Dirty Rocker Boys (14 page)

“Oh, you know, we got rid of Vince. John Corabi’s on vocals now. We’re on hiatus before our tour, so I thought I’d come visit Jennifer.”

“Jennifer’s amazing, huh?”

“Yeah, she’s cool. She’s cool.”

When Jennifer got home the three of us went out and partied at Velvet. I got ahold of more coke. I hadn’t slept in a few days, so I figured I’d just finish the rest of this bag and then relax before my mom brought Taylar out to visit, later that week. But every time I started to come down from the blow, all I felt was panic. I obsessed over Jani’s betrayal of me and our little family. I imagined him with Shannon, kissing her. I replayed the conversation on the phone. At least in the dim light of Velvet, unknown faces and bodies all around me, I could dance and forget my reality. My blurry Miami nights bled into one another until I had dissociated from reality almost completely, and by the time my mom and Taylar arrived to visit me, I was so agitated and confused I could barely string a sentence together.

“Bobbie, come out of the bathroom, or I’ll call the police!” I had been in the shower for nearly two hours, sobbing hysterically, while my mom banged on the door. A few hours earlier, Taylar had banged her head on the side of a coffee table, and it had sent me into a tailspin. It was not a serious bang, but I should have been watching her more closely. “It’s my fault!” I screamed. “I’m a drug addict, I’m on coke, I’m too high to be a mom!”

“Can I bring you a towel?”

“No! I’m ashamed! It’s all my fault.” I was shaking.

When I eventually emerged from the shower, my mom put me to bed and sat with me, Taylar on her knee, stroking my dark hair. “Don’t carry on like that, Bobbie, you’re going to get
through this. We’re all going to help you. Your hair looks terrible, by the way.” I nodded, feeling calm for the first time since touching down in Miami.

My mom called Jani and told him that I was in a bad way, that she was going to bring me and Taylar home to Baton Rouge, and that I was going to go to rehab.

“No,” said Jani.

“What?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“That boy doesn’t have a grain of sense,” said my mom, hanging up the phone.

My mom was baffled as to why Jani would be against my going to rehab. I think deep down, Jani knew that the second I got sober, he would lose me forever.

My mom flew me and Taylar home to Baton Rouge, and Mr. Earl called SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, which agreed to pay for me to go to a local outpatient rehab for six weeks.

“Bobbie, you’re gonna stay here and rest,” said Mr. Earl. Then he called to my mom, “I’m going to the store, honey. Bobbie is all skin and bones.”

Being a fast-talking cocaine addict from Los Angeles, it was hard for me to adjust to Southern life again. The addicts in my twelve-step group, especially, spoke so damn slow it took half an hour for them just to say their names.

“Hi, mah naaaame is Patty Mae, and ahm an allllllcohaaaaaalic.”

I had never been to an AA meeting before, but it seemed like everyone in rural Louisiana had taken up smoking crack since I had left.

“So how was everybody’s weeeeekend?” asked the therapist.

“I went for a drive,” said a wiry balding crackhead called Elijah, sweat dripping down his temples. “And then I lost mah keys. So I looked for mah keys. And I said, ‘Well, darn. I can’t find mah keys.’ ”

“Dude, who gives a fuck!” I blurted. “Did you use or not?”

“All right now, shugah, hush yo’ mouth,” said the doctor, and the group tutted and shook their heads. “Bobbie’s ill as a hornet this mornin’,” said the doctor, giving me a sympathetic smile.

I couldn’t believe I was in the company of actual crackheads. What with my being a glamorous model/actress coke addict.

“Honey, you realize you talk about your husband nonstop?” said Elijah. “I think y’all are havin’ a toxic relationship over there.”

“Yes, everthang’s awl messed up with y’all,” said Twyla Fay, junkie and mother of three. “What about
you
, Bobbie? What do
you
want? You’re a fahn-lookin’ woman.”

“Yup, mighty fetchin’,” added Elijah.

The crackheads had a point. I didn’t really know what I wanted. Not since leaving Louisiana to become a model had I thought about what I really wanted out of life, in the long term.

“Well, I want to be a good momma,” I said, slowly. “I want to be happy. And I don’t want liars in my life.”

The more time I spent in group therapy, the more I realized it would be impossible for me to achieve those things within my marriage to Jani. Especially now, with all the rumors I was hearing, how in my absence Jani was drinking heavily and up to no good. How he was seeing this girl or that girl; how he was bringing them back to our home. I called Jani, pissed. “I am not going to be in this marriage if you are fucking other bitches, you understand?”

Jani denied everything and flew out to see me in Baton Rouge in a desperate bid to save our marriage. My mom and Mr. Earl made themselves scarce while Jani and I talked it out in my bedroom. “Your stories keep changing, Jani,” I yelled. “Can you just be completely honest with me for once?” I just wanted the truth. Finally, Jani told me what I already knew. There wasn’t just one woman—there had been many. Jani was a serial cheater.

“Anytime I was with anybody else, I was always loving you, Bobbie,” he pleaded. “I was just selfish and insecure, and they were giving me attention. I’m so sorry. Please, let’s work this out.” Jani’s heart was breaking in front of me. But a sickness took over my whole body, and I started shaking. “Fuck that shit,” I said. “If you love someone, you don’t fuck other people and lie about it!” It didn’t make any sense to me back then. “Get your shit, pack your bag, and get the fuck out of here.” Then I ran into the bathroom and threw up.

I remember how confident I was when Jani and I first fell
in love. How I never ever thought he would cheat on me. Even when Joan Rivers asked me, on her show, “Aren’t you concerned about marrying a rock star? Once a playboy, always a playboy.”

What a bitch,
I thought.

“No way would Jani cheat on me. Not in a million years,” I told her, indignant.

Back in group therapy, my fellow addicts tried to help me understand that Jani’s cheating was not about me. It was about his insecurity. But it’s really hard not to take cheating personally, especially when you are married. I was getting calls from Jani’s mom. “Bobbie, Jani had a breakdown, he’s in the hospital, saying you want to divorce him and he can’t handle it. Please, can you give him another chance? He loves you.” But I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t strong enough to take him back. He was supposed to be the guy I could rely on. The one who loved me the most. The Cherry Pie boy and the Cherry Pie girl were supposed to be together forever. He had fucked it up, as far as I was concerned. “So I’m supposed to forgive and forget now just because he’s in the hospital? I already gave him a second chance. I’m still young; I can still find a partner who I can at least trust.”

Three months after I came back from rehab, we officially separated. Jani fell into yet another tailspin, clinging to the people and the habits that were bad for him. I wish I could have stayed with Jani, but I couldn’t get past the lies. Sober, and with my eyes wide open, I filed for divorce.

“Hey, it’s Tommy Lee, your Miami buddy. You and Jani should come over to my place sometime. Miss you!”

Tommy Lee had been calling the house. I hadn’t had the time or mental capacity to get back to him—I was in the middle of restructuring my entire life and preparing to become a single mother, now that my marriage was ending. My mother flew to California and took Taylar back with her to Baton Rouge for a little while so that I could regroup. Being alone felt surreal. I was sober. I was single. I had a strange, raw clarity. My life was at ground zero and I was starting over, divorced in Hollywood at the age of twenty-four. The next time I fell in love, I told myself, it would be with someone completely different. Someone stronger, less insecure.

Once word got out that Jani and I were splitting, the hair metal hounds came sniffing. “So Bret Michaels hit on me—
while he was on a date
,” I told Sharise on the phone. I couldn’t believe how the men in this scene behaved, not just toward women, but toward each other. They seemed to have so little loyalty toward one another.

“Ew, really?” said Sharise.

“Yeah, he sent his bodyguard to tell me to meet him in the kitchen of the restaurant, so I did, and then he asked me out. And I was like, ‘But what about your date out there?’ ”

“What a dork!”

“I know. Talk about tacky!”

Sharise was my biggest supporter. She too was going
through her own problems, and she would divorce Vince Neil the same year I divorced Jani. Sharise and I have led parallel lives in that way. While Jani was quitting and then getting back into Warrant, Vince was getting fired from Mötley Crüe. Sharise and I were both mothers, and Sharise’s little girl, Skylar, was the center of her world. Sharise and I talked almost every day, and she was anxious that I start moving on from Jani as soon as possible.

“You know, it might be too soon, but I do know someone who is dying to see you, Bobbie. And it isn’t Bret Michaels.”

“Who?” I asked, curious.

“Tommy. He’s saying he’s in love with you.”

Now this was an unexpected turn of events. Had it been anyone else in the world, any other rocker in Hollywood, I would have said forget it. But
Tommy Lee
, my teenage crush, my Prince Charming on a Harley? I had been planning on taking some time out before even contemplating dating. But for Tommy, maybe, I would make an exception.

I was at Club Ugly, a club night that Sharise had started at a venue called the Dragonfly in Hollywood. It was
the
place to be on a Thursday night. Everyone who was anyone was there. Johnny Depp came in one night and ended up getting together with Sharise. (“He’s into clowns,” she told me the next day. “Creepy!”) Danny Boy from House of Pain, and my dance buddy Jay Gordon were regulars. Now that I had separated from Jani, Jay was all up in my grill, but I was not down.

“Sex changes everything, and I don’t want things to get weird
between us!” I told Jay on the dance floor. “You’re wrong, sex will make our friendship even better,” he yelled back. “Listen, Jay, stick around long enough, and I might cave in,” I conceded. “But you’ll probably be waiting a long time!”

“Nice chaps, Bobbie Brown!” I turned around to face Tommy Lee, who had snuck up behind me. Yes, I was wearing chaps, with a leotard underneath. It was a hot look back then. And Tommy seemed to appreciate it. He said he wanted to sit down and talk. He told me how he had broken up with Jennifer months ago. I told him how Jani and I were over and how it was for the best. We talked about how we are both Libras—his birthday is on the third of October and mine is on the seventh. We talked until the club shut down.

I was driving home when my cell phone rang. It was Tommy. We had said good-bye outside the club not five minutes ago.

“Hey, Tommy, what’s up?”

“I just wanted to tell you you’re the fucking shit; you’re the hottest woman in the world. I’m screaming it out my car window, right now.”

And he was. I heard him screaming my name, yelling how hot Bobbie Brown was.

Then he came back on the line.

“Bobbie, I’m going to go home and jerk off while I think about you.”

Whoa.
Tommy wasn’t playing coy. Later that night, my phone rang again. It was Tommy.

“Bobbie!” he groaned.

“Tommy, are you okay?”

“I’m coming!” I heard groans as Tommy Lee shot his load. “Oh fuck yeah, I just came.”

I hung up the phone.
What the fuck?
Tommy was the nuttiest guy I had ever met.

Tommy started sending me flowers. Huge bouquets, a different one each day. My girlfriend Annie came over for lunch and was startled to see so many roses and irises and orchids everywhere. “Who died?” she said, wading through them. “Wait, these are from
Tommy
? Ooooh, the plot thickens. Tommy, Jani, Tommy, Jani . . . which one will she pick?”

“Shut up, dude.”

That night, Tommy called—he wanted to take me out for dinner. I said okay, still a little unsure about how to deal with his dramatic gestures of appreciation. He showed up in his red Ferrari and flashed me that smile . . . Tommy had it going on, and he knew it. He was hard to resist. We went to a Greek restaurant, threw dishes in the fireplace, and laughed our asses off, as usual. The restaurant had a rooftop garden, so after dinner we stood out there in the wind and took in the views. The Santa Anas were blowing, hot winds that the Spanish call “devil’s breath” or “murder winds.”

“I dare you to rip your shirt open in the wind,” said Tommy as we leaned off the railing of the restaurant roof. My hair whipped about my face. I tore my shirt open, and all the buttons popped off. I closed my eyes and flung my arms out. “Shit, your tits are huge!” Tommy exclaimed. I wasn’t on coke, I wasn’t
drunk, I wasn’t thinking about Jani. For the first time in years, I felt free. The last thing I needed was to get wrapped up in some guy . . . but I didn’t want to stop seeing Tommy. We had just too strong a connection for me to let it die; I just had to figure out a way to stay in control of the situation, to not let myself fall in love.

Each time we went on a date, I would bring a cockblocker, a girlfriend whose job it was to make sure Tommy and I were never alone together. The only man I had been with in the last three years was Jani Lane, and the thought of jumping into bed with crazy Tommy Lee was just way too scary. “Dude, am I fucking ugly or something?” Tommy asked a mutual friend. “Bobbie won’t even make out with me!” Despite my apparent lack of interest, Tommy was undeterred. He asked if he could stay the night at my house, and curled on the floor by my bed. “I just want to breathe your air, Bobbie,” he said. “Okay whatever,” I said, brushing my teeth and putting on my pajamas. In the morning, there he was, still on the floor. I told him he could shower if he liked, and when he emerged, skin glistening, a teeny white towel wrapped around his hips, I had to turn away.
Sweet baby Jesus. Be strong, Bobbie Brown, be strong!