Chelsea Handler - Are You There, Vodka, It's Me Chelsea

At around noon on a Wednesday I got an e-mail from Lydia inviting me to Aubrey’s birthday dinner that very night. The e-mail was in the form of an Evite and was sent to Ivory, Ivory’s roommate Jen, and me. There was one other person on the list-someone I had never heard of but whose name I didn’t like the sound of. The number of invitees for her “thirtieth birthday bonanza” totaled five. And the heading read, “Aubrey wants to be with her closest friends for her birthday tonight. Can’t wait to see everyone!” Ivory’s roommate Jen had met Aubrey once.

Aubrey is the type of girl who insists on telling unbearably long-winded stories that go absolutely nowhere with no point and no punch line. Not only does she present them as if she’s doing a one-woman show on Broadway, she takes painfully long pauses, leaving the listener wondering if the story has ended or if she is just making up details as she goes along. The most ridiculous part is that she tells these tales with the same gusto Richard Simmons would use to gear up for a back handspring. She’ll build up momentum tantamount to a downhill slalom, only to reveal after a laborious forty-five minute monologue that Mariah Carey likes to take baths with her dog. In between these painfully long diatribes she somehow also manages to insult the listener.

“Chelsea,” she said upon meeting me for the first time, “I have to be honest, normally I don’t love dark roots on blondes, but it’s weird how they kind of frame your face. You’re so angular!”

The backhanded compliments are not nearly as annoying as her stories, or the complete and utter disappointment you experience after getting sucked in to one of these tales expecting a pot of gold, only to get a pile of shit. Ignoring her is the obvious option, but it doesn’t work. The problem with this tactic is that if you look away or appear disinterested, she’ll simply turn up the volume. She’ll speak louder and louder until you are paying attention, and if you try to change the subject, she will interrupt you. The simple act of listening becomes exhausting. “Land the fucking plane!” you want to scream at her.

Another unappealing quality about Aubrey is that she is always telling you the kind of person she is. “I’m a very loyal friend,” she’ll tell you in the middle of one of her stories, with the emphasis on I’m . “I’m one of those people who will give someone the shirt off my back,” she’ll stand up to say, as if she was a rabbi giving a sermon.

It’s been my experience that people who make proclamations about themselves are usually the opposite of what they claim to be. If someone truly is a loyal friend, then they wouldn’t need to broadcast it; eventually, people will figure it out. Who talks about themselves like that? I have a lot of good friends and not one of them ever introduced themselves by saying, “I’m a very good friend.”

The more time I spent around Aubrey, the more I realized that she was simply born in the wrong decade and would have been better off doing vaudeville in the twenties. I made it very clear to Lydia that she wasn’t allowed to bring Aubrey around anymore.

Unfortunately, Lydia is not a good listener.

I promptly responded no to the Evite, wrote something about having diarrhea later that night, and headed back to bed to rub one out with my vibrator. A full minute hadn’t gone by before the phone rang, which I ignored. Then my cell phone rang. I looked at the screen and saw Lydia’s cell phone number. “This is Chelsea,” I said upon answering the phone.

“Chelsea!”

“What?”

“Listen, I don’t want to go to this fucking dinner either, but she is really upset about turning thirty and she’s not speaking to anyone in her family, and she really needs us there.”

“What are you talking about, ‘needs us there’? I’m not even friends with her, and I don’t appreciate getting seven hours’ notice for someone’s birthday dinner,” I told her. “And by the way, the fact that she’s not speaking to anyone in her family is a pretty good indicator that she is the problem.”

“I know, but she had no plans and I feel terrible. It won’t be bad if we all go.”

“I have pinkeye.”

“No, you do not.”

“Yes, I do, my eyes are all red.”

“That’s because you’re hungover.”

“Listen, I feel bad for her too, but I can’t stomach an entire dinner with her. Those stories are just too boring. Plus, I don’t have a present for her, and I’m certainly not buying one.”

“Just get her something cheap; it’s not like you have anything to do today,” Lydia said.

That annoyed me. “Listen, you have no idea what I have planned for my day,” I said as I put my vibrator down. “Where are you anyway? You sound like you’re in a washing machine.”

“I’m in the bathroom, because I didn’t want Aubrey to hear me calling you. She thought you were serious about the diarrhea and I told her you were just kidding.”

“I was serious about the diarrhea.”

“Chelsea, stop it! You need to do me this favor tonight and come. How many of your stand-up shows have I been to?” This was true. Lydia was pretty loyal and she would come to show after show of mine and laugh riotously after every punch line despite the fact that she’d heard it a million times before, even when the jokes were about her.

“Oh, fine! But if my eyes don’t clear up, I may have to wear a patch.”

“Good, I hope you do.”

“I hate you,” I said, and hung up the phone.

I needed a gift. I went into my closet and looked for something I hadn’t worn yet, or maybe something I hadn’t worn in awhile that looked new. I looked at an old pair of boots and wondered if I could pass them off as vintage. I had never re-gifted before and didn’t know what the guidelines were. I decided to call Ivory, who, incidentally, had a job that she went to on a daily basis.

“Can you believe this?” I asked her when she picked up the phone.

“No, actually, I can’t. Can Aubrey tell if I’ve viewed the Evite?”

“Yes,” I told her. “And Lydia says we all have to go.”

“I know. She’s instant messaging me right now, saying you’re going.”

“Apparently I am.”

“Well, maybe it will be fun if we all go,” Ivory said.

“No, it won’t be fun. Can you get her a gift from us?” I asked.

“Chelsea, I’m at work, I don’t have time to go out and get her a gift. I’ll probably give her something someone gave me. I barely know the girl,” she told me.

“That’s what I was thinking too. I have a first-aid kit I’ve never used.”

“I have to go,” she said hurriedly and hung up.

I looked around my apartment at all the possible things I could re-gift and was torn between a picture frame that held a picture of me and my sisters, and a candle that had only been lit once. My head bobbed back and forth between the candle and the picture frame, the same way it would if I were watching a tennis match. After what seemed like a long period of time, I finally decided I really liked the picture frame, and I would just cut the top part of the candle wick off. Lydia walked in the door as I was looking for my pocketknife.

“Well, that was a hard day of work you put in. It’s almost one p.m., you must be exhausted,” I said, rummaging through my fanny pack.

“Ugh, Aubrey is so annoying. She’s been crying all day, going on and on about turning thirty; it is so fucking depressing. I had to get out of there.”

“I’m giving her that candle,” I said, pointing at the candle I had placed on our coffee table right next to an old newspaper I was planning on wrapping it in.

She walked over to take a closer look at the candle. “It’s already been used.”