They Tried to Make Him Go to Rehab, he said Yes, Yes, Yes - Reviewing 'Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing' by Matthew Perry

 Forward

People ask me how Matt is. I say I don’t know, because I haven’t seen him for about fifteen years. The nicest thing I can say about him is I’m glad he’s not dead.

Lisa Kudrow

Chapter One

When I was five years old, my mom put me on a plane all by myself to see my dad in LA. I have never forgiven her for abandoning me in this way, like I have never forgiven her for having a career when she should have been looking after me. My life-long fear of abandonment begins at this moment. My dad is very handsome and my mom is very beautiful. But they both abandoned me, so they can go fuck themselves. 

Chapter Two

I have my first drink and I realise that this is the answer to my beautiful, cruel parents abandoning me. I can’t get a boner though. I’ll mention this many times until all you can think about is my flaccid willy flopping about sadly in my Calvins, untouched, despite all the many beautiful chicks that want to touch it.

A talent scout sees me in a local diner and offers me a part in a movie. I guess my natural charm and talent just shines through, even when I’m just grabbing a burger and coke with my homies. I get off with a rockstar’s wife.

Chapter Three

I get a part in a film with River Phoenix. Goddamnit, why is life so cruel that it takes such people as River and Heath, yet that ugly talentless loser Keanu Reeves gets to be alive. I wish Keanu was dead, the ugly stupid talentless loser.

Chapter Four

I fuck over a friend to get a part in the bestest most loved sitcom ever. I basically reinvent comedy and change the way America speaks. Jennifer Aniston still won’t look at me, though, the beautiful bitch. Even though I have lost weight and I am the funniest person on the planet, I am not good enough for her, just like I wasn’t good enough for my mom. You know who I am good enough for, though? Julia Roberts. Yep, beautiful, funny and smart movie star Julia Roberts likes me. Luckily, my erectile dysfunction has been resolved, thanks to an ex-girlfriend who I promptly dumped after she got the old crank shaft working again. I am sure she would know it was all worth it (for me) because I get to bang Julia for 4 months. Things don’t work out with Julia though. I can’t get too close to women, for once I start to realise that they are sentient beings with their own feelings, wants and free-will, and not sex automatons, I go right off them.

Chapter Five

One day Jennifer Aniston tells me we need to talk. Here we go, I think. She’s realised how great I am! Instead, to my surprise, she says that everyone is really worried about my drinking. I don’t know what she’s on about. Then she says, ‘we can smell it on you,’ which is a LIE because everyone knows vodka is odourless!!! It's just a lame excuse not to go out with me.

Chapter Six

I am making a film with Salma Hayek. She dares to have her opinions about how a scene should be filmed, but I know better because I am in the biggest sitcom of all time. Salma doesn’t know anything so I get my way. What do you mean, she’s won an Oscar? So what, she didn’t reinvent comedy like I did! Stupid bitch. When I am making this film, I insist on going on a jet ski, despite everyone telling me it’s far too dangerous. Well, no one tells the inventor of sarcasm what to do, I’ve changed the face of comedy forever. I go on the jetski and I crash it, but it wasn’t really my fault. I believe it may have been a porpoise with a vendetta because my mom abandoned it, too, or something. Thus begins my addiction to painkillers.

 I blame Salma Hayek, in a way. It’s like she forced those pills down my throat. Did you know I used to date Julia Roberts?

Chapter Seven

I used to date Julia Roberts, the world’s most famous and beautiful movie star. I am starring in the world’s most popular sitcom and thanks to David Schwimmer, we are earning a million dollars an episode. Yet I am so, so sad. My life has been so hard. No-one will know the painful struggles of my life, the abandonment, the lack of love. No one wants my poor, diseased brain. I have the curse of addiction. All I can think about is vodka, pills and cigarettes. I’d swap places in a heart-beat with that man that lives in the dumpster behind my favourite A-list hangout and wears tissue boxes instead of shoes. There’s no way his life has been as hard as mine. I bet his mom didn’t put on a plane when he was five years old!

Chapter Eight

I’m in rehab for the tenth time, but they won’t let me smoke in here so I kick off about that. I also fancy one of the nurses, but she’s not interested in the man that once dated Julia Roberts and reinvented comedy. If only she’d agreed to marry me, we’d be living in a beautiful house by now with lots of gorgeous children running around. It’s sort of her fault my colostomy bag keeps exploding. Nothing to do with me not being able to look after myself properly. How am I supposed to do that when both my parents abandoned me? 

Chapter Nine

I see God in my kitchen. The same God who years before I had made a deal with. If he made me famous, he could do anything he wanted to me. And he gave me the curse of addiction. But the warmth of the golden light of his love shows me he has greater plans for me yet. It’s that, or I’m withdrawing pretty hard and have hallucinated this entire divine encounter. My relationship with God is complicated. It’s never occurred to me that trading fame for a rampant drug problem is more like the kind of deal that the Devil makes. Yay God!

Chapter Ten

I am seeing an actress that is fifteen years younger than me. I won’t say her name, but everyone knows who she is. We start off as fuck buddies because I just can’t handle the emotions of someone other than me. She’s wild in bed and we fall in love. But she wants to get married and I don’t, so we break up. Later on, I have a play in London and she phones me and says well done about the play, but I can’t come and see it because I got engaged. This is literally the worst thing that someone has done to me since my mom put me on a plane when I was five years old. How could she do this to me? How could she choose her boyfriend over seeing my play? I got her a painting of us both on our phones done and everything. I gave that woman my heart. I wish her all the best though. I hope she dies horribly.  And Keanu Reeves, he can die horribly too.

Chapter Eleven

I open a rehab centre named after me, because all I have ever wanted to do is help other addicts like myself. Noone can afford to come here, though, so I cut my losses and close it. I spent $500,000 on this venture. Despite me spending double that on my own rehab visits over the years, the cost of this really stings. Turns out not all addicts have the same funds as I do for top-class treatment. You know what, though, I’d still trade places with them in a heartbeat because none of them, none, have been through what I have. They have, like, the Temu version of addiction, and I’ve got the Harrods / Gucci / supernova version of it. 

Chapter Twelve

I nearly die and have a colostomy bag fitted, which keeps exploding shit all over me. I probably mentioned this a few times before, but the timeline of my tale of woe is all over the place and I refused to have an editor, because the world’s most well-known and beloved comedian who once dated Julia Roberts for 4 months almost thirty years ago doesn’t need an editor. I get a part in a movie, but through no fault of my own, I often don’t make it to set in time and when I do I’m often too tired to work. This has nothing to do with my vodka consumption, I am a professional and have never let my addiction get in the way of work. When filming has to pause through no fault of my own, because I have  HEALTH issues, I’m very upset that I have to pay the production company for lost hours. Noone understands how hard it is to get up and go to work after you’ve been caning vodka and cocaine until dawn.

Chapter Thirteen

I have never tried heroin, I have my limit you know. Sure, I’ll take a lot of things that are like heroin, but not the actual stuff because I’m not a dirty smackhead.  I will not acknowledge the fact that OxyContin is very definitely heroin adjacent, because it comes in pills and I don’t have to inject it in between my toes. 

Chapter Fourteen

I mistake a waiter for M Night Shyamalan and talk to him about doing a project together. Look, it’s not my fault those Indian dudes all look alike. He really should have said something earlier. My friend said later he saw M Night climbing out of the toilet window. I wonder where he was going?!

Chapter Fifteen

I’m sober and this makes me really charming to chicks. I’d have fucked mud at this point, and Canadian mud at that, which everyone knows is the worst kind of mud. I have this line that I use on all of them, which is that it ain’t me babe. This really works and I fuck a whole lot of mud. I see nothing wrong with referring to women as ‘mud’, because really, when you think about it, they’re not really human are they? Not in the way I am.

Chapter Sixteen

I go to rehab, I get sober, I go to rehab, I get sober. I get a part in a TV show but because I’m not allowed to control everything about it, it flops. I write a TV series which is about a man who is put on a plane by his mom when he’s five years old and can’t form proper adult relationships as a result. I also write a play, the one that my horrible ex wouldn’t come to. It does very well in London where Brits who have zero taste in anything other than dark comedy love, but which New York hates. I fuck some more women and quickly lose interest in them. After one break-up, when the ex tells me she’s got married and had a baby, I pull my car over and weep. That should have been MY baby!  All the women in my life have been HORRIBLE just like my mother. Everyone leaves me. I can’t remember her name. It wasn’t Julia Roberts though. 

Chapter Seventeen

I am all alone in the world, again. I sit in my big house, alone, apart from my lesbian sober sponsor who is the only woman I’ll ever have a modicum of respect for because there’s no chance we’ll ever fuck. I dated Julia Roberts, invented sarcasm, changed the way America speaks and ad-libbed some of the funniest lines in comedy history. But I am alone, with no wife and no kids. Yet for all my 53 years on the planet, I have not learned one single thing about myself or developed any self - awareness. The disconnect between me and my actions could not be any more obvious. It’s like they are two separate entities and never the twain shall meet. Even the process of writing this book didn’t grant me any real introspection. I am the best person in the world, and the worst, but all the bad bits of me come from that day long, long ago when my mother put me on that plane. The day the innocence died, the day I realised I was always destined to be alone.

I’d like to thank Matt Le Blanc, for turning a one dimensional character into a not one dimensional character, Courteney Cox, for convincing the world that someone as beautiful as her would go out with a schmuck like me, David Schwimmer for all the money, Lisa Kudrow for being almost as funny as me, and Jennifer Aniston for letting me look at her face for a few seconds. GOD she’s so up herself. 

You too, dear reader, may one day be called upon to do something great and then do whatever that great thing is, like I did. 

Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing is published by Headline and is available from all good book retailers. And Amazon.

They're Coming to Get You, Barbara (aka, back once again like the renegade disaster)

 

I’ve led a peaceful existence these dating app-free last 13 months or so. There have been no random messages at midnight asking if I’m still awake, no more dick pics, no more little September boys.

Or so I thought. Like some weird 2021 Reboot, two ghosts crawled out of their stinking holes in the ground to return in my life as zombies. Two. In as many weeks. One of them I’d never even gone on a date with, he’d just stopped replying in the middle of messaging, like he’d raptured or something. I didn’t even know who he was when he’d messaged. His number had been long deleted, and I didn’t recognise the WhatsApp profile photo. He didn’t bother asking what I’d been up to the last three years, apologise for vanishing, just asked if I was down to hook up.

 The second zombie was someone I’d been semi-seeing. As I said before if you count ‘watching’ a movie as ‘seeing someone’ (I don’t). He disappeared around Easter 2019, unliking my Instagram posts and blocking me. He messaged on a Friday just before midnight. I had gone to bed early, in readiness for the Horror-on-Sea film festival and didn’t get the message until the next morning. It took me a while to figure out who he was, too. ‘Hey, long time,’ his message said. ‘how have you been?’

I did a quick social media stalk and in the last 3 years, he’d met someone and had a baby. I guess either that had gone South, or he was bored, or needed an ego boost, or wanted to get his dick wet. Probably all of those things.

The lion, the witch and the audacity of this bitch.

Did they think I have been waiting for them to message me? That while their lives carried on, mine had stopped because I no longer had their scanty attention? Am I supposed to be flattered that I was probably one of a few women they tried to hit up that night? Oh Jeebus, grant me the confidence of an average white man and watch me rule the world. I didn’t reply to zombie number 2, just left his message hanging in the air like the fart in a car it was. I doubt he’s even noticed I haven’t replied as he's probably too busy smashing his head against the closed door of a shopping centre to get the shiny things inside.

I did actually go on three dates at the end of 2021, and I did write about them. I didn’t post the blog for a few reasons. I’m trying to write more in 2023, and I know some people miss my adventures in the dating hellscape. So here you go, a previously unpublished post from the end of 2021.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out with friends Edie and Fleur. We ended up in what should be referred to as The Pub at The End of The World, or as it has been known a previous incarnation, ‘the Last Resort’. The kind of dead-end dive with a sticky carpet and £2.50 shots, Curry Thursdays and Fizz Fridays. The toilets have the odour of spunk and bleach. 

This was the first time since Jimmy the Flip that I had met a man in real life. OK, so he was young, and OK, so he was super keen, and OK, so he licked my face as we said farewell at the taxi rank, and said breathily, ‘There’s more where that came from!’

He texted me mere minutes later, saying he was sorry he was so keen but I ‘caught his eye,’. We messaged the next morning, and then he stopped replying, mid-conversation, as if he’d just dropped dead. Left me on the two grey ticks and everything.

Despite this time last year swearing I was off the apps for good, I signed up again. I knew full well the same old faces, the unchanged profile photos from 2017, the ‘No Drama’ and ‘good vibes only!’ dudes would still be there. And they were, along with the sex pests and the ghosts and the zombies and the liars. Here were the men obviously hitting 60 claiming they were ’45 but feel 35,’ the embittered and embattled and I was re-joining their ranks. At least I had a few new photos (sparse opportunities for photos in 2021).

If my match rate was down when I was 42, 43 seems to have sent me down to the bargain basement and into a basket labelled, ‘last chance to buy’.  As a Reddit user cheerfully commented, ‘no-one wants old women!’

Anyway, I had a few dates and here’s how they went…

42 & 43 – Macavity the Mystery Twat

(Or, ‘I am sorry, TS Elliott’)

Macavity’s a mystery twat, he’s called the Hidden Fist

For he’s the master dater (tee hee) with the deadly kiss

He’s the bafflement of women, the swiper’s despair

For when they reach the day of the date – Macavity’s not there!

 

Macavity, Macavity, there’s hundreds more like Macavity

He’s the basic average white man, lacking common decency

His powers of evanescence would make a bath bomb stare

And when you reach the day of the date -– Macavity’s not there!

You may seek him in the basement – you may look up in the air

But I tell you once, and once again, Macavity’s not there!

 

Macavity’s a husky cat, he’s very tall and wide

You would know him if you saw him, for he’s dead behind the eyes

His beard is big and bushy, uncombed and streaked with grey

He thinks he’s a hipster but I’d say he’s more bou-jay

He says he’s a dapper dresser with innate confidence and style

I would say it’s more a case arrogance and living in denial

 

Macavity, Macavity, there’s thousands like Macavity,

He’s a milky tea in human form, a prime example of blandidity

You may meet him the High Street, you may see him Market Square,

But when a date is coming up, Macavity’s not there!

 

He’s outwardly respectable (they say he cheats at Scrabble)

Like all the others, he says he likes to travel

And when the hair is done and the eye-liner is applied,

When the perfume is sprayed, it’s clear that he lied

When you spent an hour choosing what to wear

Ay, there’s the dismay of the thing! Macavity’s not there!

 

And when another hopeful dater finds her plans have gone astray,

Or the drinks at 7pm are cancelled by midday

There will be radio silence, a grey ticked message unread

You would be forgiven for thinking that Macavity is dead

When you’re thinking that his number you should block

There he is again, making innuendos about his cock.

 

Macavity, Macavity, there’s many more like Macavity

Let’s throw them off a cliff and see them reach terminal velocity

He always has an alibi, and one of two to spare

At whatever time the date was for, MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!

This is a gentle warning, about all the matches whose wicked deeds are as yet unknown

(I’ve mentioned them before, I’m weary to the bone)

That dating apps are nothing more than agents for twats who are all alone,

They don’t care much about who they match with as long as they get to bone!

 

 

44 –  Jerry

Friends will tell you I have a terrible habit of swiping right on, and matching with, men in their 20s. While this is an obvious ego boost when a match happens, the reality is most men of this age will only ever see a woman in her 40s as a tick on the sex bucket list.

So when Jerry, a 64 year old, commented on of my profile photos (this is Hinge, where you don’t have to match to send an initial message) I thought, ‘maybe I should give this ago!’.

There’s a distinct absence of men in their 40s on the apps (I’m not counting in the men in their 50s and 60s that are putting their ages as 45), men in their 20s are fun but essentially of no use to me, men in their 30s aren’t interested.

Jerry was able to hold a decent conversation, and at no point tried to bring the topic round to sexting which happens so often. Most of his photos were ones from a slight distance, apart from one that was a close up of his tanned, smiley face.

So off I went to meet him for a weekend morning coffee, and it was…OK.  He was much smaller, slighter and greyer than his photos had suggested. He wore small wire-rimmed glasses and all his clothes (he cheerfully admitted) where logo’d freebies from his work. That was kind of cool, because how many people have a Men in Black gilet, or a Life fleece? He’d met Ryan Reynolds and pronounced him ‘An okay chap’!

 He’d been divorced 20 years after his wife ‘totally changed when she started taking anti -depressants,’ which made me wonder if this was his version of the crazy ex. In my experiences, crazy ex wives and girlfriends have simply had normal reactions to intolerable behaviour but eh, who am I to judge one man on the behaviour of many others?

He was engaging, interesting and interested…well, moderately interested. At least he asked me a couple of questions about myself and didn’t spend the entire time talking about his own hobbies and achievements.

The age difference felt quite pronounced – he wouldn’t be far off retiring and was busy doing up his house. I tried to imagine him staying up until dawn caterwauling along to Leave a Light On, or drinking a pre-loading tinnie on the tube, or meeting my raucous, argumentative family and I couldn’t.

I thanked him for a lovely time and wished him luck. And like the gracious, mature man he seemed to be, he responded in kind.

 

45 – Nick

By the time Nick messaged me, my match rate was so depressingly low I responded, even though he wasn’t my type. He didn’t use any punctuation in his messages, (When I told Edie about this, she said, ‘you’re always going on about how much you hate commas – you once told me they’re pointless,’ which is entirely untrue. If anything, I use them too much) so it took me a while to decipher some of his messages.

Nick warned me he’d put on weight. Who hasn’t, over the last couple of years? I asked if his photos were recent, and he said they were. In that case, it was OK, I knew what he looked like. I messaged Lulu after a date had been set, and said, ‘He’ll probably be much heavier than he is and at least 2 inches shorter,’ she told me I was over-thinking it, like I always do.

Off I went, on a chilly Sunday evening to meet him. He was waiting outside the pub, walking around in circles.  ‘Hello!’ I shouted, in the manner of a jodhpur clad duchess striding across a field.

‘I was always told that a gentleman should bring a lady some flowers on a first date,’ he said, and whipped out a packet of Sainsbury’s crusty bread mix from his coat pocket. As he did this, a waft of stale body odour floated out into the chilly air.

 Inside the pub and waiting at the bar, I saw that I had been right about the height, he’d added about 3 inches. I don’t mind short men – some of the men I’ve been most attracted to in my life were short. I don’t like them lying about it though, as if I am not going to notice when you say you’re 5’9 and show up looking more like 5’6. The weight gain was significant, and he looked much heavier than his photos. He did talk about his weight loss plan – a friend was helping him with his diet and fitness – and his goal to be able to wear a size large t-shirt.  He had a nice face with friendly eyes and would be handsome if he lost the weight.

Then he started talking; about not being vaccinated because his body could handle the virus (I felt like saying, ‘your body doesn’t look like it can handle stairs,’ but I kept that snide body-shaming opinion for here). He talked about the 2 major accidents he’d had in the last year because of his Jackass-ery type behaviour, and his cheating ex. He rattled off questions like Paxman, and after a while I realised that he was only asking me questions so he could regale me with his own tales of worst holidays and dates. I put this down to nerves and an insatiable need to appear entertaining and high-spirited.

My eyes kept being drawn to his dirty hands, the grime engraved into the lines of his palms, the black crescent moons of his nails; borderline fascinated by the way his hands melted into his wrists which melted into his arms, as plump as a baby’s and as thickly haired as a silverback’s.

The pub closed early, and neither of us suggested finding another one. When I got home, I did the usual ‘thanks for a good night,’ and left it there. He did message back saying, ‘you’ll have to let me know if you want to see me again,’

I thought that the flour was actually sort of funny, and cute, but did the overthinking thing and imagined a lifetime of packets of flour as birthday gifts, ‘cause it’s our special joke!’ and the thought made me want to cry. I didn’t want another partner who was casually cruel or lazy under the guise of ‘just a joke! Don’t be so sensitive!’

 I couldn’t get past the not getting vaccinated thing, and the smell of body odour made me think he hadn’t cared enough about the date to have a shower before he came to meet me. Seeing the apron of his belly as his t-shirt rose up when he put his coat on cemented my preference for physical fitness in a partner. Not the Hollywood male standard of desirability, but proof of caring about how their body feels and looks. Yeah. I’m shallow and too fussy.

I had been realistic this time round, knowing it was unlikely I’d meet someone this way. Again, I was right. Macavity, Jerry and Nick were like most of the other dates I’ve been on since 2017. A perfectly pleasant way to spend a few hours, but in essence a drink with a stranger with whom you actually have very little in common with.

I had heard that the apps are a wasteland around the festive period, and then pick up again the New Year. The first Sunday after New Year’s Day is apparently the busiest day for new sign-ups to dating apps. Did this mean I have re-installed the apps this week? No. I was tempted, but to go back a third time in as many months felt futile. Trapped in a cycle of install, delete, install, delete, install, delete until I die or actually meet someone whichever comes first. It feels like the Greek myth of Sisyphus who is doomed to spend eternity rolling a boulder to the top of a hill where it immediately rolls back down to the bottom again.

Part of me doesn’t want to give up. After all, the idea of this was to stick it out one hundred dates and then give up. I don’t think my spirit can take a further 55 just OK dates, or another 3 years of apps. Each time I reinstall them, the brief flame of excitement that this might be the time is quickly extinguished.  I feel much more at peace when I am not on the apps. In the words of the late, great Amy Winehouse, ‘I don’t understand / why do I stress the man / when there’s so many bigger things at hand?...I cannot play myself again /I just be my own best friend / Not fuck myself in the head with stupid men,’ Amen, sister. Amen.

This week’s crush

Noel Gallagher has apparently split from his wife, Sara. While he’s not my favourite Gallagher brother (he seems salty and is apparently a Tory now), I could put that aside. He has an excellent head of hair for a 56-year-old man, (it’s as thick as a thatched cottage) he looks pretty trim and he could write a song about me. Plus 17 year old me would be really happy. 

I'm moody but I'm rich