by Margaret Cho
No matter how hard it is, I am not going to fashion a wedding fantasy for my next crush. I will stop living life for a future happiness that does not and may never exist. I will live for now and stop wasting my time. Every moment I live can be as beautiful as a fantasy. Every second of life is precious. I vow to stop wasting my time on these dreams that turn my life into a nightmare. I vow to live, to be mindful, to pay attention to life and hold it hard to my heart. Every beat another second going by.
It was so hard then to not want to lose myself in the lacy, white emotions, the soft, womanly caresses of the bridal salon. I was insane, I was being a lunatic. Trying on wedding dresses, preparing for a wedding to someone who would never even call me back. But the ladies at the boutique didn’t know that. They just wanted to help me be ready for my Special Day, the one I would remember for my entire life.
I tried on a dress, which didn’t look good on me anyway. I went to wait outside for Sledge to pick me up. Curiously, he didn’t think anything that I was doing was strange.
I was standing on a corner of Ventura Boulevard and this guy drove up and looked at me and then went and parked his car and walked back. He started talking to me and saying that I was attractive and asked what was I doing. It took me a long time to realize that he thought I was a prostitute! Sledge came roaring up in his Acura and I got into his car and he drove my crazy ass home.
14
TALES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION
The show was under massive reconstruction. Since there had been such a backlash from the Asian-American community, an effort was made to make the show more “authentic.” An Asian consultant was hired, mostly to help actors with their accents and to determine the Feng Shui on the set. It was all the more insulting because the actors didn’t need any help, and “authenticity” was never the problem. It was insensitivity. The idea that there is one defining, “authentic” Asian-American experience ignores the vast diversity of which we are capable. It discounts the fact that there can be many truths, and holds us in a racial spiderweb. We were accused of being racist because we did not ring true as an “authentic” Asian-American family, when the real racism lies in the expectation of one.
Of course, the network had little time for discussions on race and culture. It was decided that the show should be moved out of the family environment into a Generation-X communal living situation. The family would still be in some of the episodes, but the focus was shifted to my life without them. This seemed closer to who I was, but it wasn’t the right solution. The show was changed drastically to be more “me,” but since I was never allowed to do any of the writing, and lines I put in were edited out of the final shows, it was as bad as ever.
Twenty-something angst was hot, so we jumped onto the Friends bandwagon. We did a few episodes where my character moved to the basement, said no to casual sex (something I would NEVER do), and moved into an apartment with two girlfriends. We even parodied The Real World.
Then, two of the writers were fired. Rain and Sherman were young members of the staff, and they had become friends of mine. I did not really know what they contributed to the show, as I was never allowed into the writers’ room, but their sudden dismissal angered me. It made me feel powerless, though I don’t understand why that did when almost nothing else had.
I used my muscle as the star of the show to get them rehired, which surprised everyone, because it was so incredibly late in the game. I just had no idea I had that much control.
It never occurred to me that I was the star.
It never occurred to me that I could have told the network that I didn’t want to lose weight.
It never occurred to me that the only reason anybody was there was because of me.
The show was called All-American Girl and I was the All-American Asshole because I never realized it. Rehiring Rain and Sherman was of no use anyway because soon all the writers were fired, including a very pissed-off Gary.
I felt bad for Gary because even though the show wasn’t funny at all, he really tried. He was also understanding when my diet pills would keep me up all night and I would storm into his office in a drug- and hunger-induced frenzy, making him take notes while I babbled incoherently about story lines based on The Celestine Prophecy, a book I had never read but thought sounded good.
The show was shot one last time as a new pilot. All of the original characters, with the exception of myself and Amy Hill, who played “Grandma,” were gone. I was now living with three men, and it was “slacker-centric.” The comedy fell flat, as it was all supposed to be ironic and cynical, with the humor emerging from the language as opposed to jokes.
It was an ambitious effort, and I would have to say that I did like this show, because at least it was closer to my own sensibilities. It was unfortunate that we lost almost the whole family. It is my understanding that the network felt that the Asian-American backlash to the show was so great that they lost their confidence in it. Either that or the North Korean conflict really had affected the pick-up of the back nine.
Too many Asians was what I’d imagined was being thrown around the conference room. We’ll just keep the quality Asians. The ones with high TV Q.
The new pilot got a lukewarm response, as it was aired to a confused audience who tuned in to a show that they had become familiar with only to find entirely new characters. Everybody was disappointed, and the show wrapped without any news of renewal or cancellation.
I went home to a phone that never rang, unless it was a drug dealer I had just paged.
It was the summer of 1995 and I went to New York to play a club and settle into my uneasy future. Hanging out with friends and doing drugs was all I could manage. The many nights of Ecstasy and Jack Daniels and pot and packs and packs of Marlboro Lights really took their toll. I was having trouble performing, and one day, I woke up without a voice.
There was a signed head shot of Morrissey in the doctor’s office, which comforted me greatly. The doctor injected me with cortisone, which got me talking again. A camera was lowered into my throat, much like my catheter experience, and captured on film the white dots on my vocal cords. I wished I had kept the footage of my bladder along with this. I could have done a great installation: Inside Margaret Cho— Coming Soon—The Ass Explored.
The doctor’s orders were very clear. Give up smoking altogether. Get some rest and be careful and maybe—MAYBE everything will be fine.
Quitting smoking was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, because I loved it so much. I loved the way cigarettes looked and smelled and tasted. I loved that it gave me something to do. Inhaling the blue smoke and watching it come out of me gray was a meditation for me, an affirmation. It was a comfort, an occupation, a drug, a casual habit, a distraction, a way to not eat, a way to not pay attention, a way to not feel. I needed all these things and clung to them as I clung to life.
Even now, when someone opens a pack of Marlboro Lights, I look at the neat white rows of filters wistfully, like the old flame I never quite got over, who my heart still burns for every day.
In addition to cigarettes, I had to give up smoking pot, which was also incredibly difficult. Not entirely ready for this, I grabbed my friend Ebby and jumped on a plane to Amsterdam, so that instead of smoking pot, I could eat massive amounts of hash bon bons and “space cake,” delicious confections that infused my food of choice with my drug of choice.
It was heavenly, feeling free and euphoric and insane. I was relieved not to be working on the show for the time being and lost in the idea that for the moment all I had to do was indulge myself with the tragedy of the mysterious growths in my throat and mourn the loss of my smoking life. Then, as I crammed more and more psychedelic sweets into my mouth, thinking more meant more heaven, it was just disgusting.
Being away from home helped me to think about Jon less, and for a while, my obsession lifted.
I didn’t get high anymore. I just got frustrated. We left Amsterdam and moved on to England. Back in L.A., I had purchased a
big brick of high-quality marijuana a few weeks before, before I knew that I wouldn’t be able to smoke it. We had left it behind in my freezer.
In Holland, since it was legal, we didn’t give it a thought, but now in Britain, where the laws governing it were strict, we started to miss it. Ebby and I wanted to send it a postcard: Dear Weed: I wish you were here . . .
To console ourselves, we drank Scrumpy Jack’s cider in pubs and went up to Cambridge to watch Nick Lowe play at a folk festival. Everybody seemed to be smoking cigarettes, which made me crazy, and when we went to see Muriel’s Wedding in Oxford, I cried for nearly three days after thinking of my one and only Jon, who didn’t care about me even though I loved him so.
One day, when Ebby and I could not take the lack of pot or each other any longer, I went to a bridge in Camden Town and scored a dime bag of seedy, brown shit pot from a Rastafarian. With that dirty brown baggie, I saved our friendship for the remainder of the trip.
It’s a funny thing about drug buddies. You can be tight and close and best friends, but when you take away the substance, you are left strangers. There are so many of these people in my life, people I grew up with, have known my entire life, and now that we don’t do drugs or drink when we are together, I have no idea who they are. Ebby and I stayed friends through sobriety, and we had to get to know each other all over again, which was wonderful. She is a true friend and one of the great gifts in my life, but I never would have known her if we didn’t love the devil’s weed.
Every once in a while, I would be recognized on the streets of London, as a few episodes of the TV show had aired there, but it didn’t happen often enough for me. I grew to miss the nominal fame that I had. I thought things would be the same when I got home, but they weren’t.
I returned to no word on the show’s renewal or cancellation. My thoughts grew darker. My management said not to worry, that the show was just a jumping-off place, that there would be bigger and better things lined up for me. Still, my phone never rang, as I divided up the big brick of pot to hand out to my druggie friends. There are few things more lovable than a former pot addict giving out her stash.
Finally, Greer took me out to lunch at Red on Beverly. In between the Paradise iced tea and Chinese chicken salad, he said, “Oh, by the way, you know the show has been canceled . . .”
I said, “Oh . . . yeah. . . .” like I knew all along, and he didn’t mention it again.
After that, when I called him, he wouldn’t pick up the phone, so I just talked to his assistant, who always said Greer was awfully busy, but that he’d get back to me. He never did.
Drinking eased the pain of the long nights without cigarettes and pot. I was not a good drinker by any means. My face got all red and I had to down aspirins by the handful to keep my head from exploding. My face swelled up so it looked like I had been bitten by a rattle-snake. That is why I liked to get as drunk as possible, because then I wouldn’t feel myself being poisoned.
There was nothing left to do except drink as much as I could, then wake up bleary-eyed in the morning and work it off, try to wring the alcohol from my body with exercise. My managers never talked to me. My new, high-powered agents, who had been to every taping, sent me scripts and flowers every week, never called me back.
I wondered how my old agent Karen was doing. Once, I remember calling her when I was drunk, after business hours and leaving a message on her machine: “You were right about everything . . .”
Sometimes, when there was no party or gathering or comedy show, I would get dressed up and go to Small’s, this little bar on Melrose, and dance by myself. I met a guy there named Doug, who said, “You are the saddest girl in the world.” I immediately made him my boyfriend.
Vodka made me unbearably honest, and I spilled out all the painful details of my life to Doug, from my sitcom cancellation to my childhood molestation by a family friend. Doug would remember everything so he could use it against me later. He’d have sex with me and say, “Am I reminding you of your molester right now?”
I did not have the presence of mind to get out of that abusive relationship. That is the only explanation I have for him. And I was too fucked up to use birth control.
Ebby and I were both late for our periods. Since we were roommates, it seemed a little strange, because we were on the same cycle. Doing our weekly shopping, we jokingly, but nervously, picked up two early-pregnancy tests along with the coffee and cereal.
I already knew I was pregnant. I could just tell. I had the odd feeling that I was not alone. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. It was around Christmas, and I attended a party in which all the guests were on acid, and even though I wasn’t tripping, I still felt altered, locked in cosmic conversation with my unborn, feeling like a little world unto myself.
I was eating a lot and gaining weight and for some reason, for the moment, it didn’t matter to me. But I still didn’t know for sure. I could entertain the fantasy of it, because I still thought I could be wrong.
I did my test in the upstairs bathroom and Ebby did her test in the downstairs bathroom. We screamed simultaneously “No!!!,” which echoed thoughout the Hollywood Hills as both strips turned bright pink.
The reality of pregnancy was nothing like the soft dream I had been nurturing. I could barely care for myself, much less another human being. Since I was also supporting Ebby financially at the time, that would mean there would be four of us! I hated my boyfriend Doug, and I was not about to have his child.
When I told him we were pregnant, he asked, “Is it even mine?” Sure I cheated on him, but I was careful about it. He was the only one I let fuck me without a rubber. Ah, true love.
Abortion was the only solution we considered. It was the only way. Ebby and I made appointments at a clinic in Westwood. I was so grateful to have her there, going through the same thing as me. It made the situation seem slightly less tragic, and more like a screwball comedy from the ’30s— Putting Down Baby.
Our pregnancy tests at the clinic were definite, and our abortions were scheduled for the following week.
In my unguarded moments, over the next few days, I felt that hazy sweetness, the oceanic peace that your hormones give you when you are carrying a child. It was in equal parts disturbing and beautiful. I knew it could not last, and that was awful. I felt that something in me was alive, and that was eternal. I imagined feeling that feeling for nine months, to end it with the birth of a baby, my baby, and the love that I’d have, a big, big love incomparable to anything. But then, reality would set in. There was no room in my life for me, much less someone I would have to raise from scratch.
Inside, during that whole period, I’d felt like I was slowly dying, and had no right to bring forth life. Still, those gentle strings of motherhood wrapped around me, and I could feel their embrace, and I dreamt of tiny hands night after night.
We went to the clinic early in the morning. I was quietly relieved when we got there. After putting our names on the list, we sat in the waiting room and silently watched the saltwater fish in the big tank swim around.
I lay in the stirrups, and as the doctor painfully pushed his latex-coated fingers up inside me, he said, “You know, when you had your television show, I don’t think they really captured your essence as a performer. If you were to do it again, I think that you should really fight for some creative control.”
I said, “That’s fine. Now, could you just kill my baby?”
Waking Up after my abortion, that feeling was gone. I was alone once more.
A nurse came and said she had been at the taping of my HBO special and that a lot of the people from the office had been there and so they were very excited to have me in, which was horrifying but also kind of nice. I was going to offer her a signed head shot of myself to put on their wall, but I decided against it when I realized we were not at the dry cleaner’s.
I felt hollowed out, as if I had been straddling an orange juicer. The operation was incredibly painful, and I thought I’d never be able to
use that part of my body again. It feels like a blender is being thrust inside and turned on. I don’t understand why there isn’t an easier, less traumatic alternative to first-trimester termination.
Are we being punished by the medical establishment for being “fallen women”? Does the scarlet “A” we sew to our chest stand for “abortion”? I might be sad for my unborn, but I do not mourn that I could not have offered it much of a life at that point in mine. With the technology we have in our grasp, why must we still suffer? While old men can purchase their Viagra online, why do we still bleed so much?
We got small envelopes of painkillers, which I could tell right off would not nearly be enough, and our friend drove us home.
Justifying it all because of our extraordinary circumstances, I had a delicious pot relapse. We got home and settled into my red couches and ordered in a bag of pot the size of a loaf of bread. We didn’t move for a month, healing, sometimes uncontrollably laughing at our hideous fortune, getting high and staying high, watching trashy movies, wondering what our kids would have been like, crying about having to kill them, and in general, having the equivalent of an anti-baby shower.
My awful boyfriend stayed away, and I was so glad to be rid of him. In times of trouble, I have always counted on my women and, of course, my gay men to get me by. I thrive on female energy, whether it comes from a woman or a man, and I am not able to function without it.
In the end, women and gay men understand longing and loss, and the pull of the physical body against the weight of societal demands. We are all witches and shape-shifters and healers and gods and goddesses, and we must stay together and join forces to lift each other up.
