"Oh, wow!" I said, "Hi! Your son must be playing against the Lakers." Larry nodded. "How are you?" I asked.
"Great. Are you here with your husband?" he asked, right in front of my date.
"No, actually we…" There was a long moment of uncomfortable silence, which LW, Val, and I had been through before, and then I said, "separated, we separated." Then I leaned in and whispered in LW's ear, "I think he's gay."
LW whispered back in my ear, "I think you might be right."
I introduced my date to LW and Val, and when we parted Val gave me a hug and whispered to me, "We'll pray for you."
"Please do," I responded.
My date and I went to find our seats. When we sat down he turned to me and said, "Well, that's terrific news. How long have you been married?"
RERUN
IT WAS VALENTINE'S Day and I had spent the day in bed with my life partner, Ketel One. The two of us watched a romantic movie marathon on TBS Superstation that made me wonder how people who write romantic comedies can sleep at night.
At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall all the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer.
Then, within the two hour time frame of the movie, the couple meet, fall in love, fall out of love, break up, and then just before the end of the movie, they happen to bump into each other by "coincidence" somewhere absolutely absurd, like by the river. This never happens in real life. The last time I bumped into an ex-boyfriend was at three o'clock in the morning at Rite Aid. I was ringing up Gas-X and corn removers.
Usually, I like to celebrate Valentine's Day by hot-air ballooning around the greater Los Angeles area and pointing out all the different apartment buildings I've slept in. This Valentine's Day was different because I was still in a deep funk from being dumped by a man with skinnier legs than me. If you've ever seen the hind legs of a German shepherd trotting away from you, then you know what my ex-boyfriend's calves looked like.
I had been dating my landlord for about nine months before the breakup. He wasn't the Schneider of One Day at a Time type of landlord, running around the building with a tool belt and a detective's mustache. He was a clean-cut, good-looking, bashful type of guy with a harmless disposition. He owned the building and the one directly next door, which he lived in. After meeting him for the very first time, while signing my lease, I called Ivory to give her the news. "I'm going to have to start dating my landlord."
"Really? Is he hot?" she asked.
"It's not hot. It's something else. He's shy and it's going to take some work. I think he might be scared of me. I'll have to wear him down."
And that's exactly what I did. I called him repeatedly with emergencies such as my pilot light going off (after I blew it out) and my sliding shower doors falling off their tracks (after I dislodged them). This would time and time again lead to coffee and/or a meal. After hanging out together for a couple of months and him not making a move, I finally confronted him. "Listen, landlord man, what's the story here? Are we going to start dating or what? I've got a crush on you and I'm not interested in any new friendships. The only reason I'm hanging out with you all the time is to get in your pants. And I'm exhausted." I had never put so much work into a relationship that hadn't even begun. "Either we become a couple or no more Chelsea."
"Let me think about it," he said.
Two days later he showed up at one of my stand-up shows. "You want to come back to my place?" he asked me afterward, as he walked me outside.
"Yes," I said and found myself skipping for the very first time since puberty.
My landlord was a soft-spoken type and we got along great-but we also fought a lot. He wasn't like any guy I had ever dated before. He was ultraconservative, insecure, and unsure of almost every decision he made. But at the same time he was also thoughtful, very funny, and really good at math. He wanted to spend almost every minute with me, which didn't annoy me like I thought it would.
We had completely opposite personalities. He would buy clothes, appliances, and supplies for the building and then, almost immediately, return them. This mentality drove me crazy. I didn't know men could be such flip-floppers. I had never returned anything in my life. If the item didn't work for me when I got home, then I would just throw my hands up and drop it off at Goodwill.
He always wanted the thermostat set at a minimum of seventy-five degrees; I would wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and sneak out of bed to turn it below seventy. The next day, he would complain of a sore throat and tell me it felt like a meat locker. One morning I woke up to find him wearing a ski cap. So dramatic.
The worst things about him were his scrawny legs and the fact that I was pretty sure I could take him in a fight. He would cuddle so intensely with me in bed that when I'd get up to walk in the kitchen for a glass of water, he'd still be attached to me like an orangutan.
It wasn't the actual breakup that hurt so much. It was the fact that I had been planning on breaking up with him first but hadn't gone through with it because I thought he would be too devastated-only to come home from a weekend ski trip to Aspen and be blindsided. It was a complete blitzkrieg. I didn't appreciate the fact that I had been considering someone else's feelings while he was telling me to hit the road. While I knew that the relationship could never work long-term, mostly because we would never be able to wear shorts together in public, I kept secretly hoping that maybe some new calf-enhancing technology was about to hit the marketplace.
A couple months went by but the pain didn't seem to be subsiding.
Ivory called on Valentine's Day to tell me there was a costume party that night and attendance was mandatory. "It's at a warehouse downtown and it's a fund-raiser to help children with disabilities." Finally, something I had been lying about doing for years could actually become a reality. I had no desire to leave my bed, but I had to pull through for the kids. "We're meeting at the Compound to preparty," Ivory said.
The Compound was the apartment building where Lydia lived with all of her degenerate neighbors. It was kind of a Melrose Place-type building minus the pool and six-figure incomes. It was a fun place to hang out and party, but not a fun place to wake up. Lydia and all of her neighbors had slept with each other at one time or another, and it had become an official lazy Susan.
"I don't have a costume," I told Ivory.
"We can make you one."
I reminded her of months earlier when, on Halloween, Ivory and I had gone as bull dykes, wearing black mullet wigs, huge Levi's jeans, chained wallets, and black-studded belts. Our wife-beaters read, "We support Bush" and "Bush Rules." Since the party was after we had invaded Iraq, people thought we meant the president.
Not only did I learn my lesson that night about supporting George W. Bush in California, I learned my lesson about wearing something unattractive to a costume party. It was a clear opportunity to slut it out, and we had completely missed the boat. No one wanted anything to do with us. Even the friends we had gone to the party with were too embarrassed to be seen around us. Ivory and I spent the entire night sitting in a corner by ourselves; the only person who approached us was the bouncer to tell us it was last call.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that," Ivory said. "Go rent one."
"I can't. Bobby and Whitney's E! True Hollywood Story is on in ten minutes."
Ivory called minutes later to tell me her roommate Jen had an extra genie costume with a bustier that would look hot. "The pants are see-through, so wear full panties," she warned.