by Carre Otis
I shook my head and quickly rushed down the hall, past the menacing firearm. In the kitchen I reached for the phone. “Bruce . . . it’s Carré. Can you pick me up?” I asked brusquely.
“Yeah, of course. You okay, Otis?” Bruce sensed something in my voice.
“Yeah. Sure. Fine. Just ready to come and hang out.” I couldn’t explain what I was feeling or what I thought I’d seen. It was nuts. It made no sense. There was just an ominous feeling in the house. And I didn’t want to be alone with it. Shaking my head and grabbing a cup of coffee, I tried to laugh it off. Don’t be ridiculous, Otis, I said to myself, almost channeling Mick’s voice. I jumped into the shower and got ready for the long day.
Waiting on sets was usually an endless and boring chore. It was the boys’ club. But on occasion I was made to feel that I belonged, too. I met everyone in Mickey’s trailer. They were playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and drinking coffee.
“What’s up, guys?” I asked. “How’s it going on set?” I was hoping things were mellowing and that Mickey was behaving himself.
“Mickey has an early wrap today. They fell behind on someone else’s scenes.” In his thick Italian accent, Franco brought me up to date on what was happening. “We are thinking to go to the county fair.” He smiled, flashing his brilliant sea-green eyes at me. Franco was a real character. Rumored to be a hit man from Sicily, he traveled and acted as Mick’s bodyguard on most movies, leaving his wife and kids at home near Rome.
“Great. Let’s do it,” I said, relieved that we had an outdoor activity planned for us.
I looked out the window of the motor home. Mickey was standing next to George Christie, president of the Ventura chapter of Hells Angels. It wasn’t unusual for George or Chuck Zito, another legendary Hells Angel, to visit Mickey on the sets of his films. The press was frequently right behind, reporting widely on Mickey’s unsavory relationships.
I opened the door and leaned out. “Hey, George.” I smiled and waved. I wasn’t entirely sure who or what the Hells Angels were—I just knew they were heavies of some sort.
“My dear,” George said, smiling and pretending to tip his hat to me. “How are you?”
George and his crew were always cool with me. But that’s not to say I was fooled or that I liked them. I just tried to blend in wherever I went.
“Mick, you ready to go?” I asked. And with that, we were off in a caravan of bikes, followed by the car that Franco drove. The day at the fair was hot and dusty and filled with lots of games, rides, and souvenirs. Soon enough Mickey and I decided to head back toward base camp, where we could have a romantic dinner somewhere on Canyon Avenue near all the art galleries.
“I heard about a great Italian restaurant—let’s hit it, Otis.” Mickey jumped behind the wheel of the rental car, ready to drive. I laughed. It was rare to see him in the driver’s seat. Sliding in next to him, I grabbed his hand, holding it close, tracing the thick veins that ran up his arm. He smiled and nodded at me.
“What’s up?” he asked, sensing that I had something to say.
“Nothing. It’s just . . . something weird happened this morning.” I was going to try to explain the oddity in the house with the gun, but I couldn’t put it into words. Mickey waited for me to say more, then began to drive. I looked out the window, trying to collect my thoughts.
We were almost at the restaurant when I looked down and saw the .357 Magnum on the floor near my feet.
“Damn it, Mickey!” I moaned, pointing to it. “What the hell?” I was furious. “Can’t you guys practice some safety with these things?”
Mickey parked the car and leaned toward me, his voice soft but firm. “Otis, remember, it’s for our protection. I am sorry, though. I’ll talk to the guys about putting these things away.”
“Good idea,” I responded curtly. I stepped out of the car and turned around to grab my purse.
“Go ahead, I got it. I’ll bring it in,” Mick said. What I didn’t know was that he thought it would be a good idea to stash the gun inside my bag.
Dinner was uneventful. My large purse sat next to Mickey’s chair while we ate. When we were through, we decided to drive the bike home and let Franco drive the car. I grabbed my bag and threw it over my shoulder, climbed onto the back of Mick’s bike, and held on tight. The air was just starting to cool, the sun just beginning to set.
“Meet ya out the house,” Mick instructed Franco. Then we sped off into the dusk, heading up Canyon Road.
“Brrr . . . it’s cold, Mick!” I shivered as we got off the bike in front of the house. The boys were already there; I could smell a fire in the fireplace. A beautiful glow emanated from within, so I knew that candles were lit.
“Come on, Otis. Let’s get into a bath!” Mickey laughed and chased me into the house. I screeched with delight and ran as fast as I could through the front door and toward the kitchen. “Grab some wine! Let’s go soak!” I giggled, skidding to a halt as my black cowboy boots hit the tiled floor. Mickey ran to the fridge, searching for a bottle of white, while I slung my bag off my shoulder and tossed it onto the counter.
Boom! A tremendous noise reverberated through the kitchen. And then silence. I looked around curiously. Franco ran into the room. Bruce was just behind him.
“What the fuck was that?” the boys yelled.
“Gunshot!” Mickey screamed in a panic. “A bullet—it just whizzed past me!”
“What the fuck are you guys doing firing guns in the fucking house?” I yelled, stunned. And just then I noticed that everyone was staring at me, their eyes widening.
I stood there, suspended in time. My head reeled. I began to sway slowly from side to side. “Whoa,” I said numbly as I crumpled to the floor. “What the fu—”
I looked down at my blue jeans, my white shirt, and my black leather jacket. What was this strange red puddle flowing out around me in an eerily perfect circle? I looked back up at the guys, confused and bewildered. An instant later the message from the gunpowder reached my brain. I felt as if I were on fire, head to toe. I gasped, and then a wild scream erupted from me. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move. I’d been shot. The gun in my purse, the one without a safety, had discharged the second I’d slung my bag onto the counter.
“Otis! Holy shit! Bruce, help! Franco . . . do something!” Mickey ran toward me. “Where is the gun? Where did that come from?” No one was sure what was going on. The kitchen erupted in a frenzy as the guys scurried around looking for the gun.
“Wait! Help me!” I finally cried out, forcing the words to come. “You gotta help me. . . . I’m bleeding. I’m bleeding really bad.” I held my hand in front of me, watching as the blood dripped down from it. It poured out from my chest, my arm, and my shoulder. A wave of wooziness came over me. I started to gag. And then realized I still wasn’t being helped. Okay, I thought. I have to get their attention. They’re looking for the gun. But I need to get to a hospital. Now. “Call an ambulance,” I could hear my voice say. I sounded very far away.
Franco came to my side. His eyes were wide with fear. “Carré, we don’t have time to wait. I need to help you into the car.” And a moment later he swept me in his big arms. “Ow! Franco! No! Don’t touch me!” I wailed. It hurt so much to move.
For the first time, I heard Franco shout orders at his boss. “Mickey, get the keys! Now!”
Mickey looked around in shock. And in slow motion he grabbed the car keys, fumbling with them in his hands.
“Bruce. You need to . . . you need to find the gun. This is a nightmare. Clean this up!” Mickey was agitated. I could tell he had grave concerns that the press would get wind of the incident. I panicked, wondering which was more important: my life or covering up the fact that I’d been shot with Mickey Rourke’s gun? But Franco was with me, holding me firmly, carrying me out the door and into the night.
“Mickey, front seat! You must drive this car. Fast!” Franco was in complete control, and somehow I knew he knew what he was doing. Thank God someone did.
&
nbsp; As Mickey slid behind the wheel, I could see that his hands were shaking. Franco’s weren’t. He held me as if I were a baby, first sitting down in the backseat, then pulling my body onto his lap.
“Please don’t squeeze me so tight, Franco!” I cried.
He looked at me levelly and said, “I must, Carré. I must try to stop the blood flow.”
I vaguely remember the drive, Mickey stopping at a red light and me begging him to run the damn thing, “Just go!” It felt as though the three of us were in some surrealist film. Instinctively, just as I had seen in the movies, I knew that despite the tremendous drowsiness coming over me, I could not let myself sleep. I fought to keep my eyes open. If I close them, I thought, I might not wake up.
Someone had called ahead to alert the hospital, and medics were waiting as soon as we pulled up. Under intensely bright lights, Franco lifted me out of the car and laid me gently on a stretcher. I was bleary-eyed, dopey from adrenaline and the loss of so much blood. I was rushed into the ER.
Later I learned that gunshot wounds must heal from the inside out, so no stitches could be used. A large drain was placed into my left armpit. I was told it would have to stay there for several weeks. I was also told repeatedly how lucky I was. “A .357 Magnum is a hefty gun,” the doctor remarked, shaking his head in disbelief at my luck.
I had been hit with a hollow-point bullet. It was a miracle I was alive—never mind alive with my arm still attached to my body! The bullet had entered just two inches from my heart. The police questioned me, but no charges were filed. Despite our best efforts to keep things quiet, the story did make the news worldwide.
My mother came to see me in Santa Fe as I recuperated. I was having terrible nightmares, typical post-traumatic-stress stuff.
“Carré, oh, Carré.” She sat by my bedside and cried. She was confused. And suspicious about what had really happened.
“Do you know . . . do you know you can come home, Carré?” she said, looking me in the eyes. I turned away from her. My hands shook, and tears streamed down my face.
“No, Mom, I can’t,” I said quietly. “It’s too late for that.”
And it was. Way too late.
BOXING AND A BIG SUR PROPOSAL
A tremendous amount of unspoken guilt settled over Mickey and me for some time after the gun incident. In some ways we bonded, in others we fell apart. I was wounded physically. And the incident was emotionally devastating for me as well. It blew me away on levels I couldn’t yet articulate. The shooting brought about a greater understanding of impermanence. It also raised my awareness of the tremendously violent vortex I was living in while I shared Mickey’s life. My ability to speak up, already so compromised, was more damaged than my shoulder. People who’ve been shot often take longer to recover emotionally than physically. That was certainly true in my case.
The silence between us hung heavy in the air. So, too, did the reality of Mickey’s decline as an actor. He wasn’t the box-office hit he’d once been. Rather than reflect on his own responsibility for his diminishing film prospects, Mickey began to scorn acting, dubbing it a “career for sissies.” He was blackballing himself and couldn’t be talked out of doing so. His mind had shifted elsewhere. Mickey wanted to box.
I remember the day that he sat down with me and Jane Kachmer, his manager at the time, to tell us of his decision to get back into the ring. It was early 1991, just as Mickey was wrapping Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, a buddy movie that would be another commercial flop. Mickey may have sensed that the film would not do well, and that played a part in his need to find something else to do outside the movie business.
He had toyed with boxing as a kid growing up in a violent household in Miami. Whether or not his stories were true—he said that he had briefly met and trained with Muhammad Ali—I never knew. He definitely had had some amateur fights when he was a teenager. I saw it all as a death wish. His new obsession with fighting struck me as both egotistical and a cop-out, something easier than working through the system to resurrect his acting career. But Mickey saw it differently, and again I was faced with an ultimatum. It was his way or the highway. And, as he told Jane and me, his way now meant fighting.
It would be years before I’d realize that his obsession with boxing, with guns, and with the Mafia was less about an attraction to violence than it was about his fear. It seemed to me that at his core Mickey was a very fearful person. By surrounding himself with tough guys, by acting like a tough guy and carrying a gun, he imagined he could keep himself safe. As I’d found out in New Mexico, the things that made Mickey feel safe had a way of hurting the people who loved him most.
Mickey wanted to have his first professional fight in his hometown. But I didn’t want to be there. Miami had always been hellish for me. Whenever we were in South Florida, Mickey’s demons came forth. Every unresolved issue from his childhood bubbled to the surface in a dark and menacing way. There, in particular, he was all about “the boys.” I was never included. When he was out at night, it was with Miami girls. And there were plenty of them from all over the world. It was the modeling mecca of its day. The white sand beaches, art deco structures and blue skies lent themselves perfectly to the hundreds of catalog jobs shot there every year. Having been told by Mickey that my career should be put on hold if I loved him, I felt unbelievably alienated in that city—on the outs not just with him but with the entire world.
I was usually left behind in a hotel room when Mickey and his posse would hit the town. Why it was so hard for me to walk away, one can only guess. I was under his sway, seemingly unable to let go of the hope that our love would rise out of the wreckage we’d created together instead of die there on the beaches and in the late-night clubs.
Through a boxing promoter, Mickey arranged for his return to the sport. He began an intensive training schedule. He went so far as to turn our Los Angeles loft into a workout space, complete with a ring and punching bags. On any given day, there were several trainers and boxers in the place, wrapping their fists, spitting in buckets, and jump-roping endlessly to INXS. It was insane. There wasn’t a single room with a door in the entire loft. I had no privacy. Our lives, especially mine, took another surreal turn.
I somehow managed to beg off of going to Mickey’s first fight, in Fort Lauderdale in May 1991. I wasn’t up to watching my lover’s ass get kicked six ways till Sunday. Mickey didn’t fight again for nearly a year, thanks to a hectic shooting schedule that included White Sands. But in the spring of 1992, another fight was arranged. This one would be at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Right in the heart of Mickey’s hometown. And it was made very clear to me that he expected me to be there for him. After all we’d been through, I felt obligated to go. Enduring the predictable madness and fanfare, we traveled to Miami Beach for Mickey’s big night.
It was every bit the hell I thought it would be.
Boxing, for me, is actually a weak man’s sport. Who the fuck needs to get into the ring to prove his machismo? I had little respect for it, and even less for the men who were the stars of that profession. Yet on that April night, I found myself playing the role Mickey wanted me to play, sitting quietly ringside, listening to the savage sounds of gloves meeting flesh, the grunts and groans and unbridled Neanderthal behavior of the man I lived with. The fight, against Francisco Harris, ended in a draw.
After the big event, we were supposed to head out to the clubs. But something had come over me. I’d had enough. I needed a break. Mickey was on a tear, on a high that couldn’t be brought down. He wanted to go out celebrating. With the training and the fight finally over, I just wanted to be with him. I begged him to come back to the hotel with me, to have a moment alone, just the two of us.
“Come on, Mickey, please. . . .” I pleaded.
“Fuck you, Otis. I ain’t goin’ back to the room with you. I’m going out!”
I knew what “out” meant, what was included in “out.” And I was sick of it. The partying. The girls. The flirtations. The
nights he never even came back to our room. I was sick of hiding the blow I was doing just to keep myself busy while I waited endlessly for his return. I felt a desperation that I was ashamed of. I felt pathetic.
“Then I’m leaving,” I said matter-of-factly. I was scared shitless as I said it. I knew I would have to stick to my guns. I knew that for any change to occur, for there to be any real hope for us, I would have to leave him.
“Then get the fuck out, you cunt.” He looked at me with testosterone and fury in his eyes. I was stung. I was shocked. But I tried one more time.
“Mickey, please don’t do this . . . please. You’re going to regret it.” A tear tumbled down my cheek.
He didn’t budge. My temper rose.
“Then you know what, Mick? Fuck you! Fuck this!” I spit at him. I was furious. In an instant, Mickey pushed me with all his might toward the door of the limo we were in. My head slammed back against the seat. But I wasn’t ready to give in. All of my passivity shifted into defiant fury.
“Oh, no you don’t, motherfucker!” I shrieked, lifting a hand to slap him. It was too late; the boxer moved too quickly. One hand hit me upside the head, while his other expertly backhanded me across my cheek.
“No, baby, fuck you.” And with that, he swung the limo door open and pushed me out into the darkness of the Miami night. I staggered to get up, crying out as the limo drove off, its red taillights disappearing down Ocean Avenue. I was on my own. It was over.
Numb, I made my way back to the Betsy Ross Hotel and got on the phone, booking my return flight to Los Angeles first thing in the morning. My heart was broken, my face stung, but in another way I was ready: ready to get the fuck out.
I waited up all night, just to see if Mickey would come to his senses, if he’d come back to me. As the sun rose with no sign of him, I knew I had my answer. It was a new day, a new dawning, and it was time for me to leave. For good.
I cried the entire flight from Miami to LAX. Sitting in first class with a pillow over my face, I wept harder than I had in years. So much had happened; there was so much water under the bridge. It was terribly confusing to be so in love yet in such profound pain. This can’t be right, can it? I wondered in despair. This can’t be love.