Dirty Rocker Boys (15 page)

Hot as he was, I tried to remind myself of the very good reasons why I should not get romantically involved with him. Namely:

1. Tommy’s a hound. There were countless strippers, whores, and Hollywood sluts who had been acquainted with Tommy’s assets (video babe Tawny Kitaen, porn star Debi Diamond, even
Cher, for Christ’s sake). Being married (to Heather Locklear, from 1986 to 1993) had never seemed to hold him back.

2. Tommy had to be an STD factory (see previous entry).

3. Tommy was probably into some crazy shit in the bedroom, and Bobbie Brown was done working hard for the dick. No more showboating.

I was out of practice, undersexed, and overwhelmed. But Tommy Lee gets what Tommy Lee wants. It was just a matter of time. “Come sit down next to me,” Tommy said, patting the couch one night at my house. It was late 1993, and we had been “just good friends” for nearly four months. I sat down—at the opposite end of the couch. He edged closer to me. I made to stand, and he pulled me back down. “Goddammit, Bobbie!”

He kissed me, but after a minute or so, I pulled back. Tommy sighed, exasperated. “You must think I’m fucking ugly or something,” he said, shaking his head. “What the fuck? And why is it you always bring a cockblocker every time we go out?” I took a deep breath. “Tommy, it’s just . . . you’re Tommy Lee. I’ve been
crushing on you since high school.”

“Seriously?”

“I’m scared. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to please you. I’m just some dork.” Tommy’s brow furrowed. “You’re silly. I’m so attracted to you. I want you so much. And trust me, you don’t have to do anything crazy. Just be you.”

Tommy started kissing me slowly. The kiss built into something more passionate. Slowly, he undressed me, stroking my skin lightly. I started babbling, revealing my hand. “I’ve been crushing on you for, like, ever, Tommy. I think I gave myself my first orgasm looking at a Mötley Crüe poster.”

“I love you, Bobbie.” I wasn’t expecting that. Immediately I grew suspicious.

“Fuck you!”

“No. I really do.”

He led my hand down below.
Dear God, it’s like a baby’s arm
.

“Holy shit, Tommy . . . I think I love you too.”

Kissing Tommy felt surreal. Was this really happening, or was I just a teenager again, having a dream? I felt nervous, unsure of myself. Was he going to bite me all over? Did he want to slap me? Did I have to slap him? Was he going to bust out some nipple clamps and candle wax? But it wasn’t freaky. We had normal, missionary-position sex with him kissing me the whole time and looking in my eyes. “You’re so beautiful. You’re so amazing.” He was flattering the shit out of me. “Look at your teeth—my God, you have the most amazing teeth. I just want to eat your face.”

“Shut up.” I never was good at accepting compliments. Afterward, I lay in his arms, seeing stars. “Bobbie, I think you and Taylar should move in with me,” said Tommy. “I want to be with you every day. Please think about it.”

It was game on.

And the way we expressed our love was with our bodies. Our chemistry was off the charts. We had sex at least three times a day, and we craved each other every second we were apart. The exact opposite of how things had been with Jani.

One morning Tommy and I were in bed, when we heard banging on the door. Tommy got up and went to the front door, towel wrapped around him, cigarette hanging from his lip.

“You’re doing my wife!” screamed Jani, standing on the doorstep. “In my
house
? Who do you think you are?”

“Jani, c’mon, you guys are over. What’s your problem?” said Tommy, keeping his cool.

Jani got up in his face.

“So how do I taste, asshole? Because each time you eat her pussy, that’s my dick you’re tasting.”

“How do you
taste
?” Tommy licked his lips and thought about it. “Actually . . . delicious.”

Jani stormed off, horrified. For the rest of that day, he bombarded Tommy’s cell phone with calls and messages. Eventually Tommy picked up.

“How could you date my wife? I thought we were friends, Tommy.”

“Well, if she didn’t insist on fucking me until my dick was sore, it might be easier to leave.” Tommy was the perfect asshole and his crass bragging hit Jani right where it hurt: his ego.

“You’re evil, Tommy,” said Jani.

Right after that, Jani changed his voice mail message to a sample of a Beck song. “I’m a loser baby . . . so why don’t you kill me.” It broke my heart every time I heard it. But I was in deep with Tommy. There was no going back.

Even after Jani and I divorced in 1993, Jani constantly tried to win me back. His attempts to seduce me always fell flat,
though. I would go to his house to pick up child support, for instance, and he would open the door butt naked and scamper to the bedroom, assuming, for some reason, that I would follow him. But I was no longer the needy Bobbie who begged Jani for attention. I had moved on. “Where did you go?” he would say, calling me later. “I went away, Jani. You know that.” Life with Tommy was so easy, I couldn’t believe I had ever put myself through the strain of being married to Jani Lane.

Everything with Tommy was hilarious. It was nonstop jokes. Which of course made me love him even more, because if you can make me laugh, that is eternal. Jani had always
thought
he was funny, but his humor had been dorky to me. Tommy’s humor was sharp, though, really hilarious. We laughed so much, we had to figure out a way to kiss and laugh at the same time, seeing as those were the two things we seemed to do most. He would grab my face while we were cracking up and start kissing me while our mouths were open. Sounds gross, but it was cute. Maybe you had to be there. Either way, it looked kind of similar to what Tommy would be photographed doing with Pamela Anderson, not too long after.

Tommy, like all the rock guys I had been with, would fly me out to meet him on the road at any given opportunity. One time, we were at an airport newsstand, and Tommy got all excited. “Hey, babe, I didn’t know you’d done
Playboy
?” He was holding up a copy of that month’s issue. “What are you talking about?” I said, peering at it. “Dude, are you serious?” It was Pamela
Anderson on the cover—not me. He looked more closely. “Oh, shit, babe, I’m sorry. You guys look kinda similar.”

“You really think so, huh?”

“Babe, I just made a mistake. I think she looks like RuPaul, anyway. What’s up with her eyebrows?”

“So now you’re saying I look like RuPaul. Great.” Sometimes Tommy was his own worst enemy.

They say that when it comes to abusive men, the signs are usually there from the get-go. The hard part is accepting it. Tommy and I were at the Roxbury, and I could not believe what I was seeing: he had Sharise’s brother Gary by the throat, pinned down to a table.

“Don’t talk to my fucking woman!” This was some caveman shit.

“Tommy, let him go! That’s Sharise’s brother!”

Tommy looked at me with wild, jealous eyes.

“What are you, a fucking whore?”

As soon as we started sleeping together, I became property of Tommy Lee, like it or not. He wanted me with him all day and all night, and any motherfucker with a penis who dared come within a mile of me better watch his back. Even my friend-zone boyfriends had taken note of Tommy’s possessiveness and were keeping their distance. But how was Sharise’s brother to know?
Tommy was starting to remind me of my father, the way he would trip out without any warning.

In the limo on our way back to his place, I told Tommy I was having doubts about moving in. “You really flipped the fuck out back there. That’s some loony tunes shit, you know that, right? I have a daughter, Tommy, I can’t be taking any chances.” Tommy said that he loved me and swore that it would never happen again. Ah, those famous last words.

“Holy shiiiiit!”

There was a huge boom, as though God was pounding the biggest kick drum in the universe. Then it felt like someone had picked up the house and was shaking it. Books and furniture flew through the air. Water cascaded as our pool cracked and its contents drained into the neighbor’s yard. There was a terrible creak as the kitchen separated from the living room.

The Northridge earthquake occurred at 4:30
A.M.
on January 17, 1994. A magnitude 6.7 quake, it was the largest and costliest natural disaster in United States history, killing nearly sixty people and causing more than $40 billion in damages.

When it happened, Tommy and I were crashed out on the floor of my bedroom in my house in Tarzana, about seven miles from the epicenter. I had just had my boobs redone.

“It’s fucking Armageddon,” I screamed, clinging to Tommy.

Tommy and I were sleeping on the floor because my surgery had made it too painful for me to climb up the ladder to my high, loft-style bed. I heard my mom screaming down the hall—she was in town to help me out after my surgery. But she hadn’t bargained on this.

“What the fuck was that?” said my mother, who never curses. She was holding Taylar, who was grinning like a kid on a roller coaster. “Wheeee!” said Taylar as the house continued to rock and tremble.

“That was an earthquake, Mom, a big one! Welcome to Los Angeles.”

“That’s it—I’m never coming back to this fucking town,” said my mom, cursing for the second time in her life.

The four of us sat in the car in my driveway for several hours, afraid to go back inside because the aftershocks were so huge. We had no idea what was going to happen to the house, the city, even the state. All the power was out everywhere, and people were freaking out, tripping balls. “Mom, take Taylar back with you.” We couldn’t stay at my house anymore, so Tommy and I booked ourselves in at a hotel in nearby Woodland Hills. The house, which Jani and I had bought just before we split, had never really felt like home anyway. I started spending all my time at Tommy’s place, and he started looking for a home for us on the beach. It felt like the universe was conspiring for us to be together.

My mom took Taylar back to Baton Rouge with her for a few
months while I dealt with the aftermath. It was not the first time she would take over parenting duties for me, and would not be the last. Whether it was earthquakes, heartbreak, or drug addiction, my mother, Judy Ann, would always be there for me and my daughter—holding our hands, reassuring us that everything would work out in the end. And now that I’d found Tommy, even she believed that I might have gotten a second chance at happiness with a rock star.

There are all kinds of stories out there about how Tommy Lee met Pamela Anderson. Some say they met at a New Year’s party while he was high on ecstasy. Some say they met when Tommy licked her face at a club. The truth is, I introduced them. Sharise, Tommy, and I were at Bar One, a club on the Sunset Strip near Beverly Hills that Vince Neil had part ownership of and occasionally rented out for porn shoots. Pamela was at a table with an acquaintance of mine, a club promoter named Billy Atkins. The three of us were passing through the crowd, and Billy grabbed my arm. “Hey, Bobbie, you know Pam?”

“Of course. Hello, Pam.” They invited us to sit down at their booth and have some cocktails. “So aren’t you going to introduce me to your guy, Bobbie?” said Pamela, looking at Tommy. “I’ve been dying to meet you.”

“Tommy, this is Pamela Anderson. Pamela, meet Tommy Lee.”

I didn’t think anything of it. Pamela and I had known each other for a few years, from working on
Married . . . with Children
and seeing each other around Hollywood. Now she was famous
as C. J. Parker on
Baywatch
, which had become the highest-rated TV program in the world, thanks, largely, to her. Magazines had been comparing the two of us, sometimes calling me “the new Pamela Anderson.” Yes, we had a similar look—tousled blond hair, sexy pout, silicone tits. We weren’t twins, though. With my motor mouth and down-home attitude, I was all slacker meets Valley girl, whereas Pamela had that white-trash Brigitte Bardot thing going on. Our personalities, especially, were very different. Pamela was coy and always played her cards close to her giant chest. I wore my heart on my sleeve and was incapable of doing “cute.” I was the goofball tomboy to Pamela’s aloof vixen.

We had already had some professional run-ins—back when I was with Jani, Hugh Hefner had offered me a
Playboy
pictorial and I arrived on set only to find that they had canceled the shoot at the last minute, for “political” reasons. I caught wind that Pamela, who had been on four covers, was not happy about her doppelgänger Bobbie Brown inching onto her turf. But I wasn’t one to hold on to a grudge.

“Tommy, so good to meet you finally!” said Pamela, a half smile playing on her freshly glossed lips. Pamela started talking about herself, how she ate organic and cared about the environment and only used a little bit of electricity compared to her neighbors. “Also, I can play the drums,” she added, playing air drums and shaking her hair, and Tommy nodded, impressed. Sharise turned to me, mouthing, “What the fuck?”

“So I’m dating David Charvet, this guy on my show
Baywatch
,” Pamela continued, eyes fixed on Tommy’s. “Talk about a
pencil dick. I’m so over it!” (They dated for about two years and then Charvet went on to marry Brooke Burke, cohost of
Dancing with the
Stars
, which Pamela became a contestant on.) “That sucks,” said Tommy, looking amused. “Where I come from, they throw the small ones back.” We all laughed, and Tommy squeezed my hand reassuringly. But something didn’t feel right.

What is up with Pamela tonight?
I wondered. She was trying a little too hard. I knew she was a big fan of rock music, so maybe she was just nervous. She hung on Tommy’s every word. It was obvious she had no interest in what anyone else had to say—her conversation was directed solely toward him. She had a reputation for being a guy’s girl, one whose identity revolved around men’s attention. She had few female friends in Hollywood, and it was pretty obvious what her goal was in town—to make it. My professional ambition, on the other hand, had been stymied by love, motherhood, and the pursuit of fun.