Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child (17 page)

“Shit, shortie,” Tony said. “What are we gonna do with a dead Tracy Morgan?”

A second later, the doors flew back open, and a shirt came flying out, just like in a cartoon, landing directly on Tracy’s back.

In moments like this—in intense situations
or
when you’re possibly on PCP—time slows down so much that you can see a hummingbird fart. I looked over to my mentor, who was dumbfounded. In all the time I had known Tony, I had never seen him nervous or fazed. But looking at him that night, with a near-dead
SNL
star at our feet, I could tell we were up shit creek. Was this how the world would know me, as the last person to get high with the famed
SNL
star? I’m sure they would do a toxicology report, find the PCP, and blame it on me, the hanger-on, the starfucker who was a bad influence on this vulnerable man. There laid my comedy career dead at my feet. I’d be like the stripper partying with Farley or that chick who killed Belushi.

Then, just like that, Tracy was on his feet. He took his shirt, snapped it clean, looked at us, and smiled.

“Now
that
is how you get out of paying a check.”

Crazy as a fucking fox, he walked east toward Broadway. “That’s how I know you didn’t smoke PCP,” Tony said. Tony joined Tracy, looking back at me. “You coming?”

I shook my head no, and smiled. “I’m heading back to my apartment.”

“You okay?” Tony asked before they disappeared.

“I’m fine,” I told him. I headed west toward home.

I walked home and passed the Comedy Cellar, praying to see someone hanging out outside who I could share this amazing story with, but no one was there. I made the rest of the walk home feeling oddly sober—not high at all, not even drunk, but happy.

In fourteen years of doing comedy, my path has crossed with countless comics, many of them repeatedly. But never again have I met Tracy Morgan. I’m sure he wouldn’t remember me at all. Guys like Tracy formed my constitution as a stand-up comedian, not the other way around, so really, why should he remember? Sometimes that’s how it’s meant to happen. Your paths begin in very different places, cross for one crazy moment, and then continue on.

10.

CP

I was twenty-seven years old and boarding a flight from LAX to JFK, returning home to New York. I was buzzed from drinking at the airport bar, and as all single young men do, I was hoping for a seat next to a drop-dead gorgeous model. Looking down at my ticket as I moved past first class, I quietly seethed as it occurred to me that all the models were probably behind me. I had an aisle seat, on the two-seat side of a 767, and my odds were as good now as a power hitter’s piss test.

Ahead I saw what could only be described as a hotter, more unique-looking Sarah Michelle Gellar. I quickly tried to do the math, simultaneously praying that the open seat next to hers was mine. As I got closer, I saw that—somehow, miraculously, like a hole in one—it was.

I slowly approached the row and put on my most casual voice as I murmured the obvious, “21B, 22B … This must be me!” I put my stuff in the overhead as I strategized my pimp game, but as I sat down next to her she jumped into conversation before I had the chance to start.

“I have my cat at my feet. I hope you don’t mind, or I can trade seats with someone else.” Truth be told, I am deathly allergic to cats, and had she been twenty pounds heavier, I would have gladly swapped her out. But she was so hot—the kind of hot where you don’t realize whether she has big tits until the second date. I told her how much I loved cats, how I couldn’t live without them, how I had no problem with her cat meowing two feet from me, shedding its poisonous fur onto me, for five hours. She beamed at how much we had in common. She rescued cats and this was her latest project. Her name is inconsequential (mostly because I’m now a married man, and I can’t remember any woman’s name but my wife’s; speaking of which: If you are reading this, honey, now would be a great time to stop), but what was important was that she grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, was obsessed with Guns N’ Roses, and within five minutes of meeting me, asked if I wanted to split a Xanax. I obliged, because I’m a gentleman and because the refusal of a casual drug offer is rude. We carried on the most seamless, carefree, hilarious conversation I’ve ever had on an airplane. Turns out, that’s what Xanax and wine will do, and we drank wine freely. I talked a lot about myself, which anyone who knows me can attest is fairly common. The trade-off was that halfway through the flight, she asked if she could take her cat out from under the seat and let it sit on her lap. I gently grinded my teeth as I forced out a yes. The idea of what I knew to be a poisonous animal sitting inches from me, staring its shock-filled eyes into mine, ran panic through my heart, but not enough to overwhelm the Xanax or the effects of her hotness, so I obliged, and it did sit on her lap—for about two minutes. Then it found a nice place to nestle in between us. Thankfully the bag of cocktails circulating through my system kept the inherent, obsessive itchiness of my allergies at bay, but as we landed I could feel myself giving in to the dander.

We taxied to the gate and said good-byes at our seats as my eyes began to swell. I darted up and grabbed my bag, but before I exited the plane and headed to the bathroom to give myself a sink scrub, I did something very out of the ordinary for me. I asked for her number. I’ve never been a guy who could make himself vulnerable like that. I grew up at a time when placing a phone call to a girl meant something, and that feeling will always stay with me. Asking for a girl’s number always seemed to come with a sly wink, as if you were saying, “I’d like to have sex with you. I understand there are some hoops I gotta jump through and this is one of them, but I’m willing and I’d like to start now.” It must have been the mix of highballs and drugs, but I took it a step further and told her I would like to get together tomorrow night for some more highballs and drugs.

She smiled and gave me her number, and I skipped to the bathroom to wash myself.

At baggage claim I saw her name on a placard held by a chauffeur and thought, “Wow, the mystery. I should have let her talk a little bit and learned more about her, as opposed to razzle-dazzling her with the B-Man pitch. Who is she? What does she do, other than rescue cats, eat pills, and drink? Or is that enough?”

I claimed my bags, got in a taxi, and, as I have done with every woman I have ever longed for, I dreamt of the life we would have together. One time I met, offended, then scared off River Phoenix’s sister while I was working at a Barnes and Noble in New York. I hadn’t recognized her when she walked up to the information desk, so I asked her where she was from. She told me Gainesville, and being from Florida, I lit up. She said her last name was Phoenix and I naturally asked if she knew that River Phoenix was also from Gainesville. She said, “Ahhh, no.” I said, in all seriousness, “The famous dead guy—you didn’t know he was from Gainesville? And you guys have the same last name!” She walked away, understandably upset. Some people might have seen the exchange as a sort of
BRIDGE OUT
sign. I saw it as an in. For days I talked about the possibilities we had as a couple. Because I was
real
.

The same tornado was starting all over again, only this time it was way more tangible. The girl from the airplane was all I talked about for the next twenty hours. She had explained on the plane that she had a friend in town and they had already made plans to have drinks in SoHo, but she would love for me to meet up with them. I convinced my two best friends, Huicho and Tony, to accompany me. I suspect they agreed only so they could have proof of how much I exaggerate every aspect of every detail of every story I ever tell. But as we walked into a crowded Mexican bar in SoHo, I saw Tony’s Cuban mouth drop.

“Holy shit, you weren’t kidding. She’s ten times hotter than Sarah Michelle Gellar.”

My buddy Huicho kept whispering to me as we got closer to the table. “Is she the hot one or the hotter one?”

“The hotter one,” I said confidently as we navigated our way through the crowded bar to the table she and her friends had held for us.

“I’d fuck her in front of my wife,” said Tony (who, coincidentally, is now divorced from said wife).

We sat down and proceeded to have a picturesque night of cocktails, laughs, and debauchery, as we stumbled our way from one place to the next along the uneven cobblestones of SoHo. We clung to each other in a big
St. Elmo’s Fire
–esque group, laughing, carousing, and cavorting. At the end of the night, she gave me a quick kiss and an odd little smirk, and slid into a cab with her two friends. As Tony, Huicho, and I walked back to the West Village, Tony revealed in a drunken stammer a detail he had coaxed from her friend.

“Fuckface. Your girl is a trust-fund kid. Old New York money that isn’t going anywhere.”

Huicho said, “I knew something was up when I went to shake her hand and she extended her left one out like royalty.”

I smiled to myself. I had hit the lottery: a hot trust-fund kid with hot friends, and she thought I was about as fascinating as I thought I was.

The next night we did the exact same thing. More friends, loud bars, and even more drinks. We ended up at my local watering hole, The Room, a dimly lit, two-room establishment that played great music and served strong beers. Huicho’s girlfriend, Alex, met up with us after a ridiculously long day on Wall Street, and she gave me the same approving grin as I introduced her to the group. She pulled me aside as the rest of them found a place to sit and asked, “Alright, what’s wrong with her?”

I laughed and felt a moment of pride as Alex and I walked to the bar to order drinks for the group. The night ended just the same as the previous—quick kiss, odd smirk, and into a cab. I walked home with Huicho and Alex, who spent the entire walk asking questions, doing what all girls do: trying to pick apart a pretty girl.

“Why did she extend her left hand when I met her?”

“She’s rich,” shouted Huicho into the empty sky. “Blue blood, that’s what they do.”

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Something seems odd about her to me.”

Huicho and I laughed off her questions as female cattiness and suspicion. As we walked home through the streets of the Village, I told them everything I felt for this chick I had known for three days. We all got home—I was living with the two of them at the time—and made our favorite late-night snack: a dozen poached eggs.

The next morning I was awoken by a very grim-looking Huicho, who said we needed to talk. “I think you need to go out on a sober date with your girl, during the day, in the light.”

“Why?”

He stood beside my bed. “Something is wrong … I’m not sure what it is but there is definitely something wrong with her.”

“Be more specific.”

“I just think you should go out on a date—sober—with her. In the sunlight. Get a good look at her.”

“Just tell me what you’re trying to say.” I was exhausted from his accusations.

“Nothing. I’m just saying you’re falling for this girl pretty hard, and you’ve only been around her black-out drunk.”

“Are you trying to say she’s a dude?”

“No, not at all. Definitely not a dude. I just walked home with you last night and the things you were saying about her were pretty big statements coming from you. I’ve known you since we were kids and I think, if you feel the way you say you’re feeling, you should have a sober date with her and see if you guys have anything in common other than the fact that you both like getting black-out drunk and stumbling around lower Manhattan.”

“Who the fuck goes out on sober dates?”

“You two should. Take her out Sunday, pick her up at her place, see where she lives, just you and her, and get to know her.”

“I know her, Huicho. I sat next to her on a plane for five hours.”

“Drunk and on Xanax. And if I know you, she didn’t talk at all.”

He knew me well. “Fine, I’ll call her now and see if she wants to go to brunch on Sunday.”

Which I did. I called her, and she was not only more than happy to hear from me but we talked on the phone for an hour like eighth graders. I worked that night and met up with her and some friends uptown at an Irish pub, and we literally didn’t move from our corner booth until closing time when we were too drunk to stand. We split ways, promising to see each other the next morning, but those plans seemed ridiculous to me. I had done my best detective work at the Irish bar: no Adam’s apple, big tits, a great smile. Her friends were real. She did admit that she had run away with one of the friends we were having drinks with, an equally hot girl, when they were young. But I had done the same in first grade. (Of course they’d hidden out in Brooklyn with some street kids, since she lived in New York City, and I had just stayed in my front yard tree for about an hour.) She partied a little with drugs in college—but who hadn’t?—and had made some bad decisions when it came to men, which I thought was playing to my favor, as I was asking her to continue that streak. Everything seemed on the up and up, and that is exactly how I explained it to Huicho as I left for my church-ass sober brunch date the next morning.

“Good, I’m glad you’re happy,” he said.

I walked out the door and headed uptown. I had a hard time figuring out what to wear to a brunch and opted for a pair of light khakis, flip-flops, and a plain T-shirt. It was summer in New York and Satan’s-taint hot. I remember because when she answered the door at her family’s house, the first thing I noticed was that she was wearing running shoes with a sundress. Running shoes, I thought. What an interesting choice. How far is this restaurant? Did she just get done running around town? Should I have worn running shoes? Maybe it was a Northeastern thing, like Londoners and their trainers. She asked me in to introduce me to her family, and that’s when I noticed it. A pronounced limp. Like a big dog who has gone on a long hike, or a grandmother getting up to make another cup of tea during a commercial break. The introductions to her dad, grandmother, and brother were a blur as I thought to myself, “Why is she limping?”