Roseannearchy

by Roseanne Barr

  The big difference between then and now is that back then I actually experienced sexual urges, but now, at age fifty-eight, I am completely free of all sexual thoughts and feelings and completely happy about this development. I firmly refuse to gulp down the estrogen pills that other sex-obsessed women my age are gobbling. They call themselves cougars, but I think they are more like coyotes and hyenas, all Botoxed and fixated on men, hungrily eyeing them like candy bars or donuts all the time. I guess I am a “badger.” I hide in the dark and try to fall asleep before any attempt at sex can be sent in my general direction. I am over it—perhaps because the last time I visited my doctor for antibiotics due to yet another urinary tract infection, and listened to her tell me that when you are postmenopausal, your vaginal tissue loses its tone and gets paper thin and tears easily during sexual activity, and that in order to partake in the old in-and-out safely I should take male hormones, estrogen, and lube up my parts in excess and use condoms. I am allergic to latex, and, of course, we all know that using nonlatex condoms feels kind of like having sex with a balloon animal.

  My boyfriend, Johnny, who is also old, has his own issues, the kind that lots of sixty-year-old men have with their (snicker, snicker) “wieners.” I just had to eventually put it all behind me (snicker, snicker). But one of the few advantages of getting older is that sex is so much less of a drive and a distraction.

  Sex is such a bore to talk about nowadays. Everyone and their brother yaps about it constantly, as if it is not something any common idiot, person, or goat can also do. I recently tried to have the birds-and-bees talk with my son on the way to pick up the girl he had invited to the homecoming dance. I said, “Hey, don’t have sex or you are grounded, okay?” He said, “I have already fucked three or four chicks, Mom.” I replied, “You better be kidding or you are going to lose your cell phone.” He said that he was kidding and has only kissed a couple of chicks. I said, “Kissing is fine, but leave it at that, and wear a rubber when you do.” Then we just laughed.

  My son really likes this girl, though. And this was the first one of his dates I was allowed to meet. I insisted that he bring her a nice wrist corsage. We got it very late in the day because my son kept saying, “No one gets corsages for people anymore. This isn’t the 1850s, Ma!” However, I still insisted that he do what my boyfriend, Johnny, said guys were supposed to do. I wouldn’t know about homecoming dances, because I dropped out of school right after completing the ninth grade and was never invited to one. But the girl actually wore it to the dance, as her Japanese mother insisted she do.

  Shortly after dropping the kids off at school, my neighbor Lisa, who knows everything about everyone and everything in general, forwarded me an email from one of her outraged Republican pals from church, saying that kids are participating in sex acts at school dances these days, and included a link to an article in the Orange County Register about some private-school kids who were caught having sex at their homecoming dance. I always pay attention to these kinds of emails because the senders are conservative Christian Republicans who are often real pervs, so they know firsthand what goes on. I find them to be reliable sources of information because they are in the know about tons of the sin stuff—since it is the same sin stuff that they themselves are doing and feeling bad about yet still doing and kind of hoping to get caught doing, and then repeating after getting caught, and apologizing for in the public exhibitions for which they are so famous. Every Republican story, without exception, since the beginning of time until now, ends the same way. Period.

  The article from the Register said that the boys at the dance were taking their wieners (snicker, snicker) out of their pants, wearing rubbers—another sign of how far we’ve come (snicker, snicker)—and the girls were getting down on their knees and giving out free blow jobs or butt sex or what have you. Those Orange County rich kids should be suspended forever! I guess their permissive, conservative, Christian, Republican parents have been too busy trying to prevent gay marriage over the last few years to notice how badly their own kids were out of control. Some of these girls today have gone wild and need to be tagged and caged.

  The day after the dance, I asked Buck if there had been any inappropriate activity at his school dance, and he said that if there was, he didn’t see any of it. I told him what Lisa’s email said, and he said, “Christ, Mom, I go to public school, and that stuff only happens in private schools!” I am choosing to believe he is right about that.

  My son will find out someday, after age thirty, ideally, that sex is a big, weird-ass, magnetic, repulsive, natural, alien, fun, embarrassing mystery that we just have to learn about and experience for ourselves, with all the attendant awkwardness, slobbery urgency, goose bumps, anticipation, disappointment, gross-outs, remorse, wicked self-satisfaction at getting away with something and the alternating fear of not getting away with anything, and then just STOP doing at some point! I only hope that I have instilled a healthy, heterosexual balance of fear and respect for women in him. If he were gay, I really wouldn’t care, though, since gays seem to stop having sex far earlier than straight people do. Sometimes I wish he would be gay, or become a priest, or be both at the same time, like most priests are—as long as he was able to develop some interests and entertain himself with things other than his wiener (snicker, snicker). Like a mature person does!

  Chapter 13

  Looking Back at the ’90s

  The ’90s was the decade that really changed my life. I went from being a working-class woman in the late eighties to being a multi-millionaire who played a working-class woman on TV. Half the year I’d be quarantined in a windowless world where it was all about the Connor family, while outside the real world seemed like it was getting whipped around in a blender. I was like Rip Van Winkle waking up to the new decade after each season of my sitcom, and it was like that for me for years.

  Computers and cell phones and beepers and fax machines were invading people’s daily lives, but I lagged seriously behind in all of that. Suddenly, people had three phone numbers but never answered their phones. I thought computers were for nerds till I found out I was the nerd and had some serious catching up to do. The ’90s brought us technology whether we wanted it or not.

  Politically, the decade started with President Bush the Elder, but it quickly became the Clinton era. “The man from Hope” seemed kind of folksy in a younger, hipper way, what with the Fleetwood Mac theme song and his “white trash to Rhodes scholar” backstory. But Clinton was basically a company man in Democrat’s clothing. He convinced people who were getting the short end of the stick that he “felt their pain,” but slowly and steadily we got used to words like “downsizing” and “outsourcing” and “corporate raiding” and “globalization” and all those other words that meant that lots more people would be getting the short end of the stick before it was all over.

  There was plenty of talk about “dot-com millionaires” and everybody seemed to be in a hurry to “have it all,” but working people were slowly losing ground. I guess the upside (for me) to the ugly mess at the end of the Clinton era was that the leader of the free world risked it all to have some nasty diversion with a fat Jewish girl. Speaking of nasty . . . Ken Starr and his typically American sex-obsessed, puritanical torch-and-pitchfork army of self-righteous zealots took a gross minichapter in our history and turned it into a somehow more embarrassing pulp novel. Their exaggerated outrage and endless parading of the sordid details was off the sleazometer.

  The ’90s was a wake-up call for Americans in more ways than one. The horror at Columbine (I lived in Colorado for years before I made it big; my kids went to school there) drove home the fact that high school was hell for most kids, and that lots of parents who thought they were doing well were strangers to their own children. I guess I wasn’t immune, either.

  In my TV family, the Connor kids went through some tough life passages, but the family was tight in its own way and they muddled through. In real life, my marriage finally came apart for good and
I wound up sticking my own kids in some of those bootcamp- type schools. They all like me now, so I guess things worked out, but as anyone who read the tabloids knew, the Roseanne on TV wasn’t exactly the same me who was leading my private life, or should I say being led by it.

  I felt grateful and privileged to be rich and famous; I was, after all, an attention-craving kid from Utah. But I felt victimized by the spotlight, too. Some of my worst behavior and lapses in judgment (as I affectionately refer to big chunks of my private/public life, like my second marriage, among other things) were blown up on the front pages of the gossip rags. But I quit feeling sorry for myself and for my lack of privacy when the tragedy of Princess Diana took over the headlines, Superman fell off his horse and was paralyzed, and Mother Teresa died. I had my physical health, but my mental health was almost totally wrecked.

  Speaking of health, the ’90s were a super-health-conscious decade. Even I lost weight thanks to what I call the surgery diet. Exercising like crazy was hugely popular, but for me, being Jewish and all, that was never really an option. Lots of Baby Boomers were fortyish and wanted to hang on to what was left of their youth and vitality. Some of my generation decided to hang on to somebody else’s youth and vitality. I, for example, dumped my younger husband for a much younger husband. I’m a feminist; I wasn’t about to let men be the only ones allowed to trade in their ultimately insignificant others for a newer model.

  The ’90s were a little like the ’60s upside down. There wasn’t really a counterculture to speak of, unless you want to call the growing rabid right-wing hordes, who thought Rush Limbaugh knew what he was talking about, a counterculture. The left had been bought out, discredited, blamed for everything from crack cocaine to AIDS. Liberal was a word that was hissed at people. Slowly but surely, the advances made by working people were being eliminated for the purpose of lowering the cost of doing business and competing with those who could always find a Third World workforce that saw working for pennies as a step up.

  Yes, the word liberal was demonized. The few people who openly spoke up about the environment were called “tree huggers” by the right-wing nuts, and the few women who still spoke up about equal pay for equal work were branded “feminazis.” Unfortunately, that brand of BS sold like shares of Microsoft and we’re paying the price—but, hey, I’m supposed to stick to the ’90s here.

  Anyway, for those who thought that Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy were practically hippies, there were right-wing militias. They were an especially interesting phenomenon. These were groups of men who played army in the woods in preparation for what they figured was the coming war with (take your pick): an intrusive government (quaint), liberals, blacks, gays, people who had or might have an abortion, Mexicans, tree huggers, feminazis, or some or all of the above. A lot of the wind went out of their sails when the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing temporarily shocked us all into a stunned realization of how wrong such things can go.

  The pop and rock music of the era was all over the map. Rap was gaining momentum; Tipper Gore wanted to label lyrics that seemed beyond X-rated. I was divided there. The artist in me rebelled at the idea of censorship, as my friend Frank Zappa did. But the mom in me was turned off by what I saw as misogyny and glorification of violence and pimp culture. We still wrestle with it. Grunge came shuffling out of the Pacific Northwest. Some say they dressed like the people on the Roseanne show did and made that look really hip, bringing back long hair and thrift store fashion with its surly, introspective, hard-rocking themes of alienation and rejection of the stale hype over what some were now seeing as a discredited American dream.

  A big movie at the time was Pretty Woman, which I thought was a minor insult to prostitution and a waste of a good Roy Orbison song, but an even bigger movie was Titanic. As far as movies about sinking ships are concerned, though, you can’t top The Poseidon Adventure because Shelley Winters was in it. Shelley played my grandma on Roseanne and what a great old broad she was! She represented a colorful, more golden age of Hollywood for me—one where it was still women who sometimes slept their way to the top but brought their talent and brains with them.

  My favorite Shelley Winters story (that I can tell in print) was the time Shelley started to act out her Oscar-winning scene from Lilies of the Field on set, and scream out the N-word over and over as a way of showing both of our cameramen, both black men, how enamored she was of the civil rights movement. It was classic Hollywood to me. Shelley had, in fact, been a major player in the group of Hollywood stars who walked with or supported Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Both camera guys just stood there staring at her for a couple of minutes before they burst out laughing and had to take a break back at the craft service tables, where I, too, ran for cover.

  Shelley was yelling, “What’s so funny? That is what America was like back then!” I told her they were laughing because they were uncomfortable hearing a white woman yell that word at them. She got mad and said, “I didn’t call them the N-word. I said nigger because it was in the movie! I would never use the N-word myself!” Which just made it even more cringingly hilarious.

  She tortured everyone all the time. If she had only a line in the show, she would end up acting out an entire scene from an old classic she had been in, or else she would start telling sex stories of Hollywood, or else she would tell us secrets about Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys, as she had been Marilyn’s roommate for a number of years. She did everything like that for hours. The only thing she didn’t do is ever once say her line right. I loved that part. It was hilarious to me, and I enjoyed her so much. A scene with her, Estelle Parsons, and Laurie Metcalf was absolute heaven for me to watch. The wonderful part of that is that I got to think up situations in which to put three of the world’s greatest actresses. What a rush to be involved with that.

  Another rush for me was just hanging out with Sara Gilbert, who is a remarkably deep human being and a talented actor and comic. I think one day we will all be watching something she writes and directs herself. She is a big talent in many ways. She has two kids of her own now, whom I hope I get to see more of soon.

  Michael Fishman has two kids and a wonderful wife; he also has a unique and funny personality, and a lot of talent and potential that I hope he continues to bring forth. Lecy Goranson, who played Becky, is also one of the more interesting actors I have ever worked with. She has more potential than almost every other young woman actor out there right now. Sarah Chalke is a great person, a funny and darling girl who is having great success on her own. I am proud of her down-home Canadian country girl, rock-solid green values that she never lost touch with.

  We all miss Glenn Quinn, taken by the hard drugs, like so many good, young, sensitive artists.

  Sandra Bernhard was the first actor ever who was gay and who played gay, years and years ahead of Ellen and Rosie (who should thank her someday), and I still tell her no one has ever been that brave since. She stands alone in honest vulnerability, and all of that shows in her acting. John Goodman is one of the greats. Even when he would piss me off a lot by acting bothered by having to do the show after he got involved in the movies (again, I hate anything to do with the movies and movie people), I always reminded myself to just shut my trap, walk away, and be grateful that I got to work with such a great actor. John and I would stand in anticipation of the way Laurie would play a scene, and Laurie and I would be lying on the floor laughing at John. It was a great, great show that we all made together.

  I had a lot of great friends around me on Roseanne; some I see a lot and some I see hardly at all, but I always think of them and remember it all with lots of happiness. Most of all, though, I remember the fun I used to have with my prop crew and my wardrobe women. They made me laugh every day; they brought me flowers when they knew I was down; their wives sent me home-baked cookies and hand-crocheted baby booties for Buck; and they brought their families to meet me; and they were always so nice to me and loved working on my show. The wardrobe women, Erin and Mary Quigley, kept me in
stitches, and sane and safe through a terrible personal time. They, along with Laurie Metcalf, gave me the kind of loyalty that is really beyond what any boss can ever hope for from dedicated people who care for her. It was just great fun drinking with my crew on many Friday nights after taping.

  George Clooney was the most fun person on earth to get drunk with. His practical jokes are still legendary. The great writers whom I pushed and pushed to get better ideas out of and who now hate my guts, as they sit in their million-dollar homes where they would never be without my show, can consider themselves thanked here and then go and fuck themselves. LOL.

  Television was going through its changes at the time. I liked and respected Bill Cosby, but business is business, and my ring-around-the-blue-collar family knocked his show out of the top ratings spot with a thud heard around the world of showbiz. Bill did his best to honestly represent the kind of black family that lots of white families wished there were more of, but a big chunk of the America of the ’90s was ready for the Connor family. Dan and Roseanne didn’t have much money, but in spite of that they managed to be fat and stay out of foreclosure. They didn’t kiss up to the establishment; in fact, they smirked in its face when it deserved it and they got through somehow, and so did their kids. They weren’t all airbrushed and squeaky clean, but they were likable, somehow, and even though it usually wasn’t pretty, they got through the day and somehow hung on to some real core values that made their underdog story one that people could relate to in crazy, changing times.

  Crazy, changing times—that was the ’90s; although they can look almost tame in light of some of what’s come since then. I’ll never be the same and neither will the world. That’s why I say we should all party like it’s 1999!