Idiot Read online

  “Are you touching my butt?”

  “I’m going to miss this butt.”

  One of their very-high-on-meth friends looked at us, very wide eyed.

  “YOU GUYS ARE MOVING OUT? OH WOW. DO YOU NEED HELP PACKING? I’LL PACK YOUR STUFF FOR YOU—”

  “You’ll pack our stuff?”

  “I LOVE PACKING STUFF. SO I’D LOVE TO PACK YOUR STUFF FOR YOU. GO HAVE FUN KIDS GO OUT I’LL PACK.”

  Colleen and I looked at each other. Okay . . . a meth-head wants to pack our stuff. Meth-heads are notorious for stealing shit to fund their habits. She wouldn’t do that to us, though!

  “That is so nice. Are you sure?” I asked.

  “YES YES YES YES YES—”

  “Wow, that is so nice! Thank you!” I said as Colleen and I went out.

  You know, that Midwestern naïveté dies hard. Even after all the bullshit I had gone through in New York and LA . . . I still trusted people. Hey, don’t judge me! It’s a beautiful way to live, trusting the world around you, not seeing ulterior motives. At least, until all your shit gets stolen.

  Colleen and I went out for the night and came back to our stuff smashed into half-zipped suitcases. Well. A quarter of our stuff smashed into half-zipped suitcases. The rest was gone.

  We were going to get the freshest start ever.

  CHAPTER 6

  A Spoonful of Sugar

  Colleen and I moved into a room in Marilyn Monroe’s old house with Paul the kind artist, and we tried to get into a new rhythm together. Yes, a junkie had just stolen all of our stuff and we were still reeling from Damon’s abuse, but this was our chance to have some peace of mind!

  Things did calm down for a while, at least in comparison to what they used to be. And no matter what happened, Colleen and I were together. We kept each other safe.

  At the house, Paul started bringing over his new best friend, Adam, who was also Leonardo DiCaprio’s completely wild brother. I guess these were the types of famous people we were rubbing shoulders with now. Side note: What kind of parents name one kid Leonardo and the other Adam? Like, I’d have a complex, too, if my sister was named something really cool like Cleopatra and I was just Laura.

  Now, remember when my parents had told me that my grandma was dying in order to save me from my abusive relationship with Damon? Well around this time, she really did die. I was pretty skeptical of my parents at first, but after Colleen started crying, I realized it was the truth.

  We were devastated. We had to fly home for the funeral. But first we had to get wasted at the Mondrian in order to not deal with our emotions.

  While we were back in Chicago with our family, we got a call from Paul.

  “Heyyyyy girls. Um. How’s it going? How’s your grandma?”

  “She’s dead, Paul.”

  “Right. I’m sorry. I just wanted to let you know that Adam offered me more money for the room you’re staying in. . . . So I’m going to pack up your stuff and rent it out to him. But I’m going to pack your stuff really nicely, though. I’m so sorry, bye!”

  “Wait, what??”

  *Click*

  He hung up. Fucking Paul. And why was everyone always packing our stuff for us?

  We flew back to LA after the funeral with no plan and no place to stay. We got our stuff from Paul’s house, neatly packed up in the living room. It was very organized, he did a great job with it. He didn’t even steal anything! What a guy. Soon enough we were out on the street with no place to go.

  We floated around Los Angeles, staying with random people we’d meet while we were out. We slept on a futon at a house with a bunch of frat guys in Long Beach. We met this weird Canadian writer that let us stay in his garden room. We just drifted around. As chaotic as this was, nothing shitty ever happened to us. We protected each other.

  Looking back, it feels insane that we ever did that. Today, I would walk through fire to avoid sleeping over at someone else’s house.

  After a few weeks on the Canadian writer’s couch, he told us that his ex-girlfriend, Cheyenne, was looking for roommates. We met up with her and hit it off immediately. Colleen and I moved right into Cheyenne’s extra room and we were soon as close as the three musketeers.

  That’s when life really started to calm down for us. Turns out having a home where you weren’t afraid of being assaulted or having your shit stolen was pretty fucking cool. Cheyenne was this brilliant actress, model, and painter who was so funny and outspoken and smart. She knew her way around the city in a much more legitimate way than I ever had. Soon enough we were going with her to tons of upscale parties and events. I saw her as an inspiration: her career was proof that it could be done. People could move to LA and support themselves with their art.

  But then I found out that she had a side hustle. Everyone’s gotta have a side hustle, right?

  Some people make extra money bartending, or waitressing, or nannying. Cheyenne’s side job was to dabble in escorting. How does one dabble in escorting? Let me explain! One night she was out at a bar and a woman came up to her and said, “Hello, I’m here with this man, Mr. Peters—” She pointed to an old man sitting in a private booth. He was in probably the most expensive suit ever made, and had one disfigured arm, but the suit was tailored to fit it. The woman continued. “He would like you to sit and have a drink with him.”

  How weird to have a woman come up and talk to her for him. Was she his wife? Cheyenne responded, “Oh, no thanks. I’m here with my friends.”

  The woman pulled out a crisp bill. “He’ll give you one hundred dollars.”

  Cheyenne took the bill. “I guess I was going to have a drink anyway!”

  After the drink, the woman came up to Cheyenne again. “He would like to have lunch with you tomorrow. He’ll pay five hundred dollars.”

  “I guess I was going to eat lunch anyway!”

  Turns out she was “dating” a sleazy billionaire with sixteen other girlfriends.

  Lunch turned into dinner. “Two thousand dollars.”

  And then: “Mr. Peters would like you to get tested for STDs and spend the night with him. Five thousand dollars.”

  It kind of just happened. And that’s how you dabble in escorting.

  She’d come home from a date, and I’d mock her a little. “Hey Cheyenne, how was your date? Did you run into the ten other girls on your way out?”

  “Shut the fuck up! Unless you want to give me back that purse I got you.”

  Touché, Cheyenne. Touché. Cheyenne had gotten so many gifts from Mr. Peters that I got by on her hand-me-downs. He even started paying her rent. He would fly her and her family around wherever they wanted to go. Jewelry. Vacations. Cars. And all she had to do was . . . well, you know! Eventually, she fell in love with an English stuntman who lived upstairs from us. This development compelled her to leave the business.

  LA is a town full of rich, old, sleazy dudes that take advantage of beautiful women with dreams. I love LA, but damn. It can be dark here.

  Sometimes I couldn’t believe she did that. But most of the time I couldn’t believe that no rich guys had asked their madams to approach Colleen and me when we were out at night. We were VERY OFFENDED.

  But it’s fine. At least we got Cheyenne’s hand-me-downs.

  One night, the three of us went to a huge party at Shane Black’s house—he’s the director of all the Lethal Weapon movies. He has this crazy gaudy mansion that has like six floors, a huge dance floor, and an elevator.

  We walked in the front door and were so confused when it seemed empty. We asked someone (his butler?) where the party was, and he answered, “Up the elevator, of course.”

  Oh, of course.

  At this particular party, I saw this man across the room. He was tall and handsome, and he was holding the tiniest black Chihuahua I had ever seen. I had to talk to him. The dog, of course.

  I went up to him and introduced myself. His name was Rudolf and he had a slight German accent and a formal, upright demeanor. The man, I mean. The dog’s na
me was Comet.

  “This is Comet. He likes to go to parties.”

  He also had a Germanic knack for describing things with complete, literal accuracy. Later on in our relationship:

  Me: How was your flight?

  Rudolf: It was efficient.

  His favorite joke was:

  Rudolf: You know what they say about German sense of humor?

  Me: No, what?

  Him: It is no laughing matter.

  He would then leave the room straight-faced, but I would hear him chuckling from the other room.

  At the party, he asked me out on a date. We went out a few nights later, and as I got ready, I suddenly became overcome with nerves. I mean, he was seventeen years older than me. I was eighteen at the time so . . . there was almost a whole ME in between our ages! I assumed this meant that he just knew everything better than I did, that he was just better than me at life.

  This is all to say that I simply didn’t know what to wear to this date. What do older people wear? Jewelry and stuff? I opened my jewelry box and pulled out every piece of jewelry I had and slipped them all on. Fourteen bracelets and four necklaces. The more bracelets I had on, the older I would look.

  When he arrived, I jingle-jangled over to his car and got inside. He saw me and said very matter-of-factly, “That is a lot of bracelets.”

  I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Thank you.”

  That was the gist of our relationship. I tried to ignore things, cover things up, and pretend to be something I wasn’t. He called things out for what they were. He didn’t let anything slide. I loved him very much and I quickly moved in with him.

  He was the sweetest man, with a genuinely kind heart. You can imagine how huge of a departure this was from Damon. I think Rudolf could easily see that I was living an immensely chaotic life and he did his best to help me step away from it. He wanted the best for me, and for the first time I had some structure in my life. After my drug-and-alcohol-filled insanity with Damon, I ate up all the structure Rudolf could give me.

  For the previous six months in LA, I had gotten so far away from what I had originally come to LA to do. I wanted to act, but I had gotten so distracted. Rudolf helped me focus again. He was against drugs. He loved to have a glass of wine with dinner, but he was in no way an alcoholic like I was. It was amazing to witness.

  I slowed down on my partying ways and started getting up early every day. He would swing the curtains open in the morning and pull me out of bed in order to get some morning sun, as he called it.

  I would squint angrily at him. “Dude. It’s seven a.m.”

  “You are correct and we are late for the sunrise. Get up, get up, get up!”

  “No!”

  “We need our ten minutes of vitamin D.”

  No, I would not do anything for the D. Sorry Rudolf. He literally dragged me out of the house, while I engaged in passive resistance. I was not a morning person at the time. But slowly I started to change. I started to like the stupid early morning sun. It felt kind of . . . good. Damn it.

  He taught me how to cook and eat right, and that healthy eating didn’t mean binge eating a bunch of carrots after binge eating a bunch of Cheetos. (Orange foods cancel out, right?)

  “Go to yoga. It’s good for your head.” He handed me two dollars. Two dollars? He continued, “Yoga at the Jewish Senior Center is only two dollars. Also, it is wonderful.”

  So I did it. I took his yoga mat and my two dollars and walked over to Plummer Park in West Hollywood, where I took yoga three times a week with Jewish seniors. Rudolf was right again. I was obsessed with this class and I became one of the regulars with Bending Norma and Angry Mildred. Everyone but me was eighty-five years old.

  The only bad thing about this class was that sometimes you’d get there and ask, “Hey, where’s Jerome?”

  And then everyone in the class would look down sadly. “Oh . . . Yeah. Jerome . . . you know, he had a good life.”

  Damn, they were dropping like flies. But other than that, these people were amazing. They were doing headstands and handstands and downward dog. They would do it all. I’m actually kind of surprised they let me, a young gentile, in the room.

  The instructor at the Jewish Senior Center was an ex-con named Ralph. He was covered in tattoos and had this brash New York accent that cut through the typical soothing yoga effect quite a bit. His teaching method was to bark orders at us. “ALL RIGHT, EVERYONE, WE’RE GETTING IN SHAVASANA, CALM DOWN. CALM DOWN.”

  He would get into arguments with all the old people, too, especially Betty.

  “You know, Ralph, you shouldn’t have all those tattoos,” she would nag.

  “You know what, Betty, there are no judgments in yoga class, so I don’t want to hear another word from you!”

  “Ralph, don’t you talk to me like that. I could be your mother!”

  “Well you’re not! My mother is dead! Shavasana now!”

  One of the ladies there even knitted a little sweater for Comet. It was like I was part of a weird little elderly community. It was the greatest. I just . . . started to feel good. All of these things have since become such important aspects of my sobriety today: eating right, getting up early, doing yoga. I owe it to Rudolf for giving me those tools.

  With Rudolf’s encouragement, I also started working again. A model friend insisted I meet her agent, and I agreed—because I had such a great history with it. Might as well take another shot . . .

  Today, when people ask me if I’ve modeled or if I’m a model, I usually respond with, “Oh, I could never. Doing something based completely on my looks just sounds so superficial and shallow. I could never.”

  Now, this has a grain of truth. I love doing work that I think is meaningful, where I get to be creative. But also it’s because I tried modeling when people told me to and it did not work out. For whatever reason, my life is peppered with failed modeling endeavors, bookended with me wondering why I even tried to do something that I don’t care about.

  When I was fifteen, this model came up to me, stunned by my height and perhaps by my bony elbows. I really don’t know. But she told me to go downtown to meet with Wilhelmina in Chicago. I sat down across from Wilhelmina for thirty seconds before she said, “You need to lose ten pounds and grow your eyebrows out.”

  I distinctly remember thinking, Oh, fuck this lady. Fuck everything here.

  Admittedly, my eyebrows did need some help. I tweezed a bit too hard that summer. But ten pounds? Asking someone to lose ten pounds who was already very thin was ridiculous. Don’t tell anyone to change their physical appearance. I’m more than that, and that’s how I grew up. It was always about who we were on the inside.

  One of my neighbors was this beautiful, arrogant Israeli model. She would say things like, “You know what is so annoying to me? I am trying to take a bad selfie and I cannot! I just cannot for some reason, it is like I don’t have a bad angle. Like I am trying so hard and I cannot.”

  On this particular day, Rudolf was out of town shooting a movie and I was hanging out by the pool. She had a model friend over and they both saw me and said, “Oh you haaave to be a model; you are fabulous.”

  I didn’t have a lot going on otherwise. So I said sure.

  I let her drag me along to different agencies that they had connections to—and I kept getting rejected. For a split second, I wondered if they were just doing a long-form prank on me with the intention of making me feel bad about my appearance. BECAUSE IT WASN’T WORKING. OKAY? IT WASN’T!

  Finally, we got to this small agency called Photogenics. The people at Photogenics said to me, “Okay . . . okay . . . we like your look. But we want you to cut your hair off and dye it dark.”

  I had long blond hair at the time. “Oh . . . kay.”

  “We’re going to send you to our hair stylist and he’ll do it all.”

  “Okay.”

  “And then we’ll do a spec photoshoot and we’ll go from there.”

  “Okay.”

  So I
went along with it. I showed up to the salon and they dyed my hair black, cut it just below my ears and gave me blunt bangs. It wasn’t bad! It was a drastic change, but I like to think I pulled it off. We did the photos and I worked all the angles that I saw my Israeli model friend working in her selfies.

  Photogenics took a look at the photos . . . and then they said no.

  So. At the end of the day there was no modeling agency that wanted me. But saying instead, “Oh I’m a comedienne; I would NEVER model. How could anyone do a job where they’re judged solely on their physical appearance?” sounds a lot cooler than the truth.

  A week later Rudolf came back from shooting his movie in Germany and was stunned when he saw me.

  “Your hair! What did you do?”

  “Well . . . this modeling agency cut it off.”

  “Oh great! So you signed with them.”

  “No.”

  Rudolf stared at me and sighed. “Jesus Christ, Laura, I leave you for two weeks and this is what you do.”

  That was the last time I ever even attempted modeling. Years later I would go on to play models all the time on TV and in movies. One of my favorite characters that I do now is a dumb model. Because I went on all those auditions and shoots, I know all the ridiculous intricacies of the career and industry. Maybe all those failed attempts were like research for my future acting, right? Whatever helps me sleep at night!

  One day Rudolf sat me down and asked me what I wanted out of life. What I really, really wanted.

  “I want to be an actress.”

  “Well, where is your agent? What are you doing to achieve that?”

  I didn’t have an answer. So he pushed me to find one. He helped me get my first commercial agent.

  Rudolf was also an actor. A great one. He had this strong jawline and weathered but stern look, but because of his accent he was always cast as the villain. Always. He made a career out of playing terrorists and murderers and coldhearted people who were the complete opposite of who he was.

  After getting my first commercial agent, I booked the very first commercial audition I went out for. It was a Spanish cell phone commercial. I couldn’t understand a word that was said, but my job was to dance around with a cell phone in my hand. So I fucking nailed that shit.