August 8, 2019 • 37 mins
Chelsea is joined live in Portland by author Courtenay Hameister for a conversation on family, sex and Chelsea's babysitting career.
Credits:
Host: Chelsea Handler
Guest: Courtenay Hameister
Executive Producer: Conal Byrne
Producers: Sophie Lichterman, Jack O’Brien
Writers: Jamie Loftus, Anna Hossnieh & Sophie Lichterman
Consulting Producers: Nick Stumpf, Miles Gray, & Anna Hossnieh
Engineer: Billy Klein
This episode wasMixed & Edited by: Danl Goodman
Music by: Kingsbury
Order: "Life Will Be the Death of Me"
Available in stores and online now
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Chelsea Handler. Welcome to Life Will Be the
Death of Me, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, Brandon,
welcome back, Welcome, thank you. We never get quality time
together anymore. I know. It's so nice when I can
just finally gaze into your eyes, isn't it. You've been
spending a lot of time in Utah the summer, Brandon. Actually,
and if there's something you need to tell me about
(00:21):
coming out as a Mormon, well, most Mormons don't come out,
They in as a matter of fact, So no, that
would sound odo like a double whoopsie doopsie if you
asked me, just might be. But you've been on the road,
so I've had time to explore. And when we went
to Park City, I just fell in love with Utah.
So I've been I know we're going to ski again
next year too. You have to get us a house
in Austria from don't forget understood Airbnb. Okay, anyway back
(00:44):
to business. We're gonna play my show from Portland, where
I was interviewed by another author named Courtney Hameister, who
was awesome. And this was the series of shows that
made me realize, oh, I wanted to turn this into
stand up, which is interesting because you never thought you'd
do stand up again. Yeah, we've said that half we
I think so well, it sounds like that's a double
(01:04):
whoopsie dood. Thank you, Thank you, that you that's so nice.
Thank you more then. Hi. This is called room temperature
(01:28):
water because I fucking abhore room temperature water, and I
wish people would stop handing it out on planes and
do saunty to saunty. I don't want to sawny water.
That's Coca cola, okay, I want ice cold water with
a lemon anyway, room temperature water. There was a time
(01:54):
in my life when astrology and psychics not to be
confused with physics, fascinated me, but as a general rule,
I think it's all a bunch of bullshit. Meditation seems
to work for some people, while medication works for others,
which explains why it's very difficult for me to sit
still with my eyes closed for any length of time
without row hypnol. I'm all for people being spiritual, but
(02:25):
I'm literally of anyone who mentions it more than once
in a single sitting, unless, of course, one is on
a spiritual retreat, which I hope to God. I never
will be if there even is a God. Jury is
out on that one too, at least until the Rapture,
an event I'm convinced will end up taking place at
the Hollywood Bowl. I believe in spirituality as a component
(02:47):
of your lifestyle. The problem is that spiritual people can
sometimes be giant assholes. Madonna doesn't make me want to
practice Kabbalah. She makes me wonder what on earth she
has is on them that they are willing to let
her be their most famous brand ambassador. At least, Tom
Cruise is a good front man for scientology because he
(03:09):
seems nice, but obviously he's out of his fucking tree too.
I feel spiritual when I'm on mushrooms. I'm not in
the rocks and crystals and chakras and healers. I just
(03:32):
think everyone is looking for something, and it seems like
some people will just settle on the first ray of
sun or glimmer of hope they bump into. Los Angeles
is a very tricky place for vulnerable people. Hourly you
will hear words like gratitude, universe and manifest and terms
(03:52):
like micro panic attack and artisanal deodorant. It is a
place consumed with trends and fads and avocados and kale,
but everything has a shelf life. There will be a
(04:13):
point when the women in gay population of Los Angeles
will turn their backs on avocados and kale, claiming they
both cause cancer and a rectile dysfunction, only to turn
their attention towards some new colonic hydrotherapist mystic who convinces
everyone that is steady diet of fried calamari is the
new anti inflammatory food for the ages. It will quickly
(04:34):
appear on the menu of upscale restaurants, and then there
will be stores selling preprackaged fresh calamari for eleven dollars
of serving. It's hard to take anything or anyone seriously
after a while. And I'm a cynic, but I've even
gotten roped in. I've been in Los Angeles for over
twenty years now, and I've you know, been taken to
a retreat where I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this
(04:56):
is a mistake, you know what I mean. You got
out of treat in the woods of t Panga Canyon
because some actress that you're friends with. It's like, yes,
do this retreat. There's gonna be a sound bath, and like,
what is a sound bath? It's like a DJ in
the bath? What is that? It sounds awesome. Are they
(05:16):
gonna be drugs? Yes, they'll be drugs, all right, I'll go,
I will go, and I'll take any drug. I am
all for it, like I am a garbage can give
me anything, and I'll tell you how it feels. I
can take it. I'm strong. I feel like I'm built
for the apocalypse. But there was a drug that this retreat.
(05:38):
There are two groups of women and one of them
were like becoming unclothed and is everyone's sweating? And I
was like I didn't like the looks of where that
was going. You know, it looked like everybody's going deep
in the woods for a finger blasting ceremony. And I
was like, I don't think so funny. I'm not gonna
trick me twice. No, oh, Surrey, I know what you're
(06:02):
gonna do with those broccoli spears, you sick bitches. And
I'm not into it. And I've done ayahuasca. I've documented it.
I did a special about drugs for a Netflix thank you,
thank you, um where. I've done Aawaska in Peru with
(06:24):
a shaman like, you know, people get diarrhea when they
do ayahuasca. People vomit. I went through that two nights
and was aces like I know how to take drugs. Okay.
Nobody shet their pants on that night, not me. My
shaman did twice and didn't even go to the bathroom,
just stayed in his jeans. I didn't let that affect
(06:48):
me either. I got high that night and had a
beautiful imagery visuals. Will never forget it at this to
retreat sound bath whatever, you know. I once I got
I was like, this is a mistake. You gotta get
out of here, you know. And there was two groups.
One group was going to the woods, you know with
the broccoli, and the other group was doing this something
from a frog five D m T or five D
(07:11):
m O or something. So this woman lies me down
and she's like, okay, you know you're gonna smoke this.
And then I'm like, yeah, give it to me already. Alright.
This place is the worst where it's like where is
the thing to smoke? Because I'm ready, I'm ready. I
was like the first one there and so she says
take a hit, and I took a hit and I
(07:31):
have been under you know, I've taken mushrooms. I've taken acid.
I took my s a t s on acid, which
is why I never went to college. You know, I
have a lot of history with this stuff. And I
took it and I was like, god, I thought for sure.
I was like, oh my god. I looked at the
woman and I was just immediately sweating, ripping my clothes off,
(07:52):
you know, I just like tearing them off. And then
she's like, you can hold my hand. I'm like, bitch,
make this stop. I'm in a matrix. All I could
see was like geometric patterns, and I was so hot,
and you know, before she asked me what my intention was,
I was like, I don't have one. Just I'll tell
you after. Meanwhile, you need to have one. And I
(08:16):
had taken my clothes off and I looked down and
I was like just sweating, and I had my underwear left,
but it was a nude underwear, so I thought I
was naked and somebody had shaped my beaver. I was like,
what is it going on? And then I looked at her.
Could you shave my beaber? And she's like no, sweetie, no, sweetie.
She's like just breathe. I'm like, this is it's a
wrap on this. I don't like this at all. And
I'm a tough girl, That's what I said. Though, I'm like,
(08:38):
I'm a tough girl and this is too much. And
then I had to get dressed in front of her,
you know, like you come out of it. I can't.
So I was like, oh my god, I'm gonna Tieme
go to time. If you're not gonna die, You're not
gonna die. You have brain damage. Now, yes, you are
going to have to deal with having brain damage because
something just attacked you. So when you get your shipped
(09:00):
together and you get in your car, I want you
to really think about this trip. So I've done a
lot of drugs, okay, and I've fallen for it too,
like the bullshit. So I'm hip to all of that,
and I assumed therapy and meditation were all in the
same bucket as chakras and you know, broccoli stalks. Anyway,
(09:20):
I needed to talk to someone, but I was embarrassed
that I needed to talk to someone. I had spent
years skirting the issue of therapy based on the fact
that my life was working out pretty well minus an
emotionally stable relationship with someone of the opposite sex. To
anyone who would query, I would say, I'm better off single.
I don't want to be tethered to anyone. I'm not
a relationship girl. My most recent favorite line was I'm
(09:43):
just more high functioning as a single person, obviously, after
all of of people were in relationships and clearly I
was special if I had somehow managed to avoid one.
Every therapist I saw before I reached the age of
forty two, it made me feel like I was running
in place. I'd go for a period of time, and
(10:04):
then I would eventually get bored. Often I knew I
was running circles around them. Some therapists were just not
the right fit, and some of them were good but
felt more like enablers than instructors. And I wanted to
be taught how to be a better at being a
whole person. I wanted to break my pattern of ending
friendships and relationships on a dime because someone did something
that I found unforgivable. I'd go to therapist for like
(10:25):
a few weeks, and then I'd be like, this guy
seems easy to manipulate, and then one day, I mean,
if you're a girl, that's your currency. How to manipulate men,
you know, and if you're a guy, we know what
your currency is. I once had a therapist and I
was like, finally one day my assistant Karen, who's now
(10:47):
my tour manager, who's here tonight? I said, I can't
go today. It's just I'm not in the mood. Would
you just you go? And then like the next week
I was like, you know what, I could go again? Please?
And I'm third week. I was like, how's it going?
Is helping you and she's like, no, I've been talking
about your problems. I thought I was supposed to be
(11:09):
talking about you. So I had an episode of My
Last Show on Netflix where I interviewed a neuropsychiatrist named
Dan Seagull. He'd written several books on developing brains, including
one that focused on adolescent brains. I wanted to know
when brains developed. You know what what age you learned
the most, whether it's possible to increase your i Q,
(11:30):
and at what age drugs and alcohol do the most
damage in terms of slowing down your learning process. The
last question I slipped in about three or four times
throughout the conversation until I finally got the answer I
was looking for, which was that my brain had fully
developed before any brain damage had occurred. This was before
that frog urine, and that any extracurricular activities I was
(11:52):
up to. We're just fine. At least that's what my
takeaway was our first few sessions consider in stead of
Dan guiding me through meditation, after which I would spend
the rest of the time bitching about Donald Trump and
what a piece of shit he was. I was paying
(12:15):
somebody hundreds of dollars an hour to complain about Donald Trump,
which seemed like the exact right move. I would have
paid him double. I definitely paid for far words in
my life. I knew people were getting sick and tired
of my anchor directed toward the election and the daily
horrifying cabinet appointees, and Ivanka and her veneers and that
schmuck Jared and that evil witch bitch they called a
(12:37):
press secretary. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact
that Sarah Suckaby Sanders and Ivanka Trump had no morality
and or sense of obligation to the very sex they
inhabited to stand up and say no more. I needed
(13:00):
someone to help me harness my anger into something positive.
In our third session, Dan asked me about my childhood. No,
just the usual bullshit. My parents were kind of lame.
I have five brothers and sisters, one of whom died
when he was twenty two, and my mom died a
few years ago. I don't really have any sense of time,
so it could have been ten years ago or five
years ago. My dad's dying. Hopefully that will happen soon.
(13:24):
And then I looked at him and I said, I'd
rather really talk about right now, like what can I
do right now? We talked about my personality for a while,
and he introduced me to this like personality test called
an angiogram, which some of you may know about. And
when we found out what my number was, I was like, okay,
I'm an eight. Tell me what the eight's weaknesses are.
Because I'm trying to get better. I'm really impatient. I
(13:45):
have problems doing things for myself. I'm like infantilized and
I just have to grow up a little bit. And
I said, what's an eight's weakness and he said lack
of empathy and I was like, huh, okay, like a Republican.
(14:09):
I had to think about the difference between empathy and sympathy.
I can be too sympathetic to people. I'm a sucker
for a sob story, and I will lavish sympathy on
any stranger who needs a hand. But empathy. I had
to talk that through with him. I said, empathy and sympathy,
what's the distinction exactly again. Sympathy is feeling bad for
someone or for their situation. Sympathy is more like pity.
(14:31):
Empathy is imagining what it's like to be in that
person's shoes, thinking about what it feels like to be
another person, and the understanding of their experiences and outlooks,
and know that they may be unlike your own, actually
thinking about what it's like to be them. Dan asked
me about those instances when I show up for people
I care about, and if while I'm doing it, I
(14:51):
think about what it feels like to be in that
person's predicament. The answer was no, I had never thought
about that. I went to someone's bedside or doorstep or
lay in bed with any of my friends who needed
a friend in order to do one thing, and that
was to fix the situation, to show up repeatedly, time
and time again. Whenever that happens. My sympathy was in
(15:13):
full gear, but rarely, if ever, do I consider what
it's like to be that person. In that moment, I
want to wrap their injury and patch them up. I
never stopped showing up, but I don't put myself in
their shoes. Often we think we're showing up for someone,
when really all we're doing is showing everyone how great
we are at showing up. Lack of empathy. That hit
(15:34):
me over the head. Yes, that's it. I don't have
any empathy. That's how I feel about people who like
room temperature water. Some people don't care about the temperature
of their drink or the quality of their eyes. I
don't understand those people. Like when flight attendants hand out
that room temperature to sawny water, I want to throw
it out the airplane window. I've always looked sideways at
(15:55):
this community of humans who are okay with room temperature
water or God forbid, prefer it. Or people who like
pineapple on their pizza or for that bat or any
other hot food with pineapple on it. Fuck off, Rosemary
annoys the ship out of me too, but everybody else
seems to fucking love it. Then again, I love Cilantro
(16:17):
and people can have a visceral reaction to that, and
I don't get that at all. How could anyone hate Cilantro?
It feels like I just need to meet more people
who hate Rosemary as much as I do. But mostly
everything and everyone at some point ends up annoying me,
And now I know why because I'm not thinking about them.
(16:40):
I've gone through my life failing to understand why people
have different reactions to things than I do. Lack of
empathy made total sense. This was a door opener. It
was a game changer. I was like, whoa, whoa, WHOA?
All right, now, what how do I get it? Can
I buy it? I spent the next few weeks We're
calling one instance after another where I now recognized my
(17:03):
lack of empathy. I had been in London with one
of my best friends, who happens to be a gay man.
We went to see the movie Do you Remember Call
Me by Your Name? Five minutes in I leaned over,
irritated and asked, is this a gay love story? Yes?
He hissed, incredulously. I hadn't known what the movie was
(17:23):
about going in, and I was taken by surprise. Oh
my god, you're so selfish, I replied, while I shoveled
popcorn down my throat. The ludicrousness of my comment hit
us both at the same time, and we started laughing
so disruptively we had to remove ourselves ten minutes into
the movie. Gay people have had to sit through straight
(17:44):
people's stories since the beginning of time. Had I ever
thought about that? Nope, lack of empathy was everywhere I went.
This was a next getting development. Thank you. Okay, we're
gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back.
(18:07):
M hm. I'm gonna bring out an author of a
very very funny book that I read that came out
last year. I called, Okay, fine, whatever. Please give a
very warm welcome to Courtney Hameister. Hi. Thank you for
(18:35):
being here with me tonight. Cheers, cheers, cheers to everybody
else who's here tonight. So nice that it's Thursday. Everything's
just getting started. There's vodka in this there's Do you
find actually that because you're kind of doing this work
and you are less annoyed by people, that you need
(18:56):
to self medicate less. No. I think I know myself,
but I never thought I would be one of those
girls or one of those people that would just wake
up and smoke or take a take an edible. I
do do that now because I do. Yeah, I'm turning
into it. Like I'm not into the alcohol right now,
(19:16):
I'm into the weed. Um. But it's not the same thing.
I can't get away with that ship anymore. I can't
just drink a bottle of vodka and look okay in
the morning. I don't look okay in the morning. I
looked rough, and I care about the way I look.
You know, I'm not that cool. I wish I were. Well,
nobody's that cool. That's the thing. Like you, I wish
(19:38):
we could drink a bottle of vodka. You're still gonna
feel like ass. Yeah that's right. Yeah, I was that
a fifty cent joke. No, I was just I was no,
I was just he was a cool person that I
was referencing. But I forgot that you had sex with
him at um No. No, So I'm class right over.
(20:00):
Let's talk about the sex. Let's get into it. Keep
can you can? Can you talk about that? I'm not
gonna do that because but I don't really he was
a very this isn't a porn he's a very sweet
(20:21):
guy who doesn't smoke weed. My friends were so excited
to hang out with fifty and we were like in
New Orleans and I think I was doing a show. Yeah,
I was performing, and I walking in the street with
him in New Orleans was like, well, I mean it
was ridiculous. And then my friends were so excited to
hang out with him. And then he didn't even smoke
weed and he doesn't drink. He was very childlike. He
(20:43):
ate like kids stuff like like yeah, like cereal snacks,
like I remember he ordered a Sunday somewhere. We're like,
no one else was ordering a Sunday you know, wait
for You're like, is there? Okay? Oh okay. Um. He
(21:06):
was a very sweet man and I never I mean,
he was the thing about him that was so surprising
that how unfuglike he was. You know, yeah, yeah, if
he's eating cereal and having a Sunday, that's adorable. You know,
he's America's most adorable rapper. Isn't it just a cuting?
(21:29):
So we were we were just sort of briefly talking
about dating, and I wanted to, um, obviously you're dating.
I think you're dating. Life is probably gonna change now, right,
now I'm gonna pay people when I break up with
them anymore. Now I do this thing. I went on
a couple of dates with a friend set me up
with this guy, and I went on a few dates
with him, and I was like, and I'm trying to
get rid of all my old bad habits, you know,
(21:49):
because I could just be like, look at a guy
and who like, you're fucking belt and that's it, It's over,
you know what I mean? Your list of deal breakers
is long, long, long. That's a protective, you know, shield
that we create. But I mean, your toe goes in
the wrong direction, something's weird. I don't like if you
shave your chest hair and you're straight, I'm not interested.
(22:10):
I don't like that it's for gay guys only. They
only get to do that unless you're Greek or Armenian,
and and if you're not, then we need to talk
about where you're shaving your chest. Every little thing, every
little thing. You have to just bite your tongue and go.
That doesn't define a person like they're fucking toe or
if you know, or they're bad genes, like that's not
(22:32):
who do you think you are? And what I've discovered
is that I want to remain single. No, the thing
is I have a very happy single person, so I
have to But it's okay to say that I want
to be in a relationship. I'm allowed to say that.
That's not needy, that's saying something that I want. I
desire that. If it happens, great, If it doesn't happen,
(22:54):
great too. But it's it's better to be honest about
and not absolutely I don't have any interest in that.
I love to meet a guy that can ski and
that can you know, have it like travel the world
with me. That's great And if I don't, I'll just
have to read it, you know, more books. Um, I
actually dated a guy who had this pelvic Uh, this
(23:15):
is a little off topic. He had he was in
a car accident and he had his pelvis got injured.
And I didn't know this when I was dating him,
but he was. I called him the kind of lingus
savant because he was so good about him in your book.
But it turns out that what happened was he had
this pelvic injury when he was very young, like he
(23:35):
was nineteen, so he had to learn other shit and
that's why he was so good at it, Like it
was you know what happened with the sex? Um, No,
the and the sex was good. He just needed to
take viagra. But for the actual sex part, But I don't.
Penetration is not really my jam so much. No. I
(23:56):
mean I enjoy it, like I love it in the beginning,
but it's like after a while there's chaffing. I really
like to be penetrate in. No. I enjoy it initially, yeah,
but I mean I don't want I mean, I like
the whole sex, like I like all the things that
have to do with sex if you're really really into somebody,
(24:17):
you know, But I don't want some guy going down
on me that I don't know that well, like i'd
rather have sex with them, right, That's how I feel.
I think there's two schools of thought on that. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, So,
so I wanted to so I wanted to talk about you.
Sorry about that. Um So. I love the way that
(24:38):
you talk about children in the book, Um you are you.
It's so simple a matter of fact. The sentence that
I loved was I've never had the urge and it
wouldn't be a good use of my time. And it
was so perfect. And you know, Jen Kirkman. Right. She
wrote that amazing book called I Can Barely take care
of Myself and it was all about her not having kids,
(24:59):
and she had this amazing response to people who talked
about why they think it's selfish when people don't have kids, Like,
what's your response to those people, Well, it's selfish to
not have any think I'm doing the world of favor right.
First of all, it's selfish. It's selfish to have children
at this point. I mean, the population is out of control,
we have climate change. So I'm doing everyone a favor
(25:22):
by not having a child, by not making another loudmouth bitch. Okay,
people should be grateful. You think people would be saying,
thank you, Chelsea, thank you for not procreating. Um. I
am able to help so many people in my life
that I care about and strangers that I'll never meet
that I care about. I'm able to do all of
that because I am financially independent and then I don't
have anybody relying on me. And if I was a mother,
(25:45):
I think I'd probably really do it badly. And I
think more people should understand that it's not necessary. It's
not you know. In forty fifty sixty years from now,
do you know how any women are gonna not even
have a partner And I'm going to have a genetically
engineered baby that they made on a computer. I mean,
that's where it's going. Like the fact that we don't
(26:06):
all need each other is bad and good. Let's just
say hypothetically that you meet the perfect man and he's
hilarious and he's super hot, and and he can ski.
He doesn't have to be older. He could be forty
to fifty and he has a kid. Oh good delivery.
(26:29):
And I was good. I was in it. I was like, yeah,
what I wouldn't I've done that before. I'm very you know,
like I like that, and but I've done that before.
And I stayed in a relationship way too long because
of his kids because they were like little, like little
sisters to me and I and I really did care
about them. They were they were like older, they weren't
little kids. Uh No, I wouldn't disqualify somebody for having
(26:49):
a kid. Obviously, people will make mistakes. I'm gonna write
a book. I'm gonna write a book called Hot Parenting
Tips where I tell everybody what I think they're doing wrong.
Because I am very persipicacious. I can see it all.
And some of these kids are such assholes iPads and assholes,
(27:10):
and I pad equals an asshole kid. When are people
going to get it is? I mean, I was at
my friend's house the other day and he was like,
she was like, iPad and this is like the level
she's talking and I'm like, oh my god, and I think, Mommy,
you're not taking it. He's seven, and I'm like, oh
my god. Just based on his reaction about it being
taken away alone, Like I remember playing Super Mario Brothers
(27:32):
to like three in the morning. You know, I've been
addicted to things. And when they told me to get
off of it, I knew to get off of it.
I wasn't like, hey, can't get out of my room
to my mom. Okay, well this sounds like a good
time to take a break. Well, there's a great story.
And you've probably already talked about this a million times,
but there's a great story. And are you there, Vodka.
(27:54):
I think about you babysitting at twelve for a fourteen
year old and taking him down. Oh yeah, I used
to babysit. I opened I started a babysitting ring in
Martha's Vineyard because it once I realized my parents had
no money and no bank account, I was like, I'm
getting a job. And I was twelve. So I started
this babysitting ring, and I called all the hotels on
the island in Edgartown, which was where my parents house was,
(28:16):
and I'd say, I'm a babysitter. I'm you know, a
summer resident. Please call me if you have couples that
want to go out. Blah blah blah. I said I
was fourteen because at twelve my tickets had already come in,
and I did look like I was fourteen. I mean
I looked at like I was fourteen when I was eight. Okay,
so I baby. So they were like, oh, we have
a son who's thirteen, and I was like perfect. So
(28:37):
he was older than me and I was babysitting him
because it was really twelve. And then he went nuts
on me. He had something whatever people have a d
h D or a d D or whatever, and not
to diminish it, I know it's a real thing, but
he definitely had something like that. And we ended up
like in a wrestling match somehow, and I put him
(28:59):
to bed and yells at him. Well, no, you were
on him and you used your knees to keep his
chest down on the floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I
was the worst. And then the father parents come home
and I was like, he was terrible tonight. I don't
know if I want to come back here, like immediately
rejecting them before they could find out that I was
not fit to be babysitting. But I ran it like
(29:23):
a mafia ring. Like my sister's a Shawna wanted in
on it. She's older than me. She's like, I wanted
on some of that babysitting money because I'd make all
this money. I had like eight different families that I
was rotating. I do it every day Monday through Sunday.
I'd go and people loved it, and so my I
started making so much money. I would double book myself
and then I let my sister in on it, but
I would only give her a cut, not the full.
(29:46):
And then at the end of the summer, my dad's like,
give me all that my where's that money you've been
stowing away in that cigar box? And I was like,
don't fucking worry about it. And he's like, Chelsea, if
you made money on doing that babysitting. You need to
share it with the family, you know, I just want
to see, I'm what you made. You're gonna have to
give me some I was like, you're not getting any
of my money, and don't ever ask me for money
until I have a lot of it. So I you know,
(30:08):
my dad was like that, like shy storry. So that
was so disappointing because it's like, what do you mean
You're gonna take a little kid's money, Like why? And
you know, so that kind of stuff is a bummer.
But what I learned, because my dad died this year
this past year, what I learned was and I was
really kind of like disappointed in my dad for a
lot of reasons after my mom passed away. But what
(30:29):
I did realize was how important it is to just
remember people when they are at their best, not at
their worst, you know. And for me, learning about empathy
made me understand my dad and what he must have
gone through losing his oldest son. Like no man does
to recover from something like this. You know, they didn't
have the vocabulary, they didn't have the wherewithal to understand
(30:53):
how to weather that storm. My mom somehow was able
to find joy and be in pain at the same time.
My dad was one dimensional. It was like, now, my boys, Dad,
there's no more fun to be had, game over, life over.
I'm going to be angry for the rest of my life.
And like he stood like that for the rest of
his life, pissed at the world and the world was
out to get him, and he wasted the rest of
(31:14):
his life. He was terrible after that. But you did
come to a place for him. It was after you
left and went to California. There's a great story in
the book about you know them picking you up I
think at the airport and your father brought you at
nine o'clock in the morning some vodka that he put
on the table at McDonald's. We were driving up to
the vineyard. And once I moved to l A, you know,
you get away from your parents and you're like, oh,
(31:36):
I do love them, Like he just we all needed
a time out. We just needed a break from each other.
We had been through too much and we didn't go
through it the right way. We didn't talk about it.
We just my parents tried to talk about it, but
I would be like my mom would trick me into
talking about chat. She'd be like, do you ever think
about I'm like, don't talk about chat. He's dead. And
then I'd go get on my bike and ride my bike,
you know, for like, you know, three hours. And then
(31:58):
at a certain age I started masturbating on my bike,
so that took even longer. And then I was like,
what can I ask? Can I do on these bike rides? Oh?
And then I just realized, you know that I love
my Dad's not perfect. None of us are, like I
have such judgment. You throw such heavy judgment around sometimes,
(32:22):
and usually the things that we can't stand and people
are the things that we hate the most about our
own thing, you know, our ourselves. And we all know
that's true. It is, It's always true what I don't
like about him, or the things I didn't like him
by myself, and you know, and and I didn't like
that he was cheaper, that he was a liar and
trying probably screwed people or financially. That gave me something
to work against. I will never be that way, So
(32:43):
I'm overly generous. I always take care of everybody. I
never lie cheater steel ever. I mean, I lie sometimes,
but you know, just because to save a conversation from happening.
It's just like now, you know, I mean, so, what
was it when you sort of came back to your
parents because you had had a hard time with both
of them, and then you came back after you've been
(33:05):
away for a while and you sort of actually sort
of loved them and get My dad kind of had
a sense of humor again, like enough time had passed
and some for some reason being on Martha's vineyard for
some reason, when I went away, our relationship are dynamic shifted,
and I think he realized he had missed so much
time with all of us because he was so angry
trying to sue the people my brother was with when
he went hiking his best friend from school. He drove
(33:27):
him out of town and he had no money. My
daddy emptied his bank accounts, suing, suing people for nothing,
never winning a suit, and and so I think he
just kind of was like, wait, where is where is?
You know, we had a very close relationship and it's
just fulminated. So I mean, I think that it's interesting
because you're doing all this work now, this mindfulness work,
(33:49):
and you're trying to be more positive and and what's
interesting is that you Obviously there were you had a
complicated relationship with your dad, but in some ways and
even Dan, your therapist, said he even some as your
dad was a really smart guy. And one of the
things that he said to you was that you should
take something away from every conversation that you have, like
take one piece of good information away from every conversation
(34:10):
that you have. UM, which I think is brilliant and
it's sort of it feels to me like it's he's
in cognitive behavioral therapy land with that a little bit, right,
Like thinking positively, if someone were to take one message
from your book, what would you want that message to be?
Not to have a spoiler, but um, to know that
(34:32):
you're not alone. Whatever you're going through, there are millions
of other people that are going through something like you.
We all think we're alone in our pain. We all
think we can't share it. We all think we're gonna
be tougher than the next person or we're not tough enough.
But we're all in this together. So like, look around
and reach out and help somebody, because it's helpful to
know you're not alone, you know, and it's and it's
(34:53):
and it doesn't have to be dark and and crazy.
You have to go through the hard stuff to know,
lean into opportunities, and no that there's room for growth
anytime something shitty happens. Now I sit and I'm like,
all right, how can I handle myself in this situation
in a good way, in a positive way. Get rid
of your ego, Get rid of your fucking phone all
the time, Stop trolling Instagram and having mindless thoughts about
(35:14):
other people's lives, and get involved in your own fucking life.
You know. And some of these some of these things
are so obvious to say or here, but to practice
it is a practice. You have to get up and
be like, I'm gonna be kind and good and decent today.
And then after a while you don't have to try anymore.
You just are to. Yeah, this is watched this evolution.
(35:41):
I feel like and now, well you I know that
you wanted to read a little bit of the book.
I just want to read something to close out the
show for you guys. For the first of all, this
is so nice to be in a theater that's intimate
where I can well, now I can see you. I
couldn't see you for a while, but now I can.
And it's just it's so nice to be here with you,
so thank you very much. It's been such a pleasure
(36:02):
to know that I'm going through something and not try
to keep circling around it, hoping to avoid going through it,
Sitting and experiencing and feeling and not running, to understand
that things take time, and to be okay, sitting with
my pain, to understand the only way through something is
through it, not to rush through life, hop scotching over
(36:24):
or around it. No one is fully cooked, no person
is complete. I didn't know then that my brother's death
was defining me. I define me. No event or person
does this. I define me. I decide who I am
and how I'm going to behave and I choose to
be better, to look more carefully, to trudge deeper, to
(36:45):
think about other people's past and not judge someone for
doing or handling something differently than I would. To understand
my limitations, my shortcomings. That is my growth edge. I
decided to be better. We can all decide to be
a little it better. Thank you Portland's for coming out tonight.
I really appreciate it. I had such a great time
(37:06):
here tonight. Thank you for having me. Thank you life
will be the Death of Me as a production of
i heeart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the i heeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, I'm Chelsea Handler. Welcome to Life Will Be the
Death of Me, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, Brandon,
welcome back, Welcome, thank you. We never get quality time
together anymore. I know. It's so nice when I can
just finally gaze into your eyes, isn't it. You've been
spending a lot of time in Utah the summer, Brandon. Actually,
and if there's something you need to tell me about
(00:21):
coming out as a Mormon, well, most Mormons don't come out,
They in as a matter of fact, So no, that
would sound odo like a double whoopsie doopsie if you
asked me, just might be. But you've been on the road,
so I've had time to explore. And when we went
to Park City, I just fell in love with Utah.
So I've been I know we're going to ski again
next year too. You have to get us a house
in Austria from don't forget understood Airbnb. Okay, anyway back
(00:44):
to business. We're gonna play my show from Portland, where
I was interviewed by another author named Courtney Hameister, who
was awesome. And this was the series of shows that
made me realize, oh, I wanted to turn this into
stand up, which is interesting because you never thought you'd
do stand up again. Yeah, we've said that half we
I think so well, it sounds like that's a double
(01:04):
whoopsie dood. Thank you, Thank you, that you that's so nice.
Thank you more then. Hi. This is called room temperature
(01:28):
water because I fucking abhore room temperature water, and I
wish people would stop handing it out on planes and
do saunty to saunty. I don't want to sawny water.
That's Coca cola, okay, I want ice cold water with
a lemon anyway, room temperature water. There was a time
(01:54):
in my life when astrology and psychics not to be
confused with physics, fascinated me, but as a general rule,
I think it's all a bunch of bullshit. Meditation seems
to work for some people, while medication works for others,
which explains why it's very difficult for me to sit
still with my eyes closed for any length of time
without row hypnol. I'm all for people being spiritual, but
(02:25):
I'm literally of anyone who mentions it more than once
in a single sitting, unless, of course, one is on
a spiritual retreat, which I hope to God. I never
will be if there even is a God. Jury is
out on that one too, at least until the Rapture,
an event I'm convinced will end up taking place at
the Hollywood Bowl. I believe in spirituality as a component
(02:47):
of your lifestyle. The problem is that spiritual people can
sometimes be giant assholes. Madonna doesn't make me want to
practice Kabbalah. She makes me wonder what on earth she
has is on them that they are willing to let
her be their most famous brand ambassador. At least, Tom
Cruise is a good front man for scientology because he
(03:09):
seems nice, but obviously he's out of his fucking tree too.
I feel spiritual when I'm on mushrooms. I'm not in
the rocks and crystals and chakras and healers. I just
(03:32):
think everyone is looking for something, and it seems like
some people will just settle on the first ray of
sun or glimmer of hope they bump into. Los Angeles
is a very tricky place for vulnerable people. Hourly you
will hear words like gratitude, universe and manifest and terms
(03:52):
like micro panic attack and artisanal deodorant. It is a
place consumed with trends and fads and avocados and kale,
but everything has a shelf life. There will be a
(04:13):
point when the women in gay population of Los Angeles
will turn their backs on avocados and kale, claiming they
both cause cancer and a rectile dysfunction, only to turn
their attention towards some new colonic hydrotherapist mystic who convinces
everyone that is steady diet of fried calamari is the
new anti inflammatory food for the ages. It will quickly
(04:34):
appear on the menu of upscale restaurants, and then there
will be stores selling preprackaged fresh calamari for eleven dollars
of serving. It's hard to take anything or anyone seriously
after a while. And I'm a cynic, but I've even
gotten roped in. I've been in Los Angeles for over
twenty years now, and I've you know, been taken to
a retreat where I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this
(04:56):
is a mistake, you know what I mean. You got
out of treat in the woods of t Panga Canyon
because some actress that you're friends with. It's like, yes,
do this retreat. There's gonna be a sound bath, and like,
what is a sound bath? It's like a DJ in
the bath? What is that? It sounds awesome. Are they
(05:16):
gonna be drugs? Yes, they'll be drugs, all right, I'll go,
I will go, and I'll take any drug. I am
all for it, like I am a garbage can give
me anything, and I'll tell you how it feels. I
can take it. I'm strong. I feel like I'm built
for the apocalypse. But there was a drug that this retreat.
(05:38):
There are two groups of women and one of them
were like becoming unclothed and is everyone's sweating? And I
was like I didn't like the looks of where that
was going. You know, it looked like everybody's going deep
in the woods for a finger blasting ceremony. And I
was like, I don't think so funny. I'm not gonna
trick me twice. No, oh, Surrey, I know what you're
(06:02):
gonna do with those broccoli spears, you sick bitches. And
I'm not into it. And I've done ayahuasca. I've documented it.
I did a special about drugs for a Netflix thank you,
thank you, um where. I've done Aawaska in Peru with
(06:24):
a shaman like, you know, people get diarrhea when they
do ayahuasca. People vomit. I went through that two nights
and was aces like I know how to take drugs. Okay.
Nobody shet their pants on that night, not me. My
shaman did twice and didn't even go to the bathroom,
just stayed in his jeans. I didn't let that affect
(06:48):
me either. I got high that night and had a
beautiful imagery visuals. Will never forget it at this to
retreat sound bath whatever, you know. I once I got
I was like, this is a mistake. You gotta get
out of here, you know. And there was two groups.
One group was going to the woods, you know with
the broccoli, and the other group was doing this something
from a frog five D m T or five D
(07:11):
m O or something. So this woman lies me down
and she's like, okay, you know you're gonna smoke this.
And then I'm like, yeah, give it to me already. Alright.
This place is the worst where it's like where is
the thing to smoke? Because I'm ready, I'm ready. I
was like the first one there and so she says
take a hit, and I took a hit and I
(07:31):
have been under you know, I've taken mushrooms. I've taken acid.
I took my s a t s on acid, which
is why I never went to college. You know, I
have a lot of history with this stuff. And I
took it and I was like, god, I thought for sure.
I was like, oh my god. I looked at the
woman and I was just immediately sweating, ripping my clothes off,
(07:52):
you know, I just like tearing them off. And then
she's like, you can hold my hand. I'm like, bitch,
make this stop. I'm in a matrix. All I could
see was like geometric patterns, and I was so hot,
and you know, before she asked me what my intention was,
I was like, I don't have one. Just I'll tell
you after. Meanwhile, you need to have one. And I
(08:16):
had taken my clothes off and I looked down and
I was like just sweating, and I had my underwear left,
but it was a nude underwear, so I thought I
was naked and somebody had shaped my beaver. I was like,
what is it going on? And then I looked at her.
Could you shave my beaber? And she's like no, sweetie, no, sweetie.
She's like just breathe. I'm like, this is it's a
wrap on this. I don't like this at all. And
I'm a tough girl, That's what I said. Though, I'm like,
(08:38):
I'm a tough girl and this is too much. And
then I had to get dressed in front of her,
you know, like you come out of it. I can't.
So I was like, oh my god, I'm gonna Tieme
go to time. If you're not gonna die, You're not
gonna die. You have brain damage. Now, yes, you are
going to have to deal with having brain damage because
something just attacked you. So when you get your shipped
(09:00):
together and you get in your car, I want you
to really think about this trip. So I've done a
lot of drugs, okay, and I've fallen for it too,
like the bullshit. So I'm hip to all of that,
and I assumed therapy and meditation were all in the
same bucket as chakras and you know, broccoli stalks. Anyway,
(09:20):
I needed to talk to someone, but I was embarrassed
that I needed to talk to someone. I had spent
years skirting the issue of therapy based on the fact
that my life was working out pretty well minus an
emotionally stable relationship with someone of the opposite sex. To
anyone who would query, I would say, I'm better off single.
I don't want to be tethered to anyone. I'm not
a relationship girl. My most recent favorite line was I'm
(09:43):
just more high functioning as a single person, obviously, after
all of of people were in relationships and clearly I
was special if I had somehow managed to avoid one.
Every therapist I saw before I reached the age of
forty two, it made me feel like I was running
in place. I'd go for a period of time, and
(10:04):
then I would eventually get bored. Often I knew I
was running circles around them. Some therapists were just not
the right fit, and some of them were good but
felt more like enablers than instructors. And I wanted to
be taught how to be a better at being a
whole person. I wanted to break my pattern of ending
friendships and relationships on a dime because someone did something
that I found unforgivable. I'd go to therapist for like
(10:25):
a few weeks, and then I'd be like, this guy
seems easy to manipulate, and then one day, I mean,
if you're a girl, that's your currency. How to manipulate men,
you know, and if you're a guy, we know what
your currency is. I once had a therapist and I
was like, finally one day my assistant Karen, who's now
(10:47):
my tour manager, who's here tonight? I said, I can't
go today. It's just I'm not in the mood. Would
you just you go? And then like the next week
I was like, you know what, I could go again? Please?
And I'm third week. I was like, how's it going?
Is helping you and she's like, no, I've been talking
about your problems. I thought I was supposed to be
(11:09):
talking about you. So I had an episode of My
Last Show on Netflix where I interviewed a neuropsychiatrist named
Dan Seagull. He'd written several books on developing brains, including
one that focused on adolescent brains. I wanted to know
when brains developed. You know what what age you learned
the most, whether it's possible to increase your i Q,
(11:30):
and at what age drugs and alcohol do the most
damage in terms of slowing down your learning process. The
last question I slipped in about three or four times
throughout the conversation until I finally got the answer I
was looking for, which was that my brain had fully
developed before any brain damage had occurred. This was before
that frog urine, and that any extracurricular activities I was
(11:52):
up to. We're just fine. At least that's what my
takeaway was our first few sessions consider in stead of
Dan guiding me through meditation, after which I would spend
the rest of the time bitching about Donald Trump and
what a piece of shit he was. I was paying
(12:15):
somebody hundreds of dollars an hour to complain about Donald Trump,
which seemed like the exact right move. I would have
paid him double. I definitely paid for far words in
my life. I knew people were getting sick and tired
of my anchor directed toward the election and the daily
horrifying cabinet appointees, and Ivanka and her veneers and that
schmuck Jared and that evil witch bitch they called a
(12:37):
press secretary. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact
that Sarah Suckaby Sanders and Ivanka Trump had no morality
and or sense of obligation to the very sex they
inhabited to stand up and say no more. I needed
(13:00):
someone to help me harness my anger into something positive.
In our third session, Dan asked me about my childhood. No,
just the usual bullshit. My parents were kind of lame.
I have five brothers and sisters, one of whom died
when he was twenty two, and my mom died a
few years ago. I don't really have any sense of time,
so it could have been ten years ago or five
years ago. My dad's dying. Hopefully that will happen soon.
(13:24):
And then I looked at him and I said, I'd
rather really talk about right now, like what can I
do right now? We talked about my personality for a while,
and he introduced me to this like personality test called
an angiogram, which some of you may know about. And
when we found out what my number was, I was like, okay,
I'm an eight. Tell me what the eight's weaknesses are.
Because I'm trying to get better. I'm really impatient. I
(13:45):
have problems doing things for myself. I'm like infantilized and
I just have to grow up a little bit. And
I said, what's an eight's weakness and he said lack
of empathy and I was like, huh, okay, like a Republican.
(14:09):
I had to think about the difference between empathy and sympathy.
I can be too sympathetic to people. I'm a sucker
for a sob story, and I will lavish sympathy on
any stranger who needs a hand. But empathy. I had
to talk that through with him. I said, empathy and sympathy,
what's the distinction exactly again. Sympathy is feeling bad for
someone or for their situation. Sympathy is more like pity.
(14:31):
Empathy is imagining what it's like to be in that
person's shoes, thinking about what it feels like to be
another person, and the understanding of their experiences and outlooks,
and know that they may be unlike your own, actually
thinking about what it's like to be them. Dan asked
me about those instances when I show up for people
I care about, and if while I'm doing it, I
(14:51):
think about what it feels like to be in that
person's predicament. The answer was no, I had never thought
about that. I went to someone's bedside or doorstep or
lay in bed with any of my friends who needed
a friend in order to do one thing, and that
was to fix the situation, to show up repeatedly, time
and time again. Whenever that happens. My sympathy was in
(15:13):
full gear, but rarely, if ever, do I consider what
it's like to be that person. In that moment, I
want to wrap their injury and patch them up. I
never stopped showing up, but I don't put myself in
their shoes. Often we think we're showing up for someone,
when really all we're doing is showing everyone how great
we are at showing up. Lack of empathy. That hit
(15:34):
me over the head. Yes, that's it. I don't have
any empathy. That's how I feel about people who like
room temperature water. Some people don't care about the temperature
of their drink or the quality of their eyes. I
don't understand those people. Like when flight attendants hand out
that room temperature to sawny water, I want to throw
it out the airplane window. I've always looked sideways at
(15:55):
this community of humans who are okay with room temperature
water or God forbid, prefer it. Or people who like
pineapple on their pizza or for that bat or any
other hot food with pineapple on it. Fuck off, Rosemary
annoys the ship out of me too, but everybody else
seems to fucking love it. Then again, I love Cilantro
(16:17):
and people can have a visceral reaction to that, and
I don't get that at all. How could anyone hate Cilantro?
It feels like I just need to meet more people
who hate Rosemary as much as I do. But mostly
everything and everyone at some point ends up annoying me,
And now I know why because I'm not thinking about them.
(16:40):
I've gone through my life failing to understand why people
have different reactions to things than I do. Lack of
empathy made total sense. This was a door opener. It
was a game changer. I was like, whoa, whoa, WHOA?
All right, now, what how do I get it? Can
I buy it? I spent the next few weeks We're
calling one instance after another where I now recognized my
(17:03):
lack of empathy. I had been in London with one
of my best friends, who happens to be a gay man.
We went to see the movie Do you Remember Call
Me by Your Name? Five minutes in I leaned over,
irritated and asked, is this a gay love story? Yes?
He hissed, incredulously. I hadn't known what the movie was
(17:23):
about going in, and I was taken by surprise. Oh
my god, you're so selfish, I replied, while I shoveled
popcorn down my throat. The ludicrousness of my comment hit
us both at the same time, and we started laughing
so disruptively we had to remove ourselves ten minutes into
the movie. Gay people have had to sit through straight
(17:44):
people's stories since the beginning of time. Had I ever
thought about that? Nope, lack of empathy was everywhere I went.
This was a next getting development. Thank you. Okay, we're
gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back.
(18:07):
M hm. I'm gonna bring out an author of a
very very funny book that I read that came out
last year. I called, Okay, fine, whatever. Please give a
very warm welcome to Courtney Hameister. Hi. Thank you for
(18:35):
being here with me tonight. Cheers, cheers, cheers to everybody
else who's here tonight. So nice that it's Thursday. Everything's
just getting started. There's vodka in this there's Do you
find actually that because you're kind of doing this work
and you are less annoyed by people, that you need
(18:56):
to self medicate less. No. I think I know myself,
but I never thought I would be one of those
girls or one of those people that would just wake
up and smoke or take a take an edible. I
do do that now because I do. Yeah, I'm turning
into it. Like I'm not into the alcohol right now,
(19:16):
I'm into the weed. Um. But it's not the same thing.
I can't get away with that ship anymore. I can't
just drink a bottle of vodka and look okay in
the morning. I don't look okay in the morning. I
looked rough, and I care about the way I look.
You know, I'm not that cool. I wish I were. Well,
nobody's that cool. That's the thing. Like you, I wish
(19:38):
we could drink a bottle of vodka. You're still gonna
feel like ass. Yeah that's right. Yeah, I was that
a fifty cent joke. No, I was just I was no,
I was just he was a cool person that I
was referencing. But I forgot that you had sex with
him at um No. No, So I'm class right over.
(20:00):
Let's talk about the sex. Let's get into it. Keep
can you can? Can you talk about that? I'm not
gonna do that because but I don't really he was
a very this isn't a porn he's a very sweet
(20:21):
guy who doesn't smoke weed. My friends were so excited
to hang out with fifty and we were like in
New Orleans and I think I was doing a show. Yeah,
I was performing, and I walking in the street with
him in New Orleans was like, well, I mean it
was ridiculous. And then my friends were so excited to
hang out with him. And then he didn't even smoke
weed and he doesn't drink. He was very childlike. He
(20:43):
ate like kids stuff like like yeah, like cereal snacks,
like I remember he ordered a Sunday somewhere. We're like,
no one else was ordering a Sunday you know, wait
for You're like, is there? Okay? Oh okay. Um. He
(21:06):
was a very sweet man and I never I mean,
he was the thing about him that was so surprising
that how unfuglike he was. You know, yeah, yeah, if
he's eating cereal and having a Sunday, that's adorable. You know,
he's America's most adorable rapper. Isn't it just a cuting?
(21:29):
So we were we were just sort of briefly talking
about dating, and I wanted to, um, obviously you're dating.
I think you're dating. Life is probably gonna change now, right,
now I'm gonna pay people when I break up with
them anymore. Now I do this thing. I went on
a couple of dates with a friend set me up
with this guy, and I went on a few dates
with him, and I was like, and I'm trying to
get rid of all my old bad habits, you know,
(21:49):
because I could just be like, look at a guy
and who like, you're fucking belt and that's it, It's over,
you know what I mean? Your list of deal breakers
is long, long, long. That's a protective, you know, shield
that we create. But I mean, your toe goes in
the wrong direction, something's weird. I don't like if you
shave your chest hair and you're straight, I'm not interested.
(22:10):
I don't like that it's for gay guys only. They
only get to do that unless you're Greek or Armenian,
and and if you're not, then we need to talk
about where you're shaving your chest. Every little thing, every
little thing. You have to just bite your tongue and go.
That doesn't define a person like they're fucking toe or
if you know, or they're bad genes, like that's not
(22:32):
who do you think you are? And what I've discovered
is that I want to remain single. No, the thing
is I have a very happy single person, so I
have to But it's okay to say that I want
to be in a relationship. I'm allowed to say that.
That's not needy, that's saying something that I want. I
desire that. If it happens, great, If it doesn't happen,
(22:54):
great too. But it's it's better to be honest about
and not absolutely I don't have any interest in that.
I love to meet a guy that can ski and
that can you know, have it like travel the world
with me. That's great And if I don't, I'll just
have to read it, you know, more books. Um, I
actually dated a guy who had this pelvic Uh, this
(23:15):
is a little off topic. He had he was in
a car accident and he had his pelvis got injured.
And I didn't know this when I was dating him,
but he was. I called him the kind of lingus
savant because he was so good about him in your book.
But it turns out that what happened was he had
this pelvic injury when he was very young, like he
(23:35):
was nineteen, so he had to learn other shit and
that's why he was so good at it, Like it
was you know what happened with the sex? Um, No,
the and the sex was good. He just needed to
take viagra. But for the actual sex part, But I don't.
Penetration is not really my jam so much. No. I
(23:56):
mean I enjoy it, like I love it in the beginning,
but it's like after a while there's chaffing. I really
like to be penetrate in. No. I enjoy it initially, yeah,
but I mean I don't want I mean, I like
the whole sex, like I like all the things that
have to do with sex if you're really really into somebody,
(24:17):
you know, But I don't want some guy going down
on me that I don't know that well, like i'd
rather have sex with them, right, That's how I feel.
I think there's two schools of thought on that. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, So,
so I wanted to so I wanted to talk about you.
Sorry about that. Um So. I love the way that
(24:38):
you talk about children in the book, Um you are you.
It's so simple a matter of fact. The sentence that
I loved was I've never had the urge and it
wouldn't be a good use of my time. And it
was so perfect. And you know, Jen Kirkman. Right. She
wrote that amazing book called I Can Barely take care
of Myself and it was all about her not having kids,
(24:59):
and she had this amazing response to people who talked
about why they think it's selfish when people don't have kids, Like,
what's your response to those people, Well, it's selfish to
not have any think I'm doing the world of favor right.
First of all, it's selfish. It's selfish to have children
at this point. I mean, the population is out of control,
we have climate change. So I'm doing everyone a favor
(25:22):
by not having a child, by not making another loudmouth bitch. Okay,
people should be grateful. You think people would be saying,
thank you, Chelsea, thank you for not procreating. Um. I
am able to help so many people in my life
that I care about and strangers that I'll never meet
that I care about. I'm able to do all of
that because I am financially independent and then I don't
have anybody relying on me. And if I was a mother,
(25:45):
I think I'd probably really do it badly. And I
think more people should understand that it's not necessary. It's
not you know. In forty fifty sixty years from now,
do you know how any women are gonna not even
have a partner And I'm going to have a genetically
engineered baby that they made on a computer. I mean,
that's where it's going. Like the fact that we don't
(26:06):
all need each other is bad and good. Let's just
say hypothetically that you meet the perfect man and he's
hilarious and he's super hot, and and he can ski.
He doesn't have to be older. He could be forty
to fifty and he has a kid. Oh good delivery.
(26:29):
And I was good. I was in it. I was like, yeah,
what I wouldn't I've done that before. I'm very you know,
like I like that, and but I've done that before.
And I stayed in a relationship way too long because
of his kids because they were like little, like little
sisters to me and I and I really did care
about them. They were they were like older, they weren't
little kids. Uh No, I wouldn't disqualify somebody for having
(26:49):
a kid. Obviously, people will make mistakes. I'm gonna write
a book. I'm gonna write a book called Hot Parenting
Tips where I tell everybody what I think they're doing wrong.
Because I am very persipicacious. I can see it all.
And some of these kids are such assholes iPads and assholes,
(27:10):
and I pad equals an asshole kid. When are people
going to get it is? I mean, I was at
my friend's house the other day and he was like,
she was like, iPad and this is like the level
she's talking and I'm like, oh my god, and I think, Mommy,
you're not taking it. He's seven, and I'm like, oh
my god. Just based on his reaction about it being
taken away alone, Like I remember playing Super Mario Brothers
(27:32):
to like three in the morning. You know, I've been
addicted to things. And when they told me to get
off of it, I knew to get off of it.
I wasn't like, hey, can't get out of my room
to my mom. Okay, well this sounds like a good
time to take a break. Well, there's a great story.
And you've probably already talked about this a million times,
but there's a great story. And are you there, Vodka.
(27:54):
I think about you babysitting at twelve for a fourteen
year old and taking him down. Oh yeah, I used
to babysit. I opened I started a babysitting ring in
Martha's Vineyard because it once I realized my parents had
no money and no bank account, I was like, I'm
getting a job. And I was twelve. So I started
this babysitting ring, and I called all the hotels on
the island in Edgartown, which was where my parents house was,
(28:16):
and I'd say, I'm a babysitter. I'm you know, a
summer resident. Please call me if you have couples that
want to go out. Blah blah blah. I said I
was fourteen because at twelve my tickets had already come in,
and I did look like I was fourteen. I mean
I looked at like I was fourteen when I was eight. Okay,
so I baby. So they were like, oh, we have
a son who's thirteen, and I was like perfect. So
(28:37):
he was older than me and I was babysitting him
because it was really twelve. And then he went nuts
on me. He had something whatever people have a d
h D or a d D or whatever, and not
to diminish it, I know it's a real thing, but
he definitely had something like that. And we ended up
like in a wrestling match somehow, and I put him
(28:59):
to bed and yells at him. Well, no, you were
on him and you used your knees to keep his
chest down on the floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I
was the worst. And then the father parents come home
and I was like, he was terrible tonight. I don't
know if I want to come back here, like immediately
rejecting them before they could find out that I was
not fit to be babysitting. But I ran it like
(29:23):
a mafia ring. Like my sister's a Shawna wanted in
on it. She's older than me. She's like, I wanted
on some of that babysitting money because I'd make all
this money. I had like eight different families that I
was rotating. I do it every day Monday through Sunday.
I'd go and people loved it, and so my I
started making so much money. I would double book myself
and then I let my sister in on it, but
I would only give her a cut, not the full.
(29:46):
And then at the end of the summer, my dad's like,
give me all that my where's that money you've been
stowing away in that cigar box? And I was like,
don't fucking worry about it. And he's like, Chelsea, if
you made money on doing that babysitting. You need to
share it with the family, you know, I just want
to see, I'm what you made. You're gonna have to
give me some I was like, you're not getting any
of my money, and don't ever ask me for money
until I have a lot of it. So I you know,
(30:08):
my dad was like that, like shy storry. So that
was so disappointing because it's like, what do you mean
You're gonna take a little kid's money, Like why? And
you know, so that kind of stuff is a bummer.
But what I learned, because my dad died this year
this past year, what I learned was and I was
really kind of like disappointed in my dad for a
lot of reasons after my mom passed away. But what
(30:29):
I did realize was how important it is to just
remember people when they are at their best, not at
their worst, you know. And for me, learning about empathy
made me understand my dad and what he must have
gone through losing his oldest son. Like no man does
to recover from something like this. You know, they didn't
have the vocabulary, they didn't have the wherewithal to understand
(30:53):
how to weather that storm. My mom somehow was able
to find joy and be in pain at the same time.
My dad was one dimensional. It was like, now, my boys, Dad,
there's no more fun to be had, game over, life over.
I'm going to be angry for the rest of my life.
And like he stood like that for the rest of
his life, pissed at the world and the world was
out to get him, and he wasted the rest of
(31:14):
his life. He was terrible after that. But you did
come to a place for him. It was after you
left and went to California. There's a great story in
the book about you know them picking you up I
think at the airport and your father brought you at
nine o'clock in the morning some vodka that he put
on the table at McDonald's. We were driving up to
the vineyard. And once I moved to l A, you know,
you get away from your parents and you're like, oh,
(31:36):
I do love them, Like he just we all needed
a time out. We just needed a break from each other.
We had been through too much and we didn't go
through it the right way. We didn't talk about it.
We just my parents tried to talk about it, but
I would be like my mom would trick me into
talking about chat. She'd be like, do you ever think
about I'm like, don't talk about chat. He's dead. And
then I'd go get on my bike and ride my bike,
you know, for like, you know, three hours. And then
(31:58):
at a certain age I started masturbating on my bike,
so that took even longer. And then I was like,
what can I ask? Can I do on these bike rides? Oh?
And then I just realized, you know that I love
my Dad's not perfect. None of us are, like I
have such judgment. You throw such heavy judgment around sometimes,
(32:22):
and usually the things that we can't stand and people
are the things that we hate the most about our
own thing, you know, our ourselves. And we all know
that's true. It is, It's always true what I don't
like about him, or the things I didn't like him
by myself, and you know, and and I didn't like
that he was cheaper, that he was a liar and
trying probably screwed people or financially. That gave me something
to work against. I will never be that way, So
(32:43):
I'm overly generous. I always take care of everybody. I
never lie cheater steel ever. I mean, I lie sometimes,
but you know, just because to save a conversation from happening.
It's just like now, you know, I mean, so, what
was it when you sort of came back to your
parents because you had had a hard time with both
of them, and then you came back after you've been
(33:05):
away for a while and you sort of actually sort
of loved them and get My dad kind of had
a sense of humor again, like enough time had passed
and some for some reason being on Martha's vineyard for
some reason, when I went away, our relationship are dynamic shifted,
and I think he realized he had missed so much
time with all of us because he was so angry
trying to sue the people my brother was with when
he went hiking his best friend from school. He drove
(33:27):
him out of town and he had no money. My
daddy emptied his bank accounts, suing, suing people for nothing,
never winning a suit, and and so I think he
just kind of was like, wait, where is where is?
You know, we had a very close relationship and it's
just fulminated. So I mean, I think that it's interesting
because you're doing all this work now, this mindfulness work,
(33:49):
and you're trying to be more positive and and what's
interesting is that you Obviously there were you had a
complicated relationship with your dad, but in some ways and
even Dan, your therapist, said he even some as your
dad was a really smart guy. And one of the
things that he said to you was that you should
take something away from every conversation that you have, like
take one piece of good information away from every conversation
(34:10):
that you have. UM, which I think is brilliant and
it's sort of it feels to me like it's he's
in cognitive behavioral therapy land with that a little bit, right,
Like thinking positively, if someone were to take one message
from your book, what would you want that message to be?
Not to have a spoiler, but um, to know that
(34:32):
you're not alone. Whatever you're going through, there are millions
of other people that are going through something like you.
We all think we're alone in our pain. We all
think we can't share it. We all think we're gonna
be tougher than the next person or we're not tough enough.
But we're all in this together. So like, look around
and reach out and help somebody, because it's helpful to
know you're not alone, you know, and it's and it's
(34:53):
and it doesn't have to be dark and and crazy.
You have to go through the hard stuff to know,
lean into opportunities, and no that there's room for growth
anytime something shitty happens. Now I sit and I'm like,
all right, how can I handle myself in this situation
in a good way, in a positive way. Get rid
of your ego, Get rid of your fucking phone all
the time, Stop trolling Instagram and having mindless thoughts about
(35:14):
other people's lives, and get involved in your own fucking life.
You know. And some of these some of these things
are so obvious to say or here, but to practice
it is a practice. You have to get up and
be like, I'm gonna be kind and good and decent today.
And then after a while you don't have to try anymore.
You just are to. Yeah, this is watched this evolution.
(35:41):
I feel like and now, well you I know that
you wanted to read a little bit of the book.
I just want to read something to close out the
show for you guys. For the first of all, this
is so nice to be in a theater that's intimate
where I can well, now I can see you. I
couldn't see you for a while, but now I can.
And it's just it's so nice to be here with you,
so thank you very much. It's been such a pleasure
(36:02):
to know that I'm going through something and not try
to keep circling around it, hoping to avoid going through it,
Sitting and experiencing and feeling and not running, to understand
that things take time, and to be okay, sitting with
my pain, to understand the only way through something is
through it, not to rush through life, hop scotching over
(36:24):
or around it. No one is fully cooked, no person
is complete. I didn't know then that my brother's death
was defining me. I define me. No event or person
does this. I define me. I decide who I am
and how I'm going to behave and I choose to
be better, to look more carefully, to trudge deeper, to
(36:45):
think about other people's past and not judge someone for
doing or handling something differently than I would. To understand
my limitations, my shortcomings. That is my growth edge. I
decided to be better. We can all decide to be
a little it better. Thank you Portland's for coming out tonight.
I really appreciate it. I had such a great time
(37:06):
here tonight. Thank you for having me. Thank you life
will be the Death of Me as a production of
i heeart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the i heeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.