Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales (9 page)

Chapter Eleven

What Color Is My Parachute?

W
hy does everyone drink through college? I would think the time to intoxicate is when you’re in your forties, have a mundane job, are beyond baby-bearing, and life just isn’t going to change, give or take a few peaks and valleys. But when I was in college, in the apex of youth and promise, everybody was wasted from 6:00 p.m. on. There were these incredible guest writers, artists, and inventors who would sacrifice their SoHo lofts or Marin County houseboats to guest teach, but the student body was either too drunk or too hungover to care, much less show up for a lecture on quantum poetry. Look, I can understand a few beers after the opening of the play or after ten hours in the library, but total intoxication from sunset to sunrise? I really took offense when my college boyfriend got so drunk he peed all over my stereo. Why not the pile of clothes a foot away? Or, dare I say, the damn toilet?

My senior year at Bard, I rented a church with two other people I had never met; with not enough Methodist followers in the area, it had been leased out to college students. My room was in the sanctuary; my bed stood where the altar had been, which made for fascinating dreams and a chaste semester. When my alarm went off in the morning, I would open my eyes to a pensive John the Apostle looking down at me through a prism of colored glass.

I spent my time at the theater with men who wore duct-tape ballet shoes and armless sweatshirts and pirouetted across the cement quad to class. And drama girls who were overly earnest with pale skin and ponchos, always trying to ignite theater games like Accepting Circle and Fast Food Stanislavski. And then there were my friends; one was writing her thesis on the question, “If Hitler had been successful as an artist, would there have been no war?” Or another who spent all day pouring paint on enormous canvases to signify the frailty of the human condition. They lived on Red Stripe beer and stir-fry tofu. It was very hip to be poor and scrappy. Even if you had an allowance from your parents or worked part-time in the admissions office, you still bought wholesale blocks of cheese (lunch for a month) and clothes from the local Goodwill and drove the rustiest, smokiest Dukes of Hazzard dump that could (hopefully) make it through one semester.

And that was how I spent my twentieth year, wearing blousy dresses discarded from relatives of dead women and choking down tempeh. If I had some extra change for maybe a new towel or a steak, I kept it on the down-low. I never out-and-out lied about my background, but my classmates somehow got the impression that I was raised with my siblings in a VW bus traveling around Peru.

It wasn’t performing a completely different person so much as tailoring the truth. I found in college, as I would in Hollywood, that my upbringing was irrelevant to who I was, and that less was more when divulging facts about what made me, me. I couldn’t be an artist because my parents paid full tuition? I have enough change for laundry, so I’m not grunge? Even though nobody fought it when I treated everyone to gourmet hazelnut coffee beans and real maple syrup.

T
he only other time in my life I chose not to accurately represent my background is when I was trying to land a job on the sketch comedy show
In Living Color
a few years after I graduated. I was told by my agent, who worked out of his one-room apartment and had a metal index-card box of contacts (two cards), that
In Living Color
was looking for a “black guy to replace Damon Wayans.” So, naturally, who better than me? I begged for an audition. And was turned down repeatedly. “But I’m a character actress! Have you seen my Ben Vereen?” I responded. Finally, I was given an opportunity to humiliate myself. It helped that I was my agent’s only client; apparently he harassed the receptionist at the casting agency until she broke down in tears.

I arrived in a black dress the size of a cocktail napkin, with a duffel full of dime-store wigs, costumes, and a ghetto blaster with a cassette of the James Bond theme music. I performed six original monologues, the final of which concluded with me hurling myself against the wall and falling into a heap on the floor. Well, having no shame paid off, and after weeks of performing for every Fox TV Armani suit–wearing executive, my final step was to meet Oz himself, Keenen Ivory Wayans (creator and star). Now this was a comedy show that ridiculed white people, and white women were the comedic bottom feeders. I wasn’t going to meet Keenen as some Debbie Debutante with a monogrammed blazer and topsiders. No, not when the show had musical guests who sang lyrics like “kill whitey.” I wore a polyester miniskirt, stiletto heels, and a tube top with a unicorn on it. (Keenen later told people I wasn’t wearing any underwear, but that is not true; what if I were in a car accident on the way home?) I smacked gum, swore like a truck-stop whore, and wore stiletto boots that made me walk like a newborn colt.

When I found out I’d gotten the job, my agent and I were so ecstatic, we both ran tiny victory laps around his studio.

My mother didn’t understand the show’s brand of humor, but then again, she wasn’t the target audience. She used to ask me why I wasn’t working on a movie with Meryl Streep, like it was my choice. I must note here that recently I had the privilege and luck of playing in a film alongside Meryl Streep. (And from that moment on, my mother referred to me as her “actress,” and not “her other daughter.”) Perhaps because I played many strippers and prostitutes (nothing my college performances of Chekhov and Brecht had prepared me for), when I wasn’t working I preserved whatever humility I had left. I had plenty of rest. I had a balanced breakfast. So when Tupac shot his driver at one of our tapings or a guest star flashed me in his dressing room, I could power through such moments with composure that would have made my mother proud. And when not dressed in a stripper thong and pasties, I was my usual modest self. Or at least I tried. One day I had to go to my annual gynecological appointment. I called the stage manager and told him I would be late for rehearsal because I was taking my dog to the vet. When I returned from my appointment, I walked onstage to find the cast and crew getting ready to rehearse a Jim Carrey sketch. The stage manager spotted me and yelled, “Hey! How’s your pooch?”

Eventually my repertoire of scantily dressed characters expanded into celebrity impersonations. I was given the opportunity to play such famous women as Cindy Crawford, Sharon Stone, Hillary Clinton, and Cher. I found it challenging and exciting to morph into real people and capture their idiosyncrasies and characteristics. One day, a production assistant from the office came skipping onto the set with a letter from Cher. Well, of course I assumed she wanted to meet for sushi in Malibu or maybe cut an album together. At the very least, invite me to come backstage at her next Vegas show!

I ripped open the envelope: “Kiss my ass, Cher.”

Never fly too close to the flame.

I
t was embarrassing, when discussing my background with directors, to confess that I hadn’t taken a Greyhound bus from Cisco, Texas, where I was the prettiest girl in Podunk and knew in my heart I was a star. I met a lot of those “gals” along the way, and don’t have the most optimistic feeling about where some of them are today. What is the shelf life of an escort? The subtext of my childhood, however, seemed to be “You’re from a middle-class family, you are privileged”; people assumed that I had just enough money in the bank to stamp out the will to work and extinguish any fire in my well-fed belly. But I didn’t know a soul in Hollywood, and nobody wanted to sleep with me, so I couldn’t screw my way to the middle. I had to do it with perseverance and a sprinkle of talent. And one of the great things about
In Living Color
was, it allowed me to “play against type.” After the show was canceled, I was only considered for Suzy Chapstick and debutante parts.

Even as recently as this year, I met with the producers of
Law & Order SVU
, who were thinking of me for a Harvard grad prosecutor. I pleaded with them, “Please, just once, can I play a murderous, psychopathic crack whore?”

They couldn’t see it.

“Fine, then what about a black guy?”

Chapter Twelve

The Four Seasons

M
ost mothers love to dispense sage, timeworn advice to their children. You attract more flies with honey, a penny saved is a penny earned, when you are stressed close your eyes and think of Christmas . . . My mother shared all these chestnuts with me. But the one piece of advice that is embedded in my mind and has, consequently, determined the outcome of many key moments of my life is hers and hers alone: “Just go to the Four Seasons.”

The Four Seasons has always been a safe haven for our family. It’s one of those silk-curtained, velvet couch places that instantly puts my mother at ease. She could have tea there, get her hair blown out and overly sprayed, and maybe take a night off from the puking kids. One of the biggest fights I ever had with my older sister culminated with us meeting at the Four Seasons for Earl Grey tea, raisin scones, and a three-hour relationship analysis. My mother thought it the appropriate meeting place, like a Park Ave. psychiatrist’s office without the Freudian shrink and the African masks, but with a great Caesar salad. We had many lunches there, dinners, breakfasts celebrating birthdays, snow days, good days, and bad days.

I was living in Los Angeles with my boyfriend Felix, an Italian man-child with huge almond eyes and callused hands. He was a carpenter and a potter. Felix was one of sixteen children (no twins) from Poughkeepsie, New York. His mother was an Italian Catholic, understatement of the year, and he was lucky number thirteen. There was always a basket of shoes by the front door and whoever got out the door the quickest would be guaranteed a matching pair of shoes. If you were one of the last, you’d be ridiculed by classmates for wearing one size 8 men’s slipper and one toddler size flip-flop. Sunday supper consisted of twenty people in the immediate family and around thirty-two babies. That’s a lot of boiled potatoes.

I met him my senior year in college. He had just graduated and was home waiting tables at a local Mexican restaurant. A place I frequented and, after taking one look at him, a place I begged for a job at. I was not only loaded down with schoolwork, a senior thesis, and roles in the school plays, but my parents gave me a stipend to pay for incidentals. The last thing I needed was to hoist twenty margaritas on a tray over my head and serve drunken college students until three in the morning. Oh, but his eyes …

My shift never coincided with his and the job was becoming all-consuming. Finally, I switched shifts with another waitress so I could have my moment with him. Unfortunately, he switched with someone as well and I was stuck with a waiter with a severe halitosis problem. Felix had the audacity to saunter into the restaurant at the end of the evening with pals for a beer and I confronted him like a jilted lover and not the absolute stranger that, in reality, I was.

“You owe me a beer, fucker!” was my sophisticated opening line. Aggressive? Yes, but remember what I said about being a python.

Felix moved to L.A. a few months after I did because we missed each other and, let’s face it, you can build shelves anywhere. He drove an olive green Volare with a smashed-in passenger side door. Your basic garden-variety death trap.

My mother lost sleep at the idea of me cruising around in that car, which was basically a microwave on wheels. She decided to sell her new Subaru to Felix for $1,000. I had to convince him she wasn’t doing this because she pitied him; she just hated the color—midnight blue. He never knew she bought the same car in midnight blue months later. But for her it was money well spent.

Felix and I lived in a bungalow with a little garden in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. If I were scouting a location for a film about a couple who was struggling in the arts, but spiritually lifted by growing their own zucchini and hiking at sunset, this would be the place. I would also cast Gisele Bündchen to play me. We rescued a dog named Trout and had small dinners for other wannabe actors, chefs, and writers; the Cowboy Junkies provided our life sound track. Unfortunately it was my damn ambition that tore us apart. I didn’t necessarily have to be a film studio head’s wife with a face that had been worked on more often than her vintage Jag, but I could no longer handle handing out steel-cut oats at the co-op. I wanted a career. And I hate zucchini.

Felix spent his time throwing pots and glazing earthenware. I had joined a theater company in town called the Groundlings, a sketch comedy troop with a theater in the Melrose district. Every Sunday we would do a show for the public, which involved a variety of wigs and a repertoire of crazy old lady and bimbo model characters. After a show we would all go out and have a beer and regale ourselves with commentary on the brilliance that had been expressed earlier that night. We would desperately try to outfunny each other in the most boisterous and provocative way. And then leave a stingy tip. Lisa Kudrow and Will Ferrell were part of the group; they have since skyrocketed to fame. And I’m happy for them. Really, I am. No, seriously, I am.

One night, a fellow Groundling named Sam walked me to my car, which was parked in the alley behind the theater. It was an ominous little patch of concrete where you were bound to trip on a syringe or a sleeping homeless woman who would call you Uncle Pie and swing her fist at the air. We needed to schedule rehearsal times and decide who was going to buy the fake blood and whipped cream. I remember a shadow flying by the corner of my eye, like one of the birds in a Hitchcock film. The next second, eight
cholo
s, Mexican gang members with hairnets and tattoos, had us surrounded, knives and screwdrivers pressed against our necks. I instantly put my head down, thinking that if I couldn’t identify them in court, maybe they wouldn’t hurt us. I was shoved and poked as they rifled through my car (the blue Subaru), tossing a rainbow clown wig and half a Big Mac onto the pavement. I repeated over and over, “I don’t have any money. I never take my wallet to the theater because, you know, actors!” I couldn’t tell if they didn’t speak English or were too high on crack to engage in conversation.

At one point I was taken to the trunk of the car, my arms firmly planted on the back windshield, as they began lining up behind me. Then there was a lot of yelling in Spanish, and I was pushed toward the front of the car again. I don’t know what happened or why they changed their minds, but I’m grateful to the one member who wasn’t in the mood that night and persuaded them to forgo a gang rape. The cops later told me that this particular gang would abduct people, take them to Griffith Park, rape and dismember them, and dispose of their limbs in the park Dumpsters. I never envisioned the end of my life being so local-newsy.

The passenger door was opened (if it had been the Volare, this all would have been over much sooner), and just as I was beginning to lower myself into the seat, I looked over at Sam. He mouthed the words, “Don’t get in.” It was as if he’d snapped his fingers and woken me from my passive trance. I suddenly realized that if I entered the car, I would never exit. Thank God for survival instincts; you never know you have them until those rare moments when they’re challenged.

I turned and ran my ass off. Two of the gang members chased me. I’ve never been a jock (spin class literally makes me faint), but my adrenaline kicked in with such force, I would have given Jesse Owens a run for his money. I made it to Melrose Avenue and stood in the middle of the road trying to stop cars and screaming for help. Cars swerved around me, moving past like I was some
Twin Peaks
character they were hallucinating. As I looked down the alley, I saw the gang stabbing my friend Sam in the chest.

Finally a man walking his Australian sheepdog and sipping a cappuccino came to my rescue. He started yelling in a heavy Croatian accent and running toward Sam. At that point the gang jumped into my Subaru and screeched away. My hero called the police.

Sam, as it turns out, was wearing his jean jacket with the thick fleece underneath—you know, the kind country singers wear? The blades had gotten stuck in the fleece, which made the wounds less severe than they might have been. I will never, ever call fleece-lined denim jackets redneck again.

The ambulance whisked us to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Sam had minor surgery and a multitude of stitches. I collapsed in the waiting room and cried harder than I ever had. It wasn’t the sad cry of PMS; it was more of a primal scream, like when passing a kidney stone. “Do you want to use the phone?” the nurse asked me. When you’re in semi-shock, it’s difficult to decide who to call. I thought about Lee Majors, because he could lift my car up and shake those bad guys out like pepper flakes onto the cement freeway. I thought about Felix, but I knew a hug and a mug of homemade licorice spice tea wouldn’t comfort me. I called my mother. The feeling of wanting one’s mommy is a feeling I don’t think any human outgrows. There are times when I’d crawl right back in that womb, if she’d let me.

It was surreal to hear myself tell the story as if I were recounting a movie I had just seen. I screamed the words “rape,” “gang,” and “stabbed” over and over. There was a pause. “Go to the Four Seasons!” she said firmly. And you know what—I didn’t question it. Of course! I thought.

The next morning I took Sam, bandaged and high on Percocet, directly from the ER exit to Suite 402 in the Beverly Hills Four Seasons. We stayed for two weeks. There was room service, laps in the Olympic-size pool, and a daily phone call with a post-traumatic stress therapist. Her professional advice, thousands of dollars’ worth of talk later, was for me to buy a stuffed animal—a friend who would give me unconditional love. She became one of a string of therapists that I should have reported to the psychoanalytic board. With the money I spent talking to these imbeciles, I could have bought an island in the Maldives, and then I would never have had cause to be depressed again.

F
rom that point on the Four Seasons became my mecca for a quiet mind, my ashram of calm. If Eloise had narrowly escaped a gang rape or was coming off heroin, I’m sure she would take to the Plaza the same way. Sam never questioned why he was sleeping at the Four Seasons. I guess trauma had rendered him mute. If I was eating at a luxury hotel on somebody else’s tab, I probably wouldn’t question it either.

Shortly after the trauma, Felix and I broke up, and, as happens when people experience such a thing together, Sam and I briefly dated. Trauma brings couples together, but we were short-lived. It turns out a harrowing ordeal isn’t enough to keep two people together. Oh . . . and he was gay.

It’s curious to me that my parents never actually flew out to L.A. to see me after this. Perhaps without an actual rape or severed jugular, it wasn’t worth spending the miles. I did get a bouquet of lilies from a friend of my mother’s. I think she misunderstood and thought I’d died.

Y
ears later another tragedy struck, this one a little less personal: 9/11. I was newly engaged and in New York to apartment-hunt. I was moving from L.A. to New York, and my fiancé had to give up his bachelor pad (and all that implied). I was excited to leave the California wheatgrass shots and avocado face masks behind me and dive into the dirt and grit of urban living.

The planes had struck the Twin Towers while I was still sleeping. I woke up and turned the kettle and TV on. In my stupor I assumed the Twin Towers burning on the screen were a scene from some crappy Bruckheimer film, and as I flipped the channels, I couldn’t understand why at a peak news hour all networks were choosing to show the same movie. But after five minutes without a glimpse of Nicolas Cage’s glistening muscles, I knew it was real.

I went out to West Eighty-second Street to witness faint smoke wafting from downtown and people rushing in different directions the way ants do when you pour water on them. Cell phones and landlines weren’t working. I was desperate to reach my fiancé, George, and find out where he was. (He was climbing out of a smoke-filled subway. But that’s his book.) I suddenly felt the vibration of my cell phone in my pocket. The one person who had managed to crash through the technology pileup? My mother. “Are you okay?”

We spoke quickly, knowing that the connection could be lost at any moment. “Where’s George?”

“Not sure, I assume at work.”

“You need to get him, and the two of you go right to the Four Seasons!”

Let me explain the geography of this proposal. If the island of Manhattan were a naked lady, we were already safely ensconced in her collarbone; 9/11 hit her calf, and my mother suggested we go down and stay in the belly button. Nonsensical? Yes. Did we do it? Yes! I was so emphatic that George didn’t question me. But if you’re going to witness the apocalypse, isn’t it better with room service?

Recently there was a blizzard in Manhattan that dropped twenty inches in Central Park. From our living room window we watched nature’s spectacular show of snow, wind, and lightning. My kids were thrilled at the prospect of being snowed in. Me, I began to sweat at the prospect of cheese fondue and Candyland for ten days. All the old ladies had thought ahead and bought up all the yogurt and bran flakes from our local D’Agostino. I panicked. “Shouldn’t we go to the Four Seasons?” George pointed out that our apartment was bigger than a hotel room, nicer, and housed all our books and toys. The last thing I needed at that moment was practical reasoning. He and the girls headed out for some prime sledding while I, in pajamas, dirty hair held together with a pencil, frantically called the Four Seasons several blocks away. Needless to say, actual out-of-towners were stranded, and the hotel was full to capacity.