Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang Read online

  "Boys."

  "But if he likes boys, wouldn't it have been easier to just stay a girl, instead of becoming a man and then becoming gay?"

  "That's a pretty good fucking question, Sylvan," I told him. "One that I ask myself every day when I look at Paul's ass. It's hard to understand the transgender community and what their thoughts are. Why they want to cross two hurdles instead of one, but I don't ask questions, Sylvan. I don't judge. I'm not the Lord."

  At the end of the trip, Sylvan told Paul that he was one of the most amazing people he'd ever met and that Paul had more guts and courage than half those soldiers who go over to Iraq.

  "Thank you, Sylvan," Paul said quizzically. "That's a really nice thing to say to someone. I think."

  "Gosh," Eva remarked to Paul. "You must really have made an impression on him."

  Paul told me after that that he felt bad for judging Sylvan based on the fact that he couldn't swim. "That guy's a sweetheart through and through. You should have heard what he told me when we said good-bye. I'm definitely going to use him as a driver the next time I'm in New York.

  "You should definitely use him," I told him.

  IKE TURNER

  On the same trip, Paul and I got into a food fight one night around three in the morning. This is something we frequently participate in after seven to ten cocktails. We are respectful enough to do it only in the privacy of our hotel room, and I usually end up the champion, as Paul is gay, which can lead to terrible hand-eye coordination. While we don't intentionally involve others, it usually requires anyone else in the room to run and duck for cover, as it can get pretty violent, with one or two fruit items ending up stuck to a wall and Paul screaming that I'm an angry dyke. I'm more apt to fight with Paul instead of someone like Tanya, because I consider Paul to be more of an equal and Tanya to be more of a mad harlot.

  Things got particularly hairy one night on our vacation in Turks and Caicos, and fruit throwing eventually graduated from grapes and decorative acorns to ripe nectarines. When I turned around to peg a strawberry in Paul's direction, I didn't have time to duck before a nectarine hit me square in the eye. It hurt, but not enough to make me cry, and I quickly recovered, although all our other friends were a little taken aback at our level of violence.

  Ted scolded us both: "Stop it, you two! Chelsea has a television show, and I already gave her one black eye when we were playing Wii tennis. People are going to think I beat her."

  Sylvan was more impressed with Paul's hand-eye coordination, because at that point he didn't know if Paul was a boy, a girl, or a sea animal.

  Either way, the party came to a screeching halt with Paul really concerned that he'd hurt me. He hadn't, but when I woke up the next morning, my friend Stephanie suggested that it would be a good idea to have me fake a black eye. With Eva and Stephanie's help, I was able to make one side of my face look like Rihanna's, and then I headed down in the bright sunlight with a hat and sunglasses, like any respectful abused woman.

  My brother, Delicious, Ted, Paul, and Sylvan were all down at breakfast already when the girls and I arrived. When Paul caught on to my face, he was horrified. I assured him it was no big deal and that I had time to heal before I had to tape the show again. "Don't worry," I told him. "I bruise easily. If it's still there by Monday, I'm sure my makeup artist can cover it up. Or I'll just tell the audience my friend hit me with a nectarine."

  "You should take iron," Ted told me as he got up from the table, giving me a thumbs-up for my cosmetic handiwork. Ted was in our room that morning when I applied my shiner and was excited to be included in a joke. "Good job, Paul," Ted told him, and threw his napkin down on the table dramatically before heading over to his beach chair.

  Not knowing that it was a joke, Sylvan was disgusted by the whole event. He said to Paul, "If you weren't a girl, I would have the right mind to hit you," and then he stormed off. Brian, Ray, and Paul all looked at each other, wondering what Sylvan was talking about, until I explained to them that Sylvan didn't have a ton of experience with gay men and that calling men girls was just English slang for gay guys.

  Shortly after, I explained to Sylvan that the whole thing was a joke, that Paul really hadn't hurt me and to just go along with it. He was bellowing with laughter. "Chels, you are a maniac! I can't believe I fell for that. And what an idiot he is, too, for believing it!"

  "I know," I said to Sylvan. "Can you believe how stupid everyone is?"

  As the day wore on, Eva, Steph, and I kept making the bruise darker and darker, until finally Paul took me aside with tears in his eyes.

  Paul is gay with an exorbitant amount of energy and an annoyingly sunny disposition. He has the tendency to look at every situation as a glass half gay and is the type of person who says "Bless his heart" when he sees someone in a wheelchair getting off a ski lift.

  "Chelsea," he whimpered, "I just feel terrible. You are so generous to all of us, and you have been such a good friend, and I thank you by hitting you in the face with a nectarine, and look at you, you look awful."

  "Don't worry about it, Paul. I'm seriously not mad at you. I know it was a total accident." When tears started to fill his gay eyes, I took a towel and wetted it with a bottle of water. "Look," I told him, "it will probably just wipe off."

  With Stephanie's video camera capturing the event, including the disappearance of the bruise, Paul realized what I had done. "You are horrible!" he screamed. "Horrible! You're a horrible, angry dyke!"

  ONE-LEGGED WONDER

  A while back I tried to set my friend Sarah up with my brother Ray, to no avail.

  "Whatever happened to hooking him up with Sarah?" Sloane asked me when my sisters and I were on a three-way phone call discussing the fact that our brother had been single for far too long.

  "It's a little late for that, since she's getting married in two weeks. I do love Ray, and I'd be willing to break up most relationships if it meant giving him one, but I have grown to love Sarah's fiance, even though Firouz is Iranian and has only one leg."

  "Come again?" Sidney asked me.

  "I told you guys this already," I lied.

  "No, Chelsea. I think I would have remembered if you told me that Sarah's fiance was legless. Is he in a wheelchair?"

  "No. I really can't believe I didn't tell you this already. He lost one of his legs in Iraq."

  "I thought he was an editor?" Sloane asked.

  "He is," I confirmed. "But he volunteered for the war and lost his leg in combat, so he's got one of those plastic thingamijiggies."

  "Sarah is marrying someone with no leg?" Sidney asked.

  "He has one leg. God, you guys are pretty judgmental. He loves her and she loves him. It's not like he can't walk around."

  "So let me get this straight," Sloane asked. "She rejected Ray for a one-legged soldier? Is he a Republican, too?"

  "No! Of course not! He's a Democrat."

  "Where is the leg?" inquired Sloane.

  "I have no idea where the leg is, Sloane. This isn't CSI: Miami. I didn't ask where the leg is. Obviously it's gone. It's probably still somewhere in Afghanistan."

  "Chelsea, you said Iraq," Sidney reminded me. "Is this one of your stupid stories? Because it sure sounds stupid."

  "Then ask her!" I yelled, exhausted. "Like I'd make up someone losing their leg."

  A week later Ray moved out to Los Angeles to be the caterer for my show. He had come to learn about Firouz's leg through my sisters and had questions of his own. Sarah was nice enough to invite Ray to her wedding, since he was new to L.A., and when Ray watched Sarah and Firouz dance to their first song, he leaned over and said to Ted, "For a guy with one leg, that guy can really move. Are Iranians known for dancing?"

  It didn't take long for Ted to come over and inform me that not only did he confirm my lie about Firouz's having one leg, but he also took it up a notch and told Ray that Firouz was able to score Heather Mills's old leg on eBay for only fifteen hundred dollars. Not an amazing attempt to corroborate my story, but a v