Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me (20 page)

Her story was so convincing that in order to prove to Roy that my legs were real I had to allow him to burn me with a cigarette. It wasn’t until the tears started flowing that he was satisfied that my legs were made of my own flesh and blood.

Aside from my posture, Chelsea has always been very concerned with my sex life. Let me rephrase that: she has always been concerned about me and my lack of anything that remotely resembles what some might call a sex life.

I loved working for Chelsea and wanted to stay focused. Having a guy to worry about was the last thing I needed. Word on the street was that Hamlet, the security guard, liked me, so at least I had something going.

One night I stayed late to organize Chelsea’s nail polish colors. She walked into the office and I proudly whipped open her makeup drawer.

“Ta-da!” I exclaimed with pride. “Looks like somebody’s manicures will be operating with a new level of professional efficiency!”

Chelsea stopped, looked at the drawer, and then looked at me. “This looks like the work of someone who needs to get laid,” she said and then walked out.

From that point on she became relentless, pitching me to any and all male candidates. If you were a heterosexual male and came to our office anytime during the fall of 2009, Chelsea asked you to have sex with me. She was always on the lookout. Crew guys, bartenders, busboys—you name ’em, she offered me up to them. Still, I was a big disappointment to her; I was always too busy rearranging her bookshelves and secretly scrapbooking to focus on my own sexual needs.

One night, during a stop in Austin on Chelsea’s “Bang Bang” tour, she was having dinner with her friend Johnny and her opener, Jo Koy. I had passed on the meal and opted to stay in the hotel room and color-code the clothes in Chelsea’s suitcase. Jo asked why I hadn’t joined them for dinner, and a light bulb went off in Chelsea’s head.

“Oh, she can’t sit still long enough to eat a full meal. Eva gets super horny on the road,” she told Jo.

Johnny has been around Chelsea long enough to know the game, so he chimed in immediately. “Yeah, I banged her a couple of times in San Jose,” he added.

Jo was really confused. He and I had known each other for a really long time. We went way back, to when he used to do stand-up at the Denver club I worked in. He didn’t think this sounded like me at all. In fact, he thought I was kind of standoffish.

“Really?” Jo asked. “She doesn’t seem like she sleeps around like that.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s her thing,” Chelsea told him. “She acts like she’s a good girl, but she porks everybody. It gets worse when we’re on the road. I think it has something to do with hotels and something that went down when she was in elementary school. Eva is pretty wound up, and sex is the only thing that seems to take the edge off for her.”

“That’s really surprising. I thought she was uptight.” Jo still couldn’t wrap his head around the new information.

“She used to be uptight, until she started doing anal,” Chelsea fired back.

Chelsea and Johnny continued to tell Jo Koy all about my sexual escapades. Chelsea told him that I had pretty much had sex with everybody at the office. She said that sometimes Chris Franjola took a turn. If Chris was too wiped out from meeting up with girls on Facebook, then Ian the PA took care of my needs. Chelsea explained to Jo that she wasn’t really an advocate of my behavior, but that I obviously had some sort of medical condition and sex was the only way I could be satiated. After all, I worked for her now, and she wanted what was best for her employees. If constant porking was what kept me alert, then constant porking it would be. She also told him that I had even gone so far as to sleep with Jeremy, the guy at the office who everyone was certain had never taken a shower.

Here’s where the story takes a twist that even Chelsea couldn’t have anticipated: Jo Koy and I had just started dating at the time. I hadn’t had the chance to tell Chelsea about it yet; it was pretty new. Honestly, I was avoiding telling her. That turned out to be a big mistake, because it turns out that she actually encourages inter-office romance. Jo was texting me throughout the entire dinner, but was not mentioning any of the things Chelsea was saying to him. He was obviously afraid to rattle my cage, for fear that one mean text from him would send me into a fury and I’d screw the bellhop.

Later that night, he called me and grilled me about my supposed sexual disorder.

“Really? Jeremy? That guy probably hasn’t bathed in six months! Last time I saw him he had nacho cheese in his beard and when I asked him about it he said he hadn’t had nachos in three weeks!”

“Have you ever been tested? Do I need to get tested?” Jo was concerned.

It took me a while to understand what he was upset about and even longer to calm him down. After four hours of talking, he finally understood that he was just another victim of a lie that Chelsea Handler had told.

It’s hard to find a way to get back at Chelsea for the pranks she’s pulled. Every time anyone has tried they’ve failed. She’s too smart to fall for it, so you really have to go behind her back and through other channels.

It’s no secret that Chelsea and her dad have a love/hate relationship. He has asked her for money on more than one occasion, even though he has plenty of his own. He assumes that now that she’s making money she should be taking care of him. The way the two of them communicate completely stresses me out, because I just want everything with her family to be fine. So I came up with the idea to mend fences for her. If it also resulted in a little bit of payback, then I’d consider that a bonus.

One day Chelsea received a phone call from one of her sisters letting her know how much their father appreciated the beautiful letter Chelsea had sent him. When Chelsea asked what letter she was talking about, her sister read it to her:

Dear Daddy,

I am so sorry that we have had any arguments over the past couple of years about money or about anything else. I’ve really been thinking about things and I have come to realize that you’re right. I am now in a position to support you financially. The fact that you have enough money to support yourself and your cleaning lady doesn’t matter. You brought me into this world and as a thank-you I should be there to see you out of it. You are an amazing man, regardless of what any of the past renters of our home in Martha’s Vineyard have said. From now on what’s mine is yours! I can’t wait to see you next Christmas. Maybe we can go sledding, LOL!

—Chelsea

Chelsea instantly knew that the letter was written by me. She told her sister that nobody else would talk like that except Eva. “Doesn’t he recognize his own daughter’s handwriting?” she asked.

“It was typed,” Shana explained.

Chelsea sent me a text that read, Nice one. That was the only reaction she gave me. I actually think the whole thing made her want to promote me, and she might have, if there had been a position to promote me to.

I was glad the letter got a bit of a response from her, but it just proved to me that when it comes to pranks, Chelsea Handler can’t be beat. Even though Jo now knows the truth about my sex life, part of what Chelsea said stuck in his head. Every once in a while, when I don’t answer my phone, he thinks I’m at a homeless shelter picking out my next sex partner. Kevin and Brian still try to offer to let me “meet up” with one of their single lesbian friends. On top of that, Chelsea’s brother Roy still treats me like I’m mildly retarded. Last time I was at Chelsea’s pool, he handed me two inflatable arm bands and a rubber duckie and suggested I stay in the shallow end.

For the record: I am still not positive that Eva’s legs are made from real human parts, or that Eva herself is even human. She is a very strange duck, and her posture leaves a lot of room for improvement. She is a better person than I am, but that doesn’t really mean much. She is also a better daughter to my father than I am, but my father has sex on a regular basis with his cleaning lady. I would also like to point out that up until I met Eva, she wore blue eye shadow on her lids.

—Chelsea

AMY MEYER

I would never lie; I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.

—FOX MULDER

I have known Chelsea, or “Handy,” for over four years, and it is no surprise to me that I was asked to weave a tale of her creative and sordid lies. Don’t get me wrong. Handy is sweet, generous, and loyal to a fault, but she loves to lie. Her delight over lying is woven through with a sweet slice of sadism. We love her without exactly knowing why. Well, on second thought, we could always chalk it up to Stockholm syndrome.

Being Chelsea’s stylist has afforded me the opportunity to be privy to many intimate moments of her life. Here are some that she has agreed to let me print.

Chelsea loved to lie to her ex-boyfriend Ted. I actually believe his sweet and loyal gullibility is the reason their relationship was extended by six months.

On more than one occasion, while Chelsea was getting her hair done for the show, I watched her pick up the phone, call Ted, and tell him that she had fallen down the stairs and broken her collarbone, lost hearing in one or both ears, or was pregnant with his child. On one occasion I witnessed her say she was pregnant while she had a margarita and cigarette in hand. Time and time again, Ted believed her; he believed the woman he was madly in love with was carrying his child. Why would anyone lie about that? Because they are a sick fuck, that’s why. Although if Chelsea ever carried a baby to full term, she would be a wonderful mother. Not only is she compassionate and protective, she incessantly spoils the ones she loves (in between lying to them).

Each time she attempted to convince Ted that he was going to be a silver-haired daddy, she would up the ante. On her initial attempt she was very serious and stressed out.

“Ted, I’m late. I just took a pregnancy test and it came out positive. I can’t even think straight, my hormones are all out of whack, and… I just ate Taco Bell for lunch. There has got to be a baby inside me.”

When Ted responded, “Everything is going to be okay, honey. I love you, and we will figure this out together,” she replied, “You are so ridiculous,” and hung up the phone.

The second and third time went something like this: Chelsea crying, “Ted, I’m pregnant and I’m not kidding. None of my clothes fit. I think I’m already showing.”

In Ted’s typical problem-solving style, he suggested she wear Spanx, to which she barked, “Ted, that will give the baby brain damage. I don’t want the baby to be slow. We already have Chuy.”

Why, I’m sure you’re asking yourself, would Ted have believed these shenanigans? Because Chelsea is infectious. She can be so warm and fun that you want to believe her just to be part of her world. I’m here to tell you that that world is overrated.

A favorite Ted lie of mine, and one that I think is so telling of their relationship, is the “very, very, very, superior Chelsea” lie. This happened on a Tuesday night. It was just the two of them, so I’m assuming her ADD ass was in high gear and she was bored out of her mind.

They were having dinner at some fancy restaurant and Chelsea said, “Oh, so I got the results back from my IQ test today. I scored a hundred and fifty. Is that good?”

I can only presume this line was delivered in complete seriousness and as an aside, right before ordering some albacore sashimi. Like, “Yeah, Albert Einstein’s IQ was one-sixty and I’m Chelsea Handler cruising through the west side of Los Angeles with my very superior IQ of one-fifty. It ain’t no thang.”

There are so many responses you can imagine or hope that a boyfriend would have upon hearing that his girlfriend is another Einstein. But one wouldn’t expect him to put his head in his hands and, after a long beat of silence, say, “I was afraid of something like this.”

The revelation of Chelsea’s genius IQ completely changed the dynamic of their relationship. Ted is a very smart and capable man—he was the CEO of our company at the time—and had the wherewithal to bag Chelsea Handler, but make no mistake about it: Ted is not a genius. From that moment on, there was no denying that she now had the upper hand in the relationship. (Technically, this would make Ted the “bottom.”) If they ever argued over the show or even about restaurant choices, all she had to say was “I’m sorry, which one of us is the genius?”

Chelsea Handler is a sharp cookie and has a beautifully bizarre brain. She may also be many things, but she is not a genius.

To be honest, I have no idea how many times Chelsea has lied to me. Most likely it’s already occurred at least twice this morning.

During our first season on air, she and our executive producer, Tom, told me that we were going to hang Chuy on the cross for the Christmas episode. The art department was building a cross, and I had one day to pull together a Jesus costume. Tom and Chelsea let me know it was really important to make the costume look authentic. If we were going to piss off the Christians, it had to be done right.

“No problem,” I assured them. I already had the muslin cloth to make Chuy’s loincloth. Warner Bros.’ costume department had the rope sandals we needed for Chuy’s nugget feet. All I had to do was make a crown of thorns. “Oh and how bloody do you want to make him?” I asked.

“Amy, the man was nailed to a cross,” Chelsea told me. “It wasn’t a pretty situation. But this is Christmas, so find a happy middle ground.”

The next day Chelsea was in her makeup chair when I paraded Jesus Chuy in for her approval. If you can make Chelsea laugh, it’s a pretty good feeling, even if you don’t realize that she’s laughing at you.

“Oh, my God, Amy, get Tom down here!” she howled, holding her vagina as she’s known to do when she’s comedically aroused. Seconds later, Tom appeared in Chelsea’s office and fell into hysterics. I felt amazing. Then Chelsea instructed Chuy to practice the line “Fuck the Jews!”

“Fuck the Yews,” Chuy exclaimed. “Fuck the Yews!”