Kevin did not respond to Chelsea for three days. First he e-mailed me to confirm that he had been fucked with. Then he decided to give Chelsea the silent treatment, which he knew she couldn’t stand. Chelsea knew that Kevin was trying to smoke her out, so she just waited idly by until he contacted her. That girl is made of steel.
Kevin finally decided to respond to her, knowing that she’d let this drag out as long as she needed to.
From: Kevin
To: CH
You’re terrible, Muriel, just terrible. I want to know one thing: What did your parents do to you that turned you into such a crazed and conniving lunatic? On top of that, how do you have the time to send e-mails out from other people’s computers? Don’t you have to tape a television show every day? I usually tune in, and while you do come off as unprepared and butcher almost every person’s name, I’d imagine you put in at least a little bit of prep time. Are you a fucking octopus?
From: CH
To: Kevin
I’m not an octopus, but I am an octoPUSSY. An octoPUSSY that poor closeted Eva would really like to get a hold of, but now she has no one to talk to…
One thing Chelsea always is to her friends and her staff is generous. Perhaps it’s her way of apologizing for, say, announcing your pregnancy to your family and throwing in your intention to raise your baby by yourself since the father could be any number of people.
One year Chelsea took her entire staff to Cabo San Lucas for her birthday. She also flew her family down to experience what was later referred to as the “Chelsea Lately Gone Wild” vacation in Mexico. For the record, Chelsea never called it that. In fact, she thinks most of us are stupid. She’s kind of right: most people who work for her should abstain from alcohol.
Chelsea’s family arrived together in Cabo. Leading the pack was her four-year-old niece, Charley. I hadn’t met Charley yet and I was really excited to, because I’d heard so much about her. I bent down to her level, tried to ignore the pain in my lower spine, stuck out my hand, and said, “It’s very nice to meet you, Ms. Charley. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Charley looked at me and replied, “Am I supposed to know who you are?”
It was love at first insult. Any four-year-old who could give me shit was someone I definitely wanted to hang out with. That really goes for Chelsea’s whole family. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Chelsea has the world’s greatest family. My family thinks that’s rude to say, but most likely they won’t be reading this, since they aren’t super interested in what I do. All of Chelsea’s brothers and sisters are funny and kind, and they’ve always been nothing but wonderful to me. I like to think of myself as their adopted sister, even though when I suggested this, they said that if they had the option to adopt me, they would not. Their family is big; I guess there isn’t much room for one more.
For the rest of the Cabo trip I was attached at the hip to the Handlers. Well… every one of them except Chelsea’s brother Roy. He had a strange way of interacting with me. He was around me a lot, but I felt like he thought he had to be. Don’t get me wrong; he was always nice, but most babysitters are. When he spoke to me, he addressed me as if I were a two-year-old. He would talk very slowly and then ask me if I understood.
“W-e’-r-e g-o-i-n-g t-o t-h-e p-o-o-l n-o-w, E-v-a. Do you want to get your bathing suit and come to the pool with us, Eva? Swimming is fun. Does Eva like swimming, too?”
I couldn’t figure out if he was repeating my name for fear of forgetting it; I heard that some people use that as a memory trick. I also wasn’t sure why he spoke so slowly, especially since I’d seen him interact with everybody else like a normal person. He even spoke to little Charley as if she were a grown woman. I have since recognized that Charley is a lot more mature than I am, but at the time, my feelings were hurt. Roy was always taking my hand and patting me on the back, saying, “G-o-o-d j-o-b,” even if all I did was walk down a couple of steps.
On the last day in Cabo, Roy was nice enough to take me parasailing. He said that he’d heard I wanted to go, which I didn’t, but I felt that it would have been rude to say no to his generous offer. I thought maybe he loved parasailing and was using me as an excuse to go. We headed to the beach. I noticed that Roy was carrying Charley’s arm floaters and wondered if he was afraid of deep water. We got to the boat that was waiting to take us out into the ocean. Just as I started to board, Roy put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me.
“Shouldn’t you take off your legs and leave them at the dock? The water is probably not good for the wood.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Don’t be scared. I brought arm floaties for extra safety,” he said to me with a concerned look.
His odd behavior toward me suddenly made sense. Chelsea was busted. I made Roy spill the lie that Chelsea had told him about me. Prior to the Cabo trip, she had informed him that I was mentally disabled. As the story went, I was born in a Polish hospital and when I was delivered my umbilical cord was wrapped around my Polack neck. They were able to save me, but because of the amount of time I spent without air, I couldn’t function at full capacity. The story didn’t quite satisfy her, so she threw in that I had fake legs and loved water sports. Chelsea told Roy that she found out about my fake legs when I was on a trip with her in the Bahamas and wanted to go down a waterslide. According to her, I had to take my fake legs off and send them down the slide first.
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.
Brad, Roy, and me heading to Cabo. You can see my leg naturally goes in different directions from my body. I believe Chelsea saw this and capitalized on it.
Hamlet
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
This photo sums up my relationship with Eva perfectly. I look on with confusion when I see a boat headed straight for us in the Bahamas, as Eva smiles like a lunatic.
Chapter Ten
Lies and Other Things I Wish Were Lies
AMY MEYER
LIES
I would never lie; I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.
—FOX MULDER
Me; my mom, Kris; and Chelsea before her show in Kansas City.
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.”