Excerpt from Wishful Drinking

My parents were focus pullers—and when I say parents, I mean my mother, who raised me, and my father, who checked in from time to time.

I mean, if I came into a room and said, “You know how you saw your father more on TV than you did in real life?” I don't think many people would say, “Oh my God! You, too!”

And by the same token, I have to ask you, how often do you say, “in real life”?

Like real life is this other thing, and we're always trying to determine what's going on in this distant, inaccessible, incomprehensible place.

“What are they like in real life?”
“That happened in real life? Really!”
Stuff like that.

I am truly a product of Hollywood. You might say that I’m a product of Hollywood inbreeding. When two celebrities mate, something like me is the result.

I grew up visiting sets, playing on backlots, and watching movies being made. As a consequence, I find that I don't have what could be considered a conventional sense of reality. (Not that I’ve ever had much use for reality—having spent much of what I laughingly refer to as my adult life attempting to escape it with the assistance of a variety of drugs.)