Alas, I hope my stint as a Chmerkovskiy was not a sprint but is a marathon.
I’ve been holding on to the offer to dance again on Dancing with the Stars All-Stars since before Christmas. Oddly, this time around, they gave us “stars” the choice to dance with our original partners or to choose a new partner. That seemed sort of like wife swapping. My first reaction was Oh hell no!!! I can’t go through it again! You have no idea how physically and mentally grueling that show is. IT’S A BIG PASS!, I thought to myself. But I was told by ABC, “There’s no hurry, take your time making your decision.” Then around February I started giving it some thought, as sly ABC knew I would, by not forcing me to make a decision.
I certainly wouldn’t want Maks to dance with me if he had a better chance at winning with someone else. And I certainly didn’t want to choose some other pro. How weird would that be? What a mighty slap to Maks’s beautiful face and ego.
The months passed, and I still wouldn’t and couldn’t commit. I would have two projects to shoot in the fall and one book to release within the same time frame as DWTS. The offer still not accepted or refused, I began wondering, If I did it again, could I be better? Have I become a better dancer or just a road show cha-cha-er? Would we have fun as we had the first go-round, or were we jaded about each other?
Then in May the north wind blew in, and I suddenly got a wild yearning for another voyage down the rabbit hole. Perhaps it was a glitch in the Matrix. Perhaps it was my desire to dance with the Cheshire Cat one last time. Perhaps I’m certifiable. Yeah—that’s probably it. So come September, the bad boy of the ballroom and the unbroken actress will throw down, one last time, on the dance floor—or throw up, depending on how mean he is.
I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.
—WOODY ALLEN
The Art of
Knights on White Horses
I’D INVENTED these reading glasses called Looky-Loos. I even have the patent on them! Looky-Loos work like this: they have magnets in the temples, and no, this is not some New Age shit. Looky-Loos are accompanied by a gorgeous, color-coordinated picture frame. On the back of the frame, under the felt, the arm thing that props up the frame is metal. When you’re done wearing your readers, you pop ’em on the back of the frame. The magnets connect with the hidden metal and voilà! You know where your glasses are! They aren’t lost in your purse, swimming around with the other debris getting scratched. They aren’t in a kitchen drawer with the scissors and disposable diapers. They are right there on the back of the frame where you left them! Looky-Loos!!
I really think I need to make a trip to the Shark Tank and pitch the idea . . .
I’m aware that this is an uncommon introduction but it’s what led me directly to Mr. New Kids on the Block boy bander . . . to my Jonny-Boy.
As I recall, we started talking to each other via Twitter, mostly about the glasses. But our first encounter via Twitter was when Jon boldly defended my religion and fired away at my attackers.
Religion is a hot-button topic. And on social media sites, religion can become explosive. Personally, I’ve never been harmed by any religion, although I have been harmed by a few people who happened to be members of certain religions. But the harm was not connected to their religious persuasions; they were just dickheads.
Anyway, the important part of the story is that Jon jumped in to defend me, without even knowing me. WOW! That’s some admirable stuff right there. It’s indicative of the bravery and loyalty that IS Jonathan Knight.
Men are not naturally brave, but when duty calls, the courageous ones rise to the occasion to defend and protect. That’s Jon’s beauty. He is an honestly good, brave, valiant man. I’m sure he’s come under fire for defending me, but the truth is, he’s willing to take the bullets.
I took my Looky-Loos to HSN midway through filming my TV show Kirstie Alley’s Big Life. They gave me a whopping seven minutes to sell them. I was exhausted from flying and filming and agreed to HSN’s ungodly hour of 3:00 a.m. My Looky-Loos are both innovative and beautiful, something you would see in a department store for $200 for the combo of glasses and frame. They were also of that quality. And I was selling them for 39 flippin’ dollars!!! They sold all right, not great, but all right, and one of the people who bought them was Jon, for his mother. Then he tweeted about the glasses he bought and how much his mom loved them. It was just common chitchat.
The first time I saw Jon in person was when I invited him to be my guest on DWTS. He came up behind me in the makeup trailer, flashed his pearly whites, and the rest is history.
We were like peanut butter and jelly, we just belonged together. You can’t help but love him. He’s sincere and funny as hell and, as I said before, loyal.
Jonathan is the first to tell you his shortcomings. He’s much harder on himself than on other people. His self-deprecation makes up most of his comedy genius. He came to most of the DWTS shows, and we always went to dinner, then out afterward.
It’s impossible to communicate the love I have for Jonny. If one of us weren’t gay, we would be married. You choose.
We are almost like twins. We both love gardening and house repairs, interior design, telling stories, lying around in bed watching movies. We’re homebodies, basically. Together, we are happy being anywhere and doing nothing.
Here’s another thing I love about Jon. When most people come to visit, especially for extended stays, they need to be entertained. They have an agenda—shopping, dining, sightseeing. UGH!! They are high maintenance. I loathe high-maintenance GUESTS!!! GO STAY AT HOTELS!!!!
When Jon came to Italy we were just as content to lie in bed watching movies as we were zooming around the Amalfi coast on a yacht! We left Positano only once, to sail off to Capri. Other than that, we just hung out, eating watermelon. He doesn’t care and neither do I, as long as we’re together, we’re happy. It’s REFRESHING!!
We also like to do really dumb stuff, like shoot bottles at cheesy rifle ranges. We both adore animals, all animals. Jon tells a hysterical story about his beloved pony June, being given away to an amusement park when he was at school!
We’re both from middle-class families. Jonathan is game for anything, anywhere. This past January 12—my birthday—my kids and I were holed up in Maine during a blizzard. After my kids made breakfast for me and gave me gifts, they said, “Let’s go out on the porch and plan our next dance.” This was in the beginning of this crazy fiasco I created called “100 Days of Dance.” I kid you not, it was a flippin’ blizzard, but I went out on the back porch . . . and there stood Jonny, all bundled up, smiling that killer smile he has. “Happy birthday!” he said with his crooked grin. For me he was the damn Christ child. I flew across that porch like a G6 into his now-frozen, outstretched arms!
There’s a quality that I’ve noticed with only three of the men I’ve been in love with. Our bodies fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, like a hand in a glove (unlike OJ’s glove). It’s this bizarre physical sensation. I’m one of those girls who sticks her ass out when you hug her, can’t get too close, you can’t press your junk against this girl, oh no . . . But with these three men it felt like melting into them, just the right height, arm length, temperature, just the right feeling skin, warm, soft, cozy. I melt into Jon every time we hug. That’s another thing we have in common. We’re not long huggers, and I never pat him like a child.
Maks and Sergey go berserk when I do that to them. Mid-hug, I pat them on their backs like I’m their granny. The reason is, they stay in too long for the hug. I like a nice, solid, warm hug . . . then a release! If you hold me there too long I panic and start patting you. It’s my escape route. Jonathan is like that, too. If too much attention is on him, he gets nervous.
There’s NOTHING about Jonathan that bugs me. Now that’s saying something. Even if one of us was gay, I would still marry him. I wouldn’t care. That part of life is actually pretty boring to me. It’s all hot and heavy for what, a year? Then you get down to
the real business of living a life together. I figure on a good day, two hours of sex is about all I could tolerate and to be honest, sex more than three times a week (save for that first 12 months of a fuck frenzy), yep, three times a week for an hour sounds good to me. I get bored so terribly fast, and sex usually doesn’t feel like the romance of the relationship anyway.
Jonny wants babies, and that’s where our like minds part ways. He’ll make a brilliant father. I’m done raising kids.
Jon’s manners are impeccable, and manners are very important to me. He’ll never let you pay for a thing, even if you invited him!! Every door is opened. Every kind gesture is thanked. His mama raised him right. He always returns calls immediately or texts or tweets. He puts his coat around you if you’re cold. He insists you order first.
One thing you could never guess about Jonny-Boy, among his multitudes of talents, is that he’s an awesome cock blocker! It began when Jon and I went to a club in LA called Colony. I’d go there after every DWTS show night and dance with black men. Oh, how I love black men! Shockingly, I’ve never shagged one but the thought of it is exhilarating and I see that in my future! I know all people are supposed to be looked upon as equal, but black men are superior! Exotic! White men are, well, white. Like the difference between a glass of milk and a hot fudge sundae. You can tell the difference between THOSE, can’t you?
Getting back on point with the cock blocking. Jonny-Boy is THE best at it. He does it without even pissing the dude off! There I was dancing my brains out with every guy who asked me. This one! That one! I was having a ball! Then a nasty boy wedged himself between me and the guy I was dancing with. You could tell he was a nasty boy because he had “Nasty Boy” written on his hat. The nasty boy was getting carried away with his gyrations. I went there to dance, not fornicate on the dance floor, but apparently Nasty Boy didn’t get the memo. I was getting pretty uncomfortable. I had my nervous giggle going on, and my eyes were darting around the room.
In flew Jonny to the rescue! He slipped his arms around my waist and said, “Babe, we gotta get home. I have to work early.” Then he flashed that big friendly smile at Nasty Boy. Nasty said, “Oh, sorry ma’am, I didn’t know you were married,” and backed his nasty ass up. AHH, my hero, Jonny Boy!
Jonny will be in my life until it ends. We’ve promised each other that we WILL be married in our next lifetime but I’m an optimist—I’m thinkin’ next June. :)
Well-behaved women seldom make history.
—LAUREL THATCHER ULRICH
The Art of
Clubbing Men
THE LAST time I was a clubber was . . . well . . . never.
I’ve spent very little time in clubs. They are pretty ridiculous to me, especially now when all you do is stand in booths and wait for slutty girls with sparklers instead of slutty girls with cocktail trays to zip by and plop $600 bottles of vodka on the table. Club dancing is near extinction, and clubs are more crowded than municipal swimming pools in the sixties. The secondhand weed smoke is nauseating. The reason for no dancing is that there’s no room, or well, just enough room to grind on one another in drunken stupors. All the clubbers are chronically texting or tweeting cool things like “We’re going in!” or “This place is sick!” which makes me wonder why, if it’s so sick, they’re sitting there tweeting.
I’ve often wondered how “epic” it would be to “go in” without drugs or alcohol. Is it really the DJ? Does he really mix the sound so differently than the DJ spinning next door? I know; I’m old, I don’t get it, ’cause it just seems like the exact same songs played endlessly with different amounts of time before the next one is bled into the last one. And call me old-fashioned, but when I see some exec in a suit or some rapper smoking a blunt, pony up 50 to 100,000 Gs for a tab, it just makes me wonder, Wouldn’t that be better spent on Habitat for Humanity? And don’t the chicks with the glorified Roman candles look identical to one another? And how about those X’d-out go-go girls gyrating on the back of VIP booths? Couldn’t they use a hot bath and dancing lessons?
Oh jeez, here I go again sounding old school. It’s apparently the clientele that make the clubgoers keep on clubbing. But aren’t the only new people you see there the out-of-towners or the not-so-pretty people who couldn’t get in the door? The ones you tripped over who were freezing their asses off the night before? The ones who got smarter tonight and paid the doorman $200 to make them seem more beautiful?
Oh sure, the girls are pretty, you know the ones, the underage “models” paid by the club owners to pretend like they aren’t hookers. I’m not saying there is no value to standing around in a club getting shit-faced. I’m just saying let’s not pretend it’s because we’re hot.
We can’t possibly take “hooking up” seriously as proof that we’re hot. Maybe at 10:00 p.m., but certainly not at 2:00 a.m. when anyone short of the Elephant Man could get laid. Even then, Elephant Woman would probably be right around the corner putting salve on her sparkler burns, willing to throw down. I’m pretty sure even a corpse could get fucked if it was propped up, wearing a G-string.
I’m not trying to be all “bah, humbug” here, really I’m not. In fact, I gave it all a whirl, a six-week whirl.
Before iPhones and sparkler girls, there were selections of alcohol and dancing was an integral part of the evening. Even then I had little interest. But in the six weeks following Dancing with the Stars, it became my life.
My copilot was my assistant Kelly, and our captain was limo driver extraordinaire, Jeffrey. He veered us in and out of more clubs and restaurants in that six weeks than I’d frequented collectively throughout my life.
The night we got runner-up on DWTS, we flew on a private G-6 to NYC to appear on Good Morning America. I ended up staying in NYC for six weeks.
I felt like a That Girl Holly Golightly banshee on the loose.
It was crazy fun. The only bad part, which didn’t seem bad at the time, was that I drank too much, which for me means “anything.” I almost never drink, maybe a couple of glasses of wine every year. Not because I’m an alchy or a puritan, it’s just that I never think about it. But boy, was I drinking in NYC. Every night, I’d say, between one and three drinks with the occasional five-drink night. For me that’s like a fifth of vodka every hour.
This was my New York City DAY schedule: up at 7:00 a.m., eat breakfast, dance, and then go to meetings. I was the NYC “It” girl. Broadway, commercials, TV series, book publishing, brands—you name it, I was meeting on it. Appearing on Letterman, Fallon, The View, and everything in between. Selling our QVC Organic Liaison line, walking the catwalk for Zang Toi, and shopping . . . lots of shopping for shoes. I collected an estimated 40 pairs of heels, split among Louboutin, Manolo Blahnik, YSL, and Prada.
And clothes. I never buy clothes. I hate clothes shopping. I’ll drop five Gs on a sofa but never on a dress. I went wild shopping for my new fitter figure. So meeting and shopping by day, but mostly meeting. Then back to my way-too-expensive hotel by seven, shower, doll up, dress up, and go out to dinner by nine.
By the looks of the press and the gossip, Maks and I were inseparable. It couldn’t have been further from the truth. Maks was mostly in the Ukraine doing the show The Cube, making appearances, or judging dance contests somewhere. Honestly, I can’t remember where he was, but he wasn’t in NYC. He popped in and out during that six-week period, mostly out, and when he was there we saw each other.
Anyway, nightly, I was “on the town” and amid “the scene.” I’m rarely on the town and never on the scene. I’ve had a bazillion opportunities to be on the scene in my 30 years as an actress, and I’m not good on the scene. The scene is usually druggie and almost always boozy, and it’s exhausting and usually boring. If you are on the scene very much, you will see the exact same people you saw the night before, and before and before—you know, the “scene” people.
Before my six-week post-DWTS romp, I would come in and out of NYC for a meeting, premiere, publicity appearance, or to be on Saturday Night
Live. This six weeks was my longest stint by far, except when I was filming movies. But that was work, this was playtime, so the scene was fresh and spectacular.
My hangs were SL, Abe & Arthurs, 1 Oak, the Greenwich Hotel, the Boom Boom Room, Soho House, Cipriani, Christian Louboutin, and Mr. Chow.
I spent all my time with Kelly, my free-spirited assistant of many years, and my friends Mona, Nicole, and Teddy. But the best part of my six-week romp was my limo driver, Jeffrey. Or “Jeffy,” as all us girls like to call him.
Jeffy has long, curly silver hair and always says the word “man.” Jeffrey was witness to every backseat make-out session, every onslaught of paparazzi, and, well, everything. Jeffrey was basically my driver from 9:00 a.m. until 2:00 a.m. We were only apart for seven-hour sleep interludes.
Jeffrey owns a limo company called EZ Ryder. He employs many drivers and owns lots of cars, but Jeffrey is the reason that big-name movie and television stars swear by EZ Ryder. Jeffrey is this laid-back ex-stoner guy who looks like he lived fairly hard between the 1960s and the ’90s. He is 100 percent trustworthy. He never gossips about any of his famous clientele, even though he must be filled with book-worthy tales.
I had a movie premiere to attend one night. I’d gotten sort of bored with my “every night out on the town” behavior, so I needed to take it up a notch. “I need an Aston Martin,” I squealed. “Fuck yeah man! I’ll get you one!” he squealed. Jeffrey showed up at eight with this white Aston Martin convertible. I was staying at one of my two favorite NYC hotels, the Greenwich. It’s owned by Robert De Niro and is decked to the nines with his father’s artwork.
Jeffrey pulled up. “Oh my god!” I yelled. “They leased me an Aston Martin?”
“Fuck no man—they’re just loaning it to you, man.”
The Art of Men [I Prefer Mine al Dente] Page 22