by Mamrie Hart
We were shown a small waterfall before we got on the river, to assess whether or not we were comfortable going down it. The guide told us about half the people decide to go down it, and the other half chicken out. As soon as I saw the falls, I thought to myself, Somebody grab the Shake ’n Bake, ’cause it looks like we’re having chicken today. But I couldn’t do that! There was a film crew with us! There are two things I never want to do on camera.
1. Show da pussy.
2. Be a pussy.
Plus, Grace was gung-ho to go down them. “We’ll regret it if we don’t do it,” she said as we were stationed on the bank about a hundred yards from the falls.
“You’re right. I’m in.”
As soon as I agreed, I immediately regretted it. I think it goes without saying that I started panicking. How was I going to paddle hard enough for us to go over the falls if my arms felt like two Sour Punch Straws? Everyone else on our crew had already gotten out; they weren’t going over them.* It was just going to be Grace, me, and the guide. He started feverishly repumping the raft. I started feverishly asking questions. “What’s the ratio of rafts that flip? Has anyone died going over the falls? How long are you in the air? I’ve bungee jumped, is it scarier than that?” After the thirtieth or so question, he cut me off.
“Look, the only thing you really need to worry about if we flip is getting sucked back into the falls. That’s why we have to paddle super hard and get some air going over them.”
“What happens if you get sucked in?”
“If you get sucked into the falls, you are stuck. The pressure of the water will hold you down, but it’s going to release you after fifteen seconds if you don’t fight it.” Fifteen seconds of being stuck underwater sounded like an eternity. “Just remember, it will release you. You just have to stay calm. What I like to do is sing the Indiana Jones theme song when I’m stuck. It keeps me more calm than counting.” And he kept pumping up the raft. I looked at Grace in complete shock.
“One last question,” I added. “How many times have you been sucked under?”
“About three,” he replied nonchalantly.
“Okay, three times. You said you’ve worked here for three years. Those odds aren’t that bad—”
“No, no. Three times this month.”
I turned to Grace, who now looked like a ghost in pigtails.
“Grace? You really want to?” I asked her, hoping the desperation in my voice would assure her she could drop the act and we’d get the fuck off the river and go drink in our hotel bar.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” she replied like it was no big deal, but I knew it was, because when Grace is uncomfortable her eyes bug out and her mouth turns into Grumpy Cat’s. But thank goodness she was putting on her tough-girl act, or else I would’ve been a mess.
“Okay,” I said, slowly turning back to the front of the raft while white-knuckling my paddle. We had said we’d do it (on-camera, no less!) and we were going to see it out. There was no pep talk. No emotional halftime speech. We nodded at each other like two kamikaze pilots agreeing to their fate. When all was said and done, no one got sucked into the falls. Grace and I paddled like we were trying to qualify for the Olympic rowing team, and our raft sailed over those falls with ease. But I took our guide’s advice to heart.
The waterfall, while scary, would’ve released us. The panic attack will also release you. Just relax, and don’t feel weird about being vocal about your feelings. Also, no one has ever died from a panic attack. Just breathe. And if possible, drink the nearest thing to you.
And one more word of advice: If you ever hear me singing the Indiana Jones theme song onstage, pull a tarp over yourself Gallagher-style, or slowly back away. Things could get real.
Spears-Mint Mojito
1 lime
10 mint leaves
½ oz elderflower liqueur
2 oz white rum
Club soda
1 oz Bacardi 151
This is like a classic mojito but with a couple of added bonuses to Vegas-ize it. Before you do anything, cut your lime in half horizontally. If the lime is the Earth, cut through the equator. If you do not understand that reference, then you shouldn’t be drinking anyway. Put down the bottle and pick up the books!
Start out by muddling your mint leaves with your elderflower liqueur in a shaker and squeezing in the lime juice. Add the white rum and lots of ice. Give the shaker the action from which it gets its name and pour into a tall glass. Top with club soda.
Then, take a spoon or your fingernails (depending on your personal level of hygiene) to one of those lime halves that have been squeezed, and scrape out all the pulp and white rind. You’ll be left with a tiny green bowl. Put that 1 ounce of 151 inside and lovingly place it on top of your mojito. Carefully set that shit on fire, and voilà! Drinks and a show! You can use a straw to dunk the fiery rum whenever you feel like it. Eventually it will all burn off, but the sooner you submerge it, the stronger your drink will be. By the time you finish two of these bad boys, you’ll be wearing those lime cups as nipple hats.
When I heard that Britney Spears was going to be doing a residency at Planet Hollywood in Vegas, the first thing I thought was, Who the hell is watching Jayden and Sean? My second thought was, I have got to see this. I had just moved to L.A. six months earlier and hadn’t yet made the pilgrimage to the City of Sin. I didn’t care that Britney would dance like a marionette version of her former self. I didn’t care that I would be paying major dollars to watch someone lip-sync their greatest hits or that her abs would require more paint than a House Hunters fixer-upper. Goddammit, I was going to get to that show dead or alive. Fortunately, I did end up getting to the show, and I was alive . . . but just barely.
First, let me take you back a few years.
Britney came into my life back in 1998, when I was a freshman in high school. “. . . Baby One More Time” hit MTV, and everyone was enamored by this cute girl with her little Catholic schoolgirl uniform and Muppet voice. She was the girl all the girls wanted to be and all the boys wanted to jerk off to. I couldn’t believe that she was only two years older than me. If you had done a split screen of the two of us, I would’ve looked like a prepubescent troll next to that bare-midriff vixen.
Britney was pretty much the soundtrack to my teens and early twenties. Obviously I listened to cooler music than Britney (no offense, Britney Jean, if you’re reading my book. And if you are, hey, girl! Did you get the picture I sent of me dressed as you for Halloween in ’01 and ’08?), but I still had a soft spot for her. I might’ve just left a Modest Mouse show, but the second I got back in my car, I’d be cranking up that former Mouseketeer, blaring “Toxic” the whole way home. Complete with dance moves from the video, which is always fun for whoever pulls up beside me at a stoplight.
If you have any doubts about the level I commit to Brit, you can use my freshman year spring break in Panama City as a prime example. While everyone else was bonging beers on the beach, I went to see Crossroads. Not that bad, you say? I went by myself. And I was the only person in that theater. If you don’t know the cinematic masterpiece that I am referring to, allow me to brief you.
Crossroads is your run-of-the-mill post–high school road trip movie in which a pop star tries in vain to be an actress for two hours. Just kidding. It’s about three former best friends, along with the possibly dangerous guy driving them, going on a cross-country trek together for their own personal reasons. It stars Zoe Saldana, a.k.a. the chick from Avatar; Taryn Manning, a.k.a. the crazy Christian redneck from Orange Is the New Black; and in her feature-film debut, Britney Spears. The movie itself is god-awful. Like, for a road trip movie, this is a car crash. . . . Shit—that was pretty good. Maybe I should ditch this whole book-writing thing and become a snarky movie reviewer.
I knew it would be bad before I went, but in an innocent, cheesy way. I needed a break from the type of bad that w
as happening outside that Regal Cinema’s doors. On the way to the theater, I walked by a girl giving a blow job to a fire hydrant. Obviously I was going to dive headfirst back into the spring break grossness as soon as I left the theater (I had tickets to see Master P that night), but for that ninety minutes, I could feel pure again. By the end credits I was belting out “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” right along with Brit Brit.
Clearly, I’ve loved the Spears for years. Luckily, I had two friends who were just as amped at the idea of seeing her Vegas show as I was. Enter Grace and Joselyn. I was going to hit the road with my two dear friends for an adventure. Which sounds oddly similar to a little film I mentioned before. Yep, this was our Crossroads. If you are familiar with the movie, Grace was obviously the Britney character in this trio. Sweet and kind, but tough when she needs to be. Joselyn was Zoe Saldana (yes, I am going to refer to them by their real names and not their roles; get over it): tough, has her shit together. And by process of elimination, I will assume the role of Taryn Manning. Would I rather be Britney? Of course. Taryn’s character is brash, speaks her mind, and . . . It’s official, I’m the Taryn.*
For those who are terrible with geography or have never seen Swingers, Vegas is only a four-hour drive from L.A. That’s it—four measly hours! I have sat on a broken-down stinky subway car from Brooklyn to Manhattan longer than that! The plan was for Joselyn and Grace to meet me at my place at noon on a Saturday, we’d take a few Bloody Marys to the face, then the three of us would hit the road. But we weren’t going to drive ourselves. No, no. We were taking a car service.
I know what you’re thinking. Oh la la, Mamrie! A car service? Did it come complete with a top hat and fox trained as a butler?
Settle down. There was a car service at the time that was giving “social influencers” (God, I hate that phrase) credits toward rides if you mentioned them on Twitter or Instagram, so we weren’t paying completely out of pocket. Also, they had a deal going for a Vegas trip. In it, a driver would pick up you and your friends and drive you to Vegas, where you’d get a complimentary one-night stay at the Cosmopolitan and then get driven back the next day. This was an ideal setup because there are few things I hate more than driving when I am super hungover. I always have terrifying out-of-body experiences where I can’t believe I am operating a several-ton vehicle, and it distracts me from, you know, being a good driver. And Lord knows we were going to be violently hungover, because we were seeing Britney, bitch!
As planned, Grace and Joselyn met me at my place for some Bloody Marys first. Because, let’s face it, we were about to drink our faces off in Vegas, and you can’t drink on an empty stomach. You can, however, drink a Bloody Mary and stick a bunch of pickled veggies in there and kill two birds with one stone. So, we were drinking our Bloodys, chatting about the night ahead in my living room. Grace called the car, and it was officially on its way.
“I can’t believe we are taking a car to Las Vegas. Who are we?” Grace chimed in.
“Assholes,” Joselyn answered without skipping a beat.
I didn’t care if we were assholes for splurging on such a luxury. I had come a long way since my first ride in New York City, when I sat on a stranger’s pizza crust. I could already picture rolling into Vegas in a sleek black car, everything going in slow motion as all eyes panned from my foot stepping out of the car on up to my face to see who I was. Obviously there would be lots of fans held by bellhops to give my hair just the right amount of breeze. Right before I could get to the paparazzi portion of my fantasy, I was snapped out of it by a car horn.
“It’s here! Let’s move it, ladies!”
We gathered our bags and feasted our eyes on our car and driver. The moment can only be described as the physical form of that losing noise from The Price Is Right.
Enter . . . Gabriel.
Gabriel was sent by Company-That-Rhymes-with-Boober to pick us up. When he pulled up, we noticed that this town car was a little more beat-up than normal. The inside wasn’t much better: There were rips in the leather, and it smelled like there was a moldy towel in the front seat. It wasn’t the ideal road trip car, with the ceiling material sinking down like a weird belly above our heads, but we would make do.
Gabriel, bless his heart, matched his car in terms of dishevelment. He looked like he’d been sleeping in his clothes, and his pants had dust on them like when you eat a powdered doughnut and then accidentally wipe your hands on your pants. His hair was doing an early Friends Joey Tribbiani thing, but unlike that womanizer, Gabriel wasn’t really pulling it off. It was gelled back so intensely that he could have legally driven a motorcycle in California with his ’do serving as a helmet.
He awkwardly tried to open the door for us but got out of the car a little too late, so we did it ourselves as he stood and watched us get in. Once we were all inside and Gabriel was in the driver’s seat, he turned and asked, “So! Where are you girls going?” We were a little surprised that his boss hadn’t given him a heads-up that he was about to embark on a four-hour drive, but we cheerfully replied that we were going to the Cosmopolitan.
He started to type “Cosmopolitan” into his GPS. “Is that downtown?”
Joselyn gave Grace and me a look. Just like Saldana, she was a little apprehensive of the situation. “Umm, it’s in Vegas?”
Gabriel’s eyes lit up in the rearview mirror. “Vegas? Holy shit! I told my friend that I didn’t think I was ever going to get one of the Vegas deals. This is awesome!” We soon found out from good ol’ Gabe that drivers really wanted to be called to drive on Vegas deals. They got paid a superhigh rate and also got put up for the night. It was like a last-minute bender surprise.
“I can’t believe it! Vegas, baby! Vegas!” Gabriel continued. That was the first time I’d ever hear “Vegas, baby” said unironically. But not the last, as Gabriel repeatedly said it for the next four hours.
We were excited that he was excited. Sometimes you can get a car-service driver, or cab driver, who is pissed when you tell him how far you are going. It would’ve been terrible if Gabriel had been dreading the Vegas call and we were stuck in the backseat while he sulked for four hours, but he couldn’t have been happier. Gabriel had almost a childlike excitement about him. He didn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the shed, but he definitely wasn’t dull. This guy was a character.
“Do you care if I call my girlfriend and let her know? This was supposed to be my last ride of the night.”
“Of course not! Do your thing. Vegas!” Although I was a little surprised that he had a girlfriend. I pictured her as an older woman, someone his mother wouldn’t approve of her “baby boy” being with. Yep, I was definitely getting a Moonstruck vibe, and I couldn’t snap out of it.
Gabriel pulled out his iPhone and began making calls. I couldn’t help but notice that his screen was completely shattered glass. When I say it was shattered, I mean it was one drop away from being glitter.
I’m not trying to say this in a judgy way, but more from a place of understanding. One time I was in such a rush to an audition that I left my phone on top of my car as I threw on a semiclean shirt I had in my trunk. After several miles, I realized what I had done, so I drove back to my parking spot and searched frantically for it. No luck. It was a goner. I headed to my audition, but unfortunately for me, the role wasn’t for a supergrumpy bitch, so I didn’t nail it. As I sat in the turn lane on Melrose about a mile from where I had lost my phone, I looked down at the five-lane road and saw a glimpse of leopard print. My phone case! I jumped out of my car like my baby was in the middle of the road and on fire, and grabbed my now-demolished iPhone. Hell, if it was a damaged phone it could be replaced for two hundred dollars, but a lost phone would cost me five hundred to replace. You’d better believe I mailed that Ziploc bag of glass to AT&T and got my discount! I felt like the luckiest unlucky girl in the world!
I didn’t dwell on Gabriel’s phone long, though, because soon
I was too overcome with terror. He couldn’t drive worth a shit, and it was terrifying. Maybe it was the adrenaline of “Vegas, baby!” Maybe it was the difficulty of looking through his contacts on shards of glass while also swerving between tractor trailers. But Gabriel was cruisin’ at ninety-five miles per hour, driving about as well as I play Mario Kart, and I’m fucking terrrrible at Mario Kart. The Crossroads 2.0 cast was complete with a driver we thought might kill us.
We weren’t five miles from home and my anxiety was through the roof. I wanted to scream but decided to approach the situation with the calmest and kindest version of my voice. The one you put on when you meant to order your enchiladas without sour cream but then they come out with sour cream and you know it’s your fault but still want them to fix it. That voice.
“Gabriel, honey. I’m going to need you to drive safer. I seriously have car anxiety and you’re kiiiinda driving like a maniac. I want to arrive alive.” And he did drive safer. For about three minutes. I tried to block out almost crashing into the back of a Smart car (which would’ve certainly killed the people in it) with happy thoughts of blackjack and backup dancers. Every ten minutes or so I would try to sweetly crack a joke to get him to pump the brakes.
“Hey, Gabe! Could you speed up a little? We haven’t gone into the future yet!”
“Gabriel, did you have to join the union to stunt-drive for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift or just sign a waiver?”
“Gabriel, knock knock? Who’s there? Slow the fuck down!”
He’d apologize and slow down, then, sure enough, he’d accelerate right back up.