How to Make a Monster
I started meeting him around the country, catching flights on short notice whenever Joe beckoned. One time, changing planes in Dallas, I spotted his road manager on a connecting flight. We exchanged hellos as I passed through first class. Later, he came all the way back to my seat in coach to explain that he’d used mileage points to pay for his upgrade (though I hadn’t asked). That night I asked Joe how the frequent flyer thing worked—so someday I can sit up front, like Kevin. Joe didn’t answer, but from that day forward Kevin flew coach and I went first class.
Warm nuts in ceramic dishes, free champagne, and hot towels. More legroom than I knew what to do with. Well-dressed chauffeurs awaited my arrivals, holding signs of my name announcing to the world that someone in it thought I was special. I was relieved of carry-on items and instructed to point at my suitcase as it circled by in baggage claim. Joe usually waited at the hotel but sometimes surprised me in the limo, a screwdriver in one hand, the other pulling me to his side. It never got old; I melted at the sight of him every time. I’d have followed him to Siberia. I’d have flown there in coach.
We kept a low profile on the road, a closed circle partying in our room, Rick’s room, or hotel bars for a change of scenery. Rick’s many girlfriends—mostly sweet and always pretty—were unfailingly short term. Mostly it was me and the boys, whose capacity for silliness far exceeded mine, though I served well as a built-in audience. One day, I entered our room to find them converting a bedsheet into a concert banner for their imaginary band, The Balls (whose first hit, according to Joe, would be “My Ex-Wife’s Got Me” by—wait for it—“The Balls”). When the last pen went dry they pulled it from the wall, revealing five square feet of ink-speckled plaster, half the wall covered in red and black Sharpie.
CNN anchors were still prime targets, but after the obligatory beard and devil horns, anything not bolted down had comedic potential. Room-service lids were cymbals, drums, confetti (tossed three at a time on the nearest tile floor, for sound effects, basically), and then hats. Everything had hat potential, even real hats, which Joe liked to stack on top of each other. Hats were big. Joe, especially, never tired of hats. Prank calls, too, never got old. The boys made frequent targets of information operators, dialing 411 for an endless supply of unwitting contestants in their ongoing game: “How long can we keep this sucker on the line before they hang up on us?” The calls were recorded and replayed for anyone who’d listen (me, Kevin, Robbie, me, the roadies, then usually me again). The road with Joe and Rick was like an understaffed summer camp and I’d often catch myself wondering if there shouldn’t be more adult supervision around here.
That said, work was Joe’s priority and I was honored to be along for the ride. I’d bring a book to sound check and settle in on the periphery, somewhere Joe could catch my eye. Nothing compared to one of Joe’s purposeful looks, especially in sight of his band and crew. I thought it was the most romantic thing in the world.
Preshow, Joe’s dressing room was solely for us, a private place to chill, cuddle, drink, and do bumps. At showtime, we’d walk hand in hand to stage, where he’d leave me, with a kiss, next to guitar tech Kevin Buell, or Todd Bowie. They’d always have a chair for me, though I’d usually stand and dance or sway to the music. At the end of the show, Joe would sweep me back up and repeat the ritual in reverse—kiss, embrace, hand-hold, dressing room, cuddle, drinks, and hog rails (huge bumps). At the hotel were more drinks, bumps, Sharpie games, old pranks, new ones, and then at some point, good night, Rick…hello, playtime.
•••
Private time with Joe was like social time with Rick in its unrestricted running-naked-in-the-woods feeling. We were adults having adult-styled sex, but Joe’s term for it had a whimsical feel. He called it “playing.”
“Hey, babe, you want to play?” he’d say, as a statement more than request. That attitude made it all the more enticing, his commanding delivery part of the foreplay. We were often in Rick’s room till 3:00 a.m. with little time left over for intimacy—sexual or otherwise—and in an effort to optimize our time together, I started doing more and more blow. To sleep was to be separated from the man I loved. Given the option, I couldn’t allow it, and cocaine gave me that option.
Joe understood, to a point, and did his best to regulate my intake. He doled out bumps as he saw fit—a vexing policy that I did, in fact, see the wisdom in. For starters, the more blow I did, the more I drank, causing hangovers that usurped the next day’s quality time. Also, I could be loquacious on blow, though Joe didn’t always mind. He got a kick out of my alter ego—an airheaded, philosophy-minded Valley-girl chick given to spontaneous rants on any topic he lobbed my way. It was a funny shtick when I got it right, but the minute Joe initiated playtime, I shut my mouth and did what I was told. The fun of it, for me, was relinquishing control.
The first bump of the night still doused my libido, but the better part of a gram later, I’d be spacey and sexually pliable. A few words from Joe, a shift in attitude and dimmed lighting, caused my stream of idle chatter to be replaced by willing submission. I’d adjusted to Joe’s way of doing things. My curiosity for the BDSM thing had segued to fascination, arousal, then abandon.
I trusted Joe and enjoyed learning new things. I’d always been a good student. That said, sex was a vast arena and I saw no reason to be pigeonholed. My past sex life had been a series of stolen moments with uncommitted partners. What those encounters lacked in emotional intimacy they made up for in fierceness and frenzy. Joe’s sexcapades, by contrast, were elaborate and involved. Marathon events versus a good, hard sprint. I missed launching out of the gate and going full blown, and feared that the further down Joe’s kinky path I went, the less traction I’d have to turn back. My issue wasn’t with the level of intensity (which these days would probably be considered pedestrian, run-of-the-mill BDSM), but with the fact that it was the only kind of sex he seemed to want to have.
At some point, I chose to ride that horse in the direction it was going. It’s not like kink wasn’t fun, after all. It had grown on me, like the cocaine had. In fact, they went hand in hand. Without coke, I wasn’t turned on by kink. With coke, kink was the only way I could turn on.
•••
We went to New York City in December. It was my first time there. As the limo sped through a tunnel, I popped my head through its sunroof, only to be yanked back down for a lecture on exhaust fumes. I laughed it off but Joe wasn’t smiling. “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.”
It wasn’t just air quality he worried about, but thieves, liars, false friends, and social climbers, too. Los Angeles was full of them, but the problem was universal and naïveté made me a weak link, vulnerable to pushy fans and opportunists. New people and experiences thrilled me, but Joe rode my wave with an undercurrent of worry. He expected the best of both worlds from me—a street-smart ingénue—and bombarded me with a litany of cautions: Be careful, watch your back, stay close, don’t be so trusting. I’d nod quietly, thinking, Bright lights, big city, blah blah blah… It was hard to take his concerns seriously.
Joe was a guest on David Sanborn’s Sunday Night TV show. I was touched to be greeted by the brilliant saxophonist as warmly as his world-class guests. Watching Joe’s performance from the wings, I felt a gentle tug on my hair. It was a grinning Al Green—the gospel-music legend—teasing me like a schoolboy. We covered our mouths and laughed together. I hadn’t known life could be so magical.
On future visits we stayed at the Plaza, though sometimes at the Royalton, which was hip and chic and buzzing with models and other fashion-industry types. If I felt dwarfed by the Plaza’s elegance, I was baffled by certain Royalton features: micro-elevators, hallways too narrow to carry more than one suitcase at a time, mesh wastebaskets (useless for dumping ashtrays, which was flabbergasting), a three-legged desk chair that stayed upright only until someone sat in it, and a bathroom counter sized to fit two tooth
brushes and nothing more. The famously huge Royalton tubs were a treat, but the unmarked toiletries, a mystery. I feared an inquiry to the front desk would seem touristy, so after identifying shampoo and conditioner, I took a chance on bottle number three. Later, at dinner, I raved about my luxurious bubble bath to Rick, who informed me the thick blue liquid was actually Woolite, and then laughed until he cried.
Early one morning, Joe and Rick left for a radio interview. We’d been doing hog rails all night, and I was trashed enough to want to stay behind. Joe thought that was wise. He’d cautioned me about this unpredictable DJ, who might try putting me on air. I didn’t know what a “shock jock” was but didn’t intend to find out with all of New York listening in. I pulled the comforter to my chin, lay my head next to the radio speaker (for all its flaws, the Royalton headboard stereo cubbies were a favorite feature), and zoned out instantly. The next thing I heard was a phone on my left and then one on my right. I fumbled for the louder of two.
“Mmmello?” Hearing a weird echo, I thought I must be dreaming. Either that, or my voice had just come through the cubby speakers.
“This is Howard Stern, and you’re on the air.”
“Oh shit,” I said, bolting upright.
“Whoa, you can’t say that word here.”
“Uh, sorry,” I replied, as our entire exchange was repeated on delay from the headboard. Disoriented, I lowered the stereo volume. I should’ve hung up the phone. Howard took full advantage of my daze, asking the very type of personal questions I’d been warned about. I answered honestly: that was just my way, caught off guard or not. He asked about stripping, of course, and my sex life—Joe’s and mine, to be exact.
“So, do you guys have threesomes and stuff?”
“Um, yeah…well, once.”
Then all hell broke loose. I heard Joe screaming at me through the phone and stereo speakers, both. “Mayday, mayday! Get off the phone! Hang it up! Hang up now!” I did what I was told.
Apparently, Joe had just returned from the men’s room, where he’d been when Rick decided to debrief Howard on Joe’s new “stripper girlfriend.” Howard had gotten me on the phone right away, then Joe returned and realized what was happening. Back at the hotel he was angrier than I’d ever seen him, especially about the threesome comment.
“My mother was listening!” he bellowed.
Whoops.
Where I came from, threesomes gave a man clout, though admittedly I hadn’t considered Joe’s position. (I hadn’t considered whether he’d want the threesome at all, an ill-conceived attempt to impress my new boyfriend by sharing a dancer friend as a gift. It was not something I planned to do again. Nor something I remembered well, or fondly, to begin with.) We were from different generations and disparate cultures. Austinites and Angelenos had distinct sets of priorities. Strippers and celebrities diverged on issues of privacy and public image. Some of this Joe clued me into. The rest I deduced on my own, bit by bit.
•••
Around that time, while Joe and I were in LA having a mellow visit, I was enjoying the simple routine, but Joe was brusque and irritable. The dry cleaners had called about a forgotten load he’d dropped off six months earlier, and I waited in the car while he collected it. When he emerged with three huge duffel bags in tow, I burst out laughing—How could you not miss an amount of clothes the size of my entire wardrobe? Joe scowled in response, and though I didn’t know why, I knew enough to drop it. We then went shopping for a gift for his daughter, and when I complimented his selection of matching bedroom lamps, he ignored me completely. Back at the penthouse, I packed my bags. Joe was beside himself preparing for Lucy’s visit, organizing ingredients for baking cookies (before finally sending Robbie out for a tube of ready-made dough). I flew home before Lucy arrived, feeling in over my head.
Joe rarely discussed fatherhood and I didn’t ask. The pain of losing his first daughter and being separated from his second was far beyond my ken. I was in love with a man whose demons outsized my own. I had to wonder what good I was to him, in ways that really mattered.
On my next visit, Joe pulled over on Laurel Canyon Boulevard to tell me that he loved me. He wanted us to “make it” and if I could hang on through the craziness, he felt sure we would. I told him not to worry, that nothing about his lifestyle would change me or ruin us. I believed every word of it.
He said he had somewhere special to take me: the studio where Paul Shaffer was recording. I’d seen David Letterman’s bandleader on TV and he seemed nice, if quirky. Meeting him, I understood why Joe had been excited to introduce us—Paul had a pure and beautiful energy, as if the walls most people put up (myself included) weren’t there with him. While he and Joe talked shop, I observed a quiet, clean-cut, middle-aged man with sandy hair. He had ghostlike movements, and though tall in contrast to the diminutive Paul, the man seemed waiflike by comparison. His gaze passed from me to Joe to some far-off place, making me wonder if we’d fully registered. Later, outside having a smoke, I asked Joe about him. “He seems out of it.”
Joe nodded. “That’s Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys. He’s been through a lot…but he’s better than he was.”
“Jeez, what was he like before?” I asked, but Joe shrugged, as if it were too complicated.
•••
We spent Christmas in Austin, where I trimmed a four-foot tree with half a dozen tasteful ornaments and Joe taped tacky strands of shimmery green garlands to every wall and doorframe in my apartment. He gave me a string of gifts, starting with a small, blue-green glass globe that he said was so close to the color of my eyes he’d bought it as soon as he saw it. Later we went to Highland Mall for the most expensive item at Victoria’s Secret, an off-white lace bed jacket with iridescent sequins and poufy sleeves. I paired it with lacey bobby socks and red pumps for Polaroids by the fireplace. The last shot was for Joe’s coffee-table-book project—celebrities (and cute chicks) in Groucho glasses.
The gifts kept coming. Next up, a breathtaking vintage blouse of sheer black silk with intricate beadwork that fit like a minidress and was very flattering. “Where did you get it?” I swooned.
“It was Stevie’s, she gave it to me.”
“Stevie who?”
He laughed. “Stevie Nicks.” Then, to my blank look, “We used to date. She gave me some of her clothes.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize. When did you date her?”
“Before Lisa. We toured together—it was a road thing, you know? Ended with the tour.”
“Okay, well…more importantly, why give you women’s clothing?”
He shrugged. “We were pretty high most of the time.”
I laughed. I gave away my favorite stuff when I was high, too.
“That’s also kind of why we broke up,” he added.
“The drugs?”
“Yeah, well…there were a lot of ’em,” he sighed. “We spurred each other on, and with people like us that lifestyle can get dangerous fast.”
I didn’t respond. I understood what he was saying, but all I could think was that I’d never let drugs come between me and the man I loved.
Later, Joe bestowed on me two more of Stevie’s dresses: an antique lace peasant dress and a brown knit tunic with gold-and-orange detail, both perfect in size, color, and style. Raiding Stevie Nicks’ gypsy-chic wardrobe had been my fantasy since high school, but Joe’s blue-green globe topped everything. He saw the color of my eyes when we were apart. Nothing beat that. I had never been happier in my life.
•••
I didn’t do much coke over Christmas, a happenstance supporting my “recreational user” self-image. In truth, though I’d been using for less than a few months, my intake was all across the board.
On a previous Austin visit, Joe and I did hog rails through the weekend. Thirty-six hours in, I was running on fumes, greeting my second sunrise feeling ill, agitated, and paranoid. I was ab
out to crawl into bed and pray for sleep when Joe ran out of vodka. I was fading fast but he was on a roll and needed supplies to ensure a soft landing. Neither of us used prescription downers—right or wrong, smart or dumb—so alcohol was vital to take the edge off, especially for Joe, with his higher tolerance. The two Miller Lites in my fridge wouldn’t cut it. He needed vodka and needed my help getting it.
Somehow I summoned steam to navigate the grocery store and get our items to the register. Joe fished for his credit card while I fought back nausea. Ten more minutes and I’ll be between the sheets. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.
The store clerk, a skinny, pimply teenage boy, rang up the orange juice, then balked at our next item. “I can’t sell you this.”
I’d just turned twenty-one, but instead of digging for my license I jerked my thumb toward Joe, old enough to be my father. “He’s forty,” I said sharply, dying to get home.
The kid stared at me like I was an idiot. “It’s Sunday. You can’t buy booze until noon.”
Duh.
Joe glared at me, as if I should’ve known, as if I routinely purchased liquor at 8:00 a.m. I didn’t; I worked in a bar, where I drank for free and then went home to sleep at 2:00 a.m. like a normal person. It wasn’t my fault Texas had archaic liquor laws.
We left empty-handed and anxious. Having missed the sleep window, I now needed a drink as badly as Joe. By the time we got back home, my hands were visibly trembling. Then Joe came up with a plan, flipping through the Yellow Pages for a limo service. Genius. The car would have a stocked bar. We’d drive around Austin drinking for an hour, then swipe a bottle to bring home, leaving a hefty tip for the driver.
That’s not what happened, either.
I crawled into the limo, willing myself not to throw up. My head pounded, my legs wobbled, and I had a hard time sitting up. Joe slid past and reached for the standard row of three crystal decanters, all empty. The bar wasn’t stocked and my Miller Lites were long gone. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing slowly and evenly. Joe had a word with the driver, a dark-skinned black man with graying hair, who gave a thoughtful nod before driving us to his house. While we parked at the curb, I lay across the back seat with my eyes closed, fantasizing about hospital admittance—I felt that poorly. When our driver reappeared, he passed his personal stash through the partition. Joe thanked him and asked him to take us to the Four Seasons.
Rock Monster Page 5