American Outlaw

by James, Jesse

  “Sandra, when’s the football movie starting? You guys start filming yet?”

  The paparazzi battled with one another to get a photograph of Sandy and me entering the restaurant. It was just kind of lame, to have to battle through this horde of photographers just to get into a space of borrowed peace for about three hours.

  “I wish just once we could go out and be totally left alone,” I grumbled.

  “Let’s try wearing disguises,” Sandy suggested, smiling.

  “Nah, these guys have radar,” I sulked.

  “Don’t let it ruin your dinner,” she said. “There’s no point.”

  “I won’t,” I said. But inside, I had already kind of let it spoil my mood.

  It just felt like my chances to ever be normal again had completely faded away, and forever. To ninety-nine percent of the people out there, I was Sandra Bullock’s husband, the owner of West Coast Choppers, some reality TV star. But that’s not how I really felt as a human. I was a regular old dude from Southern California. Not a sophisticate, not a hero, just an average dad who liked football and racing. But I’d allowed the media to construct an identity for me, because it seemed like the right thing to do from a business and personal perspective. And now I was trapped inside of it.

  Against all odds, I’d become a personality. That truly baffled me. In a shoe box at home, I had an old black-and-white photograph of myself on Romper Room when I was a kid—we’d lived half an hour away from where they filmed. Who in the hell would have predicted that someday I’d be stumbling around, playing an adult version of myself on so-called reality TV? It was just so unlikely, a one-in-a-million occurrence. And yet as much as I found it odd, and not really in accordance with my own vision of myself, I couldn’t exactly bring myself to give it up, either. Fame annoyed me, but at least that massive block of attention showed that people cared. If I quit TV, what exactly would I have left?

  So I ventured forward, not really knowing what the hell else to do. The producers for the Apprentice had been on me for years, trying to convince me to do the show. To this point, I’d never really been interested, but now, I forced myself to listen to their pitch.

  “Look, Jesse, it’ll be fantastic! I promise. We got Andrew Dice Clay!”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that,” I said drily.

  “We’ve got Dennis Rodman!”

  “Incredible.” I yawned.

  “We’ve got Scott Hamilton lined up, too,” the producer pleaded.

  “Scott Hamilton’s doing the show?” I perked up. “Seriously?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Interested?”

  “Yes,” I said decisively. “Sign me up.”

  I’d been on the fence: like a lot of America, I considered the Apprentice a little hokey. But the mention of Scott Hamilton tipped the scales. I’d been trying to find a way to hook up with him for more than twenty years, ever since I’d stolen his Porsche from outside the San Diego Sports Arena in 1986.

  The story was a strange one: I was seventeen years old, and in the prime of my car thieving days. I’d already stolen another Porsche the month before, ripped it down to the bare essentials, sold what I could. Now I was looking for parts I could transplant into the shell I already had. I was cruising downtown San Diego and found myself at the Sports Arena, where Stars on Ice! were having their big day. Right outside the arena, a green Porsche 911, with a vanity plate reading “ISKATE,” just pleaded to be stolen.

  So I burglarized it and drove it away.

  I knew it was Scott’s car, and later, when I got more well known, Scott had found out that I’d been the guy who’d ripped it off. I’d never really managed to make a good apology, though, and I’d always felt kind of like an ass about that, particularly because Scott Hamilton was known to everyone as a really sweet guy. I figured doing the Apprentice would give me the opportunity to work alongside him, and make my amends.

  And in fact, it did. We hit it off immediately, and gradually we became real friends as the filming wore on. It took me a couple of weeks, but finally, I screwed up the courage to say to his face, “Hey, Scott, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am for what I did.”

  “Jesse,” he said, “I forgave you for that a long time ago. You’ll always be my favorite thief.”

  It was amazing, just how good that made me feel.

  As for the rest of the show? I kind of surprised myself by how much I enjoyed it. They gave you the opportunity to work pretty hard if you wanted to, which I respected, and when it came down to it, how well you did was contingent on how well you functioned with your team. I worked with some awesome guys: Herschel Walker, Clint Black, and of course Rodman. He and I got into a little on-screen drama, when I suggested that he might have a drinking problem, but I never regretted saying it.

  “I can kick anybody’s ass at any task,” I remember Dennis saying, when he was defending himself in front of Trump.

  “What would you say to that, Jesse?” Trump asked me.

  I thought about it for a second and replied, “I’d say, Dennis, why don’t you kick our asses at being a good person?”

  I don’t know. Maybe he thought I was being a dick, especially since I’d had a drinking problem myself. But I didn’t want to come off like I was better than him; I really believed what I said. Rodman was such an awesome athlete, and he had this unique jokester personality. He didn’t want people remembering him as the guy who started pounding vodka at ten in the morning.

  Being on the Apprentice kept me entertained. The way they cut the show together was a little cornball—that fake-drama music is the worst—but the actual experience of doing the show was great. I dug the challenge of being a bellman, or baking cupcakes, or designing a costume for a comic book character; whatever they threw at me, I tried my best to succeed at it. I got fired toward the end of the show for not bringing any real donors to the table for my charity—maybe Trump expected me to ask Sandy for a whole bunch of money or something, but I had no interest in doing that.

  And then it was over, and I was back to twiddling my thumbs professionally. Bikes were my bread and butter—I’d built this whole empire in Long Beach. Still, for my whole life, I had always prided myself on being ready to move on to the next big thing. Now was no exception: I was waiting for the next big inspiration to hit my brain, to give me a new direction and inject my life with some much-needed excitement. But it wasn’t happening.

  During this time, Sandy was often working. Occasionally, she’d be gone for weeks, or even months, on end.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I remember telling her.

  “Got to,” she said, smiling. “This is my job, remember?”

  “Well, how about I stow away with you?” I joked. “Live in your trailer?”

  “That would only be, like, the best thing in the world,” Sandy said. “But I’ll be back before you know it. I love you.”

  It was an odd time for me. I felt fatigued with the reality I’d created for myself, but there was no one to complain to about it. Everyone on the outside looking in at my life probably would have said, What the hell are you complaining about? I got a mortgage, a nagging wife, a clock-punching job I hate. You married America’s sweetheart! You have money, and freedom, and fame. So shut the fuck up.

  And that’s precisely how I would have thought, too. When I was younger, the absolute last dude in the world who would have gotten my sympathy would be some famous guy, lamenting the glamorous problems of the elite. It just wouldn’t have sat right with me. But now that I was inside that situation myself, things felt a little bit more complicated.

  There was pressure stacking up from every direction, particularly on a business level. I’d spread myself increasingly thin with the various operations I’d developed over the years: my Walmart clothing line; my restaurant, Cisco Burger; my production company, Pay Up Sucker Productions; as well as a whole merchandising operation and the manufacturing facility that we’d connected to the bike shop. All told, the Jesse James congl
omerate I’d built up spanned an entire city block. If I wanted to step away from that, it would have to be one hell of a step.

  I’d love to just fucking blow it all up, I found myself fantasizing, as I sat behind my desk at West Coast, blinking my reddened eyes. How sweet would that be?

  It was a great image. All this responsibility gone: no more staring down at yet another payroll sheet, calculating just how much money I’d have to bring in this month to make all the labor worth it. No more hordes of people outside, craning their necks, desperate to catch a glimpse of the action. My life could shift back into a more manageable gear. I could return to the average workingman grind, just me in a small garage somewhere.

  But if I closed West Coast down, it would hurt Sandy. That was the catch. In the eyes of the public, my fate was directly tied to hers. So just like I couldn’t punch somebody’s teeth out on the red carpet, I couldn’t really fuck up businesswise, either, because it would reflect badly upon her, and probably affect her successful image.

  You’re trapped, I thought suddenly. It came out of nowhere, but you’re trapped pretty good, aren’t you?

  Before I met Sandy, I’d romanticized the stable, calm married life: the idea of me finally growing up. But now I missed leaning up against the fence at the dragster races in Pomona, laughing, talking shit, cracking jokes with my no-good friends. Too many people knew me now. I couldn’t escape. Not even for an instant. Hell, I didn’t even have most of those old friends anymore. They all thought I’d pissed on them, gone Hollywood.

  Mentally at a loss, desperate for something to make me feel like I had some sense of freedom, I ran through the list of things I could do to assert my independence over my life. Infidelity, unfortunately, was at the top of the list.

  ——

  Sex is strange. For men, it’s on our minds every minute of the day. It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning; it’s the gold at the end of our rainbow. Sex is part of what makes us fall in love with a woman. It’s also part of what keeps us perpetually alone.

  Ever since I had gained even a moderate amount of fame, I’d had women offering themselves to me—online, in person, and over the phone. I say that not to brag, but to tell you the truth about what fame does. I’m not special, by any means: the same thing happens to every man who makes his living in professional sports, music, television, movies, or politics. It’s part of what motivates men to strive to be famous in the first place. After all, when you take money out of the equation, what’s the point of being famous besides having your pick of attractive partners?

  Throughout my life, I’d always had opportunities to hop on the train. But from the groupies at the concerts to the biker chicks who crowded our booth in Daytona, I’d mostly said thanks, but no thanks. It’s not because I was a great person; it’s just my nature to get emotionally caught up with the women I’m involved with. I’m into sex, but contrary to whatever biker stereotype got built up around me, sex is mostly a cerebral experience for me. If there’s no personal connection there, then it’s sort of pointless.

  But with that said: I still did it. I screwed around behind Sandy’s back, and the whole world came to know about it.

  I can’t go back, and I can’t save my marriage. What I can do is try to understand why I did it.

  When Sandy and I first fell in love, I was so overjoyed to be with a woman who was obviously a superb person. And on the flip side of that same coin, I think part of what got her excited about being with me was my “bad boy” image. Opposites really do attract. During the initial period of our romance, we were carried along on the wave of the good we so clearly saw in each other: kindness, a willingness to give affection, our physical attraction, and a strong feeling of safeness we got from each other. But as we got to know each other better, I think we both came to realize that we really were a bit oddly matched. Sandy wasn’t rich, but she came from a stable, middle-class family—she’d grown up singing in a choir with her mom. I’d grown up with a dad who sent me a hooker in the middle of the day.

  After Janine and I had split for good, a whole bunch of my friends had commented on how rash my decision to marry her had been. “Man, you thought you and Janine could make it work? You must have been high.” But weren’t Sandy and I almost an odder combination? I mean, I knew I could count on Sandy not to punch me in the face for snaking her parking space. But that didn’t mean we liked to do any of the same activities, or that the things that motivated me would do the same for her.

  The more important factor, though, was the fact that I’d grown up in an environment where love hadn’t been shown to me on a regular basis. My dad had torn me down every time he could, and my mom had been pretty absent. Now I had a great woman who was telling me she loved me, but that didn’t mean I was in any shape to believe her. Sandy was an actress, after all. I think in the back of my mind, I always told myself she was pretending.

  I never really trusted Sandy. It’s shameful to admit it, especially considering how hard she tried to let me know that I was accepted, and that she saw the good in me. But no matter how many times she told me, it just didn’t take. I nodded when she said she loved me. Inside, I was always thinking to myself, Sure. We’ll see.

  I guess I always felt like sooner or later, she was going to see the real me. And then she’d leave me. Well, I figured, if I was going to be left, then I wanted to make the first break. I’d reject Sandy before she could reject me. I’d expose myself as broken and incapable of love before someone else could beat me to the punch.

  I have no problem admitting that I fucked up. I cheated on a woman I cared deeply about and I am so regretful. If there was any possible way to undo my actions, to communicate instead of cheating, to be able to say to her, “Hey, I think we need to change some things about our marriage, because I’m losing my mind in this world we’ve created for ourselves,” then I would. But I can’t. I transgressed against the vows of my marriage, and it doesn’t really matter whether I did that ten thousand times or just once. Once you’ve lied, there’s no taking it back. There’s no way to erase the deceit that you’ve created.

  Instead, you have to live with it.

  ——

  I probably almost blurted out the truth to Sandy more than a hundred times.

  “How’s the steak taste to you, Jesse?”

  I fucked someone. I didn’t mean to, but somehow it happened and I can’t take it back.

  “Jesse? Anybody home?”

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “Sorry. I’m just tired.”

  “Well?” Sandy said. “Everything taste okay?”

  “It’s great,” I said, stiffly. “Just like always.” And also, do you have a moment while I admit something that will end all happiness as you know it?

  Being around my kids was almost as bad as being around Sandy. I’d always prided myself on being straight with them. I wanted to earn my kids’ respect, not demand it, and I knew that the only way to do that was through honesty and by being a decent person. Now I was caught up in this big lie that followed me around from room to room like a dark cloud.

  I’d never lived as a liar before. It was something to get used to.

  I couldn’t look in the mirror for too long. I didn’t want to examine myself too closely.

  I couldn’t listen to the lies I told Sandy, my weak cover-ups. I pretended that my voice was coming from someone else.

  All the self-respect I’d accumulated over the years, through seasons of hard work, through refusal to quit even in the face of hardship, it was all gone, because I was full of shit and I knew it. My confidence was at an all-time low. And ironically, the sex that I’d sold my soul for wasn’t even good. There was no relationship and no personal connection. I was just there coldly, for myself, and even though I figured that detachment would make me feel less guilty about being unfaithful, that made me feel like a heel, too.

  Months went by like this, the guilt mounting and my loathsome behavior making me feel like the lowest rat in the world. T
hen, one morning, I stepped out of the shower, and caught a good look at myself. I was a fully-grown man, complete with graying temples and a few wrinkles across the forehead. I wasn’t a child any longer. I had the power to stop what I was doing. I’d acted mindlessly. If I continued down this road, I’d lose everything, starting with my self-respect.

  And so I stopped. The decision, arrived at in a moment, was final, and my execution of it was cold and definite. It was just like turning off a switch. Bam. It was all over. Several weeks after the fact, I realized that I’d quit drinking in precisely the same way.

  It took a good long while before I began to feel better about myself—not to mention secure enough around Sandy to act like a normal human being.

  “Want to go take a walk on the beach? It’s so beautiful out tonight.”

  “All right,” I answered carefully. “That’d be great.”

  We strolled along the beach in the evening air, arm in arm. Sandy was a trusting woman at heart, and that made me feel even more guilty. She’d never suspected a thing. Sometimes, I awoke sensing I loved her even more now, having gone outside of our marriage and finding no happiness there. I wished I could tell her. There was a story inside of me now—maybe if I phrased it right, I could share it with her.

  I strayed, but realized that no one could replace you.

  “Look up at all these stars,” Sandy exclaimed. “They’re so incredibly perfect. I mean, are we the luckiest people on earth, or what?”

  No, I realized. I couldn’t tell her the truth.

  “We are,” I agreed, gazing up at the black, quiet sky that loomed over our private stretch of beach. “We’re very, very lucky.”

  That evening, as I walked along the beach with Sandy, I knew that I’d have to swallow what I’d done. I had no choice. It was the only plan that made any sense to me.

  As time passed, strangely, our marriage began to gel again. I felt satisfied with my wife, and far less constrained by the specter of being known as Mr. Sandra Bullock. So what if I had to act in a certain way? So what if I couldn’t go to the racetrack anymore? Wasn’t being with a remarkable woman worth that much? In the grand scheme of things, was that really much to ask?