I'm the One That I Want (25 page)

Ah, love. We all hang so many hopes and dreams and expectations on it, like ornaments on the Christmas tree of dysfunction, with the shining star of inadequacy right on top.

In the midst of this disaster, we cleaned up a little, packed up and went back East. There were the snapshots taken of me and Marcel at his parents’ house in Florida. I am red and flushed from the heat and the booze. The pictures are stiff and he and I look fat and uncomfortable in them. That day I had gone with the family to the “whites only” country club his parents belonged to. Even though they themselves were not racist and were silently horrified by the club’s policy, it did not bother them enough to boycott it. They gave much money and time to this place, this anachronism, this relic of the antebellum South with apologies and tight smiles to me.

I Wanted to go there out of sheer curiosity and a punk rock hope of actually getting kicked out. Marcel wanted me to go but then fretted and fretted over what I was going to wear, making me change out of my T-shirt and shorts into a Lauren button-down oxford and J. Crew khakis which were dirty but acceptable to him anyway.

I could tell he was quietly nervous but didn’t know what to say or do. I didn’t want to play golf with him and his father and his father’s oncologist friend, so I stayed by the pool and swam laps in the hot rain. They didn’t kick me out, but there was something wrong. It was subtle, but loud as guns.

The mothers pulled their kids away from me, as if they feared I would steal them and teach them how to stir-fry their vegetables. I kept swimming in the pool to avoid them, staying underwater where my race was not as clearly defined. Then I thought even doing that would arouse comment
(They can hold their breath for a long time, on
account of they gotta go pearl divin’! See what I mean?).

I emerged starving and hoping that I could order a club sandwich from the cheery-cheeked staff that serviced the families around the pool area. They all avoided my gaze, bestowing sleazy, self-conscious smiles on every other person around the pool, everyone except me.

I was not imagining this. I could feel it.

There was an hour to go until Marcel would be back. I sat up stiffly in the pool chairs, miserably waiting, staring at the servers, daring them to look my way. They were even more efficient than usual, as if to taunt me with their efficiency, handing out menus, taking orders, lifting up huge round trays filled with steak fries and little hotel bottles of Diet Coke, asking all the whites if “everything was okay.”

I was indignant and ashamed. I kept thinking,
I am almost white. I
am just as good as white. I am off white.

I plotted a million revolutions and forms of revenge in my head. I thought of blasting the servers when I was on Letterman, in my couture dress and with my new movie project. I saw them cringe as they watched from their lumpy futons in their studio apartments with broken air conditioning in the middle of South Florida, ruefully recognizing me, confronting their own racism in the night, and the juxtaposition of my glorious media life and their damply innocuous, anonymous one. I saw me asking point blank for a menu, being refused, tossing the big, tan one, the girl with the heavy eyebrows who looked at me the least, into the Olympic-size pool, black satin bow tie and all. I was so wrapped up in my fantasies that I almost didn’t notice Marcel standing right in front of me. “Hey are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m starving. Let’s go.”

I should have just asked for a menu. I should have just acted like I belonged there. I should have just broken up with Marcel right on the spot. I didn’t do any of those things. I just kept my mouth shut, tried not to drink too much, held my breath until I got home.

When we had been there for several days already, I checked my messages at home. My video store had called informing me that I had not returned some tapes: “
Beaver Fever
is late. Please return it as soon as possible.”

Before we left, we rented some porno videos to keep me from passing out when we did it. Since we had different flights, because I was coming from work in another city, I asked Marcel to return the tapes. He failed to do so, so now my video store thought that I was unable to return tapes on time because I couldn’t stop masturbating.

I got off the phone and Marcel and his father were standing right there. I started to tell Marcel what happened, not saying what the video was, of course, and he got angry and said, “You can’t expect me to follow through on that shit. Don’t you know me by now? You cannot rely on me.”

His father joined in. “My son is totally incapable of doing anything for anybody else. That’s m’boy.” They laughed a good long laugh, and I fell irretrievably in hate.

As much as I hated him, I hated myself more. He didn’t really do anything wrong. He was just human, yet I couldn’t accept that.
How
dare he love me?
I thought.
Doesn’t he know how worthless I am?

I didn’t know how to get away from him. I didn’t know how to get close to him. I drank and ate to try to chemically erase his presence. When I was loaded and full, he just loomed larger, wanting to have sex with me.

He’d stopped drinking before, but he was back with a vengeance. Being sober had made him totally unhappy, so now he lived in utter pursuit of happiness.

When we got back home, we experimented with not drinking. One night, we decided to try to have sex without alcohol. I was terrified. I had never done it sober before in my life. He lay on top of me and a torrent of emotion swept over him, the usual stuff (“so in love . . . you are the one . . .”). I, on the other hand, got cold and stiff.
I cannot feel anything. I cannot love anything
went through my mind over and over. I tried to go to sleep and forget about sobriety. He ended up drinking.

We had a hellish cycle, drinking away our relationship troubles and emotional barriers, growing closer in the high, then waking up, hungover strangers. Most mornings he had to go do community service and would come home in the afternoons totally wrecked, angry and demoralized and wanting to get fucked up as soon as possible. We had decided that since the Hollywood Beautification Team’s HQ was just minutes from my house, that he should move in with me. These plans all sounded fine when we were drinking. It’s just that when I could come home after a hideous day of auditions, with pot smoke and loud alternative rock billowing out of the windows, to a man I hated who was pumping iron in my living room, it was almost too much to bear.

We didn’t get along, but he convinced me we did. He made me think that I had a fear of intimacy, when in reality I just hated his goddamn guts.

He’d tell me that I had a fat stomach and that I had to just deal with the reality of that, that my body image was distorted and that I was putting myself through hell because I had a fat stomach.

He told me angrily that he’d hoped I would gain twenty pounds, at first acting like it was a joke, but then really acknowledging it for the curse that it was.

He borrowed $500 and never paid me back.

Marcel, Marcel.

I put up with it because I didn’t think I deserved any better. Marcel was nicer to me than I was to myself.

Siobhan’s birthday party was where it all came crashing down. We had made a pact not to drink that day, and when we got there, he broke it. He was so insecure, feeling like he was being judged by all my famous friends, that he went right for the beer, getting louder and louder with each one and looking at me with silent guilt and defiance. I was so angry that I decided to keep my part of the bargain, just to spite him, just to show him I could do it and he couldn’t, just to be superior, even though I could feel the gears in my brain grinding together.

We had to stop the car on the way home because we were fighting so much. I half-heartedly accused him of flirting with my friend Jane at the party, and he overreacted, which made me madder because it convinced me that I was right.

In a rage, I bought two bottles of Patrón while the car was stopped. We got home and immediately drank one. Things got calmer for a few minutes.

Marcel wanted to get high and he couldn’t find his stash. After much searching, we finally found the plastic bag, empty on the floor. Poor little Ralph had eaten the pot!

Marcel chased Ralph all over the house, threatening him, asking him mockingly if he was high. The dog was so weak and frail anyway. I actually feared for his life. I started to scream at Marcel, and he acted like he was just kidding, told me not to get angry.

“Why—did you really think I was gonna do something? C’mon babe. What is happening to us? I’m not gonna hurt your dog. I was just kidding . . .”

But I didn’t think so.

Ralph hid from us as we drank the other bottle. We passed out on the bed not long after that.

In the morning, when we woke up, the bed was wet. It was not an uncommon occurrence, but this time, the stain was in the middle. We couldn’t figure out who wet the bed.

I thought, WHAT KIND OF FUCKED UP MÖTLEY CRÜE
BEHIND THE MUSIC
BULLSHIT IS THIS??!!!!

I was sick of myself. I was sick of living this way. I was sick of dying.

I realized I did not want to die.

I wanted to quit drinking.

Most of all, I wanted to get away from Marcel. Why was I doing this to myself? Why was I doing this to him? Why was my life such a mess? How am I going to get out of this one?

Marcel could see that I was serious about quitting. About getting sober. About living. He went into the kitchen and opened all the bottles of expensive wine and the rest of the Patrón, even the stale Sapphire gin and Pimm’s from Wimbledon parties of yore. He ceremoniously poured them all into the sink, and I cried as if my life was going down the drain.

I saw a new side to Marcel. He was so glad that I was getting clean that he did, too. He became my rock, my steady, what I relied on to get me through those tough, early nights.

The hangover of the last few years did not go away for a couple of days. What I noticed first, was that time seemed to go by much more slowly. Then, I learned how to fall asleep instead of pass out. I noticed that when I worked out, my sweat did not burn my eyes.

Early sobriety was wondrous, and the newfound purity made the constant battles with Marcel subside. We went to New York and walked the streets holding hands in the hot city night. I thought he’d saved me, and I hung onto him like a life preserver. It was all so romantic. Without alcohol he was a changed person, full of love, reason, and unlimited strength. He was handsomer, sexier, a better man.

I played Carolines and I found a renewed sense of enthusiasm in my work. Audiences found me funnier, more alive, happy. Sometimes I had drunk because I thought I hated my job. I realized then that I loved my job, and that being fucked up all the time made me hate it because I couldn’t do it properly. It was tiring though, and at Carolines, where multiple shows a night were the norm, my energy reserves were low.

On Saturday night, Marcel invited his many friends to the show, and had them all come backstage to meet me in the tiny dressing room. My throat hurt and I was exhausted, so when I had to entertain all his friends and be the gracious girlfriend between the 9 P.M. and midnight shows, I couldn’t help but be a bit reserved.

There were like ten people in the small dressing room, which was only about eight feet wide, and which also served as the staff locker area and restroom, not to mention a greenroom for the other comics. None of his friends would leave, and Marcel kept making me talk to them, when I wanted to just kick everybody out and break the mirror and slit my wrists with the shards of broken glass.

Marcel could see that I was annoyed and didn’t know how to deal with it. To make him feel guilty, I tried to appear as exhausted as I could. I think that I have the same ability as some reptiles to change their skin color to fade into their surroundings, but for me it is not as much to fit in as it is to manipulate others. I made big dark circles appear under my eyes. This made Marcel really mad, so he took all his friends and went drinking at a nearby bar.

“Well, since you are so tired, I guess we’re going to go have a
drink
.” The word hung in the air for a second, his secret way of getting back at me. I registered it, wanted a drink myself, decided I would be superior and above it, watched him leave the dressing room with all his comrades, and did the midnight show with a sore throat and a nagging feeling in my gut.

He came to pick me up after the last show smelling beery and remorseful, so I let it go.

When we got back to L.A., Marcel had decided to move back to New York, assuming that I would be coming shortly after. I couldn’t wait to be away from him so I could get out of the cycle of self-abuse, so I wouldn’t have to be around him anymore. Still, it never occurred to me to break up with him. Perhaps I was afraid that I would have to admit to being wrong about him. Afraid that all my wedding plans would go down the toilet. Afraid that I would have to tell all my friends that we weren’t getting married after being so convinced that we were. I’d also miss all the attention that couples who are presumably in love get. Everybody assumes that love is the most enviable state, because happy, young couples are the building blocks of families, which are the gateways to the future. People look at you with admiration. When talking to anyone I didn’t know very well, I’d mention Marcel—my fiancé—and they’d always stop the conversation momentarily to congratulate me. I’d see the faraway look that some women would get, the envy, delicious and cold. I was not so willing to give up that privilege, no matter how much it cost me. Everybody thought I was so lucky. I was sure that I would see it someday.