Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me - Chelsea's Family, Friends [76]
Chelsea was six when I left for college at age seventeen, and ten when I graduated at age twenty-one. She visited me at college with the rest of my family and was a little too comfortable hanging out with me and my fraternity brothers at the AEPi fraternity house at Emory University, in Atlanta. It’s always reassuring when your ten-year-old sister very easily flirts with your twenty-one-year-old fraternity brothers, who themselves act as if she’s just a fellow co-ed. It’s even more reassuring when the gaping age difference completely vaporizes the second your sister starts butchering your frat brothers’ hair, clothes, faces, and witless comebacks.
“You know she’s ten years old,” I’d occasionally remind my lecherous university comrades.
“I know, Glen, but I could really see myself going out with her,” said more than one frat brother.
“That’s great, guys,” I said. “Statutory rape has always been underrated.”
I moved back home after college, since my first job was with a CPA firm half a mile from my house. It was a fun place to work. It was full of weirdos, and was not too uptight as workplaces go. There was the usual collection of social misfits who formed the melting pot of mid-1980s New Jersey—lots of Jewish, Italian, and Irish accountants debating the dreadful merits of debits, credits, balance sheet adjustments, and deferred income taxes. Fortunately, most folks had a decent sense of humor, except for one or two born-again Christians and one or two complete pricks.
At this firm, one was required to work Tuesday and Thursday nights and Saturdays during the busy so-called “tax season.” The company provided dinner, so the accountants could quickly get back to churning out tax returns. These extra hours were somewhat flexible and not strictly enforced, so I always went home after the day shift ended, since home was just up the block. I would eat my mother’s cooking, get rid of my suit and tie, and come back in a more reasonable wardrobe: jeans and a T-shirt. Sometimes I would take a nap and come back to work kind of late.
I started bringing then-twelve-year-old Chelsea to the office on those nights, most likely because there certainly was nothing for her to do at home and because I thought she was the perfect party favor for a wretched evening of tax-related drudgery. Naturally she was a huge hit at the office, and she loved it because there was no real supervision, since the partners didn’t work late. She had an instant large audience of mutant adult accountants to insult, and there was free Coca-Cola, which we would eventually wind up stealing by the caseload when we expanded our visits to even more oddball hours.
Chelsea didn’t exactly befriend people as much as steal coins from their desks, insult the introverts and the socially awkward, and entertain anyone whom she wasn’t insulting. Typical of the conversations she had with the staff were the following:
CLOSETED HOMOSEXUAL AND AWKWARD ACCOUNTANT STAN ISAACSON (after being introduced to Chelsea): Well, it was nice meeting you.
CHELSEA: I wish I could say the same… Why would you ever choose to be an accountant?
SI: It’s what I do best and I enjoy it… Why are you so obnoxious?
CHELSEA: It’s what I do best and I enjoy it… Now, moving along, did you dress yourself this morning or did your mother pick out your clothes, because you look ridiculous.
SI: Glen, what’s up with your dick of a sister?
CHELSEA: Oh, did I hurt your feelings?
SI: I don’t have to put up with this nonsense.
CHELSEA: No, you don’t… but you will and you’ll enjoy it.
SI: Get your little sister out