‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol

by Jake Brown

  327

  328 what the hell was i thinking?!! Arch Enemy, Hatebreed among a bad-ass list of others! Sadly, by the end of the first night, even though we’d had a good time hanging out with our friends from Cradle of Filth, Shadows Fall, and Dragonforce, Matt had predictably been drinking and drinking so much that night that even his friends were getting worried.

  By 3 in the morning, we were arguing about the fact I had to get up and work the next day. By the time he was done calling me every name in the book in the parking lot of a Taco Bell, I realized his alcoholism was past the point of no return. I had held out hope for so long that he would change, or sober up long enough to realize how much we really had to lose at that point, but he’d let me down every time. My husband had become a joke, a horrible joke, and his drinking problem was far worse than Earl’s had been. Earl was an annoying drunk, at worse, Matt was a DANGEROUS drunk. He even had the audacity when we woke up arguing the next morning, to suggest we should divorce because I was ruining his career, vs. the alcohol. It was unbelievable, and day two of the convention wasn’t much of an improvement: Matt spent the whole day drinking while I was working the convention floor doing band interviews for my T.V. show. He ended that night the same way, which was highly inconsiderate to the next day I had before me, which included another signing, interviews for the T.V. show, and a fashion show, all of which I had to fit into one day.

  After the fashion show, we headed home and I found out Matt had blown $500 of the $1000 he had left out of his settlement check on a bar tab! I was livid, but tried to keep things on an even keel while I figured out whether to stay in the marriage or not. I felt at that point as though I’d spent my entire adult life taking care of the men in my life, and felt it was time the one I’d chosen to be my husband stepped up for me for a change. Still, when I broached the subject of his getting a job of ANY sort, his solution — as usual — was to berate me about my adult film past and suggest I was somehow holding him back as a musician. It was laughable, and honestly, by that point, Matt could have been one of those clowns on that A&E show Intervention. He was that sad of an addict and his concept of reality rested entirely in whatever bottle of Jack Daniels he was pounding that day.

  That February, for his birthday, we were so broke I could barely afford to buy him a present, and by March, things looked the bleakest they had

  thanksgiVing debacle 32 9 at any point in our relationship. Matt had become so controlling by that point that he wouldn’t allow me to even do booth signings at conventions! That was my bread and butter, and the fact that Matt was jealous of any fan of mine because he attributed ALL their adulation to my adult film past was ludicrous! It was also bringing us to the literal edge of financial ruin. To put that reality in perspective for my readers — even though Matt still didn’t seem to get it — by that April, for the first time in my adult life, I had problems paying the rent. Not surprisingly, my deadbeat husband — as usual — was doing NOTHING to contribute to our living expenses, and had put such a choke-hold on my ability to cover those costs that I was beginning to feel suffocated, and even panicked in a way I never had before in my life. I even felt so desperate about Matt’s drinking problem that I resorted to calling his mother to speak to her about it, but she basically blew me off.

  When our eviction notice arrived later that month, I was heart-broken. I’d lived in that apartment for a decade, it was my home, where all my memories had been built, and were now being torn to shreds — along with what was left of my dignity, heart and marriage. I was at a true low point, and the fact that Matt wouldn’t even swallow his pride to call his parents and borrow a month’s rent just made my heart sink even lower. Everything was on me at that point, and I didn’t know if I had the strength to pull through this time. We got a Notice to Appear re our eviction about 10 days later, and I’d hoped at the very least that would be a wake-up call of sorts for Matt to see how desperate things had gotten, but it seemed lost on him. I wound up selling furniture trying to come up with the outstanding rent, precious keepsakes like the first dresserset I’d ever bought after moving to L.A., our living room couch that I’d had for years, gone. I was watching the pieces of my personal life being removed one by one, and didn’t know how much more I could take, or have taken from me.

  By June, we were formally being evicted, and our plan was to move to Seattle to live in Matt’s parents’ basement while we re-grouped, with my cats being left out back in the cold in some chicken coup. It was rockbottom, and it was the first time in my life — even with everything I’d already been through — that I felt I’d really hit that point. No matter what emotional issues I might have been working through in the course of my adult film career, that pain was at least compensated for by the stardom and financial stability I’d worked so hard to accrue. From there, working

  33 0 what the hell was i thinking?!! my way out of that business, out of those fucking strip clubs and into wrestling performance/promotion- it had all been a climb upward. Then graduating into the world of Metal as a model and Veejay personality, for every sacrifice I’d made along that way, there had been a reward, which to me had offered at least some sense of it being worth it. Now, having watched all of that slowly slip away over the past year into the avalanche that was now bearing down on us, I felt completely helpless for the first time in my life.

  On top of everything else, I could tell his parents HATED the idea of my moving in with them, and was desperate to avoid us having to take that route. I knew it would be the ultimate death of our relationship, and after losing everything else in my personal life, it was the only thing I had left to fight for. Thankfully, my then-best friend Sickie came to the rescue and offered that we could move temporarily to New York to live with him until we got back on our feet. It was the first lifeline anyone had thrown us that I really welcomed, and was truly relieved we didn’t have to lower ourselves to living in my husband’s parents’ basement. Still, it was perhaps the only silver lining to an otherwise very dark set of clouds hanging over us. When we finally were evicted, we had to leave my bedroom set because we didn’t have room in storage. We had to leave my six cats in L.A. with friends of Matt’s, and sell my beautiful yellow Mustang that had been my dream car for many years and that I’d worked my ass off to buy. A dear friend of mine paid for our plane tickets to fly to New York, and when we landed, I was just relieved to be away from the shame of everything that had just gone down back in L.A.

  Thankfully, later that June, I signed at a comic convention in New York and made a few thousand dollars, which helped get us back in our feet in the very short term, but we were still living very much day to day. Matt had also landed a gig with Warrel Dane’s solo band, and was writing a lot of material for that while I helped Sickie run his eBay business, so I just focused on making sure I didn’t lose my career like we had everything else. As happy as I was for Matt finding a potentially viable music project, it hurt me deeply that his parents were willing to shell out $1500 to help him buy a 4th guitar when they wouldn’t lend us that same money to keep from being evicted back in L.A. I felt our marriage at that point was definitely in a probationary period of sorts, and so I tried to be supportive and not make an issue of it, but quietly, it stung me deeply. I knew that even if things got better between Matt and me by some miracle that his parents would never accept me into their family, and I found an entire new struggle trying to make peace with that.

  In later July, we decided to move back to L.A. to rebuild our life, and were crashing on my friends’ Bobby and Shelia’s couch while I waited on some royalty money from Australia to get moved into a new apartment. While things had been temporarily peaceful in New York, as soon as we landed back in L.A., Matt was back at it with me again, picking fights over nothing and drinking himself under the table on a daily basis — when we could least afford it. We finally found a cute studio apartment in West Hollywood that I felt I could live with, and even though we had a roof over our heads again, we had no car and no money coming
in on Matt’s end, so again I became our sole provider. At this point, I had stopped giving a shit about the fact that my husband was a deadbeat; I was in survival mode, trying to make sure the rent stayed paid and that I could afford payments on the little car I’d managed to get my hands on. More importantly, I had to quickly re-establish my presence back in L.A., and began working again on my L.A. Metal Scene T.V. Show in August, focused on the future and picking up the pieces of my career, and maybe in time, the rest of my shattered life. Little did I know that the worst was yet to come.

  As the fall blew along, things were beginning to look up because Matt was going to be heading to Nashville in later October to begin work with Warrel Dane of Nevermore on his solo project from the record label for his songwriting on the album. I was happy for the most part because I felt maybe Matt had finally found something that might actually encourage him to do something with himself professionally. For almost the entire duration of our relationship up to that point, he hadn’t done anything once his stint in Himsa had ended. Many of his friends had let me know that there had been musical opportunities that had come his way in the interim, but he’d been happy to mooch off of me, and really hadn’t ever carried his weight financially in the marriage. So this was great news it was a chance for him to do something to contribute, because I’d been so busy paying for everything, putting a roof over our heads that we were running out of money. I’d loss the income from my website since he made me take it down and though I had some money coming from a 3PW licensing deal for Australia, I was really looking forward to my trip there to further shore things up. I had a really big signing lined up with wrestlers Rob Van Dam and Sabu for the Armageddon Festival in

  332 what the hell was i thinking?!! Australia, and I’d decided to bring Matt with me so we could get away together. Naturally, I paid for his ticket because he had no money of his own, and we stayed in a really nice hotel, were taken out to dinner that night by my friends, so everything was comped for him, thanks to me. Nonetheless, he still saw fit to act like a dick throughout the entire trip, and was drinking heavier than ever. By the time it was over, I’d thankfully made about $4500, most of which I put into an IRA I wanted to replace and keep safe from Matt’s alcoholic clutches.

  One night I got us into Motorhead’s show through my relationship with Lemmy, who let us all backstage, and it gave Lemmy and me a chance to catch-up. Lemmy is someone I’ve always thought really highly of, and he has to be one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in L.A. People see him as a God, but to me, he’s always been Lemmy — this really kind-hearted person. He’s better than Dr. Phil when it comes to advice! Matt was busy wandering off backstage, throwing back Jack Daniels and Coke one after another, and after a while, was acting like a total dope in front of my friends. I’d dealt with this once before with Earl Slate, who was also an alcoholic and drug addict, and it had just kept getting worse and worse with my husband. I’d even called his mom earlier in that year to alert her to the fact that I thought he had a drinking problem, and of course, she blew me off, which I thought was sad given it was his own mother. I’ve always been a very loyal and loving person, the type of person who puts my significant other first when I love them, and makes them my priority, which meant I was putting Matt’s problems before my own happiness. Though that should have been his # 1 priority, I wanted him to get well. Even though he acted like a drunken ass all week, I tolerated it in the hopes things would change. Still, in another part of my heart, I knew the end of Matt and I was getting near. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was matter of when.

  When we got back to L.A., we were in the midst of a drama with my landlord over this old toxic heater they wouldn’t fix. Thankfully, we were leaving town right after we got back to go to Nashville for Matt to record his guitar parts for Nevermore singer Warrel Dane’s solo album. Matt and Warrel were working with this songwriter Peter Wichers and I was excited for Matt to finally be recording new music. He and I stayed at this horrible Days Inn because Warrel — also a raging alcoholic — was staying at the band’s apartment, and I didn’t want him and Matt together drinking it up all night when Matt was there to work. In an odd way, I felt inside as though this was our last chance to get on our feet again as a couple, namely by Matt starting to take some kind of aim professionally toward being a real man and pulling his weight financially. While he was recording, I’d bring Matt down food to the studio because he had low blood sugar, and our money was starting to run low. One night Warrel offered to take me out to Applebee’s for lunch while Matt was working, and we ended up getting thrown out because Warrel was being drunk and louder than the staff apparently would tolerate. It shows you how these two were evil twins, and in an example of how much worse things got once they were together, on one of our last nights in town, Warrel took us out to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse for dinner. Naturally, he and Matt got wrecked throughout the meal to the point where Warrel excused himself at one point in mid-conversation, turned away from us and vomited underneath the table before returning to the meal/convo as if nothing had happened. We stayed with Warrel for the last few days in the band’s apartment, and after tripping over empty Vodka bottle after empty Vodka bottle, I decided it was just a really unhealthy environment for me to be around. Thankfully, I was able to move us to the album producer, Peter Wichers’ house, which was a cleaner environment for everyone involved.

  The next time we touched back down in L.A., things only got worse when I was greeted walking in my door to an eviction notice. Amazingly, Matt’s check from Century Media Records arrived within the next couple days, and he wouldn’t use any of the money toward fighting it. I finally begged $300 out of him but saw from that action among many others how arrogant he was becoming, walking around with a rooster chest like a big rock star. It finally began to occur to me that I might be too good for him, which love had blinded me too up to that point. I was always a very smart woman until I fell in love…I never learned my lesson. Still, just as I had begun to feel like I was starting to see things clearly, everything went into a sudden blur. I had had what I thought was our final fight one night in early November, shortly before heading out to the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset with some friends to blow off steam. Someone wound up drugging my drink that night, and while thankfully no one took advantage of the situation, I wound up barely making it home. After my ride dropped me off, I started losing consciousness as soon as I walked into the apartment, knocking over a lamp, slamming into a dresser on my way to the floor in a blackout. When I woke up the next morning on the kitchen floor, I saw I’d knocked right into Matt’s laptop and knocked over one of his guitars. I felt horrible, even though it was a total accident,

  33 4 what the hell was i thinking?!! knowing he wouldn’t understand. Sure enough, when I’d woken up, he’d already been home, packing his things, and greeted me with ‘ I’m leaving you, don’t want anything to do with you anymore, don’t touch my shit, I want a divorce, you fucking cunt.’ When I tried to explain what had happened, he blew me off and left me instead.

  When we finally spoke a couple days after, he said he’d decided to move back to Seattle, and left me to deal with the eviction alone. Strangely, he called a couple days later from San Francisco, told me he loved me, had always felt I was his partner, knew he was wrong, and to come up to join him in Seattle. As soon as I felt we were finally getting somewhere in the relationship, just as Thanksgiving Day arrived, he pulled a complete 180 and dumped me by email. I’m sure that move was partly his parents’doing, but to have led me on like that was cruel, and my heart was broken. I spent Thanksgiving at my friend’s house, and felt just horrible and confused and completely depressed about everything. Back home, things were worse with the Eviction court date approaching on December 3rd.

  I was broke with no where to live, and even though the apartment management company eventually settled with me out of court, I had to move all our belongings into storage at the last minute and couldn’t even afford a hotel to stay in till things were s
ettled. I’d never been at a bleaker point in my life heading into the holidays. I know how good an actress I am though by the front I put up for everyone during that December. To start with, I had no car because I’d had to sell it to get Matt out of debt the year prior, so I had to rent a mini-van, where I and my four cats wound up LIVING for a few weeks. I would go into work every day at Fuse TV to film a special I was hosting for them, and would shower every morning at my work-out gym without anyone realizing I was essentially homeless. It was the scariest moment of my life; I had no sense of security because Matt had essentially taken care of me. I was lost, and remember driving up the 5 freeway toward Seattle on Christmas Eve, not knowing exactly what I was doing, but thinking there might be one more chance for us. I also bided my time transcribing an interview I’d done with King Diamond, which was the month’s only highlight. He was really cool to talk to, and it was a cover story for Rock Brigade Magazine, and actually ended up selling it to two other magazines as well, so it gave me some small sense of meaning during that dark, dark time. I remember I was at an internet café I worked out of a lot, one day I happened in the course of checking my MySpace email to see Matt’s page, where he’d already

  thanksgiVing debacle 33 5 changed his status from married to single. Just like that, it was over. I don’t remember driving as I processed all of this, just that I wound up by the ocean in Santa Monica, and spent Christmas alone in my cold, rented van with my four cats. I also spent New Years that way, it was the dreariest ever, because it also fell on mine and Matt’s wedding anniversary of all days! I felt like my life was going nowhere, and actually thought about killing myself again, but decided I wouldn’t give Matt the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten the best of me.