You’ll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again

by Heather McDonald

  David and I went out that night and had one other date where we went back to his house, which Jan had described on the show as “contemporary and as sexy as David.” It was pretty nice, a tri-level tucked into the hills to take full advantage of the Studio City views. In his bedroom, he brought me over to the bed, and as I willingly went to sit on it, I sank unexpectedly. It was a water bed! I admit, this took place in the nineties, but water beds were officially out of style circa 1983. In fact, I think they had stopped making them entirely, so who knows where David got this thing from. I tried to get up, but I literally felt like I was drowning and trying to grab a buoy. Not only had he not refilled the water bed in years, so I sank deep enough to feel the wood underneath the water mattress, he had satin sheets, so I slid as I tried to get some balance and get the hell out. No wonder Jan slept with him—she had no choice. I heard the water swoosh every time I moved. How can anyone sleep in a water bed? Anytime you change positions, it’s like being on the boat Orca just as Jaws bit into it.

  After making some jokes, including the demand that I see his birth certificate from Israel proving he was twenty-seven because the bed was so outdated, David said, “Is that all you do—make jokes and not make love?” Now I was officially David Felded out. I laughed it off as I swung my leg over the leather ledge of the bed frame and pulled myself up and off the water mattress. It felt good to be land-ho again. (Did I mention that this bed was made of dark wood and had a mirror as the head-board and all these little compartments for books and condoms, I assume, much like Hugh Hefner’s very dated bed in The Girls Next Door?)

  David called me a few times about our free trip to Cabo. The only way we could cash in on the trip was if we went together. I had no intention of going with David Rico Suave Feld. I was not going to sleep with him, and I didn’t feel like fighting him off all weekend just for a few margaritas and a room with cold Mexican tile floors in a three-star hotel. I told him my senior year was starting in a few weeks and there wasn’t enough time. After two unreturned calls, I believe David regretted not choosing Nurse Jan.

  My episode aired on the Thursday a week before the fall semester at USC began. Summer Thursdays were reserved for Strattons, a bar and grill in Westwood. Even though it was UCLA’s neighborhood, everyone from USC who lived in or around LA went there. As I walked past the long line, I knew the bouncer, of course, I heard people say, “Wasn’t that girl on Studs?” It gave me a rush like no other. I thought, This must be how Julia Roberts felt when she was in Mystic Pizza and no one knew who she was, but she was the girl with all the hair who served pizza. That night was magical. With each passing comp Jell-O shot, I told my story of how I got on the show and no, I wasn’t dating that cheesy David Feld anymore, and yes, I do think he boned Jan on their date, and so on.

  My appearance on Studs wasn’t always so well received. Sometimes I’d be walking on campus and a random voice would yell out, “Studs.” When the show got progressively cheesier and a guy I was interested in found out I had been on it, he was so disgusted that he never called me again. But the night the show aired, I went home determined to pursue acting and change my major from communications to drama.

  When I looked into changing my major, I found that I’d have to stay another year to complete the courses necessary to graduate. I decided to stick with communications, but every time I saw fellow students wearing a pager, that meant only one thing: they had a talent agent who needed to get hold of them immediately when an audition for a commercial or TV show came up. Even the sound of a pager going off gave me a pit in my stomach because I wasn’t really pursuing my dream of performing. So whatever extra credits I had, I used to take courses in improvisation or character study.

  All the while, my social life was ruled by the fraternities and sororities of USC. The sororities could be broken down into a pretty stereotypical structure. The Thetas were the wealthiest girls with “old” money from Pasadena. They chose their pledges based on looks and what their dad did or owned in Los Angeles. The Delta Gammas were all blondes from Newport Beach and therefore into anything nautical. The Pi Phis were hot, but they had been kicked off the row for two years for doing something nasty, so they were just making a comeback. The Kappas were fun and pretty, but a couple of them were only a few pounds on this side of looking like Kappa Cows. And the Alpha Phis were mostly from the Valley, like me, but were considered a little slutty.

  I chose Gamma Phi because my mom was one. They were the partiers, the drinkers, and I was much more of a drinker than a slut. But to be perfectly honest, the main reason I chose Gamma Phi Beta was because I wanted to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. During my rush week, all the sororities put on different plays. Kappas performed Cats, Pi Phis did Grease, and Gamma Phi did The Wizard of Oz. Gammas changed the story and words so that Dorothy was looking for her home and in the end she found it over the rainbow at Gamma Phi with her sorority sisters. After the performance ended, I commented on how well Dorothy could sing, and the sorority sister said, “I know. But she’s a fifth-year senior, so I don’t know what we’re going to do next year.” I immediately said to myself in my Bette Davis voice, I do—she’s going to be played by Heather McDonald for the next four years. And so she was.

  I loved being Dorothy except when I was verbally abused by a drunk disgruntled rushee we had dumped after skit day. She approached me at a bar one night saying, “How you doing, Dorothy? … How’s your freaking little dog, Dorothy? … You know, you and your bitchy munchkins pretty much ruined my life, Dorothy. … You guys all acted like you loved me when you handed me those shortbread cookies, but you’re just a cunt in red shoes, Dorothy.” I felt terrible and yet flattered that my performance made such an impression on her. Maybe I could be a real actress.

  I tried to make the best of it, like when I gave a speech on rape for one of my communications classes. After I delivered the well-researched statistics and legal findings, I wrapped up with, “And now for a monologue from the Broadway play and film starring Farrah Fawcett, Extremities.” I transformed from anchorwoman to dramatic actress as I crouched down to deliver my lines to what was supposed to be the man who had attempted to rape me. Now the tables had turned, and I had trapped him in my fireplace and I was taunting him. When I finished and wiped my tears away, I faced the shocked expressions on the thirty or so students sitting at their desks.

  One guy raised his hand and said, “I think you’re in the wrong major.” Again, I took that as a compliment.

  Once, a fellow communications major gave a speech about how she chose our major. She was Asian with a very heavy accent. Her name was Lemon. (At least, that’s what she said. I think it was something like Ling Long Dim Sum, but she made it Lemon for short.) Her speech went like this: “When I first come to University of Southern California, I not always communication major. I chemical engineer major. I study so hard, I cry. Professor yell at me, bring me to board in front of whole class, and say, ‘Lemon, why you can’t do simple equation, you stupid.’ That day, I walk past Tommy Trojan and think, college not fun, Lemon not having good time here. Later that day, I turn on TV. It football game. All USC football player communication major. They seem happy. Have time to play game on Saturday. So now, I, too, communication major. Now I have lot of free time. I live on fourth floor in Deans Hall. We do lots of wild thing like go and eat at Ed Debevics. And last Saturday night, we all go to Medieval Times in Buena Park. We crazy.”

  I could not believe that someone smart enough to be an engineering major dumped it to be a communications major when she couldn’t even communicate. It left such an impression that a few years later I did this exact speech as Lemon for a monologue at The Groundlings theater. They were so politically correct at the time, I had to lie and say I was one-eighth Korean so that they would allow me to do the accent.

  Every Friday morning in college, I’d do a solid ten-minute routine at breakfast for my sorority sisters about what went down the night before. Who hooked up with whom, who got shot down, which one o
f us still hadn’t made it home, and who hit on our security guard, Leroy. Everyone was just loving my humor.

  So when I was in Cabo for spring break (Cabo at last!), I seized a great opportunity to play a joke I knew everyone would appreciate. At one of the bars in the ladies room there was a sign that had one of those stick figures they use in walk/don’t walk signs. But there it was—someone throwing up into a toilet with a big X going through it. I took a picture and then went to Kinko’s and had them print color copies. Being a sorority house, it was standard to have a percentage of students who were bulimics. But everyone at the house was taking it sooo seriously. For example, one night after I downed about ten Jager shots, I got up to get rid of it in the bathroom when the lights went on. About six girls came running in to have an intervention, yelling things like, “No, don’t do it. You’re thin enough.” They pulled my head out of the toilet by my scrunchie and said, “We love you! We’re your sisters.” Finally, I managed to look up and say, “Don’t you get it? I’m not bulimic. I’m an alcoholic.”

  At about three in the morning, I tiptoed around and put these no-puke signs all over our bathrooms. We had quite a few with different stalls, since sixty girls lived there. Once you sat down, you’d see a sign on the stall’s door. The following morning, I awoke in pure delight, anticipating how great it would be to go downstairs and take full and sole credit for the hilarious prank. I was more excited than at Friday morning comedic breakdown. As I came down the stairs, instead of laughter, I heard girls saying things like, “It’s terrible, how insensitive, who would do such a horrible thing, whoever did this should go to a standards hearing, should we get national involved.”

  I walked in and asked, “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Have you gone to the bathroom yet?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, these completely unfunny and cruel signs are everywhere,” one of the girls said, holding up one of my signs.

  “I can’t believe the nerve of some people. I don’t get it,” I said, and I got my coffee and went back upstairs. It was my first experience bombing. Unlike bombing when doing stand-up on stage, I was the only one who knew I bombed, thank God.

  Another time that I bombed with my sorority, it was not necessarily my fault. Besides being social chairperson, I was also head of the bubs at rush. This meant I had the power to ax a girl even if her score given by the other girls was high enough to get in. If I felt a sister was giving a “bub”—meaning she was not cute enough, or cool enough, or fun enough to be in our house—a high score because she was a bleeding heart and felt sorry for her, I was instructed by the rush chairperson that I could give the bub a big giant goose egg. Her score would drop significantly and she wouldn’t be asked back the next day. To convince our sisters not to be bleeding hearts, we would say things like, “Do you want to brush your teeth next to her for the next three years?” Or, “Would you set her up with your boyfriend’s best friend?” If the answer is no, then you are not doing her a favor by asking her to be in this house. The fraternities could only invite a few sororities each semester to party, so having an attractive pledge class was important. We didn’t care about their grades. Yes, I know it’s awful, and I’m convinced if I go to hell, God will punish me with an eternal rush week.

  When I was a senior, hazing of any kind was no longer allowed. But when I was a freshman pledging Gamma Phi, we were hazed. They put the pledge class in a room with a chocolate sheet cake that covered the entire dining room table. We were then told that our pledge class needed to finish it in an hour if we wanted to be initiated. I was ready to do my part and show my devotion to my future sorority. Besides, I love chocolate cake. I started eating cake, really taking one for the team, while a few of the alleged anorexics panicked and threw some of the cake out a window, saying, “I’m not downing empty carbs and sugar for anyone or anything. I’m not an animal.” All I really wanted was some cold 2 percent milk to really get this party started. The active members burst in with the grass-covered cake and said, “Not too smart girls. Now you have to finish these pieces, too.”

  I went over and picked the grass and dirt off before I planned on eating it when some of the girls started crying and threatened to quit the sorority. The rest of the sisters then told the pledge class it was just a joke and of course no one has ever finished the cake. I swallowed my last bite of grass-garnished cake and truly felt like a really fat asshole with cake all over her face.

  So at least in my social chair duties, I wasn’t hurting anyone.

  I loved being social chairperson, talking to the fraternity social chairs to plan “exchanges,” which were essentially big parties. I also planned our house parties, which could never be at our sorority house because alcohol was not allowed. For our last party of my senior year, I came up with a western theme and called it “Most Wanted.” I wore black leggings, cowboy boots, a western shirt, and a cowboy hat. A cowboy hat is such a flattering look. I love it because I never have to worry about the top of my hair becoming flat or frizzy. Sometimes I wish I lived in Texas solely because I could get away with wearing a cowboy hat every day. I acted as the sheriff and I got five of the hottest girls in our house to come with me and go up and down the row. We went into the frat houses shooting fake guns, stood on their dinner tables, and I’d say, “I’m the sheriff of this here row, and our most wanted men are … ,” and then we’d list the names of the girls’ dates and hand them the invite. Everyone was talking about how cool it was, and the party was getting a lot of buzz. I had found this great gay party planner in Hollywood who was helping me. He found a ranch and caterer, and we were going to have hay rides, full barbecue, and fun-themed alcoholic drinks. Then he said to me, “There’s still a little extra money in the budget, so I got something really cool that you are going to love. Do you want me to tell you or do you want to be surprised?”

  “Surprise me,” I said.

  My date was this babe, Tyler. He was a couple of years older, had graduated from college, and was working as a production assistant on the sitcom Wings. I met him one night out with friends, and he was tall, dark, and gorgeous. We had been on a few dates. Although he was extremely stupid, I was so excited to take him as my date. I was very close to asking one of the USC dental students who worked in our sorority kitchen in exchange for free meals to be my date. A few girls had done this and it always ended disastrously with the girl having to take her plate up to her bedroom to avoid eye contact with the soon-to-be dentist who had checked her molars with his tongue the night before.

  Everything was going great at the party when the DJ stopped playing and said, “Can we please have Heather McDonald on the dance floor?” I thought something needed my attention, so I rushed over to where two guys who I did not know had cleared the dance floor except for one chair in the middle, which they pushed me down to sit in. Then it happened. The music began and these two guys in their early thirties started to strip. Before I could object, one tied my hands behind my back so that I couldn’t escape. Next thing I knew, this greasy, overly tanned guy was rubbing his prickly shaved chest against me. I looked at my mortified sorority sisters as I yelled, “No, stop, stop!” But it kept going until they tore off their pants to reveal only a black G-string. Then one of the smelly guys shoved his dick and balls in my face as he grinded his pelvis. I thought I was going to die.

  Finally, one of my friends untied my hands so that I could run away. I found the gay party planner. “This is the surprise, for me or for you? Not only was that disgusting and humiliating, but this is not my party. I just planned if for my sorority house. This is something you do for a bachelorette party or a fortieth birthday. My sorority house is not paying for this, so you better take it off the final invoice,” I fumed. He apologized and did not charge us. I do hope he at least got some action from one or both of the gay strippers, because I didn’t get any action that night. Tyler was really turned off and was embarrassed that his date was being double teamed on the dance floor. Not only
was I mortified, but so was my sorority. Instead of everyone talking about what a cool themed party it was, they talked about how a couple of thirty-year-old gay strippers took over the dance floor.

  I didn’t hear from Tyler after that night, and with only few weeks left of college, I set out to win the scamboard. The scamboard was a big board with eight of our names on the top. For every guy who we made out with, we’d put his name under ours. We never used the guy’s real name, always his nickname. There was “the TA” (teacher’s assistant), “the gym guy,” “the mole man” … The mole man was a gorgeous model with a mole who barely kissed me. But a kiss counted. When I took him to a party where we took some photos together, he was obsessed with getting the pictures back because he was in love with himself. When I went to his place to drop the photos off, he told me how he had a roommate. He lived in a single with a queen-size futon, so that explained why he didn’t try anything more than a kiss. I guess the night of the party his “roommate” was waiting at home, keeping his futon warm.

  Sometimes I’d make out with some guy who tried to go farther, and I would say no, as always. The next day, I’d be walking to class and he’d skateboard by and just nod his head as if to say, “What’s up?” He didn’t wait for an answer, because he put his foot down to give himself another push and kept rolling past. Those were the times when I really thanked my virginity. What if I’d gone all the way with him and all I got was a nod in passing, or worse, what if because I slept with him, he went out of his way to avoid me? In the end, I was crowned the winner of the scamboard, with fourteen guys listed under my name. A few of the girls ended up getting boyfriends and becoming exclusive. That wasn’t for me: going out drinking, making out with a guy, and never talking to him again was my forte.