Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me - Chelsea's Family, Friends [75]
Linda has never done drugs in her life. Not once. She goes to church on Sundays. So this news floored her. Then Chelsea walked in the room, was informed of the situation at hand, and didn’t miss a beat as she proceeded to make me a cocktail.
Once I figured out what the fuck my Monday had turned into, I had an amazing evening. Thank God for Ms Pac Man.
A VERY BLURRY LINE
We spend a lot of time in Mexico. We like the sun, tequila, and fish tacos. Chelsea loves to spend at least one day at sea on a yacht. Lucky for us she always takes an interesting group of friends along for the ride. Not so lucky for me, on one of these glamorous days she peed on me.
This is me on that day on the boat, pre-urination.
I was sunbathing on the front deck, when Handy came and got me. She said, “Amy, I want to show you something.”
We went to the back of the boat and she told me to sit in the captain’s fishing chair. She climbed up with me and said, “I just wanted to share this beautiful view with you. We are so lucky that we get to live this amazing life and I’m so glad that I get to share it with you.” As she spoke these lovely words, she urinated on me.
That pretty much sums up our beautiful and weird friendship.
This is me contemplating when my life took a wrong turn, post-urination.
I would like to take this opportunity to say that I would only ever urinate on someone I truly adored, and I would only do it pool- or seaside, so we could immediately rinse off… together. When all is said and done, it is a bonding experience, and there is only a handful of people who can say they have been urinated on by me. I take my urination very seriously and am selective about whom I share it with. I also promise never to take it any further than that. Shadoobies are off limits.
I believe the real question here is who are all these people who continue to be friends with me after they’ve been peed on?
—Chelsea
Chapter Eleven
Pubescent and Adolescent Mendacity, 1985–1991
GLEN HANDLER
Chelsea has three older brothers, of whom I’m the youngest.
In the summer of 1974, my parents told me they were “thinking” about having another baby. This was alarming news to me. I was a serious ten-year-old boy and I strongly advised my parents against this idea, because it was clear there were already way too many people in the family, and none of them seemed particularly solvent. My parents smiled politely at my counsel, and my mother, Rita, offered some soothing words of encouragement about how much I’d enjoy another sister or brother, since I had been so helpful and supportive with baby Shoshonna.
Easy for her to say, since it became obvious later that she was already three months knocked up, had no relationship with birth control, and was not “thinking” about having another baby; she was having one. Since I was eleven years old when Chelsea was born, I helped raise her with my mom. My father (aka Platypus) never changed her diaper.
1979, Chelsea on my shoulders in Martha’s Vineyard with Simone, Shana, and our family friend Sam Gaidemak.
Growing up with five much older siblings made Chelsea older through osmosis. She also was forced to think for herself, since no one in our family provided guidance of any kind. Don’t get me wrong. Our family was very loving and nurturing; we just were not in the business of offering one another meaningful counsel on how to navigate the world. Our upbringing was a very comforting, warm, and directionless love-in, but any efforts involving parental guidance and/or social interaction outside the four walls of the house were nonstarters. If you wanted a ride somewhere, to sign up for Little League, or your parents to go to the parent-teacher conference, you were completely out of luck, unless you assumed the role of the parent and became your own parent. So that’s what we did. We were child adults.
Not surprisingly, it was clear early on that Chelsea was advanced beyond her age in terms of sensibility and