Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me - Chelsea's Family, Friends [50]
Go for the joke and then let shit sort itself out afterward. Not always a great trait but, at the very least, it’s entertaining.
By the end of the evening, I had almost forgotten about Chelsea’s story. Since the joke had no real payoff, no big “Ha-ha! Joke’s on you!” ending, I figured that it would just eventually fade away. I was wrong.
Two things I underestimated: Beth’s sudden interest in gambling and Chelsea’s love of fucking with people.
In the house I grew up in, for a prank to be worth it, there had to be a big payoff. Someone believing that you were a gambler when you weren’t wouldn’t have been enough. You would have had to make the other person bet and lose a shitload of cash or pretend to be in debt and hire fake mobsters to come over to the house to collect. Something where there were real consequences or you scared the living shit out of the other person.
But Chelsea is unique. The joy she gets out of even the little things puts her in a class all her own. Even if she has you believing something for only five seconds, it’s fine with her. You can tell someone is truly into practical jokes if they don’t need to be there when the payoff happens. Just the knowledge that it’s going to happen is enough for Chelsea.
Then came our trip to the Bahamas. Chelsea chartered a ridiculous yacht for a group of people for three days. I couldn’t have been more excited about the trip, and didn’t consider for a second that Chelsea would use this as an opportunity to destroy my marriage. Every opportunity she had, she talked to Beth about gambling. How much she was winning, how easy it was for her, how she almost felt bad about “the gift” she had been given, blah, blah, blah. I had to walk away when I heard Chelsea say to Beth, “What’s so crazy about all this is that I have so much good fortune already with the show and my books, and my tour, and then on top of that the universe rewards me with winning almost every bet I make on sports? Obviously someone upstairs is looking out for me.” I couldn’t fucking believe what I was hearing.
I had dug myself a bit of a hole.
If I had told my wife then, in the middle of paradise, at the apex of the nicest, most lavish weekend the two of us had ever been able to spend together, things would have gone downhill very quickly. The questions would have come at me fast and furious. “Why would you do that to me? What else do you lie to me about? How could you choose a joke over your wife?” All valid questions, none of which I had an answer to. I was screwed. You know who wasn’t?
Chelsea.
It wasn’t her responsibility to tell Beth the truth; it was mine. I’ve known Chelsea for ten years, and I’ve seen her pull her nonsense over and over. I’ve seen her persuade a drunk friend of mine whom she’d never met make a toast to a family member of mine he’d never met. I’ve seen her convince a driver in Cincinnati that she was in labor but absolutely needed to get some chicken nuggets from Wendy’s before he dropped us off at the hotel, which—she also convinced him—had a pediatric unit. I’ve seen her convince a child that instead of being able to house children in her womb, she is able to house parakeets and certain reptiles.
It’s usually hilarious to watch when it doesn’t involve you or a loved one. Chelsea has this amazing way of enlisting you in her army. Partly because we love practical jokes and partly because you think that if you’re in on it, you can’t be the butt of it.
In the Bahamas, she was nonstop. Not just with Beth but with everyone. Her love of the five-second joke was