by Tommy Lee
The week afterward, I was in the kitchen cooking dinner for Pamela and the kids. Everything was quiet and cool again, and we were splitting a glass of wine as I pulled a bunch of vegetables to stir-fry out of the refrigerator. I looked through the cabinets for a pan and couldn’t find one because the fucking housekeeper had our cooking shit scattered all over the place. I was so high-strung and tense that as soon as the littlest thing went wrong, I’d start to freak out like it was the end of the world. So when I couldn’t find the pan, I started slamming cabinet doors and throwing shit around, like a little baby crying for attention, hoping Mommy would come and solve all his problems. So Mommy—Pamela—came over, saw that I was in one of those moods, and just threw up her hands. “Calm down, it’s just a pan.”
But it wasn’t just a pan. It meant everything to me. My whole fucking peace of mind and sanity depended on me finding that pan. And by not caring whether I found the pan or not, Pamela, in my mind, was disrespecting my feelings. In my fucked-up, selfish way of thinking, it meant that Pamela didn’t understand me—the worst sin someone can commit in a relationship. I grabbed all the pots and mixing bowls I had pulled out, fucking threw them in the big open drawer I had taken them from, and screamed, “This is bullshit!”
And then Pamela said the words that you should never say to anyone who’s losing their temper, the words that only pour gasoline on the blaze: “Calm down. You’re scaring me.”
I should have walked outside and just vented at the stars, or gone for a long jog, or taken a cold shower. But I didn’t. I was too wrapped up in the moment, in my anger at the missing pan, which was really my anger at the miscommunication between Pamela and me, which all boiled down to nothing but my own insecurity, neediness, and fear.
“Fuck you! Fuck off! Leave me the fuck alone!” I yelled at her, kicking the drawer and hurting my fucking foot like an idiot because I had forgotten I was wearing soft slippers.
That was it. We were off and running. She screamed at me, I screamed back at her, and pretty soon the kids started screaming. Dylan was crying in his crib and I could hear Brandon in his bedroom, bawling. “Whaaaaah! Mommy! Daddy! What’s going on? Whaaaah!”
“I’ve had enough,” Pamela said as she ran to the crib and scooped up Dylan. She brought him into the living room, grabbed the phone, and started to dial.
“Who do you think you are calling?”
“I want my mom to come over. You’re scaring me.”
“Don’t call your mom. Put the fucking phone down. We can deal with this ourselves.”
“No, don’t try to stop me. And don’t swear in front of the kids. I’m calling them.”
“Your parents are here all the fucking time. This is so stupid. We can talk about this and be over it in one minute. Look at me: I’m calm now. I’m not mad anymore.”
“I’m calling Mom. And stop swearing.”
She dialed the numbers, and I hung up the phone. Then she turned and fixed me with that dirty look, the one that told me that I was mean and selfish, the one that reduced me to the ugliest, scrawniest worm on the face of the fucking planet. I fucking hated that look, because it meant that the situation was escalating out of my control and no amount of apologies or flowers would ever convince her that I was a good guy who loved her again. Her therapist had given her the stupid advice of ignoring me when I was angry, because according to him I received enough attention as a rock star. But what he didn’t know was that I was a rock star because I needed the attention. Silence equals death. So when Pamela started giving me the silent treatment—just like my parents used to—it only drove me further over the brink. In the meantime, Dylan was yelling in her arms and Brandon was howling louder and louder from his room.
She defiantly grabbed the phone again and dialed her parents. I slammed down the hang-up bar. “I said, ‘Don’t fucking call her!’ Come on. I’m sorry. This is so fucking petty.”
She threw the phone against the handset, clenched her fist, and swung at me blindly, connecting half her fist with my lower jaw and the other half with the tender part of my neck, which fucking hurt. I had never been hit by a woman before, and as soon as I felt the contact, I saw red. I had been trying so hard to defuse the situation, but when she kept getting madder at every turn, it only incensed me more. The more willing I was to calm down, the madder I became when she wouldn’t let me. So as soon as she slugged me, my emotional meter flew into the red and clouded my eyes. Like an animal, I did the first thing that instinctually came to mind to stop the situation. I grabbed her and held her firmly. “What is fucking wrong with you?” I yelled, not letting go. And once again, my attempt to calm her only panicked her more. Now she was crying, the kids were freaking out, and the phone was ringing off the hook because her parents were worried because of all the cut-off phone calls. My stir-fry had turned into a nightmare.
As I held her, the silent treatment ended. She yelled every shitty thing she could think of at me, called me every dirty name in the book, stabbed at every one of my weak points. I never could have imagined when we stared at each other all night at Señor Frog’s that it would end up like this, with us crying and screaming at each other like demons. I released her, and she began to run toward Brandon’s bedroom, as if she was the loving mother who needed to protect her brood from their cruel father. As she ran past, I swung my foot after her and helped her on her way with a swift, slippered boot to her ass. “You are a fucking bitch!”
“You’re mean!”
I followed her. I hated fighting in front of the kids. It was hard enough trying to raise them with paparazzi everywhere; the least we could do is set a healthy example as parents. I sulked toward Brandon’s room to talk to him. But she had picked him up and was shielding him as he cried.
“Let go of him,” I said. “I’m going to take him outside. Do you want to go see the frogs, Brandon?”
Our backyard pond had suddenly filled with frogs over the winter, and I thought it would be a good place to breathe deep and chill out. “Get out of here!” she screamed hysterically.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m going to take him out to the frogs so that he can calm down. You stay with Dylan so you two can calm down. Everyone just needs to stop screaming.”
But everyone kept screaming, except Pamela, who wasn’t speaking to me again, which made it impossible to resolve anything.
I took Brandon’s hand, and she pulled him away from me. Suddenly, we were wrestling over him and everyone was getting mental again. No matter what I did, the situation just escalated. As I wrested Brandon from her, I pushed her and she tumbled backward into a little blackboard covered with chalk drawings our kids had made. She tried to catch herself on the blackboard with her hands, but the face of the board swiveled forward and she broke her nail.
Before she could finish yelling, I had taken Brandon by the hand and walked outside with him. I took him to the frog pond and sat him down. As he sniffled, I told him that Mommy and Daddy loved each other very much, and we loved him very much. I promised that we would never get angry and raise our voices again if it scared him. I picked up a mellow little frog and cupped him in my hands. As my hands closed around him, he started struggling and flailing. “That’s how Daddy feels sometimes. That’s why it’s good to go outside, breathe the fresh air, and clear your head.”
After we both calmed down and dried our tears, we headed back inside. I tried to find Pamela to apologize and suggest ordering some dinner. I searched every room downstairs and couldn’t find her. I brought Brandon to his playroom and, as I sat him down with his toys, I heard voices behind me. I turned around to see two cops standing there.
“Turn back around, Mr. Lee,” they barked at me.
“For what?”
“Turn around.”
It was like the Bobbie Brown incident all over again. Here were two cops who were going to arrest me no matter what I said. If it takes two people to get into an argument, why am I always the only one getting arrested?
I turned around
and felt cold metal wrap around my hands, followed by two clicks. “You’re handcuffing me? Are you fucking kidding me? Handcuff her too. She hit me in the face.”
“We don’t care, Mr. Lee.”
“But…”
They led me downstairs, past the living room (where I saw Pamela sitting with her parents), out the front door, and into the back of the squad car. Then they left me there alone while they went back inside to question Pamela. I relaxed when I realized that they were probably just separating us so they could question us in private. I probably wasn’t going to be taken to jail. An hour later, the officers stepped out of the house. One of the cops was carrying a Civil War–era pistol that I had on the wall as decoration and, when I saw it, my heart sank. I knew they were going to somehow twist the antique into a firearm possession charge, which violated a probation sentence I had picked up four years ago after I packed a semiautomatic pistol in my travel bag and stupidly carried it through an airport metal detector.
Wordlessly, the cops climbed into the car and backed out of the driveway. “Hey, where are you going?” I asked, panicked.
“You’re going downtown.”
Again, I felt a situation that should have been easy to deal with spiraling out of my control into something that was going to be a real pain in the ass. “Dude, you guys didn’t even talk to me yet. You are only listening to her side of the story. What about my side?”
They didn’t say a word. They just ignored me and kept driving. And, bro, I just fucking rammed my head into the wire mesh separating the front of the car from the backseat. I kept bashing it against the wire helplessly, yelling, “Why won’t you fucking listen to me? Fucking talk to me!” I had turned into a child again, because I was being given the silent treatment. And silence equals death.
fig. 4
Mug shot
Tommy used to call from jail in tears every day. Separated from his kids and wife, he was in agony. As angry as he was at Pamela for pressing spousal assault charges and sticking him with a six-month sentence, he still wanted her back so badly. But she kept toying with him, driving him out of his mind. He would pour out his heart in letters to her every day, none of which he’d ever show us.
The worst part for the band was losing Tommy at such a critical juncture in our dispute with Elektra. In addition, Vince was having major money problems and we had scheduled a tour independent of the label to bail him out, because if he couldn’t get together a lump sum for his creditors, they were going to foreclose on his—and thus our—assets. If Tommy stayed in jail for a full six months, however, the tour would be canceled at our expense, Vince would be destitute, and Elektra would have us vulnerable and right where it wanted us. As much as any of us, Tommy needed this tour because the money would help him pay his legal bills and support his children. But Tommy’s mind was so far removed from such matters: all he could think about was trying to get back to the domestic bliss that was life with Pamela Anderson—even though she had already started divorce proceedings and hadn’t visited him once. As far as Tommy was concerned, however, Mötley Crüe was over, a closed chapter.
Every girl does the same thing to a young band. They always say, “You’re the most popular” or “You’re the cutest one” or “You’re the one everyone talks about.” With older, more experienced bands, the women have to get more subtle. They say, “Those guys are holding you back” or “You should be getting more money” or “They’re not treating you with enough respect.” And every time, the guy will say, “Really? Do you think so?” They don’t have the balls to say, “Shut the fuck up! We are a fucking gang, and we’ve been a gang since the beginning. So please stay out of it!”
This happens because every girl wants her guy to be “the guy,” and every guy wants to hear from a girl that he is “the guy.” And so what happens afterward is that when one guy driving the band says “left,” the henpecked guy will say, “No, let’s go right.” He won’t really want to go right, but he’ll want to assert himself as the leader. Every band is the same: the drugs, the women, the ego. All three of them prey on you and destroy your group. And, after getting over the drugs, the women and the egos were destroying us.
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” Tommy said. “Why would I want to tour just to pay for Vince’s mistakes?” The touring was about more than Vince and his pocketbook; it was also about getting Tommy out of jail. We had every promoter in the country writing the judge letters about the financial straits they’d be in if Tommy’s jail term forced the cancellation of dates.
So I told Tommy, like I had a million times before, that he could do both: start his own band and play in Mötley Crüe. That’s what I was doing with my side project, 58 (a collaboration with David Darling, who happened to be married to Brie Howard, which made him my ex–stepfather-in-law).
“I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “Being on the road with Mötley Crüe is going to be a hell of a lot safer than being at home with Pamela Anderson.”
As I visited Tommy in jail each week, I wondered why I had never done the same for Vince when he was serving time after the Razzle accident. He was my brother and bandmate too, but back then I was too addicted and self-indulgent to think about anyone else. I called Vince and said, “You know what sucks? That I’ve been to visit Tommy a dozen times in jail, and I never went to visit you once.”
“It’s okay,” Vince said. “You were really fucked up back then.”
“It’s not okay with me,” I said. “It was a miserable time for you, and we weren’t there for you. We had just completed the most successful tour a young rock band had ever gone out on. We had just enjoyed the best times of our lives together. And when you went to jail, we dropped you like a hot sack of shit.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Vince said. “Everything ended up okay.”
“I don’t know if it did,” I said. “I don’t know if it did.”
That night, Vince and I decided to spend some time together. There was a party at the Playboy Mansion and we pulled in after midnight. When we walked in, a friend named Dennis Brody ran up to us. He said Pam had just been at the party, getting very friendly with her ex-boyfriend, a surfer named Kelly Slater, in the middle of the game room with dozens of people watching.
The next afternoon, Tommy called. He was excited because he had just checked his answering machine and there was a message from Pam. He made me call his machine and listen to it. “I love you so much, baby,” the message began. “And I’m so sorry you are in there. I know it will make you a stronger person, though. Just always remember that I love you and care about you very much.”
I called Tommy back. “Dude,” he said. “I have hope. There’s a good chance now that we will be back together.”
I wanted to keep my mouth shut, but that’s not what a real friend would do. “I have a story to tell you,” I began, “and I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
He was flabbergasted. He refused to believe that while he was in jail talking to cockroaches, she was out getting the cockroach.
“You know what,” he told me. “Pam always hated you.”
I always knew that was true. Some people said it was because she was jealous of my friendship with Tommy, but I always thought it was because she couldn’t control me. Every time she went out to eat with us, she had every man at the table willing to sell their soul to pay the check or pass the bread or pick up a napkin she had dropped. But I was never interested. I used to tell Mick that I wouldn’t even fuck her with his dick. She just seemed weird and misshapen, like someone had beat her face in with an ugly stick, albeit a very expensive ugly stick. Who she reminded me of, actually, was some of the chicks Vince fucked. And, come to think of it, she was one of the chicks Vince fucked.
5/28/98
F.E.A.R.
False Evidence that Appears Real.
Fear, the enemy of faith.
Where Faith is, Fear isn’t.
I shall Fear Not.
Why am I scared?
/> Is she gonna leave me?
Will she come back?
Does she really love me?
If it’s in fact—
(rap)→
Fear can make a person
See something that’s
Not there—or
Hear something that
Was not said.
My cell is a “one-man submarine.”
Worry is “soul-suicide.”
If in fact
She really really loves me
Then why did she leave me?
And will she ever come back?
Possible album title: “Feardrops From…”
5/29/98
“Control your emotion or it
Will control you!”
“The angry man will defeat
Himself in battle
As well as in life.”
5/31/98 (written on the back of a pamphlet titled “Our Daily Bread”)
Pamela,
I’m sorry to hear that you’re taking the incident that we had as the breakpoint of our marriage. It was a terrible incident. I’m being punished for it.