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.
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.
