When Entertainment Tonight Canada started, we were a small crew that put together a big show from two rented wood-panelled mobile trailers that smelled like old cigarettes and fresh raccoon shit in the parking lot of the network building. This was the same building where I’d produced that talk show years before and blown twenty-five grand of their money on that trip to L.A. to meet a girl only to be left stranded at a dildo store at two in the morning. I kept that story to myself even though the entire company had been bought and sold twice since I last worked there. They weren’t paying me enough to pay them back, but the show wasn’t making enough that I didn’t think they wouldn’t try, so I kept my mouth shut.
This wasn’t a flashy downtown media headquarters like the other places I’d worked. This building was in the suburbs north of the city, and smack in the middle of a residential street. It was a pain in the ass to get there, but a trip that I was more than used to. The network had big plans for ET Canada and were dumping a ton of money into it. They were building us our own offices and a state-of-the-art control room, but until all that was done, we produced the show from that parking lot, in the blazing heat with no personal space.
I was sweating buckets through my borrowed suit as my thick caked-on and layered TV makeup liquefied and dripped off the tip of my nose onto my desk when I was writing scripts. This was a glossy production, but I was far from a glossy guy, so the brilliant contradiction between how the show looked on TV and what it all looked like behind the scenes suited me just fine. I was a skid with a little bit of shine on him now, but I was still far more comfortable in that parking lot than I was on set of the show.
The first meeting I had with my boss was when he made it clear why I was hired. “Interviews and voice-overs,” he told me. “That’s what—sorry, that’s all I need from you.” I’d worked with this same exec producer when I was doing Last Call, so we had enough history that we could be (somewhat) honest with each other. But clearly he didn’t like me enough to give me anything more than a series of one-year contracts, when everyone else was getting two- and even three-year deals. I had to constantly prove myself, continuously auditioning for my own job.
“I need you to ask the questions nobody else will,” he said. “I don’t care what the rules are, or what they’re promoting: we ask what we want to ask, and we make news. That’s what you do for this show. That’s your job. These people aren’t your friends, and we owe them nothing. They need us more than we need them.”
So that’s exactly what I did. I spent the first two years of that show pissing people off while building a great reputation for getting people to talk about all the shit they said they wouldn’t. This was the kind of structure and discipline I was looking for. I was a tool. I had purpose. But I wasn’t proud of any of it. If Robert Downey Jr. was promoting a new movie, I’d ask about his past drug use and jail time. I’d go hard on people’s relationships, their breakups, and their breakdowns. I said horrible things about Britney Spears during her 2007 head-shaving episode, and have apologized for it, publicly, every opportunity I’ve had since. I’d unfairly ask about pregnancy rumours, how much money people made, affairs, weight gain, eating disorders, and anything else that might make some news and get us some press. My philosophy was, it was way better to have Lindsay Lohan pissed off at me for five minutes than have my boss be pissed off at me for five days.
One of my first trips to L.A. was to interview Colin Farrell. He had a new movie, Miami Vice, that he was promoting, but the big story was that he had recently, and secretly, married. This was huge for us. He chain-smoked for our entire interview, and in the final minute I said, “Can I ask you a personal question?” to which he replied, “Can I snuff this fucking cigarette out in your eye?” But because of his accent, his mumbling and the ten feet between us, I didn’t hear any of it, and asked the question anyway. He didn’t answer, but I had to ask. That’s all that mattered.
These first few years at ET Canada, I was crushing it. I didn’t love the job, but I was good at it. They hired me on as a senior reporter, but it wasn’t long before I started doing all the work of a co-host, which in that world, are two very different jobs. I was great on the teleprompter, showed up on time and prepared, and could always get the show back on track if we were ever running late. I was fast and didn’t fuck around. I was consistent, dependable, and had amazing chemistry with Cheryl Hickey, the host of the show, who I’d known for years. I didn’t mind my life as a reporter and really had no desire to be the face of anything, let alone ET Canada, but it drove me crazy that they used me as a co-host but never let me forget that I wasn’t.
This had nothing to do with money, either—it always felt personal to me. I obsessed over why I was never asked to co-host the show officially. I didn’t particularly want the job, but I did want to be offered the job. My boss had absolute control over my life and future on that show, and when I asked him if he’d ever promote me to a co-host, he told me flat out: “No. Never. You’re just not dashing enough.” He actually laughed while answering, like me thinking I could co-host this show was hilarious.
He was right, though—I wasn’t dashing. I was never going to be dashing. I didn’t even like the word “dashing.” But for some reason, this all messed with my head and crushed my confidence.
“I didn’t hire you for your looks. You should be happy about that,” he told me. I felt like that skid I had tried so hard to erase. And fat. I felt fat. I spent the next four months pounding Hydroxycut, an over-the-counter miracle weight loss supplement that years later was recalled and banned. According to the FDA, “Hydroxycut presents a severe potentially life-threatening hazard to some users. Although Hydroxycut-induced hepatotoxicity has been reversible in most patients…in certain instances acute liver failure has resulted that has required liver transplantation to ensure survival.”
At the time I didn’t know any of this, but I knew it was wrong. It felt wrong, and I didn’t care. I didn’t have a weight problem, not even close—I had a self-image and confidence problem. I’d always hated my body, but now I was pissed off. I was going for the kind of drastic change that a new haircut and a few hours in a tanning bed wouldn’t even come close to achieving.
I was ashamed. I didn’t keep the pills in the bathroom vanity or in the medicine cabinet like any normal medication. I kept the bottles in my sock drawer, hidden and buried so deep it was a pain in the ass for even me to find them every morning. But they were working, and doing exactly what they were designed to do. Fix the outside and destroy the inside. Our wardrobe stylist was taking the waist of my suit pants in an inch every couple of weeks. I shaved all the hair off my body, ankles to neck, so I could better see the progress, and would stand naked in front of my full-length mirror in my dressing room for twenty minutes every morning before getting dressed for the show.
After routine blood work, my doctor called me at nine one night. He had never called me personally before; I’d only ever talked to his assistant or one of the nurses at the clinic. He told me he was testing me for hepatitis, and asked big questions about my family history and if I had travelled anywhere sketchy recently and needed to know if I was taking PCP or ketamine in “large amounts.” I was six four, 146 pounds, and my liver enzymes were off the charts. I was killing myself with diet pills in some stupid quest to prove I was “dashing” to a person I wouldn’t have taken the morning off work for had he dropped dead. I knew what was hurting me, so I stopped taking the pills and played dumb. I lied. My second round of blood tests, about five weeks later, came back totally normal. It was a miracle.
I found a new doctor and stopped watching myself on television. I haven’t seen an episode of ET Canada since.
For about a year, early on in the show, Suri Cruise was the most famous baby in the world, and the show paid an obscene amount of attention to her. A baby. For months, it didn’t matter who we sat down in front of, or what they were promoting, we had to ask every interview what they thought of the baby. If you were a TV chef promoting your cookbook, with zero connection to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, or if you were the bassist from Metallica, if you were on our show you’re goddamn right you were going to talk about the baby. Our boss was obsessed.
I was assigned to interview Penélope Cruz, which was a huge deal, as she dated Tom right before he and Katie were married. Penélope was an actual connection—she was Tom’s ex, and a comment from her would blow the fuck up, I was told. My boss sent me in to do what I was hired to do, and nothing more. The script for the show was already written. I had no choice. They created big flashy graphics with the word “EXCLUSIVE” in huge shiny font and everything was ready to go. Did I really want to ask a woman about her ex-boyfriend’s new baby? No, but that’s what I was hired to do, so that’s what I did.
“No personal questions,” her publicist told me before I sat down. “No relationship questions. No games. Stick to the movie.”
“Yeah. Of course, man. Nooooo problem,” I reassured him.
I was an expert at lying to publicists. I was a huge fan of Penélope Cruz, though, and under different circumstances I think we probably would have had a lovely chat. Her movie was really great. But none of that mattered, because the baby.
I don’t remember if Penélope Cruz stopped the cameras or if we were still rolling when this happened, but I do remember our interview ending early with her hunched forward in her seat, her finger pointing at my face, darting closer and closer after every word, as she cussed me out in a lightning-fast combo of English and Spanish. To be honest, it could have been one or the other, I don’t remember, because I wasn’t listening to a word of it. The only thing I remember wondering, as she rightfully read me the riot act for that gross overstep, was did she say the word “happy” before going off on me. If she said the word “happy” like she was “happy for Tom,” we could run that. We could isolate that one word and build an entire show around it. That’s the exclusive. I didn’t apologize or try to justify the questions I asked, and I didn’t even stand up or say thank you when she stormed past me out of the room.
I’m pretty sure she said happy, I thought. I fucking hope she did.
I felt horrible after that interview. But I got high-fives when I got back to the studio with the tapes.
I left the office that night around six, feeling gross about myself. I took the same two buses, a subway, and a streetcar back downtown to Katherine’s tiny apartment. “How was your day? How was the show?” she always asked when I walked in.
“Fine,” I’d say. That was the only way I ever described my day. Fine. Then we’d flop on her bed, on those incredibly soft sheets that she couldn’t afford, as she quietly sang along to whatever was playing. Usually something by Bob Dylan. I’d put my head on her stomach, close my eyes, and fade into her while she ran her fingers through my hair until I was me again.
I didn’t want to break up with Katherine, but I had to.
Most of the truly horrible decisions I’ve made in life, like this one, have been based around the same made-up mathematical equation that has no specific formula or defined rules. It goes like this: I take all the people I’ve hurt, add that to all the people who’ve hurt me, then I know exactly how much I need to hurt myself.
Do you know how much you have to dislike yourself to dump a woman like Katherine, who is pure fucking joy, optimism, and kindness, for someone who tells you: “You’re so worthless that when you’re not around me and my friends call you Peso?” Like some cute nickname? That’s where I was at. That’s what I did.
I’d started feeling guilty, like I was taking advantage of Katherine and her kindness. We were in love, and it was crushing me. I knew where this was going, and I couldn’t handle the weight.
In the years we were together, Katherine never asked me to define myself or our relationship. But I could feel that we were getting to a point where that wasn’t going to be enough for too much longer—not for her, but for me. Her patience was my anxiety, and she deserved more. She was worth all the work it would take for me to start putting the pieces back together again. But people started to look at me like I was a big deal now: I was on national TV, I had an audience and free clothes and people seemed to love my flirty, awkward, and brutal interviews. And as much as most of what I did made me sick to my stomach, I did love the attention. I didn’t mind being that guy. That guy felt nothing. But I wasn’t that person around Katherine. Katherine was genuinely proud and encouraging.
But if I stayed, I was going to burn it down.
I couldn’t be both people, and I wasn’t ready, even after all this time, to process the loss of my dad or anything else. If I started to fall apart now, I’d lose it all. I didn’t know how to be happy, but I was an expert at being a fraud. So, I ran. I started to put space between Katherine and me, and began to undo all her hard work. Travel became my new distraction. I was more comfortable alone in a hotel room in a city I’d never been to than I was at home or in Katherine’s bed. I told our assignment editor to just send me anywhere. It didn’t matter where. “Just keep me on the road,” I told her. The U.K., L.A., New York, Aruba, all over Mexico, northern Alberta, South Florida, Egypt, Rome, Vancouver, Chicago, Moscow, Paris. I’d be gone for weeks at a time.
I felt if I ran far enough, I’d find what I was looking for.
On one of those trips, I met a writer from back in Toronto who was covering the same story for the paper she was working for. Nothing happened between us on that trip, but I could tell we had a connection. I probably paid a little too much attention to her and she definitely didn’t mind. She looked at me like I was someone else, someone I clearly wasn’t but was already interested in becoming. Being that guy felt good. It felt easy. She didn’t care about my story and never asked me to open up. She was into fashion and fancy shit that I didn’t know anything about. I still don’t know what “couture” means. I never once saw her wear the same thing twice. She had rich friends, she was popular, had beefcake male models blowing up her inbox way before Instagram, and clearly had never waited in line for anything her whole life. The polar opposite of anyone I’d ever been with. She was the exact kind of woman who would never date a skid like me. But she never met that guy. She didn’t know my life, or where I came from, and didn’t ask. And she was never going to ask. This woman was going to hurt me, and I went all in.
At first, we really did have a few good days. Her friends seemed to like me, we had a couple of fun nights out, and I’d always do my best to take note of what I did on those days, to make sure I didn’t do anything to piss her off the next day. She was super easy to piss off, and could easily freeze me out for two or three days at a time, making me work my way back in.
The good days started to fade, then became non-existent. What I was chasing were the days that weren’t just total shit. I convinced myself that a “not total shit day” was actually a good day, because the bad days had quickly become volcanic and cruel. But there were no more good days. Two months into our relationship, I was so beaten down that I was taking Viagra just to be able to sleep with her because nothing worked. Nobody has ever made me feel worse about myself so fast. Then we’d have one not total shit day where I’d feel like I was her entire world, and the whole wicked cycle would start all over again. I’d call her friends to ask what I was doing wrong.
“Everything,” one of them told me. “You’re doing everything wrong. Last week at brunch you made a joke about blowing your nose into your hand in the shower and pushing the booger down the drain with your big toe.”
That sounds like something I’d say, I thought.
“She dumped a guy for that.”
Excuse me?
“For blowing his nose in the shower. How do you not know that?”
How would I know that?
“She needs a man,” another friend told me. “So you need to get your driver’s licence. We think it’s weird that you don’t have one.”
She said this like they were all part of some collective hive. That was the truth, though. I was thirty-four and I’d never driven a car. I never got my licence because I was afraid I was going to kill somebody, but how could I admit that to the most judgmental person I’d ever met?
My Tourette’s had progressed over the years and was cranked up by the amount of stress I was under. It was made especially bad by having to be awful in interviews but flawless on TV. I’d gone through a few years now where all my tics were in my eyes. I would blink rapidly, squint, or roll my eyes back into my head. I didn’t trust myself to drive a car, because one tic could take me out of the world long enough to miss something. I worried if I lost even a single second when I should have been paying attention, I’d cause an accident. I was afraid I would kill somebody.
I’d never mentioned my Tourette’s to her, and I wasn’t planning to either.
“If you want her, you have to fight for her,” the friend instructed me. “I want you to win. I’m on Team Roz over here.”
I didn’t know it was a competition.
We were in bed one night at my place when I saw her texting someone because she thought I was asleep.
“Be home soon” were the words I read from the corner of my eye.
I asked to see her BlackBerry. She refused, even though she went through mine every night before we went to bed.
“I need to know I’m your boyfriend,” I told her. I was ready to fight for us. “I need to be more than just another guy in your phone.” I’d never tried this hard with a woman before. But it wasn’t about love. It was about validation. I felt like shit, but I was in too deep and had walked away from whatever life I’d lived before her. This was it. I wanted to become the exact thing she needed. A whole new person. I needed to win, and tried to prove my worth by being able take whatever toxic abuse she threw at me. More than anyone else. That was a fight I knew I could win.
“Do you know how hard this is for me? Being with you?” she asked while I was still lying naked on top of her. “Do you realize that every time I kiss you, I have to close my eyes and pretend you don’t have tattoos, that haircut, or all those bracelets? You’re not my type, Roz. I told you that, but I’m really trying here. What more do you want from me?”
She finally saw me for the skid that I was.
Asshole is what I thought. “I love you” is what I said. And I didn’t mean a word of it.
What I should have done was gather up whatever self-esteem and pride I had left and walk the fuck out of her life, giving her the finger from the end of my bracelet-filled wrist. What I did do was start to wear long-sleeve shirts to cover up my tattoos and put every bit of rock ’n’ roll jewellery I had in a box under my bed. I tried to do better.
On one of those bad days, when she hadn’t returned my calls for a full twenty-four hours, I had a few drinks while out and then wandered next door into a tattoo shop to get a small heart done on the inside of my middle finger on my left hand. It didn’t really mean anything, but heart tattoos are always pretty. Also, I wasn’t burning myself anymore, and the process of getting a tattoo reminded me of that feeling. If I walked past a shop that had an open chair, I’d ask if I could get in for a quick touch-up on one of my older tattoos just to feel the needle darting in and out of my skin. I knew the tattoo would piss off my girlfriend, but I did it anyway. The heart tattoo took all of ten minutes, then I walked back next door, ordered one more drink, and settled up the bar tab I’d opened before I left.
Our entire relationship lasted maybe five months. I knew it was going to end, and it wasn’t going to end well. It was only a matter of time. The last time we talked was when I found out she was also dating a friend of mine the entire time we were together. She had a whole second boyfriend. They went home for the holidays that Christmas, back to her parents’ house, and he got to meet her family while I was at her place, back in Toronto, putting together her new bed frame and reorganizing her closets.
I’ve listened a lot in my life. Listening is the one skill that has helped me more as an interviewer, entertainer, and person than anything else. But I’ve never listened to the universe, not in any sort of Oprah/Higher Power kind of way. I’m not religious, I don’t remember my dreams, and I’ve never looked for signs. I’ve never been that guy. I wouldn’t even know what to listen for anyway. I don’t believe in fate, or that everything happens for a reason, and I still have no clue what it means when Mercury is in retrograde. I’ve never once taken my guard down long enough to surrender to anything, and the only whispers I’ve heard were my own, bouncing off the inside of the walls I built around me.
But if it was the universe (and Paris Hilton) that brought Katherine and me together the first time, maybe the universe could do it again.
I called Katherine right after I ended that relationship, like the same night. Maybe an hour later. I’d spent so long hurting myself that I didn’t once think about how it affected anyone else. I’d never gone back, or even looked over my shoulder to see what I was leaving behind. I was self-destructive and self-centred, which always does as much damage to the people who love you as it does to yourself. But I was done. I was done hurting myself.
Katherine picked up the phone and asked me if I was okay, if I needed help. She knew. There was no lecture, no yelling, no guilt, no price to pay.
“Can I come over?” I asked.
“Of course, always,” she told me.
Katherine didn’t look at me like I was someone who broke her heart, or an ex-boyfriend who showed up to beg for a second chance. She welcomed me in like I was a teenage runaway who’d finally made his way home defeated and lost, or an addict fresh out of rehab after a relapse promising this was the last time. Again. She was kind, but rightfully cautious. There was no big hug, but she did take me by the hand, like she had that night we met, and led me to the couch. She was in a new apartment now, and I didn’t know my way around.
“What happened?” she asked me, while still holding my hand on her lap.
As I sat there trying to put the words together, I looked down at our fingers intertwined, both of her hands on top of one of mine.
“What is that?” I asked.
“What is what?” she answered. I had to wiggle my hand free to make sure my eyes weren’t fucking with me.
“That!” I asked again. “When did you get that?”
“Oh, the tattoo? Maybe a couple of months ago.” It was a small heart on the inside of her middle finger on her left hand. I slowly opened my left hand to show her mine. They were identical.
“What!” Her eyes opened wider than I’ve ever seen them, and Katherine has big eyes. “When did you get that?” she asked.
“A couple of months ago,” I told her.
Now tell me, if that wasn’t the universe, then what was it? How do two people, who hadn’t talked in months but who were still so obviously in love, go off and get the exact same tattoo, in the exact same spot, at the exact same time? Like, are you fucking kidding me?
After talking for hours, and me telling her everything, we spent the night together. I was too exhausted to head home, and I didn’t want to leave anyway. I don’t think she wanted me to, either. I had the second-best sleep of my life that night. We woke up naked and started the day slow. There was no awkwardness, or remorse. I loved this woman and was never going to push her away again. I just didn’t know if she wanted me. I’d hurt her more than I’d ever hurt myself, and I was never going to hurt either of us ever again. I wanted to heal. I took the week and tried to put everything together in my head. Everything that I wanted to tell her. Katherine came over the following Friday, maybe eight or nine days after that night at her place, and I took her by the hand and led her to the living room.
“I’m going to stand, if that’s okay,” I told her. “I’ve got tons to say. I’m probably going to ramble and pace around, but please hear me out. I’m going to try to make all this shit makes sense—please let me try.” The ceilings in my place were tall, and my couch was huge, and Katherine looked so small sitting there alone, but she sat up straight with her shoulders back, confident as hell. She never broke eye contact.
“All right,” she told me. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I never stopped loving you,” I said right out of the gate. “I was never not in love with you.” I needed her to hear that first and I needed her to know that I meant it. I talked for three or four minutes, waving my hands around like a maniac while walking rings, perfect circles, into the rug. Katherine never said a word. She just listened. I tried, as best I could, to explain that yes, I was a little bit broken, but I was not ruined. I just hurt all the time. I let the things that hurt me continue to hurt me every day. But I was done. No more.
“I think about dying. All the time,” I told her. I still felt so much guilt over the way I handled those last few months when I still had my dad. That his death put me on the clock, and I’d lost sight of the purpose of all this—of being alive. Awful things happen to really good people, to all of us. But none of it, none of the hurt, abuse, or cruelty from the past, should define who we are today.
“I just want to fill a house full of love and see what happens,” I told her. “And when it’s the end, when it’s my time to go, there’s only one person I want by my side holding my hand and telling me goodnight. It’s you. It’s always been you.”
“Do you mean that?” Katherine asked me. Finally breaking her silence and eye contact.
“Every word. I’ve never meant anything more in my entire life,” I told her.
“Good. Because I’m pregnant.”
I dropped to my knees and cried. I crawled over to her on the couch, sat on the floor in front of her with my head on her lap, and cried. I cried harder than I had in my entire life. Every tear, from every time I should have cried but didn’t, came pouring out and they haven’t stopped since. I can’t say that I cry every day, but I do almost cry every day, and on the days when it does happen, it’s beautiful. It’s a recharge. It’s always the exact thing I need at the exact time I need it. Like a rainstorm finally hitting a field of wildflowers after a long, dry summer. That’s what we were going to be—wildflowers. Beautiful, full of joy, and free. Strong enough to grow through concrete, and resilient enough to thrive under whatever punishing conditions came our way. I learned to love the rain that night.
“I guess I should man up and get my driver’s licence, huh?” I said when I finally stopped crying enough to put a few words together.
“Why?” Katherine asked while wiping her own tears from her chin.
“So I can take the kid to karate.”
“Nah. I can drive us. We can go as a family.”
A family of wildflowers.