No One Asked for This

by Cazzie David

  He laughed, but I wasn’t amused.

  The first day filming was November 9, 2016, the day after the election. Like most of the country, I spent the night before wide awake, hysterically crying, and trying not to throw up from the surreal results. I arrived to set shaken and distressed, having gotten barely an hour of sleep. I looked around for other sobbing red faces, assuming that everyone was having the same reaction to our disturbing new reality as I was, but they must have had subtler crying faces. I met my bosses, who were chipper and seemed as if they hadn’t heard about the election results. They gave me a walkie-talkie and told me what my responsibilities would be: Guarding the street and informing everyone (by walkie) of my dad’s location. I would essentially be his security guard.

  I stood blocking the street for two hours, crying as I paced back and forth, thinking about the fear of so much of the population and all of the things that would now happen with Trump as president. When my first shift was up, I ran into Jeff Garlin, who immediately noticed my puffy, red face. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked me directly in the eye.

  “Listen, you’re going to get used to it. It takes time. I promise it’s going to be okay. Everything gets better. This will too. It’s just the first day!”

  I nodded, thankful for the reassurance.

  “If you ever need anything here at all, let me know.”

  I thanked him and wiped away a tear as it slid down my cheek. Soon after, Mike, one of the key PAs (the people in charge of the rest of the PAs), came up to me and asked if I was okay. Again, I didn’t feel the need to explain since it was so obvious and everyone else was weird for not crying. He then started to give me unsolicited tips on how I could “make things easier” for myself. It was confusing, because he was talking to me like the job wasn’t easy when all I was doing was standing and guarding the street. His first tip was not to call my dad “my dad” when telling people his location. I hadn’t yet done this, nor would I ever, and the fact that he assumed that I would be the type of person who would tell the entire film set via walkie-talkie that “my dad is walking onto set” completely threw me. I felt like I had been character-assassinated. After he gave me two more tips, I realized that he and everyone else believed I was crying because I was so overwhelmed by my first day at work, that I was such a good-for-nothing shithead, I had been brought to tears from the stress of working. Off to a great start.

  Afternoon rolled around, and I hadn’t eaten anything since six a.m. I heard my dad’s assistant ask him what he wanted for lunch from his favorite restaurant, and as she turned to go place the order, I timidly squeezed my way into her space. “Hey! Can I get something?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked disapprovingly.

  “With his lunch order. Can I put something in?”

  “Oh . . . there are sandwiches available at catering.”

  Sure, maybe it was wrong for me to ask, but I was hungry, and I have privileged taste buds! “Dad!” I exclaimed. Some people glanced over at me. “Uh”—cough—“Larry.” He looked up from his phone. “Claire wouldn’t get me lunch with yours. She said I have to eat from catering,” I whispered.

  “And?”

  “And I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “For the same reason you don’t eat from there.”

  “Don’t you think people would hate you if they saw you ordering in your lunch?”

  “They already hate me. And they won’t know. I’ll hide.”

  “Don’t you think it’s unfair for you to get takeout from a restaurant when everyone else is eating catering?”

  “Yes, but—”

  He laughed and walked into his trailer. Again, not all that funny. I resigned myself to the inevitable and ate with everyone at catering, where we talked about how the food made our stomachs hurt.

  Ironically, working on the Curb set led to more Curb-like grudges, arguments, and misunderstandings than I had ever previously experienced. Besides my personal vendetta against my dad and his assistant for refusing me the opportunity of a good lunch, I spent a lot of my time annoying the other crew members by refusing to use “set talk.” Set talk is a language that is apparently used on every set in Hollywood, one that replaces common English words that everyone knows and feels comfortable using with words no one has ever heard of. When you’re carrying something behind someone, you’re required to say “Hot points” rather than “Watch out.” There’s martini (last shot), crafty (craft services), grip city (area for lighting equipment). I wouldn’t refer to that area as grip city if you paid me a hundred dollars. But anyone who happened to use regular ol’ English was quickly corrected in a condescending manner.

  One of my bosses took her job so seriously, she acted like we worked in an emergency room. To her, an actor being late to get miked was equivalent to an EMT taking his sweet time before giving someone CPR. One day, she asked me to inform the other crew members how many clicks it takes transpo (transportation) to get to the parking lot.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Clicks is set talk for ‘time,’ ” she informed me.

  “So how many clicks does it take to get to the parking lot?”

  “About seven clicks.”

  “Which is how much time?” I asked.

  “Fifteen minutes. But tell them in clicks.”

  My brain could not comprehend why that would be necessary. “No one is going to know what seven clicks means. I’m just going to say fifteen minutes.”

  “Everyone here knows what clicks means.”

  I raised my eyebrows, and, doing my best Curb Larry impression, I squinted my eyes, tilted my head, and said, “Iiiiii . . . don’t think they do.”

  “They do. That’s how you’re supposed to tell them,” she said, which immediately led me to look for someone nearby on set I could ask.

  “Ravi!” I yelled. “Do you know what seven clicks means?”

  He did. My boss rolled her eyes and walked away.

  I observed my father get into just as many disputes with people on set as I was. Several of us were in video village (the area where the monitors are kept) where my dad’s assistant and a female producer were massaging each others shoulders. Enter my dad. “What is this?” he asked.

  “We’re giving each other massages,” the producer said between rubs. My dad then made some joke along the lines of “If one of you ever saw me getting a massage that would be the end of me.” And then walked away, leaving a room of four offended women to talk about it.

  “Oh, so women can’t massage each other?! Men just love to turn it around, don’t they? This is how women are with each other!”

  The producer then turned to me and asked if my girlfriends and I massage each other, and I reacted like she’d asked something truly repulsive.

  “Ew! No way!”

  The producer scoffed.

  I told my dad about the rest of the encounter, and the next day, in exact Curb fashion, I heard him go up to them to clear the air and uncomfortably say, “So . . . I’m sorry about saying the massage comment yesterday . . . It was a stupid joke. Even though it is technically true. Anyways, you’re of course welcome to massage each other in this or any environment.” They forgave him.

  These minor disputes were somewhat entertaining, until one day, there was an argument between my dad and me. That Friday, the crew set up a raffle. I spotted Mike (the guy who thought I was crying from working) walking around with two buckets draped around his neck by strings, one full of tickets and one full of cash.

  “A raffle! What is this for?” I asked excitedly. Set was typically uneventful, so this was a welcome distraction.

  “It’s just a fun thing we do for the crew. There’s already six hundred dollars in it.”

  “Wow! How much is it for a ticket?”

  “Five dollars for one ticket, ten dollars for three tickets.”

  I ran to my dad. “Dad!” Someone looked over at me. “I mean, Larry—can I have five dollars to buy
a raffle ticket?”

  He walked with me back to Mike like I was a five-year-old at a fair and handed him five dollars. Mike gave me a ticket and a pen to write my name on it. As I was writing on the ticket, I saw my dad give Mike a hundred-dollar bill before he walked off. I couldn’t believe it! It was so unlike him. An extra thirty tickets! That raffle money was mine!

  “Can I have the rest of my tickets?” I asked Mike excitedly.

  “What do you mean? You want these tickets?” he asked with horror.

  “Yeah, of course! He just gave you one hundred dollars for them.”

  “Uh . . . well, the stars of the show often put in extra money without getting tickets for it, just as a nice thing for the crew. Like, for the winner of the raffle.”

  In the moment, this made no sense to me. Why would someone put in that much money and not take any tickets for it? Why would you put in more money for the winner? They’d already won! It seemed to defeat the point of the exercise. I stood there, visibly annoyed by this minor injustice.

  “So you actually want the tickets?” he asked me hesitantly, definitely thinking to himself, I can’t fucking believe this privileged piece of shit is going to win this raffle. It’s not like I would have kept the money for myself. I’d disperse it among the causes that would most effectively relieve my guilt. Duh.

  “Fuck yeah, I want the tickets!”

  Mike reluctantly started handing the tickets to me, one by one, looking more and more like he wanted to strangle me as he ripped each off.

  My dad noticed what was happening and walked back over. “What are you doing?” he asked me.

  “I’m getting the rest of our tickets,” I said as Mike looked at my dad with eyes that seemed to say I fucking hate your daughter or PLEASE HELP ME or, most likely, a combination of the two.

  My dad was appalled. “These tickets aren’t for you! It’s unbelievably selfish for you to take all of these tickets. You’ll win!”

  “Yeah, that’s the point of a raffle! The more money you put in, the more likely it is you’ll win. You obviously just don’t know how raffles work,” I informed him.

  “No. You’re wrong. The money is extra for whoever wins the raffle. I gave him the money to give to the winner. Hand those back now!” he shouted.

  Mike looked back and forth between us uncomfortably, not knowing what to do. In one of the more humiliating moments of my life—including the time in college when I briefly blacked out at a club, fell down a flight of stairs, and was so scared I peed myself—I started to hand the tickets back to Mike. By contrast, Mike appeared to find this interaction one of the most enjoyable moments of his life. He just stood there smirking, like all privileged children of celebrities had been brought to justice.

  Later, James, a PA who loved to gossip, found me hiding behind set. He told me that two people had come up to him and said, “Did you see Larry yell at Cazzie?”

  “Were they smiling when they told you?” I asked.

  “I guess, kind of.”

  I knew it. Everyone there hated me, no longer just because I was their boss’s daughter but because they had now witnessed firsthand how bad a person I really was. And not only that, but they also had the satisfaction of knowing that even my dad hated me. But no one hated me more than I did.

  Later that day, the raffle winner was announced. It was a crew member, who said he was “so happy” because he wanted to take his girlfriend on vacation. Everyone was saying “Aww” and “He deserves it!” and “I’m so glad he’s the one who got the money,” while they glanced back at me like, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WANTED TO STEAL THIS FROM HIM. I obviously just didn’t know how raffles worked.

  After Rafflegate, I was sentenced to the most annoying jobs out of all the annoying jobs. They gave me lockups (places for me to guard) as far away from set as possible, probably in an attempt to do Larry a favor by keeping away the daughter he clearly hated. They also made my call time thirty minutes earlier than all of the other PAs for the week—because they needed help with “background,” they said—which was undeniably a personal attack. I was waking up so early, my body was convinced I had a flight to catch to Europe each morning. Every day I got to set and not the airport, I felt confused.

  After a few weeks, I’d had enough and thought it was time I started getting some respect. It was clear the jobs they were assigning me were for their own gratification and not at all necessary. I needed to stand up for myself so they’d know once and for all that I was not, nor had I ever been, someone you could ask to do stupid, made-up tasks.

  I found small ways to assert myself. I started to blatantly abandon some of my lockups (the ones that already had a security guard, and yes, they’d have me guard next to a guard who was already guarding). Instead I’d walk around set with a look in my eyes like I had been sent to do something when in actuality, I was just watching them film.

  I also started to surreptitiously revise my own work hours. I wasn’t needed or wanted enough to continue to put myself through the torture of opening my eyes before sunrise, and at this point, it would be fine if I got fired. Embarrassing, since it’d be a firing from my dad, but ultimately fine, as the raffle had taken away any dignity I had left. So I told my bosses that my dad had changed my call time to his so we could drive to set together, and I told my dad that my bosses had changed my call time to later, so, conveniently, we could now drive to set together. I manipulated my bosses into thinking my dad loved nepotism and manipulated my dad into thinking my bosses loved nepotism. I am a despicable waste of a human.

  Over time, I got my wish. I noticed that I was no longer being asked to do anything. No one even called for me on the walkie-talkie anymore or asked me to announce that “Larry” was getting wired.

  The problem (besides, you know, me manipulating the parameters of the job) was that I began to hate myself for it. Who would have thought? In order to mitigate that I began to create my own tasks, as no one was giving me any, a be-my-own-boss kind of situation. My self-assigned jobs included telling all of transpo to stop idling the vans, ensuring that all of the security guards were well fed and hydrated, and standing by the craft services table to prevent crew members from wasting plastic. I also provided entertainment for anyone on line 1 of the walkie-talkies by testing out stand-up material (a safe place to perform because you wouldn’t know if they didn’t laugh).

  Our spring hiatus soon arrived, and before we broke for the day, our bosses handed each of the PAs a gift. For obvious reasons, I felt uncomfortable accepting mine. As they handed out each gift, they said to each person, “Thank you for all your hard work.” It seemed fairly obvious that they were saying this to everyone only to make me feel like shit. Pretty low. But smart. It worked. I felt so guilty and embarrassed for not working as hard as the others that I vowed to spend the rest of my life (day) trying to help out as much as I could. If I did that, I figured, then maybe I could leave them with the impression over the break that I was (at least for one day) a hardworking PA, and I’d plan on continuing that overall vibe for when we returned to work.

  I went up to Mike and asked if there was anything I could do to help. He looked surprised, but he could see I was genuinely trying. I appreciated that he didn’t make a passive-aggressive comment or joke about it.

  “Sure. How about on the day, you wait over here and make sure no one passes down the hall.”

  “On the day? What day?” I asked.

  He scoffed. “On the day is set talk for ‘when we start shooting.’ ”

  “So instead of saying ‘when we start shooting,’ we say ‘on the day’?”

  “Yes. It’s the lingo we use on set so everyone understands.”

  Everyone understands English too, but I thought better of getting into this argument again. I knew there was no winning with logic, and I didn’t want to ruin the potential image of me not being a piece of shit. So instead I just stared at him blankly until he left. Grudgingly, I made my way to the hall to block it off, like the privileged child
of a celebrity I’d never considered myself to be, as I wondered if the Garrett Leight store had any job openings.

  One night after work, I was driving home with my dad and he asked why I happened to be in such a bad mood. In that particular moment it was because:

  “People will never really like me and they shouldn’t like me. Everything I ever do will be because of nepotism. And so nothing I do can actually ever be respected. Not even by me. So I’ll end up doing nothing with my life and will never amount to anything because I’m a useless loser.”

  He responded with that thing that dads or moms or grandparents who didn’t grow up with privilege do, the thing where they say, Let me take you back to when I was your age. Or, if you’re my dad, who forgets his daughter’s age: “How old are you again?”

  “I’m twenty-two, Dad.”

  “Let me take you back to when I was twenty-two. I was working as a taxi driver in Manhattan. I lived in what can only be described as a cockroach-infested-railroad hovel. Every night when I got home, I spent an hour killing cockroaches with my boot. I collected pennies to be able to buy a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli for dinner. I had no money, no girlfriend. I was the definition of a loser!”

  Naturally there was a long pause so I could soak in this perspective.

  “At least you paid your own rent!” I said.

  * * *

  I Got a Cat for My Anxiety

  I hate being around people. I also hate being alone. The moment I’m alone with my own thoughts, I text every person I know to see if they’re available to hang out. Then the moment anyone comes over, I’m bothered by their presence and want them to leave immediately. I am not a people person. I am also not a loner. This is one of the never-ending miseries of being me.

  I’m so desperate not to be alone that I actively try to lure people to my place. While my dazzling personality should be plenty of reason for them to come over, sometimes my presence alone isn’t enough to persuade friends to drive across town. I’ve offered to pay for my friends’ dinners in return for, well, them having dinner with me. (I regret the offer the second the check comes.) Often at the end of the meal, I get nervous that I’ll soon be alone again, so I try to convince them to sleep over to assuage my anxiety for another twelve hours. “C’mon, it’ll be fun. We’ll have a . . . pajama party? Without the party. We’ll have pajamas!” Once in a while, a friend will agree, and for a second I’ll be thrilled, but then I’ll think about her body taking up half my bed and how I’ll have to wash the sheets after. Or how she’ll ask to borrow moisturizer, and I won’t have a lot left, and I’ll see her stick her finger deep into the container and scoop out a bigger glob of it than I would ever take. Then she’ll jabber on about things I don’t care about, which is pretty much anything not having to do with me, until I’m once again painfully reminded of how badly I wish to be alone.