Go Ask Ali

by Ali Wentworth

  Finally, the luggage was unearthed and we set off on the nauseating journey to find our rooms. Let’s not call them rooms; they were bunkers. Most of the passengers ascended, yet we descended, belowdecks . . . BELOW SEA LEVEL! I did not book passage on a submarine. Let me be very clear here—we are a family of anxious claustrophobes who mainline Lexapro; you cannot put us where we cannot see land, light, or some form of oxygen. If I was playing the game “Would you rather” and my choices were sleep in a hazardous cruiser below sea level or lick the toilet seat of a Porta-Potty at a Black Sabbath concert, which do you think I’d choose? You are correct. (Assuming I can bring a can of Febreze, some penicillin, and a mint.)

  When my husband and I kicked open the door to room 239, we were met by a fetid stench. Our toilet had overflowed an hour before we embarked. The refuse squished beneath my sneakers. I couldn’t open a window because . . . we were underwater.

  Our daughters had the bunker next to us, 238. A minute after they dropped their Disney bags, headphones, and bag of gummy bears on the cots, they banged on our door. “We want to go home!” they commanded over and over, an endless loop of wailing. My husband regurgitated one of his greatest lecture hits about being grateful, not being spoiled, and enjoying the moment. I completely agree with him. Most of the time. But when our children were submerged below sea level in a dilapidated tanker with floating shit circling them, the word “spoiled” was not one that sprung to mind. I felt, as Sally Field had in Not Without My Daughter, that I needed to find a way to lead my children to safety. And by safety I meant call an Uber.

  I pulled out my cell phone and decided to google helicopters in the Galápagos. I figured we could fly to Miami, rent a car, and make our way up the East Coast back to New York. If we only did drive-through McDonald’s and switched off driving, we could make it in three days. I got excited. I love Big Macs.

  “No cell!”

  My husband’s head shot up the way our dog’s does when you say the word “park.”

  “What?” he gasped.

  “I have no bars. It says no service.”

  He slipped his feet into his urine-drenched loafers and stormed upstairs. I don’t know who he thought he was going to complain to. There was no concierge or Julie McCoy, or even anyone who smiled. And I assumed the captain had his hands full (probably of scotch). My daughters and I scurried up behind him. My husband doesn’t get angry very often, but when he does, it’s as exciting as it is horrifying—the human equivalent of yellow police tape around a murder scene.

  The woman he finally wrangled (I don’t even know if she actually worked for the cruise line) barely spoke English, and my husband may be worldly, but Spanish is not in his repertoire. He settled for countering every one of her “No WiFi”s with an “I need it for work.” And then the telltale sign appeared—the protruding vein above his temple. All three of us clocked the thermonuclear bomb pulsing on the side of his head. But you can’t will cellular connection. And this was my husband’s kryptonite. He deflated and took to his soiled cot. Every night he snuck up to the stern of the boat and raised his phone to the sky, Lion King style, hoping for a sign of life. Even from a distant galaxy far far away.

  Eating my feelings was not an option. Or eating anything, for that matter. The boat rocked back and forth in such a manner that you were constantly grabbing your silverware so it wouldn’t slide off the table. The bottom line was that we were queasy the whole time. It was morning sickness that lasted all day and night without the reward of a baby at the end of it. Instead, a swine’s head encased in red gelatin was our dinner reward that night. Now, I can barely get my children to eat anything other than mac and cheese. And their first venture outside their comfort zone was not going to be Pippa the pig’s severed head. Thank God for PowerBars.

  We had imagined that during the day we would be hiking through uncharted beachfront, swimming with penguins, and discovering subspecies only seen in rare Harvard Science Review publications. Nope. We were allowed on shore for two hours a day. We would walk a bit on the gravelly beach and if we were unfortunate enough to miss the sea lions, well, that was just our own bad luck. I’ve been closer to a sea lion at the Central Park Zoo four blocks from our home.

  One afternoon we were granted an hour-long walk on one of the islands fertile with brambles and indigenous weeds. We had a guide named Louis, a strapping Ecuadorian man in his late twenties who would be found on New Year’s Eve two days later, drunk and singing karaoke to “Borderline” by Madonna. The captain was also very inebriated that night, which is always a good sign. I had my eye on the rubber dinghy the whole night; if we did hit an iceberg (not likely by the Equator), we were going to be the first family to jump in and paddle to Panama.

  Louis pointed out certain trees and a local bird called the blue-footed Booby. Always made us giggle. As we were rounding a bend on the dirt path, I spotted a cigarette butt.

  “Oh my God! There’s a cigarette? How is there a cigarette in the Galápagos? It’s so pristine and untouched?”

  Louis rolled his eyes. “Sometimes the Russians come down here with their prostitutes and cocaine and they leave their trash. It’s very illegal. I once found an empty caviar can in the water.”

  I love caviar. And I was so hungry.

  “Are there any Russians here now?”

  Louis shook his head. And dinner that night was pig face again.

  As each day sluggishly went by, my husband’s beard grew longer and his will to live diminished. He would have beaten out Tom Hanks for the lead in Cast Away, I kid you not. The rocking back and forth that set in on day six did concern me. Wasn’t that what people did when all the voices in their head were talking at once?

  We finally docked at a sketchy fishing town on the coast of Ecuador to await the bus that would take us to the airport and, consequently, freedom, cheeseburgers, and Netflix. We ran off the boat like we were trying to catch the last chopper out of Saigon.

  The plane ride home felt like the vacation we were all hoping for. There were peanuts, a movie, and a toilet that actually flushed.

  My younger daughter turned to me during the flight and asked, “What do we tell Grandma?”

  This was a daunting question. It would be cruel to regale my mother with the litany of the trip’s nightmarish experiences, particularly as it had been her idea. And she paid for it.

  My daughter’s eyes lit up. “I’ll just tell her it was a trip we will never forget!”

  She got that right.

  Chapter 14

  Gossip Girl

  When someone says something unsavory about you, I have found that the confrontational approach rarely works to anyone’s satisfaction. Your friend is defensive; you are vulnerable and will probably receive only a mishmash of the truth, which will leave you as frustrated as you were before you decided to talk to this friend in the first place. But I know the feeling! You lose trust, you feel hurt, and you downgrade her birthday gift for years to come.

  I am always suspicious of the “heard it from someone who told someone . . .” grapevine. To me it’s equivalent to a journalist citing “White House sources.” Who are these sources? When has the game of telephone not concluded in a ridiculously scrambled version of the original message? You start with whispering “French fries are my favorite food,” and by the time it’s repeated back to you it’s “Mandela is a flatulent fool.” Not the same. Try playing it sometime—just once or twice—it’s just as absurd as your naked Twister parties!

  The real culprit is the nasty, evil-tongued gossip. The words themselves become possessed and the more they are spread, the more demonic they become. Gossip, to me, is more complicated to understand than nuclear codes. The evolutionary theory holds that gossip was used as a tool to bond a group. And as humans multiplied, so did their need for a sense of community, and gossip played a pivotal role in that. Of course, it was mostly practiced among women, and later they were burned at the stake or dunked into a barrel of freezing water, but they did use idle tal
k to socialize their hamlet. In the sixteenth century the British used to punish the gossipers (or scolds) by forcing them to wear a menacing iron birdcage over their heads. Not helpful if you’re gunning for homecoming queen. Imagine a mean girl with blond hair extensions and too much lip gloss walking the high school corridors wearing a metal cage over her head? As punishment, not to straighten a vertebrae.

  But today “social bonding” has veered completely out of control—mainly because social media enables gossip to be passed around more quickly than an STD during fleet week. And there’s the added perk of potential anonymity.

  I had always confused gossip with knowledge. You see, I grew up in Washington, D.C., where gossip was currency in political circles. Gossip could lead to sources that could lead to impeachments, firings, and wars. Well, maybe not wars, but catastrophic events like not being invited to the White House Correspondents’ dinner. I would pass the peanuts in my nightgown at my parents’ dinner parties and overhear snippets of gossip—“Well, if she keeps screwing that fat Republican, that husband of hers will not be so democratic with the alimony” or “You know, he’s a drug addict, so even if he did vote to reauthorize the federal aviation association, he’s not going to remember it.” And so to me, that’s what you did—trade information. Gossip was a way to separate the good apples from the bad. The bruised ones (adulterers, perverts, misbehavers) you knew to toss out. Even if it was just based on rumor. And if you felt the need to chip away at an opponent, you gossiped. “Words have no wings but they fly a thousand miles.”

  In its elementary form, yes, gossip is lowbrow and wretched and when venomous it can be calamitous for the person being talked about. We have all succumbed to dishing dirt—it’s difficult to resist. In the moment you feel such a connection with your coconspirator. It’s like sharing a Charleston Chew. You take a bite and munch, then they take a bite and munch . . . soon you’re offering other people a piece to chew on! Your adrenaline kicks in when someone tells you something juicy; you can literally feel your heart rate accelerate and you have a burning desire to tell the next person who walks by. “Hey, taxi driver! Open the doors, I’ve got a story for you. . . . You know that mom who volunteers at the library and walks funny?” In the heat of the moment it’s difficult to stop and consider the ramifications. Or to remind yourself that whoever is gossiping with you, will gossip about you. Or to get really heavy, in Islam they equate gossip with eating the flesh of one’s own brother.

  I had heard from friends of friends (already a red flag) that a friend of mine was in trouble. Landy was someone who enjoyed a cocktail here, a Klonopin there. The word was that she had gone off the rails and lost control in a spiral of what looked an awful lot like addiction. I knew Landy had an exuberant streak and was pretty much up for anything—spontaneously driving to New England at three in the morning to see the fall foliage or dyeing the tips of her hair a periwinkle blue (she’s a grown woman). She was single and childless and a frequent Uber abuser when intoxicated. And by abuser I don’t mean she wasn’t nice to the drivers, I mean when she was drunk she would take other people’s Ubers. Someone told me that once she passed out in the back of the car and woke up in the driver’s studio in Queens. He was making ramen noodles as she grabbed her things, leaving behind her bra and one sock. That turned out to be a made-up story.

  I was worried about Landy and I took it upon myself to be proactive. I called people—acquaintances, her friends, my friends. I expressed concern and repeated the alarming stories I had heard. There was no malice involved; I was gathering evidence before formulating a plan.

  I assumed my conversations about Landy were confidential. Ha ha ha ha, no conversation is ever confidential. (Even with shrinks. I remember once in a session mentioning a friend by name and the therapist saying, “Oh God, don’t be friends with her, she’s the devil.” I’m pretty sure the American Psychoanalytic Association would not find that on brand.) Unfortunately, some people spread the stories, changed the facts to make them more salacious. And others called Landy and told her I was spreading sordid lies—as the kids say, talk’n shit about her.

  My first reaction was that of hurt and a sense of betrayal. How dare those people go to Landy when I was acting out of concern and they were interested only in character assassination? But who the hell did I think I was, discussing someone’s private life like it was the latest episode of Dynasty? And why didn’t I just go to Landy first?

  I was hardly the victim in this scenario. By the time my words of concern made their way to Landy, they had morphed from “Guys, I think Landy may need help” into “Landy is a drug addict and got pregnant by her dealer.” People found it too delicious not to pepper and season the information.

  Landy was devastated. Her reputation had been destroyed and a new unseemly one created in its place. And my hands were dirty. Even if I justified it as genuine distress about her drinking, I had created a “story,” a story with momentum. I’m sure if someone told me the stories that have circulated about me, I would never get out of bed.

  Along with profusely apologizing to Landy, I went on a gossip cleanse. Which is harder to quit than sugar. Without gossip, I’d be a dullard at dinner parties, I was sure. I’d lose my beguiling, bewitching edge. I would have nothing interesting to say.

  My first test was at an intimate dinner with close friends. Now let me state right now: My husband does not gossip. Never has. He will discuss people, just not in a dishy way. So the good news was it wasn’t like I was a smoker and quit but my partner still smoked.

  At the dinner I found myself starting a sentence like “You know I heard . . .” and then would catch myself and trail off, mumbling like an insane person. But when I left that dinner and the ones that followed, I felt a lightness. I now fall asleep without conversations racing in my head. Should I have not said that? Will they tell? Well, someone told me, it’s not like I made it up. Oh God, I shouldn’t have said that. It helped that my husband monitored me like I had Tourette’s, with the fear that at any minute I could scream out “Veronica just had a face-lift!” written all over his watchful face.

  I am no longer on a cleanse but a gossip diet. It’s easy now. To be positive, happy, peppy, and bursting with love! I’m not going to lie; I still peruse a tabloid now and again and I am as concerned about Brad Pitt’s weight loss as the next person. But I don’t succumb to spilling tea (gossiping, according to a drag queen pal) about people I know. Or don’t know. And without the gossip portion of any social event, you begin to learn that there are plenty of other subjects just as electrifying and that building people up instead of tearing them down does not make you boring or a dullard. As the saying goes, “If you didn’t hear it with your own ears or see it with your own eyes, don’t invent it with your small mind and share it with your big mouth.”

  Part III

  Half-Baked Advice

  If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll have to be a horrible warning.

  —Catherine Aird

  Chapter 15

  So Long, Joe

  A few years ago I was given the opportunity to create my own show. Having spent the majority of my thirty-plus-year acting career in a teeny-weeny trailer separated from the male crew’s bathroom by a rolling screen, I finally got to be the boss. I was not only the creator, the star, and the writer, but I got to pick snacks (salt and vinegar chips and Rice Krispie treats) and veto wardrobe (no hooker ware unless they’re playing a hooker and no open-toe shoes for men).

  I can’t tell you how many times in the past I’d had to skulk around on film sets in the most unflattering outfits. On the first day of shooting I would giddily peruse the racks of the costume department. All the expensive, ethereal dresses, sharp tailored suits, Manolo heels . . . and then I would stumble upon my segregated area of anemic colors, burlaps, and polyesters. Oh well, that’s what the goofy friend, bitchy fiancée, and other assorted nonthreatening females would wear, right?

  There was actually one time, on the film It’s Compl
icated, that I got to wear the most beautiful Brunello Cucinelli sweaters and shirts, but they were swiftly retrieved on my last day of shooting. Then again, It’s Complicated’s budget for a day was my show’s budget for a whole season. Needless to say, for my show, I brought my own clothes from home.

  Another perk of being the boss was that I got to cast the show and hire the crew. I found it the most uncomfortable part of my new showrunner status. I have been that actor with knocking knees in a small, bare room with a camera on a tripod and a few casting people sitting in foldout chairs, bored. I’ve been the forty-third actress they’d seen that day. There’s no other way to say it: Auditioning is an unnatural and inhumane way to search for talent.

  So now it was my time to set the tone for the actors coming in, nervous and fidgety, knowing their rent was riding on that one audition—or proof to their parents they didn’t have to move back to Pittsburgh. A lot of the actors tried to overcompensate for their jitters with lame attempts at humor. “Whoa, it’s like a firing squad in here,” chortle chortle. I cringed inwardly, realizing that I had annoyed countless casting directors by plying the same tedious banter. I used to try to sell myself as the gal who would be super fun to hang out with on set—braiding hair, performing pranks, baking cookies . . . they would cast me based on my convivial persona regardless of how mediocre my reading, right?

  I met my friend Joe on an independent film set twenty years ago. He was an aspiring director and got his first break (after a series of short films) directing a feature. Making a film is like going to adult sleepaway camp. It’s an insular community where everyone pretends to be someone else and eats three meals a day together for weeks; some even sleep together. Joe was confident, handsome, and never ruffled by the craziness surrounding him. He had an “Oh well, I guess that’s that” attitude. If he was hauled into a maximum-security prison, he would roll his eyes at the knife fights and gang initiation rites; he would have them all doing trust exercises and starting a band.