Chelsea Handler - Uganda Be Kidding Me

Sue and Lesbian Shelly on the plane to Johannesburg, South Africa.

“When the hell did you decide to go to Africa?” Sue asked me when I rode my Segway into her office and gave her information about the typhoid, tetanus, hepatitis A, and hepatitis B shots we would all need in order to traverse to Africa.

“The doctor will be here at three today for you, me, Hannah, and Shelly.”

“Chelsea, we tape the show at three thirty p.m. Did you forget that you have a TV show?”

Out of fairness to Sue, there have been times when I have indeed forgotten that I do have a TV show. I’ve gone to lunches on a Monday or Tuesday with a friend, had a couple of margaritas, and on my way back home gotten a phone call from one of my producers asking if I forgot we have to tape the show at 3:30 p.m. that very day. This, by the way, has never happened, but it’s a fantasy of mine. I do, however, happen to be very absent-minded and will sometimes forget about an event moments after it’s happened or moments before it’s supposed to take place.

“Sue, I’m quite familiar with the show, but we can push it a half hour or do the shots after.”

“I don’t think I can swing it this time,” she told me. “Chuck has planned this entire weekend and booked plans for us to go up to San Francisco to see a Giants game. He surprised me with it on my birthday and he even made a map of San Francisco and a highlighted route from the airport to the stadium. It would be a little bit soul-crushing to tell him I’ve decided to skip San Francisco and go to Africa because Chelsea’s bored.”

“Well, first of all, Sue, he didn’t need to make a map of San Francisco. That’s a little over the top. They have them everywhere, unless the topography has changed—or he’s in a Learning Annex summer program for mapmaking.” Then I started to sing: “Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map, show me a star…” I trailed off, forgetting the rest.

Sue stared at me expressionless. “The song is ‘ Match maker,’ not ‘Mapmaker.’ And there’s nothing about stars mentioned, either.”

“Sue, we can move the show or we can do the shots after the show. Whatever. San Francisco isn’t going anywhere.”

“When did Africa come up? I thought you were going to the south of France.”

“I want to know where rappers come from. You know that’s always been a passion of mine.”

“That wouldn’t be South Africa where this safari camp is. You know this, right? What you’re thinking is more along the lines of Kenya, where the Great Migration is. Plus, the last time I blew Chuck off for our hiatus, I had to walk around Rome with you and your boyfriend in togas. I mean, can’t we go next year, Chelsea? You just had knee surgery. You can’t even walk normally. It’s starting to feel like we’re chasing the dragon.”

The incident Sue was referring to was the ACL surgery I had on my knee exactly three weeks prior. I had wiped out badly in Switzerland a few months earlier, and now I was basically walking like a Vietnam vet with Bell’s palsy. (If you want the complete Switzerland story now, turn to page 161.)

Due to my newly acquired immobility, I knew that I needed a vacation that would keep me occupied instead of lying around all day on a beach drinking margaritas. I was unable to do any proper exercise, and added calories from alcohol were unwelcome to my atrophied body. My left leg was already half the size of my right; I was starting to morph into muscular dystrophy territory.

“Sue, you can come or not come, but you’re probably going to die soon, so it’s really your call.”

Hannah, who has had different names in all my books and I simply don’t have the energy to reread any of them to find out what they were, was also newly broken up and seemed to be extremely upbeat about it. In addition to being my oldest friend in LA, she is also a terrible driver. Once, Hannah left my house on a Saturday afternoon, only to call me the following Sunday and alert me that my driveway had “hit her car.” Normally, I would argue with a person this out of touch with reality, but I’ve known Hannah for fifteen years, and her self-denial is superseded only by her peripheral vision. She can’t fucking see.

Hannah also has a very unusual tendency to whisper in the middle of a conversation, for absolutely no reason other than to strain the listener’s ears. She will be in the middle of a story about her nephew’s summer camp and will then start talking so softly that she’s practically lip-synching. And what you can hear her saying is so incongruous to the actual subject matter, you are left with the notion that she is in deep negotiations with Somalian pirates about high- and low-tide patterns. She lacks either of the two key ingredients necessary for a story to be funny or compelling: (A) being funny, or (B) being compelling.

When the doctor who specialized in safari inoculations came to my office, he asked us for all of our personal shot history, specifically hepatitis A and hepatitis B. Hannah arrived thirty minutes late (she’s always thirty to seventy-five minutes late) and couldn’t get ahold of her personal physician, who coincidentally happened to be on his own safari. She sat in my makeup chair, looked at the doctor we had all just met moments before, and said the following: “[Normal voice] I once dated a guy, [whisper] Luke , and he was a heroin addict—not when I was with him—but anyway…” She looked up at the doctor and whispered, “ He had his hep A and B shots. [Back to normal voice] So.… do you think I had my hep A and hep B shots?”

This was the moment it should have been clear to me that Hannah was not the right selection for a safari. Sue looked at me, looked at the doctor, sighed loudly, rolled up her sleeve to expose her shoulder for the shot, and announced she was next.

Safari appealed to me for a bevy of reasons: six grown women in pigtails, matching khaki shorts, open-holed army belts, lesbian hiking shoes, and armed with assault rifles. We would parachute in like typical asshole Americans and be completely clueless about what kind of trip we were actually on, asking questions like, “When do we start shooting the animals? Where is the freshest sushi? When do we meet Aretha Franklin, and where are the squash courts?” I’d also insist on hunting live lobster and killing it with my handgun.

It’s also worth mentioning that I’m not a huge fan of brushing my hair and/or showering. In my own defense, I will say that I do not have feculent body odor. I believe my scent is natural, beautiful, and banana. I have several eyewitnesses/employees who can vouch for me. I don’t live in the woods and I make it my business not to camp, dine, or linger at Benihana. I do shower before or after working out, but I find excessive showering just for the hell of it overrated. I believe people who shower twice a day are hiding a secret, or a sandwich.

Having said that, I want to be clear that I do not endorse anyone (Brandy) who thinks swimming in the ocean is a logical substitution for a shower. I also do not value a visitor coming over to my house in Malibu (Brandy, again), borrowing a bathing suit, leaving with it, and then returning it to me days later in a plastic bag—still wet.

The main issue with my recent ACL surgery was that due to the anti-inflammatory tape around my knee, showering had become a major pain in the ass.