Diary of a Mad Diva

by Joan Rivers

  MARCH 4

  Dear Diary:

  Now I’m mad at my bank. I called to double-check that the money I’m hiding in the Cayman Islands is still hidden, and all I got was a recorded message: “If you want to check your balance, press one; if you want to transfer funds, press two . . .” How about, “If I want to kill you, I’ll press your head under water for six minutes”? I hate this automated shit. If I ever did get the urge to talk to a machine I’d say “thank you” to my vibrator.

  MARCH 5

  Dear Diary:

  Today is Multiple Personality Day and we’re both so happy! Ever since Sybil I’ve been fascinated by people with multiple personality disorder. One minute you’re talking to Janice from Roslyn Heights, and the next minute it’s Cressida, ancient goddess of ground transportation. A couple of years ago my friend, the comedian Roseanne, announced that she had twenty-six different personalities. I was shocked. You’d think at least one of them would’ve gone on a diet.

  I don’t believe in multiple personalities; I think it’s just a good way of not paying your bills. “Joan-Thrifty” would never wear $1,500 shoes. “Here, they’re only a little worn, take ’em back.” Yes, “Joan-Whore” slept with all those men, but “Joan-Good” would never go down on a fleet; it might bend her braces and would jeopardize her marriage to that withered, rich old man. “Joan–Child Abuse” might have taken down the horrible boy next door who continually tipped over her garbage, but “Joan-Nice” would have called the boy’s parents and asked them to speak to their pastor, prior to punching little Johnny in the face, breaking his arm and leaving him sightless. (Children need to be taught boundaries.)

  MARCH 6

  Dear Diary:

  I’m tired of dealing with crazies. When did it become my job to manage your mental illness? You wanna be nuts, be nuts. Go put a pencil in your mouth and bark at the fire hydrants, but leave me the fuck out of it.

  I was leaving Citarella (where I buy day-old fish to donate to orphanages for children with clogged nasal passages) and some wacko starts following me, saying, “Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you.” I said, “Look! It was just a summer thing. We were young, we were crazy, we got drunk and took a house on the Cape. Now leave me alone!”

  And speaking of Christian love, I am so sick of those stupid ads for Christian singles. The ads always have some homely girl saying, “Jesus wants me to get married.” I doubt this. If Jesus wanted her to get married, he would have given her a chin. I have news for you, Gloria Jean: Jesus wants you single and teaching special ed.

  MARCH 7

  Dear Diary:

  Went to see Diana Ross in concert last night. Nine songs, a thousand costume changes and two hours of “Reach out, hold hands; sing with me, sing with me audience, sing with me . . .” Fuck off! For two hundred bucks a ticket, I’m not singing; you sing, you skinny bitch. How did the singing suddenly become my job? When I’m in Vegas, I don’t make my audience hold hands and tell the jokes. My proctologist doesn’t ask me to put my fingers up his ass.

  After her show I started to go backstage to meet Diana but I just couldn’t. The thought of calling anyone other than Michael Jackson “Miss Ross” depresses me so much. It’s been several years and I still miss my Michael. He was such a help with my grandson, Cooper. Now that he’s gone I have no one to call and tell me how to sweet-talk a young boy into doing almost anything.

  Anyway, back to Big D. I remember a night way back in the ’80s when Diana Ross gave a free concert in Central Park in New York. There were 200,000 people there, including me, and five minutes into the show a hurricane hit. Howling winds, driving rain—there was so much flooding it looked like Adele must’ve jumped into a swimming pool. People, dogs, benches were swirling by, and Diana’s standing there onstage, saying, “I’ll save you, I’ll save you . . .” Save us? Who the fuck did she think she was, the Pope? She couldn’t even save Florence Ballard, and she was a Supreme.*

  MARCH 8

  Dear Diary:

  Picked up Melissa at yoga class. They were doing the Downward-Facing Dog, but when I walked in they switched to the Downward-Facing Pig. On our way home, Melissa and I swung by a fast-food chicken place. When we got to the counter the idiot taking our order says, “We’re out of breasts.” I said, “Who are you? A Beverly Hills plastic surgeon a week before the Oscars?” I was livid. How is it possible that there were no breasts? Did all the chickens have mastectomies? Maybe they’re roosters in drag and this is a gay chicken store and no one told the manager. If you only make one thing, there’s no excuse to run out. For example, I know for a fact that if you swing by George Michael’s pad, he’s never out of butt plugs.

  MARCH 9

  Dear Diary:

  I hate people who are lousy at their jobs. If you don’t do something well, then don’t do it. For example, if you weigh four hundred pounds and can’t cross the street without having a triage unit on standby, don’t become a personal trainer. If you stutter, don’t look for work on a suicide hotline (“D-d-d-d-d-on’t j-j-j-j-jump . . .” Too late). And if you give a rotten blow job, then don’t become a hooker. If you can’t suck a nice dick well, then find a job that doesn’t require that skill, like lesbian golfer or Midwestern housewife.

  MARCH 10

  Dear Diary:

  I’ve got to get caller ID. Too many people I don’t know are getting through. Tonight I was lying in bed struggling with a crossword puzzle (four-letter word beginning with “c” for mean, horrible bitch; I wrote small and put in “TYRABANKS”), when the phone rang and I heard bereft sobbing.

  So I listened, because at my age my friends’ husbands are dropping faster than Justin Bieber’s balls. And I sighed in all the right places and said “tsk-tsk” and acted like I really cared until she said, “I really be missing my Darnell.” Darnell? I don’t know anyone named Darnell.

  From here on in, anyone who calls me better fucking identify themselves, just like they do at AA meetings. Those old winos always announce themselves. Okay, they’re wrong a lot because they’re drunk, but they try. “Hi, I’m the Dionne Quintuplets and I’m an alcoholic . . .” No, you’re not the Dionne Quintuplets. You’re a thirty-eight-year-old carpet salesman from Sheboygan named Edwin, and you have beer foam on your pants.

  MARCH 11

  Dear Diary:

  That call about Darnell got me thinking: Names are crazy; they have no rhyme or reason. I was hoping that maybe Gwyneth Paltrow was starting a trend by naming her child after her favorite food. Her kid’s name is Apple. My niece could be named Peach. And Christina Aguilera’s next kid should be called Potato. I know for a fact Connie Chung’s second-born is named Dog. And Kanye West’s new son is going to be named Pussy in honor of where he came from.

  MARCH 13

  Dear Diary:

  I can’t stand it when an actor wins an Oscar or a Golden Globe and gets to the stage and stutters and mutters and says, “I didn’t prepare anything because I didn’t think I was going to win.” Why the fuck didn’t you prepare anything? You knew you were nominated. You had at least a 20 percent chance of winning, or 40 percent if Amy Adams was in your category. Would it have killed you to make a list of people who helped you make the movie and got you out of rehab/prison so you could make the damned thing, or your mother or your family, or your life partner, Jimmy, who makes your world go round?

  I hate people who don’t prepare. Who wants to walk into their accountant’s office during tax season and find him shocked at having to do so much arithmetic? Or go to a proctologist and have him blurt out, horrified, “Oh, wow! Look at all the doody!”?

  MARCH 16

  Dear Diary:

  Had lunch with my friend Brian, who’s in AA, and his sponsor and his sponsor’s sponsor. Ordering food took longer than the Hundred Years’ War. “Is there alcohol in tiramisu?” “Does the wine burn out of the mussels?” “I could be wrong, but is there rum in the rum cake?” I’m hop
ing they get anorexia, so they’ll starve to death and I won’t have to put up with that bullshit again. And every five minutes, in the middle of a conversation, one of them would pipe in with, “Let go and let God.” However, this was never said when I was reaching for the check. I wanted to get in a car and drive right into them yelling, “Sorry! I let go and let God take the wheel.”

  I just want to say here that I’m thrilled with my friends’ sobriety, but I’m sick and tired of hearing the competition of their rock-bottom moments. “I was drunk and raped by a gang of twelve. It was a horrible moment. Four of them were Japanese and poorly endowed.” “That’s nothing; I once ran nude through the White House; even Clinton booed.” “That’s nothing; I was so drunk I believed Richard Simmons was straight.”

  Sometimes I hear about celebrities who’ve gotten sober and I wonder what they say at their meetings. “Hi, my name is Phil Spector and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve kidnapped my wife, shot a woman to death and, even worse, let my hair go to hell, but I didn’t drink today, so I’m a winner and I feel pretty good about myself.” “Thank you for sharing, Phillip.” Clap. Clap. Clap.

  MARCH 17

  Dear Diary:

  My friend Margie has convinced me to go to a silent retreat in the Catskill Mountains for three days. It costs almost $2,200. I said, “Margie, why not just save the money and stay home and shut the fuck up?”

  MARCH 21

  Dear Diary:

  Thank God the retreat is over. I haven’t heard that kind of silence since my wedding night when I asked Edgar, “Was it good for you?”

  MARCH 23

  Dear Diary:

  I love Award Season. I watch all of them: the Oscars, the Grammys, the Golden Globes, etc. But I love two awards shows more than all the others: the Gay Awards Show, which is fabulous, and the statue is an exact copy of the Oscar except it’s on its knees; and the Porn Awards, which is also exactly like the Oscars except the red carpet is shaved.

  MARCH 25

  Dear Diary:

  It’s Passover and I’m at Melissa’s house in L.A. for the holiday. (I’m also here for Fashion Police, Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? and In Bed with Joan.) As much as I love Judaism, I really love tax write-offs. So I invited twenty-six people over, all of whom can help me career-wise. To me, Passover is just Thanksgiving with Jews: lots of food, lots of laughs and lots of people sending food back to the kitchen because it’s too tough and you know your aunt Miriam has sensitive gums.

  Very mixed guest list—Jews, Christians, atheists and homos. Should be fun. They start arriving in fifteen minutes, which gives me just enough time to do a final inspection and make sure the cater waiters have covered up their cold sores and open lesions so they don’t upset my guests and ruin the Four Questions by adding a fifth question: “Why is there pus in my soup?”

  MARCH 26

  Dear Diary:

  Passover dinner couldn’t have gone better. It was the gayest Seder I’ve ever had. Two of the four questions involved Lady Gaga. When the giant lamb bone came out, half of the men at the table squealed with delight, and the other half said, “I think I know him.” There’s always one person at every Seder who’s an uber-Jew and knows absolutely everything about Jewish history and culture and tradition. And we had ours. For the sake of kindness (and because her father’s a lawyer), I’ll call her Nafka. Nafka knew it all: she knew the prayers in English, Hebrew, Yiddish and Farsi; she knew the answers to all four of the questions; she even knew why Moses schlepped the Ten Commandments down the mountain instead of taking the elevator (Big M was mildly claustrophobic and had once gotten stuck for six hours in an elevator with Lot and his wife, who was not only hateful, but lived on a salt-free diet of cabbage and beans).

  MARCH 27

  Dear Diary:

  I haven’t gone to the bathroom in almost twenty-four hours. Matzoh is so binding. Now I know why it took us forty years to cross the desert.

  Constipation is a terrible thing. Why do you think so many of our top serial killers (Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, to name a few) come from Wisconsin and its neighboring states? Cheese, that’s why! Everyone knows this about cheese. I’ve always been surprised that those maniacs’ defense lawyers didn’t use this as an argument. I can just see Johnnie Cochran now: “If you eat the cheese, that revolver you’ll squeeze.”

  I was once clogged up for a week after reaching the bottom of the Olive Garden’s bottomless pasta bowl, and I was in such a foul mood that I contemplated taking out an entire Boy Scout troop right as they were practicing their knot-tying skills on their giggling, gay scout master.

  MARCH 28

  Dear Diary:

  Had to run to the store to pick up milk and tampons. I buy tampons so that the teenaged box-boy who works in the store will continue to look at me with both admiration and lust.

  And when the fuck did milk become $8,000 a gallon? Is there a shortage? Are the cows on strike or on a work slowdown? Did Elsie and Flossie unionize, protesting work conditions? They spend all day standing in a pasture, staring at nothing and eating—just like Kevin James—so what’s the problem? If I didn’t care about Cooper’s teeth and bones I’d cut out milk altogether and let him eat his cereal with gin or Jack, just like Grandma does.

  MARCH 29

  Dear Diary:

  Did press all day promoting Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best? and In Bed with Joan. I did as many TV and radio shows in the New York tristate area as my schedule and medications would allow. All went great, although I must say I hate going on shows where the interviewer just reads the questions, regardless of what’s being said. Me: “I just killed my mother.” Interviewer: “I understand you like shoes?” I hate that. At least link it up with, “Did you get your mother’s?”

  MARCH 30

  Dear Diary:

  I spent all day in bed watching the Discovery ID channel. All murders, all the time; it was like the good old days on A&E when it was Hitler 24/7. (No matter how lonely or how depressed I was, I knew I could always turn to that station and get a little touch of Adolf. I was in heaven.) Nothing makes me happier than watching the police find a family of five tied up together in their rec room, bound, gagged and stiffer than Martha Stewart. My favorite episode was a cliffhanger: all the victims were so fucking ugly that everybody in town had a motive to kill them. (Which begs the question: Who really was the victim here? The dead person or the townspeople who had to look at him every day?)

  I got hooked on true crime when I first read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, the story about two drifters in Kansas who slaughtered the Clutter family for no apparent reason. I take that back; the Clutters were simple, Christian, farm-folk—the drifters had a reason. I always hoped that Capote would have combined his two greatest works, In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, into one sequel, and the drifters wouldn’t have just killed the Clutter family in that farmhouse cellar,* but they also knocked off Holly Golightly and her fucking cat, too. Now that book would’ve spent a lot of time on the bestseller list.

  MARCH 31

  Dear Diary:

  Today is Easter. Jesus came back from the dead. I don’t understand this. We’re both Jews but he comes back from the dead and I can’t get up before noon.

  According to my accountant, I spend too much. According to me, I need a new accountant.

  APRIL 1

  Dear Diary:

  I love everybody. I think Melanie Griffith is smart smart smart smart. And John Travolta is straight as an arrow. And Jackie Chan is hung hung hung. April Fool’s!

  Today is April Fool’s Day and I hate it because the people who play practical jokes on other people are usually assholes who think they’re funny and they’re not. (And to me, not being funny is a bigger sin than patricide, matricide and sometimes infanticide—but only if the baby was nice-looking.)

  April Fool’s Day is not a real national holiday. If it was a real h
oliday, Saks would be selling bedding half off, and I’d be booked at some casino or country club at a wildly inflated price.

  There are a lot of different theories as to how April Fool’s Day came to pass. According to Wikipedia, author/hand model Geoffrey Chaucer—who wrote The Canterbury Tales, the feel-good book of the fourteenth century—coined the phrase April Fools to refer to the engagement of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia, either because they got the date of their wedding wrong or because Anne was a taciturn, butch lesbian and Richard had no idea; he thought she was just a little frigid and a lot handy.

  And as for “jokes” such as undoing the tip of a pen so it leaks or hiding cicada bugs on someone’s food tray, they really aren’t funny practical jokes; they’re stupid. If you want to do something funny, think big. One of my favorite pranks is to run into a kindergarten class and yell out, “Little Billy? Your mommy loves your sister more than you.” Wait five seconds, then run back in and say, “Just kidding! April Fool’s! She actually loves your sister and your brother more than you!” Poor little Billy.

  APRIL 3

  Dear Diary:

  I hate Wikipedia. There’s no guarantee that what they say is true because anyone can go in and change the profile information. Today, I could change the part of Mother Teresa’s profile that refers to her as “a humanitarian who gives assistance and aid to women and children” to “an old lezzie who dressed poorly and liked touching strangers’ feet.”

  APRIL 5

  Dear Diary:

  Went out to dinner last night with one of my closest friends, whose name escapes me for the moment. Anyway, she’s a diabetic and is constantly monitoring her sugar level. It was very exhausting. How many times a day can I say, “No, you’re not pale and you don’t look any worse than normal, but would you like to stop and get a Kit Kat?” She also has no boundaries, so right in the middle of dinner at Joe Allen, just as the waiter was bringing us our lump crabs, she hikes up her blouse, moves her boobs and gives herself a shot of insulin. The place went silent; it was quieter than Auschwitz the morning after shower day. She looked around at the appalled customers and said, “What? I have diabetes!” The guy at the next table said, “So what? I have colitis. You want me take a shit in the coatroom?”