She’s like, “End it! End it! End it!” meaning the marriage, so the public wouldn’t think she was some kind of conniving bitch. So we came up with this idea for an annulment. At that point, I was willing do anything to make her happy—so I’m like, “Where do I sign?”
What came next made it seem like I was schizo, listening to my Carmen-loving heart one day, my Carmen-hating handlers the next—but that’s not the way it went down. I was just trying to get the annulment done as fast as possible so Carmen and I could start fresh.
My lawyer filed the papers on November 23, 1998. The marriage was nine days old. In California, there is a form for just such sad occasions, the “FL-100,” which offers six—and only six— grounds for annulment. If you’re going for a divorce or separation, you have the nice, vague “irreconcilable differences.” But for an annulment, the only categories are: “petitioner’s age at time of marriage,” “prior existing marriage,” “unsound mind,” “fraud,” “force,” and “physical incapacity.”That’s it. Me? I don’t give a shit. Just get it done. So my handlers huddle, and they go with what they got. Since nothing else even remotely applies, they check the boxes marked:
Unsound mind (as in plastered)
Fraud
In other words, we were back where we started.
“IT WAS LIQUOR AFTER ALL,” screamed the NewYork Post, reporting on what they called a “bizarre flip-flop.”
Instead of clearing Carmen of charges of being a conniving bitch, the annulment papers reinforced the notion. The whole thing had backfired—and my signature is right there on the goddamn form. Did I read what I was signing? Nope. Did I ever tell anyone I was too drunk to know what I was doing? Nope. I’m not sure my lawyer understood the nuances of the situation.
“Dennis alleges he was so inebriated at the nuptials that he didn’t know which end was up, what he was doing,” he told the media.
Carmen’s publicist countered, but it was too late. The damage was re-done. “Carmen and Dennis mutually agreed upon the termination of this marriage several days ago,” the publicist said, “due to all the events that occurred.”
What-fucking-ever.
Meanwhile an enterprising reporter for the Post talked to folks at the Clark County Marriage License Bureau and the Little Chapel of Flowers in Vegas.
Both denied I was drunk. “We don’t issue a license if they are intoxicated, no matter who they are,” said a license bureau supervisor.
The clerk who actually sold us the license said, “He was fine as far as I could tell.”
“He was not intoxicated,” said somebody from the wedding chapel. “He said so himself, and you should take his word for it.”
Even Carmen waded in. “I’ve seen Dennis drunk before,”—no shit?—“and he didn’t seem drunk,” she told People Magazine.
“I asked him, ‘Dennis, is this really something you want to do?’
He said, ‘Yes,’ and he asked me the same question, and I said, ‘Yes.’”
Drunk, not drunk, it doesn’t matter. I knew exactly what I was doing.
The act may have been impulsive, but the sentiment was not. Carmen and I were crazy in love, and we were going to get married sooner or later, one way or another. It was inevitable. Now staying married—that was something altogether different.
By the way, the annulment didn’t take.
Why? I don’t know.
Despite all the uproar, Carmen and I were still married and looking to the future. Anyone trying to keep up with what was going on with us, need only have read the Post:
New York Post—December 8, 1998: “She’s a very classy woman, no matter what my manager or anyone said about that she conned me,” Rodman says, “You don’t have to be drunk to want to marry a woman like that. That decision I made was my decision and hopefully stays.”
New York Post—December 11, 1998: “I am still in love with him,” Electra says. “There is possibly a future for my relationship.”
Chicago Tribune—January 20, 1999: “As of Tuesday, [Dwight Manley] was Rodman’s former agent.”
New York Post—January 23, 1999: “Electra appeared on the Howard Stern show … [and] said the marriage is solid despite reports her hubby is two-timing her with Scores dancer Stacey Yarborough.”
New York Post—February 6, 1999: “After only three episodes starring Carmen Electra-the former Baywatch babe who married NBA star Dennis Rodman—the WB is pulling her struggling drama Hyperion Bay off the air.”
New York Post—February 23, 1999: “Rodman signed with the Lakers and the couple were ‘lovey-dovey,’ as the NewYork Post would report later, Rodman claiming he and Electra ‘were happily married, but living in separate homes.’”
After I signed with the Lakers, Carmen played the dutiful NBA wife, coming to games and all that shit. Of course, she never made it until halftime, and my right-hand man,Thaer Mustafa, was pissed from having to wait for her to get her shit together. I understood that. She was now a big-time celebrity, thanks to me, and the spotlight was going to be on her so she was feeling the pressure to look good. All I was saying was, “Start earlier.” Coming in late shows disrespect.
Anyway, when she finally arrived, it was more of the same. She was signing autographs, not paying attention to what’s going on.
Thaer was like, “This is your husband—watch the fucking ball game.”
Come a television timeout, she was dancing, and people in the stands were going crazy. Now I’ll admit the girl can dance, but this ain’t her show. This is a fucking basketball game. So I’m the frustrated husband, signaling “Sit her ass down! Get her to stop!” to Thaer. Not much chance of that—she was a whore for attention.
But I have to admit: the girl looked fine, and she was mine.
Looking back now, I realize that those early months were about as good as it would get for Carmen and me. Of course, I managed to fuck it up. I don’t know what I was thinking. There I was, 37 years old, and it had finally happened. I had met the love of my life and married her. It should have been a done deal. But three months into a marriage where I was supposed to be “forsaking all others,” I was still partying my ass off.
Same old Dennis.
Comes the inevitable in late March of 1999. I was still with the Lakers, Carmen was out of pocket somewhere, and, following a 99-91 win over the New York Knicks, I was holed up with female company at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. Another one of those enterprising reporters, this one from the London Times, would report I was in Room 821. Whatever the room, I was having a large time.
Then Carmen showed up.
I had come close to being caught red-handed before we were married. I was having a beach party at my Newport Beach house, 300-400 people, and the “adult industry” showed up. One of the girls took a liking to me, and we did what we did. Somehow, Carmen got wind of the party. She walked in the door, looking like the Bulls’ logo—smoke pouring out her nose. First, she cornered the girl, and then she turned on me.
“Did you screw her?” she asked. “Did you screw that porn star?”
“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
World War III.
It’s one thing to suspect somebody might be fooling around on you—it’s quite another to stand there face to face with the slut-ho competition.
But that was nothing compared to what was about to happen at the Beverly Hills Hotel. This dumb ass, who to this day bills himself as a super bodyguard, let five-foot-four Carmen Electra bully her way into the bedroom, where I was in bed with not one, but two girls—a buck naked ex-girlfriend who happened to be a masseuse and a Playboy/Penthouse model wearing one of my T-shirts. As for me, I had my earrings on.
It was like the Jerry Springer Show.
“Carmen went ballistic. She yanked the covers off the bed and started screaming at us,” the Playboy model told the London Times. “The whole thing was a nightmare. She was jumping up and down on the bed, screaming and cursing at the three of us.”
&nbs
p; “The other woman and I were cowering in bed, while Dennis was lying back as though he hadn’t a care in the world,” the woman continued. “He said he had never seen me before, as if I just dropped through the ceiling and happened to land on his bed.”
After about 15 minutes of this, Carmen left—but she wasn’t done with my ass.
No, No, No. …
Later she was like, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck You! I’m going to be with somebody that’s going to treat me right.”
Who could blame her? You can’t fuck with a girl’s emotions like that—not that I meant to. I was just doing what I did, just being Dennis. And the Playboy/Penthouse woman had gone on and on and on in the Times, saying the “sex was fabulous,” and “we probably did just about everything two women and a man can do in bed.”
Now I had not only cheated on Carmen, but, with a little help from the media, I had embarrassed her in front of the world. I loved her, but I guess I didn’t show it.
We broke up, and I tried and tried and tried to get her back, but when you fuck up like that—get caught with another woman, make that two women—that’s probably the last straw. Still, I did everything I could to get her back, to get the magic back: flowers, gifts, crying jags, the whole deal.
Nothing worked. Nothing new.
No matter whom I’ve dated, it has always come down to that fateful day where she’s sitting here, I’m sitting there, and she’s asking, “Did you sleep with this girl? Did you sleep with that girl? Are you going sleep with that girl?”
Being straight up, real, I say, “Yep, yep, yep.”
You want Dennis Rodman? You have to accept the whole package. I don’t want to be your boyfriend if you’ll feel degraded when I sleep around. Don’t want that. We’ll just be friends. Carmen and I decided together that, since being married to me was hurting her so badly, we’d get divorced and try to date again, which seemed logical—so that’s what we did.
New York Post—April 7, 1999: “‘Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman have announced they have mutually agreed to end their six-month-old marriage under amiable circumstances,’ said the couple’s spokesman. ‘Miss Electra and Mr. Rodman are and will remain friends.’”
Turned out I was dead right about one thing: when we got divorced, Carmen didn’t want anything—not a penny.
Nothing, zilch, zero.
About a week after Carmen filed, the Lakers let my ass go after only 23 games. The grounds?
“Irreconcilable differences.”
Carmen started dating other people—rock stars Tommy Lee and Fred Durst—and we went for weeks without seeing each other or talking or connecting at all. I went nuts, trying to get her on the phone, driving by her house in the middle of the night, this and that. At my worst, I was curled in a ball moaning, repeatedly screaming, “I fucked up! I fucked up! I fucked up!” I was punishing myself for not being with her.
Most of the time, when I want to get over somebody, I go out and have sex with other girls.
Sleep with this girl.
Sleep with that girl.
But even that didn’t stop the pain.
Carmen must have been feeling the same way, because we got back together for a little bit, but because of the things I’d done and the things she’d done, it was never quite the same. I even stripped for her—she loved that—did this, did that.
All kinds of crazy shit.
Nothing. There was no turning back. Still, we continued to date off and on, going nowhere, until the fall of 1999 and the beginning of the end in South Bee-itch—Miami, baby—playground of the stars.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE PASTA THING
Miami, Friday, November 5, 1999. According to police reports, she—Patrick, Tara Leigh, “alias Carmen Electra”—and I— Rodman, Dennis Keith, “alias ‘The Worm,’”—had very different versions of what exactly led to the late-night brawl. About all we agreed on was that we had been clubbing and drinking the night away in South Beach before returning to Room 302—my suite at the swanky Bentley Hotel—around 4:30 a.m.
I was in town to work on a movie called Cutaway, starring me, Tom Berenger and Stephen Baldwin. The script involved a skydiving cop putting the hurt on skydiving drug dealers or something like that. Carmen had come down to visit, and we were all staying at the Miccosukee Resort and Convention Center, a Miccosukee-Indian-run hotel in the Everglades National Park near our shooting location. I soon decided that was too far from the action, and I booked us another set of rooms at the Bentley in South Beach. That’s where we were when the brouhaha began.
In Carmen’s version, we were “watching MTV together when Co-Defendant [me] became agitated when Defendant’s [Carmen’s] ex-boyfriend appeared in a video.”
I was supposed to have said, “You fucking whore! Get the fuck out! Go with Fred!”
(That would be Fred Durst of the rock band Limp Bizkit.)
This was all total horseshit—pure fiction—not that I did any better.
I told the cops that the “Defendant” (that would be me) was asleep—passed out actually—when “Co-Defendant (Carmen) began poking Defendant with a rose stem.”
That too was horseshit.
Here was when what we told the cops and the truth began to converge.
Big picture: For whatever reason, a knockdown, drag-out fight ensued that went up one side that hotel and down the other. I really don’t remember much of this, a fleeting detail here and there— forget the sequence of events—since I was, you guessed it, “shitfaced.”
Here’s a blow-by-blow pieced together using media accounts, the statements Carmen and I gave to the cops, and Thaer Mustafa’s recollections.
First, after the opening blow-up, Carmen claimed that I “forcibly escorted” her out of my room onto a “concrete walkway,” where she cut her toe. I then “slammed the door.” She came storming back inside, “punching Co-Defendant about his body [yelling], ‘How could you do this to me?’” as my statement put it.
We then “began to wrestle on the bed.” Carmen claimed she got “hit on the left side of her head”—could have happened, but it wasn’t on purpose—and “in fear for her safety, fled the hotel room and went upstairs to Witness #1’s [that would be Thaer’s] room.”
Now, anyone who believes Carmen Electra was “in fear for her safety,” wasn’t there and obviously doesn’t know the girl. This 110-pound hellion jumped my 230-pound ass, and it was all I could do to keep her off me.
That I remember.
So Carmen “fled” to Thaer’s room, by her account, telling the cops she wanted him to help her get the hell out of there. I stomped in.
“‘You want your fucking purse?’” I supposedly yelled.
I “threw her black purse at her, hitting her in the face.” That resulted in a “fat lip” as the New York Post phrased it. Then Carmen “fled to the lobby and waited for her limousine.”
I was right behind her.
“Look in your purse,” I yelled. “You’re not going anywhere.” I had hidden her identification, passport, and credit cards. Somewhere in the report, Carmen claims that I “tore a silver chain off her neck.” Anyway, I didn’t want her to go, so I asked the desk clerk to call the cops. That was likely redundant. This was around seven o’clock in the morning, and by then, we’d been raising hell for a couple of hours. Anyway, Thaer was like, “Bad idea on the cop-calling thing,” and he was trying to get Carmen out of there before they arrived to keep her from being arrested. Still under the influence, I was thinking, “If the cops come, she’ll have to stay, and we can work this thing out.”
Stupid.
Meanwhile Thaer finds Carmen’s identification and stuff where I hid it—in the bottom of one of those big cylindrical ashtrays with sand in the top—and loads Carmen into a limo for her ride to the Miccosukee Hotel.
The cops arrived at Room 302 to find me “lying on the floor behind the door.” Why? Only Herr Jägermeister knows. They reported that “the room was in disarray.”
I’ll say. The
place was trashed. It was so bad that it looked like we had been having sex in there. Officer Paul Acosta took my statement, the cops talked the limo driver into bringing Carmen back, and Officer Christi Tanner took her statement. Officer Tanner then moved on to Thaer and took his statement.
“I told her the whole story—almost,” Thaer recalled. “I left out a couple of things, like the pasta thing. I told her everything else.”
“The pasta thing.” Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s start over.
Flashback to 4:30 a.m. in Room 302, the Bentley Luxury Suites Hotel: I was passed out face down on the bed. Carmen undressed me, and for reasons unknown, decided to give me a sponge bath. When she was done, she was telling Thaer—why he was there I don’t know—that as wonderfully nasty and kinky as I was in bed, you’d think I would grant her this one little indulgence. Then she told him what she planned on doing.
Thaer was like, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
She was like, “He’s not going to do anything, he’s passed out.”
Thaer says she started looking around in the kitchen for something suitable. She found this box of pasta—penne pasta—in this gift basket that had probably been there for years.
Thaer was still saying, “No, you’re not—this is a really bad idea.”
But she was saying, “Yes, I am; he never lets me do this to him.”
Now all of us have things we will and won’t do, like and don’t like in bed. And sometimes you and your partner just have to agree to disagree. That’s the way it was with Carmen and me—until then.
The woman is on record as saying I have “a nice butt.”
A little too nice apparently.
For whatever twisted reason, Carmen would occasionally ask me to let her—“Won’t hurt a bit!”—shove things up my “nice butt.” But I was like, “No. No. No. Homey don’t play dat.”
My life-long policy has been, if you’re going to be inserting anything in Dennis Rodman’s butt, it best be in a hospital setting, and involve a fistful of K-Y jelly and a board-certified proctologist.
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