In the event I got a gold cowboy hat and hoped for the best. Ricky Hatton was fighting that weekend in Vegas against Manny Pacquiao, and I, IDIOT THAT I AM, said that I’d sort us out tickets.
“That’s cool,” said Puffy. “You score the tickets, I’ll grind out the jet.” That’s by no means verbatim but it is the gist and style of what he said.
“Sean, you can rest assured that it will be no problem getting those tickets,” I lied.
“Make sure they’re ringside. I can’t be sitting in no punk-ass bullshit seats.” Similarly, that may not be verbatim but it was certainly the gist and vaguely the style.
“Sean,” I said. “Sean, Sean, Sean, Sean, Shawny Sean. You don’t know me well yet, mate, but I am connected all over Vegas, a place I LOVE, incidentally, so you needn’t worry one iota about these tickets –we’re going to that bout, and what’s more, we shall have the time of our lives.” That is what I said – verbatim.
And so began the frantic quest to get tickets to a highly sought-after boxing match taking place in less than forty-eight hours. I know Ricky Hatton “a bit”, but Noel Gallagher’s good mates with him, so I started nagging him about it. He said he’d try, he got me Ricky’s number, but, guess what? It turns out that Ricky was a bit preoccupied on the days building up to the biggest fight of his career and wasn’t answering his phone. Shit. Puffy calls.
“Yo, how’s it going with them tickets?”
“The tickets? How’s it going? It’s going well. Very well. Very, very well. Very, very, very, ver-y …”
He interrupts, “You got ’em?”
“Not as such, no. BUT, I am a hair’s breadth away from getting them, so worry not.”
Eventually, after enlisting everyone I’ve ever met to pursue an objective that I don’t actually, in my heart of hearts, want to achieve, through Dan Weiner, hornet of enthusiasm who pursues PR like a vocation, we got some tickets. But they weren’t good enough. Fourth row.
Puff explained that if you’re seen on TV sat too far back you look a bit of a prat. So he sorted the tickets himself, which made me feel a bit embarrassed. When the day arrived me and Nik, my plus one, headed to Burbank to catch the private jet to Vegas with Puff Daddy – which is not a sentence I envisaged myself writing when I was a crack-head. To be honest I didn’t envisage myself writing any sentences, I could barely hold a pen. We’d arranged to meet Big Danny O’Leary out there so that I’d have a bit of an entourage, although secretly we were all mates.
The plane journey was pretty good, Puffy is a remarkable host and knows how to create a vibe, although I regretted wearing the cowboy hat as it made me look like a thin Chippendale, and I didn’t have the courage to be three hours late. I think we were actually a bit early.
On private jets they do your passport on the plane and you can use your phone at all times. Plus there’s no customs or security and you can have music on, not that crap they play usually. The safety announcement is essentially a gesture and the feeling that you could have it off with the stewardess is heightened even further than usual. In Woody Allen’s film Zelig the protagonist laments that his father’s words to him on his deathbed was the advice “Always try and fuck waitresses.” I would extend this creed to include stewardesses, masseuses and bystanders. Puffy’s entourage, or “mates”, depending on how you look at it, were a nice bunch. A couple of big blokes were his security, he had about four assistants and a couple of people who were not working. One of them, Tracey, has become a proper friend of mine as a result of a spiritual chat we had in the dawn aftermath.
Fame and money and glamour aren’t the answer. You can’t find spiritual solutions in the material world. I’ve learned this empirically but the knowledge is useless in front of the glare. The chat I had with Tracey in fact was spun around the idea that life is like a game or The Matrix, which is a dangerous analogy to use around me because when I first saw that movie it capsized everything from my philosophy to my dress sense, but the analogy, thankfully, didn’t call for me to don a black coat and stare into the mirror fretting about whether or not I was “the one”, it was actually about the nature of compulsive behaviour and illusions.
Me and Tracey conjectured, the morning after, framed by Puff ’s crumpled entourage in the obnoxious Vegas suite (that’s not a judgement on them, I had the same one a floor down), that the universe, in my extraterrestrial worshipping language or God in his, sets challenges for you, and until you overcome them you remain ensnared on that “level”. For me, for the longest time I was trapped on a narcotic plateau, and until I addressed the problem I could not progress spiritually. Now, clearly, the problem was women. The night before had been testimony to that. Me, Danny and Nik, having become separated from Puff and Jay-Z’s conga up and down the Strip, had wound up at our hotel with some girls.
The fight was not good, Ricky was knocked out in the second round at Caesar’s Palace in front of a largely British crowd. I was stood next to Puffy, behind Jay-Z and was struggling with my new context. It transpires that I’m not really into boxing, and when I saw Ricky being expertly pummelled by the sublime Pacquiao I felt sad and guilty. I wanted to climb into the ring and help him. What assistance I’d be capable of offering under those circumstances is questionable, I think the two men would have whisked me into a smoothie of blood and hair before I could even whip out a Gandhi quote. The feeling of alienation was not helped by Puffy, who seemed to have a soft spot for Pacquiao and was now standing on his seat cheering and whooping. He does create a buzz, ol’ Puff. To be in a fancy Vegas restaurant or entering a club with him and Jay-Z is like living in a hip-hop adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Sometimes though he creates a party atmosphere in a situation which, in my view, could’ve gotten along without one. We were in the hotel lift with an old lady gambler and her dog and Puffy and his razzamatazz turned it into a claustrophobic version of Girls Gone Wild. Except it wasn’t Girls, it was Puffy and a Yorkshire terrier pulling up its dog jacket and barking “Spring Break”.
I overdosed on oestrogen again back in the suite, squirrelling all four girls into my room like a right little greedy guts. It wasn’t even that good. I imagine that’s why the next day I was talking about the excesses around women feeling like a trap.
When it came to the first week of filming on the Greek we were slung with cruel poetry right back on to the Vegas strip and indeed the very same hotel and room as before. My suite, I observed, had a lot of boys’ toys-type trinkets like a pool table and fußball (I hate that word), but also a wipe-clean couch. In fact all the surfaces were wipe-clean. I’m not sure that it is a talisman of success to be staying in a room designed to be covered in sperm. In the front room there was a glass cylindrical shower, like a teleportation device, with lights on the ceiling and floor. At the centre there was a pole for the inevitable pole dancer that you would be bringing back to your suite. This is the ergonomic ideology employed at the hotel. No trouser press or little kettle, no shortbread or mini shampoos, no, a private pole dancing shower. I used it once to shower in, alone. It was the most depressing shower of my life, it was like doing your taxes in Disneyland. The closer I got to the summit of this mountain of indulgence, the more the climb seemed pointless.
The film itself brought more opportunity. By the time this book is out it will have been released and we’ll know if it was a commercial success or not; either way I’ve seen it and it makes me laugh. It looks cool, Jonah is brilliant and adorable, Puffy is a revelation as the self-parodying music magnate Sergio, and Elisabeth Moss and Rose Byrne as me and Jonah’s girlfriends are both hilarious. I loved working with the Irish actor Colm Meaney, who like Alfred Molina in The Tempest exudes qualities that one longs to emulate: diligence, warmth and class.
Making movies is not like watching them. As I’ve explained before, and I don’t wish to sound ungrateful, it’s like a long, boring caravan holiday, and I’d had enough of them as a kid. The performing and the collaborating with talented people are the upside but, for young aspirants out
there, if you want to succeed in film-making, don’t study On the Waterfront or Goodfellas while reading Stanislavski, book yourself into a caravan park in Ramsgate for three months and say the same thing twenty times every morning while caked in make-up – if you enjoy that, then Welcome to Show Business.
Nik sometimes says that I shouldn’t make films as I clearly don’t enjoy it. That’s not entirely true, you get to work with amazing people, and when you see the end product all the pain and hard work seem worthwhile, like giving birth, right girls? Yep, that’s what I’m saying, it’s like childbirth. Only a lot more important obviously.
I suppose what I should do is practise yoga and meditate all day, then in the evening present a chat show, to get the exhibitionism out of my system – I should be a swami-entertainer, a monk-Leno. What is it, this thing that we’re all questing after? Love? Acceptance? Blowjobs? Some disgusting combination of all three?
I met a lot of girls making the Greek, but this tale I think illustrates rather well that my womanising was approaching its nadir.
I plodded on with the production line of daily seduction and by gum, thank heavens, there were some romantic encounters, I am not a marauding dog-man, grinding out jizz on any unguarded leg, I see the beauty in people, I want to connect with it and hold on to it. Meredith, the witch-acupuncturist who I would forever trouble with my musings and enquiries, especially the craving I felt for love and companionship, would say, “Don’t worry, Russell, you won’t choose a girl, a girl will choose you. One day a woman will come along and scare off all the others with a big gun.” I hope the last bit was metaphorical or it seems I am destined to wind up with Ma Baker or Lara Croft. She’d be alright actually. Unless she wanted me to go Tomb-raiding with her, which I wouldn’t be into unless “tomb-raiding” is a metaphor for bumming.
The day after Michael Jackson died we were on the vast expensive set built to match the Vegas suite from the first weeks’ filming. The loss of this genius lay like a sombre mist around the lot. As Jim Morrison said, “Death makes angels of us all,” and Michael was returned to his rightful status as an icon to be worshipped. We were working loooOOOOOoooong days, seventeen, eighteen hours sometimes. The gaudy, opulent set was hallucinogenically bright, as were the extras that populated it. Usually between takes Puffy did deals on his Bluetooth earpiece, so I was surprised to see him chatting to an extra. I saw this as a chance to interview him on his views about women. Also the girl he was talking to was not the prettiest there and so I was curious as to why he’d elected to chat to her. He explained that he was in a relationship that meant seducing women was off the menu and that he’d merely noticed that the girl had an interesting energy. I enquired further, hoping to glean specifics from a man who clearly understands human nature. He remarked that the woman, in his view, would be exciting to be around. Given that he’d already said that it was an avenue he was unable to explore, I asked if he thought it was something that I ought pursue. He said I ought.
The girl was Hollywood pretty, blonde and shapely. I sharked over and got her number. When we wrapped I gave her a call. “Fancy coming over?” I asked. She said it would not be possible as she was looking after her sister’s dog. Blast. Incapable of countenancing a night alone I called another young lady, dusky, mysterious, saucy and accommodating and asked if she’d like to come over. She would.
So we head home, Nicola, Tom and I, back to our glamorous West Hollywood home we’d rented with its boundless view of the twinkling orange grid that LA becomes at night. I’m in fine spirits as I’m anticipating the arrival of the dusky girl, a girl with whom I’ve had liaisons in the past and who has proven to be quite diverting and adventurous. Then my phone rings. It is the curious extra.
“I can come over,” she says. Well, this is interesting.
“Would you still like me to?” I would. But what about the other girl, you may wonder, she is already en route to the house. That could be viewed as a problem, but I like to approach these matters optimistically. Sure, if the two girls arrive simultaneously and one of them has some cumbersome moral code to contend with it could be a minefield, but fortune favours the brave.
“Oh, I’ve got Nobu with me, is that a problem?” Nobu is the English bulldog she is looking after for her sister. His presence is not ideal but I’ve already handed over complete control of the situation to my madness, who in this is abetted by the part of me that puts anecdotes before reason. Anyway, I tell myself, even though I’m not really listening, I’ve been in billions of situations like this and I calculate that the most likely outcome is a threesome. Content with my speculation, I move on with the plan. Now both girls are coming over. Luckily I arrive home first and I’m pretty confident that “dusky” will be up for anything, given her previous behaviour, and “curious extra” I can play by ear. As I’ve said, the only problem would be if they arrive simultaneously, then I have no time to separate them and tailor a deal that is amenable to all parties, or possibly, if luck goes my way, a merger.
DING DONG. That’s the door. I don’t have a doorbell but “KNOCK KNOCK” doesn’t have the farcical connotations that the anecdote demands. Hopefully it’s just one of them, preferably Dusky, I think as I approach the door but, of course, it is both of them, stood on the step looking at each other at 3am, baffled. Only Nobu is untroubled. These are the scenarios where you earn your spurs.
“Come in, girls,” I say like a jocular butler.
“What’s going on?” enquires Curious.
“Nothing. You’re tired, come this way and try not to think. Is this Nobu? He looks thirsty.”
I guide Dusky to the TV room, pouring wine for her and Curious and placing a bowl of water on the floor for Nobu as I go, gliding through the moment like a kinky ninja.
“I’m not having a threesome,” announces Curious.
“Of course you’re not. What an absurd suggestion. Whatever gave you that idea?” I imagine it was Dusky’s somewhat forthright mode of dress. Hot pants, crop top, dark tumbling hair, Hispanic accent and dark, suggestive eyes.
“We’ve all had a long day, this is no time for pondering ethics. Why don’t you and Nobu come upstairs? Diana Ross used to live here.”
Me, Curious and Nobu ascend the stairs, leaving Dusky to flirt with her wine. Once in my room I light the fire, in every way, and spend the next few minutes bolting up and down the stairs between the two girls like Mrs Doubtfire. As I’d assumed, ol’ Dusky is up for anything, so my attention must now be focused on Curious. Nobu asthmathically snuffles and grunts his way through his water, so I turn up the music and light the candles to compensate. Puffy’s verdict is proven to be accurate, and once assured that Dusky is safely downstairs the two of us get in bed and have a proper cuddle. I enjoy it of course, but the perfectionist in me is troubled by how to turn this two-some into a threesome. As long as I can create a land of sexual wonder for Curious I’m pretty sure her reservations will fade. The inhibitions around sex are mostly about conditioning. Some women just don’t like girls, and that’s fine, but normally if you can unpick the social stitching with some beautifully put universal truths a good time can be had by all. I am about to embark on a Byronesque soliloquy designed to facilitate this bliss when, blessedly, for once fate takes the matter in hand and things move on for the better without my input. For whilst Curious and I cuddle face to face, in enjoyable, vanilla conjugation, I feel that cheeky rascal Dusky round the back taking care of the region oft neglected in heterosexual men, but in my view a tunnel to endless pleasure and amusement. I continue to kiss ol’ Curious, more passionately than before because the mischief of Dusky’s unannounced appearance, not to mention the expertise of her tongue, elevates the encounter to a whole new realm.
“God, I’m good,” I muse as I occupy these two beautiful women.
“People will write books about me – and if they don’t, I will.”
Curious seems a little reticent suddenly, but Dusky is going crazy at the backdoor and I’m struggling to maintain control.
“Hold off, Russell,” I think, we’ve got to take care of Dusky too, especially after this incredible surprise performance she’s put in round back – she’s certainly very thorough, I’ve never been so well tended to in that department. I smile and continue to kiss Curious. But she gasps and pulls away, doubtless to accommodate the screams that will accompany the massive orgasm she’s about to have. Her lips part and her mouth widens ...
“NOBU! GET DOWN!”
No.
Yes.
No!
Actually, yes. That’s right, folks, I turned my head to see that my bottom was being licked by a bulldog. There’s no nice way of saying it; it was bestiality but I was the victim. A lesser man would’ve been tempted to let Nobu finish what he started but I, ever the gentleman, politely insisted that the hound remove his snout and return to his water. Was I able to unite Dusky and Curious? I’ll leave that to your imagination. What I will tell you categorically is that an episode of that nature makes you question your lifestyle.
“Is this really what I want?” I thought as I eyed the bulldog at my rear. “Is this really part of my life-plan?”
“So, Russell, where do you see yourself in five years?”
“Well, ideally I see myself getting rimmed by a bulldog.” Hey, you’ve gotta dream big, right?
I told Puffy that story the next day and he exploded with joy. I’ve never known such happiness. Well, maybe five seconds before I looked over my shoulder to see a symbol of the British Empire disgracing us both, the flag and Her Majesty.
The movie shot in LA, New York, Vegas and London. It was a big deal. I loved shooting in London, especially as my mate Karl Theobald turned up and did a cameo, as did Gee and Jamie Sives, all characters from Booky Wook 1, and also, less importantly, real life.
Booky Wook 2: This Time It's Personal Page 25