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

“None!” she exclaimed, incensed. “I didn’t drink anything before I got here. It’s noon!” After a couple of minutes of me asking ridiculous questions about her driving record, I yelled into my walkie-talkie that I needed backup.

Kimmy then hauled ass through the side door, slid under the table, and landed on top of my feet. The woman I was harassing was horrified as she looked down at my deputy. At this point I had to turn around to hide my laughter. We were in our fourth season of the show, and by this time I was having a hard time keeping a straight face during any of our filming. The jokes we were playing on people were becoming more and more ridiculous.

The woman didn’t know what was happening and was getting angrier by the minute. “First of all,” she said, “I am not intoxicated, and I don’t appreciate coming to a wine tasting, where you are encouraged to drink, and then being pulled over by a security guard.”

“Security officer,” I corrected her.

“Whatever,” she responded, still staring at Kimmy.

“Security officer!” I screamed as her shoulders jumped a little bit. I used this tactic on the show when people got indignant, and more often than not it succeeded, and I quickly regained control of the situation.

I grabbed Kimmy under her arms and lifted her up so that she and the woman were face to face. “Please exhale deeply into Deputy Kimmy’s face,” I ordered her. She looked at the group of people she had been separated from, who were now all watching. She took a deep huff and then blew into Kimmy’s face.

“Again!” I ordered. I had to stall before I put Kimmy down because I was laughing so hard, and she was the only thing blocking me. She was heavier than I thought she’d be and my muscles were starting to atrophy. There was urine running down my leg inside my uniform, but I just had to accept it until I could compose myself. I realized rather quickly that that was never going to happen, so in order to not have our victim catch me laughing, I put Kimmy down suddenly and ran out of the room.

The next two people we played this joke on reacted much the same way, and I was finally able to keep it together for the third person. So far, this was the best day of my life.

After I had changed my underwear and we were done with the day’s shoot, I told Kimmy that I was performing that night at The Comedy Store and that I would love for her to come. She was elated.

I picked her up at her hotel at 7 p.m. I was half hoping she was still in the police uniform she had worn during the shoot, but was also half wishing I could see her in a brand-new midget outfit. She came out to the car and climbed into the passenger side. She was wearing jeans that I had seen before at babyGap, her high-top sneakers, and a pink, rhinestone-studded tank top that was skintight, and barely covering either of her nipples. I was completely flabbergasted.

“Whoa, Kimmy. You’re really serious about having a good time tonight,” I told her, eyeing her tank top.

She started to laugh maniacally and said, “Girl, I have never been to a city like Los Angeles, and I am ready to rock!” Then she took out a Marlboro Red 100 that was twice the length of her fingers and lit it up.

She was a little firecracker and I loved it, but I also feared for her safety in such a revealing top. We headed toward a restaurant called The Stinking Rose, where I had made reservations after the hostess assured me they had high chairs.

The whole way to the restaurant, Kimmy went on and on about how grateful she was for my friendship and how this was by far the best experience of her life. Home life was not so good, she implied. I would have to wait until dinner before I pressed her for more details. This was just the way I imagined myself acting around Nancy Grace-available, yet distant.

Once we sat down at dinner, it didn’t take me long to realize that I would gather more information than I could have ever bargained for. The waiter came over and she ordered a Captain Morgan and Coke.

“Are you even allowed to drink?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she cackled, as she pulled out her ID for the waiter. Apparently, she was twenty-five.

“Wow, you look really young for your age,” I told her.

“Thanks, Chelsea,” she said. “I have to tell you, when I married my first husband, I wasn’t even eighteen.”

“What?” I blurted out. “Your first husband? How many husbands have you had?” I couldn’t believe this little nugget was having grown-up sex, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was horrified.

She went on to tell me that not only did she marry again, but her current husband was in prison for grand larceny. She lived with her mother, who has never accepted the fact that she married someone in prison.

“Wait a second,” I interjected. “You met him while he was in prison?”

“Yes, but he got out right after we met,” she told me. “But he ended up getting caught again. This time he didn’t do it. He was framed.”

“Of course he was,” I said in complete agreement. The idea that Kimmy was involved in something as sophisticated as a framing was alluring. My mind ran the gamut of criminal possibilities, from espionage to high-level racketeering, until I was interrupted by Kimmy asking if she could borrow money to pay her phone bill.

I was a little thrown off guard, but told her that wouldn’t be a problem. If this little spark plug wanted to squeeze me for a couple hundred bucks, that was fine with me. I was more intent on getting the waiter to take a picture of her sitting on my shoulders without causing too much of a stir.

Kimmy was on her third rum and Coke when she told me that she had almost all the money to bail him out, but was short one thousand dollars. “His trial isn’t until the spring, so I want to get him out before then, just in case he ends up getting convicted.”

I was beginning to become concerned with Kimmy’s alcohol intake and asked her if her little body would be okay handling that much liquor.

“Oh, I get fucked up all the time,” she said in a deeper voice than she had started the night with. The waiter came over and set down the tri-tip steak Kimmy had ordered. I was too nervous to eat and had only ordered a Caesar salad. I wanted to keep my hands free in case Kimmy needed me to cut her meat.

I squinted at her. “We still have to go to The Comedy Store, so maybe you should hold off on the booze.”

She told me more about her mother, who was collecting money from the government for disability, and a father who had left home when she was three. I wanted to tell her to look on the bright side-she couldn’t have changed that much in her condition, so at least he knew what she would look like twenty-two years later.

After Kimmy polished off her sixteen-ounce tri-tip, she asked me if I’d like dessert.

“You go ahead,” I told her. “Anything you want.” It was becoming pretty obvious that Kimmy probably didn’t get out of her hometown much and that her life in Pittsburgh was pretty bleak. I started thinking of different ways that I could help turn her life around.

Maybe I could move her out to Los Angeles and we would start our own detective agency, or maybe I would just quit showbiz, move to Pittsburgh, and she and I would open an arcade. I wondered if she would eventually get on my nerves if we lived together.

I thought about all the fun baby pictures I could take of her and then send out to my relatives. We would go to the mall where people take their infants for pictures, and I would have her surrounded by ducks, pumpkins, or maybe holding a bat and baseball. Would she be opposed to sleeping in a planter? I didn’t have the answers yet, but I knew my life would never be the same. I needed to help Kimmy and nothing was going to stop me.