Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me Read online

  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.