Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me Read online

  I was shocked. Immediately a flood of memories of the horrible, degrading, and malicious things I had muttered around the halls of Chelsea Lately for the past seven months came rushing back to me. Man, I’d been a major, chauvinistic prick so many times I couldn’t believe it.

  “Nope,” I said, looking straight into Gary’s dark, scary eyes. “Can’t think of anything inappropriate that I’ve ever said, Gary.”

  Hell, yeah, I remembered everything, but I was not about to admit it… and certainly not to a Mercury-driving Armenian. I didn’t know which side Gary was on. For all I knew, Comcast was paying him to try to trap me.

  My stomach dropped and my eyes drifted to the crayon doodles strewn across Gary’s wall that his daughters had drawn. The contrast between the innocence of those pictures and the severity of the moment wasn’t lost on me. Neither was the realization that I, too, would someday have to hang on my office wall the shitty little drawings my kids made.

  “Really, you can’t think of anything you’ve ever said?”

  “No,” I insisted. After a moment of silence, I asked, “Was it Elvira?”

  The lady I was referring to wasn’t actually named Elvira, but it was the name we assigned to the security guard who’d just been fired from the show. She was black, but had these electric blue eyes, and when she spoke, it was with an indistinguishable accent. It was kind of faux-British, but not really. She wore the strangest, witch-like outfits, which made no sense since there was a uniform for security guards. She was fucking creepy. It had to have been her. She was clearly pissed about being let go and wanted retribution. And even though she and I rarely, if ever, spoke, I was loud, outgoing, white, and well known in the office. I was an easy target. “Blame that boisterous fire crotch.” Everyone else did.

  “I can’t say, Brad. Listen, Ted is on his way in to talk with you. We’ll reconvene when he gets here.”

  Shit, this was serious. It was Saturday and Ted, the CEO, was on his way in to dress me down personally? It had gotten that high up already? Immediately my entire career flashed before my eyes. This was it. My stupid mouth was going to cost Comcast millions of dollars to settle this suit, I would be fired, and the entire industry would turn its collective back on me.

  What would I tell my parents? What would I tell my fiancée? How would I earn a living? Did this go on some permanent record? Would I go to prison? I couldn’t go to prison—I’m small, white, and, again, very rape-able.

  After leaving Gary’s office, I lumbered back toward my own office, where Tom and Sue were waiting.

  “You’re never going to believe this,” I said as I walked in. “Someone is suing Comcast for harassment based on something I said.”

  Immediately they peppered me with questions. Who was suing? What had I said? How did I react when Gary told me? What was I going to do? I slinked down in my desk chair and stared off into the distance, pondering my fate.

  “Well, let’s finish writing this stuff,” Sue suggested.

  Had she not heard me when I said that Comcast was being sued by some unidentified loon because of something I’d said? If the tables had been reversed, I would have been a little more concerned with consoling my officemate than making another fucking Lindsay Lohan joke.

  Sue clearly didn’t understand the gravity of this situation. Soon all of the big Comcast executives in Philadelphia—these industry titans—would not only know who I was, but would despise me for costing them millions of dollars. I was toast. Fuck, I was also a Comcast cable subscriber. Would they raise my rates or, worse, drop ESPN from my cable lineup?

  My anxiety was increasing as I kept replaying the conversation with Gary over and over in my head. That’s what compulsives do—we continuously replay the same scenario in our heads, hoping for an alternative resolution or perspective on the event. That’s what compulsives do—we continuously replay the same scenario in our heads. That’s what compulsives do—we continuously replay the same scenario in our heads. We wonder if there was anything we could have done differently. It never helps. We just end up wallowing in our dread. With that, the twitches came roaring back and I was soon making popping noises with my lips.

  I called my fiancée for some consolation. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I get fired, Shannon, but we’ll stick together.” She didn’t admit it, but I could hear the concern and panic in her voice. She was clearly wondering how she’d gotten engaged to such a perverted loose cannon.

  After twenty minutes of sitting in shock, I was jarred to my senses by my office line ringing. It was Gary. “Come down to my office. Chelsea’s here and we want to speak with you.”

  Oh shit. I hadn’t even thought about Chelsea. A new terror was upon me. When Chelsea gets mad, she gets bright red and the veins in her neck flare up, kind of like mine when I have that certain twitch. She, too, looks like a Velociraptor… only redder and with huge breasts. She was clearly going to be pissed. I shuffled back down to Gary’s office, all the while picturing Chelsea yelling, “I fucking told you. You just couldn’t shut your mouth.”

  Gary was in his chair and Chelsea was in one of the two chairs on the opposite side of the desk. Before I could even sit down, Chelsea launched into me.

  “What did you say, Brad?!”

  Yep, there were those veins… and those breasts.

  “I don’t know, Chelsea. I haven’t said anything you haven’t heard. I think whoever this is is just crazy.”

  “You must’ve said something, Brad. These things don’t just come out of nowhere.”

  “I mean, you know we say all kinds of things in the writers’ room.”

  “Well, Ted is on his way down here,” she assured me. “And he is not happy. You’d better start thinking. Never mind this is a Saturday and this is his swimming time. Think, Brad!” Chelsea screamed. “What did you say?”

  I racked my brain. Again, a million things came to my mind, but I was not about to incriminate myself.

  Then Chelsea launched into a barrage of ridiculous questions.

  “Did you ever say that someone had a nice ass?”

  “No,” I insisted.

  “Did you ever ask someone to lift their shirt and show you their breasts?”

  “What? No!”

  “Did you ever tell someone you masturbated thinking about them?”

  “That’s fucking gross, Chelsea. No!”

  And then came the question to end all questions.

  “Brad, did you ever say you wanted to rape someone?”

  For a moment the world stood still. I had to repeat Chelsea’s question in my own head just to make sure I’d heard it correctly.

  “What?!” My face became flushed. “No, I never said I wanted to rape someone, Chelsea!” The truth is, at one time or another, we’ve all said these things to each other.

  “Even as a joke?” Gary added.

  I whipped my head around. “No, Gary, not even as a joke,” I said, even though I knew, for sure, that not only had I been threatened with rape, but I had also threatened a rape. We all threaten each other all the time. But I had never, nor would I ever have, gone up to someone and said, “Hey there, I want to rape you.”

  At this point, I was not sure how any answer I gave would help the situation. If, for some reason, I did admit to telling someone I wanted to rape them, what was Chelsea going to do about it? Probably not a whole hell of a lot. It was safer to deny everything, but I had second thoughts. Maybe, I thought, I’ll admit to one rape comment to make it more believable that I’m denying everything else.

  It was at that point that even Chelsea couldn’t take it anymore. She clearly saw the torment I was going through and had a rare soft moment. She initially presumed—and rightfully so, given my history—that I would go apeshit and throw a childish tantrum and start telling everyone that they could “Fuck off and suck my big, long balls! You can’t bring Brad Wollack down!” Instead, I succumbed to the severity of the situation. No ranting or raving, just quiet panic.

  I was t