Unwifeable(27)

I’m also asked to do shows I’ve never done before, including one with Nick Kroll and Julie Klausner at Mo Pitkin’s. I decide I’ll do a reenactment, and I get Nick and Julie to act out the parts. Nick looks at me after it’s over, and, I think comparing it to my very mediocre stand-up, says, “That was funny.”

Sure. When you have Andy Dick writing your material, no problem.

Which is where Dick is right to criticize me as he’s done in numerous interviews about the incident. I do have a conflict of interest as a performer myself. In fact, I thought he was hilarious even after assaulting me. I suppose it’s lucky for him I did. Any other reporter would have filed charges after being groped and bitten. I just lambasted him onstage.

The way Andy dealt with the incident? Rehab and carrying around a notebook with an unsent letter to me in which he referred to me as a “dried-up cunt.” I learn all this from reading the Washington Post article profiling Dick and listening to his livid appearance berating me on Howard Stern.

After performing at the sold-out Mo Pitkin’s show with Kroll and Klausner, which was hosted by Michelle Collins (now of The View fame), I’m approached by a small bald man who is in the audience. It is Moby. Turns out, he has stories of his own about touring with Andy. There are many, but the most notable portions:

1. Andy once took a dare to defecate on a cake, then actually followed through.

2. At one point, Andy made himself comfortable on Moby’s bed, where he proceeded to have sex with a man, who Moby said was straight but just liked being with celebrities.

3. During the sex, Moby caught a glimpse of Andy’s penis, which he described as being the size of his forearm.

4. Andy once replaced the champagne in a bottle with his own urine and served it to several unsuspecting guests.

Moby and I spend the rest of the night chatting at the bar, and I notice how celebrities are instant status boosters. A younger comic who has treated me like shit every other time I talked to him suddenly acts like I am his new best friend. Sipping my Smirnoff and soda, I tell Moby one of my dumb stand-up jokes: “I’m not really a starfucker. I’m more of a star-spooner.”

He politely laughs. We exchange numbers, and I proceed to send the following ingenious text messages to him as the night progresses, and I get increasingly hammered.

12:28 a.m.

All right, well very nice to meet you sir.

12:34 a.m.

Um that’s me call me if u want

12:36 a.m.

Ok tried ur # but no cigar am headed home almost

1:18 a.m.

Am about 2 pass out near the slope?

1:20 a.m.

Gotta confess it would be fun to meet up but almost nearing my end of the night

1:24 a.m.

Well its 124 and I’m abiut to sign off . . . fun 2 meet u!

1:30 a.m.

Tempted 2 call u 1 more time

1:46 a.m.

&Allright just woke up roommates r u in brooklyn even?

1:50 a.m.

Wacky good night, Moby. Good luck w ur evening’s conquests

The next morning I wake up to the horrors of my cell phone. But—to my surprise, there is a single late-night email from him. “Hi from moby is this you? Moby”

“ha yep . . . reading through my novella of text messages I RULE,” I write.

“yes. you do rule,” he writes. “i concur. g’night, moby”

He sends me funny non sequitur emails from time to time, like, “do you know about the 2 different types of nyc fire-escape? and why nyc has water towers? i can be pedantic, if you like, and tell you about them. i’m going to go sit on my roof and read and drink tea.”

Since I spent all of 2004 in a shitty marriage and a shitty job, blasting Moby’s “South Side” in my office alone late at night, it’s a strange feeling. I tell Mackenzie this in the Post bathroom one day and another reporter overhears and interjects super dismissively, “Congratulations, you’ve been hit on by Moby. You’re officially a New Yorker now.”

“Does that mean you have?” I ask.

Her face turns crimson. I guess she is not a New Yorker yet.

“I mean,” the reporter says, “if you want to fuck him, fuck him.”

I don’t, really, but I do want to go on an actual date with him, which we do soon enough.

We meet at the vegan hot spot Candle 79 on the Upper East Side one night, and the conversation is nonstop. Some people are like scorpions, he says. You know they are going to sting you, but you befriend them anyway. He says fame is like a drug, and that he was really addicted to it at first. He says one of the main headaches of being rich and famous is getting hit with petty lawsuits—like for around $9,000—where the litigants know it’s easier just to pay out than fight it.

I tell him I’m considering writing a book about douchebags.

We walk across a misty, dreamy Central Park to the $4.5 million prewar penthouse he is renovating in the twin-towered El Dorado building near West Ninetieth Street. To get to the “sky castle,” as he calls it, we have to take an elevator up to the twenty-ninth floor, then walk up two flights of iron stairs guided only by the light of his phone. Caring for a dream home is like caring for a child, he tells me.

When we reach the roof, staring down at the swirl of traffic lights and cars below, Moby leans into me and says, “You have a very patrician neck.”

Then he sniffs it. For a while. Gets a real good whiff. This is new. Moby pulls back and looks pleased with himself. He must know no one has ever done this before.