Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me (14 page)

“Well, something’s gotta go.”

I was becoming increasingly agitated as I took more stuff out of my bag: shoes, makeup, bathing suits, every charger known to man. There was a heaping pile growing higher and higher next to my suitcase. “What the hell do I do with all this?”

When I turned around to look at Chelsea, she was laughing uncontrollably. She was bright red and could barely breathe. “Throw it overboard” she said, holding her coslopus for dear life.

“I’m glad you think this is funny!”

I was so annoyed. I looked over at Ivory, who was also laughing. Was this all a big joke? “No way. Are you guys fucking serious?”

Laughter started to erupt around the boat. Everyone was laughing at me, including the captain.

“You guys suck!” I looked toward Hannah. “You too?”

She nodded her head, laughing with the rest of them.

I couldn’t believe it. Were Zoughi and I the only ones told this lie? The entire boat knew? Even the captain? And the Persian with the hairier back than Zoughi’s? That was just so embarrassing.

How had I let it get so far? It wasn’t like I couldn’t take a joke. I could. But I felt stupid and I hated feeling stupid. I silently refolded my clothes, pissed.

So there I sat for the entire boat trip with two oversize pieces of luggage by my side. Anytime someone walked by, they smirked. Needless to say, Chelsea’s arm was no longer in a sling. She snapped a picture of me flanked by the two large suitcases. Instantly it was up on Twitter. I figured there was no getting out of that one.

Just then, I couldn’t help myself. I started to laugh as well. This really was a ridiculous situation. Plus, it’s hard for me to stay mad at Chelsea. I’m the idiot who’d believed her.

There was no time to be angry. The boat had anchored at a sandbar near Norman’s Cay, and everyone was jumping off the boat and swimming in the crystal blue waters, having fun. I wanted in on that action. Good thing I had my suitcase and ample bathing suit options.

When we got back to the hotel, which was not submerged underwater, we all went to the casino. I was not going to risk leaving early this time and be the asshole again.

Going to a casino with Chelsea is a unique experience. The vodka is flowing and so are the chips. Luckily, I was playing with Chelsea’s chips and not my own. We planted ourselves at one blackjack table, right next to a loud-mouthed Israeli and his four equally annoying sons, who were betting five-hundred-dollar hands. The father was flirting with Chelsea hard core and had no idea who she was. But his four kids knew, and they were mortified by their dad. A situation like this really highlights one of the many differences between Chelsea and the rest of us. Most of us, when confronted with a drunk Israeli at a blackjack table, will either ignore him or ask to be left alone, but not Chelsea. Chelsea engages. An hour at that table and she knew everything there was to know about this guy, and he knew nothing truthful about her.

As the night wore on, she grew tired of her games with the Israeli and was ready to be done gambling. This meant going “all in,” because to her, exchanging chips back to cash is a hassle. She looked up at the dealer, pushed all her chips toward him, and said, “Take this. I want to go to my room.” He politely got blackjack and took them all away.

At 4:00 AM, we continued the party up in Chelsea’s room. The other Persian whipped out a box of cigarettes, which looked appealing to everyone in our shitfaced condition. But no one had a lighter. Chelsea promptly called room service to solve the problem.

“Hi, this is Chel-say-ya,” she enunciated slowly. For whatever reason, Chelsea has a tendency to disguise her voice when she calls room service. “Can you please bring up some matches?” she asked.

We were in a nonsmoking hotel, so the person on the other line was clearly suspicious.

“I don’t want to smoke,” Chelsea assured the person, with the phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “I’d like to take a bath and light some candles.”

The person on the other end wasn’t falling for it.

“Okay, fine. I need to get some matches for my book club that’s about to start,” she said.

The whole room was laughing.

“Yes, we’re about to start From Pieces to Weight, a 50 Cent thriller, and I need to get in the right mood.”

I could hear the response on the other end of the phone: “I’m sorry, Miss Handler.”

“Fine. I’ll take chicken fingers.”

Room service came shortly thereafter. There were no matches.

By almost 5:30 AM, the party had started to unwind and Chelsea had retreated to her bedroom after a chicken finger, so I thought it was safe to leave. After all, Chelsea was harmless when she was sleeping. Plus we had a car picking us up in a couple hours to take us to the airport.

The trip back was another long day of traveling. I kept thinking about the poor fools back at the hotel who would fall prey to Chelsea’s voodoo. All in all, Zoughi and I made it through the trip relatively unscathed.

When we walked in the door to our apartment, there were about a dozen flower arrangements scattered throughout the living room. I had no idea what they were for.

I started to read the cards: “Congrats you guys!” “So happy for you.” “You deserve it.”

Most of them were from family members and close friends, so I figured they were for our engagement—until I came across a card that read, “Can’t wait to be an auntie!”

“Auntie? Maybe these are for the wrong apartment.”

The doorbell rang. Another delivery.

“Hi, this is for a Zoo-wa—”

“Zoughi,” I interjected.

“Yeah, can you sign here?”

This one read, “Zoughi, hope you feel better. Let me know if you need anything.”

I didn’t get it. Sympathy and congratulations?

I turned on my BlackBerry, and text messages started pouring in. Clearly I had to Sherlock Holmes this situation. There was a series of texts from Zoughi’s brother, Farshad. I called him.

“Oh, my God,” he said upon hearing my voice. “Are you okay? How are you feeling? How’s my brother doing?”

“Good, we just got home.”

“Cool. Have you told anyone in the family yet?”

“No, we literally just got in. Feel free to spread the word.”

“Does my brother know?”

“Know what?”

“About the e-mail you sent earlier.”

Farshad then forwarded me an e-mail that I had supposedly written to my soon-to-be brother-in-law. It read:

I JUST TOOK A PREGNANCY TEST. I’M PREGNANT AND I’M NOT KIDDING. I’M ON MY WAY HOME.

Just then, it all made sense. Chelsea was continuing to fuck with me. From three thousand miles away. Impressive.

“Oh, my god, Zoughi, where is my iPad?”

“I don’t know. You packed it.”

I texted Chelsea. “Hey, did I leave my iPad there?”

No response for a few minutes. Then: “You’re a hot mess.”

And there was my answer. I had left my iPad in Chelsea’s room in the Bahamas and she had randomly e-mailed a bunch of people from my address book. Since Chelsea is electronically challenged, I was surprised she’d figured out how to use the iPad to begin with.

She’d created a real shit storm in my conservative, Catholic family, who now thought the reason I was getting married was because I was pregnant. For weeks everyone was talking about my shotgun wedding and how I needed to buy a new wedding dress that would flatter a pregnant belly. This, of course, was hilarious to Chelsea.

It wasn’t until everyone came back from the Bahamas that the sympathy cards for Zoughi started to make sense as well.

When I was at dinner with Ivory one night, she asked, “So how’s Zoughi doing?”

“He’s good. Back to work.”

“Well, that’s good. Does he need surgery?”

“For what?”

“His knee!”

Ivory could see by the look on my face that I had no idea what she was talking about. “Chelsea told us what happened,” she said, giggling.

“Well, why don’t you tell me what happened, since apparently I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Chelsea said that when he fell, he busted his knee.”

“He didn’t fall!”

“She said that night you left early, you and Zoughi had taken peyote and you guys were rolling—”

“Peyote?”

“Yeah. I thought it was weird, but she said there had been a resurgence in Middle Easterners using peyote.”

“Uh-huh.” I couldn’t wait to hear what line of bullshit was coming next.

“And that you guys had crazy sex and Zoughi fell off the bed and broke his knee.”

“From the peyote?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Ivory, peyote is for Native American Indians. Zoughi is fucking Persian. How do you think we would even get peyote in the Bahamas?”

“She said that Zoughi always travels with it. Like a ritual. Oh, my God, I can’t believe I am so stupid. What is wrong with all of us? Chelsea begged me not to tell you that I knew about the peyote.”

“And what else?” I asked her.

“And the reason you left early was because Zoughi had to be airlifted back to the mainland and then taken immediately to an American hospital because of his insurance or something. I guess he’s with an HMO?”

I just sat there staring at Ivory.

“None of this is true, is it?” she asked.

“No! We came back early to make it in time for Tanya’s New Year’s Eve party!”

“So Zoughi’s knee is fine?”

“Yes, his knee is fine. It’s like we’re dealing with a seven-year-old with Chelsea.”

“A seven-year-old with really big tits and a lot of money,” Ivory reminded me.

“This is true.”

Unbelievable. Chelsea had used my e-mail to screw me and my fiancé in our circle of friends and family. Now I had to put out a lot of fires: convince my family that I wasn’t pregnant and that my marriage to Zoughi was not a shotgun wedding. And to top it off, I had to convince my friends that I didn’t have a drug problem or kinky sex issues and that Zoughi’s knee was just fine. Zoughi, however, thought the knee thing was funny and started limping when we were out with friends. Of course, Chelsea turned the limp into a prosthetic leg in her book Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang.

I called Chelsea later to tell her I knew about everything. “Nice work,” I said.

“You are so dumb,” she said, before hanging up on me.

Actually I was smart enough to realize one thing. If Chelsea doesn’t fuck with you, she doesn’t care. And it’s easy to see why I keep coming back for more. She’s spontaneous and compassionate. She favors individuality. She roots for the underdog, and her loyalty never wavers, not even for the sake of a joke. She is truly a friend.

But I’ll tell you this. If that bitch ever learns how to use Facebook, we are all fucked!

I would like to go on the record and say that Amber is currently pregnant, so in essence, anything I was “lying” about was simply me telling the future. As with many psychics, my facts are right but my timing can be off.

As far as Zoughi’s knee injury goes, there is still time for that.

Love,

Chelsea

JOSH WOLF

The one thing that has been consistent about Chelsea Handler since the day I met her is that she is painfully honest. She will tell you the truth, even if you don’t want to hear it, anytime she feels it needs to be said.

At the same time, you can’t believe a fucking word she says.

Crazy combo, right? She is one of the truest, most loyal friends you could ever hope to have in your lifetime, but if the window is cracked open even a bit for her to fuck with you, she will say and make you believe anything so she can have a good laugh.

That’s harder to handle than you would think. Luckily, I was prepared. I grew up with three older brothers who waged mental warfare on me for my entire childhood. They had me convinced for years that I was adopted but that my parents would never admit it because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. They said that if I talked to our parents about it, my mom would most likely kill herself. Not wanting to be responsible for my mom’s untimely demise, I resisted the temptation.

After a while, I suspected they were lying. There were pictures of me all over the house, and my brothers and I kind of looked the same, but every time my mom or dad yelled at me, my oldest brother would be sure to tell me that they were harder on me because “I wasn’t blood.” It wasn’t until I heard my grandmother talking about how she was at the house when my parents brought me home from the hospital that I was able to put the final pieces of the puzzle together.

“I knew it! I knew I wasn’t adopted!” I shot up and screamed. Everybody just stared at me. They had no fucking idea what I was talking about. Shit, my brother barely remembered. He hadn’t teased me about it in years. I was eleven years old. Since then, I have learned to take everything anyone says with a grain of salt. Especially assholes like Chelsea Handler.

My wife does not.

My wife, Beth, is an extremely intelligent woman. She’s a writer and director whose films have won awards all over the world. She also might be the single nicest person on the face of the earth, someone who always comes from a place of truth and who takes what people say at face value because that’s how she treats people in return. Unfortunately, all of those amazing traits also make her very susceptible to practical jokes.

How did she end up with an asshole like me? No idea.

Sometimes I feel bad bringing her around my jerk-off friends because we are all such assholes. Our idea of fun is hurling insults at one another and pulling pranks that have a good possibility to humiliate. So when I started bringing her around Chelsea and the gang, I thought, This might get ugly.

Things were fine for a while, until one day when we were all hanging out at Chelsea’s and somebody brought up the Lakers. As soon as Chelsea heard the word Lakers, she said, “Oh yeah, I just won fifty thousand dollars on that game last night.” This is her thing. Whenever someone brings up a sports team, she talks about how much money she won on a game they played in. Every single time.