by Jenny Mollen
ALSO BY JENNY MOLLEN
I Like You Just the Way I Am
Copyright © 2016 by Jenny Mollen
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Limited, Toronto.
www.doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Portions of Chapter 1 originally appeared in Cosmopolitan, “Sex & Relationships” (www.cosmopolitan.com), as “First Comes Miscarriage, Then Comes Marriage” on January 7, 2014, and “The Moment I Fell in Love with My Son” on March 12, 2014.
Cover photographs of Jenny Mollen and Teets © Deborah Feingold
Other cover photographs: snow © matthaeus ritsch/Shutterstock; mountains and foreground © Lizard/Shutterstock; fire © Tyler Panian/Shutterstock; smoke © Asia Glab/Shutterstock; man © Chase Jarvis/Stockbyte/Getty Images; planes © Pete Ryan/National Geographic/Getty Images; sky © Hip Hip!/Alamy Stock Photo; fez © chrisbrignell/Shutterstock; sled © trekandshoot/Shutterstock
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Mollen, Jenny, [date] author.
Title: Live fast die hot / Jenny Mollen.
Description: New York : Doubleday, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015045930 | ISBN 9780385540698 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385540704 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mollen, Jenny, 1979—Humor. | Actors—United States—Biography. | Adulthood—Humor. | Conduct of life—Humor. | BISAC: HUMOR / Form / Essays. | HUMOR / Topic / Relationships. | HUMOR / Topic / Adult. Classification: LCC PN2287.M655 A3 2016 | DDC 818/.602—DC23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045930
ebook ISBN 9780385540704
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Contents
Cover
Also by Jenny Mollen
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
AUTHOR’S NOTE
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1: FIRST COMES MISCARRIAGE
Chapter 2: THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE NIGHT NURSE IN THE DAYTIME
Chapter 3: NILF
Chapter 4: SLEEPING IN THE DOGHOUSE
Chapter 5: ATLAS RUGGED
Chapter 6: MANHATTAN MARLBORO MYSTERY
Chapter 7: HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN
Chapter 8: SOME BODIES THAT I USED TO KNOW
Chapter 9: AMAZON PRIMED
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
About the Author
For Sid
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The stories you are about to read are basically true. Though I tried to do my best in depicting events as I remembered them, there are exaggerations, some characters are composites, some time periods are condensed, and some people’s names have been changed to protect their anonymity. Except my mom’s. Her name is Peggy.
INTRODUCTION
I never wanted to write a book about having a baby, mainly because I would never read a book about having a baby. After I saw the movie For Keeps with Molly Ringwald in 1988, I was pretty much scared off children for the next two decades. But when I hit thirty-four, my husband’s biological clock started drinking and screaming at me before bed that it was time to put somebody else first. Him. So we got pregnant.
When Jason and I got married, I made all sorts of vows and promises, some of which I intended to keep (and others I just said in the moment to make him come faster). My life was exciting, sexy, and ever so slightly eccentric. I had a healthy relationship with a Hollywood actor who, despite my valiant efforts, remained more famous than me. He understood my neuroses, my fear of commitment, and my insistence on wearing his ex-girlfriend’s beach caftan on vacation. He showed compassion when I got kicked off jury duty for accidentally befriending the defendant over lunch break. He even found it sweet when I invited our drug dealer to Passover seder because I didn’t want him to think we were only using him for drugs. Life was fun, uncomplicated, and—aside from when our drug dealer found the Afikomen—predictable.
Then we had our son, Sid, and overnight, the fun-loving woman-child that my husband fell in love with was banished from our home. It was time to stop biting my nails, to stop bleeding through my tampons, to answer my cell phone, and to learn to do simple math in my head. But what if I didn’t want any of those things? What if math hurt my feelings and super-plus tampons made my vagina feel fat? What if I wasn’t ready to be a role model because I still envisioned being discovered at the mall and becoming a real model? (Or at the very least a Top Model.) Sure, I was thirty-five, but my boobs were only eighteen.
This book is as much about my reluctance to be a responsible adult as it is about my fear of vulnerability. The second Sid entered my life, all bets were off. I was in love like I’d never been in love, under the spell of a guy who would one day leave me for someone else. I felt terrified, unworthy, unprepared, and not at all hot. In an effort to outrun my own insecurities, my life turned into a cross between Eat Pray Love and Die Hard.
In retrospect, it probably would have been cheaper just to get back on Zoloft.
1
FIRST COMES MISCARRIAGE
“How pregnant do I have to be before I can get an abortion?” I called out to Jason from the hotel bathroom, trying to sound rational.
I sat on the freezing-cold toilet, wearing only thermal socks and a headband, focusing intently on the plastic wand holding my destiny. Swallowing hard, ingesting one more moment of freedom, I tried not to look down at what I could already sense was a smug pink smiley face glaring up at me. Overwhelmed and unprepared, I fell into my lap, hyperventilating.
It was 2008, and Jason and I had been dating for only six months. Two months prior, we’d secretly gotten engaged in Saint Martin, but that was only because I’d found a picture of another girl’s underwear on his phone and he didn’t want me to jump to conclusions or light him on fire. I considered his proposal more of a negotiating tactic, a pillow-talk promise I could easily extract myself from if he turned out to be a philanderer or somebody who owned a bunch of aquariums. I was falling in love with him, but it was too new a feeling to trust completely. I’d never been in love and, I have to say, I didn’t enjoy it. I was always more comfortable in relationships where I held all the cards, where I didn’t have to feel and I couldn’t get hurt—where there was always an easy exit.
Over Christmas I vaguely remembered taking ecstasy and letting Jason finish inside me, then washing down a morning-after pill with the next day’s breakfast. I gave no thought to the notion that I could actually be pregnant. I wasn’t even sure I could get pregnant. I was twenty-eight years old and I’d never been on birth control. At some point along the way I just decided that I was blessed. Accidental pregnancy was one of those things that happened to “other girls”—the ones in high school who smoked cigarettes and listened to Courtney Love.
Granted, I’d never let guys finish inside me. But it was the holidays, and I was feeling festive. It wasn’t until a few weeks after New Year’s that I suspected a problem. We were skiing with friends in Vermont when I started experiencing cramps that felt like I was being shived to death in a women’s prison for not sharing my clarifying shampoo. My boobs were swollen torpedoes of estrogen. Every couple seconds I’d check behind me to make sure I wasn’t turning my double black diamond red. I wasn’t.
After two more days of waking up on unblemished sheets, I grew concerned and bought a pregnancy test. Like buying a Lotto ticket or a rolled-up drugstore scroll with my horoscope on it, I wasn’t expecting more than a few seconds of entertainment, followed by a tinge of buyer’s remorse.
Jason waited anxi
ously on the other side of the door as I hyperventilated.
“Well?”
“I can’t breathe. This can’t be happening. I’m gonna faint.” I hobbled out of the bathroom and threw myself prostrate on the floor, hoping to instantly miscarry.
“Wow. Okay. Well, we can handle this.” Jason picked me up and put me on the bed.
“I’m too young to be a parent, Jason. I’m a mere child myself.” I thrashed around in a full-blown tantrum.
“You’re twenty-eight. Actually, you’re twenty-eight and a half, so basically you’re twenty-nine,” he said, thinking he was comforting me. “Let’s take a beat and think this through.”
“Okay…But I don’t want a baby.” I cloaked myself in a plaid comforter, assuming it made me invisible.
“Like ever?” He sounded concerned.
I’d pictured myself with children in the future, but before that I needed to be famous and have a booming acting career. The kind that would make my parents question why they hadn’t paid more attention to me when they had the chance. I needed my ex-boyfriend to stop paying half my rent. And I needed my dad to stop paying the other half.
I had a life plan, things I needed to check off my list. If I was going to bring someone else into the world, I wanted to be able to take care of them, famously.
“Maybe someday,” I said. “Just definitely not right now.”
I spent the rest of the trip skiing like I was a stunt man in a Warren Miller film. I darted in and out of trees without braking, tried to complete an entire run on one leg, and even attempted a jump I’d researched on YouTube known as a “Screamin’ Semen.” There wasn’t any point in holding back; as far as I was concerned, life was over. I was knocked up, I was barely working, and I was only five months away from being twenty-nine, which was only twelve months away from being thirty, which was basically dead.
Three days later, I was still alive and Jason’s screamin’ semen was still burrowed inside me. We’d spent the last seventy-two hours (the same window, incidentally, that my bunk morning-after pill should have covered me for) weighing our options. Abortion was still tops on my list. Most of my girlfriends had survived them without complications or remorse. It was, after all, the twenty-first century. I was an independent woman living in a country that for the moment still granted me the freedom to make my own choices with my body.
The only thing holding me back was Jason. He wasn’t some random dude I’d rear-ended while pulling out of the Rite Aid parking lot. Sure, I’d slept with that guy. But I obviously wouldn’t have thought twice about aborting his baby. Jason was different. As much as I hated to admit it, he had a hold on me. And in my mind, having an abortion meant running the risk of ruining our relationship. I didn’t want to look back and feel resentment toward him for allowing me to destroy something that was a part of us. Or have him hold it against me in fights. Like, “You forgot to put the cap back on the toothpaste, and oh, yeah, you killed our baby.”
I wasn’t ready to be a mother, and I sure as hell wasn’t ready to start capping my toothpaste. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment with no furniture, and I’d thrown out all my dishes because I was too stressed out to wash them. But I was an educated adult woman, with money in the bank (that my dad and ex didn’t know about) and a relationship that was actually making me feel something.
The more we talked, the more we realized we had to have the baby. The timing was a little off, yes, but we were in love, at least as in love as I was capable of being, and oh, yeah, we were secretly engaged already. We’d find a way to make it work.
When Jason broke the news to his mother, she was less than thrilled.
“You know, you don’t have to marry her just because she’s pregnant,” she said, saving her more devout Catholic expressions for the next time she was in public. I imagined that in her best-case scenario, I’d run off to Europe or die during childbirth, leaving Jason no choice but to move back home and have her raise the child with him.
My family was less interested in raising my child for me.
“I’m too young to be a grandparent, Jenny. I’m a mere child myself,” my mom whined as a seventeen-year-old spray-tan technician instructed her to bend over and spread her ass cheeks.
But to their credit, both my parents warmed to the idea once they realized that the baby’s father was successful and stable and not the guy I rear-ended at Rite Aid.
Jason and I spent the next three months preparing for parenthood. We moved in together, went to couple’s therapy, bought an SUV. The circumstances didn’t allow us time to play games. We opened up about our own childhoods and forged pacts about the things we would do differently. We bought books, talked about names, and even looked at pictures of kids online.
But as my hormone levels continued to rise, so did my anxiety. I felt like a caged animal, locked into a life that was thrust upon me. Unlike my fledgling acting career, parenthood happened overnight. Whatever I’d tried to do with my life up to that point was now doomed to sit on the back burner. I was going to be one of those moms—those women with unfulfilled dreams, delusions of grandeur, and a need to lip-synch “Cold Hearted Snake” in their daughter’s talent show.
And what about Jason? He was great, but so is everybody when you’ve been sleeping with them for less than a year. Sometimes I’d look over in bed and imagine all the various threats our relationship might face. What if he fell in love with someone more successful than me? What if he fell in love with someone skinnier than me? What if one day he decided he was trans and transitioned into a skinnier, more successful version of me?
My anxiety came to a boil one afternoon on our way to a routine doctor’s visit. We were in the SUV, and Jason had turned left on Beverly instead of right. The faster way would have been taking La Cienega to Third, but after living in Los Angeles for almost eleven years, Jason still couldn’t tell Third and Beverly apart. When we first met I found his handicap cute, but once I was pregnant, I saw it as a personal affront to my sanity. That would have been enough; then he mentioned that he liked the name “Ernie” for our child-to-be.
“Let me out of the car! I don’t even know you! You’ve completely hijacked my life! I want my life back!” I tried jumping from the SUV.
“Sit down! Jenny, sit the fuck down now!” He tried to hold me in place by the hood of my sweatshirt. His breath smelled like matzo brei to my expectant nostrils as I bit down hard on his hand. The truth was, no matter how serious or ridiculous our fights seemed in the moment, they really didn’t matter. Like two siblings bickering in the backseat on a family road trip, we were tethered to each other for eternity, regardless of the outcome.
But at the doctor’s office that day, things took an alarming turn. We huddled together on a white exam table covered in crinkled-up paper. The doctor had already exited, giving us a moment alone to digest the news. After three months inside my womb, our fetus had decided to pull the rip cord. His heart had stopped. I was miscarrying.
Before I knew it, I was reclining in a dark room at a nearby clinic, where a giant DustBuster was inserted up my vagina and my fetus and his vacated condo were suctioned out. The fear and anxiety (even the rancid smell of Jason’s breath), all of it faded to the background. Once the procedure was complete, Jason and I locked bodies and started crying. I’m not sure we knew everything we were crying for. Our lives, which had been moving so fast, suddenly came to a grinding halt. Our destinies, which a moment before seemed so certain, so cemented together, were without warning ripped apart.
This was my chance. If I needed an exit, I could make one. But the only place I wanted to run was straight to Jason. I couldn’t live without him. I mean, I obviously totally could have and I’m sure would have rebounded and been totally fine. But I didn’t want to. When I was afraid to love him, he loved me with total conviction. When I questioned my own strength, he trusted me completely. He was either the most incredible man I’d ever known or even more batshit insane than I was. Either way, he was perfect for me.
After committing to carrying Jason’s child, the idea of marriage and the idea of Jason no longer scared the shit out of me. (Especially once I confirmed that he looked terrible in a DVF wrap dress.) We eloped that week.
Five incredible years of marriage later, the only name Jason was desperate to transition into was “Dad.” I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly know I was ready to try again for a baby. But Jason reminded me that I was thirty-four and a half, which was basically thirty-five, which was basically forty, which was WAY past dead, and I figured it was now or never.
Getting pregnant this time around wasn’t nearly as easy, partially because the universe never cooperates when you need it to, and partially because figuring out when you’re ovulating requires an understanding of second-grade math. I’d spent a solid year halfheartedly fucking around with thermometers and period-tracking apps for my iPhone when my sister insisted I try using a digital ovulation stick. Three months of dragging my heels and getting waylaid by online sample sales later, I finally bought one. Twenty-eight days after that, I was pregnant.
Once again, I fell into my lap hyperventilating, but this time it was with nervous excitement. I didn’t feel any more prepared or any less afraid. The only thing I knew with confidence was that with Jason, I was okay having my life hijacked.
At forty-one and a half weeks pregnant, I changed my mind again. And decided that a baby was definitely the wrong choice for me.
“Wait, I might not be ready for children,” I said one evening as I waddled around the bedroom, trying to reposition what felt like a tiny knee digging into my rib cage.
“Well, get ready,” Jason said, unmoved and far too used to my neurosis.