Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child (18 page)

We left and walked around the block to her favorite restaurant, and the limp remained constant. We sat down at our table and I noticed her smirking at me, the same smirk I had gotten at the end of each night. But now it came all the time. The waiter gave us water—a smirk. I said the place was nice—a smirk. I asked her where the bathroom was—a smirk. My head started spinning: The limp, the smirk. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. She was eating only with her left hand. Cutting with her left hand, forking the food with her left hand, lifting her glass with her left hand. Everything with her left, the right hidden under the table. Curiosity was overwhelming good intention. I stopped the waiter and ordered a Bloody Mary, and that’s when she said it.

“Cerebral palsy.”

Apparently she had been born with cerebral palsy, though she was fairly high functioning, and she completely assumed I knew. How could I not?

She kept telling me about her life, but all I could think to myself was, what does this mean for me? Did this change anything? Did this make her less attractive to me, and if it did, what did that say about me? Was I a bad person for not noticing until now, and would I be a bad person if I let it affect my feelings for her? I drank four more Bloody Marys, finished the meal, smiled politely, and limped her home. I then hopped in a cab and headed back to my apartment.

As luck would have it, everyone was awaiting my arrival like it was Christmas morning. Tony, his wife, Huicho, Alex, and Huicho’s sister Val, all stopped talking as I walked in the door. I realized instantly they had been talking about me. I stood in the doorway of our living room and announced my findings.

“She has cerebral palsy!”

The women processed the information, nodding, while the guys laughed hysterically.

“How big of an alcoholic are you that you go on four dates with a chick and don’t even know she has cerebral palsy?” howled Tony.

“I think it shows how little he pays attention to anyone but himself,” Huicho said.

“So it’s over,” proclaimed Tony.

“Nope. I invited her to go to Scotland with me,” I said, shocking even the women in the room. They all knew that the next week I had to fly to Scotland to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with three other New York comics.

“I told her I was leaving in a week, and I’d be in Scotland for a month and it sounded a lot like ‘I just realized you have cerebral palsy so this is over,’ and I felt like a jerk, so I told her if she wanted she could come with me.”

The room sat in shock. “Is she?”

“Yup. She said she has always wanted to see Scotland. She goes back to L.A. tomorrow, and I’ll see her in two weeks in Scotland.”

I left the living room and walked into my room. I felt good. I was an okay-guy after all. Yes, I had a drinking problem. No, I didn’t pay attention to anyone but myself. But when push came to shove, I wasn’t about to let a nonprogressive disorder of the nervous system tell me who I did and didn’t like.

The next time we spoke was over the phone and this time I asked her to tell me more about herself.

“I’m a vegan, and you should know I have severe urges to firebomb Pink’s.”

“Pink’s, as in the hot-dog joint?” I said.

“Yeah, Pink’s, as in the purveyor of death, hatred, and all things meat. Have you been there?”

The answer to that question was yes. In light of the fact that she was considering a terrorist act against them, I decided to hold off on telling her that it was maybe the best hot dog I had ever had.

“I can’t even believe that anyone can enjoy meat,” she said. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Well, people have different likes and tastes.”

“Have you ever had veal?”

“I fucking love veal!”

I realized what had just come out of my mouth. The fact was, I liked veal so much that when I heard the mention of it, my Paleo instinct took over and I didn’t have time to edit.

“Are you serious?”

“Uhhh…”

“Do you know what they do to those babies?”

The truth was I didn’t even really know anything about veal. All I knew was that I’d had veal parmesan a couple times, it was on the short list of things I wanted to regularly put in my mouth, and just the mention of it made my mouth water. For the next thirty minutes she lectured me on the atrocities of veal raising, how they tether them in crates to restrict their movement, to make them more suitable for assholes like me, who joyously shove hate down their throats. At the end of the lecture she gave a mild apology. Then she started crying. Talk about the joys of sobriety! Things had been going much better when we talked about me, we drank, and when she didn’t have cerebral palsy. She apologized. I didn’t need the apology, but I took it. I told her I’d see her in Scotland.

I hung up the phone and told Huicho I needed to talk to him, so I offered to buy him dinner. Over a nice Italian meal I told him my conundrum.

“How do I get out of this? I’m sure she was spewing this crazy before but I never listened. The only thing I’ve heard her say in this past week is, ‘hot dogs are death, veal is murder, and I have cerebral palsy,’ which is night and day from ‘do you want to share drugs, you are fascinating, and I have a cat.’”

As with most male relationships, he did nothing more than say, basically, “I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision.” We drank together until it wasn’t bothering me.

The next day as I was packing for my trip, my cell phone rang.

“I may not be able to make it to Scotland,” she said.

I exhaled and began envisioning a great joyful swim to freedom. “The problem is that I rescue cats, and I have someone who is willing to watch all of them but one, my problem cat.”

“How many cats do you have?” I said meekly. I realized I had never told her I was deathly allergic.

“Right now, five.”

“Five cats. How awesome, and they all live in your house?”

“My apartment in L.A., yes. So, I’m just giving you the heads-up, I won’t know about Scotland until tomorrow.”

“Umm, okay, but that creates a little bit of a problem, because I’ll already be in Scotland. Do you want me to try and call you, or do you want to try and call me?”

“I’m not promising anything. Let’s play it by ear.”

That was good enough for me. I wrote it off as a problem averted, and that night I got on a Virgin Atlantic flight to Edinburgh and drank like a king. To this day I’ll never forget that takeoff into the night above Manhattan, soft and smooth on the top deck of a 747.

The next morning I sat in a flat, still drunk from my flight, sharing my exploits with Patrice O’Neal, one of the comics I was staying with. Patrice was older, larger, and blacker than me. He howled in laughter as I told him the story.

“You gotta talk about this shit on stage! You start dating a cripple and don’t even know about it ’cause you’re such a goddamn drunk? And then she is fucking crazy and you can’t dump her ’cause now you know she’s a cripple!”

I laughed it off. I knew Patrice well enough not to let on that it was bothering me. Patrice was an old-school bully who loved to watch people get uncomfortable. That coupled with the fact he was a genuine comic genius meant that if he wanted to, he could dismantle you like a puzzle, so not even you knew where your corners went. He liked me enough to let it slide, and that was the last I heard about it—until the next day when she knocked on our door.

My heart sank when I saw her at the door, tired, drunk, and with more bags than expected. I slowly walked her into our kitchen, where she met Patrice for the first time. The beautiful thing about Patrice was he didn’t accept bullshit. If you came to him with something ingenuine, he sensed it. He also relished playing the part you expected of a man like him—a six-foot, 400-pound black man with chipped front teeth, who scowled more than he smiled. I introduced the two of them and as Patrice extended his right hand and she reached out with her left, I could almost hear Bruce Buffer’s voice in my head:
Let’s get ready to rumble.

“What am I supposed to do what that shit, kneel and kiss it? What are you, a fucking queen?”

Patrice walked past her in a huff and went directly to the freezer. I immediately regretted having told him anything about her as I heard him pull out a pack of hot dogs.

“Bert, you want a hot dog?”

“No thanks, I’m good.”

“How about your girl? I can make chili dogs with some bacon bits, cheese. Mmmm. Sounds good, don’t it, Bert?”

I could see her eyes growing red with anger, and I grabbed her by the good arm and escorted her to the living room. There I introduced her to Rich Vos and Patrice’s girlfriend, who was from England and staying with us. I then walked her into my room, where I hid her from Patrice until showtime.

Around eight o’clock, we all hopped in a cab together and headed up to the Assembly Hall, where we were performing. Patrice said nothing, as his chick and mine were apparently hitting it off, both, coincidentally, wearing extremely sexy leather pants.

We sat in the back of the hall and watched as Rich Vos slurred his way through his set, followed by Lewis Schaffer. Just before it was my turn to take the stage, Patrice leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “Your girl looks hot in them pants.” I exhaled a deep breath, thinking the worst of the storm had passed. “Too bad you know there’s a baby leg in there.”

I took the stage and bombed. So did Patrice, which unbeknownst to me was about to make the remainder of the night absolutely unbearable.

We went downstairs to a bar all the comics from the festival frequented, and I noticed our two ladies were well past tipsy. Not fifteen seconds into sitting down, my chick made the mistake of mentioning how she had expected Patrice to be better on stage.

She didn’t hear it, but I definitely did: It sounded like the click of the land mine you just stepped on.

She continued talking about his set and where she thought he lost the audience. I could see a smile growing on Patrice’s face. It was as if someone had cut off a serial killer in traffic, and he was now following her home. She stopped for a second to take a sip of wine and Patrice began what I can only call the most perfect disassembling and reconstructing of a person’s insecurities and flaws, in the most casual and offhand manner, that I have ever seen. He was loaded with information I never thought he would use, because had I ever thought this would happen I would never have told him anything about her. But as it was, I had told him more than he needed, and he used it all. Phrases like “Upper East Side pussy” and “liberal ass limp” decorated his work. The evening ended with her screaming about him in my bedroom, which I’m almost sure he could hear.

The next night was worse, and the night after that no better. He had her number and he was going to continually pull it at his leisure. This made her crazy—and absolutely unbearable to be around. At one point I thought he was going to make her racist. She would get drunk and fight all night with Patrice, so much so that after a week I started to think she really wanted to fuck him. Then when Patrice didn’t feel like fighting anymore, she would come into my room and fight with me. It all culminated with her standing naked at the foot of my bed, shouting at the top of her lungs, “You are never gonna fuck me!” (Which I didn’t, as a matter of fact. We never even kissed the whole time we were in Scotland.)

Then God intervened. One morning, two weeks in, I got a phone call from my manager telling me three things: I got another TV development deal, I got a TV show on FX, and that I had to fly to L.A. immediately. The news couldn’t have come at a better time. Not only were great things happening for me in Hollywood, but I had a reason to leave this horrific reality show.

Patrice came out that morning as I was trying to arrange flights. He had a smile on his face as he told me that he had stuck his head into my room last night, as she stood naked in front of my bed (I had seen him). I smiled back and told him, “Well, she’s all yours.”

“What?”

“I just got a deal and a TV show. I have to fly back to L.A. tonight.”

Patrice spent the next hour and a half taking me apart over breakfast, which he made, slowly. He explained why my show wouldn’t succeed, why my deal wouldn’t make it, and why he felt bad for me as a comic. I half brushed it off and half took it to heart.

I’m not proud of what I did next but I stand by it: I left. I left her with Patrice and I left Patrice with her. They called a couple times—once while I was at a bar in Santa Monica and another time while I was looking at houses—both times still from Scotland, to bitch about one another. Patrice ended up kicking her out of the flat and she ended up backpacking through Europe. I started my TV show and didn’t hear from her once. But I felt bad about how everything had gone down. That’s what I do, I run away from problems.

Until one day I decided to make amends and reach out. I’d learned that I was going to be interviewing Slash of Guns N’ Roses, and to make up for being a complete and total dick, I told her she could come by the set. She jumped at the offer, and we talked on the phone for twenty minutes like nothing had ever happened. The next day she arrived, and I had a production assistant find her a front-row seat for the interview. Slash arrived shortly after. The supervising producer pulled me aside and asked, “You have booze in you greenroom, right?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Can we get Slash a drink?”

“Fuck yeah,” I said. Next thing you know, I’m pouring two glasses of brandy, one for Slash and one for me, as he’s telling me about how his chick had made him sleep on the couch the night before.

She was seated up front, on the floor with the crew, and she watched me do possibly the best interview of my life. I was a fan of Guns N’ Roses, too, and I asked Slash all the questions they had told me not to. That, coupled by the fact that we were drinking brandy out of coffee mugs, only tightened our bond.

Directly after the interview he looked at me, still on set, both of us still mic’d. “Hey, I have to fly to Europe in a few hours and I can’t go home. Any chance I can get another one of these?” he said, pointing to the brandy.

The crew stiffened as I took him back to my greenroom. I subtly motioned for her to follow us and as I did, I saw her body lighten with joy.