I've Got This Round

by Mamrie Hart

  OTHER BOOKS BY MAMRIE HART

  You Deserve a Drink

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Mamrie Hart

  All photographs courtesy of the author.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Plume is a registered trademark and its colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Hart, Mamrie, 1983– author.

  Title: I’ve got this round : more tales of debauchery / Mamrie Hart.

  Description: New York : Plume, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017048891 (print) | LCCN 2017058195 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399576805 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525533603 (hardback) | ISBN 9780525536529 (signed edition)

  Subjects: LCSH: Hart, Mamrie, 1983– | Actors—United States—Biography. | Entertainers—United States—Biography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.

  Classification: LCC PN2287.H27 (ebook) | LCC PN2287.H27 A3 2018 (print) | DDC 791.4302/8092—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017048891

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  Version_1

  For my Pussy Posse

  Contents

  Other Books by Mamrie Hart

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  The Poc-oh-no’s

  Starr-Spangled Manners

  That’s So-Noma

  Long-Lasting Friendsips

  Singled Out

  I Think I Cannes

  Moulin Rouge

  Amster-dayum

  Pure Cunt’ry

  Sliding into My DMs

  Pros and Cons

  Backstreet’s Whack, All Right!

  Pity Party

  Get Online, Fellas!

  Just the (Unsolicited) Tips

  Get a Clue!

  Love at First Fight

  Somebody Rockin’ Knockin’ Da Boots

  Weirdest Day

  The Irish Hello

  Frasierween

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Introduction

  THE DAY AFTER my first book, You Deserve a Drink, came out, I was sitting down for lunch surrounded by my “team,” comprised of my manager, agents, editor, and PR people, the whole ridiculous shebang. As I sipped my midmorning martini, I thought to myself, Well, look at you, Miss Hart. A few years ago, you were begging people to come to your comedy show in this neighborhood, watching them throw your flyers in the trash can two seconds after you handed it to them.* Now, you’re sitting here all fancy. Enjoy it, girl. You’ve earned it. But before I could break into a choreo’d number to “I’m Every Woman”* in my head, I was snapped out of my daydream.

  “So, what are we thinking for the next book?” one of the suits asked me. I froze like I’d just realized I was sitting at a table of T. rexes. Next one? I thought. This one has been out for twenty-four hours. Then another spoke up: “Yes! When can we expect a follow-up?”

  I gulped down that lemon drop with a plastered-on smile, nodding and looking attentive, while internally, I was losing it. Those were all my stories! I thought. It took me thirty-one years to collect them! I don’t have anything left to tell! Besides, most of them happened in my early twenties. I’m in my thirties now! I don’t have that kind of energy anymore!

  But when a huge publishing company named after a flightless bird wants another book, you say YES. When I got back to LA, where I had been living for about a year, I wondered how I was going to pull this off. Well, lots of authors fabricate stories for their books. Maybe I can just make some up? That’s not that bad, right? Of course it’s bad! There’s nothing I hate more than listening to someone tell a story and knowing that they are exaggerating. Back to the drawing board. Maybe I can just leave the business entirely? Retire at the top of my game! I took a shot deep breath.

  This wasn’t me. I am not a person who is scared of challenges. My motto has been and always will be “fuckin’ prove it.”

  It’s true. Whenever someone in my life says they want to do something, I say, “Well, fuckin’ prove it.” This can be as simple as someone saying they are going to belly flop into a pool or make out with someone at a bar, to bigger things like going back to school or finally writing that movie idea they’ve told me the plot of eight hundred times.

  I needed to heed my own advice. I needed to fuckin’ prove it.

  So, I did! For the next year and a half, I actively sought out the weirdest and funniest adventures I could find. Luckily, I can make YouTube videos from the road, and I avoid going on auditions at all costs, so getting out of town was actually feasible. I’d adventure in a new city, and then my sunglasses-on, hungover self would write up the tale on the plane home, so as to not forget any details. But this book isn’t just stories of random boozy adventures and wacky celeb run-ins. See, while I was off acting like a free spirit, indulging in those overpriced plane spirits, I was also dealing with a major turning point in my life: the end of a decade-long relationship.

  Initially, I thought I’d keep the breakup out of this book. Hell, what better way to deal with an emotional earthquake than pretending it’s not happening and getting the hell out of town, right? Turns out, you can’t leave those feelings. They are your constant carry-on.

  As I was writing, I realized I couldn’t just tell you about my wild night in Paris and leave out the fact that I was bawling like an idiot! Or pretend like my summer of mayhem wasn’t in part due to being single and also living alone for the first time in my adult life! I went into the writing process for this book expecting it to be an easy follow-up. Another collection of random debauchery, except this time in my early thirties. But, turns out, when I sat at that table sipping that ’tini in Rockefeller Center, I wasn’t just about to start a new writing project. I was about to start a new chapter in my life, and that’s what I’ve documented here. Between the travel and the life-changing circumstances, this book is my Eat, Pray, Love, except it would be more accurately titled Drink, Drink, Drink.

  This book is the closest thing I’ve had to a diary since the Hello Kitty one I kept in the fifth grade, which I used to write thorough reviews of spin the bottle, and it’s by and large the most vulnerable I’ve ever been in public. Which at first made me hesitant. But it’s like they always say: you can’t spell “vulnerable” without “all rub even.” By “they,” I mean me looking at an online anagram generator, but weirdly enough, that phrase actually ties the book together nicely. I started off solid like a rock, threw myself into a tumbler of mayhem, and came out feeling polished and smooth, ready to skip along any tough waters that come my way. Wow, did I just invent a beautiful metaphor?

  SOMEONE. CALL. OPRAH.

  I really do hope you enjoy this collection. I hope it makes you laugh on a beach somewhere, or say “Oh Lawd-a-mercy” on a crowded subway train, or allows you to feel a little bit better about your own transitions in life. And if it doesn�
��t, have no fear: I always have a drinking game incorporated to help give you a nice buzz during the process. So drink every time I . . .

  mention a canceled TV show

  name a snack item you could buy at 7-Eleven

  reference a chain restaurant

  use a slang term for a reproductive organ

  And also, like the first book, I am instituting a safe word for anyone related to me reading this. Trust me, it’s for your own good if you want to be able to look me in the eyes again at a future family function. In the first book, the safe word was “rutabaga,” so why don’t we stick to the root-vegetable theme and make this book’s safe word “KOHLRABI!”? Why? Because I have never used that word in a conversation, and also ’cause it kind of looks like “cool rabbi.” Like a rabbi that would bust out a rap at a bris.

  Now, you’ve bought the book, you know the drinking game rules, you know the safe word, and I’ve fully prepped you to get into this thing, so there’s only one thing left to do . . .

  FUCKIN’ PROVE IT.

  I even got this obnoxiously large neon sign made to remind myself of this motto. To anyone passing by, my living room looks like a Barbie brothel.

  The Poc-oh-no’s

  A DISCLAIMER: Every good relationship I’ve had has started with honesty . . . and usually a long night of drinking and creating memories that could be used as future blackmail. But since they wouldn’t let me duct-tape a fifth of tequila to every copy of this book, I’ll just stick with being truthful instead. SO: This chapter, out of the entire book, is the longest. Most authors wouldn’t do this. Most authors would kick off their book with a snack of a story. Something to whet the appetite. Like an amuse-bouche at a fancy restaurant or a mini Snickers in your car before Chili’s. But that’s not my style. I respect you too much to start you off with a quick bang. I wanted our first time to be slow and attentive and leave you satisfied. That said . . . let’s get into some trouble, y’all!

  Reader, if there’s something you need to know about me, it’s that I often get very obsessed with very dumb things, one of these things being comically large items. Nothing makes me happier than larger-than-life gags: giant whoopee cushions; water towers painted to look like food items; roadside attractions, like the world’s largest ball of twine. This love for colossal crap started early, thanks to a creative local business in my hometown. Where I grew up, in Podunk, North Carolina, there were only a few businesses in town: some gas stations,* a VHS rental/tanning bed salon hybrid, and, situated right by the town’s only intersection, a silk-screening shop that took care of all your sports uniforms and fund-raiser T-shirt needs.

  Now, I’m no marketing exec, but one would think that the best way to advertise this last business would be to put some jerseys in the window. Ya know, show the people driving by the best examples of your work. But not this place. Instead, they filled their window with a ginormous pair of bright orange granny panties, at least four feet wide, that read “Home of the Whopper” across the ass. It killed me, and still does. To this day, it’s my go-to visual to make me laugh, like Peter Pan’s happy thought to fly. Home of the Whopper. SMDH.

  But despite all the oversize goods I’ve been around in my day, there has always been one giant thing I’ve yet to find. My comically large holy grail . . . no, but seriously, it is a grail, because I’m talking about a giant champagne glass.

  Let me take you back. When I was just shoulder high to a titmouse, I saw a commercial for a romantic resort with a couple in a tub shaped like a massive champagne glass. I couldn’t believe my freshly diagnosed nearsighted eyes! What a sight to behold. This couple was happier than an eighties Newport cigarette ad, heads cocked back, laughing as bubbles swirled all around them. I immediately fell in love with that scene and that tub. I know what you’re thinking:

  WTF does “shoulder high to a titmouse” mean? Stay tuned for more confusing Southern colloquialisms!

  What kind of child fantasizes about going to what is clearly a lovers’ resort?

  THIS one. I was a weird child who wanted to be an adult by about age eight. While other kids were decorating their Barbie Dreamhouse or out in the yard playing hide-and-seek, I had a different routine. I would sit at my dining room table, ordering “Vodka Vavooms” from an invisible waiter, which was really just cran-grape in a martini glass. Then I’d take that ’tini to the roof of my dilapidated barn, imagining it was a sexy rooftop bar,* drinking, and puffing away on a small twig as if it was a Capri cigarette.

  This is all especially strange because neither of my parents ever drank or smoked while I was growing up. Despite this, I was basically a four-two Samantha Jones in the making, and so naturally, when I saw that commercial, I felt I had to go. I even asked to visit the resort as a birthday gift, which looking back is amazing—a kid begging her mom to take her to a place that is obviously made for people to have lots of sex? She said no and, I’m assuming, started researching youth-size chastity belts.*

  Now, twenty-five years later (ouch), I found myself wondering if I had just imagined this commercial as a kid. That is, until one night when I was at a bar, socializing with friends scrolling through my Instagram feed. There, in a pic drenched in likes, was a shot of my friend Alan, down on one knee, proposing to his girlfriend, in front of the very champagne tub from my memory!

  It existed! Hallelujah! I was elated. Obviously for my friend finding true happiness in another human but also because this meant that I had not made up this place in my li’l horny brain and that it was still open for business.

  In no time, I was texting Alan:

  Congrats on the engagement yada yada yada where on Earth is that champagne glass?!

  Thanks Mame-dog. It’s in the Poconos, at a resort called Cove Haven. It’s amazing, you gotta go!

  Cove Haven, huh? It sounded like a short-lived Days of Our Lives spin-off. But then he sent the website. I clicked the link and scrolled through, mouth agape like a preteen boy seeing his first nudie mag. It was glorious. Not only were there elaborately themed suites, but there were multiple bars, performances every night, laser tag, archery, you name it. There was so much adrenaline coursing through my veins that I momentarily blacked out, and when I came to, I had a Visa in my hands and booked a champagne suite for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, one month away. MLK had a dream, and so did I. A dream to have my own dreams atop the circular bed that was prominently featured on the resort’s home page.

  I knew the perfect person to take with me: my dear friend and former camp counselor buddy, Hayley. Now, those of you who read my first book might remember Hayley from a few chapters, particularly the one where we ate mushrooms and I kept accidentally setting my faux fur coat on fire with my cigarettes at a Flaming Lips concert. Long story short: I was so out of my gourd that night that I thought the greatest way to ring in midnight would be to pour all our bottles of bubbly into a tub and hop in before it struck twelve. Glamorous in theory, but in reality, it was just a girl tripping balls while sitting in four inches of cold André. Not my finest moment.

  But this would be so full circle. This wouldn’t be a couple of idiots in their early twenties sitting in a birdbath of grocery store champs! This would be two idiots in their early thirties lounging in a giant bubble bath champagne glass! So I texted her with my plan.

  Fuck yeah, Mamie!!! she texted back. I need this soooo bad. And she did. Hayley is a mom and a wife, and her husband had just been through a major health scare. In other words, Mama needed a weekend of debauchery out of North Carolina. I knew she’d be the perfect copilot, too. Hayley should be illegal in most states, ’cause that woman is a firecracker. Seriously, I consider myself to be an exuberant, charismatic person, but Hayley makes me look like a baked potato with a wig on.

  The plan was in motion. I would fly out from LA and meet her at the closest airport to Cove Haven, in lovely Wilkes-Barre,* Pennsylvania, before heading to our luxurious weekend of love
.

  Three weeks later and there I am, waiting for Hayley in the arrivals area, happy that my weed gummies passed as gummy vitamins* through security despite them being skunky as hell. But that wasn’t the only thing skunky at baggage claim. “Mamie Rocket!!!!” Hayley screamed from across the room. She was rocking a new hairdo of shaved dark sides and a bleached-out coif on top, like an edgy Pepé Le Pew. She started barreling toward me, and I say “barreling” because she had clearly drank about a barrel of whiskey on her Detroit layover.

  We embraced like I was a soldier coming home from war, Hayley lifting me off the ground and spinning me in 360s.*

  “Are you ready for the weirdest weekend ever?” I asked.

  We piled into our rental, which might as well just have been a go-kart with a car shell on top of it. I can’t remember the exact make or model, but something makes me think it was called a Dust? Which was fitting because every time there was a breeze, it felt as though the car was levitating. We were literal Dust in the Wind, and I was terrified. But there was no time to worry about being blown off the road in this wind sock of a car. I had my ride and my ride-or-die chick beside me, and we were about to undergo Operation: Acquire Alcohol.

  There are few things I know about Pennsylvania besides the fact that the scenery can get real monotonous as you are driving through the state. But here are a couple of nuggets I know that will hopefully help you in bar trivia one day:

  Bret Michaels, the lead singer of Poison and the person whose scalp might be detachable—he’s been hiding it under a bandana for thirty years—is from there.

  Steelers fans are intense.

  Buttloads of Amish people.

  The alcohol laws are crazy strict.

  That last fact was the only thing that mattered to me in that moment. In Pennsylvania, you can only buy wine and liquor in sanctioned stores, which were surely closed by this hour. We were tired and jetlagged, and the thought of having to seek out different storefronts for booze made me want to drive into downtown Scranton and quietly pull brown bags of Mad Dog out of sleeping bums’ hands. But rather than die by the hand of a vagrant’s shiv that night, I called the resort and put it on speaker.