by Nik Richie
The actual marriage, on the other hand, is another issue entirely. We’re fine, Shayne and I. Happy. I’ve never been this happy. We took that initial beating in the press, and even though that’s died down, it’s been replaced by more personal assaults. Girls from my past: Sarah Wood, Ashley Zarlin, even a few that I don’t remember—they’ve all reached out.
Sarah goes fucking crazy, texting Scooby: How the fuck could he do this? I loved him. That was supposed to be me.
To me, she says: Out of all the times we were in Vegas, you never once tried to marry me. Why? I want to know why.
Ashley Zarlin talks all sorts of random trash. Her friends are all calling me every name they can think of. I kind of expected this. Wood and Zarlin are both crazy. This kind of behavior is right up their alley. It’s the randoms that get me: girls that I haven’t seen in forever, girls that somehow got my number that I don’t remember giving it to.
The twins in Scottsdale that I fucked text me to ask why I got married and why I’m trying to upset them. What’s creepy is that the texts come from one number but they refer to themselves as “we” and “us,” as if I was dating both of them.
While Shayne gets the apartment in order, randoms call and leave upset messages. They text how they had been waiting for me, that they loved me the entire time. “I always wanted to be with you,” they say. So many calls come in that my voicemail box fills up. Pictures of tits flood my e-mail. Vaginas pried apart by manicured fingers are SMS-messaged. Fingers knuckle-deep in soft cunt that I may or may not have had at one point. I delete them. All of them. Sometimes they come in as early (or late, depending on how you look at it) as four in the morning.
All day and night it’s: “I love you”…“I need you”…pictures of tits…ass… cunt…“It’s not too late for us to be together”…a masturbation video… video of tits…” You’ll regret this, Nik.”
Delete. Delete. Delete.
I turn my phone off so I can concentrate on the site, but the attacks are there, too. Traffic on The Dirty is up, but I attributed most of that to the fact that I got married so quickly. There was no warning and none of my fans saw it coming. What I didn’t consider was Shayne’s following: Bachelor fans, fans of Leave it to Lamas, fans of her father. All these people who have never heard of me before are asking why she’d pick an Internet scumbag over Matt Grant. They think I’m abusive, that I’m going to hit her or hurt her somehow. These bored housewives scour the site and surmise that I’m hyper-judgmental and “not right” for her. Or they think it’s a publicity stunt that Shayne and I concocted together.
A part of me wants to ask Shayne if she’s getting this kind of backlash, if ex-boyfriends are reaching out to criticize her, to tell her I’m not right or it’s not going to work. I wonder how many random shots of abdominal muscles and cock she’s gotten on her phone, but Shayne’s World is different from that of Nik Richie. She is elegant and composed. When Shayne sees something she disagrees with or doesn’t care for, she discards it from her mind. She’s somehow able to do this quite easily: picking and choosing the things she wishes to retain.
Shayne is able to let things go and carry on with her life, which may or may not be a by-product of her Hollywood upbringing. In a world where scrutiny is constant, Shayne has been trained in the delicate art of tuning people out. While I was flipping shit about TMZ and all the other news outlets bashing us, Shayne was painting her nails and telling me to relax. Chill out. It’s no big deal, she said.
“I love you, Hooman,” Shayne tells me. “That’s literally all that matters. And I know you love me, too.”
In public Shayne calls me Nik. When we’re alone she calls me Hooman.
Nik Richie invented The Dirty. He hosts events in clubs like Marquee and Pure and LIV, usually sleeping with one or two girls a night. He gets drunk and out of control, and on a couple occasions, has almost died because of it. He is, in fact, hyper-judgmental and lacking sensitivity. Nik Richie will tell you what he doesn’t like about you. He will treat you like shit if he feels like it. Nik Richie, however, is not the name on the marriage certificate. He’s not the guy Shayne met in Vegas. Nik is a facet of Hooman Karamian, a small fraction of the overall persona that is showcased online. He’s a blogger, not the guy that Shayne fell in love with.
That’s why this works: we don’t have any preconceived notions of each other based on websites or reality shows, and because of that, can be our true selves. Shayne can lounge on the couch with Madison in her pajamas. I can be the romantic that enjoys holding her hand and taking her on dates. We don’t have to be “on” or “in character.” We don’t have to put on a show. We can be normal, and considering our individual backgrounds, normal is something we don’t get to be very often.
I’ve been Nik Richie for so long that I forgot how good it felt to be Hooman Karamian. One of the reasons I love Shayne so much, maybe even the main one, is that she lets me remember. That is our life in Optima: two normal people living in a modest yet comfortable apartment. We go on dates. We laugh. We love.
We get to be ourselves for a change.
Meeting the Family
Oddly enough, I meet Lorenzo on Father’s Day. He’s out in Scottsdale directing some movie, so there’s no avoiding this now that we’re in the same city. My hope is that he’s cooled off since the TMZ thing that happened a couple months ago, but from the pictures I’ve seen of him online, I can’t count on it. He’s like this all-American biker dude with the leather pants and shit, and I’m this Persian Internet guy that puts people on blast. It wouldn’t surprise me if he hated my guts, not just for what I do, but for marrying his daughter behind his back.
What I learn is that Lorenzo is the most normal one of the Lamas family. He’s got this very chill vibe about him, mostly just wanting to get to know the guy his daughter married. Specifically, he’s trying to find out if the Nik Richie in front of him is the same Nik Richie from the site.
He asks questions like “Is this real?” and “Are you really that guy?”
No, this is not a hoax.
Yes, I’m that guy, but that’s not the guy Shayne married.
There’s a public Nik Richie and the husband Nik Richie. The person you are at work is not the person you are at home. Doesn’t matter if you’re a congressman, a plumber, or yes, even a website owner.
His fiancée doesn’t see it that way, though.
“All my friends are on that site,” she says, sneering.
Lorenzo was born in 1958. His fiancée is younger than Shayne. Like I said, he’s the most normal one, but in the Lamas family, that doesn’t mean much.
Lorenzo and I get along. He’s a good guy, but he’s the center of a highly dysfunctional family. I can see that already. At this point in time, I know that Lorenzo is Shayne’s biological father, and I know that Lorenzo used to be married to Shauna Sand, whom I’ve already met in Vegas. What I don’t know is why Lorenzo and Shauna split.
This is where Lorenzo’s son comes in: A.J.
I’ve spoken with A.J. a couple times.
Shortly after the news broke on the wedding, this kid called me up all pissed off, saying, “I don’t fucking know you, man. You just married my sister without running it by anyone.”
I thought, Oh shit, this is like a structured family.
He’s just looking out for his sister.
A.J. said, “You know Shayne owes me money, right?” but he didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he just started demanding I send him cash.
So the first time I actually go to meet A.J., Shayne drives us up to this mansion in Beverly Hills. The place is enormous. There’s a $300K Mercedes parked outside. If A.J. is living here then I don’t know why he’d be so stressed over a measly half a grand.
I say to Shayne, “Your brother must be doing well for himself.”
She shakes her head and says, “No, he’s just crashing here,” and then she starts walking toward the side of the house, toward the maid’s quarters. “This place belongs to a pr
oducer or something like that,” she says.
We walk through a door and down a flight of stairs. It’s dark, and there’s a smell that’s getting stronger: cigarettes and booze and body odor. Shayne doesn’t seem to be concerned that we’re walking into a basement where the only source of light is a TV. A few steps in and my eyes adjust. A.J. is sitting on the couch with a bottle of Jack in his hand. There’s coke all over the table in front of him, and A.J. barely acknowledges us because he’s fixated on the TV, watching The Dark Knight.
Shayne raises her voice over the movie, saying, “A.J., this is Nik.”
There’s shades of Lorenzo in him, the movie star looks, but he’s in bad shape. He clearly hasn’t showered in days. He’s got long greasy hair, and this nasty fucking beard on him like he’s Dirty Jesus. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s been on a three-month binge, and then it clicks that this is the reason he’s been calling and asking me for money.
“A.J.,” Shayne tries again. “I want you to meet my husband.”
He looks my way, and I give him a little nod. A.J. sets the bottle of Jack on the table and says in this creepy voice, “Let me give you a hug,” as he wraps his arms around me. He smells like shit. A.J. sits back down on the couch, picking up the remote to rewind the movie.
Shayne tries to engage A.J. in a discussion, asking him what he’s been up to, but then A.J. starts repeating lines from the movie like he’s auditioning.
“Let me show you a magic trick,” he says in the Joker voice. He leans forward to grab the bottle, pounding it like it’s fucking tap water. Meanwhile, Shayne is sweeping coke off the coffee table into a small waste-basket, beyond embarrassed. And A.J. says again, “Let…let me show you a magic trick.”
“A.J., what are you doing?” Shayne asks, but it’s clear to me that he’s been up to the same thing for quite a while: drinking, doing coke, watching Batman.
He rewinds the movie. Hits play.
“Let me show you a magic trick,” A.J. says, attempting to sync his voice up with Heath this time.
I lean over to Shayne, placing my mouth to her ear, and whisper, “He’s not okay. He needs help.”
She says, “No, it’s fine. It’s L.A. This is how it is.”
A.J. is rewinding the movie again, mumbling to himself, “Great actor. You don’t even know how great of an actor Heath is.” He hits play again, saying in his Joker voice, “And I thought my jokes were bad.”
“A.J.” Shayne says. “A.J., seriously, can we like talk…or whatever.”
“Let me show you a magic trick.”
We end up leaving A.J. minutes later.
Shayne is embarrassed. I’m creeped out.
I tell her, “Shayne, your brother needs help.”
She waves me off, saying, “I know, I know, I know,” like she’s heard this too many times already. This is when we get into the discussion about Leave it to Lamas. I’ve never seen the show, so Shayne has to explain why Lorenzo and Shauna Sand split. What happened was that Shauna came on to A.J. because she’s got a thing for young dudes. A.J. fucked her because she was hot and he was too stupid to say no. Of course, when Lorenzo found out he cut ties with both of them. The TV show reunited Lorenzo and A.J. after a long silence of many years. They’re cool now, but it’s still a little weird. The kid fucked Lorenzo’s wife, so of course it’s weird.
“Oh, and Shauna has some porn tape59 out,” Shayne says. “Like, she leaked it on purpose for publicity or whatever.”
Leave it to Lamas, I find out, was pretty much a fucking disaster. Unlike the Kardashians, this family couldn’t deal with the cameras and all the bullshit. They got sick of each other, and by the end of filming, they unanimously agreed they needed a break from it.
“The only good thing to come out of it,” Shayne says, “is that it finally got Dad and A.J. to talk again.”
I nod. It’s hitting me just how much I still have to learn about Shayne.
“Okay, let’s go meet my mom,” Shayne says, driving through Beverly Hills with her big designer sunglasses, a cigarette pinched between her fingers. Shayne looks at me with a small grin, and tells me, “She’s crazy too.”
Michele Smith is Shayne’s mom, Lorenzo’s first wife.
We meet her at this tanning salon in the Valley that she works at—my first thought upon seeing her is that she looks a lot like Crocodile Dundee. She looks fine for her age, but her skin is pretty much what you’d expect when you work at a tanning salon and have been partying hard for most of your life. Michele Smith was one of the top publicists at PMK in New York, and was a bottle rat before bottle rats existed during the Studio 54 days. That’s how she met Lorenzo. She was his publicist.
“Y’know, Shayne and I were twins in another life, Nik,” Michele says, laughing in this kind of actor-y way, like she’s on TV.
“See? Crazy?” Shayne says. “Don’t listen to her.”
“I mean, hell, we could be twins now for all I know, right?” Michele says, and this is when I’m supposed to be polite and agree but I don’t.
“Mom—ugh! You’re crazy!” Shayne says. “Nik, don’t listen to her. We’re not twins.”
“Yeah…I know.”
“Nik, do you like animals?” Michele asks. “You look like an animal lover.”
“They’re…okay,” but it comes out sounding like a question.
Michele starts ranting about cats and dogs and shelters and whatnot. She’s an animal kook, and she talks to me like she’s known me my entire life, which makes me uneasy. The entire family makes me uneasy.
Then we meet Dakota.
Dakota Pike is Shayne’s sister from a different father.
She was also on Leave it to Lamas, although Shayne was featured more prominently due to her actually being a Lamas and her Bachelor stint. Regardless of them having different parents, Shayne and Dakota still look at each other like real sisters since they grew up together.
Dakota has roughly the same issues that A.J. does (drinking, pills, coke, etc.), but to a lesser degree. She hasn’t yet hit that stage where she’s doing blow in a dark basement quoting the Joker. Her problems aren’t the in-your-face kind. She hides them, or tries to at least.
Dakota is in a fucked-up relationship with this dude named Benry, who was on Survivor60, I would later find out. For the most part, Dakota and Benry do drugs and fuck, but it’s not like they love each other. Celebrities or people with a name gravitate toward each other like junkies. When you’re cut from the same cloth it only seems natural that you date someone on your level, and that feeling is intensified when you add drugs into the mix.
So Dakota and Benry have both been on TV, they’ve both have had their fifteen minutes, and now that it’s over, they both want to do drugs and party. In a place like L.A., these kinds of relationships are more common than you’d think. On the outside, Dakota and Benry look like a perfectly happy and normal couple, but behind closed doors it’s about as dysfunctional as you can imagine.
Shayne and I will see Dakota, and she’ll be strung out on pills and liquor and possibly coke, and she’ll say, “Benry beat the shit out of me last night. Look at these bruises.” Dakota models her arm, and it’s spotted with welts and plum blotches. She’s crying hysterically, telling Shayne, “I’m fucking done with him! I’m done!” and Shayne will put her arm around her sister, patting her on the back like she’s seen this a million times. Calm. Collected.
The next day, Dakota will act like everything’s fine again. Her and Benry will rekindle things, party together, or do whatever it is they do to make things good again. Maybe get high and fuck. I don’t know. It’s unstable and not normal. I know I don’t want to be around it.
After meeting Dakota and seeing her drama play out—that’s right around the time I conclude how I want things to work with Shayne and me.
If meeting Shayne’s family did anything of positive note, it’s that it made me realize what a good job my own parents did. Granted, I’m not the most well-liked person on the pl
anet, but I’ve never touched a drug in my life, I’ve never been in an abusive relationship, and I’ve never had a kid I didn’t take responsibility for. I set rules for myself that most people in my position wouldn’t bother doing. I’m good to my wife, and I want to start a family with her, but not with these people around us.
That’s the conclusion I make.
I tell her, “I would like to start a family and have kids, but I’m not going to have people like A.J. and Dakota in their life. Lorenzo—fine, but I’m not having this dysfunctional shit around my kid.”
Shayne nods. She gets it.
If we’re starting a family, we have to give the kid a fair shot at being normal. Even though Shayne and I have long forgotten what normal is or feels like, we have to try.
59Shauna Sand Exposed.
60Redemption Island season.
Origins (Part 3)
Because the concept of reality Internet had never been done before, I wondered if it was even legal. I was going to put it all out there: the drugs and the girls with plastic surgery and all those guys going out every weekend pretending to be something they weren’t. Unmitigated exposure. What had once been confined to the clubs and celebrated, I was going to question on an open platform. I was going to break the façade. Satire it. Whether or not that would be something I could get in trouble for remained to be seen.
