You’ll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again

by Heather McDonald

  So there I was at the Rite Aid, holding my bag of disposable razors and shaving cream. The line was moving like midnight zombies. OK, I’ll buy it, I thought, and I’ll run back and then shave them in the bathroom at the bar. With each nanosecond that passed, I was more and more conflicted. I even considered shoplifting for a moment and calculated I’d be in prison until at least four p.m. the next day, and I had a Fiber One cereal commercial callback at noon. Just then, another checkout opened and I cut in front of an old lady, threw a ten at the cashier, told him to keep the change, and ran. I prayed to the Lord Jesus and tried to explain that I doubted the old lady had a hot movie star to get back to and I’m sure she didn’t care that I cut. When I got a few steps away from the front door of the bar, I slowed down, put the razors and cream in my purse, and walked in calmly. Just as I stepped in, I bumped right into Vince.

  “Where were you?” he asked.

  “I just went across the street to get some gum,” I lied.

  “Oh, can I have a piece?” he asked.

  “I just realized I left the bag at the checkout. I’m so stupid,” I said.

  “Well, the bar is closing, so we have to go,” he said as he put his hand on my back to lead me out. I looked back longingly at the restroom, desperate to put my leg on the sink and break in that razor with my fur.

  The four of us, Vince, childhood friend, annoying comic, and me, got into Vince’s car and drove the annoying comic to his apartment. When I stepped out to let the comic pass, he said, “We’ll have to go out again, when he’s not around.” That was just bizarre; being with Vince was even making other guys like me more. Then Vince drove to my car and parked behind it. The childhood friend was once again sitting in the back. He was really becoming a third wheel.

  “So what do you want to do?” Vince asked.

  What I wanted to do was have a good dry-humping old-fashioned blue-balling session with Vince Vaughn. So I said, “Well, we can go back to your place and hang out.” I figured I’d go to his bathroom immediately upon arrival and shave these legs and then our make-out session would get started.

  “Well, there’s some other friends of mine staying there, too. We could go back to your place,” he suggested.

  All I could think about was how disgustingly messy my room was, not to the point of being on an episode of A&E’s Hoarders, but it was pretty bad. Let’s just say it looked as if Amy Winehouse and Courtney Love were roommates. Besides an unmade bed, there were my dirty G-strings and wigs from Groundlings’ sketches strung everywhere. My first thought was that we could make out in the living room and he’d never even see my messy bedroom. But the friend was going to have to come with us, so he’d have to hang out in the living room with us, too, which would have been beyond awkward. I said, “It’s really late and I think I better leave. ” I kissed him again with the friend sitting in the back. Being a virgin, Vince would have been just another notch on my chastity belt, but even if I wasn’t and Vince was going to have me every which way including Sunday, there was no way I was going to bring him to that disaster of a bedroom. It was simply too shameful.

  Vince said he was going out of town but would call me the following weekend to get together. Well, that weekend was Memorial Day weekend, which was when Jurassic Park 2 came out, and he was in it. I never heard from him. Instead, I called him a few times and left messages like, “Hey, I’m trying to see your movie, but it’s not playing anywhere. Ha, ha.” Needless to say, my calls were never returned.

  Luck is where opportunity meets preparation, so if you want to get lucky, my advice is to always shave your legs, pick up all worn G-strings from your bedroom floor, keep it short when meeting with the most successful sitcom star of all time, and never wear a bodysuit around a William Morris agent. In fact, just never wear a bodysuit, especially if you ever plan on getting “lucky” !

  8 Ray

  Getting tired of LA guys, my friend Sarah and I decided to go to New York for four fun-filled exciting nights. We didn’t have much money, so we were going to stay with one girlfriend for two nights and then split up. She’d stay at a different friend of hers and I would stay at our newly married girlfriend Nicole’s apartment for the remaining two nights. I had been a bridesmaid in Nicole’s wedding, which was incredible. I remember the two gay male wedding planners whispered in my ear at the rehearsal dinner that the wedding cost upward of four hundred thousand dollars due to the exclusive location, exorbitant number of flowers, and special effects lighting. It would have been a perfect evening if it wasn’t for my date, Jeff.

  Jeff was a game show producer for a trivia show and just a few years older than me. (I was twenty-seven.) Everything was going great, we’d been on a few dates, and my dry humping skills were up to full par. He’d call when he said he would, so I thought he’d be the perfect one to invite to the “Black Tie strictly enforced” wedding. Besides, Nicole’s father was a TV director, so I knew Jeff would be impressed, as Les Moonves (the president of CBS) would be in attendance. However, like so many of my unconsummated relationships, after a few weeks, Jeff started acting a little dickish. At dinner one night, he bragged about how when he took me out, he told his boss I was a different publicist each time so that he could put it on his expense account. Even if he did that, why would he tell me unless he was trying to hurt me? It’s every girl’s self-esteem booster to know she’s some man’s corporate write-off.

  For the rehearsal dinner, in which all of the bridesmaids were invited with a date, feeling this relationship was on the brink but it was too late to invite someone new, I called Jeff and said, “Hey Jeff. Don’t feel like you need to attend the rehearsal dinner on Thursday night, too. You can just come to the wedding on Saturday.”

  “No, no. I want to come to the rehearsal dinner. I’ll be there. The Four Seasons at seven p.m., right?” he asked. Since I had to be at both events early, he was going to meet me at the rehearsal as well as the wedding. I was excited for all the festivities. Being one of Nicole’s bridesmaids had become a part-time job between the numerous showers, fittings, and mandatory meetings on necessary undergarments, length of pearls—12-inch, not 14—and hairstyle, all to be worn down and professionally blown straight. Only the bride would wear her hair up. I was looking forward to all my hard work coming to fruition. I tried to remain positive and told myself that maybe I was misreading Jeff and that we actually had a chance of making it.

  At the cocktail reception at the rehearsal dinner, Jeff came up to Tara and me, and the first thing he said was “Wow, Tara! You look amazing. That is some dress.” Tara, who was a bridesmaid, too, did look great, but to say that first to her without even a hello to me? I tried not to make a big deal out of it. Throughout the dinner, he continued to hit on Tara anytime her boyfriend was not in earshot, at which she just laughed as I took another gulp of Chardonnay. At the end of the night, as we were waiting for our cars, Jeff didn’t make any attempt to get me to go to his place or even kiss me, even after I hinted with “So what do you want to do now?” His response was “Go home, and you should do the same. You look tired.” I knew this relationship was going nowhere fast and I still had to spend the entire epic eight-hour wedding with him.

  All that night I couldn’t sleep. It reminded me of the brazen rude behavior of my first Mary Duque Deb ball date, Eric Kellog. I didn’t put up with it then, so why put up with it ten years later? The next morning, I called Tara to discuss the night and said, “Tara, he was so hitting on you right in front of me. He gave you three compliments throughout the night and not one to me. I think it will really bum me out to have him at the wedding when I know for a fact he could give two shits about me. I’m going to call the wedding planners and say he has influenza so they can rearrange the seating.”

  “No, Heather. You are going to regret not having a date there. All eleven bridesmaids are bringing either their husband or boyfriend. Even the fourteen-year-old junior bridesmaid, Nicole’s cousin, is bringing some guy she is seeing from her AP algebra class. You can�
��t be a dateless bridesmaid at twenty-seven.”

  “Tara, now you sound like my mom when I just wanted to go stag and dance with my dad all night at the Valley Deb ball, but she was horrified. Who gives a shit? I know half the people there. I’ll have plenty of people to talk to,” I said. Tara went on to defend Jeff, saying that she thought he was just trying to be funny with her and still really liked me, finally convincing me to stick to the plan to meet him at the Pacific Palisades mansion at four p.m. for the ceremony.

  Since I was the tallest bridesmaid, I was the first to walk down the aisle and stand over on the left-hand side. I looked out to smile at Jeff and make the best of this day only to find him fixated and smiling ear to ear while staring at Tara as she slowly walked down the aisle to the song they always use in Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing commercials, standing on the right-hand side of the altar. He never even looked on my side for the entire wedding ceremony. Afterward, he found me at the bar getting my first of many glasses of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Again, right in front of me, he complimented Tara on her dress. Hey asshole! I’m wearing the exact same cream off-the-shoulder Vera Wang dress as she is and we’re the same size. Then the videographer came over to interview me. I did a funny, then sentimental toast, and when it was over, Jeff said, “Do you always have to be on?”

  “No, but I am going to be on when a camera is on for something that is going to be around forever.” When we arrived at the tent for the reception and I had a few more champagnes in me, as much of a jerk as Jeff was, I still wanted a date to talk to, dance with, and make out with. But every time I leaned over to Jeff or tried to get him to dance to “We Are Family” or “The Macarena,” he refused. So I danced with the four-year-old flower girl, the fifty-year-old divorcees, even the grandpa with Alzheimer’s who thought he was, in fact, dancing with the bride. When none of them were available, I danced by myself. Halfway through the night, I thought to myself, This is what it must have been like to be Princess Di when she was married to Prince Charles, always trying to get his attention at fancy state dinners and him just turning her away trying to spot Camilla. At the end of the night, Jeff drove me back to my apartment and kept the motor running as I gathered up my bouquet, program, and heels, and then I turned to him and said, “Look, let’s just be honest. You’re clearly not into me anymore, so I’m never going to hear from you or you see me again, so …”

  Then he said, “Heather, you’re drunk. We’ll talk in the morning. Just get out of the car.” So I did. And the next day, Jeff left me a message, saying, “Heather, in spite of what you thought, I had a really good time at the wedding and I want to see what your plans are this week so we can get together, so call me back.” I have to say it felt very satisfying to delete the message and never talk to him again.

  It was fun shopping and hanging out with Nicole in New York. She and her husband’s place was tiny, as most New York apartments are. She had to keep all the fine china she’d gotten from her wedding tucked under her bed. She set me up on her sofa with a pillow and blanket, but for someone my height, it was pretty uncomfortable, because it was a loveseat. I was still grateful, as there was no way I could afford a hotel. On the flight back with Sarah, who was Nicole’s premarriage roommate in LA, I said how my neck and back were hurting so much. Sarah asked, “Why?”

  I said, “Well, I slept on Nicole’s loveseat and for me at five-feet-nine, to crouch up in a fetal position for two nights in a row can’t be good for my spinal cord.”

  Sarah looked at me in shock and said, “Nicole didn’t pull it out for you?”

  “What do mean pull it out? What out?” I questioned.

  “That couch pulls out into a double-size bed.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Nicole had a coffee table in front of the couch filled with meticulously arranged crystal Tiffany candlesticks that people had given her as wedding gifts, so the only explanation was that she didn’t want to bother moving them in order to pull out the couch and give her poor bridesmaid a decent night’s sleep after she flew six hours in coach on a red-eye to see her. What a horrible hostess. She must have thought I’d never find out that the loveseat pulled out into a bed. To have been able to stretch and lay flat on my stomach all night would have been magical. I never had the balls to confront her until now, so if you’re reading this, Nicole, next time, move the goddamn candlesticks, bitch.

  A couple of nights after returning from New York, I was at a nightclub in Santa Monica and ran into some guys I knew from college. I was chatting with them when the one standing to my right said, “Heather, you don’t recognize me? It’s Ray Smith.”

  Ray Smith was a Sigma Chi, and his mother and my mother were in the San Fernando Valley Gamma Phi Beta alumni group and had planned many functions and parties together. In fact, that is how I met Ray when I was nineteen. He was transferring from Cal State University Northridge to USC, and my mom took me to a party at their house and introduced me. I thought he was really nice and cute but shy. In college, he joined Sigma Chi and took me to one party. As we were making out pretty hard core on the roof of his fraternity house, he kept saying, “Heather, I can’t do anything with you. My mom knows you.” I just know that my mom told his mom that I was a virgin and his mother probably warned the shit out of him not to do anything with me. Thanks, Mom. Way to watch my hymen. I mean, I barely got a grind out of him. So after that party, we’d see each other on campus and say hi, but that was about it. Now I was twenty-seven and he was thirty. We talked all night at the club. He wanted to walk down to the beach, but I wasn’t about to do anything with him without a proper date first.

  The next day, he called. I remember I was on the 3rd Street Promenade and my phone was dead, so I went to a pay phone to check my messages. I was so excited that I called him right back from the pay phone. Ray’s father was in the film industry and he had worked with his dad for many years. Now he was on his own with his own small production company and studio to film commercials and music videos. I was impressed. We went out to dinner that night and he told me how he had a serious girlfriend for many years right out of college, then her best friend revealed that she’d been cheating, and then the best friend became his girlfriend for the next three years. They had just broken up a few months ago. Both of the exes were Pi Phis, so I immediately looked them up in my Greek Legend yearbook at home. The first girlfriend was a pretty half Latina girl and the second was a total blonde, blue-eyed beach girl. Well, Ray certainly didn’t have a type, except maybe cute.

  I had a fresh unopened package of birth-control pills and decided to start taking them that following Sunday. My gynecologist had given them to me for free after he brought in his medical assistant, Maria, who was twenty-six, the second oldest virgin he knew, so that we could meet, which was awkward, as I laid there in the stirrups and tried to make small talk with her. He wasn’t pushing the pills on me, but even he at sixty years old felt it was about time I got that cherry popped.

  This wasn’t the first time I had taken the birth control pill. I had begun it three times before—once when I was with Phil the hand model, then again when I was dating Santa Barbara, then the last time, when I was seeing Divorce Dad Dan the Marching Band. I knew I had to take it for a month for it to be most effective and in each case the relationship ended before the month’s pills were consumed, so I repeatedly found myself in a virgin state with a half-empty prescription.

  When I was in high school, my mom was fifty and was still getting her period. This concerned me because I knew she wasn’t on any kind of birth control yet she and my dad were still having sex. This was confirmed each time I tried to open their door in the morning to ask for a check for school and then to my total disappointment found it locked! What was my irresponsible premenopausal mother thinking? I knew my mother did not grasp the rhythm method and that is how my sister and I came to be. My dad used to joke, “Your mother can’t count a calendar.” I was becoming more and more concerned that my mother was acting recklessly with her vagina, and at he
r age, if she were to get pregnant, there was a very good chance there could be complications, plus she worked full-time. I kept pleading with her, “Mom, this is serious. If you have a baby, I’m not taking care of it. I’ve got two honors classes next fall, this is my year.” She would just laugh and try to blow me off. Until one day in the car she couldn’t take my badgering anymore and she pulled over and said, “Listen, I’m going to tell you something but you cannot tell your brothers or sisters. After you were born your father had a vasectomy. He struggled with the decision, being that it is against the teachings of the Catholic Church, but his friend introduced him to a priest in San Juan Capistrano who blessed it, so it’s OK.” What a relief. Had they just been honest with their daughter from the beginning I wouldn’t have lost so much sleep over it.

  Over the next few weeks, Ray and I saw each other a few times a week. He lived in a nice apartment building just off Sunset Boulevard. I’d go over there after I performed someplace close by and I would sleep over after an evening of everything else, but… One time I was leaving another one of Lily’s old rich men dinner parties and I called him. He was at home writing a screenplay. I was driving on the freeway from Encino back over the hill to Santa Monica, where I lived, and I asked, “So do you want me to come over or not?” He could not make a decision. He kept hemming and hawing. I finally said, “Ray I’m at that point on the 101 where I either cut into the 405 on my way home or keep going straight to Hollywood—make a choice.” This part of the freeway always has traffic, so I always cut in at the last minute and wave to the person behind, pretending like I just got into town and had no idea that this freeway entrance came so quickly. Also at a certain time in the morning, right where the 101 and the 405 meet, it lends itself to incredible lighting, perfect for tweezing your eyebrows as you scooch along at two miles per hour.