The completion of her bat mitzvah was a miracle in itself. My brothers all had wagers with one another on whether it was actually going to take place. Most kids prepare for a couple of years. Chelsea regularly skipped her sessions with the cantor and rabbi. They had never in all their years at the temple worked with a child like her before. She regularly swore at them, she was always defiant, never prepared, and repeatedly said she wasn’t going to practice until a week before the ceremony. At one point, she slammed down the Torah and exclaimed that all this was practically child abuse, because she wasn’t ready to commit to having a bat mitzvah and wasn’t even sure she wanted to be a Jew. It wasn’t pretty, but in the end she somehow managed to pull it off without making any mistakes. This, of course, drove me insane, as I was silently hoping she would embarrass herself the way she had embarrassed me so many times, but on a bigger scale. Pure schadenfreude. Google it.
It wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I became determined to repair my relationship with Chelsea. I was single, living on my own in Seattle, and working as a registered nurse. I really wanted to take a trip to Hawaii, and I wanted Chelsea to come with me. Admittedly, I was a bit of a late bloomer, but I was finally ready to sow my wild oats. I thought maybe this trip would be a fresh start for Chelsea and me. We would rebuild our sisterly foundation on a big adventure—just the two of us.
I very excitedly called her up. “Chelsea!” I said, bursting at the seams. “Let’s go to Hawaii for a few days. I will pay for everything. It’ll be a blast, and I am sure you could use a few days off.” At the time, Chelsea was living in LA with our aunt and uncle, nine cousins, and six animals in a three-bedroom bungalow. She was waiting tables and auditioning in Hollywood.
My proposition was met with a long silence on the other end of the line. “Can I think about it and call you back?” she asked.
“Chelsea, really? You won’t go with me on vacation to Hawaii?”
“Shana, no offense, but you are not my idea of a good time.”
“I know, but I’m more fun now, and I promise we won’t fight. I’ll even promise to drink with you.” I had never been a big drinker, and Chelsea considered nondrinkers very untrustworthy.
Finally, she said, “Well, as much as going on a trip with you seems like watching paint dry, I could really use a break. Hawaii sounds pretty good actually. But you’d better cool it, Shana. Your enthusiasm is a little alarming. We are not planning a honeymoon here or going on a bunch of gay tours. I just want to chill out and relax. And drink.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. Chelsea probably had no intention of doing anything other than getting a borderline amazing tan and hooking up with a semi-hot Samoan dude, but I would try to wear her down. “Chelsea, we can’t go all the way to Hawaii and not even go to a luau. It would be sacrilegious.” I reminded her: “The drinks will be free-flowing, it’s only a couple of hours, and don’t forget, I’m picking up the tab for the whole trip.”
About six weeks later we took a red-eye flight to Hawaii. On the way, I made friends with my seatmate; she and I talked the whole way there. I knew Chelsea was farting, and I told her to knock it off. Near the end of the flight I got my new friend’s phone number, but when I went to the bathroom, Chelsea ripped it up.
“What the hell did you do that for?” I said.
“Well,” Chelsea said, “two reasons, really. Number one, you didn’t shut the fuck up the entire flight. It’s a red-eye, but thanks to you I didn’t get any sleep. And number two is for accusing me of farting on a flight. Shame on you, Debbie. Shame on you.”
We stepped out of the airport and hailed a taxi. In Oahu, or any tropical destination for that matter, any hotel worth squat is on the beach. I know that now. Back then, however, I thought near the beach was good enough, right? Plus I would save a few bucks. As our taxi started heading away from the beach, Chelsea yelled, “What is happening? We are in Hawaii, I just spent what seemed like four years on a plane, and now the beach is disappearing. Shana! What is going on? Where the hell are we staying?” she screamed.
“Oh… well, I got a great deal at this place in town. It’s just a half mile walk to the beach.”
“Oh, that sounds fabulous,” she mumbled.
We pulled up to the Grand Hotel (not so grand) and I hit the driver with my big tip (not). Later Chelsea lit into me about the standards and practices of tipping. Since she’d joined the service industry as a waitress in LA, tipping had become a very sensitive issue for her. My low tip evidently was unacceptable and not to be repeated. To this day, you are not to argue with Chelsea when she hands you a ridiculous amount of money to give to a waitress, hotel employee, or concierge at a hotel. I’m not rich, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought about pocketing some of the money she’s instructed me to hand out to people on islands we will never see again.
After getting a few hours of sleep, I suggested we check out the hotel pool. We headed up to the cement rooftop pool and made a quick U-turn. It was not a pretty picture: a bunch of beer-bellied, bald, leering assholes in the Jacuzzi and a pool of questionable water color. Upon seeing all this, Chelsea decided to take the reins on our daily plans. She told me we were hoofing it to Waikiki Beach and to put on my walking shoes. I wasn’t much for exercise or exerting any kind of physical energy, but I agreed, only after she told me my bathing suit looked a little too snug in the rear. Her exact words were “Your ass looks like Delta Burke trying to crawl through a tennis racket.”
After much complaining on my part and both of us sweating like pigs carrying our crap to the beach in ninety-plus-degree heat, we finally arrived. Chelsea scoped out a decent-looking hotel on the beach with a great pool and a guest population that appeared to be under forty. “Shana, let’s find our spot. Don’t worry, we’ll blend right in,” she assured me.
“I really don’t know about this, Chelsea,” I said.
I grabbed two chaise lounges close to the pool, and we set up shop and caught some rays. We got pretty hungry and figured we should try to order some food. I picked out a few items on the menu, and Chelsea signaled the waiter to give him our order.
He asked for our room number and she blurted out, “Twelve twenty-one.” I, a rotten liar, felt uncomfortable. The waiter looked at the two of us suspiciously but finally walked away.
“Shana, what’s the matter with you? Just go with the flow.”
Our food arrived, and a short time later the waiter came back and said that there must be some mistake with our room number. “I am going to have to see your room key, miss.”
“Oh, I am so sorry, there must be a misunderstanding. Maybe I got the number backward or something.” Chelsea rifled through her bag, as though she were looking for the key. I was shaking in my flip-flops and not being much of a wing woman. Chelsea was going to have to handle this solo. “You know what? I can’t believe it, but I think I lost it swimming at the beach earlier. How about if we just pay in cash?”
“This pool and bar are for hotel guests only, miss,” the waiter said.
“Are you accusing us of crashing this pool?” Chelsea said. “I mean, really, I find that very offensive. I am going to have to talk to the manager about the awful treatment we are receiving here.” She probably could have pulled this off, but I had blown our cover. Tears started to well up in my eyes, and Chelsea looked at me with horror.
“Are you seriously crying?”
“I’ll be right back,” the waiter said and left.
“Okay, Shana, let’s hit it. Grab your shit and nonchalantly walk to the beach,” Chelsea whispered. Over my shoulder I could see our waiter with two large security guards on either side of him heading toward our spot. They were both ridiculously overweight, so I wasn’t worried about outrunning them, but I wasn’t fast enough for Chelsea. “Step it up! They are onto us!” They started running after us, but we were able to lose them fairly quickly.
That was too much excitement for me already, but when you’re with Chelsea, there’s always more to come. We fou
nd a nice spot on the beach, and Chelsea said we were both looking pretty pale and should forgo the sunscreen to get a jump on our tans. She also forced me to join her in having a piña colada, which resulted in our quickly falling asleep for a few hours. We spent the next two days holed up in our crappy hotel room treating extremely severe cases of sunburn. We were in agony and were ridiculously red. Chelsea rationed off a few Percocet she had been saving for a rainy day and we watched a marathon of Lifetime movies until we reemerged.
Day four was, much to my sister’s dismay, luau time. Chelsea was bitching about it all day, but I had already paid for it and wasn’t about to let her forget that. Besides, I had a feeling I was going to meet Prince Charming there.
When we boarded the bus, though, it appeared as if we had just been admitted to a nursing home.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Chelsea said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “What kind of luau is this? There isn’t a single person on this bus under seventy. Shana, you signed us up for a senior citizens’ luau? You are such a moron. I will never go anywhere with you ever again, do you understand me? And good fucking luck finding your soul mate.”
After she calmed down a bit, she decided to have a little fun and make me pay. She put her arm around my shoulder and struck up a conversation with the ladies across the aisle. “Hi y’all! I’m Fannie and this here is Bertha, my lesbian lover. We are just so doggone happy to be going on this trip. Are you two ladies together, too? This is the lesbian luau, right?”
I knew I was turning different shades of fuchsia because my red was all used up.
All night long, Chelsea told anyone who would listen stories about how we’d met and what our hobbies were. The stories were absolutely ludicrous, and every time she said “Bertha,” I stiffened up. She told one couple that we’d met at the Junior Olympics when we were both on the young women’s high dive team. She interspersed all of this banter with a quick kiss on my lips, and whenever I refused, she pinched me severely under the table. I am sure it was pretty rewarding for her to see me so unnerved.
I didn’t think she could keep up this charade, but as the night wore on she was clearly getting into it; I noticed her lesbian accent was improving greatly. She had gathered quite a crowd around her for her description of our “African safari” trip the year before to visit a special lesbian animal reserve. The highlight of that fake trip was her saving my life. I was supposedly picked up in the trunk of a lesbian elephant. The elephant wouldn’t put me down, and started to trot off with me, while I screamed and cried. Everyone in the luau group was staring at me incredulously. Then Chelsea topped it off with “I just had to save her any way I could. Bertha was my soul mate, and so I ran after that elephant and launched a gourd at its ass, and that was that. Bertha tumbled to the ground like a house of cards.” The tale was just preposterous, and as per usual, I was at a total loss for words. Chelsea was so good at telling the story that these people actually believed her. Many came up to me afterward and expressed how lucky I was to have Fannie in my life.
On the bus ride home she said, “Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it, Bertha?”
Chelsea at the luau. She was twenty-one in this photo but looks forty-five. She does really look like a lesbian in those pants.
But I wasn’t ready to give up on my vacation yet. I still wanted to hit Hanauma Bay, a supposed prime snorkeling spot. When we got there I noticed that almost everyone on the beach was Japanese and armed with a snorkel and a camera. People were staring at us and taking photos, and then they started coming toward us one by one, asking if Chelsea would be in a picture with them. This was long before Chelsea was on TV or had written a book, so naturally I was confused by the attention they were giving her.
“What the fuck?” Chelsea said.
“Don’t you see, Chelsea? They think you’re Pamela Anderson. You’re blonde and you’re wearing a red bathing suit. They love Baywatch in Japan.”
The situation was completely ridiculous, and Chelsea really got a kick out of it. She decided to go with the flow, as people started shoving me out of the way to get close to her. Chelsea was really getting into it, posing for photos and actually signing Pam Anderson autographs for people. Most of them just spoke Japanese, but one lady said she worked for a newspaper and wanted to know if “Pam” would answer a few questions.
“Sure, why not?” Chelsea said with a smile.
“What are you doing here in Oahu, Pam?” the lady asked.
“Well, actually I am here doing some research for Baywatch. We were thinking about doing a Christmas special in Hawaii on a great beach like this. I am here with my assistant to see if this really will fit with our idea for the show. Unfortunately, we have to get back in a couple of days to finish this season’s finale. No more questions, please, I feel a bit tired. Thank you, thank you.”
“You really are unbelievable, you know that?” I said. “You might get sued for doing what you just did.”
“Oh please, get a grip, Shana!” Chelsea said, laughing. “It was funny, and good practice actually, as I plan to become a great actress one day, so you’d better get used to it.”
The only thing left to make the trip complete was the flight back home, during which I got airsick and unloaded my lunch in my airsickness bag, on my shorts, and on Chelsea’s new skirt.
The bonding vacation didn’t turn out exactly as I had planned, and I was pretty sure Chelsea would not consider traveling with me again anytime soon. I consoled myself with a memory from when I was in the sixth grade and she was in the first. The neighborhood bully decided to target me one day for the factory-reject corduroys my parents had sprung for. Chelsea marched over to this big kid without any hesitation, got right in his face as best she could, being only six and a half years old, and said, “Listen up, fat ass. I have two things to tell you. One, you’d better leave my sister alone or I’m gonna break your dog’s neck, and two, I hope you choke on a Twinkie.”
Whether she felt disdain for me or not, Chelsea always had my back, and a pretty big set of balls—which is true to this day. She still reminds me of what a buzz kill I am, and still has me listed in her phone as “Debbie Downer,” but once Chelsea started making money, she became much easier for me to get along with. After that luau, she has never stopped kissing me hard on the lips, and always in inappropriate situations. The only thing that’s changed is that I’ve stopped fighting it.
My sister Shana still has room for improvement. She is constantly tired and constantly asking extremely annoying questions. I like her more now than I did when we were younger, and I definitely love her more now than I did when I was younger. We talk all the time and vacation together all the time, but I’d be lying if I said we’d be friends if she weren’t my sister. We would not.
—Chelsea
Shana giving it to me from behind in Atlantic City.
Chapter Nine
Eva Is My Name, Comedy Is My Game
EVA MAGDALENSKI
The first time I met Chelsea I was nineteen. I was working at the Denver Comedy Club and she was there performing for the week. I immediately loved her. I didn’t necessarily think that she was that funny, but she seemed smart and quick. I also really loved the fluorescent scrunchies she wore in her hair. Sometimes a well-dressed ponytail is all it takes to get me going, and don’t even get me started on how I feel about an organized French braid. Since then, Chelsea has ditched the scrunchies, but there are some memories that nobody can take away from me.
While Chelsea was in Denver, she had to go to several radio stations and give on-air interviews to promote her shows. It was my responsibility to make sure she made it to those stations and that she was comfortable.
You know that feeling you get when someone comes up to you and starts massaging your shoulders without asking first? You become very still and uncertain while the unwelcome massage quickly becomes kind of creepy and uncomfortable. All you can think about is how badly you want that person’s hands off you. You can’t really functio
n or make any sudden movements without making things really awkward, so all you say is “Oh, thanks… you don’t have to do that. No, really. That’s okay. Please. Get off me.”
Well, I was giving Chelsea those massages during her radio interviews. My intention was to relax her; it was early in the morning and from what I’d seen with other stand-up comics over the years, there was a good chance she was hungover. Luckily, instead of getting irritated and shouting, “Stranger danger!” the way many had in the past, Chelsea appeared to enjoy my famous touch. She said it was really weird that I had no boundaries when it came to molesting her shoulders, and she appreciated someone who didn’t care if they made other people uncomfortable. After that she lovingly nicknamed me Sloppy Sea Bass. I don’t know what that had to do with the massage, but coming from Chelsea, that nickname was a sign of affection.
Chelsea liked something else about me, but when I recently asked her to tell me what that “something” was, she said she’d have to get back to me. One thing that Chelsea did recognize about me was that I had a passion for comedy. I guess I didn’t hide it all that well, since all I talked about was my passion for comedy. I’ve often been told that I don’t have much of a life, but the joke is on the people who say that to me, because the fact is I don’t. But at least I’m aware of it.
She also enjoyed my sense of humor. One day I went to use the restroom and noticed that Chelsea was in the stall next to mine. When I heard another person enter the bathroom, I started yelling, “What is all of this blood? There’s so much blood!” Chelsea exited her stall and the bathroom, completely ignoring me and leaving the stranger to deal with my pretend situation. Ten minutes later, Chelsea offered me a job as her publicist.
Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me Page 14