by Jenny Mollen
With Chelsea, it was different. Over the course of five short years, the girl who I’d watched get a back massage in the middle of a Vegas mall, the girl who I’d dressed in a pair of my shitty Charles David heels because she was planning to wear Havaianas to our premiere party, was now a household name. For a person like myself, who was already lacking ego strength, it was impossible not to feel not only intimidated but slightly unworthy. When a normal friend fails to call me back I psycho-text them seventeen times in a row demanding they pick up. When an über-famous friend doesn’t respond, I go through a different series of thoughts:
1. She’s probably just busy.
2. Maybe she doesn’t have her phone.
3. Weird, she just posted a picture to Instagram twenty minutes ago.
4. Maybe she’s getting a Pap smear.
5. Maybe I said or did something to offend her.
6. Maybe she’s told everybody around her that she hates me and to never bring my name up ever again.
7. I bet if I were Amy Schumer she would have answered.
8. Why am I not Amy Schumer?
9. Why am I failing at life?
10. It’s going to be so awkward when I bump into her six months from now and she spits in my face.
11. Fine, I guess we’ll just be enemies. Everybody has enemies. It’s perfectly natural. Something I’ll just have to live with.
12. She wrote back.
13. We are totally good. I don’t know what I was thinking, of course we’re friends!
14. I love her.
Chelsea had never done anything to hurt me. She was actually one of my biggest supporters. It was the pandemonium that swirled around her that seemed to throw me off balance. Just like with my mother, I couldn’t help but feel like I had to share her with the world. Everyone wanted a piece of her—which allowed me to use her interest in me as a way of judging my own self-worth.
So when Chelsea asked me to go to Peru, I felt worthy. Mommy picked me. It took a few weeks of saying it to myself aloud to remember I was, in fact, a mommy myself, and that traipsing off to the Amazon to do a controversial hallucinogen with a friend who once persuaded me to climb up the mast of a 164-foot sailboat without a harness might not be in the best interest of my son. I intentionally failed to mention my plans to my therapist for nearly five months, seeking counsel instead from the Magic 8 Ball in my friend Lisette’s office.
“It is decidedly so!” I announced one afternoon. “How can I argue with that?”
Lisette worked at The Wall Street Journal, where I’d recently repurposed her cubicle to be my writing headquarters. I’d met Lisette through my friend Joan Arthur, who had threatened to kill Lisette if she didn’t help publicize my first book. Lisette didn’t have children and was still a bit of a baby herself, but I’d decided that her access to a printer and the fact that she thought I was pretty was enough to base a friendship on.
“Don’t you just shit and vomit the whole time?” Lisette asked, skimming an op-ed online.
“Yeah, but I enjoy both those things.” I hit Print on a two-hundred-page script.
“Animal! Be honest, if I’d have asked you to go on this trip, would you have said yes?” Lisette said, invoking a pet name she’d given me the first time she watched me devour a container of sushi in the checkout line at Dean & DeLuca.
“Absolutely not.”
“So you are only doing it because it’s Chelsea?”
“And because it’s going to be on Netflix. Oh, and I might reach enlightenment.”
Lisette’s office phone rang. She picked it up and immediately slammed it back down.
“Who was that?” I asked, concerned.
“My dad. We are in a huge fight. Don’t worry about it.” She paused, then turned to me, dead serious. “Listen, I think my Eight Ball might be lying to you.”
“Really?”
Lisette tucked her jet-black pixie cut nervously behind her ears, then poked her head out of her cubicle to see if anyone was listening.
“It lied to me two weeks ago about my remodel and now I’m in for another fifty grand. Or, well…my dad is.” She gave me an ominous look before turning back to her computer to continue working.
Though it sounded shallow, it did mean something to me that the trip was being filmed. It legitimized the whole thing. It legitimized me. After all, I’d be on a TV show, and as any actor knows, the words “TV show” are basically interchangeable with “reason for living.” I wasn’t trying to prioritize my career over Sid. But I did feel the need to keep it going so that in seventeen years when he moved out and left me, I wouldn’t completely fall apart. And more than that, I wanted to remain interesting, to stay worthy of his affection. I wanted Sid to respect me, to see me as successful, and to never feel like he was solely responsible for my happiness. I didn’t want his high school years to consist of me creepily lurking around his locker, waiting for soccer practice to let out so we could go get our eyebrows threaded. I didn’t want to reach my fifties before I learned how to Snapchat. I’d worked too hard to let it all go. And I wanted to be an example for him, to show him that when you put your mind to it, you, too, can end up doing drugs on Netflix.
But the longer I thought about Peru, the more conflicted I became. Unlike my trip to Morocco, I couldn’t seem to justify the risks I was taking this time. Ayahuasca was a drug, and I was responsible for another human being.
“It’s used to treat addiction and eating disorders and all sorts of phobias that I think you have,” Jason said, over a bowl of Naomi’s albondigas soup. “If you were telling me you were gonna go drop acid at some dude’s apartment in the Bronx, I’d say no fucking way, but I gotta say, I’m not freaked out by this.”
“Baby! You freak out when I’m at the gym too long. You’re fine with me hallucinating in South America?” I couldn’t believe how nonchalant he was being. This was not the Jason I was constantly hiding shit from.
“My sobriety has opened my mind to this kind of stuff.” He lifted his bowl to his face and slurped down a mouthful of broth.
“Opened your mind? Or do you just want me to do drugs because you can’t?” He seemed sincere, but I was still skeptical.
“A little of both,” he admitted.
“I think you need to do it. In my country, we believe it will heal your fear,” Naomi added. “You have a lot of fear.”
“Are you guys serious? You both think I should do it?” I looked at Sid dragging a turkey meatball across his plate. He beamed at me. I was getting cold feet and yet the most important players in my life were telling me to go for it. “What if I come back a totally different person who doesn’t believe in marriage or makeup? What if I stop wearing a bra and just want to practice Kundalini yoga and drink yerba maté all day?” I looked down at Teets to see if I could get a read on what he was thinking, but he was too distracted by Sid’s meatball. Gina screened him from Sid’s high chair like a power forward.
If I were kidless, this is the type of trip I wouldn’t have thought twice about. But overdosing in the jungle now had consequences far greater than Jason becoming a widower or his ex-girlfriend being able to use her real name on Instagram. If something happened, Sid would be motherless, and that idea filled me with the deepest dread I’d ever known. I couldn’t bear the thought of him waking up in the middle of the night and not having a mommy to call out to, of never knowing how much I loved him, of one day trying to understand who I was by dissecting a picture of me taking a picture of myself in a bathroom mirror. My parents had always put their own needs first, and I didn’t want to be as selfish. This was my chance to take a different path. A path that didn’t lead to me being incapacitated in a foreign country.
As hard as I tried to rationalize my actions, I couldn’t make peace with my heart.
That night, I shot out of bed, my eyes wide, delirious with terror, my stomach clenching into a giant knot, the kind you can’t untangle. The kind you have to use kitchen scissors to cut out.
“I’m not g
oing,” I whispered to Jason, picking up my phone and composing an e-mail to Chelsea. I hit Send before I could rethink it.
The next morning, I reread my e-mail and realized I sounded like a complete psychopath in the throes of an existential crisis. It was 6 a.m. New York time and Chelsea was in Los Angeles, no doubt fast asleep. I quickly scrolled through Instagram to make sure that was the case. Stressed that I was perhaps the worst mother in the world and that Chelsea was going to read my e-mail to Jennifer Aniston over brunch, I decided it was time to call my therapist. As much as I valued Lisette’s 8 Ball, I needed input from someone who wouldn’t fuck with me by saying “Reply hazy, try again.”
Later that day, while anxiously waiting for my phone session with Chandra, I got a call from Denny. I answered cheerily.
“Hi! Are you so excited about Peru? Because I’m not gonna lie, I’m starting to freak out,” I said. “Oh, by the way, have you heard from Chelsea today?” I tried to make it sound casual.
“No. I never hear from her. But I got your texts,” he said, referring to the six messages I’d sent him over the last twenty-four hours reading: “R WE GOING 2 DIE?”
I’d known Denny and his wife, Dakota, for six years. They were the kind of couple you tell yourself that you and your partner are going to turn into when you grow up. Denny and Dakota were freethinking loners who liked each other better than they did anyone else around them. They had two sons and a third on the way. Though their parenting style was incredibly hands-on, they remained open and progressive when it came to their adult lives. In my mind their date nights consisted of an indie concert at the Troubadour, dinner at some cash-only hole-in-the-wall in Thai Town, drinks at a Valley strip club, and maybe a little impromptu ink at a tattoo parlor on Vineland. Dry, acerbic, and fashionably bitter, Denny was like Woody Allen if Woody Allen had moved to Los Angeles and started working in reality television. Not only did I look up to his relationship and how he was able to balance his role as a father with his role being somebody far cooler than me, I also trusted that the skeptic in him would never do something that might get himself killed.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime,” he said with an enthusiasm I didn’t know he was capable of. “Dakota is so jealous she can’t go. If she wasn’t pregnant right now, we’d probably be doing it somewhere in Topanga Canyon.”
“People are doing ayahuasca in Topanga Canyon now?”
“Mainly Josh Radnor, but yeah.” I could see Denny chomping on a carrot as he chased his younger child around his living room. “I can’t fucking believe I’m about to have another one of these,” he said, mostly to himself.
“Do you think I’m being an irresponsible parent, though?” I asked, desperate for reassurance.
“This is a Netflix special. Nobody is going to let anything happen to us. Chelsea is even bringing her own medic. And it’s herbal. Have you done mushrooms?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s apparently just like that, only a thousand times stronger…” Denny trailed off, unsure if he’d made me feel better or worse. “You’d better fucking come. I hate all of Chelsea’s other friends.”
Hanging up with Denny, I started to realize that I’d sat with the idea of ayahuasca so long that it had mutated in my head. Having read little more than a few BuzzFeed articles and a Wikipedia page, I’d convinced myself that drinking the tea was as self-destructive as freebasing crystal meth. The reality was, ayahuasca hadn’t actually killed anyone. Sure, there had been accidents involving human error, but you could find those same kinds of stories about Ambien, alcohol, or making a Vine while driving. Chelsea e-mailed back assuring me that I was overreacting about the drug and that we were going to have an incredible time. She acknowledged my concerns but brushed past them, like a skydiving instructor would to the person already strapped to her back.
When I finally spoke to Chandra, she did a bunch of mind-gamey shit, asking me why I’d withheld information from her and questioning whether or not I trusted our therapeutic relationship. Coming dangerously close to uttering the words “Reply hazy, try again,” she eventually cut to the chase—and even Chandra, who never missed an opportunity to tell me I was being an asshole, seemed unfazed.
“I think it’s fine. Lots of people do it. Not a big deal. For some people it can feel like seven years’ worth of therapy in a matter of five hours,” she said, leading me to suspect Josh Radnor might also be her client. “But you’ll still need therapy,” she was quick to add.
I tried to do a bit more research online, but like looking at my checking account at the end of the month, I was too scared to dig deeply. So, after forcing Jason to do a bit of reading for me and talking it through several more times with Chandra, I decided to keep an open mind and consider that maybe this opportunity had come into my life for a reason. I e-mailed Chelsea’s cousin Molly, our production coordinator, to confirm that I was on board.
It was 9 p.m. on a Monday and our red-eye to Lima left at eleven. Travelers and ticket agents moved briskly through the brightly lit departure terminal of Tom Bradley International like it was the middle of the workday. I was hungry and yet not. Anxious and yet resolved. An hour earlier, I’d been on a soundstage in Burbank. For the weeks leading up to Peru, I’d landed another ridiculous television show, and I was working in Los Angeles every Sunday through Tuesday. Since I was going to be stuck on the West Coast for at least two days after my return, I persuaded Jason, Sid, and Naomi to come stay with my sister and wait for me in L.A. The trip was going to be six days in total, including travel, and if I was able to switch my flight in Iquitos on the way back, I might even get it down to five. I’d been away from Sid for longer, but the older he got, the more difficult it was to pull away. Not because I missed him—I did, of course—but because of the way I knew I’d be punished upon my return. I could be working late one night and not be able to give him his bottle before bed and the next morning he would look at me and start wailing “Dada! Dada!” like I was a home intruder. Jason agreed to bring Sid to California, but after getting into a screaming match with my sister at my brother-in-law Larry’s birthday party, where she accused him of drinking all the personal-sized Pellegrinos, he insisted they stay in a hotel.
I got my ticket and breezed through security. Molly called, directing me toward the lounge, where she and the rest of the crew were eating samosas and drinking wine.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I said, wrapping my hands around her waist and shaking her like a doll.
“It’s gonna be awesome!” Molly was eight years younger than me but felt twenty years more mature. I’d been with her in various predicaments and without fail she always exuded calm, confidence, unflappability. “Okay, so Denny said he’s waiting at the gate and Chelsea is at the XpresSpa getting a chair massage. We have, like, fifteen more minutes before we’re gonna head over if you wanna buy any almonds or birdseed,” she said, poking fun at my disordered eating. We walked out of the lounge, past Duty Free, Starbucks, and Kitson, looking for the XpresSpa. When we found her, Chelsea was facedown on a rickety massage stool prominently positioned at the store’s front entrance.
“Hi, baby.” She looked up and smiled, her short blond hair pulled into a tight bun. Molly gathered Chelsea’s scattered belongings while Chelsea paid her tab. “No, Molly, I hate that bag. We have to leave it. I think it threw my neck out.” Chelsea reached over to a satchel she’d unpacked during her massage and handed it to a passing manicurist. “Do you want this?” she asked. The young Korean girl looked at her, confused. “I’m throwing it away unless somebody wants it,” she said to the room.
“We gotta go!” Molly took the bag from Chelsea and handed it to the manicurist. “Come on,” she barked, pushing us toward our gate.
“I think I only brought one pair of underwear,” Chelsea announced as we walked briskly toward the gate. What my own insecurities often caused me to lose sight of was that Chelsea hadn’t really changed that much. Her Havaianas might have been upgraded to Mano
lo Blahniks, but she was still the girl getting the chair massage in the middle of the mall.
At the gate we looked around for Denny, who seemed to have already boarded the plane. We boarded ourselves, and Chelsea reclined in her seat. She started playing with her sleeping mask while I looked for my row. When I got there, Denny was waiting.
“Oh my God! This is happening!” I said, looking for a jovial high five. Denny had his blanket pulled up to his neck and was seemingly unable to form words. “Denny?” I asked, waving my hand in front of his face.
“This was the worst idea I’ve ever had,” he said, closing his eyes and trying to breathe deeply.
“Denny! What the fuck?! You told me this was a great idea. The whole reason I decided to do this was you.” I started to freak out as the doors of the plane sealed shut. Denny shook his head back and forth, unable to articulate a response. Chelsea hung over her seat, aiming a rubber band at Denny’s head and shooting. “Who am I supposed to talk to? This person?” She looked at the elderly woman sitting next to her, then back at us.
Our plane to Lima lifted off; there was no backing out. Just over eight hours later we were in Peru.
“Hope you don’t mind if we mic you guys before you get off the plane,” Molly said, motioning for Chloe and Andre, the boom operator and sound engineer, to bring up some lavaliers. Denny turned to me, hungover but increasingly coherent.
“Sorry about whatever I said last night. I ate some crazy edibles on my way to the airport.” He rubbed his eyes and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
“Denny! You scared the shit out of me. For a second you had me convinced we’d made a terrible mistake.”
“Oh, we have,” he said, serious. Chloe taped a mic to my skin and fed a wire down the back of my shirt.
“What? Why are you saying this?” I looked around, worried the crew was hearing all of what was transpiring.
“I shouldn’t have left. My wife is about to have a baby. We have two other kids. It was a shitty, selfish thing to do.” Suddenly Denny, my quasi–role model, was sounding exactly like me two weeks ago.