The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation

by Melissa Rivers

  A Sport by Any Other Name

  Circa 1984

  Me: Mom, I want to join the volleyball team.

  Joan: Jews don’t play sports.

  Me: I’m Jewish; I play sports.

  Joan: You were adopted.

  Me: I was not.

  Joan: Jews don’t play sports; they own sports franchises.

  When I was growing up in California we belonged to a country club, where my parents would spend lazy summer days having cocktails, playing cards with friends, and swimming in the gene pool, which is the only pool they would have gone in, because they were not exactly what one would call “sportsmen.” My mother was so nonathletic that when she was in high school the gym teacher excused her from class without her even asking—for the entire year. When it came to sports, not only was she disinterested, she was totally illiterate. For someone who made a living on her command of the English language, I found it remarkable that she couldn’t keep straight the difference between a touchdown and a knockout. Here’s the extent of her knowledge of sports: Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe—and Marilyn could’ve done a lot better. The only athletic endeavor my mother participated in was power shopping, and during holiday sales, she turned it into a contact sport.

  My father was no better; he was so nonathletic that the local college wouldn’t let him be the team accountant, even though he had a master’s degree in accounting—and he was only in the third grade. But my father was a sports fan. One of my fondest memories of him is lying on my parents’ bed, just the two of us, watching football, while my mother is downstairs loudly ordering things on his credit cards.

  Yet I am very athletic, which should prove to all “science deniers”—are you listening, all of you batshit crazy nutbags on the science committee in Congress?—that Darwin had a point and recessive genes do exist, although I am not stating for certain that that’s the case here. (FYI, my mother loved recessive genes. We’d be walking down the block and she’d notice a family across the street and she’d say, “Missy, is there anything better than seeing a really good-looking couple pushing a baby that looks like a Sasquatch who got caught in a house fire? I think not.”)

  Of all the types of children my parents could have had, they never would’ve expected, or wanted, an athletic one. Asian? Yes. Seven feet tall? Possibly. Conjoined twins? A delicious maybe. But athletic? Not in a million years. My mother looked at sports the way Liberace looked at women—the outfits might be interesting, but the rest of it was boring and useless.

  Since my athleticism and love of sports couldn’t be proven through heredity—on the combined Rosenberg/Molinsky family tree there was not one ancestor who was known for running, kicking, or tackling, and the only things they threw were tantrums—my mother couldn’t figure out how or why I’d become interested in sports. From as early as anyone can remember, I liked athletics. As a baby, I jogged before I could walk. In kindergarten, all my friends liked to watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Sesame Street; I was hooked on NASCAR’s Firecracker 400 from Daytona Beach.

  For a few years when I was in high school, my mother was convinced that the only reason I was playing sports was because I was trying to gently break the news to her that I was a lesbian. When that didn’t pan out, she figured I was simply doing it out of spite.

  I think her lack of interest in sports came from the fact that she was not a terribly coordinated person. When did you ever hear anyone say, “My God, that Joan Rivers glides across the floor like a gazelle?” She was so uncoordinated she could actually stub a knee. She couldn’t dance; she had absolutely no rhythm. Even Dancing with the Stars, a show that books people with no legs, never invited her on. Apparently the contestants with missing limbs could at least find the beat.

  By the way, it’s not that she didn’t want to go on Dancing with the Stars. It’s just that she knew her limitations. Yet she never let those limitations stop her. One day she called me with what she described as a “genius plan” to get on the show, in spite of her inability to channel Twyla Tharp. She wanted the network to book us as a team. Here’s the plan: She would do all the easy steps. Then, when the routines became more difficult, I would run in, in a matching outfit, take her place and do the kick, spin, or whatever the more complicated move was, and then run out. “Melissa, it’s fantastic! No one’s ever done it before.” When I replied, “There’s a reason for that. I want no part of this,” she mumbled something about my being impossible to work with and hung up the phone.

  One winter we took a vacation to Vail, Colorado, and my mother tried to ski, but she was afraid of heights, which made the chairlift a problem. She gave it one shot, fell down, and that was it. (Of course, she fell on a hill that was so low it had no chairlift.) After that, she just sat in the lodge “encouraging” the other skiers with cheers of support like “Get off that bunny hill, you big wuss,” and “Don’t be such a hotdogger!” And that was just to the four-year-olds in the pre-K group.

  I’m not suggesting that because my mother didn’t like athletics she didn’t take care of herself. She did work out. She walked on the treadmill, she lifted light weights, and she even hired a trainer. Of course, the second the trainer arrived, she’d bamboozle him by sitting and having a cup of coffee with him first, feigning interest in his steroid-riddled life, and then suddenly—it’s snack time and, Holy Cow! Before you know it, she’s got only five minutes on the treadmill and the trainer has to leave to wax his chest and put on his man tan.

  My mother stayed in shape by doing one of the two physical things she was good at: walking; the other was shopping. She walked everywhere. Mind you, she couldn’t walk six feet in sneakers—actually she could, but she didn’t want to; she didn’t like sneakers; she didn’t believe they were flattering to the leg—but she could hotfoot it from Saks to Bergdorf in under four minutes in a pair of heels. And even though she never set foot in a gym unless she was paid to do a show there, she nonetheless gave me advice on the subject: “Melissa, always wear full makeup when you go to the gym; you never know whom you’re going to meet. They can’t all be gay.” Similarly, when I’d go out to play tennis, she’s say, “I know you have a good serve, but a little lipstick wouldn’t hurt you.”

  To be fair, I’ll concede that she did attend sporting events periodically, but that’s only because she was friendly with the owners. (She actually turned down Lakers courtside season seats because “Why would I want to sit so close that all these giant players would sweat on me? Ucch.”) I remember after one New York Jets football game, in which they got clobbered, my mother went up to her friend, the owner, Woody Johnson, to thank him for inviting us and to give him a piece of advice. She told him that, in her opinion, the cheerleaders needed sexier uniforms. She didn’t care that it was freezing outside. If the girls looked hotter, no one would care that the team lost.

  There was one sporting event she did enjoy attending, and that was the Kentucky Derby. That’s because she got to wear a hat, the jockeys wore pretty colors, and she could drink.

  My mother didn’t fail at many things in life, but being a sports mom was one of them. I give her credit because she tried, but it wasn’t easy because (a) she didn’t like sports, and (b) she didn’t like children, and youth sports are filled with them. On the food chain of things she liked, sports ranked about the same as dysentery. (She actually preferred dysentery over children, because if you have it, you can at least lose weight.)

  She (and my father) came to all my sporting events even if the results weren’t what you’d call optimal. When I was in fifth grade, I was on the school swim team. Before every meet, my parents brought Toblerone chocolate for all the kids; they seriously thought the sugar rush would help us swim faster. Needless to say, we didn’t win a lot: we were so bloated and cramped we were lucky we didn’t drown. Apparently the “Don’t Eat an Hour before Going in the Water” memo never caught my parents’ attention. Yet in spite of the mounting losses, my mom and dad were the most popular parents on the team. “Oh, look
, it’s the Rosenbergs. Yay! Can we have some chocolate?”

  My favorite sport growing up was horseback riding, and I competed in a lot of equestrian events. As I’ve said, my parents made a valiant effort to be good sports parents—in fact, too much of a valiant effort. They always showed up, and I mean always. They were there for every event, every practice, and every grooming session. It was embarrassing—not because of their constant presence but because, in all the times they were there, they never learned anything. They were so uninformed that I finally said, “Either learn a little bit or don’t come. It’s becoming humiliating. After twenty years of my riding, you should at least have accidentally picked up some of the rules. At least the one about not making startling noises near the horses!”

  One would have thought that with all the time my parents spent traipsing to games, meets, and horse shows, they would at least have been interested in the results. Nope. They couldn’t have cared less. Turns out my mother was frequently asleep behind her oversize sunglasses, and managed to stay upright only by propping herself against my father, who would usually be listening to a business report on his Walkman radio. As an adult, I asked her, “If it was such torture, why were you and Daddy there?” She shared with me that one of her pediatricians once told her that while “quality time” with a child was important, so was “quantity time,” so even if she didn’t care or was bored shitless by the event, she’d show up.

  Looking back, I see that what embarrassed me as a teenager I’ve taken to heart as an adult: the “quantity time” she gave me is one of the reasons I’m so involved with Cooper. Unlike my mother, I actually love, appreciate, and enjoy the sports he plays. I can even tell you what sport it is, how it’s played, and what the rules are. Last year, my mom and I were at one of Cooper’s lacrosse games and I was screaming and yelling at the top of my lungs. She looked at me, with disdain and horror, and said, “Oh my God! You’ve become one of them! This really matters to you? Where did I go wrong, and please God, tell me that’s not a jersey you’re wearing!” FYI, whenever my mother went to one of Cooper’s games, she wore her “uniform”: black pants, black top, jacket, low heels, and jewelry. It’s the dead of summer at an outdoor lacrosse tournament, and she’s Johnny Cash. She would also be in full makeup and hair. Why? Because she didn’t want any eighth-grade kid to go back to his parents and say, “I saw Joan Rivers; she didn’t look good.”

  When we went to Cooper’s lacrosse games, I enjoyed watching my mother almost as much as I enjoyed watching Cooper—because she knew nothing about lacrosse. She just clapped whenever anyone else clapped, even if it was against our team. She followed the crowd like a lemming off a cliff. Seeing my mother clapping with all her heart, even though she didn’t have a clue what she was clapping for, made me realize that while she may not have been the stereotypical, drawing-board sports mom, she sure was one fantastic sports grandmom—and this time around, with her grandson, I think she actually enjoyed it (when she was awake).

  Fs and Us, Ps and Qs

  My mother was a stickler for manners. I’ll never forget the first time she took me to a petting zoo. (I was thirty-seven; Mom was a procrastinator.) We saw a huge potbellied pig feasting on slop. She shook her head and said, “Look at that! He’s got food on his whiskers, he’s covered in mud, and he’s chewing with his mouth open. It’s like eating with your aunt Miriam.”

  My mother was born in 1933 and was raised in an era when simple manners meant a lot. She told me that her mother would never leave the house—not even to walk to the corner store—unless she was dressed “like a lady”: that is, stockings, gloves, fur coat, hat. My mom said Grandma used to say, “It doesn’t matter if no one on the street could see me; I could see me.” On one hand, I think that’s such an elegant and esteem-building way to behave. On the other hand, it seems like a huge pain in the ass just to get a loaf of bread. But it’s easier for me to understand those times than it is for me to understand today, when many of the younger girls are getting tattooed from head to toe. I’m not judging; I like a little ink. I have a couple of small, discreetly placed tattoos myself. I just wonder how, sixty years from now, Nana is going to be able to explain to her ten-year-old grandson why she has a tramp stamp and a picture of a serpent coming out of a vagina on her chest. (I once heard a rumor that former secretary of state Al Haig had the Princeton tiger tattooed on his butt. Whether it was true or not, that image has never left me. I’m just grateful he didn’t go to South Carolina; he’d have had a gamecock on his ass.)

  When it came to etiquette, my mother was very old-fashioned and old school. She actually collected old Emily Post books to see how manners had changed through the years. Believe it or not, when she wasn’t on the road, we frequently sat down together as a family and had a formal dinner. I’m talking French service with fingerbowls, and forks, knives, and spoons of every conceivable shape and size. I’m doing the light version of formal with Cooper, as I don’t think his generation will need to know what a demitasse spoon is for. (Pity, because someday he’s going to inherit four sets of them.)

  My mom believed that men should be gentlemen, women should be ladies, and drag queens should make a friggin’ decision so we know whether to treat them like ladies or gentlemen. Once, when I was in high school, I had a really big date with a football player. He was taking me out to dinner, and right before I left the house, my mother said, “Missy, I hope he behaves like a gentleman.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “It’s his job to bring the condoms and lube.” I said, “Mom!” She said, “I’m kidding. I hope he opens the door for you and pulls out your chair in the restaurant—and not while you’re sitting in it.”

  She always said that chivalry wasn’t dead, it was just hiding in Argentina like the old Nazis and it was her job to ferret it out.

  My mother was especially focused on table manners. If she caught me eating with my fingers or chewing with my mouth open, she’d glare at me as though I’d run over the only child of a powerful world leader (or, more important, a powerful talent agent). When I was a little girl sitting at the dining room table, she’d say, “Is that how you’re planning on eating when we’re having dinner with the queen of England?” I bought that until I was eight years old, and then one night at dinner, I had an epiphany and said, “Wait a minute! You don’t know the queen of England.” Little did I know that twenty years later she would, but back then she was just being manipulative.

  My mother felt that regardless of one’s standing in life—or what one was eating—there was never an excuse for bad manners. She said that good manners, table or otherwise, start at home, and it makes no difference if you have money or not. The rules of civility are the same whether you were raised on the Kennedy compound or in Honey Boo Boo’s trailer park. When my mother saw the movie Deliverance, she was stunned by the hillbilly rape scene in the woods. It wasn’t the rough sex that horrified her; it was the fact that, the next day, not one of the hillbillies had the manners to send flowers, pick up a phone, or drop a simple thank-you card in the mail.

  My parents felt it was never too early to teach a child proper manners. According to family legend, my first words as a baby were “Excuse me,” spoken after I spat up on our nanny while she was burping me. As the story goes, Consuelo looked stunned, and to this day I’m not sure if it was because I had such good manners at such a young age or because she spoke no English and thought I was possessed by the devil and speaking in tongues (the day before she had taken a phone message from one of my mother’s agents, so the devil was at the forefront of her mind).

  I was taught that when I was introduced to my parents’ friends, I was to address them as “Mr.” or “Mrs.”—unless the woman was single or the man was gay, in which case I was to address them both as “Miss.” I remember once, when I was about ten or eleven years old, a new neighbor moved in across the street. She was very masculine, with close-cropped hair, man hands, Brooks Brothers suits, and wingtip shoes. I said, “Mom, what do I say to her? ‘Hel
lo, Miss Jones’ or ‘Nice to meet you, ma‘am’?” My mother told me to crack my knuckles, give her a slap on the back, and say, “How’s it hangin’, Butch?” Apparently there was a whole different set of rules for lesbians she had not yet taught me.

  My mother’s show business career took us all over the world, and I learned that manners differ from country to country. For example, in Japan, burping at the end of a meal is considered a compliment. It means “Tell the chef the food was delicious.” In this country, burping at the end of a meal is considered rude and means “Tell the chef to cook the fuckin’ fish!”

  I learned that in the Middle East, people are only allowed to eat with their right hands. My mother said that this was because half the people had had their left hands cut off for masturbating, shoplifting, or masturbating while shoplifting.

  I was taught that in Korea during dinner it’s considered a sign of respect to follow your elders’ cues—that is, eat as they do. My mother told me that she and my father tried that once in Boca Raton, following the elders’ cues, and it didn’t work out too well. They had to eat dinner at 2:00 p.m. (soft food only), pass gas at the table, and then wander the parking lot for an hour looking for the car.

  My parents raised me in a very traditional manner, which, in the world of show business, is an anomaly. For example, I did not know that it was considered the height of rudeness to turn down a second line of cocaine from your celebrity host’s private stash. Imagine my embarrassment at my sixth-grade graduation party.