Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(39)

“But can we?” Molly asked Karen, with one eyebrow raised to somewhere between the middle of her forehead and her hairline.

“To do it legally, you’d have to go to South America. It says here, Peru is pretty much the place for that,” Karen said, squinting at her computer.

    Molly’s eyes lit up, and she wiggled her shoulders. “You looooove Peru.”

Molly and I had just come back from Peru, where we’d gone after I announced that I was ready to tackle my phobia of snakes. This idea was based simply on the time of day, the amount of marijuana in my system, and my willingness to travel anywhere, for any reason. We were in Santiago, Chile, tagging along on one of my brother Glen’s “business trips,” when it dawned on me that Peru was basically up the street.

We had gotten some weed off of our sixty-seven-year-old driver in Santiago—who refused to take any money for it, being that selling drugs in Chile is a crime whereas gifting them is not. We were all very stoned and exhausted from walking around the city for hours. For some reason, Glen had dragged us from one corner of the city to the next, as if he owned the place, until finally Molly and I told him to fucking cool it.

“Don’t go to Peru, Chelsea,” Glen said with a scowl, as we sat in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton in Santiago, catching our breath. “That’s going to be a full-blown nightmare for you. There are snakes everywhere.”

“Ooooh, this is going to be scary,” Molly said as she started looking up flights.

“I have no fear of dying,” I proclaimed.

“No one should fear dying, Chelsea. It’s going to be glorious,” Glen said, smiling longingly.

“Flying, Glen. I meant flying, not dying.”

“Commercially?”

“She means coach,” Molly interjected. “Some of these smaller planes don’t have first class. So the whole plane is coach.”

    “I’d fly coach if it meant finally conquering my fear of snakes.”

“Can you imagine if you had to be a flight attendant, Chelsea?” Glen asked me, smiling and looking off into the distance.

“In coach,” Molly added.

“You’d be collecting unemployment.” This image delighted him to no end.

“Or in jail,” Molly said.

I got up and tried to find some chicken fingers. When I realized they weren’t just sitting on a table in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, I came back to the bar and asked them what the plan for food was.

“You’re not hungry, Chelsea,” Glen told me. “We’ve been eating all day. You’re just stoned. Sit down and have a drink, like a normal person.”

“We’re going to Peru,” Molly declared, shimmying her shoulders.

“Well, if you’re going to go to Peru, then at least go to Machu Picchu,” Glen replied. “At least that has a shred of history.”

“No one’s even talking to you,” I reminded him as I tapped on my Fitbit for an update on steps taken and calories burned.

I had recently ended my show Chelsea Lately and had signed a deal with Netflix. I had about six months off, a time I was referring to as my sabbatical.

“Chelsea’s taking a semester at sea, Glen. Why can’t you be more supportive?” Molly asked with no expectation of an answer.

    Molly is always game for anything, so we ignored Glen and booked some lodge that sat on one of the tributaries of the actual Amazon River, Madre de Dios—or Mother of the Gods—and headed to Peru in search of anacondas.

Not only did we not see any anacondas, we didn’t see a single animal. Except piranhas—if those even count as animals. We went on a fishing expedition one day and were expected to jump into the water with the piranhas for some sort of cleansing/pedicure experience, and when everyone in our motorized canoe declined to hop into the river, I decided I would be the one to do it—until Molly announced to everyone that I had my period.

For the record, it was Molly who actually had her period, but she knew full well I was only trying to be brave and that I had no real desire to have my legs nipped at by piranhas simply because it had been suggested as an activity. Instead, our guides all fished the piranhas and then fried them for lunch. Obviously, they were delicious—because anything fried is delicious.

The trip was a quarter past awful. I even had Juan, our guide, take us out in the middle of the night with headlamps on like coal miners to search for anacondas—or any snake, for that matter. He had a machete and everything. I was ready to combat my fears, and I was indefatigable in my efforts, yet we saw nothing. Each activity was more boring than the one before, and the whole experience was tantamount to being at a landlocked Sandals resort. We did see lots of large bugs and went on about six nature walks through miles of woods with large walking sticks, where the most exciting discovery was a butterfly. All the other guests at the lodge were in their mid-seventies, and at some point we realized it was a bird-watching lodge.



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? ? ?

“Ugh, Peru again. That feels like two times too many,” I said, lacking any enthusiasm.

“Maybe Peru is calling you back because the ayahuasca will help you conquer your fear of snakes,” Molly said, excitedly. “Maybe it’s all related. It says here: ‘After ayahuasca, people have claimed to get over phobias, quit addictions to drugs and alcohol, and some people end up moving to the jungle and doing it for years.’?”