So George went over to talk to the pit boss, told him, “If Dennis says he’s lost or somebody’s stolen a $1,000 chip, trust me, it’s gone.”
The guy was skeptical, but then George asked him, just for curiosity’s sake, to “check out the ‘eye in the sky.’”
Well the video from several security cameras showed that the girl who was still standing on my right—the brunette I had planned on sleeping with that night—had palmed the $1,000 chip and then cashed it in at cashier number nine. This after she’d told me that she was going to the bathroom. George whispered the news in my ear.
All I said was, “Get my money.”
George waited a few minutes, then pulled the girl aside on some pretense, and called her out. She denied it, repeating, “I didn’t steal shit! I didn’t steal shit!” Right about then, George told her she was the star of her own casino video. Now she was sweating.
“If I give you the money, will you let me go?” she asked.
“Sure, no problem,” George replied.
She jammed a hand down the front of her pants and dug 10-$100 bills out of her panties. George counted the money and then escorted her over to the two suits from casino security.
“You told me you were going to let me go,” she said.
“Yeah, and you told me you didn’t steal the chip,” George said. “I guess we’re both liars.”
Reality Check:Life’s a bitch, Bitch.
I was a late bloomer. For me, all the sucking up started in college. For guys like Shaq, it begins in junior high school. If you’re good on the basketball floor, you’ll have many “friends,” because they see the potential down the road. Then you start noticing how things change. Suddenly you’re a whole lot smarter—nobody disagrees with you—you’re a lot better looking, and women who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire suddenly want to date you. You can do no wrong. The money you haven’t made yet starts making friends on its own. Later when you finally realize the money and fame are more attractive than you are, it’s like “Fuck!” But you can’t dwell on it.
As for all you “Hey-let’s-go-party-with-Dennis!” suck-ups out there, when you hang out with somebody just because of money or fame, and not because you like the person, you can lose yourself. When you’re living the ass-kissing life, all of a sudden your views, your ideas, your opinions, and your thoughts get buried, and you have lost contact with yourself, downgraded yourself, sold your soul. The bottom line is: you’re hurting yourself a whole lot more than you’re hurting me.
CHAPTER FOUR
EVERY DAY IS NEW YEAR’S EVE
I first hooked up with bodyguard George Triantafillo at the photo shoot for the cover of Bad As I Wanna Be. My agent at the time, Dwight Manley, asked George to work the shoot, trying to head off any trouble since there was nudity involved.
“Do I have to be naked?” George asked.
“No,” replied Manley.
“Then I’m in.”
Born and raised in Chicago, George is a burly guy, over six feet tall, who looks like he belongs in the “City of Broad Shoulders.” We hit it off from the first, and he would soon become not only my full--time bodyguard, but my friend. A cop from a family of cops, his job was to protect me from the public—and myself—as I continued to try to live every day as if it were New Year’s Eve.
During my three seasons with the Bulls, George was the hurdle you had to jump to get to me, whether you were my agent, a crazy-ass fan, or Phil Jackson himself. He was the bad guy if someone wanted an autograph, and we didn’t have time to stop, the guy who got me to places on time and always answered the door. He was the guy who dropped women off at the curb with 20 bucks for cab fare at the first sign of trouble, and perhaps most importantly, he was the sober guy who did my thinking for me in the wee hours. (George swears my ass would have never gotten within 10 yards of that motorcycle at Treasures if he’d been around. He’s probably right.) George also came up with the litmus test for when it was time to call it a night.
At some point late in some wasted evening, George would come up to me and say, “So Dennis, what’s the state fish of Hawaii?” If I could pronounce it, we kept on partying. If I couldn’t, we went home. Now this would be no big deal if we were talking about the Illinois state fish (the bluegill), or the California state fish (the golden trout). But the state fish of Hawaii is something called the humuhumunukunukuapuaa. Many a night, I just took it on home without even giving it a shot.
The Dennis Rodman party train had started out small— George, a few friends, and me—ferrying from one club to another until dawn in my pickup truck or Hummer. But in time, I became like a pied piper. We’d pick up a handful at supper, another bunch at a club, and before the night was over, there’d be a couple dozen of us raising hell. I got tired of everybody having to follow us in cabs—it interrupted the flow of the party—so I bought an R.V. first, and then, in my last year in Chicago, I got us a tour bus like the ones rock stars have—you know, with couches, a television, sound system, bar, and a bedroom in back. Now 20 or 30 of us could party non-stop all night long. Maybe we’d go to St. Louis to see the Rams play; or Joliet to gamble; or Detroit to see my favorite group, Pearl Jam. When you hopped on that bus, best pack a bag, it might be a three-day trip. Whatever. Whenever. If we didn’t have a game the next night, I was partying. After a game, I was partying. Off-season, I was partying—lots of drinking, gambling, and, of course, women.
Most men spend the better part of their life chasing women. But if you’re a famous NBA superstar like “Dennis Rodman,” you aren’t chasing—you’re picking and choosing. Bottom line: if you’re an NBA star, you never have to sleep alone. That ain’t bragging; it’s just the truth. And that changes everything. The whole man-woman thing is out of kilter. And while you might be living every man’s dream, odds are if you sleep with 20,000 women like Wilt Chamberlain—My ass! Do the math—or a more modest couple of thousand like me, some freaky shit is going to happen.
Here are a couple of stories:
One night, George and I were at Crobar, this hot club in Chicago, and I got hooked up with this young lady. White. Blond. Beautiful. The usual. Normally, I’d just take her home to my house in Northbrook, but it was late, and that’s like a 30-minute drive, so I asked George to get us a suite at the Ambassador East.
We took off in the pickup; the girl and me, and George, who drove, since I was hammered. He soon noticed that this guy was following us in a red Camero. George ran a few lights, made a few quick turns—the standard stalker/paparazzi drill—then double-parked in front of the Ambassador East. By now, it was like 4:30 a.m. So we were at the front desk getting the key to the suite and George spots the red Camero guy standing in the lobby about 30 feet away. George went over to check him out.
He flashed his badge. “May I help you?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the guy said, “That’s my girlfriend. That girl with Rodman.”
“Wait right here,” said George, without missing a beat. He came back over to talk to the girl. Turned out the guy was telling the truth.
“How long you been dating?” George asked the girl.
“Oh, we live together,” she said.
I swear to God. They were fucking living together. I figured ol’ Dennis was going to be sleeping alone that night.
“Should I let you go?” I asked the girl.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she said. “I’m going with you.”
Okay.
So now I was feeling sorry for the red Camero guy, not sorry enough to run the girl off, but you know … sorry. I gave the key to the suite to George, and he took it over to the boyfriend. I could get another room. Well, the guy accepted the key. No shit.
The girl and I went to our room and did what we did. The next morning, George, the girl and I were grabbing a little breakfast at the restaurant Third Coast, right around the corner from the hotel, and I spotted the boyfriend a couple tables away. So I asked George to pay for the guy’s breakfast—least I could do. The boyfr
iend accepted.
Breakfast over, the girl gave me a big wet kiss and her number. “Call me,” she said, and walked over to rejoin the boyfriend. Well, the red Camero guy stood up and started toward our table. I was thinking, “Oh shit!” (I wasn’t afraid of the guy, I was afraid of the lawsuit).
George was tensing up as the boyfriend offered me his hand and said something like, “What a great fucking honor it is to meet you … You’re the coolest guy. Chicago really needs you. Thanks for being who you are. Keep it real.”
No shit.
Then the guy took his girlfriend’s hand, and the last I saw of them, they were strolling down Dearborn arm in arm.
Freaky ain’t it? It’s been almost eight years, and I’m still trying to figure out what that was all about.
Reality Check: Fame changes everything.
Here’s another freaky story. I’ve always had this thing about hijacking bridesmaids’ parties. I must have horned in on a dozen of them over the years.
So one night I saw this group of girls out on the town in Chicago. Bridesmaids! I started buying them drinks; we hooked up; and after a while, the bride was all over my ass—the bride. As if that wasn’t bad enough, turned out one of the bridesmaids was the groom’s sister. I figured this was going nowhere. Whatever, we were having a good time. That was a few hours before the bride fucked my brains out. Now I’ve always wondered if the bride went through with the wedding. If she did, you know the sister-in-law owned her ass for as long as that marriage lasted.
Reality Check: Fame warps everything.
Some people hear these stories and say, “Dennis, you were wrong to sleep with that bride and the wayward girlfriend. Why didn’t you do the right thing and send them packing?”
That’s not my choice to make. If some woman wants to have sex with me for whatever reason—I’m irresistible, a last fling, revenge against an unfaithful husband, temporary insanity—who am I to say “No”? If they want to betray all that is holy by fucking the devil himself, that’s their decision. If I say “No,” I’m saying that this helpless little girl is incapable of making her own decisions. My approach has always been, “If you’re willing, let’s go.”There is one exception: If I know you, know your husband or your boyfriend, I won’t do it.
Other than that, bring it on.
And, by the way, back in the day, Dennis Rodman was the safest “devil” to screw in Chicago. That’s because George was always close enough to hear a “No!” or a “Don’t!” or any last-minute change of heart. And before my feet hit the floor, he would come charging in the bedroom and do the father-knows-best drill, dragging the girl’s ass out the door. All for “her own good,” of course. Actually, that’s a pretty good example of another thing they accuse me of: treating women like a piece of meat.
I’ll admit to that. And how do you think women treat Dennis Rodman? Hello—like a life-support system for a dick. So in my world, there ends up being a kind of crazy, ass-backwards brand of equality that even a feminist might embrace. In Rodman world, everybody is treated like a piece of meat.
That’s cool. I know women don’t come to me looking to live happily ever after in a two-bedroom brick rancher with a white picket fence. They come to me so they can say, “I slept with Dennis Rodman.” Then they get on back home to Opie. And so there’s no doubt, I make it clear up front.
“We’re just gonna have sex. That’s it. Done.”
So everybody knows what’s up going in. Take it or leave it. That’s the way it is. Everybody gets what they want—sounds like a perfect arrangement to me.
Sometimes in party mode (maybe I’ve had 10, 15, 20 shots of Jägermeister) things have happened—not that I regret, I don’t regret anything—but things have happened that probably wouldn’t have happened if I were sober. I’m thinking in particular of this benefit sponsored by an upscale strip club where things got a little crazy. Some people called it an orgy. I’m not going to tell you the name of the club or even the city, except to say it wasn’t Chicago.
Why?
In your typical strip club, there is lots of good, nasty fun: topless, maybe even buck-naked girls dancing, lap dances, rivers of booze. And unless you’re tucking a few bucks into a stripper’s garter belt or whatever, there’s a “no touch” rule. But, if you believe the cops, this club was—for sports VIPs at least—nothing but a high-priced whorehouse, and we weren’t even in Nevada.
Four of us flew up there from Miami on a private jet for a benefit the club was having the next day for some charity, somewhere. It was me, George, this big-name entrepreneur, and his son, whom we’ll call “Joe” and “Joe Jr.” I got hammered on the plane and commenced playing the big shot, making promises to Joe, who was an older guy around 60.
“You’re gonna have the time of your life,” I said. “I’m gonna get two girls to go down on you.”
George sometimes calls me “a corruptor,” and this time perhaps he was right. We went straight from the plane to the club. I’m known all over the world for going to strip joints—you might say I’m a recognized connoisseur. So every bouncer, every manager, every yahoo in the place came out to meet me at the door. It was like, “Oh my God! Dennis Rodman’s here!” I was the man of the hour. I could go in there and get anything I wanted. It was like waving a magic wand and—shazam!—I got my wish.
They led us upstairs to this private, dimly lit room, and when we all got inside, they closed the curtains. There were already a dozen naked girls in there, maybe more—nothing but writhing flesh. I chatted up the woman in charge of “negotiable services,” and soon two girls went over and delivered on my promise to Joe. Joe Jr., a kid in his early twenties, couldn’t take it, and he had to leave the room. Can’t blame him. George laughed, and I said, “What are you laughing at?” and sicced a couple of girls on him. Then I got three girls for myself.
After a while, Joe Jr. wandered back in the room. Not that he was having a good time. He was sitting there, straight up in his seat, eyes big as saucers, frozen, watching all this way nasty shit going on. The boy was in shock. I tried to snap him out of it, “introduced” him to one of the girls. It didn’t help. Turned out the kid was germophobic, and he dashed out of there to the bathroom where he scrubbed his hands for 15 minutes.
The next day the charity thing kicked off with a golf outing. It was a shotgun start, and all these pretty girls—there were like three women for every man—were spread out all over the course doing hostess duty for all these big-name sports celebrities. I won’t tell you who they were, but let’s just say there were future hall of famers from three or four sports on hand—all for some charity, somewhere. Anyway, the shotgun went off, and so did the girls’ clothes. They went topless. They went bottomless. They were making golf balls disappear. This was right in the middle of this suburban golf course. Even I was impressed. Somebody called the sheriff.
Party’s over.
So we went back to the private room at the strip club where the owners said they were donating the day’s proceeds to some charity, somewhere. The more I drank, the more enthusiastic I got. It was for a good cause, right? I was running up a major tab—$5,000-$10,000—for girls, booze, champagne, food. After a while, an AFOed—“all-fucked-out”—George was just sitting there in a room full of beautiful naked women eating buffalo wings, proving once again that you can get too much of a good thing.
Night over, I was out about $50,000, but it was for a good cause, right? I even got to take a couple of girls home: “the woman in charge of negotiable services” and a sweet young thing who would later tell the cops I paid her $500 for the privilege. No way, I have never paid for sex. Don’t have to.
As I told the district attorney, a stripper’s job is to please you and satisfy you the best way she knows how. And sometimes she might end up having sex with you, but not in a way where she’s going to be a whore. It’s like meeting a girl at a club, at the grocery store. I mean if she wants to screw you, she’s going to screw you. Money has nothing to do with it.
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br /> As for all this shit being demeaning to women, I don’t buy it. I don’t do anything that the woman doesn’t want me to do. Strippers are there for one reason—to make money. They do it by fulfilling male fantasies. It’s tit for tat (yeah, that’s on purpose), and it’s the most straightforward relationship a man will ever have with any woman. I pay you this. You do that. There’s no bullshit.
I treat a woman as she is. If she wants to work in a strip joint, I treat her just like that—take anything I can get. If she has a “respectable” job, I treat her like a respectable woman. That’s the way I break these girls down—no big mystery. If I’m treating you like what you are, what you chose to be, how can that be demeaning, disrespectful? It would be disrespectful if I treated you like something you’re not. Say I treated a whore like a Sunday school teacher. Hell … the bitch would starve to death.
Reality Check: Act like a piece of meat, get treated like a piece of meat.
Back in my suite at the hotel, “the woman in charge of negotiable services” won out, and the sweet young thing bailed, ending up in the next room with George. “You mind if I come sleep with you?” she asked. “It’s pretty wild in there.” A couple of minutes later she was sound asleep in his arms. Later, George was like, “So what’s wrong with my ass? Not even a stripper will screw me.” Turns out she wasn’t all that interested. The sweet young thing and “the woman in charge of negotiable services” were lesbian lovers. You can’t make this shit up.
I told one on George, now here’s one on me. I was so drunk, I don’t remember any of this, but George swears it’s true. One night I was in the rear bedroom of my rock ‘n’ roll tour bus with a young lady. George was outside just watching the bus rock “like a ship at sea,” as he tells it. Well, the rocking stopped too soon, based on past experiences, and George came charging onto the bus to find out what was wrong. The girl was standing there stark naked in the bedroom.
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