“That’s exactly what I’m talking about! I would know if my son was gone.”
“Not if you were watching porn.”
“Were you watching porn?”
“No. I was babysitting my nephew, Jake.”
“Really, Chelsea? Isn’t Jake sixteen?”
“Well, I don’t know, but he needs me more than ever. He’s got pubic hair now.”
That was a lie; Jake did have pubic hair, but I was not babysitting him. Once I realized Chunk wasn’t in the house, Jake and I walked through the neighborhood and yelled Chunk’s name repeatedly.
During that time, three separate dogs appeared out of the woods and nearby driveways to answer my call, although none of them belonged to me. I followed one of the dogs back to the house next door and was walking up the driveway when I heard from within the house, “Chelsea, Chelsea,” and then clapping, “Chelsea! Come on in.”
I thought it rather rude that this man was beckoning me over to his house instead of walking outside like a gentleman and saying hello, but because I am so stupid, I walked through the open front door, exhausted.
“Hello, everyone,” I announced. “I am Chelsea Handler, and I’m looking for my dog Chunk. I’m not here to hang out. I need to find my dog and I’m happy to take pictures or sign any memorabilia you have, but this is not a social call or a book signing.”
A man appeared in the front hallway of the house and looked at Jake and me standing next to his dog.
“Oh, thank you so much,” he said in an English accent.
“No problem,” I said. “I’m actually looking for my dog. You haven’t seen him, have you? He’s half chow and half German shepherd. His name is Chunk.”
“Oh, Chunk. What a cute name. I’m sure he hasn’t gone very far. Chelsea always runs around the neighborhood and plays with the other dogs.”
I looked at my nephew Jake who was biting the inside of his cheek and then down at the midsized terrier who was kneeling beside me, and realized I wasn’t the only Chelsea in Telluride.
“You’re a real piece of work,” Jake told me on our way out. “Memorabilia?”
Chunk ended up being at the local animal shelter, and I would like to thank them again for giving my dog shelter after he was found roaming on a freeway.
I have learned over time to blame Chunk’s disappearances on his respect for our relationship. He knows it is shameful to empty his bowels while hunched on his hind legs, scrambling around in a circle in order to avoid eye contact with me—a move I have come to refer to as the “helicopter.” I believe he snuck outside to relieve himself when the shuttle showed up to take the rest of the family skiing. I stayed home to write, and as per usual had done absolutely nothing but surf websites looking for dolphin rape videos until my nephew alerted me of Chunk’s absence.
On a completely separate note: my mother loved the snow and disappeared all the time.
Chunk in Telluride after he was returned to me.
CHAPTER 10
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
I hooked up with a man I literally passed on the street when I was in London for the Summer Olympics.
I had been in Montreal for a comedy festival with a bunch of friends when I casually mentioned the Summer Olympics were only a six-hour plane ride away. Dave Grohl was guest-hosting my show the next week, so there was no reason I had to go back to LA. Everyone at dinner stopped what they were doing, and Sue put her hand on my hand.
“Chelsea, that’s a long flight to a foreign city that is going to be filled with tourists because of the Olympics. Are you sure you’re thinking this through?”
“Sue, is there a reason you’re talking to me like I’m an eight-year-old?” I asked her.
“Yes, Chelsea. There is. Because you act like an eight-year-old. When you travel alone, disaster ensues. You can barely use your phone or a computer to gather information and if you get into a jam alone, which you will, there’s a chance you could die.”
I wasn’t even serious about going to the Olympics, but after that conversation, I left on the next flight to London.
I was staying with my homosexual friends Kevin and Brian, who had several other houseguests visiting for the Olympics, all over the age of seventy. It was more ridiculous than I could have ever imagined.
A picture I am proud to have captured of Brian and Kevin in Mykonos.
We all went to a pub for dinner on the first night I arrived and the main topics of conversation were hip replacements, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s. When we were all home and ready for bed at 9 p.m., I realized I was staying at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel—and needed to get some air.
I was walking through their neighborhood (Bloomsbury) and locked eyes with a man—a big one. I passed him, stopped, and then turned around. He had stopped and turned around, too, so we stood there on the street staring at each other.
I took a few steps toward him, and my mouth got away from me before I could figure out anything better than “What’s up?”
“You.”
“Would you like to buy me a drink?” I asked.
“I would.”
He didn’t buy me a drink. We walked two blocks back to his place and he made me a drink. Then we had the most outrageously sexy sex I have ever had. I could never do this incident justice by trying to paint a picture, so I won’t, because (1) this isn’t Fifty Shades of Grey, and (2) I hated that book.
We had sex, danced, had more sex, and danced some more until the sun came up. Somehow, in between the time I met him and got to his place I had learned how to dance. My body was moving in ways it had never moved before, and I—Chelsea Joy Lately—had rhythm. It was the strangest night of my life, and the most intriguing part was that we barely spoke a word to each other.
He only really spoke while we were having sex, which I love. He had new material all the time—a nice respite from my last relationship with a man who would use one phrase over and over during sex. “What you’re doing feels so good.” No shit, Sherlock. Obviously it feels good. I’m the one with your erection in my mouth. I appreciate a little more originality under the sheets, and my Englishman had it. It was the kind of sex that you almost don’t have to participate in, the kind of sex that just happens to you.
This continued for a week straight. I would get back to Kevin and Brian’s house for dinner after whatever Olympic event I went to that day, and then I would very seductively sneak out of the house after everyone went to bed. Why a thirty-seven-year-old adult was sneaking out of a house filled with people who weren’t even related to her made no sense at all.
I went to London for what was supposed to be three days, but turned into eight. I spent most of the Olympics watching tennis, and when Serena Williams won the gold medal, I decided that my time there was over and that I would leave the next day. Sidenote: I believe Serena Williams is a man.
I went over to my London lover’s house for the last night, and at six the next morning, I told him I would be going back to Los Angeles later. “It was a pleasure making your acquaintance,” I said, as I got my things together. Later, as I was walking out, I asked, “By the way, what is your name?”
“Benjamin.”
“I’m Chelsea. I left my number in your bathroom if you ever come to Los Angeles.” And then I walked out the door and seductively sauntered up the street to Kevin and Brian’s. My whole body was tingling and I felt like a sexual dynamo. Kevin was in the kitchen when I came in the front door.
“Morning, Chels!” he said, handing me a cup of coffee. “For the record, you don’t have to sneak in and out of our house to go have sex with people. You’re an adult.”
“That’s good to know for my next visit,” I replied. I collected my things and ran to the car that took me to Heathrow, where I got my ass on a plane and reminisced about my most recent affair the entire eleven hours back. Going to London on the spur of moment to see the Olympics had turned out to be a jackpot.
I knew nothing about Benjamin or what he did for a living
or who he was, and I didn’t want to. It was too sexy of an affair to ruin by talking, and I had a smile on my face the entire plane ride home. I felt like I had just walked out of a James Bond movie. I sat on the plane like Diane Lane sat on that train in Unfaithful and was basically trying to calm my vagina down the entire flight.
Benjamin and I texted a few times after my trip, but our communication fizzled out after a week or two. Four months later my phone rang, and it was him asking me if he could take me skiing for the weekend.
This was mostly surprising, because Benjamin was half black.
“You ski?” I asked him. “Since when?”
“Since I was a little kid, you racist,” he said in his cute British accent.
“If I was racist, I’d be whispering, no?”
“Would you be inclined to come on a ski holiday for the weekend with me or are you trying to say no?”
“Are you any good?” I asked him flirtatiously.
“I’m pretty good,” he told me. “Are you any good?”
“Well, I tore my ACL last year in Switzerland, so I would say yes, I’m pretty good.”
“That explains why one of your legs wasn’t as flexible as the other when I saw you last.”
I was sitting at my desk in my office and nearly fell out of my chair. “That’s a pretty sexy thing to say to me in the middle of the day. I don’t know if you know this but I have a very serious job.”
“It’s not the middle of the day here,” he replied. “My apologies.”
“I suppose I could go skiing with you.”
“Great. A mate of mine has a place in Yellowstone Club in Montana.”
“What state is that in?” I asked him.
“Montana.”
“Isn’t Yellowstone in Wyoming?”
“Yellowstone National Park is, but this is a private ski club in Montana.”
“Ahh… yes. I know the place.”
“It doesn’t sound like you do.”
“Are your friends going to be there, and are they annoying?” I asked him.
“Are you?” he asked me back.
“Am I going to be there?”
“No, I’m asking you if you are annoying,” he said.
“Yes,” I told him. “I’ll be there.”
“Brilliant. I’d like to take you skiing.”
“Perfect,” I said, fondly recalling Ted Turner’s autobiography profiling Montana, bison, and womanizing. “I’ll join you.” I like when a man gives me a run for my money and talks to me like I’m a prostitute.
We had picked up right where we left off in London.
I got a text from Benjamin telling me that he would be meeting me at the Burbank airport, where he had chartered a plane for the flight to Montana. This was a surprise, but I was obviously not turned off by the notion. The two of us on a plane alone together meant there would be plane penetration. I hadn’t had plane sex in a while, and this was the kind of guy you wanted to do that with. In the one week I had slept with him, he had thrown me and my body all over the place. I love that kind of shit.
His behavior during takeoff was another matter. I have some sympathy for women who are scared to fly—I do not have any for men.
When a black man gets scared and there are no police around, you know things are going south. I do not have the capacity to deal with a man who is scared—of anything. When Benjamin prayed out loud before takeoff with his eyes shut, I thought he was joking. He scolded me for making a joke about something that could potentially kill us—meaning the flight. Had I known this was the reason we were flying privately, I would have chartered my own fucking plane and met him wherever the hell we were going.
“Dying on a plane would be a great way to go,” I told him. “Don’t you think?”
“That’s a very macabre thing to say.”
“I’m serious. It would be instant and we probably wouldn’t suffer very long, if at all.”
“Stop it. God forbid any such thing should happen.”
“How is it possible that you are scared of planes? Do you not fly very often?”
“Yes, I do. I get scared every time.”
“Oh… my god.”
I took my seat belt off and went over and sat on him. I was trying to be funny and make light of what I considered to be a silly situation, but you would have thought I murdered a baby. “Are you a little scaredy cat? A little kitty cat that’s scared like a little baby boy?” I said, tickling him. I was hysterically laughing, which always makes me laugh even harder, but he was not laughing at all—which made me laugh harder, until he yelled at me to get back in my seat and buckle up. I actually thought he might hit me.
“So, I guess we won’t be having sex on the plane?” I asked him, after I wiped the tears from my cheeks. He didn’t think that was funny either.
How was he going to be able to ski if he was scared to fly? I wondered. Talk about a buzzkill—and I hadn’t even had a drink yet.
“If you’re so scared to fly, why don’t you take a Xanax or something? I have a Vicodin. Do you want one?”
“I don’t take recreational pills.”
“Well, I’m going to take one then.” I opened my purse, grabbed a Vicodin, split it in half, and popped both halves into my mouth.
“What is the point of that?” he asked.
“Because if you break it in half, it hits you faster.”
“What is the point of taking a Vicodin?”
“Because I have to watch you fly.” We hadn’t known each other long enough to have a fight, and the first one was over me buckling my seat belt and a Vicodin.
The rest of the flight was awkward, to say the least. He relaxed a little once we were up in the air, but the same anxiety resurfaced when we landed with him praying out loud and then gripping the armrests with his eyes squeezed shut. It was an embarrassment.
The house we were staying in was situated in the mountains and allowed you to ski in and ski out of Yellowstone Club—a private ski resort that required no lift tickets. When we arrived at the house, the property manager greeted us and let us know that a woman named Martha would be there shortly to prepare our dinner, then showed us to the master suite downstairs. The kitchen was on the main floor, so I immediately went back upstairs to pour myself a drink. When I returned downstairs, my London lover who was scared to fly… was meditating.
Martha arrived and was singing as she prepared our food upstairs. She sounded overweight, so I went up to check out her body. I was right; she was overweight, but not in the way that made me feel felt I wanted to tackle her. When I came back downstairs, Benjamin was still meditating, so I called Lesbian Shelly in LA and asked her to let me FaceTime with Chunk.
“I guess that means things aren’t going so well.”
“Well, he’s scared to fly.”
“What do you mean, he’s scared to fly?”
“He’s scared to take off and land,” I whispered. “Like fists-closed-praying scared to fly.”
“Oh, my god.”
“And now guess what he’s doing?
“Crying?”
“Meditating.”
“Oh, no.” Shelly was laughing for what became an irritating amount of time. “Can I please talk to Chunk?” I asked her.
As I was midway through talking to Chunk in the annoying baby-talk voice I use with him, Ben walked in the room with a bottle of wine and sat down. Chunk was licking the screen on Shelly’s iPad, and I was kissing my phone. I said good-bye to Chunk and explained to Benjamin that after I saw him meditating, I decided to call my dog.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” he asked me.
Wine is completely wasted on me. It makes me sleepy and gives me a headache, but at that point either option was more palatable than what was happening.
“I think it’s rather cute that you were on the phone with your dog.”
I wanted to tell him that I thought it was rather cute that he meditated, but I would have been lying.
I was trying my hardes
t to get the negative thoughts out of my mind while he penetrated me, but it just wasn’t the same as when we were in London. I could deal with the meditation, but I knew we wouldn’t be able to get past the flying issue. I was very concerned about what kind of skier he would be, and I knew I would be turned off even further if he wasn’t better than me. I took a Xanax and went to bed.
The next morning he tried to wake me up at seven.
“I can’t get up now,” I told him. “I need to sleep more. You go ahead, and I’ll call you when I’m up and we can meet on the mountain.”
I don’t like to be woken in general, and I certainly don’t like to be woken up at 7 a.m. This is why I will never have a baby or borrow anyone else’s. Sleep is my friend and is the only place in this world where I don’t get into fights with other people.
I woke up around ten and grabbed an energy drink out of the fridge upstairs. Then I came back downstairs and put all my ski gear on. I felt quite independent getting my ski socks, long underwear, ski pants, and boots on all by myself. Usually I require some help in this department. I called Ben, who gave me instructions to take a hard right out of the house until I came to a run called Rocky Mountain Fever, then take that to the base of the mountain. Once there I would take the main chairlift up, and he’d meet me at the top of Rocky Mountain Fever.
“Do I just grab a lift ticket at the bottom?” I asked him.
“No, this is a private club. There are no lift tickets.”
“Right. Okay, I’ll see you in a little bit.”
I looked outside to see where the path was to get down from the house to the mountain and didn’t see any. No worries, I thought. I tossed my skis down the side of the hill, positioned my poles so that they were parallel to the snow, and slid my ass down the hill. Once at the bottom, I put on the knee brace that was required after my knee surgery, clicked on my skis, and I was off.
I’m pretty amazing, I told myself as I sashayed down the mountain. It was very unlike me to be this independent. Not only was I unafraid of skiing without a partner, I had no anxiety about being able to navigate my way around the mountain in order to meet up with Ben. I had my phone, my fearlessness, and two single Fritos I had stashed in my jacket pocket in case of an emergency.