by Brad Garrett
Robert’s girlfriend and eventual wife, Amy, was played by Monica Horan. For those of you who are unaware, she was (and is) the real-life wife of our faithful showrunner, Phil Rosenthal. So rest assured, she got the job by doing something no other actress would do: fuck Phil. (I believe that was also a Tarantino movie.) It was so much fun playing opposite Monica. I used to love that surprised look she would get on her face during filming. It was as if she’d found a lucky penny during her gyno exam.
In the nine years I worked on Raymond, we had a lot of laughs, and as cliché as it may sound, we really were like a family. We were surrounded by brilliant writers and a commitment to do the best work that we could. I was one lucky bastard to be allowed on that bus.
Now, on the rare occasions when Ray and I get together to do a stand-up tour, golf, or play poker, we compare ailments and the amount of stiffness we feel in the morning. Unfortunately, that stiffness is in the wrong area. Both in our fifties now, we find ourselves bombarded with thoughts of what will truly lie on the other side of this hill. He’s a lot richer than I am, so at least he can buy the cure for most anything or purchase the moon if Earth gets too crowded. Me? I’m gonna keep up with the Icy Hot, hide that quick-dissolving aspirin next to the alarm clock, and pray the hip gives out before the ticker.
9
Goodbye, Sauce
Sammy Davis Jr. used to quote two great lines about boozing. One was: “If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken much better care of myself.” The other he coined after quitting the juice: “It’s difficult to wake up in the morning and realize this is the best I’m going to feel all day.”
After the first season of Raymond wrapped, I took a job in a horrible independent film where I portrayed a demented and homicidal postal worker. They should have cast the director. Up until that point, I had worked very little in film and thought it could be a move in the right direction for my career. Almost every naive actor at one point or another thinks, This could be the one. After just a couple days on the set, I realized I wouldn’t have to worry about the film ever seeing the light of day. I recall one scene where my character was sitting in the bathroom eating SPAM out of a can as his nose bled into the gruel and he continued to eat it. Film noir at its best.
After the film wrapped, I headed off to Hawaii with a lovely gal I had met on the project who happened to be clean and sober and often spoke at A.A. meetings. Now I hear she goes around the country “channeling voices of wisdom from ancient prophets” to add dimension and clarity to strangers’ lives for a nominal fee, DVD included. It pains me to say this, but some people are just better off drinking.
We weren’t a great match for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was my excessive alcohol consumption. I recall hitting the minibar at the hotel pretty hard as she was taking a bath, thinking I was being discreet, as if she didn’t already know I was an alkie.
On my third day in Maui, I read in Variety that Raymond had been picked up for a second season. Les Moonves, the president of CBS and one of the most ballsy and creative minds in television broadcasting, believed in the show enough to move it to the plush timeslot after Cosby on Mondays (we had been floundering on Friday nights). Later that evening I found myself at the Hula Bar, pounding down one after another as I sat alone, celebrating the news that after twenty years of canceled shows and the brutal club circuit, I might actually be on a hit. Or at least have a job for a while without living out of a suitcase.
There was a Hawaiian trio playing thirty feet away from me, and I remember thinking, I drink when the news is bad and drink when the news is good. This shit’s eventually gonna kill me. I hit an emotional bottom. Fortunately, it wasn’t as devastating as it could have been, but I had started to black out from heavier nights of drinking, and this worried me greatly. What if one night I never woke up, like Judy? I was living a life perpetuated by fear, and it just wasn’t me. How could I be so fearless onstage and so petrified in real life? My daily reality wasn’t consistent with who I was deep down, and it was all because I was hooked on the sauce.
The biggest fear of any working performer struggling with sobriety is: “Will I be as good straight?” It doesn’t matter if it’s a singer, comic, actor, writer, director, dancer, bricklayer, or painter. Any artist who has had success while high fearfully asks this question, and with good reason. Many of us have that dark hole in our being to contend with, and what we decide to fill it with is up to us. Many times we take out one ingredient only to fill it with another. We tackle the alcohol but are often left with the “ism.” Artists in general tend to be complicated beings with conflicting voices going on in their heads. And you better believe, substances have their own voices. They try to woo you into needing them and not leaving them, which fits right into the void left by your guilt, doubt, and low self-esteem. They can also promise to give you the high you get from performing; it’s an experience that can be so wonderfully intense, you may find yourself tempted in your downtime to try and artificially re-create what you felt onstage.
The other unfortunate trait of the artist’s mind is that it’s almost never allowed to turn off. True art is forever evolving and questioning, and once you delve into booze or drugs that appear to tame the brain into checking out, you find an artificial peace. In reality, you’ve just made the brain work overtime (along with the rest of the body), because as we know, the substances take a hell of a lot more work to filter out than do without. But I would be a liar if I told you that checking out did not fill a needful gap at times in all those insecure, stressful years, even though it came with a high price in the long run.
Now, on that particular night at the Hula Bar, I happened to take notice of what appeared to me to be a “perfect family.” The father was the kind of guy I always wanted to look like, and the wife was the kind of woman I felt I would never have. But it was something about their two kids that moved me the most. My whole life, I had always dreamed of being a father. I wanted to have the same kind of relationship with kids that I shared with my dad; one that was healthier, perhaps, but based on that same unconditional love and appreciation. And that was when I put it together. I knew I wanted to have children, but there was no way I was going to put them to bed at night with booze on my friggin’ breath. I downed what must have been my tenth double vodka, straight up with a lemon, and stumbled out onto the beach.
In those days I believed in God, though my belief system was based mostly on guilt and the need to appease my father. I sprawled out on the sand and squinted to focus as I looked up into the heavens. There I saw an incredible bright light. It had a tail on it and was literally frozen in time. It was the Hale-Bopp Comet, though I was too drunk to put that together until I read about it in the paper the following day. Hawaii was one of the few places in the world where, for a certain amount of time, the comet appeared to be standing still in the sky in all its cosmic glory. Staring up at it, I began to weep. Not at its beauty, nor at a sudden acknowledgment of my alcohol issue, but at the fact that my waitress from the bar had just walked over to present my tab of $160.
It was April 12, 1997, and that was the last time I had a drink. Sure, there are those rare times when I miss it, like when I’m at a titty bar or when I’m forced to watch reality TV. But I never miss the dread, lost opportunities, embarrassed apologies, and self-punishment that every alcoholic has to endure. And it’s nice to have a liver again. Those fuckers can really take a punch.
I wish I could give some advice to those struggling with addiction. I wish I could share some secret nugget about what got me straight, never to look back or never to fall off. But I just stopped. I knew I wouldn’t have survived in the long haul if I didn’t. Ironically and thankfully, my sobriety created an even greater freedom on- and offstage. I had convinced myself that the substances were giving me strength, but in reality, they were holding me back. They gave a false feeling of freedom, which only limited my potential for creativity, expression, and growth.
One tidbit I
can offer to those in a similar predicament is to try and focus on gratitude in times of struggle. Whether you’re grateful for your existence, your family, or being able to do what you love, there is power in acknowledging and appreciating what you have. Sure, there are times when I have a pity party for myself or get frustrated with my industry or my choices or whatever the case may be. But I try to let the low points last only a few minutes, and getting through them without a drink or a drug is the truest form of gratefulness. Sometimes I feel euphoric through simply doing the right thing. And I promise you, if you’re good to yourself and stay thankful, it will pay off.
I only went to three A.A. meetings, and though I believe wholeheartedly in the twelve-step program, I was certain if I had to frequent those meetings that I would have ended up drinking even more. Hearing how a biker stabbed his girlfriend during a blackout gave me more anxiety when I had to walk alone to my car after a meeting. The key for me was quite simply not to drink. Everyone needs to get there in his or her own way. But if it’s killing you or those around you, get there any way you can.
Clearly, entering middle age affords us plenty of opportunities to look back and reflect on the stuff we want to carry into our second half, as well as the stuff we want to leave behind. I’ve learned that people can change, but few do because the hard work so often outweighs the desire. The “old dog, new tricks” philosophy is accurate, though it can double as a convenient copout. Like anything else in life, it all comes down to how badly you want something.
Jill Diven (right) at the Rio Hotel, Las Vegas, 1997. (Courtesy of author’s collection)
10
“A Sober Guy and a Cocktail Waitress Walk into a Bar . . .”
You have probably gathered by now that I have an addictive personality. That said, I don’t consider myself a “recovering alcoholic.” I consider myself a “former alcoholic.” I know the folks at A.A. will disagree, and that’s okay, because they obviously know a lot more about the condition than I do. But I’m not a former teenager; I’m an adult, right? I also don’t believe that alcoholism is a disease. You can’t stop a disease. You can stop being a drunk.
I often say that people with addictive and compulsive wiring will replace one addiction with another while combating their neurosis. I’m no doctor, but I do understand the beast, and I have years of experience with “stuffing the black hole,” trying to artificially soothe and comfort my feelings of insecurity and self-doubt. Because this is not a self-help book, I’m allowed to make statements like that without giving evidence, answers, or solutions. I would rather refer to this as a self-aware book, actually.
The black hole is the place in your gut that cries out when you have feelings of inadequacy, guilt, anxiety, or sometimes just plain boredom (which, if you’re like me, is often). In other words, we all have a black hole. It’s bigger in some than in others, and how we choose to deal with it varies. Personally, I like to cram it with as much unimportant shit as possible, though with age (particularly middle age), it seems to be getting less and less cluttered. Other losers like to fill it up by working out and doing community service.
I’m a variety junkie. Variety in everything, especially food, women, projects, houses, and cars. There are books on the shelf selling right next to mine that will conclude these are the indications of an insecure, insatiable man. Others may say, “This fuck knows how to live,” and I think both would be correct. But rest assured, these desires to change things up often are served with a side of enormous baggage.
Much of the planet, and most certainly towns like L.A., revolve around appearance and first-impression bullshit. Women are unfortunately expected to take this to a frightening level because we boys keep demanding bigger tits, tighter asses, and smaller dresses. That said, by God, we appreciate it! So thank you, ladies. Keep up the good work!
Admittedly, I feel grateful that my thirty-one-year-old girlfriend labors at the gym to keep her already great body in shape as I sit at home, writing this book and eating Fritos. But does that mean I join her at the gym? Or do I have a fish-and-chips dinner and look into buying a red sports car to fuel my inadequacy? Is it wrong to go after the more fun and satisfying outcome? “Vvvaaa-roooom” sounds much better than having Kronk at the gym yell, “Give me one more!” And that, my friends, is the beauty of growing older. “Who gives a fuck?” suddenly has a lovely ring to it, when just a few years ago it rang hollow, immature, and defensive. The difference now is that in some odd, indefinable way, I feel I’ve earned being able to say, “Fuck it.”
As I mentioned, I’ve never been an A.A. guy, but I know one of the rules of the twelve-step program is to avoid getting into a serious relationship within the first two years of one’s sobriety. That’s a damn good one, though not always easy to follow. Especially when you’re looking to “fill the hole,” like I was. My synapses and chronically lonesome loins began to reappear, and my sobriety gave me a clarity and strength that made me feel more fearless than ever. I believed that I was ready to enter into a relationship because I was still a compulsive fuck, even though I had stopped boozing. I was far from having anything figured out.
When I was about six months sober, I began to experience a slight rebirth that is supposedly common around this period of dryness. I had a week hiatus from shooting Raymond, and I decided to take my pops to Vegas for a guys’ weekend. We were playing low-stakes poker at the Rio when my future ex-wife, the lovely and statuesque Jill Diven, dipped and laid a double iced tea with extra lemons next to my paltry stack of chips. She handed my dad his fifth coffee. He tossed her a dollar chip with the flourish of Donald Trump. I glared at him as I slipped the temptress a green twenty-five-dollar chip. My dad glared back at me.
Jill was blond, blue-eyed, five-ten, and had the only real breasts on that shift. At least she did back then. She was shy, sweet, simple, and hard working. At least she was back then. And she smelled me coming a mile away in all of my bright-eyed wonderment and newfound clarity.
For some reason, I’ve dated a lot of waitresses over the years. Not sure why. Probably because of my insecurity, always needing to feel I had the upper hand, lessening the chance that I’d be dumped. That, and I think I took “liked to be waited on” to a new level. After a short two-month courtship and a lot of persuading on my part, Jill moved into my recently purchased home in the Hollywood Hills, just off of Sunset Boulevard. We couldn’t have been more different on almost every level, and I’m sure she felt that way as well. But Jill being from humble beginnings in Pueblo, Colorado, and me needing to feel loved and important immediately, we plowed through with our eyes closed, never stopping to figure each other out. Though it was odd for me to dive into something so quickly, I believe my sobriety amped up my fear of being alone. And after getting to know Jill a little bit, I realized she hated being alone as well. “Any port in a storm,” as my dad used to say.
Three months into our courtship, Jill found out she was pregnant, and we rushed into marriage in hopes of acquiring what I’d only dreamed of and never really had: a real family. I’m grateful every day because I was given my two amazing children, Max and Hope.
Unfortunately and predictably, our marriage started to crumble shortly into our fourth year, though we hung in there for seven. We found ourselves in something that felt like a long-distance thirty-year marriage. I was not a faithful husband, and the apathy on both sides was overwhelming. The bottom line was we were decent people who just didn’t belong together.
I came to realize with insurmountable guilt and dread that I had repeated something from my own childhood that I had prayed never to encounter again: a divorce.
The day I sat down with my two young children to try and explain that Daddy was going to move out was the most painful day of my life. They were at those ages when it would never make sense to them, but they were old enough to experience the loss and pain.
Ironically, at the same time, my career was at its peak. I had just won my third Emmy for Raymond and was appearing on Broadway
alongside the great Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in The Odd Couple. But I was dying inside, because my lifelong unrealistic dream of being the perfect father was disintegrating before my eyes. In hindsight, I think maybe I wanted to be a parent more than a husband. What was important was figuring out what was best for everyone in the long term. As in all failed marriages, the tension between me and their mom would have been more devastating in time than the much needed separation, which has ultimately allowed us to become friends but, more importantly, better parents.
So here I was at forty-five, working to stay sober, experiencing partial erections, popping TUMS and antidepressants like mints, wondering where the fuck the years had gone, about to lose half of my dough-Ray-me to a cocktail waitress from Pueblo, Googling “chronic constipation,” battling to maintain the love and respect of my children, and pretty much beginning to question EVERY LITTLE THING.
And now, as I hurl myself toward my mid-fifties, I find it imperative to share with all who will listen my twisted and skewed philosophy that appears to become more relevant as I grow older.
At my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah, 1973.
Darren, seated, center. I’m the pimp on the right.
(Courtesy of author’s collection)
11
The Power of the Pink
Another good title for this chapter could be “The Art of Settling.” Which reminds me of one of my favorite Elton John songs, “Rocket Man.” There’s a verse that says, “I miss the earth so much I miss my wife.” I always took that literally, as in: “I miss the earth so much I even miss my wife.” Elton purists may argue that it was meant to have a comma after the word “much,” as if he’d been making a list of the things that he missed: earth, my wife, gravity, etc. The fact is, Elton was probably thrilled that he would never have to worry what it means, unless his partner happens to be the “wife” in their relationship, in which case my heart goes out to him.