Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life by Melissa Joan Hart

Author:Melissa Joan Hart [Hart, Melissa Joan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-10-28T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 11

JUST SAY “WHY NOT?”

Los Angeles in the ’90s—I can’t think of a better place for the young, rich, and recognizable to stir up trouble, except maybe Seattle. (Then again, the Pacific Northwest is really into coffee and nature, and who needs to be that caffeinated to stare at trees?) So once I landed ABC’s Sabrina, I really cut loose for the first time. I was in my twenties, free from the stifling expectations of my youth, and anxious to define life on my own terms. Which is to say, I was ready to party.

When in Hollywood, right?

My boyfriend James, who I met during my first semester at NYU, always knew how to have a good time. At my nineteenth birthday party, he earned a rep for rolling the best doobies, and when we moved to L.A., he graduated to the role of my perfect partner in crime. We got an apartment together in the Valley, not far from the house where Mom, Leslie, and my five siblings were living. When I told him one night while folding laundry that I hoped to make my twenty-first birthday one to remember, he was anxious to help me cut the cake and keep the shots flowing.

I decided I’d get completely hammered for the first time and—spoiler alert—keep going until I yacked. (Yep, I like being organized and in control so much that I even planned my first big drunken escapade.) I mentioned this idea to James, and he was on board. Since my own star was rising, I also wanted to celebrate this milestone the way that I’d read other celebs rang in their birthdays—in style. I rented a dark little bar on Sunset Boulevard that had pool tables, three bars inside and out, and a movie theater where we played only Quentin Tarantino movies all night.

After People magazine finished taking pictures and I’d cut the cake with James, I realized the party was almost over and I was barely buzzed. I bellied up to the bar and did a few double shots of tequila with the crew of Sabrina, then a shot of Jägermeister, then back to tequila … until two hours and eighteen shots later, my head was in the toilet. After I clogged it three times with my black Jäger-puke and the bar owner kicked me out, my friends and I piled into a limo. I urged the driver to take the freeway so I didn’t upchuck even more from the infamous twists and turns of Laurel Canyon. I hung my head out the window like a Shih Tzu desperate for fresh air, and James held back my hair. I had alcohol poisoning for about two days after, even though James put me on a plane the next afternoon for Vancouver to shoot the NBC TV movie Silencing Mary. At least all that barfing gave me the dehydrated, gaunt, flat-belly look that so many actresses covet.

James and I began to build a glamorous life together—just call us “Jamelissa.” First, I bought us an amazing house.

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