Celebrity Detox

by Rosie O'Donnell

  Billie Jean King was mobbed that day at the US Open, with everyone asking for her autograph while I just sat there and watched. And it was a great day, a great thing, to be the observer, not the observed. I could almost feel my eyes, like lenses, open up and take in light, and color. I could tell you all the details, the fluorescent yellow of the balls smacking back and forth, the wind-whipped hair, Blake’s new baseball hat, the plane overhead, its fuel scarring the sky in a line. I felt free and also tethered, finally, to the right place, to the right time; here. Now. These people mine.

  Chelsea was less interested in the tournament than she was in the athletes. Blake and Parker were watching the tennis, and Chelsea, who was sitting next to me, got up and went on her own to the box suite, where there were all these amazing women gathered, tough-assed ladies in their seventies, sports enthusiasts, some golfers. Chelsea apparently held court there for the entire time the match was going. She wound up sitting next to this beautiful blond woman who was showing her a book about female athletes. After a while I came over to see. “Who’s this, and this?” Chelsea kept asking, and the woman was explaining who each featured athlete was. Amazing gymnasts, tennis players, and figure skaters. And they turned to a page in the book where there was a picture of a woman who had no legs—she was running with steel springs, her blond hair flowing behind her. The book explained that this woman was a champion. And Chelsea said, “What happened to her?”

  And the woman said, “Well, that’s me.” Chelsea looked at the woman, and then back at the picture, and then back at the woman, her mouth partly open with surprise, concentration. And then the woman said, “I had my legs amputated when I was a child.”

  “Can I see?” Chelsea asked.

  The woman said, “Yeah.”

  She pulled up her pant leg and showed my daughter where the prosthesis attached. They talked about why her legs were gone and how it felt.

  It was a gift to watch this. It was a single moment, a moment so real you wish you had a camera to capture it, knowing somehow that if you did, you would taint it. I know the best moments can never be captured on film, even as I spend nearly half my life trying to do just that.

  Maybe what it means to be an artist is knowing you are doomed to fail, that you can’t capture your “it,” because sometimes the feelings are so huge they go beyond your medium, and so you are left standing there, staring: your girl, one leg, two women . . . on and on the story goes, so much faster, and smarter, than you will ever be.

  The woman, Aimee Mullins, ended up giving Chelsea the book and inviting her to a dinner of the Women’s Sports Federation, where she serves as president. Chelsea was so excited. The tournament ended, the great day was over, and we went home and ate dinner at our local Mexican restaurant and then went to bed, but it was like the sun hadn’t set yet and the good things kept coming—my life as a used-to-be, a washed- up woman, like the glass on the beach, beautiful glass, blue and green. Its edges softened from the sea.

  And the sun didn’t set on my day. It went on, in part because Chelsea could not stop talking about Aimee and all the women she had met at the US Open. All she wanted was to go to this dinner and be with these women. We went. They asked me to present an award. I said, “No, I’m going with my daughter. I’m going to sit down with my daughter and watch these women.” And this is what I did. I watched and watched . . . for the whole four years I took off I exercised my eye, and tried to focus from angles I hadn’t even known, or had forgotten existed, and the experience was a little like geometry when you suddenly see how shapes might come together, can come together, when the measurements are exact. I did a 180-degree U-turn and I wound up in a new place that was also, weirdly, a very familiar place where I was at once old and young, where I was who I used to be but also something new, and if I had to give this place a title, I would have to call it home.

  I was with Kelli in Times Square when I saw the announcement go up: Rosie To Co-Host The View.

  “Well, that’s nice,” I thought. “I’m glad I was the first to know.” The one-year contract was still an issue, but it seemed we were going forward; it was clear we were. I saw the billboard in Times Square, and it was real. Inside, my thoughts: “Prepare for reentry.”

  I knew I had to hold on to the purity of my intent. I knew my intent was not to gain status, or money, or fame this second time around, but to be . . . groundbreaking.

  Ruthie, my Kabbalah teacher, with whom I regularly meet, and who teaches me all things spiritual, told me my ego is my biggest fault and challenge.

  Oy vey.

  I wanted to go back because I knew it would be groundbreaking. One can break ground quietly; one can start a small crack or dent that does not mean much, except that it is an opening. When I started my show I was in the closet. There were no gay people on TV. Ellen wasn’t out yet and there was no Will and Grace. Now here we were ten years later; I could do it all again—only be out. I would be able to talk about my family like the other hosts did. I thought, “Wow—this could be a big deal.” I thought, when I saw the Times Square billboard, that this was what I was meant to do.

  There are no mistakes.

  Faith or fear.

  Remember to breathe.

  Maybe my job was to ride the wave, make it to shore, and rest. And then, once rested, surf out again, swim out again, only this time, without barriers or boundaries—without shame. Just be. Allow the light. Corny but true, that was my intent.

  I have had tremendous luck in my career, amazing opportunities to work with some of the best artists alive, and now another opportunity was coming my way. I have been fortunate. Almost all the directors I’ve ever worked with have been women, which is shocking to begin with, considering the law of averages. I got to be directed by Nora Ephron, Angelica Huston, and Penny Marshall. I have come to know and love Mia Farrow, Chita Rivera, Sharon Gless. Celebrity is odd—hard to make your way through. As I said, a few months ago Jane Fonda was at my house. Now I know people think celebs hang out with other celebs a lot—but I haven’t found that to be true. Jane Fonda called me one day and said with sincerity, that she would like to know me better, be my friend. I invited her over and she came.

  I’m the kid from Rhonda Lane, so how did I wind up here, or, rather, how did she wind up there, talking to me in my home? In the five hours Jane Fonda visited me, she was able to mine through all of my “movie-star mother” issues. And she walked down with me to my craft room and sat with me and watched twenty of the movies I had made, and looked at all of my art and asked me questions. Every fantasy I’d ever had about a mother being alive and wanting to know me came true, in that time with Jane Fonda in my craft room. And then we walked back up to the main house. Her son called and told her he had asked his fiancée to marry him the other night, and he wanted to tell her about it. I watched her eyes well up and I heard her ask about the ring, and, you know, I was thinking, “Wow.” I had just watched her live a real moment in front of me and the fact that she is able to live and feel all of that is why she’s a great actress, because most people can’t take that in. That was a moment of near complete clarity for me, with her in my kitchen, and thinking of her sitting on a tank in Hanoi in 1972 and speaking of peace at a time when I knew that peace was the answer because children know; their souls are closer to God. She inspired me as a child and here she was in my living room continuing to inspire me.

  This is what I was thinking in Times Square, when I saw the billboard, how lucky I had been, past opportunities, none of them lost, so why lose this one? Jane Fonda had been in my house and now Barbara Walters was asking me to be on her show, and it was startling to me, and the very fact of that—the startlement of it—made it clear to me to go forward. With the intent to challenge the image this country has of celebrities. The intent to work with very talented people. The intent to laugh and hear laughter, and not to get lost. One year only. I knew a person is only as good as her brakes, just like any other forward-moving machine.

  In real life, whic
h is not the same as a memoir exactly—in real life the billboard happened second, the Emmys first. But this is not how the telling has happened, not how the story seems it should go. Barbara was excited to speak of our future collaboration onstage at the Emmys, and I was excited to see her do so, to be on the stage with her when she made the announcement, because she is legendary, Barbara Walters. She is a weather girl who made one of the widest wakes in the history of the women’s movement. She is, in this sense, a mother, or grandmother, to the many who have followed her footsteps. She has one daughter, Jackie, named after her sister, both of whom have been a source of private pain for Barbara. Throughout our entire relationship, I have always been acutely aware of both the public and the private facts: her struggles with her daughter and vice versa. She has told me I remind her of Jackie, whom she truly adores. Jackie has rejected the gold and glitter life: she lives in a small town in Maine, counseling troubled teens. Plain pain—in the end the only kind there is.

  After Barbara asked me to co-host her show, I sometimes wondered about the daughter, and her hurt, and if she’d felt abandoned by a mother who was maybe so busy with the world that she didn’t have time for her kid. I don’t know. Women’s choices. What I do know is that the knot between a mother and a daughter is always fraught, always frayed, you can depend on that. I sensed a raw place in Barbara right from the start; I could practically see it, the haze of her heart, glinting like an ornament, but not, real, beneath her silken blouses.

  And so there we were on the stage at the daytime Emmys, together. Because the news of our collaboration had already leaked, we did, instead, a bit of prepared banter. I said, “I just read on the Internet that you have something to ask me.” The stage was hot, from the full force of the lighting, and below us I could feel the swell of the crowd. Barbara said, “Would you be on my show next year?” and I said, “It’s either you or Celebrity Fit Club.” This part we had planned, but then I swerved. I surprised Barbara, the same as many months later she would surprise me, and a rift would form between us, and within me a rift that would forever change the way I saw celebrities, myself included. But I had no way of knowing, that day, no way of anticipating all that was to follow: the abandonments, the dissembling, lies that lit the way toward truth, a new path for me, a total turn. The View. It changed my view forever.

  But on that day, at that moment, we were just at the bare beginning. The conflict had not even started to simmer. I turned and I looked Barbara in the eye, like she’d looked me in the eye the night of my documentary, and said to her onstage, “Thank you for asking me, Barbara Walters.” And Barbara Walters, she got choked up, and I think I saw the haze of her heart beneath her dress, and then she leaned forward, and put her forehead next to mine.

  Blog 12/24/05

  five and fierce

  pins put in his busted elbow this morning

  now—in bed next to me

  his lips dry and cracked

  a newborn waited

  unaware

  on the cot next to his

  mother and grandma

  crying beyond scared

  too tiny—this baby

  to go under and out

  to have to fight so soon

  for life—air

  unfair

  out of myself

  gratitude

  perspective

  half-full

  i cannot spell

  i never could

  commas and capitals

  only in the way

  on i go

  unworthy

  blogging

  hmmm

  who is the mother

  we both say me

  instantly

  instinct

  not of my body or blood

  this brilliant boy

  naming every animal

  without a thought

  the doctor comes in

  i am not as famous now

  but any fame helps

  always

  in emergency rooms

  what did you do kiddo

  he asks

  broke my skeleton he answers

  and my knees wobble

  as my heart again grows

  do i regret leaving

  the razz ma tazz

  queen of the world

  they said

  all of them strangers

  my world

  made up of 6 vital souls

  that is the deal i made

  my promise wish prayer

  how selfless people think—say

  no—i know—purely selfish

  life perservers

  each one

  i took 4

  knowing with them i could never drown

  my boy will remember this day

  his two mommies there

  when terror shook all 49 pounds

  soft songs sung

  chances are i would have missed this

  had i not jumped

  i would have been at 30 thousand feet

  hovering speeding across

  to important and validating

  saving strangers righting wrongs

  lay down the cape

  two and 1/2 years now

  i have been back here

  at sea level

  present panicked and plain

  a mom

  with watery eyes

  nodding at the others

  my sisters my friends

  take care of your children

  as i will mine

  CHAPTER 4

  Barbara’s Show

  In the right story, which is not the real story, my first day on The View is noteworthy, a grand return to daytime television. In fact, though, I don’t recall much about it. What sticks in my mind are the precursors. I remember Bill Geddie, Barbara Walters’s producer, coming to my apartment in New York City sometime during the summer before the season started. We have a little apartment and Bill is a very tall man, he’s six foot five or something, a big guy, and a Republican. I’d hosted The View in the past, when I’d had my own show, so I knew what his politics were. I knew they were different from mine. Sometimes in the past I had even called him on them, in a sort of friendly way, like, “Why are we talking about lip liner when twenty-seven marines were killed in Iraq this week?” And he would say, “Because that’s what we do on this show.”

  So, going in, I knew that we had very different politics, and this was a concern for me. I wanted to meet him first, to talk, and to make sure we could agree on how to make good television. After all, I’d never had a boss before, never in my life, in my career; certainly not in any traditional sense. There’s real freedom in that but also real risk; you’re on your own. No one owns you, and you don’t own anyone. Those days are long gone, and while for the most part I’m grateful at how far I’ve come, how lucky I’ve been, I sometimes miss, or maybe just remember, the days way before I became who I am, the days when I had no worth, and yet, oddly, maybe more worth, because there’s a purity to beginnings, to being unbossed, outside of any contract, your years your own.

  I wondered what it would be like to be part of a team—that’s what The View was, after all, a team—and as I wondered these things I recalled other things, the radical aloneness of being eighteen, in a time far before fame. I remember going up and down the East Coast, crisscrossing the country, making my way. Unbossed, radically free, and also alone, I did club after club. I got to know every airport. I’d land in a city and look for the guy with my name on a white sign. He’d drive me to the hotel, or the condo that the nightclub rented for the comics. Those condos, you can’t forget them. They always smelled stale. They always had fridges with one leftover bottle of beer and a devilled egg with someone’s mouth marks on it. Usually, the comic before, who’d been doing the city’s circuit for a few weeks, hadn’t paid the phone bill, and I’d lift the receiver to nothing.

  The condos were lonely, and made more so by the smattering of personal stuff the prior occupants always left behind.
I’d find the last actress’ shirt in the closet, belted with sequins, or a used condom. Once I found a wadded up note, which, when I unfolded it said, “Richard, go left out the drive and keep going straight till you fall from the cliff. Fuck you. Michelle.” Michelle who?

  But I wasn’t depressed. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but I had the sense of making it, doing it on my own, getting as much as $300 a week, which was more than I ever could have asked for. God, the gratefulness. Is it all gone now? I had two credit cards. I rented my own place in LA, for when I wasn’t traveling. I opened a bank account in LA, with an ATM card to boot. In truth I knew nothing about banking. I just put in money. I never wrote down how much, where, when. I just deposited whatever I had and knew, since this was a bank, that everything would be taken care of. I trusted them, the bankers.

  My method of money management was this: whenever I needed to write out some checks for monthly bills, I’d skateboard down to the Wells Fargo on Van Nuys Boulevard and pop in my ATM card. Balance? The machine always asked me. Yes, I’d punch in and it would respond with a figure: $782.92. Excellent. Thank you. I took the piece of paper back home and went to work. I went through my bills, in order of importance: rent, car payment, gas, electricity, Visa. All totaled $700. Lucky for me I had $82.92 to play with.

  And with the stamped invoices in my chubby round hand, I skated down to the mailbox, dropped them in, and then quick cashed myself forty big ones. On the way home I would stop at the 7-11 for a six of beer and some pretzels.

  A few days later, the bounced check notices would start arriving in the mail. Oh God, I’d think, not again. I made an appointment one afternoon with the bank manager. He wore a suit; I wanted to discuss with them the problem of their shoddy record keeping. I had facts and figures and a loose-leaf sheet with the balance receipt stapled to the top left-hand corner. This guy was toast.

  I walked into the bank. There was a velvet rope with a tasseled edge. There were tellers behind panes of glass. The man I’d come to speak with was seated behind a big boat of a desk, and I could see his shiny shoes. He listened. I explained.