Life Will Be the Death of Me

by Chelsea Handler

  “You shouldn’t be giving men money just because you are breaking up with them, whether they got fired or not. You’re not forcing them to sleep with you, are you?”

  “No, Dan. I’m not raping men.”

  “So, why are you paying them?”

  “Because, I’m just not thinking about their circumstances and that they could lose their jobs. So, if that happens, and it has happened, I try to ameliorate the situation—with money.”

  “Do you understand that that behavior—paying someone to break up with them—is completely unnecessary?”

  “Yup.”

  I needed to switch gears. I told Dan that I also go for very long periods of time without any male interest or sex, and I’d prefer to be having more sex.

  “You don’t get hit on by men?”

  “No. Not typically. Not in America. I think I’m just one big boner killer. Older men like me, because they’ve seen it all and they probably find it refreshing, but men my own age are definitely not interested.”

  “Why?”

  “Probably because I’m loud. It’s obnoxious. People are scared of me.”

  “You say that often.”

  “I hear it often.”

  “People tell you they’re scared of you?”

  “Dan, I’m loud and brash. Certain people find that off-putting. Most straight men find that off-putting. This isn’t hard for me to understand. Why is it hard for you to understand?”

  “It sounds like you’ve worked your entire life to make sure that you wouldn’t get hurt again.”

  “But, I have gotten hurt. I’ve had my heart broken.”

  “And what did that feel like?”

  “It was awful. I was completely out of control—like a madwoman. I get distracted with love, and I’ve let it take over before. I’ve done unreasonable things, like checking a guy’s phone, or acting out of fear and jealousy—all the qualities I’m not interested in having ascribed to me. It’s just so much safer to be single. I just get more done when I’m single. So, yeah, let’s talk about that.”

  “That’s your doing, not your being.” I pretended I didn’t hear that.

  “So, is that Chet too?” I asked Dan. “He’s certainly getting a lot of airtime for a dead guy.”

  “I don’t think you’ll allow it. I don’t think your subconscious thinks it can take another letdown. You are most likely actively making sure that you are preserving the only reliable thing in your life.”

  “Which is?”

  “You.”

  “Yikes,” I said.

  “Do you think you’re capable of being in a loving, caring relationship with a man, knowing that if something terrible happens, and he dies, that you will be okay?”

  “No. No. No. No one can die.” Dan stared at me. My body reacted as if I had been Tasered. The tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. Once that sentence left my mouth, I was able to hear myself. Not what I said, but the tone with which I said it and the age of that voice. The nine-year-old.

  “I can die, but no one else can die. It’s enough already with death,” I said, snapping back to my present-day self.

  “Did you feel what happened to your body when I suggested that someone could die?” Dan asked, with his bottom lip curled inward.

  “Yeah. I’d rather be alone. I can’t take another death.”

  “I want you to think about what you just said.”

  No matter how many times our conversations would lead us away from Chet, we’d always end up back there.

  Dan was making sure we paused every time Chet came up—he wanted to make sure I didn’t minimize my feelings, and he was constantly relitigating my pain back to me—each time further convincing me of the notion that I had a right to be in pain. Not to feel like my pain wasn’t valid because I wasn’t raped or assaulted or molested or beaten or worse. Just because I grew up with all the things I needed and never had any real perceivable struggle, that didn’t preclude me from having the right to unearth my pain. To not power through it and assume it was in my past simply because I’d identified it. He wanted me to live those moments slowly and repeatedly, to make sure the pain didn’t get stuck again—to wring it out.

  That is not my comfort zone. Hashing, then rehashing, something. I don’t like repetition. I like newness. I had to remind myself constantly that this was a reasonable course of action. I was learning from Dan not to object to something without hearing it out or giving it a whirl. I was giving sitting in pain a whirl—and it felt yucky.

  Dan explained that in very traumatic times, you freeze.

  “You do the only thing you can do to survive the pain, which is to shut off and retreat to your own world, because if you were to absorb the pain from all the people around you or acknowledge your own pain, you wouldn’t be able to cope. So, you coped, just like everyone else in your family coped—each in different ways. Your coping mechanism was motion. Do something—anything other than sitting around with your feelings.”

  “But if everything has been a deflection thus far, and I’ve been pretending to be someone for this long, at some point didn’t I eventually just become that person I’ve been pretending to be?”

  “No,” he said firmly.

  “People are generally consistent at being themselves,” I reminded Dan.

  “Not when you’re working so hard to change that consistency.”

  “Okay, well, then I’m going to take a step for you, because you’ve been working so hard on me. I’m going to say something I never thought would come out of my mouth. I think I’d like to be in an adult relationship.” And then I wrinkled my nose as if one of us had just farted.

  “You don’t have to commit to being in a relationship. You don’t have to want to be in a relationship. I’m asking you what you want. Any answer is fine.”

  “Quite honestly, I’ve never given it much thought. I’m more worried that liking being alone makes me selfish—selfishness is around the corner from narcissism, and anything is better than being a straight-up narcissist.”

  “You’re not a narcissist,” he told me.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure. I deal with narcissists all the time. You are consumed with grief that you have been trying to hide for years. Narcissists are defensive, and you haven’t been defensive about identifying your shortcomings. Narcissists have trouble being self-critical.”

  “Oh, thank God.” I exhaled. “I feel about narcissism the same way I feel about HIV. I’ve always suspected I might have it but was too worried to take the test and have it come back positive.”

  We sat in silence and let this all sink in.

  “I’m a storm chaser,” I declared to Dan.

  “Well…you’re the storm,” he corrected me.

  “Yikes. That’s a double whoopsie.”

  Dan nodded, and we stared.

  “More like a hurricane,” I added.

  “Spinning and spinning, and never landing anywhere,” he said.

  This was another metanoia.

  To know I’m going through something and not try to keep circling around it hoping to avoid going through it. Sitting, and experiencing, and feeling, and not running. To understand that things take time, and to be okay sitting with my pain. To understand the only way through something is through it. Not to rush through life hopscotching over or around it. No one is fully cooked. No person is complete.

  “You had some unfinished business,” Dan told me. “You are healing now. You are learning how to grow and become a fuller person. This is good.”

  * * *

  • • •

  A few weeks later Dan returned from a trip to Jackson Hole and told me that he had spoken to one of the park rangers who remembered my brother’s death. My jaw clenched, my eyes flooded. I was learning to recognize what happened
to me physically when faced with this subject. I became aware of the fight my body would put up to prepare to block the pain.

  “What did he say?” I asked Dan, referring to the park ranger.

  “That it happens all the time.”

  So my brother was just a number. A statistic. He was one of many, not anything special. Lots of other people died there too.

  “Then why would he even remember it, if it was so common?” I asked Dan, whose intention I know was to make me feel better. “Now he’s just a number?”

  “It’s funny how you see that. I was trying to give you comfort—to know that you aren’t the only person that this happened to. That your horrible experience has happened to many other people, and now you’re upset that you aren’t alone in your pain.”

  Bingo.

  I had forgotten to modify. Identification. Awareness. Modification. Baby steps.

  It crossed my mind to pay Dan double for that session, but I remembered this was also behavior that needed to be dropped off at the curb.

  I know that in five years it will be politically incorrect to body-shame fat dogs—so I’m going to do it now.

  With Tammy gone and Chunk getting older, the writing was on the wall—it was time to get another dog. I went to a rescue two hours north of Los Angeles that specialized in Chow mixes, in search of a new addition to my family. When the older lesbian who owned the place told me about a brother and sister Chow duo that came with the names Bert and Bernice, my eyes started to do cartwheels.

  “I don’t even need to see them,” I told her. “I’ll take them both.”

  The first time I saw them rounding the corner, I almost climaxed right there on the dirt. Bert looked like a miniature lion and Bernice was his sidecar—a more petite, more portable version of her big, fat brother. Bert is short for Bertrand, by the way, so I had to take a minute to look up at the sun and marinate in that merriment. Bert had all the trimmings of what I look for in a pet: long hair, weight-management issues, and laziness behind the eyes. Bernice was lacking in all three areas and actually maintained very strong eye contact—something I took as a sign of either intelligence or an addiction to Adderall.

  The woman who ran the rescue explained that they would need at least two days to give the dogs all their shots and grooming, and that someone from her organization would have to do a home inspection before they gave me the go-ahead. I respected that, but had no idea what it meant. I would have agreed to let her comb through my taxes with a forensic accountant, if it meant having a brother-sister combo platter named Bert and Bernice. I mean, seriously. Does it get any more real than that?

  I left Tanner in charge of answering the woman’s questions regarding the adoption, and drove back to Los Angeles, looking forward to the challenge of knowing I was ready for some real doggy parenting this time around. Chunk wouldn’t be thrilled with the discovery that I had two more dogs coming home, but I would just explain to him that we were trying to keep families together. Chunk was on whatever mission I was on, whether he knew it or not.

  Bert and Bernice arrived on a Friday afternoon, freshly groomed and ready to rumble. If Bert is shaped like a giant turkey—which he is—Bernice is the drumstick. Bernice is superior to Bert in terms of traditional good looks, but traditional good looks aren’t what I’m after.

  Being that it was my year of self-sufficiency, I gave Brandon and Tanner the weekend off. By Sunday morning, I called Tanner and Brandon and told them to get their asses over to the house. The dogs were insane. I couldn’t get them to do anything. They’d run up and down the stairs and act like they wanted to play, but when I got near them, they’d psych me out and outmaneuver me. They were both impossible to wrangle. If I managed to grab Bert and tried to put a leash on him, he’d flinch or snap as soon as I touched his neck. Tying a leash around a dog’s midsection also doesn’t work, and if you don’t believe me, try it. They were skittish and confused, and where there wasn’t drool on the floor, there was piss. My house smelled like a chamber pot and looked like the grounds of the Burning Man festival, three days after it ended.

  Once Brandon and Tanner arrived, it was revealed upon further family discussion that not only were these dogs not potty-trained, they hadn’t lived indoors ever. Somewhere along the way, Tanner had forgotten to disclose this little tidbit of information when he was doing their background check. Brandon almost hit Tanner that day.

  “So, they’re wildlings?” I asked Tanner.

  When I suggested returning the dogs, Brandon lost his temper with me. Losing his temper may be an exaggeration, but he definitely jerked his head in a way I hadn’t seen before, deftly completing what very well looked like a 360-degree circle.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Chelsea,” Brandon said, continuing his bobblehead motion. “You’ve had them for two days. The woman knows who you are, and it wouldn’t look very good to all the people who think you are this big animal lover. Plus, you can’t just quit things every time they get too hard.”

  I had been through sagas like this before. I had procured dogs that didn’t work out that had to be rerouted to friends or relatives. The idea that all of a sudden I could handle two new feral dogs was preposterous.

  This was supposed to be my year of self-sufficiency—the year I was going to take back my life from my assistants—and here I was, lacking the fundamental skills to clean dog shit off a carpet, and instead sitting on the floor, crying like Brett Kavanaugh during a Senate hearing.

  “Why is it so important for you to learn how to clean up dog shit?” Brandon asked. “You have people you pay to do that. Stop torturing yourself with menial tasks.”

  “Because!” I wailed. “I’m missing out on culture.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Brandon spent the day calling around and found a dog trainer who offered an eight-week course, and—very fortuitously—he had two available spots. Brandon offered to inquire about a third spot, and to see if they took adult women. Behavioral training for eight weeks actually sounded enticing—like a finishing school, for forty-year-olds. I needed someone to reteach me how to accomplish simple tasks and combat the domestic amnesia that I couldn’t seem to shake. For example, I would love to know where the toaster is hidden in my kitchen, but after living in the house for seven years, it’s become one of those questions that is just too embarrassing to ask my housekeeper.

  While Bert and Bernice were away at get-better camp, Brandon, Tanner, and I would get videos and updates on their progress, with notes like Bert passed his first week with flying colors or Bernice is now ringing a bell to go outside to potty. The reports always made it sound like the dogs were right on track, until it was time for them to graduate. That was when we got the call that they had completed their eight-week course, but had failed miserably. The trainer said she couldn’t, in good faith, let them come back to me without properly “graduating,” and that they would need another eight-week course. By the third time they needed to repeat the eight-week course, I asked Brandon if the trainer was planning on keeping the dogs permanently, and if this was the plan all along—hoping I’d forget.

  “No,” he reassured me. “She just doesn’t want them to come home until they both graduate magna cum laude. She says they have some behavioral issues and that they are getting better, but they’re not ready.”

  “These dogs better be able to roller-skate when they get back. I mean, seriously, Brandon.”

  “And mix drinks,” he added.

  That’s how I felt about myself. Getting better, but not quite ready.

  * * *

  • • •

  I didn’t mind the dogs’ absence so much the first eight weeks, or the second eight weeks, because Chunk and I were on our own for the first time in three years and we were enjoying some serious post-Tammy bonding during that stretch—plus, I was secretly dreading Bert and Bernice’s re
turn. But when Chunk passed away over Christmas while I was at Whistler, I texted Brandon and told him that I couldn’t return to a house without dogs in it.

  Upon the dogs’ re-entry, I had some obvious decisions to make. First, I was going to have to shave Bert’s body and get down to business. I needed to see precisely what kind of physique I was dealing with under all his matted hair. Once shorn, what was unveiled was the exact body type I was hoping for: tons of different folds, flaps, and pockets of extra meat. His body was a wonderland. This was a dog you could use to hide jewelry in, if the situation arose. Cuddling with Bert was what I imagined kneading dough to be like—hypnotic.

  Cuddling with Bernice was a bit more sinister. First, you had to catch her. Once caught, Bernice is easily transportable, so I’d bring her over to my bed or a sofa, where she would submit to a two-minute rubdown. But the moment I stopped petting her, she’d pop up—as if suddenly coming to—and like a squirrel spinning through the air, she’d scurry away. She is much more nimble than Bert and can quickly climb up any hillside or jump off a bed in a way that Bert will never experience. Bert can’t jump off a bed; either he’d go straight through the floor or the impact alone would kill him.

  Bert is more Scooby-Doo, and Bernice is more honey badger. Bernice doesn’t give a shit about anyone. Not me, not my cleaning lady Big Mama, not even the landscaper. She does her own thing; she is an independent thinker. The best time to make inroads is when Bernice is sleeping on her side. If you go in and start to rub her belly, she will kick her leg up and roll onto her back to assist you in petting her. My bonding with Bernice takes place during car rides, listening to political podcasts, and on trips to my office. When Bert isn’t around, Bernice is a star. When Bert is around, she’s like any other marginalized woman.

  Bert is everything I’ve ever wanted in a dog, except for having the signature Chow personality—which means that one minute he will be sweet and loving, and the next he’ll rebuff my advances with a snap or a flinch. His nighttime personality when we are in bed together is all love and affection—it’s like sleeping with a giant, lifelike teddy bear—but come morning, when we go downstairs, he becomes Daytime Bert, who shuns me and behaves as if we didn’t just spend the entire night in each other’s arms. I’ve had myriad one-night stands—which have also been documented—but never anything quite as degrading. The rejection is fierce.