If Tammy was my family mascot, Chunk was my husband. Everybody loved Chunk. His smooth soft hair, his well-mannered disposition. He didn’t have the body type I’m normally drawn to, but any parent will tell you none of that matters when it’s your own flesh and blood. He gave our family some much-needed dignity. He was described by many as aloof, but that was also part of his charm. He had the disposition of a butler—he was congenial but kept his distance. Without a kerchief around his neck, he was just another well-groomed dog from Bel-Air. With the kerchief, he was cooler than Fonzie. He amassed a large social media presence during his time with us and never once used it for ill. He didn’t troll people online or spread fake news. He was pure goodness. He loved me categorically, but that’s not the only reason I loved him. It was most of the reason—but he also had qualities I didn’t jibe with. When I came home drunk or stoned, he laid some heavy judgment on me. When I had friends over, he’d give me a look that said, Lights out in five. I tolerated it because he never said it out loud. He never diminished the meaning of his judgment with lectures. The stares stayed fresh. It made me feel I had a sort of spiritual guide—albeit a sober one. That is, until I got him his own marijuana pills. That’s when the judger became the user.
Soon after I got Chunk, Molly and I took him on what we presumed was his first trip to the beach, but once we got there, it was clear he had been to a beach before—possibly even as a lifeguard. He sat in front of the water, listening to the waves crash with his eyes closed, while he let the wind blow through his hair—like Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway would probably have been blacked out, but for some reason that’s who I always thought of when I watched Chunk on the beach. Molly said he reminded her more of Stevie Wonder at the beach, but Molly can be a contrarian. Whenever Chunk was in this state of tranquility, I wished he could drink and smoke cigarettes, but after many failed attempts, I had to accept that neither vices held any interest for him.
“Can you believe he loves the beach as much as I do?” I asked Molly.
“Yeah, because he lives in a fucking icebox. He’s probably never felt the sun on his back.”
I like my house cold, and if I’ve been drinking, I like it even colder. I’ve always held the false assumption that things with fur could easily withstand freezing temps. “I’m just kidding—his fur keeps him warm,” Molly said to assuage my fear that I was torturing my own dog. “Poor thing thought he was going to become the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and instead he lives in the Arctic. He’s like a modern-day Shackleton.”
While on a self-imposed sabbatical between my shows at E! and Netflix, I decided it was time for Chunk to see Europe. My family and I were meeting in Spain for a week, and I believed that after years of North American travel and good plane etiquette, Chunk had earned himself the right to a trip overseas. I have an affinity for Spain because the food is delicious and the Spanish take lots of siestas. That is when I get my best work done—when whole towns are asleep.
Someone from Chunk’s multipronged medical team had given him a prescription for sleeping pills. I was advised to give him as little water as possible on the day of our “journey,” which seemed like sound advice for a fourteen-hour voyage—a ten-hour flight to Germany, a two-hour layover, and then a two-hour flight to Formentera. The German layover added a nice ancestral touch, since Chunk was half German Shepherd and half Chow. It would be his very own episode of Who Do You Think You Are? When we reached the Spanish island, Chunk would be reminded of my cleaning ladies and feel right at home.
The first leg to Germany was uneventful. Chunk sat at my feet during takeoff and I used him as a footstool. Once we were airborne and I was able to recline my seat into a bed, he hopped up, and I positioned him as a headrest. This configuration worked well in that he wouldn’t be able to get up without waking me—and his breath would help keep me knocked out. (From this vantage point, I realized the two connected seats in the middle aisle of the first-class cabin would be an even better configuration, so I texted Brandon to purchase those two seats for our return flight, so that Chunk and I could return to our homeland like a real husband and wife.)
Chunk’s breath got trickier as he got older. I had received multiple complaints from some of my closest friends, who pointed out that it was hot and strong—but to me it smelled like home. It also smelled like littleneck clams, but I’m a fan of littleneck clams. Chunk is also a fan of littleneck clams, which explained his breath—but I digress. The important part of this story is that I was able to tolerate Chunk’s breath, which means I am capable of accepting people’s shortcomings—but usually only if that person never speaks. Chunk had the only terrible breath I’ve ever loved. That’s how I knew I was capable of unconditional love—his breath and his slender body. Neither was my first choice.
My vet warned me that the sleeping pill could make Chunk very thirsty—which, as usual, didn’t add up. Why would I give him a pill that would make him thirsty during the only window of time when I wasn’t allowed to give him water?
I decided to abstain from giving Chunk or myself a sleeping pill on the flight. That’s what good parents do; they make sacrifices for their children. Chunk was a complete champ the entire way to Spain. We got up a couple times to do a lap or two, and when I had to use the restroom, I just tied his leash to my cup holder. People kept coming over and commenting on how well-behaved Chunk was—and on his looks, of course. People were always searching for the right word to describe him. Regal, debonair, rakish. Chunk was always polite with strangers, but never effusive. He would entertain a stranger with a smile and perhaps a paw shake, but he wouldn’t be caught dead licking someone. He had too much dignity for that.
Once we got to Formentera, my sister Simone took him for his first long walk. When she came back she described it as a “disembowelment”—another reason I loved Chunk: saving his excrement for someone in my family. My brothers and sisters know I am not equipped to deal with any of the responsibilities that come with parenting, so they immediately take charge of my dependents. Likewise, Chunk knows it’s better to go for a walk with anyone other than me.
Halfway through the trip, predictably, I became irritated with my family. I came home from a sailing excursion and took a closer look at Chunk’s “meds.” It’s not often I come across a sleeping agent I’m unfamiliar with, but it does happen. I googled “alprazolam” and discovered that Chunk’s medicine was just a generic form of Xanax. I could have high-fived myself if I had gotten more air. “It’s doggy Xanax!” I exclaimed to my aunt Gaby, who was in the kitchen making everyone lunch. “This is a game changer.”
My brother is married to a Russian woman with whom he bickers about almost anything—it could be a bicycle helmet. It is of my opinion that their three sons—my three nephews—are prisoners in their home, but that may be because I grew up in my home and can’t relate to any kind of hands-on parenting. My sister-in-law is more than just hands-on—I believe she would actually live inside one of her sons’ ears if she could. She is supremely overprotective and consumed with everything from their grades to the temperature of all foods and liquids that enter their bloodstream—everything has to be room temperature. Much to my dismay, I’ve seen this woman heat up orange juice. She is an enemy of ice, and therefore—in my opinion—an enemy of the state.
The first half of the week was spent finding opportunities for me and my two older nephews, ages thirteen and sixteen, to sneak out of the house to swim in caves or jump off of cliffs, where their mother couldn’t find us. Advance work was necessary to introduce the boys to fun. If Olga sees anything adjacent to danger—which in her mind could be an open body of water, a lap pool, or a can opener—she will insert herself and cancel the fun. One must always be one step ahead of her. In the beginning of the trip, I held high hopes for the adventures I would take the boys on. By the end of the week, I was beaten down, having given up on the hope of a meaningful relationship with my nephews until they graduated from high school and became legal.
“Can you believe how annoying Olga and Glen are with the kids?” I asked Gaby.
“It’s pretty unreasonable,” she agreed.
“I mean, how much sunblock can you put on someone before it stops working?”
“I’m surprised she doesn’t put it in their mouths,” Gaby said, handing me a plate of jamón to put on the table. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
My aunt doesn’t say a lot, and it’s a nice quality in a person, but “nice” isn’t the word anyone would use to describe Gaby. Every time she sees me, she shakes her head, almost as if she can’t believe what I’ve gotten away with in life. When I moved to Los Angeles at nineteen and lived on her sofa, she told me if I wanted to be in the entertainment industry, I had better drop some weight.
I have retold this story for years to friends and family alike, while Gaby has consistently denied it ever happened, ridiculing my flair for the dramatic and propensity for exaggeration. I was finally vindicated when Molly found some old home videos from that time in which you can actually hear Gaby saying on camera that if I wanted to make it in Hollywood I had better drop some weight. Molly knows my memory has a solid track record, and when she found the evidence to support what I had been claiming for twenty years, she made sure the whole family watched the footage together in order to clear my good name. In the video, you can see my face turn bright red. Even I felt bad for me. Gaby must have felt like Hitler in that moment, but ever since then we’ve had a better understanding of each other.
Gaby is Molly’s mother, and my mother’s sister, and in exchange for the living accommodations I was provided at nineteen, I was required to drive Molly and her eight brothers and sisters to school each morning at seven o’clock. This is when I discovered that I never wanted children. I wasn’t upset by the realization that I wasn’t cut out for motherhood. I was only upset that I hadn’t thought of it sooner.
By the end of our family vacation week in Spain, I stopped going to meals with my brother and his family. If I woke up and heard anyone speaking Russian, I’d go downstairs for my medication.
“I can’t take any more kids or any more Russians,” I told Gaby, popping a doggy Xanax. “I’m going to take a nap.”
“You just woke up,” she told me.
“Who’s that person?” I asked Molly, gesturing to the front balcony, where a woman and my sister-in-law were sitting.
“That’s Olga’s Russian friend who stopped by last night when you came down from your bedroom in your bra and underwear to get another Xanax.”
“So, I’ve already met her?”
“Well, she met you, but I wouldn’t say that you met her.”
That’s how I felt about my trip to Formentera—it met me, but I didn’t meet it.
On our return flight, Chunk and I had the two seats next to each other with the option of putting the partition up or down. We chose down.
Once Chunk and I were both comfortably settled in and each watching our respective movies, I popped a Xanax and then realized there was none left for Chunk. I didn’t want to knock myself out with Chunk awake, so I took one of my weaker sleeping pills I had brought and tried to get him to swallow it. After failing to get it down his throat for the third time, I opened the capsule and emptied it into about two ounces of water and Chunk drank it down.
I had been using Sonata ever since I learned how terrible Xanax was for your brain: the memory loss, the irritability the next day, the fact that it makes you dumb. I justified abusing it that week because of the Russian interference in my summer vacation. Right before I passed out, I wrapped Chunk’s leash around my waist and tucked it into the back of my jeans.
Hours later, a flight attendant shook me awake and told me that my dog was loose and running around the first-class cabin. The simple task of standing up suddenly became incredibly difficult to accomplish, as I was lying on my side and had one leg swung over Chunk’s seat, where his body had been. My body was confusing me, as was the situation. I could hear Chunk’s panting, which sounded almost maniacal. I stumbled through the first-class cabin in a fugue state, scared by the heavy throat-clearing, coughing sounds I was hearing—and at one point during all the confusion, I called out Brandon’s name.
When I found Chunk, he was licking the bathroom door with no leash in sight. I grabbed him by the collar and ushered him back to our double pod, where I had to force him to get back up on the seat. His tongue was almost touching the floor and there was foam on either side of his mouth. He looked like he had just snorted an eight ball.
I had never seen Chunk in that state before. I grabbed one of those miniature bottles of room temperature water they give you on planes, but thought Chunk would appreciate something more refreshing—like a Fresca—and then bounced back to reality and recognized I was talking about a dog who was on the verge of swallowing his own tongue. I started by pouring the water into the tiny plastic lid, but after Chunk almost swallowed that, I made a cup out of my hand and started pouring the water in there. When that didn’t suffice, I gave up and just started pouring the water directly into his mouth. He wouldn’t sit still and kept yanking his head around to get out, but I held him down, trying to get a handle on the situation. The shame that enveloped my double pod took the shape of two blankets I converted into a fort covering the tops of our seats in an effort to prevent the two of us from causing any more of a scene.
“Can I get some more water bottles and a bowl?” I whispered, peeking out from under the covers.
“I don’t work here,” the passenger across the aisle said, as she sat back down in her assigned seat. The procuring of water became a tricky endeavor, as I couldn’t leave Chunk to his own devices and I couldn’t find his leash. I looked around for the call button, which I generally try to avoid using because of how rude it seems. I also made a mental note of possibly installing that option when I got home to Bel-Air. Brandon would love a bell.
When I stood up to press the button above my head, Chunk made a run for it. I dove over my seat, grabbing his tail. I hit the floor face-first and felt a sharp burn around my stomach. I discovered that Chunk’s leash was wrapped around my waist, under my shirt. In my delirium, instead of fastening the clip of the leash to Chunk’s collar, I had clipped it to one of the belt loops on my jeans.
“Can we please get him an entrée?” I asked the flight attendant from the floor, when she headed over to me with three large bottles of water.
When the flight attendant looked at me sideways, I told her I was pregnant. Once I got Chunk nicely settled with his second gallon of water and a bowl, I looked at the map in front of my seat, which told me there were six hours left of our flight to Los Angeles.
When the flight attendant arrived with a Salisbury steak and some other gross side dishes, I took out my tray table to play the part of being the passenger who would be eating it. To cement my credibility, I asked her for a glass of red wine and some bread options. I went through the motions of taking out the silverware and cutting off a piece of the steak on the tray, and once the flight attendant was far enough away, I handed it to Chunk. By the time she returned, the entire tray was facedown on Chunk’s side of the seat, with food splattered everywhere, while I was wrestling him to get the entire slab of uncut meat out of his mouth. She didn’t even bother stopping; she just turned around and took the red wine and bread with her.
There was water, food, and dog hair everywhere. I fastened Chunk’s leash to his collar and placed the handle grip around my ankle. It was time to get real. I recovered the blankets and reinstalled our fort until I could get the situation under control.
I rang the call button once more and ordered a double espresso.
“Would you like one or two?” she asked, eyeing Chunk.
A week earlier, Chunk had been too dignified to lie on his back to get his belly rubbed. He would rather be caught shoplifting than lie in such a submissive position. It was too ungentlemanly. Chunk even knew it was wrong to get a hard-on. He turned his back when he had to go number two. He was august. He was esteemed.
And now here we were—on a flight where Chunk had lost his last shred of dignity because his delinquent mother force-fed him a human sleeping pill.
I could see the headlines now: “Chelsea Handler Kills Dog on Flight from Spain.” PETA would have a field day with this.
Once Chunk was hydrated, his breathing slowed and he started to calm down, and then, finally—exhausted from the emotional turmoil—he fell asleep. In between checking his pulse and cleaning up the food and dog hair that was splattered all over our area, I became aware of a soreness on my back and abdomen. When I lifted my shirt, I discovered several rope burns.
I quickly realized that I had to start planning for the very real possibility that Chunk might shit his pants on this flight. I had my very aromatic grapefruit hand lotion in the toiletry bag inside my purse, so the plan I devised was to scoop up any fecal matter with the Maxi Pad–grade pillowcase, douse it with the hand lotion to cover the smell, and then flush it down the toilet. I had empty water bottles lined up and ready to place over Chunk’s penis in case he decided to pee. I didn’t know the protocol for when your dog shits on a plane. Would we be arrested upon landing? Surely, this can’t be a felony.
Not only did Chunk not die on the flight, he didn’t urinate or take a shadoobie. He waited the entire haul through customs, where the officer greeted the two of us with a “Welcome home, Chunk” and then asked me for my passport. This kind of shit happened with Chunk all the time. Chunk was a national treasure, and I was his plus-one. He’d get recognized on the streets when my houseman Oscar would take him for his morning walks, and even when he would be catching a breeze in the backseat of my car on our way to work. You’d hear other drivers at stoplights say, “Look, that’s Chunk,” and he’d wag his tail and smile. People would stop us and ask me to take pictures of them with Chunk. He probably went through life assuming getting recognized daily happened to all dogs.
By the time I got home, I looked like the one who should have been on a leash through customs. I was using my eyeshades as a scrunchie, I was covered in dog hair and food stains, and I was bleeding from one arm. I looked like a streetwalker.
Later, when I told my vet what had happened, he informed me that giving a dog a sleeping aid when they’re in a state of agitation will just prolong that state of agitation. I told my vet that I was in a constant state of agitation, and whenever I took a sleeping pill, it worked. I didn’t mention to the doctor that I had prescribed my own medication for Chunk, or that I had pilfered his on my family vacation.
I avoided eye contact with Chunk for days after we got back from Spain. He knew I was the culprit in this situation, and I had absolutely no defense. For fear of being accused of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, I stopped giving Chunk his CBD oil too. I knew I had overstepped, and it was time to get my dog clean.
“Wouldn’t you just kill to know what Chunk is thinking?” Molly asked me one day over oysters I had shucked earlier that afternoon.
“Not anymore,” I told her. “That’s a slippery slope.”
My brother Glen once told me the reason your firstborn is so special is because they’re the one that makes you a parent. That’s how I felt about Chunk. He made me a mother. A delinquent, useless one—but a mother nonetheless.