The girl I was staying with was dating a guy called Chris Shinn, a talented rock singer who is the lead singer of Live and was once tapped to be lead singer of Blind Melon. He listened quietly to my woes. “You can come stay with me as long as you like, Bobbie, I have an extra bedroom,” he said. At that moment, I remembered that angels are real. I hadn’t known Chris five minutes, but he agreed to take me in. Taylar came the second night and we lived there with him for a year, rent-free, at his beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills while I got back on my feet (again). It was hard. I didn’t have a job. I was only getting $500 a month from Jani (far less than the child support arrangement we had agreed upon), and the house was a forty-minute drive from Taylar’s school—sometimes an hour or more if the horrible L.A. freeway traffic was bad. She was often late for school. But we made it work. I cooked, cleaned, and bought groceries, pitching in as best I could. And there was no funny business, ever, with Chris. He was a good friend and a generous and respectful roommate. But still, it wasn’t the best environment for my daughter. We were sharing an air mattress in a small guest bedroom, with an even smaller bathroom. We both knew she deserved better. As much as I had been itching to make it to Hollywood when I was her age, she could hardly wait to leave.
In ninth grade, during the period I was living with Chris Shinn, Taylar went to Baton Rouge for the summer to stay with my mother. In late August, as she was preparing to return to L.A. in time for the new school year, Hurricane Katrina hit. She wasn’t able to leave the state in time to start school, so my mom convinced me to have her enroll in high school in Baton Rouge. Not long after, Taylar called, telling me she wanted to stay there permanently. She liked her new friends in school, Runnels, and she liked the stability that living with my mom afforded her. My mom had remarried, and her third husband, Bill Williamson, doted on Taylar. I was devastated, but I couldn’t blame her for leaving. She had been bouncing back and forth for so many years, it must have been tiring. Taylar, having witnessed the vain excesses of Hollywood firsthand, had no interest in following in the footsteps of either her mother or her father.
Gifted with words, she wanted to be a novelist, and when she graduated, she went on to study creative writing in college. She is extraordinarily talented, just like her father. When she left, I had to fully face the fact that I had not been the best mother I could have been. I had always dreamed of being the mom who threw slumber parties for her kid, who baked cookies and was in a happy union with her child’s father. I knew Taylar deserved all those things. I remembered berating my own mother for falling short in ways that seemed so insignificant, compared with the ways I had failed Taylar. It made me feel ashamed. I had never intended for my daughter to suffer at the hands of my fucking emotional health. But she had. I’m just grateful she turned out as strong as she is.
LET’S BE FRIENDS
Jani, from what I heard, was still on a downward spiral, his alcoholism out of control and his marriage in tatters. He and I talked on the phone occasionally, but his presence in Taylar’s life was minimal. He called me from his home state, Ohio, where he had moved with Rowanne. “Celebrity Fit Club called and said they want me to be on the show,” he said. “I’m not sure, what do you think?” Rowanne was against the idea, but I thought it might benefit Jani. “You should totally do it,” I told him. “It will revive your career, and the general public will be interested in you again. Plus, they’re offering you $80,000. That’s eighty thousand more dollars than you had before.” He took my advice and moved back to L.A. to film the show. The show’s producers even had me film a little clip, wishing Jani good luck. Taylar was visiting, so she and I sat down to watch the first episode together, excited that Jani was finally making a comeback.
“Oh my God, Mom, is that even him?” said Taylar. Jani was performing some songs on the show, and he was barely recognizable to us. Bloated from the alcohol, he seemed disoriented and kept forgetting his lyrics. When he saw the little clip of me wishing him good luck, his response was, “I used to hate her.” Taylar and I were worried, and I called him so we could meet and talk. It was the first time we had seen each other in years.
“I’m a fuck up, huh, Bobbie?” said Jani. He was ashamed that the cameras had captured him and his alcoholism, and that the whole world had seen. He told me that he had drank pretty much throughout his marriage to Rowanne, and that she had been a heavy drinker too. He was ready to start over.
With Jani back in L.A., we were able to rebuild our friendship. Enough time had elapsed that we could let bygones be bygones and focus on trying to be better parents to Taylar. Thankfully, by the end of his time on Celebrity Fit Club, he had sobered up again and was upbeat—he had actually won the show. And things were good between us; we were talking on the phone nearly every day.
Once again, he brought up the idea of him and me getting back together, but I said it would be impossible. Although I loved him as the father of my daughter and as my friend, I could not imagine being with him romantically again. He took it hard. Jani never was good at being alone.
THE NEW NORMAL
In 2006, for the first time in my adult life, I got a job. Like, a regular job, not one that involved pouting in front of cameras, dancing on podiums, or wearing a bikini. As an office assistant at Le Paws, a pet talent agency, I was responsible for answering phones, running errands, cleaning the kitchen, and refilling the watercooler. I was starting from the bottom. The cool thing about that was, the only way was up.
I went out here and there, and tried to make the scene, but everything was different. Maybe it was my quieter attitude, maybe it was because I was older, but people were less interested in me. In my youth, men would flock to me without me even having to try, and I would just roll my eyes. Guys had offered me $100,000 to spend an evening with them, like that movie Indecent Proposal. Which I thought was the creepiest thing ever. “If I could only turn back time,” I muttered, as I sent faxes and swept the floors at Le Paws, wishing I had $100,000 in the bank for Taylar and me. I had always been an attractive girl who wasn’t aware of her attractiveness and how it could get me places. I tell my friends who are younger than me, “Take advantage of your looks!” Because that shit gets you everywhere. Nine times out of ten, you are getting out of that speeding ticket, or getting to the front of that line, because you are a pretty thing. Girls, be grateful if you were blessed with good looks. Don’t be an obnoxious, self-entitled diva, as I was, because baby, your days are numbered.
Jani would often come over and spend time with Chris, Taylar, and me in the evenings. Finally, it seemed like we were both settling into our lives in L.A. Jani as a sober musician, and me as Bobbie Brown, the former model who had a regular job, a regular life, and finally, a little stability. Jani would come pick me up for lunch at work almost every day, and tell me how he was so happy to be able to hit high notes again. I hadn’t seen him so happy in a long time, even though he was still troubled by dark thoughts. He had a feeling that he was being followed, and spoke of a darkness in his soul. I put him in touch with Jesse Woodrow, my preacher friend who is a spiritual advisor (and an actor, of course—this is L.A.). It seemed like Jani could use some guidance.
One night, Jani told Taylar and I that his manager, Obi Steinman, was trying to book him on a major tour, and he was excited about it. But I thought it was a terrible idea. Even though he had been sober a few years, it just seemed too early in his sobriety for him to be going back out on the road and playing shows, surrounded by booze and women and all the things that had fucked him up in the first place. But he didn’t listen to me, and in 2008 he went out on the road again, performing solo on an all-star bill with a bunch of other ’80s rock bands.
I tried calling him while he was on the road, checking up to make sure he was okay, and he wouldn’t take my calls. I hadn’t heard anything from him in two weeks when I got a Google alert and it was about him: A producer on the tour had posted all these terrible stories about Jani. How he had fallen off the wagon; how he had flown som
eone out to perform an exorcism on him; how he dove into a river so he could cleanse his soul; how he hit a guy and told him to suck his dick. All these drunken antics. What the fuck? This sounds like a bad movie. I read how he stunned fans in Las Vegas by performing so drunk he was slurring his words, stumbling around onstage, doing Christopher Walken impressions and throwing his mic at a fan.
I called my Jesse, who I assumed was the guy Jani had flown out to perform an exorcism. “Is what I’ve been reading true?” I asked him, trembling.
“Yes, I’m sorry, Bobbie.”
Jesse told me Jani was acting like he was possessed by demons, so much so that Jani’s assistant quit and became a devout Christian shortly after the tour. Shocked as I was, things were slowly starting to make sense. Whatever these demons were, real or imagined, I realized that they were the reason Jani was using alcohol. Booze was the only thing that could silence the voices in his head. But the silence came at a price.
Jani was arrested in June 2009 for crashing into a parked car while drunk and was given a misdemeanor DUI and put on probation for three years. In 2010 he was arrested for driving drunk again, and this time, he went to jail for 120 days. He put out a statement to the press: “Anyone out there dealing with personal problems . . . the consequences do not get lighter. I can only say I’ve never regretted a good decision or action and never been proud of bad ones. People have an astounding ability to forgive. . . . I have to start with forgiving myself.”
A SECOND CHANCE
A TV production company showed up at Le Paws one day—they were shooting a reality series about the pets and their owners, but after a few weeks of listening to my motormouth and my insane Hollywood stories, the crew decided to turn the cameras on me. “You need your own show, Bobbie, you’re just too funny not to be on television,” one of the producers told me. I felt shivers up and down my spine. I liked being funny; funny seemed more substantial than just pretty. There was longevity in being funny, pride to be taken in making people laugh. Since returning to Los Angeles following the death of my two dads, broke and near homeless, with no direction to go in, I’d stopped hinging all of my hopes and dreams on my physical appearance. Those days, I knew, were over. “Really? You think I could do reality TV? I mean, how do we even go about doing that?” I asked. We shot a pilot for a show called Cougar, which didn’t get picked up. I was crestfallen but excited to be in front of the camera again. I told myself that if the whole TV thing didn’t work out, I didn’t need to be upset about it. I was still working at Le Paws and it was fun, even though I occasionally got in trouble for being a loudmouth. Life was simple, and I liked it that way.
FINALLY . . . CLOSURE
Every three years, like a comet or a distant planet, Tommy would come around and inject a little chaos into my world. He would reach out to me out of the blue, then e-mail and talk and then maybe we would hang out. Inevitably he would kiss me and tell me he loved me, but never initiate sex. It was as though he was waiting for me to give him the okay to take my body again, but I never did. Eventually, he would leave to go on tour or start dating somebody, or I would start dating somebody, and we would fall out of touch. Then a few years later it would start again. “I can’t believe you’re dating someone who treats you like shit, Bobbie,” he would say, eyes full of concern, as I complained about Jay, or whoever else I was allowing to mess with my head. The irony was not lost on me—no one had broken my heart like Tommy had broken my heart.
“Hey, why don’t you come with me to this DJ thing I’m doing?” said Tommy.
“Sure,” I said, immediately wondering which of my girlfriends to bring as cockblocker. It was 2008, and I was a year shy of my fortieth birthday. Time sure had flown by, but even after all these years, I still preferred not to hang out with Tommy alone. I still had too many unresolved feelings for him.
Tommy picked us up in a limo, and we headed to the venue. Tommy’s driver was chatting with us. “I hear Tommy used to be so in love with you, Bobbie, but then you had a silly fight and broke up.” Tommy laughed. I couldn’t believe it. Was his driver really making light of how we broke up? After the show, I confronted Tommy. “What you did to me, marrying Pamela like that, was worse than death,” I told him. “You broke me, Tommy Lee.” I laid it out for him, the revenge fucking, the drugs, the rock bottom that my love for him had led me to. Tommy seemed surprised, and then sad. “Listen, Bobbie—I’m really sorry I did that to you, Bobbie. I really am.” In that moment, some of the anger and hurt I had been carrying around melted away. Finally it was all, quite simply, in the past.
After that night, Tommy stopped trying to be sexual with me. I think once he understood just how vulnerable I was, he realized it simply wouldn’t be fair to make light of my emotions. Even for a big kid, Tommy was starting to grow up. It was a little sad, realizing that he probably would no longer be contacting me every few years anymore.
Chapter Eleven
APPETITE FOR RECONSTRUCTION
The last few years of Jani’s life were unbearably painful, not just for him, but for all of us who loved him. Terrified of the people who he thought were following him, and haunted by his fears and paranoia, he sank back into his alcoholism and would never fully emerge. In 2010, I got a call from his on-off girlfriend Sheila Lussier, with whom he was living with in Woodland Hills. She said Jani was having a meltdown, that he was asking for me. I drove over there as soon as I got off work at Le Paws. By now, everyone in Jani’s life was accustomed to his alcohol-related breakdowns. But this one seemed different.
I pulled up outside Sheila’s house, and Jani shuffled out the door. He wanted to get in the car with me. “Listen, I am not taking you to get alcohol,” I said, irritated. I felt bad for him, but boozing wasn’t about to start solving his problems now. He looked terrible. He was bloated, and his hair was unkempt. His hands quivered on his lap, and his skin was waxy. “Just drive. Drive!” he screamed. Whoa, I thought. He was scaring me. Even though I had known Jani for nearly twenty years, I had never, ever seen him this out of control.
“Take me to the liquor store, Bobbie.”
“No fucking way, Jani. Why are you killing yourself? People love you. You have fans, a career, you’re talented.”
He was sobbing, punching the roof of my car. I begged him to stop. I had seen him sloppy, emotional, needy, incontinent, puking, incoherent—you name it. But I’d never seen him this angry.
“Jani! Will you tell me what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I can’t! You’ll stop loving me. You stopped loving me before, remember.”
“No, Jani, I just couldn’t deal with the cheating. You know that.”
“Okay, just be quiet and let me speak!”
I sat in silence as, between sobs and punching the window of my car, he told me the secret he had been carrying around for more than twenty years. He was nineteen when it happened. It was after a show. An older man, a major rock star, had invited Jani to hang out with him and the big guys. Jani was young, and easily impressed. Later that night, along with an accomplice, that major rock star put Jani through an ordeal he had been too ashamed to talk about until this moment. It was violent. It was ugly. It was exploitative. Jani said he had been too scared to tell anybody and had been pushing the memory under the carpet, pretending it wasn’t there. Jani was a proud man and hated to think of himself as a victim. Now, finally, I understood why he had been acting like one for so many years.
I started to cry.
“You have to do something, Jani. Can’t we tell somebody?”
“No, it’s embarrassing.”
“Fuck that!”
“It would be humiliation for life,” he sobbed. “And that motherfucker knows it. That’s how he gets away with it. They lie to these young guys who are trying to make it in the music industry, invite them to their show, and they pull this shit. They get away with it because nobody who is trying to make it is going to fuck with them. Nobody.”
I helped him back in the house and drove ho
me alone, crying the whole way. I couldn’t believe that he had been carrying this around with him for so long. I couldn’t believe that there was nothing I could do. I kept quiet about what Jani had revealed to me. And Jani and I never discussed it again.
After Sheila and Jani broke up, Jani moved into his own house with his daughter Madison. There was a spare room at Sheila’s and because, as usual, I was looking for a new place to live, Sheila invited me to crash with her. Which is how I found myself living with my ex-husband’s ex-girlfriend. Strange but true. Things were tough for me again—I had been fired from my job at Le Paws for calling my boss a dick. The Cougar pilot had done little for my career, and now I didn’t even have my “normal” job to rely on. I really needed a break.
Sheila told me someone from VH1 had contacted her, trying to find women to interview for a documentary about the Sunset Strip. “You should do it!” she said.
I went for an interview at VH1, and shortly afterward, the show’s producer called me saying they wanted to change the entire idea to focus on the rock star wives. Would I be interested in narrating and helping with the script? “Of course,” I said. Do It for the Band: The Women of the Sunset Strip aired in 2011, and I guess I made some kind of an impression because Lorraine Lewis, former front woman of the all-girl hair band Femme Fatale, contacted me on MySpace after it aired. “I have always been your fan, Bobbie. I think you are a star, and I was friends with Jani back in the day. I saw you on VH1 and I have an idea that I think you would be perfect for.”
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