Huicho said, “I knew something was up when I went to shake her hand and she extended her left one out like royalty.”
I smiled to myself. I had hit the lottery: a hot trust-fund kid with hot friends, and she thought I was about as fascinating as I thought I was.
The next night we did the exact same thing. More friends, loud bars, and even more drinks. We ended up at my local watering hole, The Room, a dimly lit, two-room establishment that played great music and served strong beers. Huicho’s girlfriend, Alex, met up with us after a ridiculously long day on Wall Street, and she gave me the same approving grin as I introduced her to the group. She pulled me aside as the rest of them found a place to sit and asked, “Alright, what’s wrong with her?”
I laughed and felt a moment of pride as Alex and I walked to the bar to order drinks for the group. The night ended just the same as the previous—quick kiss, odd smirk, and into a cab. I walked home with Huicho and Alex, who spent the entire walk asking questions, doing what all girls do: trying to pick apart a pretty girl.
“Why did she extend her left hand when I met her?”
“She’s rich,” shouted Huicho into the empty sky. “Blue blood, that’s what they do.”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Something seems odd about her to me.”
Huicho and I laughed off her questions as female cattiness and suspicion. As we walked home through the streets of the Village, I told them everything I felt for this chick I had known for three days. We all got home—I was living with the two of them at the time—and made our favorite late-night snack: a dozen poached eggs.
The next morning I was awoken by a very grim-looking Huicho, who said we needed to talk. “I think you need to go out on a sober date with your girl, during the day, in the light.”
“Why?”
He stood beside my bed. “Something is wrong … I’m not sure what it is but there is definitely something wrong with her.”
“Be more specific.”
“I just think you should go out on a date—sober—with her. In the sunlight. Get a good look at her.”
“Just tell me what you’re trying to say.” I was exhausted from his accusations.
“Nothing. I’m just saying you’re falling for this girl pretty hard, and you’ve only been around her black-out drunk.”
“Are you trying to say she’s a dude?”
“No, not at all. Definitely not a dude. I just walked home with you last night and the things you were saying about her were pretty big statements coming from you. I’ve known you since we were kids and I think, if you feel the way you say you’re feeling, you should have a sober date with her and see if you guys have anything in common other than the fact that you both like getting black-out drunk and stumbling around lower Manhattan.”
“Who the fuck goes out on sober dates?”
“You two should. Take her out Sunday, pick her up at her place, see where she lives, just you and her, and get to know her.”
“I know her, Huicho. I sat next to her on a plane for five hours.”
“Drunk and on Xanax. And if I know you, she didn’t talk at all.”
He knew me well. “Fine, I’ll call her now and see if she wants to go to brunch on Sunday.”
Which I did. I called her, and she was not only more than happy to hear from me but we talked on the phone for an hour like eighth graders. I worked that night and met up with her and some friends uptown at an Irish pub, and we literally didn’t move from our corner booth until closing time when we were too drunk to stand. We split ways, promising to see each other the next morning, but those plans seemed ridiculous to me. I had done my best detective work at the Irish bar: no Adam’s apple, big tits, a great smile. Her friends were real. She did admit that she had run away with one of the friends we were having drinks with, an equally hot girl, when they were young. But I had done the same in first grade. (Of course they’d hidden out in Brooklyn with some street kids, since she lived in New York City, and I had just stayed in my front yard tree for about an hour.) She partied a little with drugs in college—but who hadn’t?—and had made some bad decisions when it came to men, which I thought was playing to my favor, as I was asking her to continue that streak. Everything seemed on the up and up, and that is exactly how I explained it to Huicho as I left for my church-ass sober brunch date the next morning.
“Good, I’m glad you’re happy,” he said.
I walked out the door and headed uptown. I had a hard time figuring out what to wear to a brunch and opted for a pair of light khakis, flip-flops, and a plain T-shirt. It was summer in New York and Satan’s-taint hot. I remember because when she answered the door at her family’s house, the first thing I noticed was that she was wearing running shoes with a sundress. Running shoes, I thought. What an interesting choice. How far is this restaurant? Did she just get done running around town? Should I have worn running shoes? Maybe it was a Northeastern thing, like Londoners and their trainers. She asked me in to introduce me to her family, and that’s when I noticed it. A pronounced limp. Like a big dog who has gone on a long hike, or a grandmother getting up to make another cup of tea during a commercial break. The introductions to her dad, grandmother, and brother were a blur as I thought to myself, “Why is she limping?”
We left and walked around the block to her favorite restaurant, and the limp remained constant. We sat down at our table and I noticed her smirking at me, the same smirk I had gotten at the end of each night. But now it came all the time. The waiter gave us water—a smirk. I said the place was nice—a smirk. I asked her where the bathroom was—a smirk. My head started spinning: The limp, the smirk. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. She was eating only with her left hand. Cutting with her left hand, forking the food with her left hand, lifting her glass with her left hand. Everything with her left, the right hidden under the table. Curiosity was overwhelming good intention. I stopped the waiter and ordered a Bloody Mary, and that’s when she said it.
“Cerebral palsy.”
Apparently she had been born with cerebral palsy, though she was fairly high functioning, and she completely assumed I knew. How could I not?
She kept telling me about her life, but all I could think to myself was, what does this mean for me? Did this change anything? Did this make her less attractive to me, and if it did, what did that say about me? Was I a bad person for not noticing until now, and would I be a bad person if I let it affect my feelings for her? I drank four more Bloody Marys, finished the meal, smiled politely, and limped her home. I then hopped in a cab and headed back to my apartment.
As luck would have it, everyone was awaiting my arrival like it was Christmas morning. Tony, his wife, Huicho, Alex, and Huicho’s sister Val, all stopped talking as I walked in the door. I realized instantly they had been talking about me. I stood in the doorway of our living room and announced my findings.
“She has cerebral palsy!”
The women processed the information, nodding, while the guys laughed hysterically.
“How big of an alcoholic are you that you go on four dates with a chick and don’t even know she has cerebral palsy?” howled Tony.
“I think it shows how little he pays attention to anyone but himself,” Huicho said.
“So it’s over,” proclaimed Tony.
“Nope. I invited her to go to Scotland with me,” I said, shocking even the women in the room. They all knew that the next week I had to fly to Scotland to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with three other New York comics.
“I told her I was leaving in a week, and I’d be in Scotland for a month and it sounded a lot like ‘I just realized you have cerebral palsy so this is over,’ and I felt like a jerk, so I told her if she wanted she could come with me.”
The room sat in shock. “Is she?”
“Yup. She said she has always wanted to see Scotland. She goes back to L.A. tomorrow, and I’ll see her in two weeks in Scotland.”
I left the living room and walked into my room. I
felt good. I was an okay-guy after all. Yes, I had a drinking problem. No, I didn’t pay attention to anyone but myself. But when push came to shove, I wasn’t about to let a nonprogressive disorder of the nervous system tell me who I did and didn’t like.
The next time we spoke was over the phone and this time I asked her to tell me more about herself.
“I’m a vegan, and you should know I have severe urges to firebomb Pink’s.”
“Pink’s, as in the hot-dog joint?” I said.
“Yeah, Pink’s, as in the purveyor of death, hatred, and all things meat. Have you been there?”
The answer to that question was yes. In light of the fact that she was considering a terrorist act against them, I decided to hold off on telling her that it was maybe the best hot dog I had ever had.
“I can’t even believe that anyone can enjoy meat,” she said. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Well, people have different likes and tastes.”
“Have you ever had veal?”
“I fucking love veal!”
I realized what had just come out of my mouth. The fact was, I liked veal so much that when I heard the mention of it, my Paleo instinct took over and I didn’t have time to edit.
“Are you serious?”
“Uhhh…”
“Do you know what they do to those babies?”
The truth was I didn’t even really know anything about veal. All I knew was that I’d had veal parmesan a couple times, it was on the short list of things I wanted to regularly put in my mouth, and just the mention of it made my mouth water. For the next thirty minutes she lectured me on the atrocities of veal raising, how they tether them in crates to restrict their movement, to make them more suitable for assholes like me, who joyously shove hate down their throats. At the end of the lecture she gave a mild apology. Then she started crying. Talk about the joys of sobriety! Things had been going much better when we talked about me, we drank, and when she didn’t have cerebral palsy. She apologized. I didn’t need the apology, but I took it. I told her I’d see her in Scotland.
I hung up the phone and told Huicho I needed to talk to him, so I offered to buy him dinner. Over a nice Italian meal I told him my conundrum.
“How do I get out of this? I’m sure she was spewing this crazy before but I never listened. The only thing I’ve heard her say in this past week is, ‘hot dogs are death, veal is murder, and I have cerebral palsy,’ which is night and day from ‘do you want to share drugs, you are fascinating, and I have a cat.’”
As with most male relationships, he did nothing more than say, basically, “I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision.” We drank together until it wasn’t bothering me.
The next day as I was packing for my trip, my cell phone rang.
“I may not be able to make it to Scotland,” she said.
I exhaled and began envisioning a great joyful swim to freedom. “The problem is that I rescue cats, and I have someone who is willing to watch all of them but one, my problem cat.”
“How many cats do you have?” I said meekly. I realized I had never told her I was deathly allergic.
“Right now, five.”
“Five cats. How awesome, and they all live in your house?”
“My apartment in L.A., yes. So, I’m just giving you the heads-up, I won’t know about Scotland until tomorrow.”
“Umm, okay, but that creates a little bit of a problem, because I’ll already be in Scotland. Do you want me to try and call you, or do you want to try and call me?”
“I’m not promising anything. Let’s play it by ear.”
That was good enough for me. I wrote it off as a problem averted, and that night I got on a Virgin Atlantic flight to Edinburgh and drank like a king. To this day I’ll never forget that takeoff into the night above Manhattan, soft and smooth on the top deck of a 747.
The next morning I sat in a flat, still drunk from my flight, sharing my exploits with Patrice O’Neal, one of the comics I was staying with. Patrice was older, larger, and blacker than me. He howled in laughter as I told him the story.
“You gotta talk about this shit on stage! You start dating a cripple and don’t even know about it ’cause you’re such a goddamn drunk? And then she is fucking crazy and you can’t dump her ’cause now you know she’s a cripple!”
I laughed it off. I knew Patrice well enough not to let on that it was bothering me. Patrice was an old-school bully who loved to watch people get uncomfortable. That coupled with the fact he was a genuine comic genius meant that if he wanted to, he could dismantle you like a puzzle, so not even you knew where your corners went. He liked me enough to let it slide, and that was the last I heard about it—until the next day when she knocked on our door.
My heart sank when I saw her at the door, tired, drunk, and with more bags than expected. I slowly walked her into our kitchen, where she met Patrice for the first time. The beautiful thing about Patrice was he didn’t accept bullshit. If you came to him with something ingenuine, he sensed it. He also relished playing the part you expected of a man like him—a six-foot, 400-pound black man with chipped front teeth, who scowled more than he smiled. I introduced the two of them and as Patrice extended his right hand and she reached out with her left, I could almost hear Bruce Buffer’s voice in my head: Let’s get ready to rumble.
“What am I supposed to do what that shit, kneel and kiss it? What are you, a fucking queen?”
Patrice walked past her in a huff and went directly to the freezer. I immediately regretted having told him anything about her as I heard him pull out a pack of hot dogs.
“Bert, you want a hot dog?”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
“How about your girl? I can make chili dogs with some bacon bits, cheese. Mmmm. Sounds good, don’t it, Bert?”
I could see her eyes growing red with anger, and I grabbed her by the good arm and escorted her to the living room. There I introduced her to Rich Vos and Patrice’s girlfriend, who was from England and staying with us. I then walked her into my room, where I hid her from Patrice until showtime.
Around eight o’clock, we all hopped in a cab together and headed up to the Assembly Hall, where we were performing. Patrice said nothing, as his chick and mine were apparently hitting it off, both, coincidentally, wearing extremely sexy leather pants.
We sat in the back of the hall and watched as Rich Vos slurred his way through his set, followed by Lewis Schaffer. Just before it was my turn to take the stage, Patrice leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “Your girl looks hot in them pants.” I exhaled a deep breath, thinking the worst of the storm had passed. “Too bad you know there’s a baby leg in there.”
I took the stage and bombed. So did Patrice, which unbeknownst to me was about to make the remainder of the night absolutely unbearable.
We went downstairs to a bar all the comics from the festival frequented, and I noticed our two ladies were well past tipsy. Not fifteen seconds into sitting down, my chick made the mistake of mentioning how she had expected Patrice to be better on stage.
She didn’t hear it, but I definitely did: It sounded like the click of the land mine you just stepped on.
She continued talking about his set and where she thought he lost the audience. I could see a smile growing on Patrice’s face. It was as if someone had cut off a serial killer in traffic, and he was now following her home. She stopped for a second to take a sip of wine and Patrice began what I can only call the most perfect disassembling and reconstructing of a person’s insecurities and flaws, in the most casual and offhand manner, that I have ever seen. He was loaded with information I never thought he would use, because had I ever thought this would happen I would never have told him anything about her. But as it was, I had told him more than he needed, and he used it all. Phrases like “Upper East Side pussy” and “liberal ass limp” decorated his work. The evening ended with her screaming about him in my bedroom, which I’m almost sure he could hear.
The next n
ight was worse, and the night after that no better. He had her number and he was going to continually pull it at his leisure. This made her crazy—and absolutely unbearable to be around. At one point I thought he was going to make her racist. She would get drunk and fight all night with Patrice, so much so that after a week I started to think she really wanted to fuck him. Then when Patrice didn’t feel like fighting anymore, she would come into my room and fight with me. It all culminated with her standing naked at the foot of my bed, shouting at the top of her lungs, “You are never gonna fuck me!” (Which I didn’t, as a matter of fact. We never even kissed the whole time we were in Scotland.)
Then God intervened. One morning, two weeks in, I got a phone call from my manager telling me three things: I got another TV development deal, I got a TV show on FX, and that I had to fly to L.A. immediately. The news couldn’t have come at a better time. Not only were great things happening for me in Hollywood, but I had a reason to leave this horrific reality show.
Patrice came out that morning as I was trying to arrange flights. He had a smile on his face as he told me that he had stuck his head into my room last night, as she stood naked in front of my bed (I had seen him). I smiled back and told him, “Well, she’s all yours.”
“What?”
“I just got a deal and a TV show. I have to fly back to L.A. tonight.”
Patrice spent the next hour and a half taking me apart over breakfast, which he made, slowly. He explained why my show wouldn’t succeed, why my deal wouldn’t make it, and why he felt bad for me as a comic. I half brushed it off and half took it to heart.
I’m not proud of what I did next but I stand by it: I left. I left her with Patrice and I left Patrice with her. They called a couple times—once while I was at a bar in Santa Monica and another time while I was looking at houses—both times still from Scotland, to bitch about one another. Patrice ended up kicking her out of the flat and she ended up backpacking through Europe. I started my TV show and didn’t hear from her once. But I felt bad about how everything had gone down. That’s what I do, I run away from problems.
Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child Page 14