a baby.

She paused before grunting, “Hi.”

Linda walked Baz over to the pedicure chair directly across from me, where apparently
her mom
was waiting for her. Baz and her mother were getting pedicures directly across from me and my mother, and I didn’t even stalk them to arrange it! I felt like maybe I was being
Punk’d,
but Linda and I both knew I wasn’t famous enough for that. This was my karmic payback! And Baz’s mom just overheard my entire conversation with Jason about how her daughter looked like a butch.

Now Baz was implying with her gruff hello that we were no longer on good terms. I was shocked she wasn’t more excited to see me. Who wouldn’t be thrilled to be featured in an essay for Playboy.com? Aside from the omnifarious array of nubile implants belonging to women who aren’t old enough to have seen the original
90210,
it is possibly the classiest Web site there is. I felt confused, ashamed, and misunderstood. It was like I was Kelly Taylor in Season Two, made to feel it was her fault for almost getting raped because she wore a sexy costume to a Halloween party. Slightly traumatized, I tucked my face back into my cell phone and pretended to be busy.

When my mom returned, she was still talking about Baz. “Can’t believe John saw her and I didn’t! If she’s such a butch, why do you think Jason dated her for so long?”

I felt all the blood leave my face as I glanced at Baz, busted.

Speechless, I picked up my phone and texted my mom the situation. “You are never going to believe this but in a weird twist of karmic fate, Baz and her mom are sitting in the chairs across from us. The ones with the working massage features!”

My mom looked at me stunned, like Donna Martin’s mom when she found out Donna wasn’t going to graduate.

“They just put on their shades! I guess they think now we can’t see them,” my mom wrote back.

I looked up again and noticed that both women were now bedizened in giant black sunglasses that looked like they were from Nordstrom’s “Blind People” collection.

“The mom looks like she wants to kill you,” my mom wrote.

“Should I say something? Are the glasses a fashion statement or is the mother really blind?”

“I’m not above clocking a blind bitch if I have to,” she replied.

John walked back in with our iced coffees.

“Hey, girls! How’s it going? Neither of you are getting that fungus-green color, are you?”

I stared at my feet and hoped to god Baz’s toes weren’t green.

“Her toes are yellow,” my mom wrote. “But the color sort of reminds me of baby shit.”

“Everybody okay? Did I miss something? You guys didn’t drive back by that poor girl’s apartment while I was gone, did you?”

My mom whispered something under her breath, which I assume was, “Shut the fuck up, and I’ll explain later,” because within minutes, John decided he was no longer in the mood for a manicure and went outside for a walk.

Meanwhile, the two seething Lt. Comdr. Geordi La Forges were engaged in furious texting of their own. I racked my brain, trying to remember my essay word for word. Was it perhaps more offensive than I’d thought? Did she somehow misinterpret it as not being slightly tongue-in-cheek? Were there perhaps some other offenses I’d committed that I wasn’t even aware of? I didn’t understand what could have provoked such anger. The way I saw it, I’d been good to Baz. I secretly took her under my wing after my husband rejected her. I got her extra work on my assistant’s short film. (I didn’t know in advance that there was going to be nudity.) And I even sent flowers when she finally broke down and got her boobs done (hopefully not for the short film). Why was she being so mean to me?

Since she seemed engrossed in her phone, I thought the easiest way to reach out would be through text. So, from less than five feet away, I took a deep breath and shot her a message.

“Are you mad at me?”

Baz stared up at me like I was Emily Valentine just after she’d doused the West Beverly homecoming float in lighter fluid.

So I did what anyone in my situation would do … I sent another text.

“Hike Runyon this week?”

Still nothing.

“Do you have a new boyfriend yet?”

Baz grew angrier by the second and eventually shut her phone off.

Realizing she needed time, I very maturely opted out of my complimentary five-minute neck rub and got up to go. My mom also collected her things before sending me one last text.

“I’m gonna walk past them again so they can see how perky my ass is for my age. Meet you outside?”

I nodded and secretly paid both my tab and Baz’s before leaving.

When Baz and her mom didn’t call to thank me for the pedis, I realized it was really over. In an attempt to show my own shortcomings as a human, I’d accidentally humiliated her. She had hit her limit. She didn’t want to be the Andrea Zuckerman to my Brenda Walsh anymore. She didn’t want to
be
anything to me.

From her actions, it was clear that Baz wanted off
The Jenny Show
and I had no choice but to comply. So instead of something degrading and final, like scripting a scene where the character jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge holding the
American Pie
boxed set, I opted for the cleaner, more classic soap opera ending where she simply gets carted off to rehab holding the
American Pie
boxed set. You know, so she can come back for the reunion episode.

8.

Chicks Before Dicks

It took me years
to learn how to be friends with girls. And to be honest, I’m still not great at it. Not because I’m one of those whores who’s desperate for male attention, but more because I’ve always feared getting close to one of those whores who’s desperate for male attention. You know, the girl who if given the opportunity would fuck your husband right in front of you. And not like, fuck his brains out twenty years from now while your lifeless ashes sit in an urn on the living room mantel, more like accidentally fall on his penis after too much wine in a hot tub while you’re asleep (because she drugged you with Benadryl) on a bench next to them. There are just women you can trust and women you can’t. As a precaution, I’ve spent the majority of my life not trusting any of them.

I’m not saying that
all
women will stab you in the back over a man. Some will stab you in the back for other reasons. And to be honest, it’s not completely their fault. We live in a society that propagates the notion that a successful woman is hot; has perfect teeth and hair; loves giving blow jobs; drinks beer but doesn’t gain weight; has a boyfriend she isn’t sick of after two years of him not proposing; looks young enough to still get carded buying cigarettes; dresses like she works for Anna Wintour; and never looks like she’s trying as hard as she’s actually trying to be motherfucking perfect.

When you put unrealistic expectations on people, they inevitably fall short, start to feel inadequate, and try to fuck your husband. It’s just science, people! As a result, the female species is at odds with itself. Every woman is a threat in some way or another because we’ve bought in to the lie that love and approval are given to only a select few. But those few are never girls you actually know. They are the elusive women of the
Vanity Fair
“Fairground” section. They are the strangers you secretly follow on Instagram. And they are the bitches you hear telling Giuliana Rancic they never break out. This feeling of falling short makes people desperate. And when women are desperate, they get crazy. Again, science!

I’m just as much a competitive psycho cunt as the next girl. As an actress, or actr-ish, I’m jealous of everyone, regardless of gender or age. Sometimes parents will ask me how they go about getting their kids into acting, and my first thought is never,
Oh how cute!
It’s always,
Fuck your kid! I will fucking cut your kid! If they think they are just gonna waltz into a business that has bled my soul dry for over a decade and snag an
NCIS: Los Angeles
guest spot out from under me, they are gonna have to pry it out of my cold dead hands!
No way! No fucking way!