My Inappropriate Life

by Heather McDonald

  I first realized Brandon was on to my threats about “poor kids” after we’d had an incident at Bank of America. My boys occasionally watched The Amazing Race with my husband and me, and every time they watched, no matter the season, it seemed like the contestants were in India. Drake and Brandon were shocked by the poverty. I’d say, “Yes, that is how lucky you are, see?” For the next couple of months, every time one of them wouldn’t do what I’d ask, like brush their teeth or pick up their room, I’d say, “I’m sending you to India and I’m going to trade you for a nice Indian boy who will be so grateful just to have a toilet in his home that he’ll do anything I ask.”

  Sometimes when the boys would complain about the tomato sauce being too chunky in the spaghetti I would say, “Oh, I e-mailed Rashid’s mother in India and she said he loves chunky spaghetti sauce and can’t wait to come here and live in your room. She said she’s very excited to have you boys. Apparently they have a lovely hut and some new sticks and rocks to play with.” Maybe it wasn’t the most conventional way of parenting, but it was something fun we did at home as a family. It continued and it became a joke between the two of them. So when Brandon would disobey me, Drake would chime in and say, “You’re going to India” and taunt him, and Brandon would do the same to Drake. So, one day I had to go inside the bank, which nowadays is very rare. I had the two boys and I sat them in two chairs at a loan officer’s desk who was out for lunch and I started doing my business with the teller. I could hear them talking and getting rambunctious but didn’t bother to reprimand them because I was almost finished with my transaction. When I heard Drake say to Brandon, “You’re bad. You’re going to India,” Brandon got so upset, he hit Drake and yelled back, “No, you’re bad! Mom is going to send you to India.” Drake fought back, saying, “You’re the one who just hit me. Na-na-na-na, you’re going to India! You’re going to have to poo in the streets with the cows.” I tried to hurry up because I could feel it escalating as I was putting my checkbook back into my purse. Then I heard Brandon yell, “No, you’re going to India and the cows in the street are going to eat while you wipe your butt with your hand after everyone in the town sees you pooing.” Brandon was so mad at Drake because Drake kept laughing as Brandon was hitting him. Drake kept on: “You’re going to be sent to disgusting India to live forever and your only toys will be flies!” Just as I was about to turn around and scold them, I looked up and realized that not only was my teller Indian but the other four people working behind the glass were Indian too, and the customer to my right was an older woman in full Sari dress with a ruby dot on her forehead. So I did what I believe any mother in my situation would do. I looked at my teller’s big dark kohl-eyeliner eyes and said, “Whose kids are those? Why don’t people learn to watch their children? Thank you so much.” Then I began speed-walking out of the bank. Just as my hand touched the door to escape, I heard the familiar sound of footsteps running after me, and Drake and Brandon yelling, “Wait, Mom, don’t leave without us!” Thank Vishnu for online banking, because I haven’t had to return to the bank since.

  Anyway, halfway through our VIP half hour at Jump & Fly, Brandon grabbed my hand and said, “Jump with me, Mom.” I was in the middle of a juicy conversation with one of the mothers about how she believed another mother in their Girl Scout troop was guilty of extortion. Extorting what, I wondered. Thin Mints cookies? It certainly wasn’t going to be the Samoas cookies with the coconut. No one would risk anything for those. But then I thought, Next year Brandon may not ask me to join him at his party, so I started to jump. And the moment my feet landed, I felt a trickle of pee drop into my underwear and then more, and then more. I started laughing so much at the fact that I couldn’t control the pee, even more came out. Ladies, if you’ve given birth, especially more than once, do not attempt jumping on a trampoline without a panty liner. No, I take that back. Make it a thick pad with wings. Liz then interrupted my jumping and my peeing to tell me that Brandon’s birthday table still read “Happy Fourth Birthday” and we were five minutes from the pizza being served.

  I immediately ran over to Kadisha, crossed my legs to keep any more pee from coming out, and said, “Someone needs to change my son’s birthday sign from fourth to sixth birthday before he sees it. It’s 2:26 p.m. Pizza is at 2:30. It’s time, it’s time.” I felt like Academy Award–winner Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment when she freaks out at the nurses because it’s time for her daughter, played by Debra Winger, to get her pain pill. Finally Kadisha put a little spring in her step and said, “I’ve got it right here, I’ll run up there now, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and just like Shirley did in the movie, I pushed my hair from my face, straightened my blouse, and ran to the bathroom.

  After the pizza was devoured, I realized there was about to be a severe water shortage at our table. Water is by far the most coveted natural resource at Jump & Fly. All the kids have bright-red cheeks with sweat pouring down their foreheads and are huffing and puffing and begging for water. There are no water fountains, only vending machines with bottled water at two dollars a pop. As part of our package we got twenty small bottles of water but we went through those quite quickly. “Kadisha, we need more waters, please,” I requested.

  “It’s going to cost you extra,” she said.

  “Not as much as it is going to cost me if one of these kids passes out from dehydration. Get the water, I don’t care what it costs.” Then I turned to Peter and said, “You picked this place, so you’re not allowed to bitch about the price. The kids need to have water. At least we have the option to buy clean bottled water, unlike the people in India.” The way the kids were grabbing at the bottles I felt as if I were a combat Marine passing out water in an Iraqi orphanage.

  That night, after Brandon opened his gifts and I was having a glass of wine, I turned on the TV and the top story of the evening news was “Sandstorms Hit Palm Springs.”

  16

  THREE WEDDINGS AND NO FUNERAL

  I first met Joe Francis, creator of the Girls Gone Wild franchise, when he was a guest on Chelsea Lately in our first season. We hung out a few times at events and he just took to Peter and me. Once, he even asked Peter to join him for a guys weekend at his mansion in Mexico. I put my foot down on that one. A guys weekend with Joe Francis would be second only to one with Hugh Hefner (Hugh would probably fall asleep and Peter would have the only working penis around for all the Playmates). That weekend was a no-go. So one day, I was shocked to get in the mail a save-the-date card announcing Joe’s wedding. Wedding? I thought. I couldn’t imagine him with just one girlfriend. I mean, look at Hef! And Joe was much younger and cuter. Still, from what I heard, Christina, his bride-to-be, was a really nice and normal pretty brunette who was an entertainment reporter.

  I immediately booked our flights to Puerto Vallarta, a thirty-minute drive from Punta Mita, where Joe’s mansion was located, and where the wedding was going to be held. Although some might think it inappropriate for a Catholic married mother of three to be friends with the Girls Gone Wild creator, I, however, argue that it can’t be porn when several of the original actresses had accrued some college credits.

  It was going to be an all-inclusive wedding, a three-day extravaganza that included free massages, Jet Skis, horseback riding, big themed parties, and all the alcohol we could drink. This was not a cash-bar wedding. It was a wedding with a twenty-four-hour personal concierge—everything was taken care of.

  On our Alaska Airlines flight down there, I had my headphones on and was grooving out to rap music—songs about living the high life, drinking champagne, and hos, getting myself in the right mind-set. Peter nudged me. “We have to turn around and go back because a 747 was disabled on the runway in Puerto Vallarta.”

  “You’re joking,” I said as the lyric “Bitches be running their mouths,” played out of my headset. However, I could tell by the other passengers, some of whom were also heading to the luxe wedding, that it was indeed true.

  When we
got back to LAX, one guy, who we referred to as Tall John, said he was trying to get us one of Joe’s private planes to get us there. After drinking margaritas for two hours at the Gladstone’s restaurant inside LAX, we finally realized Tall John was full of crap.

  Since we already had a babysitter for the weekend, Peter and I decided to splurge on a hotel room and get on another plane the next day. At two the following afternoon, Peter and I were in a taxi van on our way to the airport with two of Joe’s three sisters and their husbands. Ten minutes into the ride, Peter couldn’t find his passport. I refused to let my irresponsible husband ruin my fun. We had the cab pull over so Peter could look through his bags—nada, it wasn’t there. I ordered the cab to take Peter back to the hotel to search for his passport and take the rest of us to the airport so that we wouldn’t miss the plane.

  Some might think that it was unwifely of me to abandon my passportless husband and pursue my own pleasure-seeking weekend, but this is the man who, even upon the birth of his sons, never even spent one night curled up in an uncomfortable chair in the maternity ward like every single one of my friends’ husbands did. In fact, the night I gave birth to Brandon, I had such a bad cough that the doctor prescribed some cough medicine. Peter decided he also had a cough and took a huge dose of the medicine. By the time I pushed Brandon out, Peter could barely stand and his eyes were rolling back into his head. They put a mirror to the side of me so I could witness the moment Brandon’s head popped out from my vagina. Just as Brandon opened his eyes for the first time a nurse yelled, “Dad is going down, Dad is going down!” Suddenly, all the attention was on Peter as they seated him in a chair and made sure he was stable. Right after they cleaned Brandon up and handed him to Peter for my sister Shannon to take a picture of them, he handed the baby to Shannon and said, “I have to go home and sleep.” When he finally got home, he crawled into our bed not remembering my mother was sleeping in our California King, since she was there to watch the kids. In my opinion, if the roles had been reversed, he would have dropped me off in the middle of the highway holding my suitcase.

  Peter eventually found the passport in his suitcase thirty minutes later, hopped in another cab, and made it to the airport just in time. I was waiting at the gate, and upon seeing me Peter said, “Give me your cell phone. I left mine in the cab.” I said, “You are un-fucking-believable,” and handed over my cell. Then he said, “Give me a hundred dollars so that the cab driver will come back and give the phone to me.” I said, and quite loudly may I add, “You really are so un-fucking-believable!” When Peter returned with his phone I was being really cold and bitchy and then he said, “Well, if this is the way you are going to be, then maybe I don’t want to go at all.” I forced myself to change my attitude like a light switch in order to salvage the little bit of the weekend we had left. I hate fighting, but I hate fighting on vacation more.

  The worst fight Peter and I have had was over data roaming. We were in a different part of Mexico with all three kids and somehow after giving me explicit instructions on how to use my iPhone in a foreign country, I screwed it up and he discovered I had left the data-roaming feature on or some bullshit. I still don’t understand. But we had one of our worst fights. In the middle of it I yelled, “Do you think Prince William and Kate would ever argue about data roaming? Then why are we?” When we got back to America, I called customer service for AT&T and tried to explain what happened between Peter and me and asked how I could pay the added charge so it would be eliminated from the monthly bill and Peter wouldn’t see it and get upset again. The poor Southern customer service rep honestly thought I was going to get beat up and told me to get out while I still could, but only after she told me all about her second husband, who was a real son of a bitch and a good-for-nothing duck hunter. I have to say, it was the juiciest conversation I’d ever had with a customer service rep.

  Anyway, when we finally arrived for Joe’s wedding, we discovered that other people from our original flight didn’t want to wait the whole day and miss out on any fun, so they’d taken a midnight flight to Guadalajara and rented cars and drove to Punta Mita. Really? I thought. All for a free massage? A curious pairing in a car were Lance Bass and Cheryl Tiegs, who had never even met before. I had always liked Cheryl and could see us bonding over makeup tips.

  The first party was an all-white-themed one with what looked like Cirque du Soleil crossed with drag queens surrounding us on the beach. Kris and Bruce Jenner were there, so we mingled with them a lot. In defense of Joe’s presumed reputation, all of the couples and guests in attendance were quite normal and very sweet, and some we met eventually became dear friends.

  The following evening, the wedding happened. Instead of a priest or a justice of peace, the officiator was a high-powered Hollywood agent. The bride, Christina, came down the aisle in a gorgeous but simple white dress, and Joe sported a custom-made tux.

  The Hollywood agent started out by saying we were not there for a marriage but instead a civil union because, per Joe’s request, he said until gays in general could be married, he would not observe a traditional wedding. Peter leaned over to me and said, “This is so brilliant. He got this girl to marry him without really marrying him.”

  Me and Joe Francis at Kim Kardashian’s wedding.

  Right when we got back to L.A., we made plans to have dinner with Joe and Christina in about three weeks’ time on a Saturday. The Tuesday before our big Saturday-night plans, I e-mailed both Joe and Christina separately confirming the location and time. Christina wrote back right away and said, “I’m so sorry I can’t join you, but maybe Joe would like to join you by himself.” I thought that was odd, and I had really been looking forward to getting to know her better, seeing as she is an entertainment reporter. There was always the chance that she would want to do a feature on me and my ascending career at Chelsea Lately. Two hours later, Joe wrote back and said, “I’m so sorry that we can’t join you, but Christina and I are having marital problems.” I wrote him back and said, “No worries. I totally understand”—as if I did understand a crisis three weeks into a marriage. Doesn’t that actually count as the honeymoon?

  Less than two weeks later, they issued a joint statement, stating that after careful consideration and with great respect and admiration for each other, they had decided to end their civil union. When I told Peter, I asked him if he would return the heart-shaped waffle maker I’d just bought to Williams-Sonoma the next day. We did end up going out with Joe alone and driving around the block in his Cadillac SUV. It had been converted into a limousine with an amazing sound system and bulletproof windows. Besides an amusement park, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in a car—other than blue-balling, of course.

  The next time I saw Christina was August 20, 2011, less than a year later. She was standing with a microphone among a crush of reporters and fans and young teenage girls holding up signs that read KIM AND KRIS FOREVER! We were in a bus that was transporting guests from a heavily secured parking lot up to the Montecito mansion draped in all its glory where Kim Kardashian’s wedding to Kris Humphries was being held. Joe was the one who pointed Christina out while he was sitting next to me.

  I got my invitation a tad late—like, four days before the wedding—even though I’ve known the Kardashians personally since 2005, but this was the event of the year. My best friend, Liz, was now working as director of creative development for Kardashian/Jenner Communications and she had pulled out all the stops to get me there. Admittedly, I had done a bang-up job portraying the Kardashians on Chelsea Lately, so I felt I earned my rightful spot.

  Trying to book a hotel room around Montecito was about as impossible as getting a room at the Four Seasons in London for William and Kate’s wedding. It was also too late for me to call my good friend Oprah to see if we could crash at her pad. I didn’t want to be rude. She usually enjoys longer stays with me. The only room I could get was one for six hundred dollars, which normally would have gone for two hundred on a typical weekend. Cheap Peter sug
gested just driving home after the wedding. I told Cheap Peter, “If you’d like to drive home, you’re welcome to. I, for one, will enjoy the king-size bed in a snore-free room.”

  Like Joe and Christina, Kim and Kris didn’t make it until death, but they did make it two months—seventy-two days, to be exact.

  Our next celebrity wedding was for a roadie for Crosby, Stills, & Nash. My friend Mindy was marrying her longtime boyfriend, Roy. During their courtship she had caught him cheating twice. One time at a birthday for a different girlfriend, he took a forkful of cake and sling-shot it at her head, destroying her sixty-dollar blowout. Mindy was so horrified at his behavior that she got up, apologized to the group, and told Roy they were leaving, then took his hand like a toddler having a tantrum at another kid’s birthday party. However, it’s a little more difficult to throw a two-hundred-pound drunken boyfriend into a passenger seat than it is to place a crying twenty-six-pound child into a car seat and leave.

  At the outdoor wedding in Santa Barbara, Mindy stood holding her colorful bouquet, and Roy stumbled down the aisle wearing Oakley sunglasses and holding a Budweiser. The whole ceremony was less than ten minutes. I just remember that I-do’s were included.