Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me - Chelsea's Family, Friends [36]
“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,