Dirty Rocker Boys (26 page)

I started to cry.

“You have to do something, Jani. Can’t we tell somebody?”

“No, it’s embarrassing.”

“Fuck that!”

“It would be humiliation for life,” he sobbed. “And that motherfucker knows it. That’s how he gets away with it. They lie to these young guys who are trying to make it in the music industry, invite them to their show, and they pull this shit. They get away with it because nobody who is trying to make it is going to fuck with them. Nobody.”

I helped him back in the house and drove home alone, crying the whole way. I couldn’t believe that he had been carrying this around with him for so long. I couldn’t believe that there was nothing I could do. I kept quiet about what Jani had revealed to me. And Jani and I never discussed it again.

After Sheila and Jani broke up, Jani moved into his own house with his daughter Madison. There was a spare room at Sheila’s and because, as usual, I was looking for a new place to live, Sheila invited me to crash with her. Which is how I found myself living with my ex-husband’s ex-girlfriend. Strange but true. Things were tough for me again—I had been fired from my job at Le Paws for calling my boss a dick. The
Cougar
pilot had done little for my career, and now I didn’t even have my “normal” job to rely on. I really needed a break.

Sheila told me someone from VH1 had contacted her, trying to find women to interview for a documentary about the Sunset Strip. “You should do it!” she said.

I went for an interview at VH1, and shortly afterward, the
show’s producer called me saying they wanted to change the entire idea to focus on the rock star wives. Would I be interested in narrating and helping with the script? “Of course,” I said.
Do It for the Band: The Women of the Sunset Strip
aired in 2011, and I guess I made some kind of an impression because Lorraine Lewis, former front woman of the all-girl hair band Femme Fatale, contacted me on MySpace after it aired. “I have always been your fan, Bobbie. I think you are a star, and I was friends with Jani back in the day. I saw you on VH1 and I have an idea that I think you would be perfect for.”

I scheduled a lunch meeting with Lorraine and her partner, Lisa, and they told me about their idea. A reality show, starring me, Sharise Neil, Heidi Mark (another ex-wife of Vince Neil’s, who would, at the last minute, be replaced on the show by Tommy’s sister, Athena Lee) and Blue Ashley, ex-wife of Warrant’s Jerry Dixon. The show would be called
Ex-Wives of Rock
and would document the real ups and downs of us former mistresses of the Sunset Strip.

“I love it!” I said, imagining how much fun it would be to reunite with the girls. Amid all the drama that had occurred in our lives, Sharise, Athena, Blue, and I had lost touch. Luckily, all the girls were on board. It had been a long and winding road, but the ex-wives were reunited and ready to rock.

Finally, our lives seemed to be on the up. Jani was sober again and had remarried, and Taylar and I were obviously delighted about that. Jani’s new wife was Kimberly Nash, whom he had known since the Warrant days (they had dated briefly
after he and I split, then when he married Rowanne, Kimberly was busy having a baby with Warrant’s keyboard player. Now, years later, they had rekindled). I would regularly visit at Jani and Kim’s home, and things seemed to be going well. We spent Thanksgiving 2010 all together as the funny, disjointed family we had become. Taylar, who was living full-time in Louisiana, had flown into town with her boyfriend, and together with my brother, Adam, we all went over to Kim and Jani’s home, and Jani cooked Thanksgiving dinner. He actually seemed happy, for once. That was the last time I would see him alive.

He had been sober nearly two years when Kim called and said he had started drinking again. And it was worse than ever before. He was falling, injuring himself, because he was so disoriented. The alcohol had destroyed his ability to look after himself or those around him. In July 2011, Jani called me, distraught. Things were not going well with Kim, and he asked me if he could move into my downstairs guest apartment. I told him no, the apartment was in poor condition, plus I had a boyfriend who might not be comfortable with my ex-husband moving in with us. Oddly, that seemed to amuse him.

“You have a
boyfriend
? That’s hilarious, Bobbie. You haven’t had a proper boyfriend in forever.”

“Shut up, Jani!”

It was a moment of levity in a year of darkness.

Looking back, the writing was on the wall. Jani was going to rehab every other month, getting sober and then getting drunk, trying to leave his wife and then going back. He had started seeing his ex-girlfriend Sheila again, in between going back and forth with Kim. His life was a mess, and even Jani knew, perhaps, that he might not be able to clean up again this time.

His decline was hard on all of us, but especially Taylar. After our divorce, Jani hadn’t been around much, probably because of all the bitterness he harbored toward me. Jani did pay child support but never gave Taylar much beyond the bare minimum, and me, my mother, and Mr. Earl had been almost entirely financially responsible for her when it came to saving up money for college and other expenses. Jani tended to spend money on himself and on his binges, and for years, he hadn’t had much time for Taylar. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and of course he had his well-documented battles with alcohol—as much love as he had for her in his heart, his demons had consistently prevented him from ever being truly there for Taylar.

By the time Jani started reaching out to her, during the last five years of his life, Taylar was still angry with him. “Taylar, you don’t understand, people keep giving me alcohol, and I’m helpless against it,” he would say, trying to explain his problems. But Taylar wouldn’t stand for his excuses. “Come on, Dad. You have to be accountable for your own actions,” she would say.

Jani missed her terribly. He had written a song dedicated to Taylar called “Stronger Now” and had gotten a heart and banner
tattoo that said
DADDY’S GIRL
. Jani often called Taylar when he was drunk, to tell her that he loved her, promising her that he would get sober. Of course, he was never able to fulfill the promise for any length of time, and Taylar, now nineteen, had had enough. She felt like the best way she could help her father was by showing him tough love.

“Dad, don’t contact me anymore if you’re drunk,” she told him. “I will only talk to you if you are sober.” I understood where she was coming from. But I wasn’t sure it was the right approach, somehow. “You know what, Tay, you never know how long your dad will be here,” I told her. “He’s reaching out to you. He feels really guilty, and he does love you.” I felt that Jani only felt able to open up emotionally and let go of his ego when he was drunk. “Drinking is the only way he knows to remove his filter,” I told Taylar, and she nodded.

On August 11, 2011, I was taking a nap, half-asleep, floating between dreamland and consciousness. I felt someone move my hair out of my eyes and touch my face. I thought it was Damon, my boyfriend. “Stop, baby, you’re waking me up,” I groaned, eyes still closed. Slowly, I woke up, charged with an inexplicably sad panic. I looked around for Damon and he wasn’t there. I called him, crying.

“What’s wrong with you?” he said.

“I want us to be good to each other, always. Life is so fleeting, Damon. What if something happens to you?”

“Babe, I’m fine, we’re fine. I’ll be home soon.”

“Wait—you weren’t just here touching my face and hair?”

“No, I left the house hours ago.”

At almost exactly the same time, Jani was dying. His wife, Kim, called me the next day with the news—Jani had been found dead of acute alcohol poisoning at the Comfort Inn hotel in Woodland Hills. The cleaner found his body. Someone had checked him in, not under his name, the night before. He didn’t have a driver’s license or a phone with him. The
DO NOT DISTURB
sign had been left on the door. I asked Kim if I could go with her to the hotel, where his body was, and she said no. Then I hung up. The next call I made would be to Taylar.

How do you tell a teenage girl that her father, who she has just started building a relationship with, has killed himself with alcohol? What words could possibly lessen the blow? It wasn’t fair that this had to be Taylar’s reality. I had been blessed with not one but two fathers, both of whom I had achieved genuine love and closeness with. I was glad that Taylar had at least been able to build some relationship with Jani, no matter how strained it had been.

She was in her car, driving to her home in Baton Rouge, when I called.

“Taylar, I’m so sorry, but your dad died yesterday.”

“What?” She thought she hadn’t heard me right. “What did you say, Mom? I’m driving I can’t really hear you.”

“Pull over,” I said, and I repeated the words. She was in shock. For a few moments, she didn’t speak at all. Eventually, she whispered, “Let me call you back.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” And then she hung up.

Earlier that day, she had been looking through old photos of her and Jani and had laid them out in her bedroom so she could figure out which ones to take to her new apartment. Jani’s smiling face, strewn across the carpet. Her father, whom she so resembled, was dead. We cried together on the phone. “At least I’ll see him every day when I look in the mirror,” she said.

To this day, the circumstances surrounding Jani’s death remain unclear. He had completed his will and divorce papers and was waiting for them to be notarized when he died. Somebody had checked him into the hotel under an alias, and we do not know who that person was. He did die of ethanol poisoning, but at least one other person was present. I would like to find out who that was.

The news of Jani’s death came in the middle of filming the first season of
Ex-Wives of Rock
. Because it is a reality show, the cameras captured some of what happened. Not for the first time in my life, I was grateful for the support of my longtime friends. Because no matter how self-destructive Jani had been over the past few years, I never once imagined he would die so soon. He was forty-seven years old, and his death left a huge hole in our lives. Jani had defined the most precious period of my youth, and our love had produced the most important person in my life—Taylar. I had always hoped and prayed that Jani would be strong enough to survive himself, in the same way I had said the same prayers for myself. In the end, though, prayers just weren’t enough.

Athena Lee was a great support to me in this time. She had become one of my closest friends thanks to the show, which had allowed us to rekindle the friendship that we started nearly twenty years prior, when I was dating Tommy and living in Malibu.

Athena held my hand through the tears, helping me stay as strong as I could for Taylar. She told me she felt like she wasn’t that far behind Jani, because of her own struggles with alcohol. She had already lost her mother and her father, her husband had left her for another woman, and her breast cancer had come back, temporarily. Since she and Tommy are no longer close, I became like family to Athena, and she to me. Now, more than ever, we needed our friends to help us through such trying times.

I’m a very different Bobbie Brown now from the Bobbie Brown she met in Malibu. Back then I was colder, tougher, and more prideful. These days, I’m much more of a softy. I tear up at dog food commercials, for crying out loud. Tough and sassy as I may appear on the outside, I am the biggest fucking wimp in the world, a side of me that came out after my dad died, and after Jani’s death too. For so many years, my life had been a whirlwind, decisions fueled by this unearned sense of ego, by this anger at the men who were constantly letting me down. The Bobbie Brown who would act out because of her anger was reckless, foolhardy, and arrogant. It took some very traumatizing experiences to steer me off that path. Today, I know what’s really important to me. It’s not revenge. It’s not drugs. Its not fame or money. It’s friendship and family. That’s it. And when
the time came for me to let go of my relationship with Damon, Athena was there to help me mop up the tears.

I’m proud that Athena, Sharise, Blue, and I are taking the scars we earned on the Sunset Strip and are showing them off to the world. Why not? We aren’t rich housewives living in mansions, fighting over Louboutin shoes. When the rock ’n’ roll dream fantasy died in the 1990s, it sent us spinning in different directions. Yet somehow, we find ourselves back together, living real lives, complete with beat-up cars and bad decisions. When the show started, I was ridiculed by people for being too real—being overweight, not looking as hot as I used to, having a messy house, or shooting scenes with no makeup on. Well,
whatever
. Yes, maybe I looked like shit. But guess what, that was
real
. Of course, it’s no fun reading online that some anonymous asshole in Indiana thinks you’re a “stupid skank ho.” It’s amazing, the people who hate you right out of the gate. They hate us because we were married to rock stars, which is not a realistic or fair reason to hate on anybody. You cannot judge a person without knowing what they have been through.

When Tommy found out Athena and I were doing
Ex-Wives of Rock
, he was not impressed. “I can’t believe you and my sister are doing a fucking reality show,” he said. “I thought you were smarter than that.” He tried to talk us both out of it, probably because he was worried about me and my big mouth. But the show isn’t about the rock stars we dated and married. It’s about us, as women, today. I think he gets it now. It took my poor mom a second to come around to the show too, especially
because in her opinion, I seemed hell-bent on airing all my dirty laundry, in front of all the people of Canada and America.

“That girl has no filter!” she growled to my brother, Adam. “I’m so hurt. I’ve had enough of it!”

Adam, ever the diplomat, advised me on how to handle the crisis.

“Don’t worry about it; I’ll talk to Mom while I drive her to her hair appointment. While we’re out, leave her a voice mail on the landline saying that you’re sorry. By the time we get home, she’ll be receptive, I promise you.”