My father is currently in a new living facility where the staff is ninety percent male, my brother’s “friend” is now a production assistant on Chelsea Lately, and I’m about to become the spokesperson for lice.
This is me on my way home from Montenegro.
CHAPTER 8
THE SWISS ALPS
For a long time as a child, I thought Switzerland and Swaziland were the same place. When I decided to go skiing in the Alps, I was once again mistakenly intoxicated at the prospect of interviewing tribal leaders.
The group this time was Lesbian Shelly, Sue, and myself. We needed a fourth, so I decided it best to throw in a wild card and invited my makeup artist, Gina, to join us. She is the female version of Steven Tyler but with a deeper voice and bigger lips. Gina is one of my only friends who doesn’t drink excessively, and I thought it might be a nice change of pace to have a chaperone. Gina is a bitch. She doesn’t mean to be, but she is. She acts like she knows everything, and the main problem with people who think they know everything, is that they usually know nothing at all.
I can walk out of my bathroom at work in a bathrobe with wet hair and she’ll stare at me with a puzzled look on her face and her mouth open for ten seconds until she is able to confirm the obvious. “Huh?” she’ll say, looking at me confused, and then come to the slow realization that any normal person would come to right away. “Ahhh… you took a shower.”
“No, Gina,” I’ll say drily. “I’m about to.”
Then you can watch her thoughts circle back around trying to figure out what is the truth and what isn’t. She’s not stupid. Well, a little stupid… but mostly just incredibly slow on the uptake. She reads the New York Times every day, though she is unable to really comprehend anything other than the headlines.
“Did you hear about Syria?” she’ll ask, walking into work.
“Are we going in?”
“I don’t know, but there was a big piece in the New York Times.”
“So, what did it say?”
“I don’t know,” she’ll say, exasperated. “It was pretty complicated.”
“Well, then why bring it up at all, Gina?”
She has been doing my hair and makeup every day on my show for four years and sits offstage watching the show so she’s nearby to touch me up in between commercial breaks, and is somehow still oblivious to the fact that it is literally my business to know what’s happening in the cultural zeitgeist. She consistently thinks she’s revealing huge news to me that has been made public for a large window of time. “Did you see Miley Cyrus at the VMAs?” she’ll ask in disgust, three weeks after the VMAs have aired.
“Yes, Gina. We’ve been discussing it on the show ever since it happened and have done several reenactments. You’re here every day. How did you miss that?”
“All right, all right!” she’ll say, walking away with her hands in the air. “I give up!”
It’s worth it to me to have Gina around, because from the way she name-drops and tells stories, you’d think she’s been in the business since the turn of the seventeenth century. Once she does actually get the joke, she laughs really hard with one eye closed, which gives me a lot of joy. She is also extremely devoted to me and is very tolerant of my increasingly ridiculous behavior, even though we argue on a daily basis. Plus, she’s good at packing my clothes.
This is the only photo I have of Gina looking friendly. She lived in London for a while shooting one of her hundreds of thousands of feature films, and she’ll be the first one to tell you how much the English love to take baths.
I love to ski and had yet to ski in Switzerland. An added bonus was that Zermatt is right on the border, so you can ski from Switzerland to Italy and back all in the same day. Zermatt had all the amenities I love the most: skiing, a weight-loss spa, and a casino.
There was no weight-loss spa or casino, but I told Shelly, Sue, Gina, and myself there would be.
We flew from Los Angeles to Geneva, and from Geneva we took a four-hour train ride up the mountain to Zermatt. I don’t like trains because I’m Jewish. I didn’t like this train because it went from side to side switchbacking in order to get up the mountain, which made four hours feel like four days. I do not suffer from motion sickness, but when I asked the conductor when the train was built and he told me the late 1800s, I deduced the obvious: this was a train that had transported Jews out of Zermatt during the Second World War. I could smell the Holocaust.
Lesbian Shelly told me to drink some water, citing dehydration from the plane ride as the cause of my nausea.
I hate water, especially room-temperature water. The water on the train, which had some German label I couldn’t make out, tasted like Chilean sea bass. The girls were all drinking wine and eating cheese, and the smell was making things worse. I took the hair clip out of my bag and used it to clip my nostrils together while I found an empty seat at the back of the car. The irony of being Jewish and having a strong sense of smell wasn’t lost on me.
“I’ve never seen Chelsea take a nap,” I overheard Gina say to Shelly and Sue.
“She’s just sleeping because she thinks she’s being taken to a concentration camp,” Shelly explained.
I fitfully slept most of the way on the train, because I was awoken by a voice with a violent German accent yelling out each stop on the way up the mountain. It hadn’t once crossed my mind that the main language in this part of Switzerland was German. When I was finally able to sit up, I asked Gina to give me French braids on either side of my head so I would look less Jewy. She reminded me I was half German, but like any half-black person will tell you, the stronger minority always takes over.
By the time we arrived in Zermatt, I was delirious and had a fever. There are no cars in Zermatt, so they pick you up in horse-drawn carriages and escort you to whichever hotel you’re staying in.
I walked straight into the hotel and asked to be pointed in the direction of the bar, where I ordered myself two margaritas to try to cure whatever I had caught on the train. Margaritas always straighten me out, and I didn’t see why this little episode would be any different. Plus, I hate checking into hotels, and Sue, Shelly, and Gina love it.
Our suite was designed like a giant cabin/chalet, with two stories, two bedrooms, and a hot tub on the balcony overlooking the town and a direct view of the Matterhorn.
This is what I was wearing when I arrived in Switzerland, and that’s the Mattherhorn behind me.
“There are other people out here,” Sue warned me after I stripped down and came outside in my bra and thong. “Just saying…”
I looked at the people on the balcony next to us and said hello. I was sweating and delirious and was hoping the cold air would help cool me down. I took some snow from the ledge of the balcony, packed a snowball, and smashed it into my face. Then I sat down Indian style and asked what time dinner was.
“You’re going to catch pneumonia if you sit out here naked. Come in the hot tub,” Gina instructed me.
“I hate hot tubs, and everyone who knows me knows that. Secondly, I was already hot, so why would I get into a hot tub to get hotter? Do you want me to die?”
“You’re always hot,” Gina said with a wave of her hand. “Why don’t you take your temperature and find out if you have an actual fever?”
“Thanks for your sympathy,” I said. “I would love to take my temperature, but I don’t carry a thermometer around in my ass. Do you?”
I’m against thermometers, because (1) I believe they are archaic, and (2) they’ve fucked me over in the past. Specifically, when I was eight and trying to feign illness in an effort to avoid a math test that was supposed to be given in school that day.
School was already a pain in the ass, and the very notion that we were expected to study for tests in addition to going to classes pissed me off. Pop quizzes were less of an affront to me, because at least I had no time to have anxiety about failing them. Algebra was a particular nuisance, and when I woke up the on the day of the test, I had to th
ink fast.
“Mom!” I screamed from my bedroom.
Not for the first time my mother ignored my cries for help, so I got up and walked over to the door in order to get some better acoustics. “Mom!” I screamed again and ran back to my bed and lay down.
“I can’t move my legs,” I told her as she opened the door.
“So, you’re paralyzed?” she asked.
“God forbid,” I told her.
“Well, then, I guess we’ll need to go to the ER.”
In an effort to be more convincing and avoid an actual hospital, I told her that I felt very hot and that maybe some chicken soup would help. She left without saying anything and came back moments later with Campbell’s chicken soup, and then went into my closet where she found a pair of jeans and tossed them at me. She was testing me.
When my mom left the room again, I dipped the thermometer into the chicken soup and put on my jeans as if my legs were in fact immobile. This was before nanny cams, but I thought if she was secretly peeking through my keyhole, it was in my best interest to cover all bases. I thrust out each leg straight in front of my body and leaned my torso over my legs, like any person paralyzed from the waist down would do when putting pants on.
I heard my mother’s footsteps returning, so I lay prone on my back, struggling to zip up my jeans. I grabbed the thermometer out of the chicken soup and put it back in my mouth.
“Well, you certainly put those jeans on fast for someone with no use of their legs.” She rolled her eyes and took the thermometer out of my mouth. “A hundred and thirty degrees?”
“Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?” I responded as weakly as possible.
“Let’s go to the hospital,” she said. I weighed my options and decided the hospital would be better than failing algebra. I had spent plenty of time in hospitals, because I have a history of either hurting myself or faking hurting myself.
My father was usually the one to take me to the hospital, but for some reason he had already left for the day even though he didn’t have a real job. He was probably just picking up his breakfast at McDonald’s.
I was admitted into the ER at St. Barnabas Medical Center. After an hour and a half of getting my legs bent in several different directions and then pricked with small needles from my ankles to my thighs in neat, tiny rows, the doctor pulled out the reflex hammer. It is incredibly hard not to move your leg when someone is hitting you in the knee with a hammer, but I thought I did a pretty good job of pulling it off. After this, the doctor drew the curtain to the examining room and he and my mother stepped outside of it.
“Your daughter doesn’t need a to be in the emergency room. She needs to be in a psychiatric ward.”
The next day I woke up with dried blood all over my legs from the needle pricks but was somehow able to get up, dress myself, and go to school.
“You have a quite a vivid imagination,” my father told me, as I made myself a peanut butter and jelly bagel for breakfast.
By the end of retelling this story to the girls, the sweat from my body was melting the snow I was sitting on.
“That is one of the most fucked-up stories I’ve ever heard,” Sue told me. “You really were a nightmare.”
“What do you mean, ‘were’?” Gina asked, cracking herself up. “Ever heard of the boy who cried wolves?”
“No, Gina. But, I have heard about the Boy Who Cried Wolf. My dad was kind enough to regale me with that tale after I broke my arm that summer in Martha’s Vineyard, and he refused to take me to the hospital for two days because he assumed I was lying.”
“Well, I don’t blame him,” Gina shot back as quickly as she was able, craning her neck like a rapper.
“My forearm was dangling off of my elbow joint in the completely wrong direction. It was pretty obvious it was broken. Even my dog Mutley knew it was broken. He sat there barking at me for two days.”
“Well… you need to get in bed if you think you have a fever,” Gina snarled with one eye open. “You need to be able to ski tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m not going to miss fondue, idiot. This could very well be my last meal.”
Cheese has always been one of my greatest passions. I adore it, and if I wasn’t predisposed to obesity, I’d want a block of it every day. It was a short walk to the fondue restaurant, so I grabbed another T-shirt and a sleeveless vest and sweated profusely throughout the entire meal. The steaming hot cheese wasn’t a help to my fever, and the restaurant smelled like a fillet of feet, but I was able to power through it and use the bread squares to dab the sweat off my forehead.
When I got up to use the restroom, I felt a draft hit what felt like an exposed midriff.
“Is that a half shirt?” Sue asked, leaning across the table, smiling.
I looked down and realized I was indeed wearing a half shirt. “I don’t know how this got in my suitcase.”
“Who packed you?” Sue asked.
“Who knows?” Gina declared. “It was probably the cleaning lady from work.”
“Actually, Gina, you packed me. Remember?”
“Well, I didn’t pack that,” she insisted and then made a hissing sound. “I would never encourage anyone to wear a half shirt.”
The truth of the matter was that I had no idea where or how that shirt got on my body, but I know I got it out of my suitcase. So someone packed it, and that somebody made a fool out of me that night. (Gina.)
The next morning I woke up feeling like I had been in a head-on collision with Rebel Wilson. I couldn’t move, never mind think of going skiing.
Shelly came in to check on me and feel my forehead. My side of the bed was soaking wet.
“She says she can’t move,” Gina told her, as if I was faking it.
“I’m going to stay here with you,” Shelly said. Shelly would do anything for me and that made me want to cry, so I told her she needed to go skiing or I would cry all day.
I woke up three hours later and called down to the spa to get a manicure and pedicure. What I really wanted was a foot massage, but I was too embarrassed to ask for that directly. As I got on the elevator, I started to feel light-headed. I barely made it to the spa, and in my delirium, I thought the spa would be the equivalent of a hospital and could aid in curing whatever leprosy I had caught. Once on the table I drifted in and out of consciousness until a German man wearing a stethoscope woke me up with smelling salts after I had fallen off the table and onto the floor.
“You have a very bad fever.”
Is there such a thing as a good fever? People annoy me when they qualify a cold as being bad. Isn’t that kind of implied when you get the cold in the first place? It’s the same thing as calling someone a creepy clown. What clown isn’t fucking creepy? As if anyone’s ever said, You know that really well-rounded clown with the good body and charming personality? Well, he’s coming over for dinner.
“Ve need to get you into ze ice bath,” he told me as he and a woman helped me to my feet.
“I love ice.”
I had lost all sense of my equilibrium and had never been so incoherent. I felt like I had gotten a DUI on a submarine and then had been forced to snorkel back up to the surface.
The doctor hauled my body from the spa up to my hotel room with his arm around my waist and my arm around his shoulder. There were already hotel employees gathered in my bathroom dumping ice into the bathtub and filling the tub with water. It seemed as though I was watching a movie of myself, and I remember being confused about whether I was really sick or I had a case of Munchausen syndrome. I took off my clothes and sat down on the bathroom floor in my bra and underwear. The doctor and a woman lifted me back up and told me to put one leg in the tub.
“Should I take off my underwear?”
“No.”
“Are you getting in, too?” I asked the doctor, ready to accept the idea of rape. I didn’t have any fight in me.
“Get in ze tub!”
“I’m not Jewish,” I repeated several times before passing out. I remem
ber noticing that my toes looked perfectly manicured. People weren’t exaggerating about Swiss spas. When I woke up, I was in my bed. I knew the girls had returned from skiing because I heard mingling in the next room.
I tried to get out of bed but was so physically weak I only had the strength to moan. Shelly ran in when she heard me. I felt so bad for myself I started crying, which made Shelly cry. We were both crying, and I was naked.
She rubbed my forehead and told me that the doctor said my fever had broken, but that I would be very weak for the next day or two and to take it easy.
“Do you think I’m allergic to trains?” I asked her.
“Maybe,” she said, rubbing my head, tears in her eyes.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Six.”
“P.m. or a.m.?”
“P.m.”
“Okay, wake me up tomorrow,” I told her and fell back asleep. I woke up fifteen hours later and heard rumbling in the main living room. It was 9 a.m. I felt better and got out of bed and walked into the living room naked in the hopes of my body appearing so gaunt, the girls would gasp.
“I’m ready to ski.”
The skiing was beautiful. Our ski guide’s name was Johann. It turns out that in Switzerland there aren’t ski guides with any other names. We skied for about three hours. Right before we were going to stop for lunch, I asked Johann if we could work on some moguls, since the conditions were so good and I was skiing so well. The greatest part about skiing there was that the runs were really wide and there weren’t very many people on them. The not-so-great part was that because of the width and light, you have no idea how steep the mountain is. That was when the snow hit the fan.