Jason and I went on quite a few dates and he always treated me to a gourmet dinner, and he always wore a suit, which I loved, because it meant I could get more dressed up, too. The one thing that bothered me about his looks were his crooked teeth. I wish his parents would have paid for an orthodontist to straighten out his smile instead of giving him a house. One night after dinner, he asked if I wanted to meet his parents at a jazz club for a drink. They were very nice and seemed very much in love for being married all those years.
Jason later told me that his mom took off with another man when he was five and didn’t return for two years. Ever since, his parents remained together. I hate knowing people’s sexual history, because when I talked to them, it was all I could think about. This was true whether it was our neighbor who cheated on her husband with her preacher or a fellow female stand-up who was married to a man, but I knew that she used to go down on a female comic when she opened for her on the road. It’s just so distracting to me. I know that women can be switch hitters. I don’t believe men can, because with men, as they say, “Once you go dick, you never go back for a lick.” It made me sad for Jason imagining him at five and his mom suddenly moved out. Maybe that’s why he was so spoiled. She must have felt tremendous guilt for leaving him.
Jason and I had been dating about a month and a half when the holidays approached. I was excited to have a date for New Year’s Eve and actually have someone to kiss instead of avoiding some gross guy by huddling with my girlfriends in a corner. The only other time I had been asked out on New Year’s Eve was by a thirty-four-year-old escrow officer I met at my parents’ office Christmas party when I was nineteen. I was so excited to get all dressed up and go to a fancy restaurant, maybe go dancing after, until he called that night around six p.m. and said he was going to pick me up and bring me back to his house in Palmdale, where he was going to make pasta for us. The only thing that sounded worse than the date rape I was sure would happen was the crappy spaghetti I was going to have to pretend to like. Besides, no one would be able to hear my screams, Palmdale is way out in the boonies. I called him back a half hour later, said I had broken out in a full-body rash, and never spoke to him again.
I told Jason about a charity event we went to every year. It included drinks and a buffet and was $110 a person. He seemed enthusiastic to go. Then he asked what I was doing for Christmas. I told him how we always had Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner at my parents’ house with the immediate family. He hinted that he was available on Christmas Eve, so after checking with my parents, I invited him.
I started to think Jason could be the one for me. He was successful. He wasn’t in the business—which was good because his work as an attorney was steadier—but he was supportive of what I did. He told me how much he was looking forward to giving me my present on Christmas Eve. I tried not to get carried away about my gift. After conferring with numerous girlfriends, I decided to spend $100 on a black leather wallet for him. Nothing too personal, but who couldn’t use a new wallet?
Finally, on Christmas Eve, in front of my entire family, I opened my gift. It was a cappuccino maker, “because you love cappuccinos,” he said gleefully. I wasn’t expecting a ring, but how about earrings or a charm necklace. I would have appreciated something with deeper meaning than espresso beans.
After dinner, where everyone behaved and got along famously, I walked him out to his car. I got in the car with him and we made out passionately. That’s when he asked me, “Heather, when was the last time you were with someone?” I felt comfortable, buzzed, in love, and as joyful as an elf on Christmas Eve. I said, “I haven’t been. You would be my first.” If this was a reality show, the editor would have put in the ever-present screech sound of a needle scratching a record.
Jason was in utter shock. “Oh, really? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he questioned.
“Because you never asked,” I said as I leaned in and tried to continue to make out with him. He kind of pushed my hands away. “I hope that is OK. I just haven’t met someone I care that much about before,” I said.
“No, it’s fine. It’s just getting late and your parents are probably wondering what you’re still doing out here, so Merry Christmas,” he said, looking like he couldn’t pull out of the driveway soon enough.
“OK, I’ll talk to you tomorrow after I make my first cappuccino,” I said with a wink.
That night, I went to bed completely in love and relieved that I told Jason the truth. I was certain he was falling in love with me as well, and soon we’d have sex and in a few years get married. The next day, Christmas, we spoke, but only briefly. He was in between family parties. The day after that, I left a message but didn’t hear back from him. I didn’t think much of it and called again and got him.
“Jason, so for New Year’s Eve, how do you want to pay?” I felt weird asking him that, but I figured he’d want to buy both of our tickets.
He said, “I don’t know. It’s a lot of money for New Year’s Eve.”
I felt a little panicked. I wanted to have a boyfriend for the special night, so I said, “Well, I can put it on my card for both of us. You’ve gotten so many dinners. Let me get this?”
“Look, I need to study for the bar. It’s in three weeks,” he argued.
“Are you really going to study on New Year’s Eve?” I countered like Angie Harmon in an episode of Law & Order.
“Yes, I need to. You just go with your friends. I’m going to have dinner with my parents and then just study as long as I can stay up.”
“OK,” I said. I was so disappointed but tried to look on the bright side. He was committed to passing the bar this time, and it was great that he was close to his parents. I mean, it wasn’t like he was going to some other raging New Year’s Eve party with a bunch of guys to pick up chicks.
When New Year’s Eve finally arrived, I anxiously put on my dark green velvet minidress from BCBG that I specifically bought with Jason in mind and went to the party. Halfway through the night, I ran into a sorority sister of mine, Patty. Patty was two years older than me and had once made a very racist comment to me at the USC pool. She said, “Heather, how can you stand living in the Valley?” I took a deep breath and began to explain that it only gets really hot for a couple of months a year but that we had a big pool and central air. She cut me off and said, “No, I mean because there are so many Jews there. That’s why we moved to Phoenix.” I was appalled. I had never heard anything like that before in my life about the Valley. Of course, there were Jews there, along with blacks, Mexicans, Asians, Persians, gays, and everything else America has to offer. We were a potpourri of domestic suburban bliss.
Jason knew Patty through mutual friends, and when her name came up, I relayed that story and thought nothing of it. At the New Year’s Eve party, Patty came up to me and said, “Heather, I can’t believe you called me a racist. My friends told me what you said when you were at their house with Jason.”
I said, “Well, I did not call you a racist, but I did relay a conversation we had where you made a comment about Jews.” Of course, I was dying. There is nothing worse than being caught having talked about someone by the same someone who you had talked about. I tried to make it better by saying, “It’s not like I said you denied the Holocaust ever happened. I just said your family did not enjoy Jewish neighborhoods.”
She tried to deny it and told me how her family had a dear friend who was a Jewish jeweler who always got them gems at wholesale. I finally just apologized for speaking about her without her being there to defend herself. When we were all made up and powdering our faces in the ladies room, Patty turned to me and said, “And I’m sorry to hear about you and Jason.”
“What?” I asked.
“Yes, we saw him a couple of nights ago and he said you guys had broken up. Too bad.”
My stomach dropped. I couldn’t believe it. We’re through. That’s it, and he’s been telling everyone but me? I tried to cover and said, “Yes, he’s just so busy having to reta
ke the bar and all. You do know he failed the first time.” Fortunately, Patty the racist did not know he had failed before, so I got a little satisfaction ripping the lid off that one. After she left the bathroom, I went into a stall. I tried to talk myself into enjoying the rest of the night and finding someone cute to make out with, but I couldn’t. I just wanted to go home. I told my friends what had happened and took a cab by myself. When I got home, I cried so hard that I threw up. I was sober, so throwing up without my typical alcohol level was new to me.
The next day, I called Jason and told him what Patty had said.
He said in an exhausted tone, “Heather, I just have to focus on passing the bar. I can’t have a girlfriend right now.”
“OK, well I will never call you again then.” I said matter-of-factly.
To which he said, “I would appreciate that.”
I hung up. I would appreciate that! My pleasure, motherfucker. He truly had broken my heart. Luckily I had never opened the cappuccino maker and promptly returned it that day. It cost $106, but since I was returning it with no receipt, I only got $79.99—the after-Christmas markdown. At least I got eighty bucks out of the deal. I knew he dumped me because of my virginity. He just didn’t want to deal with it, I guess. Later I talked to Jen, my friend from The Groundlings who introduced us. I told her how he so abruptly dumped me after Christmas, saying he couldn’t have a girlfriend after he basically invited himself to my house on Christmas Eve. I offered up the fact that we had not had sex but did not tell Jen I was a virgin.
She said, “Oh, Heather, thank God you didn’t have sex with him. He has the smallest penis I’ve ever seen. I made the mistake of having sex with him, and honestly, I asked, ‘Is it in?’ and to my horror it was. I wanted to warn you, but I didn’t think you guys would have hit it off like you did.”
I told Jen about the one night I ended up attempting to give Jason a hand job, but I gave up halfway through because I thought it was never getting hard because it was so small. It was barely the length of my thumb.
The realization that Jason suffered from having an extremely small penis did make me feel better about being dumped, and it explained a lot. His mother must have known how itsy-bitsy small his penis was, so maybe that’s why she insisted he have a nice house. And maybe his dad has a small penis, too, and felt guilty for passing the little prick gene on. Like many men with small penises, he tried to make up for it with a Porsche. Most important, maybe he was afraid that if we did do it and got married, I would never know what a regular-size penis felt like, which really is quite considerate when you think about it. Or maybe he just really needed to focus on studying, and if boning me wasn’t in the immediate future, he didn’t want to deal with it. One thing I did know was that was the last time I would ever tell a guy I was a virgin.
Soon afterward, I started dating Ned. He had been on the soap opera Santa Barbara for years, but the show had gone off the air. He was tall for an actor and pretty good-looking, not perfection but very appealing. I gave him my number at an art/ free appetizers/DJ playing party. When he called a few days later, he said, “You don’t know what I went through to find your number that I accidentally threw away. Let’s just say it was pretty disgusting.” Ned was funny and had bought a house when he was on the soap, which he now rented out at a profit. He rented another house with a roommate. I was impressed with his business sense for an actor and he was always busy auditioning.
I had sworn off guys in the entertainment business after I went on one date with an alternative stand-up comic, right before Ned. He said he hated the beach. At first I didn’t believe him and thought he was just saying that to fit into the grungy Janeane Garofalo alternative comedy scene, which was about hating everything conventional. But again, who hates the beach? I pressed him on the subject and asked what if it was Hawaii, the Four Seasons, all expenses paid—but no, he said he hated the beach. I thought to myself as I finished my penne pasta arrabiata, no honeymoon on the beach, no taking the kids to the beach club to build sand castles—yep, this date is over! I was home by nine-thirty and pissed because the date with the beach hater was on Valentine’s Day. After accepting his invitation, a doctor I had been out with once asked me to a dinner party with other doctors on Valentine’s Day, too. I chose to go with the beach hater because he had asked me first and I figured God would reward me for keeping my word, which He didn’t.
When the big night came, the beach hater hadn’t even made reservations because he claimed he didn’t know it was Valentine’s Day. For good measure, he added that he didn’t believe in it, either, something about how it’s just another way for the corrupt corporations and the greeting card industry to profit off a made-up holiday. I tried to explain that Saint Valentine was a real saint, but it didn’t seem to matter. Sadly, we ended up at the Olive Garden. I hate it when I have two sets of plans to choose from and choose the wrong one.
Ned, however, loved the beach, which was fitting since he was on a soap. In describing him to my friends, Ned was soon referred to as “Santa Barbara.” Everyone I dated past or present had a descriptive name: “Beach Hater,” “Divorced Dad,” “Hand Model,” and now “Thimble Dick.” After dating for a few weeks and blue balling Santa Barbara numerous times, I decided to go on the pill, take it for a month so that it was in full effect, and then bone Ned one night without any big virginity speech. He didn’t have to know.
Santa Barbara told me that his ex-girlfriend, a swimsuit model who he had lived with, just tried to kill herself and her mom called him to come over. This happened to be the Fourth of July weekend, which really pissed me off because I wanted to have a good Fourth of July and spend it with someone I cared about. What was up with my love life getting killed on holidays?
The year before, Derek, a guy whom I had dated once, invited me to meet him in San Diego, where we would spend the Fourth of July on his friend’s boat. I had my sister Shannon join me. Shannon was always the best person to bring to a thing like this. She’s blonde and pretty, really easygoing, and most important, nice. So even if she was not interested in my guy’s friends, she would drink, laugh, and make out with one of them, anyway. My friend Tara, in contrast, was the worst. One time, I introduced her to my guy’s friend who had been playing volleyball all day and drinking all night, and she looked straight at me in front of him and said, “Is this a joke? Look how red his face is. Heather, absolutely no!” I had to lie to him and say that she wasn’t a coldhearted bitch but rather had recently lost a relative to skin cancer and never wanted to experience that pain again. I then lectured him about the importance of sunscreen.
When Shannon and I reached San Diego, we checked into a hotel room and met Derek and his friends at a bar. It was fun, but I knew I was not that into Derek. At least we’d have an amazing day on the boat. The next morning, Derek called. I thought it was to tell us where to meet at the dock, but instead he said, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, it’s an amazing day; the bad news is my friend had an emergency back in Arizona where he lives and never made it out here with his boat.” I was silent for about a minute until I said, “Are you kidding me? The boat is the only reason I came to San Diego.” Shannon couldn’t believe how awful I was being, but I really wanted to have a good Fourth of July. She convinced me to make the best of it, which was difficult.
We ended up meeting Derek at his friend’s apartment near one of the universities. We packed cans of beer—not even light beer, so I knew I would be completely bloated in my bikini— in backpacks and walked about a mile to the crowded public beach, where we drank the warm high-caloric beers. I had planned on sipping champagne while heavily accessorized in my bikini and heels à la Puff Daddy, J Lo style. Instead, I was buzzed and full while reading people’s neck tattoos.
When I found out for the second year in a row that my Fourth of July plans were being changed at the last minute, I got pissed. I told Santa Barbara, “If you two are broken up and don’t plan on getting back together, do you really think
seeing her is a good idea?” He said he felt he had to try to help her. I felt that pushing him to wait until the fifth of July so that we could attend my friend’s shindig in the Palisades might make me look a tad insensitive, so I let it go.
Now that I didn’t have Santa Barbara with me, I questioned not going to the married couples’ party and instead going to a Groundling’s party in Los Feliz. I couldn’t do both. You have to choose one party on the Fourth of July, especially if one is at the beach and one is in the Hollywood Hills. With traffic it could take two hours, and nothing is more depressing than seeing fireworks go off when you’re still en route, trying to poke your head out of your window to see them while stuck at a red light. Good luck finding the radio station playing The Star Spangled Banner so that you can sing along. I finally decided to stick with the Palisades party. It was pleasant, good drinks, kids in the pool, but no potential guys for me unless I was willing to break up a marriage and become an insta-stepmother.
The next day, I found out I had made a monumental mistake. I chose the wrong party. I had made the wrong plans yet again! The Los Feliz Groundlings’ party was packed with Saturday Night Live cast members, hip stand-up comics, and up-and-coming industry types. Shit, I was pissed. The previous Groundlings/Saturday Night Live cast member party was at a Hollywood apartment building, and I made out with Will Ferrell in the community pool. Sure, he tried to get away, but I’m an excellent swimmer and took first place in the breast stroke when I was six years old, so I managed to get a few more kisses in. I would have never bothered in the past, but he had already done a full season on Saturday Night Live, so he was instantly more attractive. The eight Corona Lights didn’t hurt, either. Who knows what could have happened at this party? Maybe I could have actually met someone who could have put me on SNL instead of just putting my tongue in a cast member’s mouth.
You’ll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again Page 11
