To: Chelsea
Subject: Re: Hey YOU!!!
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012
Hey there ya sexy beast!!! Answers: no you didn’t… yes we are… Absolutely..100 percent… I am driving outside of Atlanta… One hand on the wheel… and now, one hand on my Johnson! A recipe for highway disaster!!! I will email with all the horny details when I get situated.
(This was when I started blind-copying half the people on my e-mail list. “One hand on my Johnson” is by far the most compelling quote I’ve read since The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson by Thomas Jefferson.)
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject: <IMG-20120726-00096.jpg>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:34 p.m.
Here you go!
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject: <IMG-20120726-00096.jpg>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:32 a.m.
Phenomenal!!! Please more… I would return the favor except I just got out of a cold shower and my big Johnson is more like ’lil jack… I need to let “jack and the twins” warm up a bit… To be continued!! Love ya
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject: <IMG-20120726-00096.jpg>
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 1:59 pm
Are you fucking with me, Sargeant? Why won’t you send me a photo? What gives?
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject: <IMG-20120726-00096.jpg>
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 2:01 p.m.
I would never fuck with you!!! I have been on the road for 3 days… Expect photos by days end!!! Love ya
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject: <IMG-20120726-00096.jpg>
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 2:04 p.m.
If I don’t get those photos, the 17th is off the calendar.
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject: <IMG-20120726-00096.jpg>
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 4:13 p.m.
Your such a hard ass . . Thanks for yours… They left a lot for the imagination!!
The man I one day hope to marry.
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject: <IMG-20120726-00096.jpg>
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 4:20 p.m.
Sargeant—I deleted in my excitement. Pls resend
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject: <IMG-20120726-00096.jpg>
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2012 1:24 p.m.
Are you joking??? I deleted on my end too.… have to wait until the next shower this eve… I’ll hook you up!!! How’s everything going… what’s new in your world?? Was just down at “your house” here on the Island, wishin we were poolside!
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject:. . . . .so, you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling…
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 7:59 a.m.
Hey… what’s goin’ on… did you forget about me?? I sent you another pic. . . . . . . it’s very sad… miss ya
From: Chelsea
To: Sargeant
Subject:. . . . . so, you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling…
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 11:00 a.m.
Sorry. At the Olympics!
From: Sargeant
To: Chelsea
Subject:. . . . . so, you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling…
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 11:07 a.m.
Don’t forget those who admire you most!! Have fun
The next and last time I ran into Sargeant was at a Lakers game. I was with the same lover I had taken to see Neil Young, and again, courtesy of the Shmazoffs. Sargeant came to say hello, and I introduced said lover to him. “Timing is everything, Sargeant, and I think we may have missed our window. We were close, but not close enough.”
“I’m not someone who easily forgets, Chelsea.”
Shmirving leaned in and whispered to my boyfriend, “This is the kind of shit she stirs up when you’re not in the picture.” Then he turned to me in front of Sargeant and couldn’t get through his own joke without spitting bits of popcorn into my open mouth. “Where’s a kayak when you need one?”
CHAPTER 7
MOUNT A NEGRO
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
—Mark Twain
It’s never a good idea to travel to a city whose name you don’t have a full handle on. For one to think that a city was named purely after the idea of mounting Negroes, you’d have to be playing with the same deck of cards I am: short one ace, three queens, and the entire suit of clubs.
I know this may be hard for some people to believe, but I actually try not to be a bitch in public. One of the main issues I’ve come to face-to-face with is that I’ve always been publicly inappropriate, and have actually had to learn to dial it backward. I used to get away with it because no one knew who I was; now I’m only able to get away with murder on television, and then I have to try to keep it together when I’m in actual public.
I am extracognizant of looking people in the eye, being gracious when people recognize me or ask for a picture, and leaving very generous tips to anyone in the service industry even when the service I’m being rendered doesn’t require one. A lot of people don’t tip someone at a newsstand. I do. I do this so that this person tells five of his friends what a nice person I am, and those five people each tell another five people, and so on and so on.
I’m well aware of the game “Telephone” and how quickly word travels when a celebrity is a bitch. J.Lo isn’t considered a nightmare because she’s Puerto Rican; anyone who wears headscarves along with hoop earrings, and is constantly photographed on yachts in Miami without ever being seen wet, is what constitutes trouble.
On this particular day, I was in a fantastic mood. I had just spoken at the hand, foot, and mouth disease ceremony at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Shmandy Shmullock hated the idea of being honored and asked me if there was any way I could speak at the event and make the whole thing about me. I told her that wouldn’t be a problem.
Shmandy’s hands and feet would be firmly planted in the cement by noon, allowing me to make my 2 p.m. flight to Montenegro. I was meeting my then boyfriend for what he claimed was his “close” friend’s birthday party.
As stated previously, an eleven-hour journey would normally make my heart sing. The prospect of such a long, uninterrupted slumber is a savory image, but when I arrived at the airport to check in and handed the clerk my license, it didn’t take more than a look between the two of us to realize that what was required of me was not a license, but a passport. Whoopsie.
This is when I went into bullshit mode.
“A passport? For what? To travel to a third world country?”
“To travel to any country, Ms. Handler.”
“Really? When did this start?”
“Since airlines were created, Ms. Handler.”
“Would you mind not calling me Ms. Handler? I’m not in my eighties, and I resent the implication that I’ve never been proposed to.”
“Okay, Handler,” he replied. “You do realize your passport is actually necessary in order to land in another country. Even if I were to allow you to go through security here, which I will not, you will have to go through customs when you land, and they will send you right back on the next plane.”