Free Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me by Chelsea Handler

My mom didn’t mind if we cursed, as long as it was casual and we didn’t use curse words as verbs or in anger. She told us life could be very disappointing at times, and if we were upset about the outcome of a soccer game or a D-plus on a math test, “Oh, fuck” was a perfectly acceptable way to express ourselves.
    “Oyn oyn oyn,” Chelsea continued while looking at me.
    Simone, a soon-to-be-litigator, sat down next to us and listened. Of course Simone, the smartest one of the bunch, figured it out. “Roy, listen to her. She’s saying, ‘You’re a moron.’ That’s what she’s saying.”
    “No, she wouldn’t say that,” my mom chimed in, shaking her head at Simone. My mom was trying to make me feel better about being insulted by a two-year-old. “I think she’s just saying she’s annoyed,” she assured me.
    Insulting us wasn’t the only thing Chelsea learned to do before she could walk. Shortly after she started crawling, she would make her way to one of the bathrooms, untape her diaper, and throw it in the toilet. We just thought she enjoyed being naked, but once she got a better handle on the English language she explained her reasoning: “It’s pretty unsanitary to sit in your own shit.”
    At dinner (food, good; conversation, not so much) Chelsea would bitch about kindergarten, then ask me in front of the whole family if I masturbated. I would bow my head in shame, lie, and say no, but everybody knew I did. We would pass all the food to my dad, and then Chelsea would roll off a couple of jokes, which were funny. Someone would inevitably fart silently, and we would try to figure out who it was, then my father would tickle my mother and blame her. “Oh, Rita, come on,” he’d say with a twinkle in his eye. That usually meant dinner was over.
    Simone was the only one who could take Chelsea aside and knock some sense into her. She would share words of encouragement that seemed to have an impact. Glen was good with numbers, so he helped Chelsea with business affairs and taxes. What business affairs a ten-year-old had, I didn’t know and didn’t ask. At a certain point my father had had it with Chelsea, but reform school was out, because it was too expensive.
    “Let her do what she wants and she will eventually come around.” That sounded brilliant. Why the hell didn’t he do that with me?
    Fast-forward twenty years. I didn’t have a care in the world, and things were going wonderfully. Actually, they were quite pathetic and everyone basically saw that except for me. I was forty-three, a chef, single with no children, and owned 33 percent of a house. The other 67 percent belonged to my sister Shana and her family. The obvious benefit of living together was that Shana’s son Russell had a head that looked exactly like mine, and this caused a few awkward moments when we were introduced to new people.
    One day while I was sitting in my third of the house, Chelsea called and asked me to move to LA. “What?” I said. “Are you crazy? The land of fruitcakes and nuts? Why would I leave my happy, pathetic life and move to LA? I love New Jersey and its culture. My whole family is here.”
    “I’m not,” she reminded me, Al Capone style.
    “No, Chelsea, I can’t do that. My friends, my job, my life is here. I’m not ready for that kind of change.”
    “Are you sure, Roy? Your life isn’t really going anywhere. You’re almost forty-five, single, and living with Shana. Obviously, things aren’t going great. If you come out here you could work for me, cook a couple of times a week, travel, and be on the show, which will probably lead to a lot of penetration.”
    “Okay. That sounds terrific. When should I come?”
    I was scared, but I made the decision, and the rest of the family wished me luck, though I believe I caught Shana giving me the finger as I left. It may have been a wave, but it was very questionable nonetheless.
    Fast-forward to California. Chelsea had just broken up with her