<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" This Los Angeles hotel room brings back a lot of memories, mostly of the night I lost my gall bladder and then bled on George Clooney&amp;#039;s couch. My recollection of the ordeal is patchy because of the unpleasant combination of drugs, digestive organ failure, and humiliation. But for the three people who know me and haven&amp;#039;t heard this story, here is my best telling of it: It was my turn to write a Clooney cover story \u2014 his fourth for Esquire. I flew out here, pretty excited. On, I believe, the Wednesday of that week, he had his photo shoot. I went to say hey and to let him know that I was looking forward to our interview, which was scheduled for that Friday, I think. He seemed very cool and relaxed, and he asked me what I was going to do in the time in between. I told him I was thinking of going to a small Mexican town called Tijuana, so if I didn&amp;#039;t show up on Friday, I was dead, in jail, or in a hospital. Ha ha, funny. As it turned out, I didn&amp;#039;t go to Tijuana. That Thursday, I went out with some friends instead. We went to Santa Monica and walked on the beach, ate a roadside burrito, walked some more, and then we went for dinner at a Cuban restaurant. I ate something called ropa vieja \u2014 old clothes \u2014 a surprisingly tasty dish, given its name. I ate vast quantities of it. Then I think we went for ice cream. Then I came back here, to this very same hotel room, at the Sunset Marquis. I was just kind of hanging out, probably thinking about masturbating, when I felt the first twinge in my gut. It wasn&amp;#039;t like a normal stomach rumble or an excited pre-masturbatory crackle. It was more like a small cramp, a kind of seismic wave. It would come on for a little while, subside, and then it would come on again, a little stronger. I decided that my ropa vieja was causing distress to my ropa vieja, and I needed to go for a walk and fart a lot. (The burrito was still in there somewhere, and ice cream has never sat well with me. Dairy in general has been pretty problematic for me. I can remember this one time, in France...) Anyway, I casually told the doorman on my way out that if I didn&amp;#039;t come back, he should send out a search party, because I&amp;#039;d be lying in a ditch somewhere, if only Hollywood had ditches. Well, I&amp;#039;d walked maybe two blocks when I came to the sudden and terrible realization that I was going to explode, and not through one of my body&amp;#039;s designated vents. I seriously wondered whether my guts were going to burst. Then I felt something go pop in my right side, absolute agony, and I hailed a taxi and told the driver to take me to the nearest hospital, which happened to be Cedars Sinai, one of the world&amp;#039;s leading hospitals, I&amp;#039;m told. They flooded me with morphine, a drug that I&amp;#039;ve enjoyed in the past, but this time, it had no effect. It was like throwing water on a grease fire. The nurse said there was enough morphine in me to knock out a donkey, and yet I could still feel my guts coming up and out through my chest. I can&amp;#039;t remember how the doctors came to their conclusion, but in the next few minutes or hours \u2014 I really have no idea \u2014 they told me that my gall bladder needed to come out, like, right now. I told them that couldn&amp;#039;t possibly be true, because I had to speak with George Clooney.  &amp;quot;Dr. Ross is not real,&amp;quot; the nurse said, patting my shoulder. &amp;quot;Dr. Ross is a fictional character from a TV show called ER. You&amp;#039;re in a real ER.&amp;quot; No, no, you don&amp;#039;t understand. I really have to talk to George Clooney. &amp;quot;Sure you do, dear.&amp;quot; We went back and forth for a while, the patronizing nurse and me, never quite reaching a satisfactory understanding of our shared circumstance. She tired of the charade, gave me a harder drug, I fell asleep, and sometime in the night, my body was shaved (more than it probably needed to be, upon reflection) and my gall bladder was cut out of me \u2014 removed through a hole between my belly button and my chest, with a few smaller holes scattered around for the instruments. I woke up the next morning when another nurse came in my room. I have to talk to George Clooney, I said.  &amp;quot;Yeah, it&amp;#039;s weird. You were saying that all night.&amp;quot; THAT&amp;#039;S BECAUSE I HAVE TO TALK TO GEORGE CLOONEY, GODDAMMIT! I called my editor, and there was some suggestion that the very capable Mike Sager would come up from San Diego and write the story. For some reason \u2014 and I don&amp;#039;t want this to read like heroism, because looking back, it reads like total retardation \u2014 I decided that no, I had to write the story. I&amp;#039;d waited three covers to bask in George Clooney&amp;#039;s glow. This time, the fourth time, he was mine. I checked myself out of the hospital, came back to this delightful hotel room to change my clothes \u2014 the doorman had been up all night, trying to find me, bless him \u2014 and went over the hills to Clooney&amp;#039;s house. (Clooney, by the way, remains the only celebrity ever to invite me into his home. I&amp;#039;m sure he&amp;#039;s never made that mistake since.) I was still pretty drugged up when I knocked on his door. I remember being weirded-out by my reflection in the expensive motor vehicles in his driveway, all of them black. He answered, and he immediately looked very concerned, probably because he had opened his door to find a slobbering zombie journalist on his step. He offered me a drink. For some unfathomable reason, I drank a Heineken. It was a poor decision. I have little recollection of our actual time together. I remember he was very sympathetic, Clooney having just come out of Cedars Sinai himself, for surgery for a broken neck he&amp;#039;d suffered filming Syriana. We talked quite a bit about his future as a director. We talked about politics. He was a smart, self-deprecating, beautiful man. Unfortunately, George Clooney was also funny, and he made me laugh, and that&amp;#039;s when I blew open one of the instrument holes in my gut.  I didn&amp;#039;t even realize I&amp;#039;d done it. It was only later, when I excused myself to use the bathroom, that I felt the wetness \u2014 sometimes those words are part of a good sentence, this time not \u2014 and saw the blood coming out like a little river. It looked like I&amp;#039;d just pulled out an arrow. I was wearing a loose shirt and a couple of layers, so not much blood had come out and through. It had just run down, collecting in my waistband. Oh, God! I cleaned myself up as best I could, and I went back out to Clooney&amp;#039;s living room, where, much to my horror, I noticed a small stain on his overstuffed leather couch, precisely where I&amp;#039;d been sitting. Oh, God! Book II, starring George Burns and Suzanne Pleshette. I spent the rest of our interview pretending to pay attention, but really, I was furtively trying to work away at the black mark with my sleeve. I&amp;#039;m almost certain Clooney must have wondered what the hell I was doing, rubbing his couch so vigorously for several hours. But he never once called me on my crazy behavior. He just acted as though this was all so perfectly normal, that journalists routinely came out of organ-removal surgery and descended on his house, where they, more often than not, drank his beer and spilled bodily fluids on his furniture. No big deal. A couple of days later, I flew home and wrote the story \u2014 using very few quotes, because I&amp;#039;d messed up my tape recorder in my fog, and my notes looked as though they were written by an angry drunk toddler. It wasn&amp;#039;t my best work. But I&amp;#039;m really glad I did it. I like telling the whole ugly tale, sure, because that&amp;#039;s what I do, and the scars have long healed, and I somehow worked out the $48,000 bill. (That&amp;#039;s the actual retail price of gall-bladder removal at Cedars Sinai, just for the record, but to hell with health care reform and all that.) Most important, I like to remember how kind and generous Clooney was. I like to be able to finish my story by saying to people, Now there&amp;#039;s a man you never have to feel bad for having fallen for, not even a little bit. READ MORE OF MY SECOND EMPIRE &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; PLUS: Follow My Second Empire on Twitter and Your RSS Feed &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a8562/george-clooney-house-los-angeles-092710/>