Tag Archives: Courteney Cox

celebrities, narcissists, poor judgment, royals

What makes my “N” chimes ring?

Last night, I was plowing through more of Prince Harry’s “bombshell” book, Spare. As is my custom sometimes, I decided to share a few excerpts from the book for a few friends. I realize that a lot of people are already sharing excerpts from Spare. Now, having gotten through about 80 percent of the book, I know the bits being shared are mostly about Harry’s relationship with Meghan Markle. No one seems to be sharing the rest of the book, which I’ve mostly found compelling and enjoyable.

I will probably finish reading Spare today. I might start a review today, or maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow. One thing I do know is that this book is probably going to spawn a few posts. I’m wading through Harry’s relationship with Meghan Markle and it’s very triggering for me. Many of the behaviors he describes– from the rush of the early relationship, to the way he describes frequently finding her sobbing and inconsolable, to the way she bullies him into psychotherapy– are very familiar to me. They make my “N” chimes ring.

What are “N” chimes, you ask? “N”, of course, equals narcissism. Chimes alert us to something in need of attention. Yesterday, I wrote about my husband’s ex wife, whom I think is a narcissist. Actually, I am SURE she is a narcissist, but I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone, so I hesitate to make that statement. I also realize that I could be wrong. That’s one of the many differences between Ex and me.

Likewise, I don’t know for certain that Meghan Markle is a narcissist. If I’m to go only on what I’ve read in his book so far, Harry thinks Meghan is the most wonderful, fantastic person ever born. And if that’s really true, then I am very happy for him. He’s apparently found the perfect woman. But, I think we all know that perfect people don’t exist. So, the fact that Meghan can apparently do no wrong in Harry’s eyes is one of the loudest “N” chimes.

I started to get that familiar feeling as I read about how Meghan and Harry met. Leading up to that point in the book, Harry had written about other girlfriends. In the years before he knew Meghan, Harry dated Chelsy Davy, a lovely young woman from Zimbabwe. Of the women he writes about, Harry seemed most compatible with Chelsy, but they broke up over lifestyle differences.

There were several other women, to include Cressida Bonas, a friend of Princess Eugenie’s. According to Harry, those women either weren’t compatible or were frightened off by the paparazzi. Harry notes that Cressida, in particular, managed to get him to “open up” and cry, following the death of Harry’s mother, Princess Diana. But Cressida apparently wasn’t exciting enough for Harry.

Meghan, on the other hand, excited Prince Harry from the moment he laid eyes on her. The way he describes it, seeing Meghan on Instagram was kismet. Below is Harry’s description of seeing Meghan for the first time…

I was sitting around Nott Cott, scrolling through Instagram. In my feed I saw a video: My friend Violet. And a young woman. They were playing with a new app that put silly filters on your photos. Violet and the woman had dog ears, dog noses, long red dog tongues hanging out. Despite the canine cartoon overlay, I sat up straighter. This woman with Violet…my God.

Harry, The Duke of Sussex, Prince. Spare (p. 267). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Harry sees Meghan on Instagram. Boom! Cupid shot him straight through the heart. That theory makes my “N” chimes ring. It wasn’t an accident that Harry saw Meghan and his friend on Instagram. Oh, I suppose it’s possible, but I highly doubt that’s what really happened. In my experience, narcissistic types are experts at seduction. They seem to have a special talent for knowing what a person wants or needs. Just like the best cult leaders, they figure out what their victim is seeking and they deliver… or, they make it seem like they’re delivering. Harry thinks he fell in love by chance, but to me, it seems like the whole meeting was contrived. And Harry, poor lad, was ripe for the picking.

Just before he and Meghan met, Harry describes being at several house parties in Los Angeles. Harry was at Courteney Cox’s house drinking tequila and consuming certain controlled substances. He didn’t know Courteney before he turned up at her house. He had a “trip” in her bathroom– the toilet and the trash can both turned into “heads”, complete with mouths. The next day, he went to another party, where he was smoking weed and apparently enjoying other substances. He met the man who wrote “Genie in a Bottle” for Christina Aguilera and made lots of money. Then, after yet another party, he went back to Courteney Cox’s house, where he seemingly had another drug induced trip– one that he apparently thinks of as an “epiphany”, of sorts. From the book:

Then I stared directly at the moon. It was speaking to me. Like the bin and the toilet. What was it saying? That the year ahead would be good. Good how? Something big. Really? Big. Not more of the same? No, something special. Really, Moon? Promise. Please don’t lie to me. I was nearly the age Pa had been when he’d got married, and he’d been considered a tragically late bloomer. At thirty-two he’d been ridiculed for his inability or unwillingness to find a partner. I was staring thirty-two in the face. Something has to change. Please? It will. I opened my mouth to the sky, to the moon. To the future. Aaaah.

Harry, The Duke of Sussex, Prince. Spare (pp. 263-264). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Based on the above passage, I know that Harry was actively looking for a woman to marry. I’ll bet he was lamenting to his “mates” about being single, too. Violet was one of his friends. She probably knew he was looking for a spouse. Meghan was single and available, and Meghan was looking, too. And, if I’m right about Meghan, she probably clued into the fact that Harry was feeling undesirable. She’s also from California and has obvious show business ties, even though she was working in Canada when she and Harry met. Perhaps someone who was with Harry at those house parties said something about Harry’s despondency about being bereft of a wife.

It seems very plausible to me that some people worked behind the scenes to make sure Harry saw Meghan on Instagram. He seems to think it’s “kismet”, but somehow I doubt it was. Add in Harry’s liberal use of hallucinogens and tequila at house parties, and the theory of Harry as a target becomes even more plausible to me. This certainly wasn’t a case of “ask and ye shall receive.” Moreover, illegal drug use and excessive alcohol consumption in strangers’ homes isn’t exactly the stuff of good decision making. Being under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and taking it seriously when one gets a “message” from the moon, also seems like questionable judgment to me.

Later, Harry further describes how he felt when he first saw Meghan, and all he got from that first look at her on Instagram. From the book…

But this woman’s beauty, and my response to it, wasn’t based merely on symmetry. There was an energy about her, a wild joy and playfulness. There was something in the way she smiled, the way she interacted with Violet, the way she gazed into the camera. Confident. Free. She believed life was one grand adventure, I could see that. What a privilege it would be, I thought, to join her on that journey. I got all of that from her face. Her luminous, angelic face. I’d never had a firm opinion on that burning question: Is there just one person on this earth for each of us? But in that moment I felt there might be only one face for me. This one.

Harry, The Duke of Sussex, Prince. Spare (pp. 267-268). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Again, it sounds like Cupid shot Harry in the heart. He was smitten by Meghan, gobsmacked by her beauty and “wild joy”. He could tell “she believed life was one grand adventure.” Harry got all of that from an Instagram video! But he didn’t even know her. This was more akin to infatuation than love. He asked Violet about Meghan. From the book…

I sent Violet a message. Who…is…this…woman?

She answered straightaway. Yeah, I’ve had six other guys ask me.

Great, I thought. Who is she, Violet?

Actress. She’s in a TV show called Suits.

Harry, The Duke of Sussex, Prince. Spare (p. 268). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Meghan certainly is an attractive woman. It’s very possible that six other guys really did ask Violet about her. Telling Harry that six other guys had asked about her, especially since he apparently hadn’t asked, seems like a manipulative move to me. It’s as if Violet was warning Harry to act now, or forever lose his chance with Meghan. But at that point, he’d only seen a video of her!

It’s like a salesperson setting up the illusion of scarcity by telling consumers that supplies are limited. I’m reminded of Martha Inc., a made for TV movie about Martha Stewart. Martha was selling pies, but she only had a couple set out on her table. Sure enough, people quickly bought them. She then set out more pies, but only a couple. Martha was pushing the idea that the pies were in high demand and supplies were limited, so those pie seekers had better act fast, or risk losing out!

I sense a similar dynamic between Harry, Violet, and Meghan. Violet works for Ralph Lauren and probably knows a thing or two about sales. Harry was shopping for a wife. Meghan was shopping for a husband. Violet connected them, and told Harry that other men were also looking. It may or may not have even been true. But Harry clearly got the idea that “supplies were limited”; moreover, he’d already lost out on other attractive women. Harry was determined to act fast, so he wouldn’t miss out on hooking Meghan. And Meghan and Violet, being savvy about sales, probably realized that. Meghan, after all, is an actress, and she’s obviously had to “sell herself” to get roles. She’s done commercials. She gets the concept of sales.

Harry implies in his book that, before he met Meghan, he was aimless and despondent. He’d dated several beautiful young women, but none of them were “the one”. He was 32 years old, and had seen his friends find spouses. He remembered how his own father, King Charles III, was 32 years old when he finally married barely 20 year old Diana. People had made fun of Charles for being single for so long. Charles actually needed to find a wife, because he needed to produce an heir to the throne. He couldn’t marry Camilla back then, so he “settled” for Diana, who was completely incompatible. We now know how that worked out for him. Likewise, Harry worried that he would never find a wife, even though the pressure to marry was probably much less for him than it was for Charles.

Harry also explains that in the palace, married couples are more prestigious than single people are. From the book…

Behind all this hand-wringing about me was something more substantive than “tittle-tattle.” It went to the whole underpinning of the monarchy, which was based on marriage. The great controversies about kings and queens, going back centuries, generally centered on whom they married, and whom they didn’t, and the children who issued from those unions. You weren’t a fully vested member of the Royal Family, indeed a true human being, until you were wed.

Harry, The Duke of Sussex, Prince. Spare (p. 231). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

So, based on the above passage, it’s clear that Harry was feeling the pressure to find someone to marry. He wasn’t a “fully vested member of the Royal Family”, because he was single. I hesitate to agree with his assertion that his family didn’t see him as a “true human being” because he was unwed. But obviously, the point is, he felt he was getting too old to be single. He was desperate to find “the one”. Meghan showed up at the right time. Boom! Cupid magically fired his dart. Bullshit.

In my experience, when someone feels that kind of pressure, they become vulnerable to a quick sale. That’s actually how Bill and I wound up living in our last house. If you’ve been following my blog, you probably know that in spite of the little voice in my head telling me to steer clear, we moved into a home in which the landlady was a bit narcissistic. We had to sue her to get our deposit returned. If we hadn’t been feeling so pressured to find a house, we might have avoided that situation. But we settled for a quick sale. Former landlady saw us coming… She told us other people were looking, which was probably a “white lie”. Other people probably were looking, but they’d wisely passed. Under different circumstances, we would have passed, too. Hopefully, next time, I’ll listen to that voice in my head.

Is Harry in a similar situation as Bill and I were back in 2014 (and Bill was with his ex wife)? Obviously, I don’t know Harry personally, so I don’t know for sure. But the signs are pretty clear to me. The “N” chimes are sounding. I’m very rarely wrong when I hear those chimes. I’ve ignored them before and been very sorry. Hopefully, I’m wrong in Harry’s case, because I don’t want him to be unhappy. I like Prince Harry, and I’m enjoying his book, even though I’ve learned more about his penis than I ever thought I would (more on that in a later post). Moreover, I don’t cheer for people to have bad relationships. I just know the signs and symptoms of manipulative behaviors.

Time to wrap up this post, although I am definitely not finished writing about Spare. I’m only writing about my “N” chimes because of last night’s discussion, and because I know I have friends who are apparently offended by my impressions of Harry and Meghan. I don’t mean to offend. I’m being honest about how I feel. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my dealings with abusive, manipulative, narcissistic people, it’s that they want their victims to suffer in silence. They thrive on secrecy. So I’m not going to be silent. If I’m wrong, I’ll say so and apologize. But unfortunately, I don’t think I’m wrong about this.

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book reviews, mental health, psychology

A review of Matthew Perry’s Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir…

Merry Christmas Eve, y’all. I know it may seem strange to be writing about addiction when I could be writing about the holidays, but I’ve just finished reading Matthew Perry’s book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, and I want to express my opinions about it before I forget the details. Perry, who is probably most famous for playing Chandler Bing on the 90s era sitcom, Friends, has led quite an astonishing life in his 53 years. Although I don’t remember watching many things with Perry as an actor, let alone “the star”, I was intrigued by all the hullabaloo about his life story, which was released on November 1, 2022. So I downloaded it five days after its release date, although I didn’t get around to reading it until this month. Overall, I thought it was a pretty interesting story. I can see why there was a lot of “buzz” (see what I did there) about it.

I really should have known more about Matthew Perry than I did before I read his book. Wikipedia tells me that I did once see Perry act, back in the day. He had a guest role on the show, Growing Pains, which was one of shows I watched regularly when I was a teenager. He played Carol Seaver’s (Tracey Gold) boyfriend, Sandy, who died in a car accident after driving drunk. I remember thinking he was way too cute for Carol, but in weird way, life imitated art for Matthew Perry. Drugs and alcohol have almost killed him on multiple occasions. He’s made many millions of dollars, and he’s pissed away millions on drugs, booze, and rehab, as well as bad business decisions and bad movies, caused by his addictions.

Matthew Perry on Growing Pains. I guess he didn’t learn anything from this very special episode…

Growing Pains was just the beginning for Matthew Perry, both in terms of his acting career, and the subject matter of that particular episode. I was never a Friends fan, although I loved watching ER, which came on after Friends. Perry is probably most famous for playing Chandler on Friends, but he reveals in his book that he almost didn’t get the part, because he was committed to another, rather bizarre sounding show, that thankfully never took off.

Originally, the part of Chandler Bing had been offered to actor, Craig Bierko, who was one of Perry’s best friends. But Bierko passed on the part, opting for another show that also didn’t take off. Fate intervened, and Perry was soon making $1 million an episode, along with fellow friends: Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, and Lisa Kudrow. During this heady time, Perry also had a lot of girlfriends, including Julia Roberts, who was a huge movie star at the time, and was even once a guest star on Friends. You’d think he’d be on top of the world, and in many ways, he really was. But he’s also addicted to drugs— especially opiates— and alcohol.

Matthew Perry explains that he was born on August 19, 1969 in Williamstown, Massachusetts. His Canadian mother, journalist Suzanne Marie Morrison (nee Langford), had married Perry’s father, American actor, folk singer, and former model, John Bennett Perry. Perry calls his parents the “best looking” people in the world, but that wasn’t enough to save their marriage, which ended before Perry’s first birthday. In his book, Perry writes about driving to the U.S. border with his parents and his father leaving, never to return to the home. When he was a very young child, his mother would repeatedly send him, alone, from their home in Ottawa to Los Angeles for visitations with his father. This experience apparently really traumatized the young Perry, who writes that he was terrified of being alone on the plane. He mentions the incident repeatedly in his story. As he got older, he had great fears of being abandoned, which led to many breakups. As he got more attached to women, and they got to know him more, he would fear that they were going to dump him. So he’d dump them first… then plunge back into his drug and alcohol addiction.

Matthew Perry’s dad starred in this classic commercial for Old Spice.

Perry was a good athlete and, as a boy, was heavily involved in tennis. He also went to school with Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, whose father, Pierre, hired Perry’s mother as his press secretary. But he really loved acting, and at age 15, he left his mother, her second husband, and his half siblings to move to Los Angeles, where he embarked on a career in show business. Yes, he was successful, but he also had a multitude of personal problems, to include a terrible fear of intimacy and bent toward toward narcissism.

Although he made many friends and had some incredible girlfriends, none of them managed to stay in his life for the long haul. As soon as they would get close to him, he would panic, and that inevitably meant using drugs and alcohol to the point of almost killing himself. I’m not kidding. At the beginning of his compelling memoir, he writes about how his colon exploded, forcing him to use a colostomy bag for nine months, due to his abuse of opioids and its tendency to cause severe constipation. And he also had a very severe bout with pancreatitis, which is often caused by excessive alcohol consumption, that landed him in a hospital for a month while his pancreas “rested”. He couldn’t eat or drink anything for that entire month; all nutrients and fluids were delivered intravenously.

Matthew Perry talks about his book.

In spite of his medical and psychological traumas, a lot of people would think that Matthew Perry is a very blessed man. He has good looks, charisma, athleticism, talent, and money. And yet, Perry writes that he’s often felt suicidal, and would trade everything for the chance to feel normal and at peace. Being sober, he writes, makes him feel close to God and peaceful. But even that isn’t enough to stop him from using drugs or drinking. In fact, I’m not even sure if this book is a declaration of his sobriety, as he’s relapsed many times after going to all manner of rehabs– expensive, exclusive ones in Utah, Malibu, and Switzerland, and “prison” like ones in New York and Philadelphia, usually flying to them on private jets.

I was heartened to read that Perry saw his behavior as narcissistic and self-centered. That tells me that he actually isn’t a narcissist. He is an addict, which causes people to behave like narcissists– (see my recent post about my father). But when he’s not loaded, he has the insight to see that he does frequently act like an asshole, and the world doesn’t revolve around him. That’s to his credit. His writing is very charming, and he seems like he would be a lot of fun to know, when his colon isn’t exploding. I can see why so many people like(d) him. I can also see why he’s made a lot of enemies.

And yes, Perry is in Alcoholics Anonymous, and has tried to “work the steps”. But even after long periods of sobriety, he always seems to relapse. I wouldn’t assume, after reading this book, that Perry has finally gotten “clean”, once and for all. It’s kind of poignant, in some ways, to think of this man in such a predicament. In other ways, it’s kind of infuriating, because there are many people who have nowhere near the blessings that Perry has had, and no means to get clean. He’s no better than they are; he’s just been a lot luckier in terms of his earning power. I also get the sense that Perry might think he’s more famous than he really is. As I mentioned up post, I never watched Friends, nor have I seen any of the movies Perry has been in. I read his book because of the press it generated. I can’t be the only one.

Perry writes about how his drug addiction started, back in 1997, when he was in a jet ski accident while working on a movie. He was in extreme pain, so a doctor gave him some Vicodin. The drug made his insides feel like “warm honey”, and he had to have more. Soon, he developed a habit of taking 55 pills a day, just so he could feel “okay”. He’d already had an introduction to alcohol, back when he was growing up in Canada. The booze made him feel “okay”, as he laid out in his backyard, pondering life. I’ve often heard that if someone has a very significant reaction at their introduction to alcohol, that’s not a good sign.

Addicts can be very endearing, and a lot of them, deep down, are basically decent people who are just very sick. I got that sense with Perry, too. As an actor, he knows how to behave in ways that seem genuine. It’s important to note that acting, by definition, isn’t genuine or authentic behavior. Actors make their money by convincingly playing roles. So, I couldn’t help but notice the usual veneer of bullshit in his writings, even though I admire him for being very candid, especially about the more humiliating and painful aspects of his story. I’m afraid that he’s always going to be an addict, though, and most addicts always have a layer of bullshit about them, even when they’ve been sober for many years. In this book, you can read about one former sponsor of Matthew Perry’s who said he hadn’t had a drink since 1980. That guy had seemed absolutely amazing… but their once “best friend” relationship has ended, and not on a good note. That time, the bad ending wasn’t because of Perry’s shenanigans, but those of his long sober friend’s.

In spite of what might sound like critical remarks about Perry’s character, I did enjoy reading Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. I think it’s well-written and very candid. Many readers will find it very engaging; it’s often even a funny book. Perry does use a lot of frank language, including a lot of profanity. I don’t care about excessive profanity myself, but I mention it because some readers might not like the cursing. He includes some photos, especially of him as a youngster, most of which are in color. He sure was cute; I think we had the same bowl cut hairstyle, which was all the rage in those days.

I’m glad that Perry knows he has a problem and is working on fixing it. I’m even happier to know that he realizes what excessive drug and alcohol use has cost him, on so many levels– from girlfriends (or potential wives, which he’s said he’s always wanted), to the chance to have children, to millions of dollars of his money, to his health. I understand that he has an illness, and that being an addict doesn’t inherently make him a bad person, even if it can cause him to act in ways that are disappointing, dangerous, or deranged. I feel empathy for him… but I think I feel even more for those who love him. And I wouldn’t call this book a triumph, either, because he hasn’t been sober for very long, at this writing. So we’ll see what happens. I do wish him the best, and I hope this time, sobriety works for him. Otherwise, he could be among the celebrity deaths we’ll read about in 2023 or 2024…

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