My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

Author:Chelsea Handler [Handler, Chelsea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction:Humor
ISBN: 9781400108268
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 2005-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

A WEDDING STORY

I WAS ON the phone with my doctor's office trying to get my hands on some Vicodin.

"What do you need it for?" the nurse who answered asked.

"I'm in a lot of pain," I lied. "I had a bit of bad luck over the weekend."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but you'll need to be more specific, Ms. Handler."

"Fine," I said. "If you must know, I was skydiving and my chute didn't open."

"Oh dear god, are you all right?" she asked me.

"Yes, I'm okay, I'm just in a lot of pain," I told her.

"What. . . where . . . how did you land?" the nurse asked me.

"In a tree," I said.

"Have you been to the hospital? Is anything broken or bruised?" she asked me.

"No, it's mostly internal injuries, nothing you'd be able to spot externally. I also feel like I'm suffering from posttraumatic syndrome, so I may need some sleeping pills."

My call waiting beeped and I told the nurse to hold the wire.

It was my sister Sloane, whose wedding was two months away.

"You can bring a guest to the wedding if you want," she said.

"Hold on," I said and clicked back over to find that the nurse had hung up on me.

I clicked back to Sloane. "Fine. Who?" I asked her.

"I don't know. One of your girlfriends or if you meet a guy you want to bring."

The thought of bringing a love interest to my sister's wedding had about as much allure as joining the Navy SEALs. Every time I brought someone home to meet my parents, whether it was just a friend or an actual boyfriend, my family felt compelled to remind me that I had terrible taste in people, and that they liked me better when flying solo. They all agreed that my friends in California were shallow and brain-dead and we were all much better off when I left them behind.

My Mormon sister was engaged to a normal human, and it seemed he was helping her to slowly snap out of the spell the Mormons had put her under. Sloane's wedding was being held at our summerhouse in Martha's Vineyard. Though I had recently been out a couple times with a guy I liked, I didn't want to embarrass myself on our third date by asking him to fly across the country for my sister's wedding.

Since my gay friend Nathan had included me in many of his family events and vacations, it seemed like time for a little reciprocity. My father had never met a gay man in person before and I thought that this could be a time of great revelation. Once again, I was sorely mistaken.

For the record, Nathan is not your typical gay man. He's not as blatant a homosexual as Harvey Fierstein, but if you have any gaydar at all—which I don't—then it wouldn't take you more than a couple of nights out with Nathan to catch on.

I didn't realize he was gay for a long time, attributing most of his effeminacy and idiosyncratic ways to the fact that he was Jewish.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.