by Bobbie Brown
“Reading Dirty Rocker Boys made me realize that someone really needs to make a movie or TV show about the women in that scene too, you know?” she said.
I raised my hands in a hallelujah. Finally, someone gets it.
“And of all the girls from that era, your story is the coolest,” she continued. “It would be so incredible to play Bobbie Brown!”
She wasn’t the first person to approach me about turning my story into a movie or TV show, but she seemed the best qualified and most sincere. Her energy was infectious, and immediately my chagrin about the Mötley movie lifted.
“So who was the person who told you to read my book?”
“My boyfriend,” she said, smiling. “Actually, he’s in the book. He’s the guy in the boy band who you hung out with for a summer, remember?”
Tilky Jones. Southern boy. Oh, my God. How could I forget.
When I first met Tilky, he was in the boy band Take Five, which was formed by Lou Pearlman, whose other acts included the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. At the time, Tilky wasn’t much older than eighteen, and I was already a mother in my thirties and heartbroken over Tommy Lee. That summer, we became friends. We even kissed, a little, although I knew better than to let it go much further than that. I’d always had fond memories of Tilky.
“Was he mad I, uh, mentioned him in the book?” I asked Leven.
“Oh, not at all,” she said, looking at her phone flashing a notification. “In fact, he just texted. Can he come over? He says he’d love to see you.”
Within an hour, Tilky walked in the door. The boy had turned into a man, and a beautiful one at that. He was an actor now, having appeared in Pretty Little Liars, One Tree Hill, Single Ladies, and a few films. I gave him a bear hug worth a couple decades, and we marveled at what a small world Hollywood really is.
“Bobbie, I’m so mad at you—why did you stop calling me?” he said, and I laughed. “No, seriously, Bobbie. What happened?”
He asked me how things were going and I told him about how I was starting a new career in comedy and working on a second book. I was also still trying to figure out my living situation—my roommates were moving out that week and I had no idea what I was going to do. We reminisced a little about the past.
“So why did you stop making music?” I asked. “You have the most incredible voice.”
“I did the touring thing,” he sighed, “and I hated it. Singing comes too easy to me; it’s not something I learn from anymore. I like being able to put on a costume, Bobbie. I would rather play a part than reveal myself to the world.”
Tilky sat next to Leven on the couch and picked up an old magazine with me on the cover. He stared at it, slowly shaking his head. “Man, oh man, oh man.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing, Bobbie. Except, look at this. Can you believe this?” He held up the magazine. “You, Bobbie. Eternal fucking hotness, right there.”
I knew Tilky was just being flirty, having a little joke. I really hoped Leven saw it that way too.
“Well, thanks for lifting a tired old lady’s spirits!” I said, snatching the magazine from his hands.
Tilky piped up. “Don’t put yourself down, Bobbie. You’re the sexiest woman in Hollywood, hands down. Isn’t she, honey?”
Leven smiled. “She’s gorgeous. An absolute legend.”
After they left, I sat on the couch and began composing a text to Leven. It basically said how lovely it was to meet her and how I couldn’t wait to work with her. Then I got a text message, from Tilky.
“I miss you so much.”
Wait. Was he flirting flirting? I couldn’t tell. I’d assumed he was just being extra friendly, but maybe there was more to it. It was so hard to tell, but either way, I’ve always had a strict girls-first policy. My code of conduct dictated that I should immediately tell Leven that Tilky was being flirty with me. Or something. So I did what I thought was right. I forwarded the message to her, with a note:
“I don’t want there to be any weirdness or secrets between us,” I wrote her. “But you should know, Tilky just sent me this.”
Within minutes I got a call—from Tilky.
“Why the hell would you do that, Bobbie?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s cool to flirt with me if you have a girlfriend,” I said. “I just thought that it should be addressed.”
He laughed. “Jesus, Bobbie, I’m just being friendly. Why do you have to be such a drama queen? And by the way, Leven says it’s very nice how respectful you’re being, even though it kind of wasn’t necessary.”
“So you weren’t flirting with me?”
“I don’t think so? Either way, I kind of flirt with everyone, Bobbie. I flirt with eighty-five-year-old diner waitresses.”
I could hear Leven in the background shouting, “It’s true, he does!”
“Oh.”
Perhaps it’s my PTSD from being on the Strip in the eighties and nineties that’s made me so militantly protect-ive of women. I’ve seen what happens to us out there, and it ain’t always pretty. For so long, there was zero protection for us in this town, at least until the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements came around. I’ve always tried to be a one-woman “Time’s Up” movement, a mother hen calling out bad behavior in public and telling girlfriends the truth about their men, even if it sometimes cost me a friendship. But for some, ignorance is bliss, and I’ve been branded a shit-stirrer. And even worse is when I get it wrong.
And so, by trying to do the right thing, I could have totally pissed off that nice Texan actress who wanted to help me and all the girls I came of age with while alienating my long-lost friend to boot. Luckily, neither of them took it to heart, and Leven continued to champion the idea of a Dirty Rocker Boys movie around town. Turned out, the world wasn’t quite ready for the girls to have their moment. The powers that be were unsure about making a film that dished on every leading man in Hollywood, especially if it meant dealing with lawyers representing Leo DiCaprio, Tommy Lee, and Kevin Costner. It all felt very unjust. Still does, if I’m honest.
The Babe Station
In response to the messages sent to her by readers of her 2013 Kindle bestselling memoir Dirty Rocker Boys, Bobbie Brown returns with a second helping of cherry pie, serving up raucous, candid advice on love, sex, and dating, with a generous side of Southern sass…
—Promotional material for Cherry On Top
Caroline Ryder, my writing partner on Dirty Rocker Boys, arrived back in LA from London, ready to get to work on the book you’re reading now. She showed up at my house—blonde, artsy, and diminutive—wearing a denim jacket with an Andy Warhol pin on her lapel. We come from different places, yet we share a fair amount in common. We are each eldest daughters who left home to pursue the Hollywood dream. We are die-hard romantics. We have racked up countless parking tickets. We have Chihuahuas. We love shrimp, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and astrology. And both of our moms are named Judy. We’ve always had great creative chemistry.
I showed her in and asked her how she was doing. She was worried about her brother. “He wrote a novel about an Incel who jumps off a building. He says it contains autobiographical elements.”
“What is an Incel?” I said.
“You don’t wanna know, Bobbie” she said, sighing. “It’s these young guys who have trouble finding girlfriends and are angry about it, so they talk shit about women on the Internet, which makes them feel like they have a sense of community. But sometimes they murder people and/or themselves.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m pretty sure those guys follow me on Instagram.”
She pulled out her voice recorder and hit “record.”
“So what’s been going on, Bobbie?”
Before I had a chance to answer, an attractive, sleepy man wearing nothing but a Gucci silk robe wandered into the room.
“Nice robe,” said
Caroline, looking at me, confused.
“Yeah, it’s Bobbie’s,” said the man, adding, “I feel terrible, let’s have a drink.”
It was Tilky.
So let me explain. After our unfortunate text interaction, Tilky and I had resolved our differences, but had fallen out of contact again. Then, all of sudden, I started thinking about him, and I wasn’t sure why. Something’s going on, I thought, so I sent him a message.
“Your name keeps popping into my head, so I’m just sending you a text to say ‘hi.’”
He responded immediately. “Leven and I broke up. I’m not doing good.”
I told him I was sorry. If he needed to talk about things, I’d be happy to.
He showed up at my house, looking like he hadn’t slept in a year. I showed him in and sat him down.
“Can I tell you something? I hate myself,” he said.
“Believe me, I know exactly how that feels.”
He asked for a cocktail to settle his nerves.
I made him a vodka tonic and asked him to tell me exactly what happened.
He told me he had just moved into a new house with Leven, but then she told him they needed some time apart. He was very much in love with her, so this all came as a shock. She promised him that after the break, she’d be willing to discuss him moving back in and picking up where they left off. Tilky left town to film a movie in Florida, then, when he returned, she told him it was over for good.
Since then, he’d been on a mad bender, going from this girl’s house to that girl’s house, this party to the next. All of his belongings were stashed with a friend, all hope and sense of home had blurred in a cloud of heartbreak and liquor. Lord, if I didn’t know exactly what that felt like, living moment to moment and only finding comfort in the promise of tonight’s escape. I told him that he’d feel better soon. That breakups are the hardest thing on earth, but they usually lead you to a better place.
I handed him some Kleenex, put a shrimp and artichoke dish on the stove, and just let him get it all out of his system.
“I’m looking to be with somebody. I’m a Southern guy, I want a family. Bobbie, I just want to stop. I want to rest.”
I told him all that would come for him in due course.
He nodded. It was getting late. “Bobbie, can I just lie down for a while? I feel horrible.”
“Sure. Do you need some water or something?”
“No. I just need to lie down.”
I took him up to my bedroom. He took off his shirt and lay down on the bed.
“Can you come here for a second?” he said, tapping the edge of the bed.
I hesitated, unsure of what he was doing. I sat next to him, warily.
“Bobbie,” he said, taking my hand. “You were so beautiful back then.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“And you’re still beautiful. In my eyes, you haven’t aged a second.”
“Thank you. That’s very sweet.”
“I was a little intimidated, but the coolest memories that I have from being a teenager were from that summer with you. I’ve thought about you for years. You know, I’ve always loved you…”
I pulled back my hand. This was too much. “Shut up, man. You think that you can just come over here and fuck me to make yourself feel better? Huh?”
He apologized, profusely. “No, Bobbie, it’s not about that. I’m telling you the truth. I really do love you. It’s not about sex.”
“Yeah, right. How can you tell the truth when you’ve been drinking? You’ve been drinking a lot, haven’t you?”
My heart was pounding. Another bird with a broken wing—too young, too handsome. Was he just being flirty, like he said he always was with women? Does he tell eighty-five-year-old diner waitresses they’re beautiful too? Danger bells clanged in my ears, and I stood up.
“Listen, panty dropper…I think you better stop this. A girl can get really attached to that kind of romantic, sweet talk, and it’s not fair. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
Tilky nodded. “Bobbie, can I stay for a few days?”
I had no idea what to do. Whether to hold his hand or kick him to the curb. With all the pain I’d been through, and all the determination I needed to restart my life, it was really easy for me to see Tilky as a threat. But he was polite. Unlike Josh, he wasn’t trying to pressure me into anything. Most of all, I got the sense that he needed a friend. Someone he could trust. The downside of being a nice person in Hollywood is that people tend to wind up on your doorstep when they’re down. People like me, Gretchen, and Sharise—the nice girls, the mama bears—we really are few and fucking far between. And sometimes it’s hard to figure out when these cries for help are real, and when we are being taken advantage of.
Tilky is an actor, but all alcoholics know how to play a role. And I wasn’t sure how much of what he was saying to me was sincere and how much was a way to reel me in emotionally, turn me into a soft place to land.
A babe station.
The guys who babe-station hop from girl’s house to girl’s house say all the right things. They lure you in and get the attention they need from everyone, all the time. They can cry on demand because they cry for themselves and their lives, which are slowly slipping out of control. They stare deep into your eyes without flinching. They ooze charisma and charm. They are entitled and spoiled, shrouding themselves with negative thoughts. Nonetheless, I dote on them, take care of them, help them with anything they need, include them in every detail of my life even though their words and actions are rarely in line with one another.
Unless they’re obvious about it, most times I will not be able to tell if they’re using drugs or alcohol because while I may be used to addicts, I still don’t understand the disease. Instead, I’ll find myself in another disappointing relationship or friendship in which my expectations are unreasonably high and then feel unappreciated as I continue to do way too much, all the while asking myself, Why am I doing this? I am a grown ass adult. I’m not stupid. I’m not in love. And then I realize I do this because I don’t want them to die.
As Tilky lay sleeping on my bed, I worried that I was overthinking things. But I had to stay vigilant. I had only just gotten my life back on track after Josh. I wasn’t ready to embark on another all-consuming journey, if that’s what this was. I couldn’t tell. Men are my kryptonite, this much I know, but it is my destiny to love and help, to be of service the way my mother was, and the way my father eventually was too.
I tried to imagine what my dad would say to me in this situation. He would tell me not to beat myself up for having a heart. That my heart was the thing he was proudest of. I thought about Jani, how right before died he reached out and asked if he could come and live with me.
I’d said no.
I looked at Tilky and knew I couldn’t say “no” anymore. I wanted him to know how much someone cared. I wanted him to know how special, how beautiful, how talented he was, and that there was no need for him to feel alone or without family because he mattered. I decided to try and show him all of those things and make him understand that there is no need to disappear. Even though the thought scared me to death.
As he slept, I went in the hallway, called Taylar, and told her what was going on.
“Mom, this is probably a horrible idea. You know that, right?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Mad? About what?”
“That I always seem to find myself in the same situations.”
“Mom, at a certain point I realized there’s no point in getting mad,” she said. “You’re just going to do what you do. This is just who you are. Maybe it’s an abandonment thing, like you’re afraid of ending up alone and not married or whatever. Or maybe you just really do believe that these guys are good people deep down. I hope you’re right.”
I hoped so too.
The Emp
eror’s New Clothes
In November 2018, the City of Angels found itself ringed by infernos. It was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season ever recorded in California. Some said the fires were headed in my direction. Even so, the show must go on.
Jimmy called to say he was putting together a show at the Dojo that Jamie Kennedy was headlining, and he wanted to know if I would be interested in performing too. I hadn’t been in touch with Jamie much recently, nor Jimmy. My attention had shifted since Tilky showed up at my door. See, that’s what happens when a man comes into my life: tunnel vision.
Tilky had stayed a couple of nights and said that being at my place and away from the party scene had made him feel better. My roommates had moved out and the obvious conclusion was, Why doesn’t he just move in? He wanted to. He had money saved. He was tidy and trustworthy. He was a friend. It seemed to make sense, but still I felt like a moth, flirting with the flame that might kill it.
“Bobbie?” Jimmy said on the end of the line, impatient for an answer.
Oh, yeah. “Go ahead and put me on the show billing. It’ll be nice to see Jamie.”
I sent Jamie a message, letting him know I’d be sharing the stage with him again. Feeling guilty for going a little cold on him, I added that I had a hook-up for a great men’s clothing wholesaler that supplied me with items for my own online clothing store.
“Would you like some cool new designer sweaters?” I asked him, sending a link to the wholesaler’s stuff.
He said he liked three sweaters.
“Great, I’m on it!” I said, guilt instantly relieved to be doing a nice thing for him. I hit up the wholesaler and told them I was ordering clothes for a famous comedian. Maybe they’d be interested in sponsoring him, if he wore their stuff on social media? They said they were fans and would love to. I was so proud of myself. I love helping people out, even if it is for selfish reasons. All was well with the world.
A few hours later Jamie’s assistant emailed me with instructions to have the clothes sent directly to his house. This couldn’t happen; the pieces would have to come to me first, and then I would send them on to him. His assistant did not seem to understand, so I explained again.