This thing? Oh my God, it was roadkill! He looked at the makeup artist. “Get your hairbrush and fluff it up. It’s going in all different directions.” The makeup artist pulled a giant paddle hairbrush out of her bag and started brushing up and down with strong strokes. She looked at me oddly. “Guess I can’t use this brush anymore.”
Oh, the horror, the misery. How does one pose sexy when you feel like you’re wearing a dead squirrel? Fake it, fake it, that’s how. I started pretending I was pretty hot. How would a hot chick pose? Not a clue. I kept doing dumb moves until they finally said, “Let’s just do some butt shots now.” Butt shots?! Whew, I thought. I can just turn around and cry while they take pictures of my butt. So I turned around and stood there, thinking the worst was over. It wasn’t. The photographer said, “Um, Jenny, you have to bend over and then try to turn your face to the lens while sticking your butt towards the lens, too.” I felt like such a dork. I did what he said and bent over and heard, “Whoa.” Not a good whoa, but a “You thought the front was bad” kind of whoa. Another surprise. “Look at all that hair that’s coming from her butt.”
What?! I had no idea my butt was as hairy as my crotch. I didn’t even know I had hair on my exit door. “Let’s light that chunk of hair coming out of her butt,” he said.
“Somebody kill me!” is what I kept saying to myself. The photographer proceeded to make me stay in the bent-over position for forty-five minutes while he lit my butt-hole hair. Finally, after a twelve-hour day, the shoot came to an end. I was exhausted.
The week the magazine came out was a disaster. As planned, I sent my parents on a cruise to Mexico so they would miss our house getting burned down by the neighborhood. Moments after their flight left, I received a phone call from my uncle, who said he’d just read in the newspaper that a Catholic girl named Jenny McCarthy had posed nude for Playboy. I said, “Ummmmmmm, yeah, that’s me.” He started screaming at the top of his lungs. He told me that I was going to burn in hell and that I had shamed my whole family. My body started trembling because I knew he was right. I was going to burn in hell, and I had shamed my whole family. What had I done?! Things went downhill the rest of the week: my house was covered in toilet paper, and my sisters, who were still at my alma mater, were tortured by the girls there. I couldn’t imagine what my parents were going to do to me. Five days later they walked in the door with smiles on their glowing faces. My sister sat them down and told them what I’d done, because we all knew I would have been murdered on the spot.
My dad took it well. My mom, on the other hand, not so well. She reacted by bursting into tears and running into her bedroom. She told my sisters that at least she had three other daughters to love. Ouch! Damn! That’s not something you want to hear from your mom. She had a breakdown, and so did I. It felt like the world was crashing down on me, and I didn’t know how to save myself. Then our eighty-year-old next-door neighbor Ruth came over and talked to my mom. She said, “Linda, who cares what anybody thinks? She’s your daughter, and that’s that. She’s a good girl, and I think she looks beautiful.” My mom only needed to hear one outside perspective to turn her thinking around. She came to me and said, I hate what you did, but I love you and will stand by you. I hugged her and cried. I told her to have faith in me. I was gonna get to Hollywood and become famous and do something good with my fame. Looking back now, we talk about that time in our lives. After all the autism activism work I have done, I have made my mom more proud than ever. She says I’m her hero, but to many others back home I will always just be the hairiest Polish porn star from Chicago.
[34]
Brad Pitt
I met Brad Pitt once at a party, just after he had broken up with Gwyneth Paltrow. (He’s going to kill me for telling this story, but he’s so busy with his fifteen children I highly doubt he’s going to do anything about it.) We were at some Hollywood Christmas party that movie producers like to throw in their backyards every year. These parties are painful to go to and are usually more like keggers in college than fancy parties. Mainly because they don’t have sponsors like a movie premiere; they are forking out their own cash to wine and dine, and it’s obvious they spend it only on booze. Anyway, I was there with my girlfriend, who had that disease I’m sure all of you have heard of, I-leave-my-friend-at-every-party syndrome. It’s amazing to witness the disease in full outbreak. One second my friend is next to me, a guy approaches, and the next second, poof! She’s gone. Not to be found until the next day, when the disease subsides.
I found myself walking through the party alone but pretending to do that thing where you look left and right as you walk, like you’re actually looking for someone. I was on my fourth lap when a guy said, “Can I help you find whoever you are looking for?” I laughed and said, “Oh no, I’m looking for the bathroom.” Good cover, idiot.
The guy showed me where the bathroom was, and I headed toward it. Los Angeles wannabe actresses, a semi-actor that I thought I recognized from the third lead in a sitcom, and band guys were all crunched into a hallway waiting for the bathroom. I stood there listening to the “I’m gonna make it in this town” dialogue, wondering why the hell I didn’t just leave. Just when I’d finally had enough, I turned around to get the hell out when Brad Pitt joined the line. I casually smiled and spun back around, hoping I didn’t seem like a total dork. How do you not geek out on a guy like that? He was wearing a beanie and looked as if he had skipped a couple days shaving. I wanted to shove my tongue down his throat, but I controlled myself and decided to just bask in his scent. I guessed his cologne pretty quickly. You might have heard of it before, it’s called marijuana. I didn’t care if he was a pothead. He talked openly about it in many interviews, and his honesty turned me on even more. Hell, he could be blind and deaf with no arms and legs. (Well, maybe just one arm. I would definitely need one arm. Okay. A finger.)
The thing about celebs is, you almost need to be one to understand the science of picking one up. Rule number one is, you never tell a celeb that you are a really big fan if you ever hope to sleep with him or her. I’ve run away from many men who had said that to me. So, what did I do in this bathroom line? I ignored him. I was hoping he was checking out my butt, but people kept talking to him, so the chances were slim. Jeez, leave the guy alone, I kept thinking as I was obnoxiously bending over to pick up the lipstick I had purposely dropped on the ground. Then I heard a familiar voice talking to Brad. I turned around, and saw it was the guy who showed me the way to the bathroom. He told Brad not to wait in this line, that he could go to the room upstairs. The guy caught me looking at him and clearly felt bad that he had steered me to the line with all the normal folk; he asked if I wanted to use that one, too. Brad looked at me, and I kept my focus on the guy and smiled. Then I casually responded with, “Yeah, that’d be great.” So the three of us headed to the bathroom, and I stared at Brad’s butt the entire time he walked up the stairs. How does he dress like he doesn’t care, yet clothing hangs over each buttock like it’s making love to it? God, I wanted to bite it. We made it to the bathroom, and Brad went in first, leaving me to talk to the guy that showed us the VIP bathroom.
“My name is Noah, by the way,” he said.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Jenny,” I replied.
I could tell the guy took a little liking to me, so I gave him a little flirt-talk to keep the conversation going. But all I could do was imagine that Brad Pitt’s penis was exposed four feet from my body. I had flashes in my head of being the first woman in the world convicted for rape, and women everywhere in the world cheering me on for doing so.
Then I heard the sounds of flushing and water running and the door opened. Oh, no, I thought, I don’t have a plan to stop him. I smiled and walked right past him, cool as a cucumber, into the bathroom and shut the door. Dammit, I thought. There goes my one shot to bone the sexiest man alive. And then I heard Noah striking up a conversation with him. I realized that I had my head plastered to the door while listening to what they were saying instead of
peeing. I pulled my pants down, forced out three drops of urine, and quickly wiped. Flush flush, wash wash. I opened the door, and it was just Noah standing there waiting for me. I was crushed. I’d blown it.
And then Noah performed a miracle in front of my eyes. “So, Brad just invited me back to his place to hang. Do you want to come with?” Holy shit, this guy has no idea, but he just picked up a rapist and is about to take the rapist to the victim’s house. “Yeah, that sounds cool,” I said. Noah smiled, and I followed him through the house and out the door. We got to the valet, and that’s where we met up with Brad. Noah made the introduction: “Hey, Brad, this is Jenny.” My eyes slowly met his, and we shook hands. His voice went into slow motion, “Niiiicceee toooo meeeeeet youuuuuu.” Then a girl popped out of nowhere and shouted to us, “Ready to go, our car is here.”
Hold on, pussycat, who are you? Who is this creature I must destroy who looks cute as a button dragging my rape victim to a car? Damn. How was I going to try and do anything with a pussy-blocker in the way? The valet opened the car door, and she got into the driver seat and Noah jumped into the passenger seat. I stood there confused as Brad climbed into the back seat, leaving the only place for me … in the back seat next to him! Brad must have asked Noah to ask me to come back to his place. The pussy-blocker had to be Noah’s girlfriend. Holy crap, Batman! I was dying. I tried to keep cool and just sort of agreed with whatever they were talking about in the car. We pulled up to a very nondescript gate, and it took security all of three seconds to open it. Brad started asking me questions about myself and was very casual about it in a flirty way. We walked into his house, and it looked like it came out of Architectural Digest. A butler or something approached us and asked if we wanted a drink. I ordered some vodka with a splash of lemon to calm my nerves. We headed into a den that was dark but cozy. I was seriously pitting out so bad from nerves that I asked to use his bathroom strictly to wipe some of the sweat away. “Yeah, I’ll show you where it is,” Brad said. Oh, no, I wasn’t ready to rape him yet. I couldn’t rape someone when I had BO.
We were walking down the hallway, talking about little shit, when he grabbed me and pushed me against a wall. I stared at him for a second, and then we slowly kissed. The butterflies in my stomach were going berserk. I slid my hands down his back and managed to get one of my hands on his oh-so-fine ass. And yes, ladies and gay men, it was oh-so-fine. We made out for a few minutes, and then I pulled him into the bathroom. I closed the lid of the toilet and made him sit down. I squatted on my knees and slowly started to rub my face on his inner thighs while looking up at him. I was giving it my super-duper naughty face, and just as I was about to unzip his pants… the freaking butler shouted that my drink was ready! What an idiot! He ruined the only rape moment I wanted to experience in my life with freaking vodka! Brad snapped out of my love spell and started to get up. I stopped him and said, “Wanna do me in the butt?”
Okay, I can’t go on any longer. I faked this whole chapter. Hahaha, sorry. I know, I wish it were real, too. Hahahaha.
[35]
What Are Friends For?
Well, the real ones hold your hair when you puke, lie to your boyfriend for you, loan you their favorite shirt, pick you up from a one-night stand, listen to your drama; they don’t copy your hairstyle, don’t gossip about you, they don’t flirt with your man, they’re genuinely happy for you and would defend you in any battle.
The fake friends go to the hair salon and come back saying the hairdresser accidentally gave them the same haircut as yours, they buy the same clothes, get you wasted so they can flirt with your boyfriends, never call to ask how you are doing, won’t do a McDonald’s run when you’re hung over, compete with you, are jealous of you, and will talk behind your back the moment you turn around.
My first experience of fake friendship came in eighth grade. A new girl named Joanna Kline moved to our school. We hit it off, and in no time we were meeting boys in back alleys to make out and dry-hump them against garage doors. We were so close in eighth grade that we would force each other to chug vodka to see who would puke green stuff the quickest and then take pictures of each other getting sick. I dropped almost all of my other friends because Joanna told me to. She wanted me all to herself. Sadly, it took less than a year for her demon horns to reveal themselves through her bleached hair.
I went to the mall with my sister one frightful day, and there I spotted Joanna holding hands with a boy that didn’t look like her boyfriend. I pulled my sister behind a phone booth (remember those?), and we spent the next ten minutes spying on her indiscretions. I couldn’t make out whom she was with, but it wasn’t the Italian boy she usually dry-humped. This guy was blond, tan, and wore Cavaricci pants. Wait… hold on a second, I thought. That’s… MY FUCKING BOYFRIEND! I felt my heart chambers rip apart from one another like the Velcro strips on a Nike sneaker. My body started trembling as I saw them move their faces toward one another and lock lips. I looked at my younger sister, whose eyes were as big as saucers; she began to speak to me, but everything went in to slow motion and her voice sounded all distorted: “Oooooooooooooooooooohhh-hhhhhhhhhhhhhh nooooooooooooooooooooooo.” I looked back at my boyfriend and the bitch and did what any girl from the South Side of Chicago would have done in my place. I took off running like a bat out of hell. Not away from them. Oh, no. I took off directly toward them like a bull let out of a pen. I was a fifty-yard track star and used every piece of talent I had within me to get there in record speed and knock down my former best friend going about thirty miles an hour. She started screaming like a crazy person, so again I did what any South Side Chicago girl would do. I dragged her by her hair around the corner and down the stairs near the arcade and proceeded to beat the shit out of her.
So I’m beating the shit out of Joanna when I hear the mall police shout, “What the hell is going on?” I got off Joanna and looked at my boyfriend, who stared at me in awe. He mumbled, “You really love me.” I grabbed his hand, and we took off running away from the police. When we made it to a safe hiding place, I cried on his shoulder and told him to never ever ever ever cheat on me again. How stupid is that? He was the one I should have beaten the shit out of.
Joanna opened my eyes. My first week of high school was tough. I was scared of making friends because I now knew firsthand how hard it was to pick out who would be real and who would turn into a fake backstabbing bitch. I decided to take my chance on a girl named Krissy, and we hit it off that first week. Krissy seemed to come from good stock; she was as poor as I was, so we could relate to wearing hand-me-downs from our older sisters. We seemed to really get along and walked through the hallways of Catholic school giggling and gossiping like we had been friends forever. Sadly, it also only took the evil group of girls in the school one week to decide to target me for destruction. I didn’t do anything to provoke it, but I’m guessing my long bleached blond hair made me the perfect choice. Krissy and I did everything to avoid the “Heathers” from seeing us in between classes. It didn’t take them too long to figure out my hiding spots, though, and they attacked me with shaving cream pies and punches to the stomach. I even had to endure the bus ride home without Krissy. Just me and the Heathers. They would shout names at me and spit on me, which I realized now was great training for Hollywood. I was so abused in high school that I’m unfazed by any critics or any negative press thanks to the thick skin I had to grow during my teenage years.
So, on this bus ride home, without my friend Krissy, the Heathers decided to sit behind me and talk about my fluffy long bleached Barbie hair like it was the ugliest haystack they had ever seen. I kept praying to God nothing too extreme would happen, but I think God was on a pee break and didn’t hear. I started to smell something awful and couldn’t figure out what it was. Then a voice inside my head said, That smells like hair burning. I put my hand behind my head and felt fire burning my Aqua Net-sprayed locks. I stood up screaming and frantically patted down my hair while everyone on the bus laughed hysterically. I wore my hair
in a French braid for the next four months.
What surprised me even more than my hair burning was what happened next; I was walking to class with Krissy, talking about how I had just gotten my period and didn’t make it to the bathroom in time to get a tampon. My underwear suffered some damage, so I decided to take them off and put them in my locker. After the next class, I made my way through the hallways with lightning speed to avoid the Heathers.
I turned toward the last wing to make it to Spanish class to find the entire hallway backed up with girls screaming, laughing, and pointing to the wall above the lockers. I couldn’t quite make it out, so I pushed through the crowd. As my vision became clear, my whole being (whatever was left of it) came crashing down into the pits of hell. My period underwear was hanging up on the wall with my name and an arrow pointing to it. The only person that knew my combination was Krissy. She had given it to the enemy.
From that day forward I missed so much high school they told my parents that I wouldn’t graduate. How could I go to school with the Heathers plotting my demise, and now my very own friend joining the dark side? I was devastated and hurt and prayed college would get easier.
And it did. On my very first day of college, I met a girl named Julie who I knew was the real deal. We went out dancing and drinking and realized that we would be lifelong friends. I’m happy to say that she remains my best friend today. The only thing that’s shitty about our friendship is that she still lives in Chicago, and she keeps having babies. I don’t know how much longer I can stay friends with her if she keeps blowing her vagina to bits. I mean, seriously Julie, WTF. Get on the pill.
Moving to L.A. would seem like the scariest place to make friends, but fortunately I met up with a couple named Paul and Jackie from Canada soon after I moved here. They are funny and kind and have been at my side throughout Evan’s autism and my interesting choice of men over the years. They know the perfect mixture of support and ridicule when I decide to do dumb things like get married or dye my hair black. I will forever be grateful for their real friendship.
Love, Lust & Faking It Page 15