So as Eric dialed him up and it rang, I said, “Are you there, Eric?”
“Yes, I’m here,” he said.
“OK. Now don’t say anything, and then I’ll call you back after we hang up, OK?”
“OK,” he said.
“Hello,” said Ben, sounding like his old charming New York self.
“Hi Ben. It’s Heather. Listen, obviously things have changed, and that’s fine, but I need to return the car today,” I said.
“Heather, I already told you the car is parked over by Icugini restaurant and I have meetings all day and I can’t get to it,” he said firmly.
“Fine, then I will come by and get the keys from you and get the car myself,” I said.
“Wow! You are one passive/aggressive bitch,” he said back to me.
Just then, Eric said, “Look, asshole. She wants the car back. it s over.
“Who the fuck is this?” Ben yelled.
“I’m a good friend of Heather’s and she’s pretty upset that you’ve been fucking her around, so be a man and give her the keys to the rental car,” Eric replied.
“Fuck you both!” and with that, Ben hung up. Before I could talk to Eric, my other line started beeping. I clicked over. It was Ben.
“How dare you put some guy on the other line to threaten me? Do you know who you are dealing with? Do you know who you are fucking dealing with?” he screamed.
“Yes, I do know who I am dealing with and I want the rental car back,” I said, raising my voice.
“It is over between us. You got that?” he yelled.
“Yes, I want it to be over. Can I get the car back?” I asked calmly.
He kept going on, saying how I was pathetic and how my dad really must have screwed me up and that I needed therapy and how I was never going to make it.
All the while I just kept persisting: “When can I come by to get the keys? What time?”
Finally, he said, “Fine. Come at six p.m., but you better fucking come alone. You got that?”
“Yes. See you at six.”
As I hung up, I was visibly shaking as I dialed Eric back. I told him that I was going over at six. He wanted to come, but I hadn’t seen him in years and he was still a douche bag who owed me money. I was grateful that he brought this mess to a head, but I didn’t need another AA asshole to replace my current one. (Sorry, AA people. I know 99 percent of you are lovely, but I had just found the exceptions.)
I did, however, make plans to have another male friend, Pat, drive me to Ben’s, since once I got the keys, he would have to drive me to the place where it was parked. I did not share the severity of the situation with Pat; otherwise, he would have insisted on coming up to the apartment with me, and I didn’t want to exacerbate the hostage situation for the release of the keys to the rental car anymore.
I buzzed Ben from downstairs. “Hello,” he said. “It’s Heather,” I said, and he buzzed me up. As I knocked on his door, I took a deep breath. He opened it and I took a step in as he shut the door behind me.
“The audacity you had to three-way call me. What the fuck is wrong with you?” he started in.
I calmly responded, “Can I please have the keys to the rental car?”
“You just want to throw what we had away over a stupid rental car?” he asked. Oh, like this romance had so much promise, you prick.
“Yes, I just want the keys and I’m gone,” I said. Then Ben turned around with pure evil in his eyes, backed me into the corner between the front door and the wall, and began pounding his fists against the walls on either side of my head while screaming in my face: “Do you know who I am? I am a sociopath. Why are you such a passive/aggressive bitch?”
I shut my eyes. I didn’t know what would happen next. He put his fists down, turned around, and walked away, saying, “You know what your problem is, your problem is …” My eyes glanced down on the table beside me and saw the keys with the little Amir’s car rental key chain. I grabbed it and ran out the front door as fast as I could to the elevator. I pressed the button and said, “Come on, come on,” like I’ve seen in so many movies, such as The Perfect Murder when Gwyneth Paltrow realizes her husband Michael Douglas was the one who really wanted her dead, except the elevator did shut without Ben’s hand stopping it, as he didn’t bother to run after me.
When I sat down in the rental car I couldn’t believe that at my age and with my life experience I found myself in this predicament. I could not tell my parents because ever since I was flashed twice in the same month at age nine and singlehandedly put one of the flashers behind bars, my family considered me something of a bad-ass.
I was walking home from school with my older sister Shannon, who was always running late for everything, I don’t know why, mostly because she was always busy rubbing her eye, how she had any eyelashes left was beyond me—and on that day she was walking particularly slowly. There was an ABC Afterschool Special starting at 3:30 about a teenage girl who was pregnant with her soccer coach’s baby and I wasn’t about to miss a second of that, especially since it was based on a true story. So I walked way ahead of Shannon and a car drove up beside me and a man in his twenties asked me where Dumont Street was. At nine years old I knew every street, because I had delivered seven-pound pumpkins to every single house in the neighborhood, compliments of Bob and Pam of Country Club Realtors, for their annual Halloween pumpkin promotion. So I leaned in and proudly said, “Oh, you continue straight, then make a left on Kelvin, and you’ll see it on your right.” Just then he said, “What about this?” And out popped a big naked penis. I screamed, covered my eyes, and turned around as he drove off. I knew what a penis was. I had seen my brother’s “appendages” though maybe only once or twice.
When I got home, I told my brothers and mom what had just happened. My brothers got out their auto magazines to show me pictures of cars for me to pick the pervert’s car out, which I couldn’t do. Then two detectives came to our house carrying a binder. I was afraid they were going to show me pictures of different penises to pick from. If I couldn’t pick out the car I doubt I’d be able to pick out the penis. But they just asked me some questions like, “What was he wearing?” I said, “Overalls.” I later realized this made no sense. How did he get his penis out of his overalls? As they were leaving they said to me, “If anything like this ever happens again, miss, the most important thing is to get the license plate number, even if it’s just the first few numbers and letters.” I felt like a failure for not being able to provide more clues; no way this crime was going to be solved in sixty minutes, or forty-four minutes with commercials.
About two weeks later, at recess, my friends and I were playing volleyball on the asphalt side court that was right next to the sidewalk and street. My friend Liz came running up to me in shock. “Look, that man over there is playing with himself.” All the other little fourth graders were laughing, pointing, and covering their eyes, though a few were locked in a dead stare. Of course, this is a pedophile’s dream. Nine- and ten-year-old girls in Catholic plaid jumpers, white kneesocks, and pigtails, jumping around playing volleyball—this pervert was a like a kid in a candy shop. I courageously walked over (as I had experience now dealing with the police) and indeed there was a man parked in his car sitting in the driver’s seat with the passenger window rolled down. He was completely naked, no overalls in sight. He was not the man from two weeks before. I immediately told Liz to get me a paper and pencil. When she returned with it, I jotted down the license plate number and checked it twice. I felt so smart. I pretended I was Jaclyn Smith in Charlie’s Angels.
I always insisted that I be Kelly, Jaclyn Smith’s role, when my friends and I played Charlie’s Angels because she had the best hair and the deepest voice. I mean really, is it any surprise that she can sell wigs, clothing, jewelry, bedding, furniture— how many collections can one ‘70s star have at Kmart? Whoever was the blondest got to be Farrah and whomever we liked least had to be Kate Jackson. If only I was wearing a white pantsuit, this moment would
be complete. I flipped my locks back in an attempt to make them look feathered and walked straight to Sister Killion. “Sister, there is a man parked outside the fourth-grade volleyball courts, playing with himself,” I stated like a prosecutor. “Glory be to God. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Girls, get away from the chain-link fence at once,” she yelled. Once the flasher saw the long navy habit, visible handlebar mustache, and white nurse shoes running toward him, he lost his erection and drove off.
A few minutes later, all the fourth grade girl witnesses were in the office of our principal, Sister Patricia. Some of the girls were crying. I spoke up and proudly said, “Sister, here is the man’s license plate number. The police will have no problem finding the predator with this. Case closed.” We went back to class and within a half hour each of the girls who had seen the penis flashing got picked up by her mom and went home way early. I kept looking at the door and waiting for my mom. She never came. After riding my bike home, I walked into the kitchen and saw her sitting at the table drinking Maxwell House coffee and eating a bowl of dark cherries while studying her multiple listing sheets.
I said, “Mom, didn’t the school call you and tell you what happened today?”
She looked up. “Oh yes, they called me at the office and said how you and some other girls were flashed.” She acted like she got a call saying I’d forgotten my baloney and American cheese on Wonder bread.
“But Mom, did they tell you that I got the license plate number and that the police caught him within an hour and he confessed? It’s an open-and-shut case, none of the girls have to point him out of a lineup or testify in court. Gosh darn it, we caught the dirty bastard!” I shouted as I slammed my fists on the table, like I’d seen in the last few minutes of an episode of Cagney & Lacey—of course I identified with the less dykey, thinner one.
“Yes, I know, Sister Patricia told me all of that.” She said this as she brought her coffee cup up to her lips and dipped the tip of her tongue into it before taking a full sip.
“Well then why didn’t you pick me up early from school like the other mothers did their daughters?” I questioned.
“Why, dear, you’ve already been flashed, I knew you were fine,” she said as she bit down on the cherry while pulling its stem off. She swirled the cherry in her mouth and gave me a little wink as she spit her twenty-ninth pit into the napkin beside her.
I guess she was right, I was fine and stronger; however, it might have been a nice gesture after your daughter gets flashed for the second time in the same month to see that she not have to ride her bicycle home alone. As a nine-year-old I was convinced that I had singlehandedly sent this pedophile to the electric chair—wasn’t that at least worth a scoop of Rocky Road ice cream at Baskin-Robbins? But in my mother’s defense, she did have a two p.m. showing of a two-story Victorian.
Upon recollection of my double flashing experience, I notice that the damage on the car was significant, but what was more shocking was how disgustingly dirty the inside of the car was. There was trash everywhere, with old Jamba Juice and Starbucks cups reeking of mold. It said a lot about Ben that when it came to his home and his personal appearance, he kept it very clean and in shape, but when it was someone else’s property, he had absolutely no respect. He was a total narcissist. I was so embarrassed to return it. I spent about fifteen minutes just throwing all the trash away. Then the Persian guy from the rental place came out to assess the car.
“This is not good! Big dent right there, and there, and there,” he said in his heavy accent.
“Yes, I know. I also know I got insurance, so what is the deductible?” I asked.
The final damage was $2,146 and some change, which was all put back onto my credit card, minus the $500 Ben had paid me in cash, which, of course, was long gone.
When I got home, there was a message from Ben yelling the same stuff he had said before. I thought about going to the police, but for what? I really felt that if I just never contacted him, he’d go away, which he did. I clearly wasn’t that important to him, damn. So naturally he never paid me the $1,646 he owed me, either.
A couple of months later, I heard through my parents’ friends who lived in Ben’s building that Ben was escorted out of his apartment by the sheriff’s department. They talked to the owner of his condo and he hadn’t paid any rent for the six months he lived there. Then I found out through another friend of a friend that shortly after his eviction, he threw a lovely party with his stripper girlfriend at his new home in the Hollywood Hills. How the hell did he get that? It was just like he was Michael Keaton in the thriller Pacific Heights with Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine, where Keaton’s character moves into their duplex by acting like he has a lot of money, but then once he moves in, he never pays rent and tries to drive them crazy as the worst tenant ever. At least, unlike Melanie Griffith’s character, I didn’t have to speak in a baby voice and Ben only destroyed a rental car, not my actual home.
This was one relationship I really had to thank my virginity for. Had I not been a virgin, I absolutely would have slept with sexy, manipulative Ben and probably become severely dick whipped. Who knows how long it would have gone on for or what lasting effects it could have had on me? I could have had his baby, gotten AIDS (remember, he did heroin), or worse, my FICO score could have dropped hundreds of points, and you know how important a good FICO score is. It wasn’t like I was completely debt-free, but I wasn’t routinely trashing cars.
I thought about writing a book called Conversations with Ben, where I would ask him questions like, “Did you ever have any real interest in me as a person?” And in my mind, he’d actually answer truthfully and say, “No, I was a criminal and you looked stupid. Who else is at Starbucks at ten-fifteen a.m.?”
7 Bed, Keep It Tidy
After quitting Great Expectations and my terrible experience with Ben, I had still managed to put a couple of thousand dollars in the bank, and I thought, Now, should I save it or put it all toward paying off a credit card? What would my mother do? Gee … This was way too logical for me. I had what I considered ever more difficult choices to make: be a hypocrite and use it for the down payment on a new nose or join Sports Club LA, the Lexus of fitness. Sports Club LA was and is the most exclusive health club in LA.
I first heard about “the gym” when a friend of mine from college said, “Heather, if you want to find rich, powerful men in the entertainment business, then you have to join Sports Club LA.” I thought to myself, How perfect—if I don’t fall in love there, then perhaps I’ll get an agent or an acting job out of it. Worst-case scenario: I’ll actually begin exercising my outside obliques. I never really worked out, because I’m not good at exercise like that beefy yet small guy with a long blond ponytail who did infomercials as he grunted away pounds. As a child, I enjoyed Jane Fonda’s workout tape, but only for her outfits, honestly. Leg warmers on my undeveloped calves were quite flattering. I just despised working out. I mean, the sweat? Gross! Mostly I was concerned that I had never really learned how to properly use the machines and was in constant fear that some trainer would come up to me and humiliate me by correcting my form in front of all the other audience, or, members. “Excuse me, Miss. That machine works your triceps, not your glutes. You need to come down from there before you become an insurance liability.”
After receiving a tour of fitness nirvana, which included valet parking, a restaurant, spa, and Olympic-size pool on the top deck, where you could lay out and order drinks and food from cute waiters, I decided $1,300 up front and another $155 a month was a small price to pay to be part of this lifestyle. Anytime I went there, I dressed in a coordinated workout ensemble and was in full hair and makeup. It really wasn’t a problem because I barely broke a sweat before moving from one machine to another. Some of the men I’d see there regularly had been fixtures on the club scene for years. One guy I always saw was in the process of getting hair plugs inserted. Each time I saw him lifting weights, he had a few more strands sprouting. I increased my reps with the
number of plugs he had so that I kept building my stamina as his head of hair got fuller.
SCLA (as it was known) was also a great place to invite people to my stand-up gigs. Many of the shows I did were “bringer shows,” meaning that not only were you expected to bring people as audience members, but sometimes if you didn’t get anyone to come to the show, the booker would not let you perform. Everyone I met at the chin-up leg-raise area or on the push-up mats was a potential audience member. The rowers were particularly sure bets because I stood facing them yelling all the details of the show while they would just nod. Approaching strangers and trying to convince them to come to a show must be what it is like to be part of a pyramid—or “a multilevel marketing business”—where everyone you meet from the hostess at IHOP to your mail carrier could be selling calling cards. “Could you use an extra ten thousand bucks a month? If you can’t, then don’t bother coming to the Radisson for a continental breakfast tomorrow.” My line was pretty simple. I would approach my victims as they were running on the treadmill, working the cashier, or collecting trash on the freeway, and say: “Oh hey, I’m Heather. I perform stand-up every Friday night at the Belly Room in the Comedy Store, so come at eight o’clock, because I’m not just pretty, I’m pretty funny, and you get to hear my jokes about Catholic school and even LA traffic.” Their general response was something like, “I love comedy. Let me know when you’re performing next.”
I would say, “This Friday night.”
And they would say, “I can’t this Friday, but call me and let me know the next time you’re performing, because I will be there.”
You’ll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again Page 15