I Like You Just the Way I Am

by Jenny Mollen

  “Okay, yes. He seemed a little pissed, I’m not gonna lie, but he definitely didn’t seem like he was at the point yet where he’d want you dead.”

  “Yet?”

  “Yeah, not yet.”

  “‘Not yet’ implies that he eventually will,” I cried.

  “Jenny, get a hold of yourself. Nothing is happening.”

  As the sun set over the canyon, Veronica and I sat on the patio drinking tequila, petting my utterly useless guard dogs, and discussing what Jane Velez-Mitchell looked like before her plastic surgeon gave her Michael Jackson’s face. I momentarily forgot about Mickey and enjoyed the summer night like a normal person who doesn’t feel like their neighbor wants to murder them.

  By midnight, all my fears came flooding back. I went to set the house alarm, but for some reason it wasn’t working.

  “Jesus Christ, he’s cut the wires!” I screamed, leaping to the most obvious explanation first.

  “Oh God. I shouldn’t have let you get buzzed. Now you’re really gonna be annoying.” Veronica laughed at me and went to wash her face for bed.

  She was right, I rarely drank and after half a glass of anything, I could usually be counted on to say or do something I’d regret in the morning.

  “I’m serious, Vern! The alarm was working perfectly fine, and now it’s not! That only happens when somebody cuts the wires. Go check the phone line.”

  I grabbed my cell and dialed ADT Home Security.

  “Yes, hi. My alarm isn’t letting me set it, and I think it might have been tampered with,” I said.

  “The phone lines work, psycho!” Veronica called out from the kitchen.

  “Well, ma’am,” the operator said, “the soonest we could get a technician out there to work on it would be two weeks from now.”

  “Look, I could be dead in two weeks if somebody doesn’t come now.”

  “It’s past business hours, and we won’t be able to accommodate your request until at least—”

  I stopped her. “Okay, fine. I need a patrolman to just come to the house and just keep a lookout through the night.… Maybe two.”

  “Armed response is included in your package only when your alarm has been set off,” she responded mechanically.

  “Well, it’s not going to be set off, because someone has obviously fucked with it.” I started to hyperventilate. “Okay, fine, I want to up my package. I want the biggest plan you offer. I want soldiers.”

  Just then, Veronica walked back in and tore the phone from my hands. “Jenny, go get in my bed!”

  I drunkenly obliged. That night I dreamt of dozens of soldiers (who coincidentally all looked exactly like Jake Gyllenhaal in Jarhead) teeming around my property with machine guns, overturning decorative rocks to expose potential land mines, and snipers on my roof ready to take out Mickey and whoever else might try to enter without permission. I think the actual “soldiers” were two forty-year-old guys in a Prius with an ADT logo who cruised by the house once or twice and spent the rest of the night sitting in their car, watching each other masturbate.

  * * *

  By morning, the threat of Mickey breaking in was gone. I agreed that I’d overreacted and promised to make a concerted effort not to dwell on death for the next twenty-four hours. It was the day of Tyler’s party, and we had to prepare. I walked outside and saw three Mercedes sedans already parked in front of his house, letting me know he was home.

  Veronica spent the latter half of the afternoon blow-drying her hair and waxing her face. Feeling suddenly self-conscious about the girth of her arms, she asked if I had a long-sleeve camisole she could wear underneath her dress (which was actually a muumuu). When it was time to go, Veronica needed twenty more minutes to look in the mirror, tilting her head and analyzing her look.

  When she finally appeared in the living room, she was wearing her black dress, black leggings, a black long-sleeve shirt, and black boots.

  “I know it’s more of a fall look, but what do you think?”

  I thought she looked like a Saudi housewife minus the hijab.

  “You look great,” I said.

  After taking seventeen pictures she didn’t approve of, we finally got one she agreed to post online, locked up the house, and left for Chateau Marmont.

  Within an hour of arriving, Veronica met an indie drummer and disappeared. I, meanwhile, ate Jell-O shots and wandered around, telling whoever would listen about Mickey.

  “Wait, Mickey Gervich? The songwriter? Trust me, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. That guy couldn’t hurt you if he tried,” said a portly guy who commenced to sit openmouthed under the vodka ice luge. “He’s repped by my firm. He’s just quirky. Have you seen his purple Tevas?”

  “I don’t know that I’ve seen the purple pair,” I said, locking eyes with Veronica, who was now sitting on the drummer’s lap across the bar.

  I excused myself and walked over to her. It had been four hours, and I was more than ready to go home.

  “Okay, seriously. I just accidentally brought up the fact that I thought Mickey was a murderer to a guy who actually knows him. I’m so embarrassed. What if that gets back to him? Jason is gonna be furious. He hates when I suspect people we know of being murderers.”

  “That fat guy under the ice luge? You’re fine. He’s wasted. I want you to meet Beau.”

  The drummer stood up and extended his hand. “Right on. Nice to meet you.”

  He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old, with shaggy blond hair, an ironic mustache, and jeans that were tighter than Veronica’s leggings.

  “I think I need to go home. I don’t trust that I won’t keep talking to the wrong people.” I watched Veronica’s hand make its way down the drummer’s pants.

  “I’ll get a ride home in a few,” she said. “Beau has a suite here, and he’s gonna show me around.” She licked her lips predatorily.

  “Fine. Ring the gate when you get back, and I’ll let you in,” I said, searching through my purse for my valet stub.

  After scanning my car for hijackers, I drove back to my cul-de-sac with increasing anxiety. I tried to calm myself by remembering that Tyler and entourage would be following shortly, and that the fat guy under the luge said Mickey couldn’t hurt a fly. As I pulled up to the house, I noticed a large package with a note on it sitting by the front gate. Fumbling with my keys, I picked it up and carried it inside. I threw the heavy package on the table and checked around the room for broken glass. Once I was sure the coast was clear, I pulled the note off the package and read it.

  Had this in my fridge all day. Think it’s for you guys.

  —Mickey

  My hand started to shake as I tore into the box. Beneath a thick layer of Styrofoam, I saw packets of dry ice cradling what looked like … preserved flesh. Before inspecting any further, I ran upstairs to the bedroom and locked myself inside. I left my dogs in the living room as an offering and frantically called Veronica’s cell. The call went straight to voice mail so I hung up and dialed again. Before her phone could start ringing, I heard a noise coming from the front entrance. The dogs rose to the occasion and started barking as the door pushed back and forth. Then, suddenly, I heard it open.

  I’d gone through what I’d do in the event of a home invasion over a million times in my head. My plan was to always grab the thickest blanket I could find and wrap myself in it as I jumped off my balcony into the trees and hoped they were strong enough to catch me. Then, I’d scurry down the branches, suffering a few minor cuts and scrapes along the way, and run barefoot to a nearby neighbor. (Preferably not one who was trying to kill me.)

  When I actually thought my home was being invaded, I unfortunately did what all idiot virgins do in every horror movie ever made. I unlocked my bedroom door and stood at the top of the stairs unarmed.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me! And Beau!” Veronica called out. “Sorry, I didn’t ring the bell. Tyler gave me his key. Beau’s bandmate had a chick in their room, so we’re just
gonna bone here.”

  Traumatized, I slowly made my way down the stairs. Veronica flipped on the lights and offered Beau a drink.

  “Oh, look! Jason’s Ibérico came! When did this get here?” Veronica opened up the rest of the package and pulled out a shrink-wrapped leg of cured ham.

  “It … I … I guess they delivered it to Mickey’s house by accident.”

  “What, you didn’t think it was, like, a dead body or something, did you?” Veronica chased Beau around the kitchen, laughing. “She’s scared of the neighbor and everyone.”

  “You don’t think I’m a killer, do you?” Beau joked as Veronica led him into the guest bedroom.

  “Wait, you’re not weird about blood or anything, are you? Because I think I just started my period.” She slammed the bedroom door shut behind them.

  * * *

  A month and a half later, Casey Anthony was found innocent, my sister had her baby, I moved out of her nursery, and Jason came home. Before Veronica left for Jersey, she polished off what was left of the Ibérico. Beau never called her after that night, which she said was fine because his dick felt like a tampon.

  With Jason back in town, I stopped watching the kind of TV that kept me up at night. Much like my liquor, I learned that I just couldn’t “hold” my crime shows. And Jason preferred watching The Bachelor anyway.

  Eventually he ordered another leg of meat and had Larry and Amanda over to share it. I was in the kitchen, eating a pastry out of the trash—one I’d tried to protect myself from earlier by covering in salt and smashing up in a napkin—when Jason walked in from outside.

  “Jenny…”

  “I know what this looks like, but I decided it was worth the calories and unfortunately I had to do a little Dumpster diving to salvage it—”

  “Just ran into Mickey in the driveway.”

  “Oh?” I said innocently.

  “Yeah, he was a little confused as to why you’ve been telling people he’s a murderer.”

  “Oh?” I said again in the exact same voice.

  Jason took the pastry out of my hand and bit into it. “You know, I’d almost feel bad for the guy who tried to murder you. Especially if he thought he was gonna keep you alive for a few days in his basement or something. Oy god, that’d be exhausting.”

  His words sank in, and they gave me a bit of newfound confidence. Maybe I was a murderer’s worst nightmare. Maybe my neuroses, childhood defenses I’d always tried to hide, were in fact my greatest weapon against lunatics as an adult. After all, there’s got to be nothing more frustrating to a psychopath than being in the company of an equally crazy person who’s stealing your thunder. From that day forward, I decided I wasn’t going to get hijacked, raped, maimed, or abducted. I was going to die the way other, happy, well-adjusted people with a positive outlook on life did: cancer.

  15.

  The Bloody Truth About Hollywood

  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. (Guys, I was in a movie with Steve Carell.) 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. Well, kids, here’s the hard truth: Most of you will never be noticed, not by your industry, not by your community, and most definitely not by your parents.

  Here are four mistakes my family made that led to me getting headshots and auditioning for a living. Hopefully you can learn from them and not make these mistakes with your own children.

  1. Do Not Send Your Child to a Performing Arts Camp

  Performing arts camp is designed to build false confidence in children who don’t need it.

  I was in middle school when my dad sent me to a theater camp for the summer. There, I was cast as the lead in The Sound of Music, a role I didn’t even compete for. I was blond and the rest of the girls in my class were brunettes, so I was the obvious choice for Maria. I was also the only one who could stand in front of a group of strangers without peeing or eating my hair. We performed only three numbers from the show, but that didn’t stop me from telling everyone who would listen that I was in a summer stock production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. I watched endless footage of Julie Andrews to help me prepare. I chased my sister around the house like she was a Von Trapp child and would say things like, “When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.” That line was cut from our production because it sounded too religious, but I decided the sentiment would be my character’s hidden secret. According to our director, actors often pick a secret their character has that they never share with anyone else in the play. That phrase would be mine. And if you by chance caught my performance at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts in 1992, you probably already intuited that. Overnight, I fancied myself an artist. I took a long, drawn-out bow at curtain call and noticed my dad in the sixth row actually looking at me instead of at his endless stacks of paperwork. When I was onstage, my parents—who otherwise couldn’t care less about my extracurricular activities—were forced to sit in complete darkness and focus on only me. Unlike the other children in my company, who used the stage as a way to overcome their social anxieties, I used it as a way to extract love (or at least an obligatory catcall) out of my parents.

  2. Don’t Ignore Your Children

  If you want to spend your life focused on yourself, great! Don’t have kids. If you have kids, however, try to at least pretend to be interested in them. Otherwise, those kids are going to become damaged actors who eventually show their genitals for money. When I got back to school after my summer of love and adoration, I could easily have continued with my previously planned, mainstream pursuit of becoming a marine biologist and followed a career that would have earned me some legitimate respect. Unfortunately, my life went back to normal, my parents went back to focusing on themselves, and I ditched my dreams of becoming the first marine biologist to ride a killer whale from San Diego harbor to the Gulf of Mexico. Now, however, I had a hole in my heart that, before it was filled with applause and roses, I had no idea existed. I had had a taste of what my father’s approval looked like, and I yearned for more. My mom wasn’t interested in whether I was onstage or not, but fuck her. There was a whole world of moms out there just waiting to hear me sing “Do-Re-Mi.”

  3. Avoid Taking Your Kid to See Phantom of the Opera

  Even if your kid doesn’t become an actor, he can still turn into one of those weird theater techie geeks who wears a Phantom shirt every day of high school and never gets laid. You don’t want this for your child. You also don’t want your kid to learn all the lyrics to Phantom. Once this occurs, he’s crossed the Rubicon. Knowing all the lyrics to Phantom leads to knowing all the lyrics to Les Mis, and knowing all the lyrics to Les Mis means your kid is officially on his way to becoming a thespian.

  I had to take three years of high school drama before I was offered the right to join the International Thespian Society. The ITS was essentially the high school drama club, except that it was recognized around the world and they gave you a button. I was finally part of an international community of artists, and I couldn’t have been happier. Once in, I was invited to miming seminars, fringe festivals, and the weird goth guy from the yogurt shop’s drunk driving arraignment. I’d fallen into a world of overly loud, overly dramatic outcasts who all got their septums pierced at Hot Topic. All of us planned to audition for college theater programs. For some, the dream was to eventually be the Phantom on Broadway. For those who knew the limitations of their vocal abilities, it was to become Meryl Streep.

  4. Do Not Let Your Kid Major in Theater

  If your ki
d majors in theater in college, he or she will believe that they are going to be famous. And they’re not. You are also further validating their self-importance and feeding into the fantasy that their degree will actually translate into a real-world job. The only real-world job I can think of where what I learned in college might come in handy is “birthday party princess” or “Elvis impersonator.” When you break it down, theater school is really just drama history, vocal exercises, and girls having abortions.

  My parents let me major in theater because I told them that feast or famine, acting was what I wanted to do with my life.

  “I didn’t choose this, it chose me.” I tried to explain to my mere mortal family members that my path was preordained and that I had no choice but to embrace my destiny.

  I prepared two contrasting monologues and sixteen bars of a song for my series of school auditions. I flew to NYC, Boston, and finally Los Angeles, eager to win the hearts of drama professors everywhere with my epic interpretation of Abigail Williams from The Crucible. For my second monologue, I chose Butterflies Are Free. I also had a Twelfth Night up my sleeve, in the event that they wanted something period. I waited in line at each audition, knowing I was the find of the season. What the other hopefuls surrounding me didn’t realize (because I was an actor and hid it so well) was that I’d just come off a successful two-weekend run as Adelaide in Guys and Dolls at my high school. That’s right, the best role in the whole goddamn show! I was a leading lady standing in a sea of singing trees and I was ready for my close up.

  I got into all but one of the programs I applied to and kept my one rejection letter to frame and one day display next to my Oscar. I chose UCLA because I felt being in Los Angeles strengthened my odds of being discovered while still in school. After announcing to my graduating class that I was off to follow my dreams, I bought a copy of Uta Hagen’s Respect for Acting and focused only on respecting acting while I waited for my big break.