Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered

by Karen Kilgariff

  This lie worked, too, but I think it had more to do with the dude wanting to see my teenaged boob than with me being a cunning and believable liar or looking anywhere close to eighteen.

  I got my nipple pierced, it hurt like a motherfucker, and then I drove home, giddy and exhausted. My best friend snapped this photo when I got to her house to tell her the story and show off my new jewelry.

  Two weeks later, I got a package in the mail. Getting a package in the mail when you’re sixteen is already the fucking best, but when I realized the sender was none other than Ray Bradbury, I nearly lost my mind. Inside the small box was a sweet note thanking me for my letter along with a copy of his book Zen in the Art of Writing, which he’d autographed and inscribed with what immediately became my favorite word and remains so to this day: Onward!

  There’s a great line from the book, which I also read and reread and still go back and read from time to time:

  You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

  —RAY FUCKING BRADBURY, Zen in the Art of Writing

  Since I’d first started reading his books, I had a secret wish to be a writer someday, which I told him in my letter. It wasn’t something I, in my infinite lack of self-esteem, was sure I was smart enough to achieve, but here was a book about writing written by the master, inscribed with permission to move forward in this direction. I’ve been told it’s basically the same as a degree in English. To be fair, I told me that. In the mirror. But I’m still banking on it being true.

  I’m so relieved that my English teacher who thought I’d like The Martian Chronicles was right, instead of the nurse who insisted I’d be back in rehab.

  And I’m so thankful to Ray Bradbury for giving the sweet baby angel that I was a reason to believe her life could be more. And it is. It’s even better than I could have imagined.

  We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

  —RAY BRADBURY

  Sweet Baby Angel: Final Thoughts

  GEORGIA: Do you think there’s a sweet baby angel inside everyone?

  KAREN: Yes, it’s tucked up inside of your gastrointestinal system, right near the gallbladder.

  GEORGIA: Do you think you’re a sweet baby angel?

  KAREN: Now I’m mad at you.

  GEORGIA: Who’s the biggest sweet baby angel that you know?

  KAREN: Paul Giamatti.

  art by Rachel Ross

  3

  YOU’RE IN A CULT, CALL YOUR DAD

  GEORGIA: This is Karen’s quote based off my long-held belief that you should always have people in your life that will call you on your bullshit—like, for example, when you’ve joined a cult. But they’ll also then offer to help you get out of said cult, even if they think you were dumb for joining the cult to begin with. And likewise, you should be there for your friends and family when they make dumb mistakes.

  Karen on How to Not Drink the Kool-Aid Even When You’re Spiritually Parched

  Wanna know what it’s really like to live in Hollywood? OK, I’ll tell you. I think you deserve to know the truth.

  Most movies or TV shows set in LA start with the same five B-roll shots: Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the beach, Rodeo Drive, the Hollywood sign, and Channing Tatum waving from the red carpet. It’s sparkly and opulent and so alluring. You see it and you want it. Your dreams are just as valid as Channing Tatum’s, right? (Wrong, actually. That man is a powerhouse of talent and charm. Have you seen him in a cable-knit sweater? Holy shit, it’s a religious experience.) So you pack up your dreams and move here like a hip, arty Dorothy heading to a sexy version of Oz. But then you arrive to find it’s a five-hundred-square-mile parking lot filled with plastic surgery and parties you’re not invited to. Then you begin to realize pretty much everyone is some sort of model. And the air is brown. And the traffic is insane. And so, disillusion sets in almost immediately. You hustle and schmooze, only to find to your great shock that no one in Hollywood cares that you were voted “Most Theatrical” in high school. Meanwhile, you constantly hear stories about younger, hotter, and less talented people being given cool jobs and piles of money. You begin to wonder why you ever believed in yourself. You start to feel lost, desperate, hopeless. It’s the perfect environment for cult indoctrination.

  I’m saying you here, but obviously I mean me. That was how it felt when I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles at the ripe old age of twenty-four. I’d been living in the Bay Area for two years, trying to break into the stand-up scene and working at the Gap. It was a dark time that I filled with beer and burritos. About a year in, I became friends with the one and only Margaret Cho, who was living part-time in LA. She’d been really supportive and complimentary of my comedy from the day I met her. After about a year, she told me to send my tape to her agent. Her agent called me and said, “Move down here. I can get you work.” And so I did. That’s how I made big decisions back then. Does someone think I should do something? OK, I will. Does someone else think I shouldn’t do that same thing? Fuck them, I’ll do it twice. Wait, how do I feel about doing that thing? That’s neither here nor there. It’s what others think about what I’m doing that matters most. So even though I wasn’t thin or beautiful or trained or connected and even though I only believed in myself as much as whoever was standing in front of me believed in me, I went ahead and moved down to Hollywood, into a big apartment building on the corner of Franklin and Fuller Avenues. And soon I would learn that just 1.8 miles down Franklin Avenue was a huge, gothic mansion shrouded in trees and surrounded by iron gates. The sign on the front gate read, “The Celebrity Centre.”

  I became fascinated with Scientology after moving to LA. The church had been expanding rapidly, and everyone I met was freaking out about it. I didn’t know much about any of it, except for those ten-second commercials for Dianetics I’d seen on TV as a kid, but I’d assumed they were for some sort of bizarre science fiction thing. Turned out, I was right.

  I met people in LA who had stories about friends joining Scientology to help their careers and getting sucked in. They’d lost all of their money, they’d cut themselves off from everyone they knew. If they tried to leave, they were stalked or sued or slandered. Not exactly standard “church” stuff. It was so scary and dark and bizarre, I was positive I was going to join at any moment. It just seemed like something I would do.

  Because that’s the thing about cults: they make it real easy to join. They try to convince you they have the Answer. They try to appeal to your deepest needs. I mean, who doesn’t want to hang out in a place called the Celebrity Centre? It sounds like, if you could just get inside, Jack Nicholson would be there to greet you with a huge smile and a cigar. Welcome, you’ve made it in Hollywood. Your worries are over. Here’s the bad news: your worries are never over. They just keep coming. Eventually, you have to learn how to deal with them yourself. There is no one answer. It just isn’t simple.

  And anyone who tries to convince you otherwise has an agenda. Maybe I should’ve written that first (do we still have that projector?). EVERYONE HAS AN AGENDA. No matter who it is: your aunt, the government, raccoons. We’re all just out here in the world trying to get what we want. You are, too. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s also not permanent. You can change your agenda at any time. Just don’t let anyone convince you to put your agenda aside in place of theirs, even if they claim to have all the answers. Especially if they claim to have all the answers. Ugh. People who claim to have all the answers NEVER have ANY answers. Anyway, thanks for buying this advice book.

  When I first started going to my therapist, she’d sit there in her midcentury chair with her cup of tea listening to me ranting endlessly on her moss-green sofa about all the people I hated or who I was afraid hated me. I had so many problems with so many people. It made me feel like a monster.

  After about two months of listening to one story after another about betrayal and heartache, she asked, “Have I
ever told you the thing about your inner circle?”

  I took a breath, slightly irritated that my monologue was being interrupted. “No.”

  “How many close friends would you say you have?”

  “Ummm … like thirty? Or so?”

  She looked surprised. “Oh, no! No, that’s too many.”

  “Really?”

  She smiled, nodding. “Five.”

  “Five?” I recoiled.

  “I’m talking about real friends. Most people have one to five. Any more is too many. The inner circle needs to be small. You can still have all your acquaintances. They belong in the outer circle. You don’t go to them with important stuff because they don’t know you well enough. Then there’s the next circle in, casual friends. They’re closer than the outer group, but they’re not close enough to be inner. The inner circle are your best friends. The ones who will drive you to the airport. Those are the relationships you should be putting all of this energy into.”

  I stared at her, feeling that life truth resonate around the room.

  She smiled again. “That’s all the time we have.”

  To some people, that might all be obvious, but it blew my mind. I’d been operating under some weird leftover high school drive to be popular. Popularity is a numbers game. I never thought about the quality of those relationships at all. I was bringing inner-circle problems to people who were really in the outer circle, then complaining when it didn’t go well. This is where the idea of the clutch-five friend came from, it’s become one of my most valuable and useful beliefs.

  And that’s the thing about therapists—they never claim to have all the answers, but they actually do. And they’re being paid to not have an agenda. And to help you with your agenda. And to watch you cry. They’re the inner-circle model to help you recognize what inner-circle behavior should look like. Then it’s just about identifying your inner circle and bringing them in close.

  It’s no coincidence that one of the first things cults do is cut you off from your friends and family. That’s because we’re all more apt to accept nonsensical bullshit and terrible treatment if there’s no one standing next to us making the “you’ve gotta be kidding me” face. Don’t believe anyone who tells you the people who love you are bad for you. That’s a huge red flag. No one who wants the best for you wants you to have less human connection. That’s strictly villain shit right there.

  We’re all crazy and scared and searching. No one gets to use that against you. It’s not proof you’re broken, it’s proof you’re human. If you can get used to being wrong, saying you’re sorry, and staying open to possibilities, you won’t feel so panicked when things don’t go according to plan. And the less you panic, the less you’ll feel the need to find someone with the Answer. Figure out who you are, what you stand for, and who you love. Put them in your inner circle. Make sure they’re smart and strong and that they love you. Be a good friend to them so they stick by you. That way, when life gives you lemons and you lose your shit and join a cult, you’ll always have a “dad” you can call.

  There are tens of thousands of people living in Los Angeles who moved here because they thought they had what it takes to become famous actors. But only about nine people ever really do. So over time, this city has become densely populated with once-hot citizens critically wounded by their own broken dreams. It’s like a battlefield in the Civil War, I imagine. All these people desperately staggering around Hollywood with open psychic wounds, silently screaming for a medic.

  And they keep on trying for years on end, auditioning over and over, only to be told, “No, thanks,” or worse and, more commonly, nothing at all. That’s the ugliest part of the Hollywood system—when you don’t succeed, there’s no “Nice try; here’s what you could’ve done better.” You simply never hear back. Showbiz ghosts you. So you end up obsessing over every stupid role like it was your young lover taken on the battlefield before his time. Except no Ken Burns–narrated letter ever arrives telling you that you must go on living and how beautiful you looked in the morning light while a sad fiddle plays in the background. There is no bad news, only darker and darker shades of denial.

  It’s fun at first. You leave your audition actually believing you did such a good job that you will undoubtedly be cast as the surly cashier in the film What Women Want. They loved you. You nailed it. You tell several (twenty-two) friends that you essentially have the part. You tell them it’s essentially the best script you’ve ever read. You watch them burn with jealousy. You make a mental note that that kind of toxicity is bad for you. You start a list of people you need to cut out of your life after the red carpet premiere. You practice smiling and waving for said premiere. This goes on for roughly two days. All the while, you’re checking and rechecking your phone. Always nothing. On day three, your conviction begins to fade. You retitle that friendship cut list “People I May Have to Borrow Money From.” On day four, you begin blurting out, “No news is good news!” to anyone you see on the street. You decide it’s best to stay indoors so when the good news comes, you’ll be in familiar surroundings. You go home and wait by the window, pretending not to feel your hope slowly fizzle out. And then … day five hits. You wake up early, knowing whatever hope you had was internally manufactured and entirely ridiculous. You’re not getting that part. They did not love you at all. You feel pathetic and unsure of your own perception. You’re wounded and lost in the wilderness of Hollywood, your compass is cracked, and your self-esteem is developing a serious case of gangrene.

  Five years inside that cycle of hope and rejection renders you a quaking shell of your former self. This is why cults of every variety do so great down here. Fake sci-fi religions, plastic surgery, improv classes—there are all kinds of belief systems to escape into. This town has a snake oil salesman on every corner, promising to provide you with the one and only cure you’ll ever need. And you need a cure so bad that you’re willing to try just about anything.

  Here are the two most destructive ones I’ve joined:

  The Cult of Booze

  I devoted myself to this belief system as a teen, right when bottled wine coolers were getting popular, and I stayed in until I was twenty-seven. I LOVED drinking. I loved it like a first crush. I got all hot-faced and excited when I knew I was going to get to drink. Beer, wine coolers, random liquor shots from our parents’ liquor cabinet. It felt dangerous and glamorous and like it could make something happen. I held on to this erroneous belief until the day I was hospitalized with seizures. The doctor told me they were probably from alcohol withdrawal. I argued that I’d never stopped drinking. The doctor stared at me, bewildered. He asked how many drinks I had a night, on average. I did some quick math: I usually only drink after work ends, say from 10:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M., and I probably had four drinks an hour, which would mean I had twelve drinks a night on average, but that sounded like too many. I knew it’d be bad to tell him I was consistently putting up double digits, so I lied and said, “Eight.”

  He rolled his eyes. “No, not how many drinks a week, how many a night?”

  I tried to smile. “Eight.”

  The color drained from his face. “Eight? A night?! Good lord.”

  “But so does everybody else I know!” I whined.

  He wasn’t listening. He was busy writing mean, judgmental things about me and my social life in my chart. God, I hated that guy.

  The problem with my thinking was that even though all my friends did drink as much as I did none of them were in the hospital for grand mal seizures. Just me. All alone. Trying to explain my rad social life to this high and mighty pilgrim doctor. Oh, I’m sorry, Pa Ingalls! Are you scared of partying? Is that why you always got your homework done and became a doctor like a little bitch?

  In hindsight, I see that this mind-set was wrong. A dozen drinks a night is about nine too many. Three or four is right in the pocket for a good night out. Anything above that and you’re likely to come to an hour later in the middle of your starring role in the whisper/
scream/barf show.

  I know it can be fun, but also, you’re drunk, so how would you know? Eight beers in and what’s actually fun versus the interpretation of a brain drowning in liquor are hard to discern. And if you truly believe you need that many drinks a night to have fun, you are mishandling your needs. You definitely must have as much fun as you can in this life. But is making out with a mailbox actually fun? Yes, it might break federal law, which is a hoot. And lightly debasing yourself with a dusty inanimate object to make your friends laugh can be wonderful, sure. But is it mental-scrapbook-of-good-memories fun? Naw, baby. It’s just a royal-blue blur in the mental slideshow of “What the fuck did I do last night?” You need to get enough of those good, clean fun times going in your life so you have something to weigh that drunk fun against. It’s good to learn the difference and be honest about how your behavior makes you feel.

  Here’s an example:

  I have a beautiful, singular memory from my late twenties (post-drinking) of swimming in the ocean with my friends. It’s one of those memories I escape to when I’m sad or panicking, as it’s immediately relaxing and joyful. It’s just six of us, all out past the breakers, that Everclear song–style, treading water and talking and laughing and floating together under a summer sky. Everyone was overtly happy, and everyone looked great wet. I’d just lost a bunch of weight after I stopped drinking, so being in a bathing suit in public was a huge victory for me. Things finally felt like they were going to be OK. At one point, someone tried to put someone else on their shoulders while treading water and yelled, “Chicken fight!” We all laughed, but then another guy and his wife tried to do it, too. We started arguing about the pros and cons of having chicken fights in the middle of the ocean. I yelled that our being out there was dangerous enough, but as I said it, I realized it wasn’t true. I wasn’t scared one bit. There were so many of us together, I knew nothing could happen to us. As stupid as that might sound, for that one moment, it was actually true.