That first night that we hung out, he talked me into trying some cocaine with him by telling me that you don’t get hungry if you are on it, and that was true in a way. You would not get hungry when you were on it, but the minute it wore off you were starving like nobody’s business, hungry enough to eat the lining out of a bear’s ass. I did it with him about four or five times, but the pre–heart attack feeling, coupled with the après-high eating linings out of bears’ asses at Denny’s at 2:00 a.m., cured me of doing it more.
I had never really had a guy friend before Tom. He became my best friend soon enough. I listened to him confess that he cheated on all of his girlfriends, and only went out with them if they were good-looking and had a car or a nice apartment and would support him so that he could pursue comedy. He had a nice girlfriend at the time who worked as a waitress and idolized him, paying for everything. She was always warning him that she would leave him if he didn’t stop doing drugs and drinking all the time, and he told me that he had quite a double life going on and that he lied to her all the time. I told him, like a regular big sister, to stop treating her badly and to sober up. She, like the girlfriend he had after her, kicked him to the curb eventually, and I rolled up to retrieve him. After he had used up every bit of the other women’s time and good graces, I told him that he deserved to be treated better, and he said he would never forget my saying that to him.
Tom was the quintessential bad boy, which is very attractive to women, and to me, too, I admit now. I knew the guy was a shit-head, but I thought I could save him. That’s what I thought, and it’s what a lot of women think. I’m sitting here right now, as I write this, watching TV, and everything on it is about Sandra Bullock’s shock that her bad-boy husband, who was a biker with an attraction to Nazi memorabilia and was previously married to a porn star, ended up being a biker with an attraction for Nazi memorabilia who was out fucking porn stars while she went to work in la-la land. It’s sad for her, but I have to laugh a little at the way a lot of us women ignore what’s right in front of our eyes once we fall for the sex-and-love bullshit. We always think we can make a leopard change his spots, and when he doesn’t, we blame ourselves and keep living in a big fantasy world, despite all the clues, until it all just blows up in the most humiliating way. We are allergic to reality or something!
Tom wrote some funny jokes and I bought some from him, off and on, for a few years. Later, when I got the Roseanne show, I encouraged him to move to L.A. and write on it. The best times I had with Tom, though, were when we went on the road together as comics, and we would go to bars to hear music. Tom would always schmooze the band’s leader until he let us get up and sing “Johnny B. Goode” together. We developed our singing routine and continually perfected it each time we met up on the road. Of course, he would end up singing louder than I did, or shove me out of his way sooner or later, but I loved singing and I loved him for taking me places where I could sing. He would always tell me I had a great rock-and-roll voice, and that is what I wanted to hear at the time more than anything else on earth. I also fell hard for him when I heard the classic Tom story that he tells on every talk show and in every interview: The one about how all Tom wants in this world is his own children. More than he wanted fame, more than money, more than publicity or anything else. This so fit my whole “I must have baby number five” thing!
My parents and siblings, not to mention my husband and kids, did not want me to divorce Bill to marry Tom. They didn’t like Tom at all, so, in classic codependent style, I stopped talking to my family.
I felt that I was finally in the right mental space to show the world the full range of my talent; it was time to get out there and show people that I could sing! Now, at the top of my game, was the right time to revisit the past and put it right at last! When my aunt Sadie visited me on the set of Roseanne (Aunt Sadie was Cousin Debbie’s aunt, too), I was sure to show her around and ask if Cousin Debbie watched my show. “Of course she watches it!” she answered. Look out, Cousin Debbie!
When my husband arranged with Tom Werner, the owner and producer of Roseanne and the owner of the San Diego Padres, to invite me to sing in front of thousands of people who liked me at a Padres game on Working Woman’s Night at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, California, I thought it was going to be the best day of my life—the culmination of my earliest childhood hopes and dreams. I practiced and practiced, I knew all the words, and I felt that I had finally conquered all my fears and was ready.
The day of the game, the Padres sent their private jet, and I took my son Jake and my daughter Jessica and my then-husband with me. On the way down, my son, who was twelve, asked me, innocently, “Mom, I’m just afraid that people might think that you are making fun of our country.”
I said, “Why would they think that? I know all the words.”
“But usually really great singers sing it, and not comics. I don’t know . . .” said my son, shaking his head. Out of the mouths of babes! Tom, supportive as ever, said, “Jake, your mom is a terrific singer, and everyone loves her. She is going to blow their minds down there, trust me!” He really believed it, too, I think.
Unfortunately, I really believed that I could do no wrong.
I took the kids to the best seats in the house, and left them there while I went down to the dugout to meet the team. One of the players said to me, “Hey, why don’t ya grab your crotch and spit? That would be so funny!”
“I’m singing it serious, though,” I said to him.
“Oh, do you sing?” he asked.
I said, “Well, mostly I sing country music, but, yeah, I do sing.” I was really feeling good now. I knew lots of people liked me, and that in and of itself was a whole new feeling for me—to be liked and accepted, and respected, too. I was like one of those kids on American Idol, the ones who come into the tryout room and soon expose themselves as being “all attitude” with no singing chops whatsoever. They have been told by their parents and their lying, insane families (like I had) that they sing as well as the guys on the radio and on TV. Then they have to face Simon, who plays the part of Satan himself, and who looks them in the eye and tells them the exact truth about themselves, which they hate to hear. “Your singing is hideous.” Then everyone gets mad and boos Simon, because they think he is so cruel, when he is, in fact, truthful and kind, yet firm and resolved. I have a huge crush on Simon; he is the baddest of the world’s bad boys. He is such a bad boy that I want to marry him—that dirty old Simon.
My old rickety sex urges still try to register in my brain after all these years, but now, as I approach sixty, I let my laziness work for me. I don’t bother to get up and pursue my sexual thoughts; I just keep them in my head, all cozy. Yes, mentally, I have become a dirty old woman. No more Cherchez le Dong por moi, as we French types say. C’est la vie. These days, I have a man at home who reads Kierkegaard and plays five musical instruments. We discuss the world and God every day at three o’clock sharp over wine at lunch. And that is exactly how I like it.
I now hate germs, all bodily fluids, and all human contact, anyway, really. Unless it’s a fine massage at Beverly Hot Springs Spa by Deborah, the older, bowlegged Korean woman who wears a black bikini and hoses me down after she scrapes all of my skin off with a brush. Then I go into the hot mineral baths. There is nothing as wonderful as that for me to do for my body’s enjoyment.
Anyway, I was completely deluding myself that I was going to sing in front of sixty thousand people and get a standing ovation for being so good at it. I remember thinking that great opportunities like this come around only once in a lifetime, and I was sure right about that. The night before I sang, I went on Johnny Carson’s show and told Johnny that I was going to do it.
Johnny said, “Are you sure you want to do that? That is a very difficult song to sing. Bob Goulet took quite a hit for screwing up the words one time. Be careful, and whatever you do, don’t start too high.” Well, I started too high and had nowhere to go but down. I was about three notes in when I
first heard the booing; I couldn’t believe it! And it kept getting louder and louder until I couldn’t hear at all, so I just starting screaming to try to make it look funny. I got judged by sixty thousand Simons!
My kids were traumatized and shaking as we boarded the plane and were flown back to L.A. When I got home, I received a call from the Padres saying they would shield whatever bad reaction was headed my way. It was so sweet of them to try to do that, even if they changed their minds the very next day.
After I sang, Ronald Reagan’s son Michael, a small-time San Diego Rush Limbaugh wannabe, took to the radio waves to say that I had purposely disrespected our country, our God, and our flag. I wanted to apologize all over the place right away, but my advisors said they didn’t think I should do that. Tom thought it would pass in a day or two, and he said that comics should never apologize, that it would totally ruin my credibility as a comedian.
And also, on TV was the president, George Bush the elder, boarding Air Force One and stopping on the stairs to call me disgraceful. Michael Reagan’s ratings went through the roof, and he appeared on TV shows coast-to-coast, saying that I personally hated each and every one of our troops and that I was giving oral sex to Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro, or some shit that ridiculous. The fucking guy wouldn’t stop! Then came the death threats, which were extremely anti-Semitic, and reawakened all my childhood fears of Nazidom, and people were such rabid assholes that they also threatened my kids’ lives. The armed policemen that guarded my house every night were a calming influence that helped us all to be able to sleep. I really do thank them for that, too. It was a most scary time.
Subsequent to my tragic singing accident, the fallout included getting sued by the clothing company I was in business with, losing several more lawsuits with a variety of people, the cancellation of my ABC morning cartoon, and losing my Burger King and Toys “R” Us deals. Then the Veterans of Foreign Wars called ABC and threatened to boycott the network if they didn’t cancel my show. The president of the network called to tell me they might do just that, and that I would have to wait until after the summer hiatus to see if the ratings were still there or if I had lost every single last American fan that I had ever had.
In the middle of a huge manic high, I had shot myself in the foot. I knew that the subsequent depression was going to be hard to come out of, and I honestly wondered if I could. I had a nervous breakdown, and no one even noticed!
When the attacks in the press didn’t pass after another few days, my husband changed his mind. He decided that he himself should do a number of television interviews on my behalf, explaining how sorry I was for singing the National Anthem so badly. He arranged for media trucks to come to our beach house, and he got ready for his close-up, telling me to just stay upstairs and he would handle everything, like he always did.
I listened to him talk to Jane Pauley with the door open, and instead of saying, “She actually sings pretty well; it’s just that she panicked,” which was what we agreed he was going to say, he said, “She didn’t mean to sing it so badly; it’s just that THAT’S HOW SHE SINGS!” To me, that comment meant that the whole basis of our relationship was suddenly a lie. He didn’t think I sang well at all! It took a few moments for the whole thing to register in my mind. I stood there thinking that something was not kosher at all. In fact, it was pork stuffed with lard and cooked in milk! I asked him why he lied and said that I didn’t sing well, and he said, sheepishly, “Well, you aren’t the best singer that’s out there is what I meant. I mean, yeah, you’re good, for sure, but, I mean, you aren’t Barbra Streisand or anything!”
I continued, “But I am a good singer, and you didn’t say that! You said that I sing badly, and that is a lie!” He looked like he thought I was completely crazy, or that I couldn’t tell the difference between bullshit and reality, like he wondered what fresh hell he had flattered his way into this time.
The interviews worked as planned; everybody now thought that Tom was a good guy. Of course, they all hated me more than ever but . . . they stopped calling Tom bad names and insulting him constantly after that. We retreated to Iowa, where Tom grew up and where we had a wonderful farm and two thousand acres of gorgeous farmland. For some reason, since I was a girl, I longed to be a farmer. Maybe it was because I loved the book Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, which I had read over and over. I loved nature so much—the digging in the dirt, the sun, the fields where there were no Barr family members around. Ahhh!
The summer passed like a bad flu because of the Anthem, and it was the worst of times. Yet, in another way, there in Iowa, where Tom and I dressed like twins and ate four or five meals a day, and invited all of our neighbors, including the entire town of Eldon, Iowa, over for a barbecue, it was the best of times. We had built our own barn, with a stage so that our band, the Allis Chalmers Experience (named after our tractor), could perform. We sang John and Yoko songs; I sang “Stand by Your Man” by Tammy Wynette, and all of our favorites, including, of course, “Johnny B. Goode.” We gave away millions of dollars to help abused kids, too, to make ourselves feel better, and when I finally went back to work, the ratings showed that there was no slippage at all, and I learned that I could keep my job!
That’s when I secretly decided that I would attempt to turn my life completely around in every way. In other words: No more Mrs. Nice Guy! I, with Tom’s help, was now going to get even with everyone who had “disrespected us.”
I also realized that there would be no end to the humiliation part of stardom, ever, and that I would forever be a symbol of hatred for the unenlightened out there, masturbating compulsively to pornography when not writing letters to say they’ll boycott any advertiser that pays me. And because of their righteous Christian charity, or just to show support for their fellow Jew, they promised to do it forever. I longed for what I had lost: direction and meaning and the conversations with God that I had somehow replaced with talking to shrinks, reporters, publicists, and recovering drug addicts in show business.
Chapter 21
Eat, Pray, Shit, Shower, and Shave
Shortly after the National Anthem horror, I started to feel as though I were waking up from a bad nightmare. The Prozac, Zoloft, Klonopin, and several other mood-altering drugs that had been prescribed for me by psychiatrists (whose destruction by Scientology I now welcome) for my “Multiple-Personality Bipolar Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder” were no longer doing the trick of shielding me from reality. I became even more depressed than normal, like a lot of people do after they take antidepressants.
I had stopped smoking the Herb of the Goddess that had forever kept me balanced enough to become successful and rich, in order to support my then-husband’s “sobriety,” and that led to massive bipolar troubles that were all capped off with tons of psychiatrists and psychiatric drugs, none of which helped with my problems at all and, in fact, made them even worse. One thing I would like to tell you folks out there who are reading this, is this: Never marry a cocaine addict in their first month of sobriety! Give them a year, as AA recommends, before they rush off to replace their appetite for drugs with something else, such as straightening out your life, your family, your fame, and your financial affairs. This is just a tip from your old pal!
The thing I really do not like about AA and 12-step programs is that they never tell you that dealing with a sober addict can be way more trying than dealing with a drugged one! Once the user stops using, his demons come out, and he has no idea how to handle them. The entire reason he takes drugs in the first place is to quiet the demons, and without drugs, he finds himself in a really bad mood. Other people’s demons are the most terrifying demons of all because they do not give a damn about you. They like to scare up your demons and do battle with them. Demons are slow learners and have a full bag of tricks at their disposal. They don’t want to die. They want to live, in order to cause more pain and wreckage to those who can be convinced, tricked, or ripped off further. After treatment in AA, they expect to be given accolades for not conti
nuing to fuck people over!
I think it may have been those terribly depressing antidepressant pills that made me more and more dependent on my husband to do everything for me, including, eventually, all of my thinking. I noticed the same thing happened to almost all of my married women friends. In order to bear being married in the last couple of years of misery, the women were always getting on anti-depressants. It makes a marriage last two more years on average, I figured out. When the drugged woman regresses back to childhood, becoming girlishly compliant once more, it seems good at first. But what happens is that men never have a limit to the bullshit they need to be fed constantly in order to prop themselves up psychologically. Something is seriously wrong with them. Men cannot ever leave well enough alone, and they, like all children who keep pushing until they have reached the Mommy Limit, must be put in a time-out.
The antidepressant pills only delay the inevitable for twenty-four months after a marriage should rightly have ended. No marriage of any kind should be attempted, ever, between heterosexuals. These days it seems that gays are the only ones who are into marriage, but now having been allowed “the privilege,” they will soon tire of it, too. When gays tire of marriage and the planning of big wedding parties and all the accoutrements that come with it, there will be peace on earth, at last—of that I am convinced.
The only part of my brain that still worked properly, après the Anthem, was the part that could write jokes for my sitcom. There was so much daily drama in recovering from the fallout of the National Anthem, and there was so much daily drama in being married to a newly sober cocaine addict, that there was actually no room for anything else in my life, including me. The fact that there was no room for me in my own life was classic codependency, but that’s the way it had always been in my life—aside from comedy, which was really just about me thinking that I was fighting on behalf of others. I saw my sitcom and my comedy career as: Fighting on Behalf of Working-Class Mothers. My messianic complex was at its apex back in the early ‘90s.
Roseannearchy Page 20