And so began a year that can only be described as hell. Sleepless nights, innumerable ultimatums, pot-induced nausea and headaches, and the internal push and pull that happens only when you do something you know is absolutely wrong for you and, no matter how hard you try, can’t find words to defend it. Dating Tommy was like stepping in dog shit and then telling your friends your feet have never felt softer.
My friends begged me to stop seeing him, I snapped and lashed out at innocent people, and I hid it all from my family (the first sign that things ain’t good). We broke up, made up, decided to be “just friends,” and made out despite being just friends in such a rapid cycle that from one day to the next our status was a mystery even to us. All the while, I tried to push stories I’d heard of Tommy’s indiscretions out of my head, and I tried to justify that I was dating other people too and hiding it because of my own sense of self-preservation. But no matter how many times I resolved never to speak with him again, my addict had found his addict, and under no circumstances would either one of us let go.
By the following April, I received a wake-up call. It was the day before the Andy Dick roast on the Howard Stern show, and I had not written draft one of my segment. Now, those of you who have read anything about me know that Howard Stern is the most important person to me professionally—the person whose opinion I value most. Here I was, the night before a big show on Stern, and I hadn’t even put pen to paper, due to my obsession with my great unattainable love. Looking back, I still feel a pit in my stomach thinking what I had risked—the respect of the man I value most in the world, plus the disappointment of Stern fans, the fans who were consistently allowing me to sell out venues all over the country.
Fortunately for me, Andy Dick is so fucked up the jokes actually wrote themselves. And thankfully, by the grace of God, I killed at the roast. But I knew I had to get out of this “relationship” before I hurt the only thing I felt I had: my career. Tommy had to go.
I sent Tommy an e-mail. Of course, it was one of my classics, full of pithy phrases plucked from choice episodes of Sex and the City—I was sure he didn’t watch it and so would not guess the source of the references—and from the bestselling book He’s Just Not That Into You. In so many words, my Carrie told his Mr. Big that he needed to work on himself for a year, decide what he wanted, and then see if I was still available. The letter was full of melodrama—like the relationship itself—and I wished him well, telling him I could not speak with him for sixty days so that I could heal.
Never one to follow rules, Tommy called and e-mailed, and for a while, I resisted. But on the night of the Washington, D.C., premiere of Delta Farce, which I attended with friends and management, he sent the e-mail to end all e-mails, with a song attached: “The Reason” by Hoobastank. Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with “The Reason,” it belongs in chapter 1 of The Addict’s Manual to Winning the Bitch Back. Between the line about being sorry about the pain he caused and the one about me being the reason he changed, the song was my manipulator’s secret weapon.
As I downloaded and listened to the tune in my condo in Connecticut, my mind raced. “Oh, my God! He’s admitting it—he’s admitting he’s not a perfect person and that he did bad things to me. But he wants to start over new—and the reason is me!!” I couldn’t have felt more like a rescuer if I worked for the ASPCA. Not only that, but “Hoobastank” was his nickname for my coochie, so there was some sentimentality involved. Score one point for Tommy—mission accomplished!
A day later, I picked up the phone, and so did he. (Funny how most of the times we were broken up, he heard the phone, but when we were dating, he couldn’t seem to hear it. But that’s neither here nor there.) I agreed, after several heart-wrenching conversations, to get back together with him if he A) would go into couple’s therapy with me; and B) told the world, including all his MySpace friends (it really did seem important at the time), that we were a couple. I would not be someone’s dirty little secret, and we needed to come out of the closet. Tommy agreed.
Little did Tommy know, I planned to “out” us as a couple in a big way. Having scheduled an appearance on the Stern show for a week later, I asked Tommy to accompany me to the Sirius studios. Of course, he agreed. A huge Stern fan and a major opportunist, as is every comedian I’ve ever met including myself, he couldn’t wait and was at the hotel early to come over to the studios with me.
As I sat on the couch dishing with Stern—who loves when I talk about dating the blacks—I dropped a bombshell: I, Lisa Lampanelli, the girl who’s “blown more black guys than Hurricane Katrina,” was dating a white guy. Howard couldn’t believe it. It was true, I insisted. He’s here—in the greenroom—I told the King of All Media. Well, that’s all it took for Howard to call Tommy into the studio and up to the microphone. Our relationship was no longer a secret; we were out in the open—the headliner and the pothead, the rich girl and the guy with no checking account. If you had animated us as cats, we could have been a classic Disney film.
Was I happy? You’d think so, huh?
I had the guy I’d been pushing to be in a relationship with for over a year, and I had his full disclosure on the biggest national radio show in the world. The problem was: Now that I had him, did I really want him, and why?
Here’s an analogy for you: Tommy was like a Krispy Kreme doughnut. You dream about eating one, drive yourself crazy with the anticipation, and then you buy a dozen. The first one is sweet but goes down way too fast and the memory of how great it was quickly fades. By doughnut four, you’re a little disgusted with yourself. How could you have made such a big deal about something that ain’t really that cool? By the end of the box, you’re just sick to your stomach and want to puke. That’s how I felt about Tommy.
It’s really just as simple as that. I mean, here I was, a millionaire with five thousand dollars’ worth of fake hair, a chin-chilla coat, and a large collection of funny dresses. Plus I wasn’t even enormously fat anymore, having lost about thirty pounds on Jenny Craig, and I was dating a wigger hundred-aire whose farts reeked so much of pot smoke they made me crave brownies.
Seriously, though, a funny thing had started happening—my self-esteem had started growing a bit in those past few months, and I’d started wondering: Is this the best I can do? Can’t I do better than dating the less successful half of Cheech and Chong? How the fuck do I get better looking and more successful and date worse guys? Hell, at this rate, if I get my own sitcom, I’ll probably marry Beetlejuice!
I mean, I’m fucking the guy who answers the phone at the Comic Strip! What’s the matter—the guy who cleans the toilets at Dangerfield’s was taken?!? The phone answerer at the Strip? That’s one step below the guy who mops up at a peep show. It’s pretty fucking sad when the best thing you can say about your boyfriend is that he’s great at conference calling. Seriously, Muslim prostitutes are more respected in their communities. I’m a star and this guy’s on the lowest rung of the show business ladder. It’s clear—I’m officially dating the Italian K-Fed.
Only hours after the morning broadcast, I started to have doubts. Seriously, a few hours! People ask me when I knew it was over with Tommy, and I always say, “That afternoon.” No shit. Back at Tommy’s seedy second-floor railroad apartment in Queens, we listened to the replay of the show. Tommy was laughing it up, and I was trying to push our latest fight out of my head. Right after the taping, we’d gotten into an argument because he wanted us to stay at his apartment in Queens—which, by the way, had had some plumbing problems so that the shower and bathroom were completely overflowing with sewage—and I wanted to have us stay at the hotel, a four-star place Lionsgate Pictures put me up in for the movie I was promoting. Tommy had gotten hugely pissed that I didn’t want to stay at Chez Shit—with the plumbing problems, no air-conditioning, and cat hair (what kind of a guy has a cat anyway?)—and I wanted us to stay in a junior suite on Park Avenue. Either pot was on the way or somehow the smell of urine helped him sleep better. The apartment wa
s such a mess that when you took a dump, it was considered a renovation. But I tried to understand his point: I mean, who wants to stay in a luxury hotel when you could stay in a three-room apartment with the only bathroom in the world where you’re dirtier when you get out of the shower? It would’ve been more sanitary to take a bath in his toilet.
As we listened to the replay, I heard Howard ask me why a woman like me would chase a guy like him: a pothead with no checking account, no driver’s license, no self-esteem, and anger issues—pretty much Gary Busey without the moments of clarity, the talent, and the money. In short, Tommy had more problems than an algebra textbook and the answers weren’t listed in the back.
So Howard asked me why I would be with a guy like him, and I said without missing a beat, “Profound self-hate.” Of course, Howard, Artie, and the whole crew laughed, but when I listened to the replay that afternoon, it dawned on me that that sentence was the most real thing I’d said the whole show. At that moment, I knew I had to break it off. I mean, when your boyfriend’s the biggest addict in a room with Artie Lange, you’ve got a real problem on your hands.
At that moment, my mind started to go back through our whole relationship, even that short part of it after I agreed to take him back just a week prior. During our first counseling session, he’d stormed out of the shrink’s office, a sure sign that the “anything” he’d agreed to do to get me back had its limits. Then I remembered that when I was flying in for our big reunion, he asked what airport I was flying into, and I said Newark. He said, “Wow, it’s a shame you’re not flying into LaGuardia. Newark’s too far to come meet you. But don’t worry, I’ll be sitting here waiting for you when you come back.” Wow! Lemme get this straight. You’ll be sitting and waiting for me? Thank you, Mr. Wonderful! Pardon me while I swoon. What was his motto? “Love means never having to take the PATH train”? If I flew into his living room, he’d probably complain it was too far from the bedroom. I guess the “anything” he’d do for me meant he’d follow me to the ends of the earth, as long as there wasn’t a bridge or tunnel on the way. I couldn’t help but remember a few years back when my Internet fix-up, Darryl, had picked me up at Newark Airport with a huge bouquet of flowers, and we hadn’t even met yet! But I digress: In Tommy’s defense, I must point out that there was an America’s Funniest Home Videos marathon on TV that night. AFHV is to a stoner what Gone with the Wind is to your grandmother.
The day after the Stern show, things got worse. I did the self-hate “joke” again on Adam Carolla’s radio show and when Tommy overheard it, it really hurt his feelings. So now, not only was I hurting myself, I was hurting him. Then we got into a raging fight that night because I wanted to go to the movies sober and he wanted to smoke beforehand. Of course, the movie in question was Delta Farce, so I probably should have listened to him. How could I continue to date a guy I wanted to change this much? This shit wasn’t meant to be.
Two days later, Tommy laughingly told me he heard Gary, Howard’s producer, on the Wrap-Up Show saying he couldn’t wait until we broke up in a year so that they could play the clips of us acting all lovey-dovey and make fun of us. I thought to myself, “A year! You better take the under.” Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t had the guts to tell any of my friends or family that we were back together. I had only told my equally codependent friend Tracy, who kept saying how great we were together because she’s a hopeless romantic—I mean, the bitch still holds out hope for Liza Minnelli and David Gest—and is afraid to be alone too. My friend Laura—who later told me she was “this close” to staging a Tommy intervention—said she’d heard us on the show together and that we sounded happy. I burst into tears and said I was anything but happy, and I couldn’t think of anything I liked about him other than the fact that he was cute and was good in the sack. Hell, I could have had just as much fun with a kitten and a vibrator. I didn’t trust him because of his bullshit commitment issues over the past year, and I couldn’t let it go. I mean, this guy drove me so nuts that I’m surprised I didn’t join NASA and drive cross-country wearing an adult diaper. And don’t get me wrong: It wasn’t like I was looking for marriage. I knew Tommy wouldn’t get down on one knee unless his hash pipe rolled under the kitchen table. But still, by the time we got back together, I didn’t believe he was committed and had an enormous list of stuff for him to change about himself. This wasn’t fair to him or to me.
Add to this the fact that he brought out the absolute worst in me. Before I dated Tommy, I never had a boyfriend who said I was jealous, clingy, or insecure. But our lethal combination was just the ticket to make me all three. Tommy had a string of ten or fifteen women he kept around as “friends” but were women he had slept with, wanted to sleep with, or who he’d do in a pinch, who called at all hours of the night and texted constantly, and he would not tell them to leave him alone. This guy got more creepy e-mails than Chris Hansen. It’s like he was developing a whole minor league of whores that he could call up at any time and I was the aging slugger.
Now, knowing psychology a little, I know this is just because he had an abandonment complex and could never be alone. But it showed his lack of commitment and concentration on our relationship and brought out a jealous side that I had never had, and I admit, I acted ridiculously! I even checked his e-mail once when he was sleeping and found out about all these women—a fact that I admitted to in therapy and he never let me hear the end of. Of course, it was exactly like the guy whose wife hires a private eye and finds out he’s having an affair, and the husband focuses on the fact that she hired the private eye instead of taking responsibility for the affair. It was like being blamed for ruining an anal rape by farting.
I joke about it, but I hated my behavior. And I couldn’t remember once in thirty-three years of dating having ever been jealous. So I called a few of my ex-boyfriends and asked them if they remembered me being jealous, insecure, or downright crazy. And guess what they said? They said I was in violation of the restraining order. No, I kid. They said I was never like that. Even Darryl, my black ex-boyfriend who cheated on me for two months before our breakup, said I was never once insecure or jealous. In fact, I’m sure that’s why he found it so easy to cheat—because I trusted him, didn’t question him, and had never done so much as look in his wallet. The only way I caught him was when our phone bill came and there were $600 worth of phone calls to the same number in one month at all hours. I knew his parole officer didn’t work nights, and I knew it wasn’t the customer service line for Afro Sheen, so it was obviously another woman.
So, after talking to these exes, I realized that Tommy and I brought out the worst in each other—his flirting and just-short-of-cheating behavior made me act insane and jealous, and my insanity and jealousy made him more distant, creating a vicious cycle.
I had an emergency session with my shrink. He told me something I will always remember—and I quote: “If my daughter came home with a guy like him, I would be suicidal.” And believe me, I know. I was two seconds from pulling an Owen Wilson myself. But I was addicted to him, and I couldn’t cut him off. And his compelling codependent arguments for us maintaining contact—like “You said you’d never delete me,” “You said we were family,” and my personal favorite, “You’re a cunt and nobody will ever love you like I do”—made it impossible for me to quit him.
Not that I didn’t try. I escaped for a week and went to Canyon Ranch. When I got back to my room after faking my way through yet another Chi Gong class, there was a string of messages from Tommy:
BEEP: “You know, you’re a real cunt. I can’t believe you won’t return my calls. You said you’d always love me and once again, you won’t even pick up. Fine—I hate you and never want to talk to you again.” BEEP: “You know, I know you have another boyfriend. You must—or this wouldn’t be so easy for you. Here I am, sitting here alone, waiting for you to call me back, and you’re off at your fuckin’ cult place, taking your ‘Forget Tommy’ classes. Well, fuck you. I hope you die.” BEEP: “I’m just n
ot myself. [sniff] I’m sorry. I could never hate you. [sniff] Please call me back. I’m waiting here. I love you. Call me…please…I love you…you’re not a cunt.”
Now, I don’t know about you gals out there, but for me, there’s nothing more romantic than a guy saying you’re not a cunt. In fact, I think he stole that from a Cameron Crowe film. It’s a Hallmark moment. “Oooh, that’s hot, honey. Now tell me I’m not a loudmouthed twat.”
It was such a love/hate codependent thing. One night, I was on my way to a show and got two messages from friends saying, “Who’s Tommy and why has he requested me as a friend on MySpace?” He was actually trolling my MySpace page for friends—and, of course, by coincidence, he was only contacting the good-looking girls. I’m in the limo furious, raging about it to my buddy, when I get a text from Tommy saying, “I love you.” And, without missing a beat and still in midscream, I text back, “I love you too, honey.” Send. When it came to Tommy, all logic went out the window, like with crack. But really, this guy was worse than crack. Crack disappears after you smoke it—it doesn’t go on your MySpace page and troll for hot chicks.
That was it! I could never talk to this guy again! But how? I realized for the first time in my adult life that I needed help, I needed answers, and I didn’t have either.
I had hit my bottom, and I had no idea how to claw my way out.
CHAPTER NINE
Chocolate, Please Page 11
