I once even took a picture with an emergency room doctor when I went to the hospital for a painful UTI. “We’re not allowed to ask patients for pictures,” he said. “But …” I took the darn photo, even though I looked and felt like shit. You know who the guy turned out to be? Dr. Larry Burchett, Bachelor superfan and future cast member on Desiree Hartsock’s season. He was cut in the first episode.
* * *
KEEPING IT REAL
Tales from Bachelor Nation
by Chris Bukowski
My craziest encounter with a fan happened on a flight from L.A. to Chicago. When the plane landed, the flight attendant announced over the PA that someone on the plane had a big announcement. I was at the back of the plane, anxiously waiting to get off. A girl, who was in tears, got on the PA and asked me to marry her. She said she was in love with me since I walked out of the limo. Everyone was staring at me so I said yes jokingly. The whole cabin was applauding and then it got dead silent. The girl got back on the PA and asked if she could have my babies and if we could start right now.
When I finally met her in the terminal, she literally got down on one knee and proposed to me again. She got up, grasped my arm, and wouldn’t let go. Her mom finally got her off me, and then told me it was her sixteenth birthday. Ever since then I will no longer sit in the back of the plane.”
* * *
The only time I ever had to say no to a photo op was during an event in Las Vegas. Ben and I were hosting two parties: one at Pure in Caesars Palace and one at Wet Republic at the MGM Grand, for $10,000 each. When we arrived at Caesars Palace, Ben sprinted ahead through the lobby when he saw we were being trailed, leaving me behind to deal with the eager fan.
“I’m so sorry. We’re in a hurry,” I said.
“How rude!” she sniffed.
When I caught up to Ben, I told him I felt really bad about leaving the fan in our dust. “I think we should go back,” I pleaded.
“Oh, whatever!” he said dismissively.
Ben invited two of his friends to tag along for the weekend and they had one of those adjoining rooms where they could walk through a door into our room. And they did. Frequently. Casey Shteamer was in town for a bachelorette party and joined in as well. Used to being surrounded by Ben’s entourage, I was so happy to have one of my friends around to hang out with. During the day, we took over a private pool at Wet Republic that overlooked the whole club. We had such a blast splashing around, taking pictures and drinking cocktails together.
That night, we all partied at Pure in a VIP booth overlooking the crowd. That was the cool thing about these paid events. All we had to do was show up and stand there like animals in a glass cage, and we got cash, free booze, and even our own bouncer for the night. When I had to pee, my personal security guard escorted me to the bathroom and cut the line so I could go first, which, of course, was greeted with a chorus of angry “aw, c’mons!” It was all enough to give me a big head, until I saw that the billboard advertising the event had spelled my name wrong—Robinson instead of Robertson.
Ben was a big shot that night at the club, too. He kept getting bombarded with screaming girls who would try to run past the velvet rope to hug him, grab his ass, and scream, “I love you!” in his face. Now, this attention he didn’t seem to mind.
We’d been drinking all day and all night, so it wasn’t long before we were hammered.. His drink of choice was Fernet, a bitter aromatic spirit from Italy, which tastes like rocket fuel. In fact, the company found out he was a fan of the liquor and made him an ambassador of the brand. Ben had cases of the stuff at his apartment.
Around 2:00 A.M., I’d had enough and wanted to go back to the hotel room. But Ben wanted to hit the tables. We got into a drunken fight. It was a conversation we shouldn’t and wouldn’t have started right then, if not for the alcohol.
“We’re never alone!” I screamed over the thumping, deafening music. “I want more of just you!”
“We don’t have anything in common!” he yelled back at me.
“Stop calling me to tell me to be more dynamic!” I shrieked.
After fighting in front of everyone, Ben apologized and we both calmed down. I told him I was going back to the room. Instead of going with me, he said he was coming in fifteen minutes and let me wander drunkenly through the gigantic hotel on my own in the middle of the night. Sure enough I got lost. I couldn’t remember our room number, and I was scared and pissed off.
When I finally made it back to our suite, I crawled into bed and fell asleep. At 6:22 A.M. I woke up and Ben was still not back. The thought crossed my mind that he might be with a random fan girl, a stripper, or a hooker. I mean this is Vegas, right? I texted him:
Where are you?
Fifteen minutes went by.
Walking up. Made some money. So tired.
By the time he walked in the door, it was 7:00 A.M.
I was enraged and stormed out of our room and wandered around the casino sobbing, with Ben frantically calling and texting me.
Babe. Can you please call me back? I’m freaking out a bit.
I feel awful.
I’m sick to my stomach.
I’m such a fuck all. I’m so sorry.
For all of his apologies, Ben never attempted to fix the underlying problem with our relationship. He never made me a priority. On Mother’s Day 2012, he flew down to L.A. with Babs and Julia to take them for a special day of pampering on the rooftop of the Thompson Beverly Hills hotel. First, they met me at my house, which I’d cleaned frantically the day before. I wanted to impress Babs with my decorating and housekeeping skills, but they only stayed for ten minutes. After a quick brunch, we all went to the event.
Ben had asked me to bring my mom, but I didn’t even pass along the invitation for two reasons: (1) The thought of Babs and my mom in the same room was terrifying, and (2) I didn’t feel right about working on Mother’s Day. What Babs didn’t know is that the event sponsors, Joico and Voli Light Vodkas, paid Ben and me each $1,500 to show up. So he basically made a profit, then shuttled them right back to San Francisco. They didn’t even stay overnight to spend time with me.
Once again, I’d found myself in a long-distance relationship that wasn’t very satisfying. It’s funny how you repeat behavior, even when you know it’s bad for you, because it’s the only thing you know. It’s like a comfortable misery. We’d stopped talking about moving in together completely. There was no way we could. We just had too many issues and problems to deal with first.
Ben had some pet peeves when it came to me—surface-level things like I wasn’t very punctual or organized, I believed in luck, I shopped at Whole Foods excessively, I talked about my exes too much, and I was always complaining about being cold. He also was extremely annoyed by my “baby voice,” and would constantly point it out, saying, “There it is!” On a deeper level, he didn’t respect my career or how I spent my free time. He didn’t think I was sophisticated or smart. He even told me I was naïve once for not realizing that he’d done the show to promote his winery. I know there were other issues he didn’t voice to my face—but for more of what he didn’t like about me, he’ll have to write his own book.
I, of course, had a few surface-level annoyances about Ben. Like it bugged me that he never remembered his dreams. He wouldn’t go for walks with me and he started to get a little fluffy around the middle. Even though I love going to the movies, we only went to one, Celeste and Jesse Forever, during our relationship. He also gave me a lot of grief about my TV habits, especially when I’d make him watch my favorite show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I loved Khloe but he’d make fun of her, saying, “Blech!” or “Woof woof!” I thought that was totally shallow. Khloe had the best personality of all the sisters. Ben finally changed his tune about the show when he saw the episode where Rob started his own sock collection. “The sock thing is pretty cool,” Ben admitted.
On a more serious level, I didn’t feel like Ben was as sexually charged as I’m used to and he seeme
d dispassionate. The chemistry just wasn’t there anymore. A few times, I’m sorry to say, I resorted to faking orgasms. We just really never hit our stride in that department. “I need more sex,” I’d tell him.
“I’m really sorry,” he’d say. “I’ve just been so busy.”
He also wasn’t a snuggler. It’s not that we weren’t comfortable next to each other in bed. “The sleeping is easy between us,” Ben would say. And we cracked up every morning, when he’d wake me up with his first toot. But night after night, after sex Ben would just roll over like clockwork. I love falling asleep in a man’s arms. For me there is no greater feeling of security and closeness. Ben just wasn’t into it. I’d try to spoon him, massaging his calves with the balls of my feet, but he’d give me a gentle nudge to get off. That hurt.
My biggest issue with Ben wasn’t about sex though. Hands down, it was that he never made me feel like a priority. It was Ben’s world and I was just living in it. During our yearlong engagement, he visited me in L.A. three times and all three of those times were either for paid events or for meetings. He only met my parents twice. Ben needed to be surrounded by his people at all times, and he often ignored me. I once spent an entire Giants baseball game getting the silent treatment from him. The only situation when Ben was reliably attentive and lovey-dovey was in front of other Bachelor alumni. Like me, I think he secretly didn’t want our relationship to fail because he wanted to be perceived as better or above all of the other couples who came before and after us.
Ben’s handler from The Bachelor got married during our engagement and we had a wonderful time at the wedding. It was held at Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss’s gorgeous beachfront estate in Malibu. Ben and I got to stay in the guesthouse next to the main house, which was incredible. The guest list was like a Who’s Who of Bachelor Nation. Chris Harrison (who’d recently separated from his wife); DeAnna Pappas, who is so warm and down-to-earth; Ali Fedotowsky; and J. P. and Ashley were all in attendance. Ashley barely spoke to me all night, but Ben and J. P. threw down so many shots of Fernet that Ben ended up “pulling the trigger” later.
New couple Emily Maynard and Jef Holm, who were only a few weeks into their post-Bachelor life, were also there. They’d just come back from doing charity work in South Africa and seemed exhausted.
I’d only met Emily once before and totally randomly. I bumped into her and a Bachelor PA in L.A. at the Magic Touch Waxing Salon in Beverly Hills. Emily was about to embark on her overnight dates and apparently needed a little tune-up. This was interesting because on the show she said that she wasn’t going to sleep with any of the guys in the Fantasy Suite. She wanted to be a good role model to her daughter. Not that she shouldn’t keep her bush trim and tidy at all times, especially since she was off to her destination shoots, which meant bikini central.
“So nice to meet you!” she’d said. “If you ever need to talk, I went through the same thing after I got engaged to Brad [Womack].”
I thought she was really sweet at the salon in L.A. I definitely saw another side to her at the wedding. She and Jef sat right beside us, but were not getting along at all. Emily kept trying to make Jef jealous by flirting with Ben, avoiding eye contact with me the whole time.
Jef opened up to me that they’d been having a rough time already. “There are some differences between us,” he complained. “She likes to be inside and not do a lot. I’m more social.”
“Oh, you’ll be fine once you get into a normal routine,” I lied. I could tell Emily and Jef were doomed.
Fed up with her flirting, Jef, who is Mormon, stormed off and sat in his car to cool down. As soon as he walked out, Emily called him “Jef Boremon.” Ruh roh. They were already annoyed with each other and I could tell they had realized how little they had in common. Plus the green-eyed monster was obviously an issue.
This all sounded very familiar, but I didn’t tell Jef that. He just seemed a little shady to me. Besides, Ben and I were on fire at this wedding: we tore up the dance floor, then tore each other’s clothes off in the guesthouse at the end of the night. Then Ben puked. We were so hung over the next day.
But that was just one great night. Like Jef, I had my suspicions about Ben. I was concerned that he was fooling around behind my back when I wasn’t in San Francisco. I’d noticed that he had a very flirty text relationship with the PR rep for Fernet. And once, when we went to Ben’s favorite watering hole, a girl who had been caught by Life & Style giving Ben a massage in a local park was there. She tried to keep her distance, but I confronted her right in front of Ben, who laughed uncomfortably.
“I recognize you!” I said, with a fake smile. “You’re the girl from the massage pictures!”
“I’m really sorry,” she said nervously. “Ben said it wasn’t a big deal at all.”
Oh really, so you’ve talked about it together? I thought. “Honestly, it wasn’t great,” I said, still sticky sweet. “My family saw that and it didn’t look good. So, no more massages, mkay?”
She laughed it off, but left the bar right after. I’m pretty sure she was in love with Ben.
By Memorial Day, Ben and I were on really shaky ground, and sort of on a mini break. We quietly canceled an appearance in Vegas that would have paid us each $2,500, but I still wasn’t ready to announce anything official about a breakup. In early July, I toyed with dumping Ben around my birthday, but we had so much fun with my sister Rachel and her boyfriend, Moe, who flew up for the weekend, that I put it on the back burner again. I forgave him for having to remind him to wish me a happy birthday. I forgave him for making a reservation at a trendy new Japanese restaurant he wanted to try, even though I’d told him on numerous occasions that I always had a special lobster dinner on my birthday.
I forgave him because he picked up the check, bought me lovely flowers, and made an effort with my sister and her boyfriend. He also wrote on my card: “I love you so much it hurts.”
But love shouldn’t hurt. I don’t subscribe to the notion of “no pain, no gain” in relationships, yet I continued down a path that caused me anguish because I thought we could make it work if we just tried harder. I kept giving him chances because I didn’t want to give up after we’d overcome so much. And I didn’t want to admit to myself that maybe he truly would have been better off engaged to a woman like Nicki.
Ben and I mistook the constant drama for passionate love. We had some great moments, but they were flashes of happiness, and quickly came and went. My favorite times with Ben were always driving in the car together, just the two of us. We’d listen to our favorite music and sing and laugh. When Ben drove through the famous Rainbow Tunnel in San Francisco, he’d honk the horn—an old tradition—and scream at the top of his lungs with such joy. The car was the one place where we really did forget all of our troubles.
After my birthday weekend, I felt so reconnected to Ben that I stayed in San Francisco for a couple weeks, the longest we’d been together ever, and helped him move into a new apartment. It was a step up from the frat house apartment, but he still had a roommate—and it wasn’t me. He also had no furniture. So Ben brokered a deal with Life & Style, the same rag that had published the incriminating massage pictures. They offered to give us $5,000 and furnish Ben’s new place in exchange for an exclusive article about the status of our relationship and (now nonexistent) marriage plans.
A reporter and the furniture arrived and we did a photo shoot and interview. The reporter asked the usual questions and Ben said that he didn’t like my voice again in response to one about his pet peeves. She asked us the last nice thing we did for each other. I was the kind of girl who would call the restaurant and have dessert sent over if Ben was out for dinner with friends. But I seriously couldn’t think of anything Ben had done recently, so I made up a story about him renting a hotel room for my sister and her boyfriend when they came to visit for my birthday. In reality, Ben had promised to get them a good deal at the Fairmont and cover half the bill, but when it came time to pay, he wandered off again.
As usual, I wanted people to think we were doing great, so I fibbed and exaggerated my way through the interview.
I almost didn’t get my $2,500 for the interview though. When a few weeks passed and I still hadn’t gotten a check, I asked Ben where it was and when I could expect it. Ben said his business manager had accidentally deposited the check in his business account and it would take some juggling to figure out how to pay me. Ben had this image of me as a rich model, but I was struggling after the show and I needed every penny we earned together. It was very annoying having to beg him for my money.
A few weeks later, I told Ben I needed the money and asked if he had figured out how to pay me.
“Why do you need it?” he asked.
“What do you mean, ‘Why do I need it?’” I said, puzzled. Ben gave me another lecture about my spending. “I don’t understand why you need it,” he repeated.
“Ben, it’s my money. I need to pay my bills, too.”
It seemed kind of fishy to me. Turns out Life & Pile was fishy, too. After they got the story, they said it was never their intention to let Ben keep the new furniture. Before it was all hauled away, Ben decided to throw a housewarming party for forty of his closest friends. I was terrified the furniture would be destroyed and we’d have to pay for it, but he wasn’t worried.
In typical Ben style, the party was a rager and I spent half the time running around picking up beer cans and begging people not to sit on the new white couch. Ben’s dog, Scotch, was so freaked out I had to tuck him under the covers in the bedroom. The Life & Style reporter and the park massage girl both showed up, but I was okay with it. As time went on, I’d gotten used to Ben’s girl-space-friends hanging around.
I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends: Confessions of a Reality Show Villain Page 20
