Jenny & Teets

12th Feb 2012 | 7 notes

When Sloppy Seconds Become BFFS

WHEN PEOPLE ASK HOW I KNOW MY FRIEND KATE, I’ll tell them we dated the same guy. After several cryptic minutes of me giggling uncontrollably, I’ll usually break down and tell them the real story.

In my early twenties, my best friend Chad Gervich tried to set me up with this guy, Johnny, he knew from work. He told me the two of us were exactly alike and would hit it off the moment we met. I was intrigued. Chad typically hated the idea of me with any man. It took away from my time being the stand-in for his out-of-town girlfriend, who was dating another guy and not returning his phone calls. I knew if Chad was willing to doff off his beard, this guy must be worth it. I agreed to meet him.

After a few days of silence from Chad, I called him.

“What the fuck? I thought you were setting me up with my soul mate?”

“Yeah. Well, turns out he’s dating someone and it just kind of got serious.”

“So a week ago he was willing to be set up and now he’s in something serious? I don’t get it.”

“Well,” Chad said, “he bought her a Christmas present.”

“Alright. So he has a girlfriend,” I said.

“He still said he’d love to hang out as a group one night, though.”

Ew. Fuck this guy! He thinks I’m fucking desperate enough to go out under the pretense of ‘hanging with a couple of friends’ just to meet him?

“Tell this guy to suck a dick! Also, I’m really offended you would think I’m anything like this douche.”

“What do you mean? Meeting someone while you have a boyfriend is totally a you move! You’re like the queen of the accidental date!”

I hung up on him.

For the next two months, every action I took was a strategic move to make Johnny throw himself off a bridge. I didn’t even know this guy but I needed his face to be smashed into a million pieces while my 7 foot tall smile looked down on him from a giant billboard in the sky. This was the first time in my life I was being rejected by someone I’d never met. According to my father, I was the catch of the century. A Goddamn debutante! And this fucking guy thought he could just pass on ever knowing me altogether? “I hope he dies in a grease fire,” I thought.

Six months later, Chad called me from work. He was sitting next to Johnny who’d just seen my epic turn on the Lucy Vanous vehicle, 18 Wheels of Justice. Johnny was apparently single now and suggested the three of us go out to dinner.

“Well, well, well. Look who decided to come groveling back,” I thought. I told Chad I’d need to check my schedule and get back to him. And then I did a victory jig around my apartment.

“See Douchnozzel, this is what happens when you play out of your league!” I screamed at the mirror, imagining it was Johnny.

An hour later, I called back and agreed to dinner. I changed my outfit three times before meeting them at a Mexican restaurant in West Hollywood. My goal in going definitely wasn’t to date Johnny; it was solely to make him spend the rest of his life on earth wishing he’d dated me. Then the unexpected happened.

I met Johnny and instantly realized he wasn’t some cocky asshole trying to Neil Strauss me into liking him. He was a total dork. This awkwardly tall, socially inept video game nerd was fueling my deviant behavior for absolutely no fucking reason. The dinner was innocuous and the conversation light. “I must have gone home with at least three guys in an attempt to spite you!” I thought to myself while watching him show Chad a wizard trick with his straw.

Once we finished, Johnny asked if I could drive him home. Reveling in the fantasy that he didn’t have a car, I obliged. This poor, innocent, fool needed my compassion. Sure, he was relatively good-looking, and had a job far more stable than mine but that was no reason for me to like him. I needed to have nothing to do with Johnny. I’d made the point that I was irreverent, engaging, and adorable and now it was time for him to never see or hear from me again. Unless of course it was on TV and I was riding Brad Pitt naked in lighting that made my boobs look less like penne pasta noodles.

When we pulled up to his place, he invited me inside. His apartment was clean and sensibly decorated. Knowing I wasn’t there to hook up with him, I didn’t do my usual excuse myself to the bathroom and check out all his prescription drugs routine. Instead, I just plopped down on his couch and requested a drink.

Two drinks and two hours later I had to make a decision: Drive home or take pity on this guy and at least let him kiss me. Sitting on the far end of the opposite couch, I knew there was no way in hell this fragile bird was going to make the first move. I stood up and told him I needed to get going. But what I felt like saying was, “Hey, Dickwich, you have a hot chick in your apartment, I doubt this happens much! Maybe you should try to take advantage of the opportunity.”

Johnny extended his hand like a gentleman and asked if he could walk me out. I couldn’t take these shenanigans any longer so I grabbed his face and stuck my tongue in his mouth.

At that exact moment, his phone rang.

“It’s probably your girlfriend calling,” I whispered.

His answering machine responded before he could.

“Hey Johnny, It’s Kate. Remember when you came your initials on my chest? I’m just listening to the Strokes and thinking about how we used to fuck all the time to this album. I’m sooooo wet right now.” Beeeeeep.

“The fuck!? Did I just hear that correctly?”

“I. Um. Wow. I swear I haven’t spoken to that person in at least—”

“Who has sex to the Strokes?” I asked, utterly thrown.

My entire perception of Johnny changed again. If he had crazy sex with this girl and she’s still calling for more, maybe he wasn’t such a prude. Maybe there was a side to him he’s not sharing. And just like that, with a few X-rated sentences, Kate gave Johnny all the game he was lacking. I slept with him that night not because I genuinely wanted to but because I wanted whatever it was Kate had.

“Who has sex to the Strokes?” I asked, utterly thrown.

After dating Johnny for thirty days, I slowly came to the conclusion that Kate must have been heavily intoxicated and had zero other male contacts in her Rolodex when she drunk dialed that night. Johnny was as vanilla in the bedroom as he was in real life: Not once did he offer to come his initials anywhere near my tits.

In the twilight of our relationship we went to a group dinner at a mutual friends’ house where Kate had also been invited. I walked into the house nervous and wishing I’d had a professional do my makeup. Kate was there, sitting in the living room, practically glowing. She was beautiful, charming, and ecstatic to meet me. As soon as our eyes met, she jumped up and ran over. Before saying a word, she handed me a package. I opened it to find a CD. It was the Strokes. Written in black sharpie across the cover was a note: “Not wet anymore. Just mortified!”

“I think I love you,” I blurted.

It turns out I was right about Kate’s drunken stupor. She had no recollection of making the phone call and only learned about it when Johnny told her the story later.

I spent the rest of the evening not with Johnny but gamming it up in a corner with Kate. She was me, if I’d gone to law school and actually did something meaningful with my life.

“Maybe Chad did introduce me to a soul mate after all,” I said to Johnny when I broke up with him on the drive home.

26th Jan 2012 | 6 notes

When your Dog Shits Condoms… (that aren’t yours)

I was never big on having roommates, especially ones who refused to lie to my parents about my whereabouts. So for the majority of my twenties, it was just my poodle, Mr. Teets and I. Then I ran out of money. I needed to downsize my lifestyle.

My second cousin, Herschel was also in the market for a roommate. He and I were a year apart in school, both went to UCLA, and had ABSOLUTELY nothing in common. While Herschel graduated and immediately got into the world of investment banking, I spent the majority of my days convincing foreign people on Craig’s List that I was an English as a second language teacher. When they’d come to my house, I’d request twenty bucks, then spend an hour making them read aloud scenes I needed to prepare for that week’s auditions.

When Herschel brought up the idea of living together, I laughed. Hershel was an Orthodox Jew with zero hot friends and way too many Phish Cds. The idea of us cohabitating sounded more boring than a Sophia Coppola film. With time however, I started to see the upside to his proposition. I was an overeducated, unemployed actress and the only man in my life was neutered. Herschel had a stable job, no sex life he could throw in my face, and zero interest in stealing any of my clothes.

Gradually, he got used to my speaking to Teets in German and I got used to hiding bacon in my bedroom. We were like the odd couple. He was the left brained mathematical genius who taught me how to tip at restaurants (by leaving only 10%) and I was the right brained artist type who exposed him to his first painting of a girl being unintentionally fucked in the ass.

Teets had come to know him as “Der Juden” and me, “The Best Roommate Ever”. Then, in early spring, an incident occurred which changed our dynamic forever.

My sister Pam and I took Teets to the Gove, an outdoor mall on the eastside of town. Teets trotted along beside us as we browsed from shop to shop.

When Teets was a baby, I taught him to only poop in beds of ivy. Not only did this make him look like a regal little gentleman, it also saved me the need to ever carry bags to clean up after him. As my sister and I exited Victoria’s secret and headed towards Nordstroms, Teets notified us that he needed a restroom. He pulled me towards an immaculate flowerbed in the center square. Knowing I’d get arrested if I let him dive into the pansies, I reined him in and continued walking. I figured he could stave off whatever needed to happen until we could tuck into a more discrete location.

Weighing in at a whopping nine pounds, eleven ounces, Teets looks like a curly, brown Fraggle with the face of Richard Dreyfuss circ. What about Bob. In other words, a KID MAGNET. My sister was blathering on about why Asian girls are so skinny when out of nowhere a little girl jumped out and started practically strangling Teets.

“ Mommy, look at the puppy!” She exclaimed.

Teets looked up at me for help. I answered the typical series of questions as I pried the little girl’s arms off his torso.

“ He’s two. Yup, a poodle, I know, he has human eyes, right?” I said.

The next question came as a shock to me, my sister and every other mall patron.

“ What’s coming out of his butt?” The little girl asked.

I looked down at Teets who was staring straight at me as, what looked like a fucking shit strangled CONDOM made it’s way out his little asshole.

“The Fuck?” My sister screamed.

The mother quickly ushered her daughter away as I tried to pull Teets off the condom he’d just passed. The problem however, was that it was stuck to his curly Q ass hair. My sister started hyperventilating as she attempted to block me from oncoming passers by. I picked Teets up and rushed him to the nearest trashcan where I proceeded to shake him vigorously waiting for the condom to drop. It didn’t. I made a mental note to remember this if I was ever cast as a baby shaking au pair.

“ Just so you know, everyone at this mall thinks you are the biggest whore right now,” my sister explained.

“ I’m not even having sex! Just hand me a receipt or something I can use to pull the rest of it out of him,” I barked.

My sister rummaged through her purse and pulled out a tampon.

“ Really? This is the best you can do.” I asked.

“ You’re lucky I’m still standing here being seen with you,” she replied.

I folded the tampon into make shift tongs and gingerly extracted the rest of the digested rubber.

Teets looked up at me guiltily. He knew that I knew that he knew better than to eat semen, especially, when that semen didn’t belong to someone I was fucking.

I was overcome with emotion. Was my dog a drug mule? Did he have Aids? Why don’t I have a boyfriend?

Before I could answer any of these questions, Teets was shitting again! Yet another condom plopped on the ground.

Mortified, my sister loudly stated that it was just ringworm and grabbed the mangled feces sculpture with her bare hands.

Gripping the latex turd, she made a beeline for her car.

We drove Teets to the Vet where he was X-rayed and a final condom was discovered. The Doctor gave him some laxatives and told me to call if I didn’t see #3 in his #2 later that evening.

That evening, the condom smuggler and I returned to our apartment to find Hershel standing in my bedroom holding one of my bathing suits.

“Hey, can I help you?” I said, curious.

“ Oh, I was just returning this. Becca, needed something to wear in the hot tub so…”

“Becca?”

“ The girl I’ve been seeing. Wanna meet her?”

Hershel escorted me into his room where I saw a hot Playboyesque model on all fours in his bathroom.

“ Someone got into your trash, Hersh,” she said without looking up.

Instantly, I knew what had happened and I didn’t like it. Hershel was having sex. While, his super fun, “always mistaken for a Shiksa” second cousin and her cum dumpster hound were celibate!

“ Teets has been eating all your discarded condoms, so maybe try not leaving them in the trash” I said as politely as possible.

As I watched Teets hatch Hershel’s final sperm baby dream catcher, I thought about how foolish I’d been. Hershel was an amazing guy with a million things going for him if you didn’t know he liked Phish. There was no reason he shouldn’t be sexually active. I was being shallow and judged him unfairly. Had anything happened to threaten Teets’ physical wellbeing I would have of course murdered him with my bare hands.

But it didn’t.

Teets was fine with perhaps even stronger nails and better skin.

I fucked my stepbrother a week later.

25th Jan 2012 | 4 notes

KIDNAPPING CAITLYNN: The story of how my husband and I met.

25th Jan 2012 | 4 notes

BLOOD ON THE COUCH: A Tale of Making a Good first Impression

AS AN ACTOR, you spend your life in Hollywood playing the lottery and hoping to hear your number called. You do the one-off guest appearances you hope will make a splash all over the USA network. You make out with Steve Carell for a few days in an attempt to steal the scene in a movie nobody except your agent will ever know you were in. You fight tooth and nail to be viewed as a comedic actress, a dramatic actress, a young actress, a black actress, or a toothless mother of six with a meth problem who can speak to ghosts. You ride the vicissitudes of fortune because you’re steadfast in the belief that someday, someone is bound to take notice.

I consider myself one of the most ‘almost–hired’ actresses in the business. I’ve been inches away from a shitload of jobs that could have changed the course of my life, and watched them slip through my fingers, often for the most arbitrary of reasons. With each disappointment I’ve been expected to muster up the self-respect to move on gracefully and pretend to be happy for someone who’s usually a total cuntbag and who wouldn’t have gotten a background role in my high school production of Pippin. But I digress.

Driven to the point of insanity, I wrote a script. And in what felt like overnight, a bunch of really important people suddenly gave a fuck about what I had to say. For the first time in my career, I was creating my own opportunities. Finally, I felt a sense of control.

I decided to collaborate with a super high-powered producer, let’s call him Stephan Speilbergson.

The first notes session of my career happened the Monday before winter break. I prepped by trying on a bunch of different ‘writer’ looks in my closet. I wanted to make certain I conveyed the proper message: Hard-working, light-hearted, but damaged enough to have a good time with. The actor in me settled on all black, allowing Stephan and Co. the freedom to project whatever bullshit they wanted onto me.

Our pow-wow took place at Stephan’s swanky production company. Joining Stephan in the notes session were his two development execs, Cosmo and Rico. The four of us sat in Stephan’s pristine, all-white, rich guy office and talked shop. Cosmo and I sat on a chenille loveseat while Stephan and Rico rocked back and forth in matching mid-century Eames bucket chairs.

At one point, Cosmo’s pen fell from his pocket and landed on Stephan’s virgin cushions. “Cosmo, your pen! It just fell out! Don’t let that thing bleed all over my couch,” cautioned Stephan.

Cosmo grabbed the pen, secured the cap and stuffed it back in his slacks. We continued on for another hour-and-a-half of story ideas. I was having the time of my life. For the last decade, the Stephan Speilbergsons of the world knew me only as one of two things: The non-famous choice who is never getting approved by the studio, or Jason Biggs’ wife who shows up on set and eats all the Zone Bars. I was full of confidence, teeming with new ideas and grinning ear-to-ear when it was finally time to go.

Cosmo and Rico left the room first. Stephan continued talking as I gathered my belongings and tried to remain hilarious, competent, and less of a hot mess than the heroine I’d written in my movie. Then I saw something that made my face go white. I’d say as white as Stephan’s couch, except it wasn’t so white anymore. It was red. Vagina blood red. My period had leaked its way past my super-absorbency tampon, through my jeans, and into the fibers of Stephan’s upholstery.

This can’t be real, I thought. The whole time Stephan was worrying about Cosmo’s pen going ballistic and ruining his immaculate sofa, I was sitting right next to him, I was sitting right next to him, HEMORRHAGING ALL OVER HIS GODDAMN SOFA.

I assessed the situation and deduced that I only had three options: Blame Cosmo, jump out the window (more blood), or confess. I paused to work out the logistics of Cosmo being on the rag when Stephan asked if I was okay. Impulsively, I threw my purse over the pancake-sized pool of blood and charged him.

“Stephan, listen to me,” I said, holding him by both arms against a picture frame collection of him and Adam Sandler doing body shots off each other in Maui.

“I… I really don’t know how to tell you this and I’m super mortified, but I bled on your couch,” I stuttered.

Stephan looked confused and started scanning me for violent wounds. As a writer, I reminded myself, it’s important to be direct in your communication.

“I got my period all over your couch!” I restated, settling any doubt in his mind that my main character and I were THE EXACT SAME PERSON.

“Umm. Well… Don’t worry about it,” he said, craning his head to see the stain.

Did he think I was actually going to leave the building with what looked like a minor miscarriage hanging out in his office?

“Stephan, you have to go!” I whispered.

“What? Where? This is my office.”

“Anywhere!” I shrieked, now pushing him out of the room.

“My assistant Mark can help you,” he offered, acquiescing. He called out to Cosmo and Rico in the adjacent room, “Come on guys, we’re going to lunch.”

“Bon appétit!” was really all I could think to say as I hovered over the Rorschach test I was about to give Mark, the assistant.

Once all three men left, Mark walked in. “Why are you still here?” he said with one part curiosity, one part ‘I work for fucking Stefan Speilbergson’ arrogance.

“You’re not gonna be happy,” I managed to spit out, my face all sweaty. “I… do you have soap, water, sponges…”

“Oh, you spilled your coffee?” he asked, sounding like he’d won fucking Jeopardy.

“Not exactly….” I said. “I’m bleeding.”

“From where?” he asked, still not getting it.

“My pussy!” I shouted, freaked we weren’t moving fast enough.

Mark looked at the couch, threw up a little in his mouth, and made a beeline for the kitchen. He returned seconds later with a bottle of hand sanitizer.

“I’m not gonna touch you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said.

“Look, I’ll help you but know that I’m gay and have the luxury of never dealing with bloody vag, so if maybe you could just deal with the mess and I’ll flip the cushions, we can figure this thing out, okay? By the way, aren’t you a little old to not be in control of your own period?”

I contemplated smearing menstrual blood all over his smug little face Last Mohican-style, but decided against it, since I did still hope to work in the film industry after this incident.

After scrubbing the shit out of the crime scene like a coke-addled Lady Macbeth, I thanked Mark and tiptoed to the bathroom to hose myself off. I looked like I’d just gotten off a shift at the Hormel slaughterhouse.

I lunged into the nearest stall, yanked the saturated tampon out of my body and dropped it into the toilet. My relief lasted only as long as it took me to read the small sign positioned eye level on the back of the stall door.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES EVER THROW TAMPONS IN THIS TOILET. WE WILL FIND YOU AND HOLD YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MASSIVE PLUMBING DAMAGE DONE AS A RESULT OF YOUR CALLOUS INDISCRETION, YOU CUNT BITCH.

Holy shit! I can’t flush my tampon! Stephan has an all-male office. It’s going to be so obvious whose period ruined Christmas! Left with no choice, I held my breath, pulled up my left sleeve and reached into the bowl to fish out my now water-logged blood baby. Half-drenched in my own urine and the entire production company’s DNA, I dropped the pon in the trash, and fled.

On my way home, my lit agent called to ask how the meeting went.

“Things were good. I felt like they had a lot of great ideas, I got my period on them, I think most of the changes will be easy to make, I’m gonna re-outline, and let’s see… I guess that’s it!” I said.

The line was dead for a minute. Then there was some insane coughing. I think she was dying on the other side. Finally, she responded by assuring me everything was fine and not to worry.

I sent Stephan a couple bottles of wine with a simple note that read, “I got you red. You know, to match your couch. LOL.”

Still haven’t heard from him.

Acting is hard but writing can be downright disgusting. I guess no matter what happens, I achieved the sought-after goal of making a LASTING impression on a big shot Hollywood producer—at least until he gets a new couch.

So seriously, though. When do you think I’m gonna hear from him?

25th Jan 2012 | 5 notes

YOU WERE MOLESTED!

When does a practical joke go too far? After four years married to my husband, I’ll admit my gauge is a bit off. In our house the rule is: nothing is off limits, as long as it’s funny. That being said, we’re also the couple that thinks jokes about our miscarried child are HILARIOUS and TOTALLY APPROPRIATE at dinner parties with women less than three months pregnant.

It probably won’t come as a shock that sometimes our humor gets us in deep shit. My favorite example of a practical joke gone awry is the molestation prank we played on my sister Pam last year.

It started at our house one Friday night in September. Jason, his sister Chiara and his hot lesbian friend Neveen were in town from New York and staying the weekend. We ordered take-out from three different restaurants because nobody could make a decision and proceeded to get stoned off our asses.

After dinner, Jason made fun of my lack coordination on our newly installed strip pole, then proceeded to choreograph a routine he believed could easily win him a mirror ball on “Dancing with the Stars”. In response, I decided to whip out his high school yearbook to remind him that he’d married up. This seemed less time consuming than using his beard trimmers to shave profanities on the dogs, something that happened the last time I was angry and stoned.

After an hour of standing in the garage trying to remember why the fuck I left the house in only a workout bra and boxer shorts, I honed in on a bin of old albums. Opening it, I realized they were mine. Earlier that year, my mom had given my sister and me all our childhood photos as a gift. (Code for: had no use for them in her new condo.) (Code for: didn’t love us.)

Waylaid by my own cuteness, I carried the ten-pound bin back into the house and started going through it. The alarming thing about these albums wasn’t seeing my parents married, happy and seemingly not about to make skin suits out of each other’s sun damaged bodies, but the obvious absence of my sister, Pam. There were no shots of her anywhere! I felt like Michael J. Fox in “Back to the Future,” but was entirely too stoned to make it to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance in time to affect any real change! From the look of these pics I was OFFICIALLY an only child. I can just picture my mom plopped in front of the TV with her wine and Triscuits, emotionlessly sorting through the first decade of our lives like trading cards. What a weirdo.

After enough digging, I finally found photographic proof of Pam’s existence. Relieved, I held up a faded 4×6 of Pam sitting in a rocking chair with our great Grandpa Earl. He seemed serene, while Pam on the other hand, looked scared to death. I guess it makes sense since Grandpa Earl was a molester.

Well, I’m not certain he ever really molested anybody, but his brother Marvin down in Texas did!

As children we always heard the stories of weird Uncle Marvin who went to jail for inappropriate behavior with his children and grandchildren. Details were never expounded upon because this was the Goyim side of my family that didn’t like to deal with things like facts or reality. Suffice to say, he was a scary fucking dude.

For as long as I knew him, Grandpa Earl had no teeth and whenever he kissed you, your mouth would inevitably collapse into his. I never saw him wear anything but overalls and his welder’s hands were swollen from years of hard labor- and (probably) molesting. He never tried anything on me that I’d consider outrageous but he had this vibe that just made you feel like he was undressing you with his creepy grandpa eyes. His daughter, my Grandma Betty was the kind of hot mess who stored TV Guides in her oven, rarely showered, and claimed she was super Christian whenever she wasn’t drunk on her couch watching Cinemax. Earl’s late wife, my Grandma Irene carried a revolver in her kitchen apron and slept on the floor between Pam and me every time we spent the night. Because of this, I was always certain of two things: 1. Grandpa Earl was a molester and 2. Pam and I were NEVER molested. Over the years, especially after Grandpa Earl passed, I’d try and bait my mom into admitting something, anything that might incriminate him. Unfortunately, she never cracked, and to this day, my mom insists Grandpa Earl was a good man. BOOORRRIINNG.

Under any other circumstances, finding this photo of Pam and Grandpa Earl wouldn’t have meant much. However, I was stoned and around people I deem the worst influence ever.

I donned my best narrator voice, like Burl Ives in the claymation version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer—who, incidentally, I also always suspected of being a molester and told the tale of Grandpa Earl. I finished my story by pointing out how this innocuous snapshot could be the photographic evidence I’d long been waiting for. Knowing full well that this was of course not the case, the four of us erupted into laughter.

“ You guys, how funny would it be if I sent this picture to Pam anonymously telling her she was molested?” I joked.

“Oh my God! That’s hilarious” Chiara instantly replied.

“Wait, was she?” Jason asked.

“No! Of course not! But it’s an inside joke. She’ll know I sent it, but how funny?” I answered.

For the next two hours the four of us worked on rough drafts of the letter we’d send Pam. Mine started:

Dear Pam, I am the woman who took this photo. You were molested. Love, A Silent Neighbor

Neveen opted for a more friendly approach:

Hey Girl, longtime no talk. Hope you’re well. PS. You were molested. Mall this weekend?

Jason meanwhile, went with the trusty stick figure explanation.

He drew two people then an arrow to each. The first said: “You” the second said: “ Me molesting you”

We were crying from laughing so hard. I pulled out a feminine set of pink Crane’s stationary and made Chiara write the note. After much debate, she decided my draft sounded the least abrasive. We folded the photo inside the envelope, sealed it, and drove to the nearest mailbox. Under the blanket of night, the letter was sent and subsequently forgotten.

Two days later, Chiara and I had lunch in Century City. My phone was on vibrate but I could feel it going ballistic in my purse. I picked it up and heard Pam on the other end.

“Jenny! Oh My God! Are you sitting down?” she said heavily.

Initially, I didn’t realize why she was calling.

“Did you get a letter in the mail today?” she asked.

That’s when it hit me. Grabbing Chiara’s thigh, I started to panic.

“No… why?” I said.

“I walked out to get the mail this morning and I opened this cute little envelope I thought was a thank you note and guess what it said? It said I was molested by Grandpa Earl!” she screamed.

I had to cover the phone with my hand as I doubled over in my seat, laughing uncontrollably. Pulling myself together, I reengaged.

“Well, were you?” I asked earnestly.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Of course I wasn’t! You know that!” she exclaimed.

Chiara motioned for me to give her the phone.

“Pam, Chiara wants to talk to you” I managed to blurt out.

Chiara got on the phone and my sister explained how after opening the letter, she popped two Xanax, called the police, and turned the note over to them for analysis. What I forgot in my weed-induced haze was that my sister was in the middle of a lawsuit against her fiancé’s crazy ex- girlfriend.

The girl had broken into Pam’s house more than once, stealing photos, art and various personal belongings. My sister had been unsuccessful in obtaining a restraining order because the suspect was blonde, white and under 100lbs. Convinced they hadn’t heard the last of this wacko, Pam and her fiancé had been quick to act on their suspicion and had notified the cops. It hadn’t even occurred to her that I was the ONLY person on the planet, including our mother, that would have access to photos of her as a child. In her tormented head she assumed the ex must have broken in, gone through her baby books and conjured up this ridiculous tale to fuck with her.

She ranted for a few more minutes before I interrupted.

“Are you seriously not putting this together? Who else has the inside joke with you that Grandpa Earl was a molester? I probed.

“What? I don’t have any inside joke about Grandpa Earl being a molester” she said plainly.

Was she serious? Had I imagined all of it? No way! Maybe she blocked it out? She did have a knack for revisionism.

“Am I the only one who has any recollection of our childhood? That was always what we said. Remember, with his weird toothless mouth kisses?” I went on.

“Jenny, you are really fucking sick. Did you send me this letter?” she barked.

“OBVIOUSLY!” I cried.

The line went dead almost immediately. Pam hung up and didn’t speak to me for a full week after that. Her fiancé, Larry called once or twice trying to smooth things over but to no avail. Pam was furious I’d duped her in such a dark way. Later we heard the police report ended up reading something like:

“No break in, just an asshole sister.”

A month later, over dinner, Pam finally confronted me in person.

“Who does that? I mean, I knew you were sick but I never thought you were THAT sick!” she said.

The worst part was, every time she tried explaining how “unfunny” it was, Jason and I would start giggling. Hearing it again, as told by Pam only seemed to make it funnier.

Galvanizing my sister’s temporary descent into madness was of course NEVER my intention. In retrospect, I guess I should have been more sensitive. But being sensitive is just so annoying. What I really learned from this event (beyond what not to say to my sister), was how lucky I am to be with a man where nothing is verboten! There’s a freedom and ease to our relationship that before this, I think I took for granted. From now on, all my molestation jokes will be directed at Jason… someone who, I know, can appreciate them.

25th Jan 2012 | 2 notes

The Third Time I Had Sex: A Tale of Dolphins, Discotheques, and Imaginary Babies

This isn’t a story about the first time I had sex. This isn’t even a story about the second time I had sex. This is the story of the third time I had sex and it isn’t hot.

Bruno was a German exchange student at my high school. The first time I saw him I thought he was some weird vampire hybrid. His skin was transparent. He had super long nails on his right hand and fairly sensible nails on his left. His hair hit his shoulders, but he wore it in a bun. Most days he’d opt for a dark black blazer and white jeans with a small leather fanny pack for his cigarillos. This guy was euro trashed to the max. In my wildest dreams I NEVER EVER thought I would fuck him. He was obnoxious and disgusting, and he always smelled like ham. The day he left to go back to his motherland, I assumed, would be the last time I’d ever lay eyes on him. I was wrong.

Three years later, I was studying with the University of Berkley in Paris. I was nineteen years old, about to be twenty, and in Europe for the first time. Everything about Paris was romantic! I’d sit in cafes and write in my journal for hours about how much I hated my parents and how I held capitalism responsible for my anorexia. During my stay, I made a handful of acquaintances, but for the most part I hated all the “Obnoxious Americans” I found myself surrounded by.

One afternoon, sitting at a park in the sixth arrondissement pretending to be Gertrude Stein, I noticed a phone number on the back of a card in my journal. Having never been in Europe before, I didn’t know until getting there what European phone numbers even looked like. The card was from this tool from high school, Bruno! He was a classical guitarist, hence the long nails and this was some sort of flyer from a performance he thought I would give a shit about. Why this card was in my journal three years later, I still have no fucking idea.

Anyone who’s ever been abroad knows that sense of loneliness that starts to creep in after a month or so. Suddenly, I started to look at this telephone number differently. “Maybe I should reach out. It’s been three years. People change. Who knows, maybe he’s hot now” I thought. Having nothing to lose and becoming more than a little curious, I went to a payphone in my hotel lobby and placed the call.

The phone beeped for three long beats before a woman answered on the other end. She spoke German and at the time my only foreign language was French. I tried to explain who I was, but it was no use. We struggled back and forth for several minutes before she said something and hung up. Then, seconds later the payphone started ringing. Apprehensive, I picked it up.

“Hello” I managed to spit out.

“Jen. It’s Bruno. How are you?” he said.

His accent was thick but not quite as German as I remembered. There was a newfound sophistication to him. The more he spoke, the more I felt the old Bruno fade, giving way to an erudite, worldly young man. He asked if I had plans for the weekend and suggested we meet up in Munich. Overwhelmed by his aggressiveness, I agreed. What the fuck was I doing?

I listened to Bjork and pictured myself in the “State of Emergency” music video the entire nine-hour ride to Munich. It was pitch black when the train pulled into the station. “Ach Ich Ich Ick Ack Euch…” was all I heard blaring on loud speakers through the terminal. I translated this to mean, “ Greetings Jew-spawn! We killed your ancestors and now with the help of Bruno, you too have been lured back to the slaughter! Danke, Bruno!”

As my anxiety mounted, I started to walk faster. Suddenly, a hand reached out and touched the back of my shoulder. I turned around to see a mini Joseph Fiennes smiling at me with a bouquet of daisies in his hand. Bruno was now a man. His hair was cut short and his face was clean shaved save for two thin strips of muttonchops framing his cherubic jaw. His nails were still longer than mine, which I was happy to overlook as long as the white jeans didn’t reappear.

We spent two nights together in Munich and did little more than kiss. He told me about how he was getting a Masters in Economics in Germany while simultaneously getting a Masters in Classical Guitar in Yugoslavia, his parents’ native country. This explained his evolving accent. He went on to tell me about getting stuck in Belgrade when Clinton decided to drop bombs on Milosevic to galvanize his withdrawal from Kosovo. He talked about the German Embassy vanishing and having to escape by boat through Hungary with a fake passport in the middle of the night. Bruno considered Americans arrogant and ignorant of the world outside their, as he put it, “little island.” Hypnotized by his conviction, I never wanted to set foot on American soil again. I wanted to run away with Bruno and right every wrong ever inflicted upon anyone ever! This was intense shit and there was nothing left to do but embrace it fully.

“I’m ashamed of my country and I want to be with you forever!” I cried as he put me on a train bound for Paris.

Seconds later, he jumped on the train, grabbed me again and made out with me until we reached Stuttgart.

“When will I see you?” he screamed from the platform, waving his fanny pack.

“Soon!” I promised.

Back in Paris I looked at all the American college boys and scoffed. I thought about how prosaic their lives were. What war did they ever find themselves stuck in? Bruno and I transcended summer love bullshit. Together we were going to save the world. You’re welcome!

After my studies ended, I took the first train out of Paris to Mannheim, Germany. Bruno, along with his parents, greeted me when I arrived. We went back to Bruno’s house (yes he still lived with his parents) and had cake. Neither of his parents spoke English so the conversation was mainly just a series of head nods and giggles. As the night drew to a close, Bruno’s mother escorted me to Bruno’s bedroom, which she tidied up with new sheets and bedding. She tucked us into bed and turned out the lights as she left. Maybe this isn’t totally fucking weird. Maybe in Europe all twenty- year-old men live with their parents and get tucked into bed at night by their mothers. Oedipal? Maybe, but I didn’t care. I was too caught up in the idea of Bruno, the brooding musician who caused me to forsake my homeland and question everything I ever believed in. I wasn’t going to let a little infantilizing dissuade me.

That night, with his parents mere feet away, Bruno and I made love. It was unique for several reasons.

He wasn’t circumcised. His penis looked like a normal penis wearing a skin turtleneck.
He had a tramp stamp tattoo just above his ass of a dolphin jumping into a cluster of stars.
I was apparently Bruno’s first.

This was the first, and only, virginity I’ve ever stolen. To be honest, I wasn’t experienced enough myself to even notice. It’s what came after that turned me off of virgins forever.

Bruno and I spent the next day walking around Heidelberg with our tongues stuck eight inches down each others’ throat. Like two dancers, we only broke hold for bathroom breaks and refueling. As dusk settled over the city, Bruno seemed to be growing more and more anxious. Dear God, was I right about him all those years ago? Was he going through “the change”? Holy shit! Just like Buffy and Angel, our consummation was morphing him back into the monster! I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to keep my cool. Sweat was pouring down this guy’s face every time we made eye contact. Later, we met up with some of his friends at a discothèque where he slammed back a couple beers and seemed to relax. As the night drew to a close, we walked out to his car to leave. Just as we were about to pull away, he stopped the car and jumped out. I sat there confused as he bolted back into the club. Through the front entrance I could see him talking frantically to one of his friends. He returned to the car with his friend, Leo. Bruno pulled his seat up and Leo contorted into the micro-backseat. They mumbled back and forth in hushed tones for several minutes before addressing me directly.

“We have to go to the hospital,” Bruno said.

“Wha- Why? For who?” I asked, scared.

“For you.” He stoically replied.

“I’m sorry, what the fuck are you talking about?” I thought. Then I heard Leo say something like “Meine Mutter is eine Krankenschwester komm doch mal vorbei.”

I didn’t speak German. What was happening? Do I have AIDS? Is my boyfriend a succubus? Would I eventually look like a total cougar hanging around an undead with crazy side burns who never ages?

The next fifteen minutes were the most embarrassing of my life.

Leo accompanied us to a small house mere blocks away. He walked in front of us and greeted the woman standing in the doorway, who I eventually gleaned was his mother. More German was exchanged as she appraised me like a piece of meat. The only thing preventing me from having a panic attack was my overinflated ego telling me that I was DEFINITELY the hottest chick this lady had ever seen Bruno with. I took my sweater off to let this bitch see what happens to a waistline deprived of Nutella. Finally, Bruno explained that Leo’s mom was a nurse and they were inquiring where we could find some morning after pills. Excuse me? This lady is only assessing me because she thinks I‘m some irresponsible whore bag?

Apparently, Bruno was concerned that he’d knocked me up! And now, apparently, everyone in his God damned village was becoming concerned that he’d knocked me up.

When you can’t speak a language the impression you make on others is really determined by how your translator presents you. And my translator was presenting me like a fucking asshole.

“But you wore a condom and didn’t even cum inside me!” I explained.

“Jen, women can get pregnant with what happens first, ‘before cum’, you know?” he said, condescendingly.

“You get that I can’t get pregnant through my mouth, yes?” I asked.

Bruno didn’t find my cavalier attitude funny. He insisted we go to a pharmacy the next morning for as he put it, a “baby killing pill.” I don’t know if it was my exhaustion or the fact that this was rapidly becoming one of the best stories of my life, but I obliged him.

The next day, as instructed, we went to the pharmacy and got a pill. I swallowed it and waited for Bruno’s non-existent child to die inside me. Unfortunately, something else died that day too… my infatuation with Bruno. It wasn’t his fault. It was just that I saw through the curtain. I was building this guy up in my mind to be perfect. I was abandoning all of my beliefs to better suit his. The truth was, this guy was as much a kid as I was. He didn’t have all the answers. We were both only twenty years old.

Two weeks later, I told Bruno I had to go home. At first he didn’t take it well, writing me a letter in his own blood imploring me to stay. When the day came, however, he pulled himself together and drove me to the airport. Standing at the gate, he thanked me for a lovely adventure and released me from his Draconian grip. Kissing him and a bit of my idealism goodbye, I boarded the plane and hoped I’d never see another uncircumcised penis again.

25th Jan 2012 | 3 notes

Testing Nikki’s Friendship: A Tale of Jumping from a Moving Vehicle

Have you ever wondered if one of your girlfriends would fuck your husband if she had the opportunity? And not like, fuck his brains out twenty years from now while your lifeless ashes sit in an urn on the living room mantel kind of way, more like accidentally fall on his penis after too much wine in a hot tub while you’re asleep on a bench next to them type scenario.

As women, you know there are chicks you can trust and chicks you can’t. For example, I’m always wary of girls who don’t have other female friends. When a woman tells me she only gets along with guys, I instantly interpret that to mean “home wrecker.” There’s like this certain breed out there that no matter how hard they try, will always put male approval before anything else in their lives.

I always considered my friend Nikki to be one of these women.

Nikki’s five foot eight with big blue eyes and tits that could save you in a car accident.

She’s the type of girl who dates two brothers at once then doesn’t understand why she’s in trouble when they find out about each other. She’s stolen girls’ boyfriends, derailed engagements and even inspired the occasional divorce. I don’t think Nikki means to be such a femme fatale. I think her psychology just prevents her from making responsible choices.

I hang out with Nikki because, on the flip side, she’s really fucking fun! She has a wicked sense of humor and we have a history that dates back nearly two decades. Our taste in men also happens to be diametrically opposed. While Nikki prefers men hot enough to fuck Herb Ritts, I tend to only like guys who look like rabbis.

Pictured above?

The night before my first date with my husband, Jason, Nikki randomly spotted him out at a club.

“Hey, that American Pie guy you are supposed to go out with just walked into Le Deux,” she texted.

“Is he cute?” I replied.

“In like a Jewish way,” she answered.

He just isn’t her type. Ergo, I’ve always felt relatively safe with Nikki. That was until years later when Jason and I were happily married and his sister, Chiara came to town.

“Are you fucking serious with that one?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean I wouldn’t leave a girl like that alone in a room with my dog’s dick!” she scoffed.

This got me thinking. Maybe I was giving Nikki too much credit. She was after all a sex magnet. How did I know what kind of respect she had for me when I wasn’t around? Maybe, after enough carb-ridden margaritas, ANY cock could become her Fundip spoon! I was now officially paranoid and there was really only one way to get peace.

I approached my husband about a possible sting operation. My request was simple: Come on to Nikki. We already had plans to go out to dinner that night with a group of friends. I suggested Jason drive while Chiara and I hide in the backseat. Jason would tell Nikki we were meeting them at the restaurant and then, on the ride over, try his damndest to make her betray me. Everything that happened henceforth would be held against Nikki in a court of law.

Quite possibly this one.

“Are you fucking nuts?” my husband asked.

He was clearly not into my plan and needed some convincing or rather, some passive aggressive manipulating of his most deep-seated insecurities.

“You’re right. Who am I kidding?” I said. “Nikki would never be attracted to you. She likes models. You’re not her type. Waaay too swarthy…”

“You don’t think I could get her? I modeled as a child and before I met you, I used to fuck the hottest chicks!” he balked.

“Yeah, chicks who thought you were Josh Radnor,” I said.

“Fuck you!” he shot back. “It’s my adorable personality that attracts them. Women expect me to be this dorky guy, but once I start talking, they realize how cool I am and instantly fall in love with me. You did!”

“That’s because I only like dorks!” I went on.

“Trust me, I can get any chick I want, including Nikki!” he insisted.

Just as I planned, Jason took the bait and agreed to do my bidding.

Two blocks before reaching Nikki’s house, Chiara and I jumped in the back seat of his car and threw jackets over our bodies. Nikki was already waiting outside her apartment when we pulled up. Jason told her we were already at the restaurant and, thinking nothing of it, Nikki got in the car. We then turned down a residential street and slowed down to about 10mph.

“You think I’m ugly don’t you?” Jason whispered almost wounded.

It took everything in me to keep from laughing. Chiara kicked me to shut up as he continued.

“It’s cool. I’m obviously not your type. I get it.” he said, almost cavalier.

Nikki, beyond uncomfortable, tried to lighten things up.

“What? No! You’re cute!” she assured him.

At this point, I was chewing holes in the insides of my cheeks to keep me from exploding. Jason knew he was selling it and decided to kick things into high gear.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Yeaaah?” Nikki said, scared.

“Why don’t you give me a blowjob?” he demanded, straight faced.

Poor Nikki was drowning in the deep end with this professional liar. I seriously think this performance was one of the best of my husband’s career- It was right up there with his 1991 performance in the acclaimed film, The Boy Who Cried Bitch.

Save your Googling. It’s real.

I think we can all agree he’s never going to top that, but this was like, super close. Chiara, guilt ridden, elbowed me to sit up and reveal myself. Jason, still driving, continued to badger Nikki.

“Show me one of your tits and I’ll just masturbate on it really quick” he suggested.

That’s when Nikki cracked and threw herself from the car.

No seriously, Nikki literally fucking threw herself out of the moving car onto a grassy mound on the side of the road. We weren’t moving fast but there was still no way, in those “Come Fuck Me” Jessica Simpson pumps, she was landing on her feet.

“Jesus Christ!” Jason exclaimed as he slammed his brakes.

Chiara and I threw back our jackets only to see the passenger side door swinging in the wind. Making an illegal U-turn we went back to retrieve Nikki. When we approached, she looked shocked. Her ankle was sprained which made it totally hard for her to appreciate the humor in our little test. I tried to comfort her by letting her know she’d scored major friend points by proving she’d sooner throw herself from a moving vehicle than cheat with my husband.

“You risked your life for our friendship!” I exclaimed in what I thought would be our total chicks before dicks moment.

Nikki then corrected me by saying, “It’s not that. I already told you, idiots! I just don’t find Jason hot.”

Half joking half serious, I guess Nikki had every right to talk shit. It was kind of a fucked up thing to do. Though I have to admit, we never expected our little prank to land us in Cedar’s emergency room. Chiara called and tried to explain what happened to the other dinner guests but I think all they really took away was that Jason asked Nikki for a blowjob so she tried to kill herself. Fair enough.

Nikki assured me payback would be a bitch and to not get too comfortable. But to be honest, I felt more comfortable with Nikki than ever. What I really took away from that evening besides the fact that my husband could play an excellent rapist was that Nikki really WAS a good friend, and for maybe the first time ever, I thought her choices made sense.

25th Jan 2012 | 2 notes

I’M OBSESSED WITH MY HUSBAND’S OBSESSED EX

The year 2007 started off with me deciding to go on Zoloft. I ended a four-year relationship with a guy who might as well have been my brother, I fired my agents, and I stopped leaving my apartment. My new Tempur-Pedic bed didn’t help this situation. Around July, my sister started to worry. She begged me to consider dating again. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to date, it was more that I didn’t want to get serious. Had it not been for the promise of really expensive sushi with no strings attached, Jason and I may have never met.

Like me, Jason, too, was a fan of Zoloft, newly single and a recreational agoraphobic. He was also charming, brilliant, compassionate, and rude. Believe me when I say, I didn’t want to fall for him. Not even remotely. I prided myself on being the only actress I knew to never date an actor. Then all of a fucking sudden, this actor comes along and tries to sweep me off my feet. I wasn’t interested. So uninterested, in fact, that I married him nine months later. Okay, look, I still don’t know how it happened. He mind-fucked me into falling madly in love with him, and I’m not entirely convinced a virgin sacrifice wasn’t involved. The point is things were fast and furious. They were also still very raw for the people we left behind.

While my taciturn ex retaliated by dating someone equally as boring as him, Jason’s ex – let’s call her Sam – spiraled into a deep depression. She made a web series about how he broke her heart. She commented on my IMDB page under fake names. She even made sure to call his nephews on their birthdays (something I still don’t do because I don’t care about kids’ birthdays.) Was I pissed? Scared? Freaked she’d filet me like a rabbit Glenn Close Style? Are you kidding me? SHE WAS A-MAAZZIING! Jason’s ex is still obsessed with him and by default obsessed with me? I LOVE IT!

Now before you judge, think about it for a second. I had my first fan! She was watching my every move. For all intents and purposes, Sam wanted to be me. This was a huge ego boost and, for someone with issues of inadequacy, like pouring fuel on a fire. I started imagining myself through Sam’s eyes. Never meeting me, she could only glean what I was like through press photos and MySpace quotes. My MySpace profile was still private, as was hers. I pictured her reading my friends’ pages trying to decipher exactly who I was. The two-dimensional me was so much cooler than the real me. She was flawless, and bronzed, with perfect hair and awesome taste in music. Grooming my online image became a fulltime job. I took pictures of myself in my underwear, scoured iTunes for the most obscure songs and even refurbished quotes from Henry Miller to make them look like my own.

My advice to all girlfriends everywhere is this: if curiosity compels you to want to meet the last woman in your boyfriend’s life, trust me- it’s not worth it! You’ll never live up to the you that some chick creates in her head. There you are perfect. You are free of acne and pigeon-toed posture. You can get away with saying something corny, and your boobs always appear symmetrical. So, for a while, I was content with the arrangement and having the time of my life.

When I was still on speaking terms with my ex, before I wrote a short film about kidnapping his new girlfriend, I would tell him all about Sam and her crazy antics and laugh about how lucky he was that I wasn’t crazy.

Then, one year later, things suddenly stopped. No more Sam. There was radio silence on her end, a silence that could only be interpreted as rejection. Where the fuck was she? Quick, Jason, do something cute! I need my audience back!

I changed my MySpace security options to “free for all” and still felt like she wasn’t seeing my most recent outfits. Didn’t she care what my new hair color was? Didn’t she want to try and reach out to a family member or show up at an event we were attending?

Sam had literally forsaken me! She maturely extricated herself from the drama, and I still wanted to play. I had all these scenarios worked out in my head where I would walk in and say, “Hello, I’m Jenny. Yes, haha. THAT Jenny. How are you?” (Note: I’d be carrying my Chanel purse.)

Suddenly the tables turned, and I was the one obsessed. I wanted to know every last detail: where she grew up, who did her boob job, why she wore so much leopard.
I needed to see this woman face to face. Maybe if she saw me, her fire might be reignited and she’d love me again. I tried to stage run-ins by driving past her apartment with my dogs. In one very desperate hour, I agreed to attend a wedding I heard she was invited to.

It was a fucking addiction. Every morning I’d have my coffee and troll MySpace for clues. You see, unlike me, Sam’s MySpace settings were still private. We weren’t friends, nor did we share any mutual friends. When she and Jason broke up, she severed all ties. This fact alone told me she was more advanced than I suspected. It also told me I needed to get hardcore. How do I get hardcore? By creating a fictitious friend who would of course be me in disguise! Obviously!

I had to be smart about this. I needed someone credible, someone who she’d instantly trust and someone who wasn’t obviously affiliated with Jason or me in any way. After days of labor-intensive research, I settled on my agent, Sarah. I knew if I deleted Sarah from my list of friends, Sam would have no reason to be suspicious. Sarah didn’t really understand her MySpace page, and, after several beers, she seemed fine giving me her password to add a few people so long as it was only to look.

And for the first few days it was. I watched Sarah’s friend request sit in the “pending” category for a solid week before, eureka! “Sam added me!” I blurted out in the middle of a movie with my sister. Chills ran up and down my spine as I did a little jig in the theater lobby.

Dying to get to my computer, I passed on dinner and went straight back to my house. There, I locked myself in the study and spent a solid two hours reading every inch of Sam’s profile. I had so much insight into this girl’s mind, I started to think I knew her better than my husband ever did. I’d find myself watching TV or strolling through the mall, see something and think, “Oh, that’s so Sam.” It was almost as if we were friends.

Then, one day, Sam posted a note to her MySpace page asking if anyone had a winged back chair she could borrow for a photo shoot. I guess I was feeling particularly boundary-less that day because, as “Sarah,” I instantly responded.

“ I do!” I quickly replied, then sat in my chair killing myself laughing at how ballsy I was. PING. Wha- Wait- No! Holy shit, Sam wrote back! I started hyperventilating when I read her response: “Could I use it?”

Oh my God, my husband was going to murder me. My little hobby just spiraled out of control. Quickly, I called Sarah.

“Hey, so remember when you gave me your MySpace password and you made me promise to never use it for evil? Well, do you have any winged back chairs in your apartment you currently aren’t using?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone when finally Sarah replied, “Actually, I do have one.”

Holy shit! The universe was conspiring for my success just like Joseph Campbell always promised it would! “You have one? Well, can Jason’s ex-girlfriend borrow it? She has a photo shoot.” Did I really just say that? I’m helping my husband’s ex-girlfriend prepare for a fucking photo shoot? This was now beyond insane. However, I couldn’t stop! I was too close! In less than a week, I could actually be seeing this person in the flesh! I needed to devise a way to casually intrude upon this meeting. Maybe I’d jog down her street, or maybe I’d ask Sarah to do the exchange at her place where I’d be hiding in the closet. I just had to get a glimpse of this enigma who was haunting my life.

Eagerly, I wrote Sam back and told her she could use the chair. She, in turn, gave me all sorts of juicy details like her phone number, email address and current employment status.

I then called Sarah and asked if she’d be able to hand the chair off to Sam, as I obviously couldn’t be seen. Reluctantly, Sarah agreed. Why? I still don’t know. I like to think it was my compelling argument, but in reality I think she just wanted me to shut the fuck up.

The morning of the drop off felt like prom. I went to the hairdresser, had my roots done and even got my toes painted “You Don’t Know Jacques” grey. Sam didn’t want to meet till eight, so I had ample time to organize my attack.

After much debate, I decided the best thing to do would be to hide in Sarah’s trunk. Sarah drove an SUV, so I wasn’t exactly hidden. Nor did I want to be. I needed to see Sam’s face to judge how much older she looked than me. I also wanted to see her expressions when Sarah, as instructed, gave away intimate details about my sex life. Evil? Horrible? I swear I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted to see this girl in her element, hear her in her own words, and try to understand what prompted her initial descent into madness. Sarah reluctantly stuffed me in her trunk, bitching the whole time that if I ever told anyone about this, she would break my face and ruin my career.

Parked outside Sam’s house, I could feel anxiety diarrhea boiling up inside me. From the front seat, Sarah rolled calls and waited for Sam to show up. “I’m hungry. This is annoying. I’m missing a screening,” she bitched. Roughly a half hour later, Sam pulled up.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “This is so sweet of you!” Whatever! Stop with the niceties and move to the left so I can gage what size jeans you wear.

Then, standing there, her hip to my eyeball, I saw her. She looked like every picture I’d ever seen, except more eccentric. She wore these white furry yeti boots and a sequined beret. Her voice sounded like she did the nightly news, and she had a tattoo that said, “dream” in gang writing on her wrist. I tried to imagine my husband having sex with her, but I just couldn’t get past the yeti boots. I guess I wanted her to be softer, more timid, and more vulnerable. This didn’t look like a girl who just had her heart broken, this looked like a girl who didn’t give a fuck and would probably stab me in the head if she discovered she was being duped.

Sarah helped Sam carry the chair inside, leaving me in the trunk. She was gone for roughly 10 minutes before I started psycho-dialing her cell phone. “Are you OK?” “What is happening?” “Did she kill you?” were a few of the more memorable texts. When Sarah did finally return, she got in the car and said nothing. As soon as we got around the block, I started in. “What else happened? What does her apartment look like? Did she mention me more? Please tell me you guys took a picture together!”

Sarah looked at me plainly and said the one thing I didn’t want to hear. “Jenny, you need to move on.”

It took Sarah a few days to cool off before calling me. When she did, she told me what was discussed that night in Sam’s apartment… nothing!

Jason did come up but never by name. Sam just made reference to a really hard breakup. Then, casually talked about how she moved on. That’s it? That’s all she said? What the fuck! Didn’t she want to talk about her pain or her sleepless nights spent thinking about what my unborn children will look like? This was terrible news!

SHE MOVED ON. And here I was stuffing myself in a trunk, trying to prevent her from moving anywhere.

I was the fucked up one, the person who didn’t want to move forward, the girl who couldn’t let go. Overcome with empathy, I started crying. This poor girl gets her heart broken, then – for sport – I want to open up the wounds and look around inside. What a fucking bitch I am. I love Sam. She doesn’t deserve this! She’s awesome! She’s even a better aunt to Jason’s nephews than I am. And so what if she wears leopard leggings and lots of crazy scarves and shit? She’s a caring person who just wants to be happy.

After that, I stopped looking at Sam’s MySpace page. Because it was the right thing to do. Also, because Sarah changed her password.

For the first couple months, I was sad. To be honest, I think I had a harder time getting over Sam than my husband. But whatever it was I wanted to know or prove wasn’t important. I was married to a man who deserved my full attention. My priority needed to be my marriage and not my own ego. My obsession with Sam, though thrilling, wasn’t fair to anyone. So like smoking, I quit.

If you or anyone you know has any crazy stories about Sam, I am still not above passively listening to them and can be reached on Twitter at @jennyandteets.

25th Jan 2012

MY REAL LIFE BROMANCE or The Time I Fucked My Step-Brother

I SLEPT WITH MY STEP-BROTHER. Well. I slept with my ex-step-brother. To me that doesn’t make it straight-up incest. Exactly.

My parents have both been married a fuckload of times. You know those cut-out paper dolls that teachers string up in grade school classrooms? Picture those repetitive, faceless shapes as upper middle-class Jewish men and you basically have my mother’s entire marriage history. Switch genders and add fake tits and you have my dad’s. (He paid for the tits.) The thing that irritates me most about my parents’ ‘just add-water’ relationships: My sister and I have had to live through them.

Eckart Bierbaum was a fancy orthopedic surgeon from Eugene, Oregon, and 20 years my mom’s senior. They were married briefly, about a year and a half. They divorced, then re-married five years later for an even shorter amount of time. Of all the men my mother ever attempted to love, I felt the worst for Eckart; he was naïve enough to trust her twice.

Eckart had two sons—let’s call them Sting and David Bowie—who were roughly ten years older than my sister, Pam, and me. Whenever Eckart and my mom would go anywhere, they’d leave the boys in charge. When I was a kid I was scared to death of them. They threw us in the swimming pool, picked us up by our heads, and locked us in closets. I proved to be less tantrum-prone than my sister, and this granted me limited access into their world of Atari, Polo shirts, and Clearasil. In retrospect, these guys were total dorks: Virgins with squeaky voices and braces.

Once I overheard them talking about Pam and me. David Bowie asked Sting if he thought we’d grow up to be cute adults. “BAHAHAHAH! NO WAY!” Sting laughed, spraying Aqua Net on his bangs.

I brought this up when I ran into Sting 15 years later in Salt Lake City. My mom and I were in town skiing for Martin Luther King weekend. Now 36, Sting’s acne and braces were gone and, based on the picture of his 5-year-old daughter, so was his virginity. He was a single dad and a part-time paramedic/part-time fireman. His brother, David Bowie, lived in San Francisco with his wife and three kids. Their father, Eckart, was retired, remarried and still in Oregon.

My mom thought she was being super progressive inviting Sting to hang out with us. Our last night in town, she insisted he come over to our condo for fondu and hot tubbing.

My initial intention wasn’t to seduce Sting. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I forgave him for all the childhood trauma he’d inflicted on me. What I did know: I was old enough to use my feminine charms to hurt people. Did I say people? I mean my mother. Sting, David Bowie, and their father represented her greatest epoch of recklessness. I don’t know all the lurid details, but I do remember that was the Halloween she dressed up as a psychedelic drug and didn’t wear any underwear to take us trick-or-treating. Suffice to say, the last person she’d want thrust back into her life nearly two decades later would be this particular Husband of Christmas Past. Sting became a walking bulls-eye.

As the night progressed, Sting offered to take me into town to meet some of his friends. Once we were in the Jeep, he dropped the ‘friends in town’ pretense and drove me directly to his fuckpad. He took me on one of those tours a guy takes you on when all he really wants to do is tear your clothes off. The tour ended just outside his daughter’s room. She was the same age I was the last time I’d seen Sting. She was at her mother’s. After several minutes of me referring to him as my brother and making things really weird, he kissed me. Just before things started getting heavy, I told him I should get going. I knew I was coming back to town the following week for the Sundance Film Festival and there was no reason to rush things. Then, as we got in the car to leave, I rushed things by having sex with him in his driveway.

The sex was neither here nor there. Partially because the idea of having sex with someone is always hotter than actually having sex with them. And partially because I was on Lexapro. Regardless, the next day I felt like a seductress supreme. I hinted to my mom that something might have transpired, but chose to keep this ace up my sleeve until the next time she decided to get married.

Once I was back in L.A., I called my sister Pam.

“Guess who I fucked?”

“A guy?”

“Remember our old step-brothers Sting and David Bowie?” I asked.

“You fucked both of them!”

“No! Just Sting!” I said.

“ Why?”

“It’s just one of those life experience things you have to do, you know?”

“Where,” she wanted to know, “is the check list that has sleep with your brother on it?”

Why was my creative boundary-pushing exploit not impressing her? I’d expected cheers and applause. Instead, I was left with awkward silence.

“That’s my other line I have to go,” Pam grumbled as she hung up, disgusted.

I tried the story out on a few more people and each time I was left with looks of bewilderment. Nobody understood why I’d had sex with my step-brother.

“Don’t you get it?” I’d insist. “Sting is a trophy fuck!”

He was that guy that decorum dictates you stay away from. Like a high school English teacher or a childhood babysitter, Sting was supposed to be off limits. Sleeping with him was an act of doffing off the trammels of modern society! It was my personal beheading of the queen. Did I say queen? I mean my mom. It was a way to say to my mom, ‘you hurt me with your various indiscretions, now I’m going to hurt you.’

The sex was neither here nor there. Partially because the idea of having sex with someone is always hotter than actually having sex with them. And partially because I was on Lexapro.

The next week, I returned to Salt Lake City apprehensive about seeing Sting. Had I been old enough to rent a car, I wouldn’t have let him pick me up at the airport.

When he pulled up, I noticed he wasn’t alone. His fucking daughter Cora was in the car with him. Was this really happening? Was I seriously about to interact with the kid?

“Hi, honey!” he said when jumped out of the car to greet me.

‘Honey?’ Did my step-brother think I was his wife? I didn’t really have a choice, so I got into his car and tried to remain calm.

We drove to a diner and the three of us had lunch. Sting kept trying to hold my hand while the kid drilled me on how long I’d been dating her father.

“Oh, we’re just friends,” I corrected her.

“Friends with benefits,” he chimed. When Sting smiled I could almost see his braces reappear. I’d forgotten to take into account the fact that Sting was a bachelor dad stranded in the among Mormons and lesbian snowboarders. Of course liked the idea of a girl with a waxed vagina, even if she did use to be his sister.

When he got up to pay the check, the kid turned to me and asked if my name was Jenny. When I said yes, she said, “I heard my dad tell his friend he’s in love with you.”

It was easier to have Sting-as-masturbation-fantasy doing me on top of his firetruck in front of a few friends than to deal with him and his daughter in a diner, I realized. I had no choice but to swallow my pride and do something really painful: Ask my mother for help.

Sting and his kid dropped me off at my hotel after I promised to meet up with them later. The second they were out of sight, I charged up to my room, locked the door three different ways, and called my mother.

“Mom, hi,” I said. “So you are probably gonna freak out, but I need your help. I slept with Sting and now he wants me to move to Salt Lake City and marry him.”

This was the moment my entire caper was leading up to—the moment when I’d get to tell my mom that her years of hands-off parenting had forced me into a not-really-incest-but-definitely-close-enough-to-creep-people-out relationship. Now she’d have to take action and be a parent. If the Harry Houdini of intimacy couldn’t get me out of this bind, no one could!

“Is that what you want?” she asked, sounding bored and distracted.

In all my life there was never a guy she didn’t approve of. I could have been dating a serial killer and she’d find the upside. Apparently, not even dating a sibling could irk her.

“No,” I said, “I need to get out of here! You have experience ending things with this family, help me!”

“Jenny, he’s a grown man. Just tell him you aren’t interested. Were you at some point?”

“He seemed interesting,” I admitted. “But no, I just thought it would piss you off.”

“Piss me off? Jenny, you could be dating a serial killer and I’d find the upside. I just don’t want you to be a lesbian or die alone.”

I realized that none of my actions were affecting her whatsoever. The only person I was succeeding in hurting was Sting.

I avoided Sting for the rest of the weekend. I sent him to voicemail every time he called. Upon my return to L.A., he wrote me a heartfelt letter that made me feel like the biggest asshole on earth. He told me how special I was and how our time together ‘just made sense.’

“Made sense in like an Angelina Jolie/James Haven kind of way,” I thought.

Weeks later I worked up the courage to call him. Like a dick, I said I’d avoided him because my mom was uncomfortable with the idea of us as a couple. To my surprise, he was calm.

“A couple? Oh, did I freak you out with my daughter?”

“Of course not…”

“Because, you know, I like you but you’re 20 years old and my ex-sister. At this point in my life, I’m kind of looking for something a bit more stable,” he said sweetly.

Um. Excuse me? Now Sting thinks he’s gonna be the one to break my heart?

“Hey Dick head, I avoided you for three fucking days” I thought to myself.

Later, I called my mom to apologize for my earlier outburst. She’d mades mistakes, like all parents do. And like all parents, she deserves to have her daughter do the responsible thing: Scream at her in front of a shrink, instead of using real people in an attempt to destroy her.

I’ll save that for my dad.