s
According to Harris, she escorted him to a big, fancy business lunch a few weeks later to meet the studio executives. Knowing that he was twenty-two and totally out of his element, she literally grabbed him by the arm and mentored him through each new handshake. “Harris, this is so and so, shake his hand. Harris, this is so and so, shake his hand.” And it worked. He booked the job as the “young smart silly greenie in the room.”
From there, Harris’s career trajectory was swift and steep. After two seasons on The Sarah Silverman Show, he got hired as a staff writer on Season 2 of Parks and Recreation, where he remained for the next six years, eventually working his way up to the title of co-executive producer. In his spare time, he wrote for Eastbound & Down and became a notorious podcaster with popular shows like Analyze Phish, Comedy Bang! Bang!, and Farts and Procreation. He did stand-up on the Jimmy Kimmel Show and opened for Sarah, Aziz Ansari, and Louis C.K.
At the time Harris died, he was a thirty-year-old co-executive producer on a beloved, major network television show. He had invented the word humblebrag, which earned him a book deal and a spot in the English dictionary. He had written jokes for President Obama that the president delivered in Zach Galifianakis’s Between Two Ferns, which has been viewed on YouTube more than twenty million times.
How many people can say that?
On the phone with Harris that March day, I tried to stay calm and judgment-free.
“Do you plan to go to rehab?” I asked.
He said he couldn’t. Parks was shooting through June. He had to be in LA for work. He planned to tackle this on his own. He could do it. It was under control.
Also: “Don’t tell Mom and Dad—please don’t tell Mom and Dad,” he insisted. He didn’t want to worry them. He only wanted to worry me. Three days before my wedding. Best to just keep this secret safe like we’d always done. He’d see me at the wedding, he said. He was excited! Yay! Don’t worry. “I’ll be fine. Love you, sister.”
I hung up and cried into Mike’s shirt while standing beside the kitchen table. I always knew my brother was a recreational drug user but had no idea it had gotten to the point where he needed them. I knew he’d been having severe back pain and was taking painkillers. The pain was so bad, he had been rushed to the emergency room one night in an ambulance. He and I had seen this storyline on one of our favorite TV shows, Intervention, countless times. Back pain + painkillers = drug addiction. And yet here we were.
It was a lot to take in three days before my wedding. It was a lot to take in, period.
Harris gave it his all that weekend, but there was a cloudy film over the lens. He smiled with his mouth and not his eyes, like in one of those tests of all the smiling faces where you pick the genuinely happy people and the sad people. He was always a little distant, a little withdrawn, and smoking or pacing excessively, but the distance felt wider and it was more of a palpable bummer on the happiest day of my life. I didn’t get the impression, however, that anyone else noticed. Harris had years of professional experience being outwardly charming and carefree when he felt like a tense little ball of toxic waste on the inside. That’s essentially what it is to be a comedian. Plus, my parents were just thrilled blind that he was there with his girlfriend. My mom insisted that she be in all the family photos that day.
Second to Mike’s wedding vows—which began with the sentence “You are strange”…swoon—Harris’s toast was my favorite speech of the day. It was a classic sort of toast that only a little brother could give to his big sister:
Hello everybody. I’m Harris—I’m the brother. So, my sister—she basically raised me. And by raised, I mean tortured me. She would dress me up in girl clothes and make me do her weird plays she wrote, and she’d play with my Hanukkah presents first. One time, her and Jennifer tried to trick me into drinking my own pee. They pretended that it was their pee, but it was apple juice, and then they made me go in a cup, too. But I knew. I didn’t do it…til later.
And then we grew up, and she befriended me. And by befriended I mean she taught me how to be delinquent. She taught me how to sneak out of the house without the alarm going off. She’d throw me a few extra beers if her and her friends didn’t want them. She taught me how to hide contraband in the back of my stereo, where the batteries go. It’s a big slot back there, and you can fit a lot of stuff. And I worshipped her and thought she was the coolest. She shopped at the Value Village resale shop, and so I shopped there, too, ’cause I wanted her to think I was cool, which is disgusting. It’s a horrible cesspool of germs and armpit stains and I went through just so she’d like me.
And then we became adults, and I think that’s when we actually became real friends and equals. And, you know, she’s the person I could always talk to the most, and I always counted on her for anything. And even when I was busy becoming a Hollywood douchebag, she would always check in on me and force me to stay in touch, and I’m glad that we did.
You know, she’s obviously very thoughtful and caring, and she deserves someone
