Dirty Rocker Boys

by Brown, Bobbie; Ryder, Caroline

  SOUTHERN FRIED

  Kenny, having grown up rich and spoiled in Baton Rouge, had no work ethic whatsoever. He thought he could just show up in L.A. with his curly mullet and mustache and land a record deal straightaway. But guys like him were a dime a dozen. They waited tables and washed cars, hustling while trying to get a foot in the door. Kenny had no foot close to any door, so he just terrorized me instead.

  “Did you fuck that French fuck?” he screamed at me one evening. I had just stepped in the door, home from a test shoot that day with a fabulous European photographer. I threw the black-and-white photos angrily on the kitchen table, too frustrated to even argue. He was pressuring me to quit modeling, give up the dream. I was starting to think he was losing his mind. The next day, he did.

  I stopped at the bank on my way home, and was politely informed that both my accounts had been completely drained by the other joint account holder, Kenny, just that morning. Now why would he do a thing like that? I wondered, rushing home from Wells Fargo. I opened the front door to our apartment, and Kenny was sitting on the floor, cutting up photos of me with my sewing scissors, shredding my face into thousands of little pieces. My whole portfolio, gone; my bank accounts, drained. Kenny was having a fucking meltdown. I had no idea how to handle it.

  My best friend at the time was a model-actress-dancer called Rebecca Ferratti, a Playboy Playmate in 1986, and star of many a hair metal video. I locked myself in our bedroom and called her, told her she had to come over with her boyfriend, a tough-looking Italian actor called Jimmy Franzo.

  “Yo, Kenny! It’s Jimmy. Open the fucking door!”

  I was hiding in the closet but could hear everything that was happening; Kenny was sobbing as he let Jimmy in.

  “Kenny, bro, you gotta go. C’mon, pack some shit, I’ll take you to the airport.”

  Jimmy drove Kenny straight to LAX and put him on a plane back to Louisiana that night. When I called Mr. Earl and told him what had happened, he sent one of my uncles over to Kenny’s house to gently—so very gently—request that Kenny pay Miss Bobbie Jean Brown the five thousand dollars she had been so generous as to loan him from her bank account.

  SCOTT BAIO BUMMER ZONE

  I was happy that Kenny, with his jealous mood swings and shitty attitude, was out of my life. I was single and ready to mingle. One of the first dates I went on was with Scott Baio, who I had met at Helena’s. I remembered him as Chachi, the cute guy in that show Happy Days. I was a little surprised when he invited a buddy to dinner with us, a chirpy little yes-man who loved to chime in and agree with whatever Scott had to say. Maybe that’s just the Hollywood way, I thought.

  “Hollywood is a dark, twisted place, Bobbie,” said Scott, with a faraway look in his eyes.

  “Yeah,” said his friend.

  “Something about it here just brings out the worst in us all,” continued Scott, toying with his fettuccini.

  “You’ll see,” added his friend.

  Jeez Louise. What a pair of depressives! After having to put up with Kenny and his bummer vibes, this was the last thing I needed. I had only just arrived in town and was having my Hollywood honeymoon. Little did I know that, as Scott Baio warned, the city will start playing tricks on your mind if you let it. But that night, I just thought Scott was a negative Nancy. Also he had these thin little lips, and my mom always said never to trust a man with thin lips. When those thin lips headed toward mine at the end of the date, I made a side dodge and air-kissed Scott on the cheek. He smiled, surprised. “See you around, Bobbie,” he said, and I nodded, sure that he would.

  BREAKING THE CHIPPENDALES CODE

  A few nights later, I found myself in the middle of a throng of screaming women in downtown L.A. It was mass hysteria at the Chippendales show.

  “Take them off!” screamed the woman next to me, and I had to put my hands over my ears. Women were standing on tables, hanging off railings, desperately reaching out for the sweaty hunks in G-strings, hungry for man flesh. It was like feeding time at the zoo.

  My girlfriend had dragged me along, promising a good time. I wasn’t so sure, until my eyes came to rest on one of the dancers. He had long hair and tattoos, and looked like a Viking warrior.

  “You can get us backstage, right?” I yelled at my girlfriend, who rolled her eyes.

  “Duh!” she said. “Of course!”

  The dangerous stud with the Viking physique was named Mike. My skin stuck to his as we kissed later that night in his dressing room, his body still covered in oil. I could feel the stubble on his chest as I ran my hands over his solid pectorals. What a hottie.

  The following weekend, we went back to the Chippendales show, and again the following week. Each time, Mike and I would meet up afterward and fuck; in the bathroom, in the parking lot, wherever we could snatch a few moments alone. Each time ended with a smile and a “see you soon,” but Mike never did ask me for my number.

  Maybe it’s the Chippendales code of honor, I thought. Perhaps they are banned from dating the audience.

  One day I was driving through Hollywood, and there he was, Mr. Mike Chippendale, standing in a hotel parking lot.

  “Hey there!” I yelled from the window of my red Honda.

  He saw me and looked surprised.

  “Well, hello there, beautiful.”

  It was nice seeing Mike in the daylight. He seemed different somehow. I invited him over to my place later, and not long after he walked in the door, we were kissing.

  “I never even noticed your dimples before,” I said, touching Mike’s cheek.

  “You’re so beautiful, Bobbie,” he said, kissing me tenderly. He came over the next night, and the night after that. I was falling in love.

  “I can’t believe I’m dating a Chippendale!” I told my girlfriend on the phone. I had been seeing Mike for nearly a month.

  “Well, let’s go visit your new stripper boyfriend, shall we?” she said.

  I got all dressed up. Sexy was in fashion, and my skirt was short and skintight; my sheer flesh-toned blouse had a neckline that plunged deep. I sat way in the back, my eyes fixed on Mike. His onstage character and his real-life self were so different, I thought, applauding wildly. Afterward, I snuck backstage and leapt on top of Mike as soon as I saw him.

  “Whoa, girl, this is a surprise,” he said, glancing around nervously. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You’re so amazing,” I said, kissing him. “So I was thinking, you know, maybe you should move in.”

  “Move in where?”

  “My place, silly.”

  “Where’s your place?”

  It was hard to tell who was more spooked. A few minutes of Q&A later, we got to the bottom of the mystery—as it turned out, the Mike who I had been fucking for the last month was not the Mike standing in front of me. The Mike standing in front of me had a twin brother called Steve, and apparently this wasn’t the first time Steve had pretended to be his brother. Mike swore he had no idea that Steve had been deceiving me for the last month.

  “I’m sorry I never asked for your number, Bobbie, it’s just that I have a girlfriend,” said Mike. “Also, I’m sorry about Steve—he’s an asshole.”

  I called Steve as soon as I got home, in tears. Fifteen minutes later, he was outside my front door, pleading with me to let him in.

  “You’re an asshole, Mike—I mean, Steve, or whoever you are,” I yelled.

  The neighbors were peering out their front doors, wondering what new romantic disaster was taking place at Bobbie’s.

  “I’m sorry, Bobbie, I was going to tell you. . . .”

  “The truth happens to be something I’m fond of, asshole! I already told you how much I hate liars.”

  It took Steve about two hours to smooth-talk his way back into my arms. I kind of preferred Steve to Mike anyway. So I let him move in. Dumb move.

  “Do you want to get high?” he said one night, a few months after he became my live-in guy. He was holding a little bag of cocaine. I had tried ecstasy a couple
of times, but never coke. What’s the harm? I figured, watching him cut two big lines the color of dirty snow. Upon inhaling, I noticed the acrid chemical taste in my throat—“nose candy” was a misnomer, because this tasted like shit. But Steve and I made love for hours that night. I told him everything; about Kenny, about my dad, about Mr. Earl. I hadn’t opened up to anyone this much since leaving Baton Rouge.

  Unlike Kenny, Steve loved going out with me to all the clubs and could hold his own. But he too found it hard to control his jealousy, especially when famous guys showed an interest in me. Like Prince, for example.

  “Prince would love to meet you; care to follow me to his table?”

  I was at Prince’s new club in downtown L.A., called Vertigo. It was the city’s first “New York–style” club, meaning it didn’t matter how much money you had, you had to look good in order to get in. Movie stars, beautiful people, and exotic-looking club kids would bounce between there and Helena’s on a typical Friday night. The scene outside was frantic, huge bouncers in Armani suits and headsets, and a door run by Studio 54’s former gatekeeper, Marc Benecke. Inside, the most glamorous people in the world mingled on a dance floor built by Mary Pickford and Rudolph Valentino. The Brat Packers were there, Emilio Estevez and Matt Dillon, and Princess Stéphanie of Monaco. And of course Prince and his protégée Vanity.

  He had sent one of his assistants over to say hello. My jaw dropped—me? I love Prince. Purple Rain is one of my all-time favorite albums. Steve looked at me with murderous eyes.

  “She’s busy,” he growled to Prince’s assistant, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me away. Prince’s assistant shook his head and walked away. Moments later, Rob Pilatus, the handsome singer from Milli Vanilli, started dancing with me. I felt Steve’s hand on my shoulder again.

  “That’s it, we’re leaving,” he said, handing me my coat.

  “Good-bye,” said Rob, in his thick German accent, shrugging.

  After six months living with Steve, I found myself wondering if it was Steve I was in love with, or the cocaine. I was spending all my modeling money on blow. I was missing jobs and spacing out on appointments because I had the cocaine blues. I would get high in bathroom stalls at shopping malls, buy shoes fueled by the rush, and then forget where I parked my car. Already slim, I started dropping holes on my belt as the weight fell off, because I was too high to eat. I was not a high-functioning addict and never would be. Although at that point, I would never have referred to myself as an addict. I just liked to party; so did everyone in L.A.

  One night, I came home from a late shoot to find that Steve had brought home a surprise.

  “Bobbie, meet Brandi. She’s a lesbian.”

  Steve was always pulling weird shit on me, but this was a first. I lacked the energy and the wherewithal to argue with Steve and his simmering libido.

  “Okay,” I said, stretching out my hand. “Pleasure to meet you.” I had seen her out and about at the clubs. When Steve and Brandi started kissing, I really wasn’t sure what to do with myself.

  “Here,” said Steve, throwing a bag of coke on the table. Brandi’s eyes were on me. I felt Brandi’s hands massage my shoulders as I cut some lines and inhaled the powder. Her bare breasts were dangling above the back of my head, and I noticed her nipples were pierced.

  Oh.

  Brandi pulled me down on the carpet and slipped her hand up my miniskirt, pulling it far enough to reveal my panties. Steve watched. I had never been with a woman before. Her skin smelled of cinnamon and tobacco. She pulled my panties to one side and started going down on me. After about two seconds I jumped up. “I just gotta go do something, I’ll be right back!” It was all too much for me to take in. I left the room and waited a few minutes, expecting Steve to follow me. When he didn’t, I peeked back into the living room, and Steve was feverishly fucking Brandi from behind. He climaxed with a mighty groan, and Brandi turned around, horrified.

  “You came inside me, asshole!” she said. “I told you not to.”

  They had made a deal that he could fuck her in return for access to me, so long as he promised to pull out before he came. Steve, as we were all starting to realize, was not one to keep his word.

  Two months later, Brandi came over. She was pregnant with Steve’s baby, apparently. Well, that was it for me. “First you’re a fake Chippendale, and now you’re having a baby with a lesbian?” I screamed.

  I got out of that apartment in North Hollywood, moving in with a fellow model called Shantae in Hollywood proper. Together, we decreed our home a loser-free zone. And absolutely no Chippendales—fake or otherwise—allowed. My days of dating down were over.

  BEDTIME STORIES WITH NELSON

  In 1990, I met golden-haired rock star Matthew Nelson on the set of Star Search, an American Idol–style televised talent show that was hugely popular. Competitors sang, danced, joked, and modeled for a top prize of $100,000. My agency had sent me along to compete in the “spokesmodel” category, and the setup was so similar to pageantry, it was easy. Winning Star Search is a tried and tested path to the big time—the singer Aaliyah had won the year before; Christina Aguilera would win that year; and Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake would be champions a few years later. I got off to a great start—every week I competed, I won. I found myself on one of the longest winning streaks in the show’s history, and millions were tuning in just to see if Bobbie Jean Brown was going to win the modeling competition again. For the first time in my life, I started realizing that maybe, just maybe, I was actually beautiful. Not just cute, not just adorable, not just entertaining . . . but beautiful. Admitting that to myself made me feel uneasy. Because with beauty comes power, and with power comes responsibility. I had never thought beyond just getting to L.A. and making a few bucks and finding a rocker boy. In no way was I mentally prepared for the opportunities that my beauty was generating—in just a year, my small- to medium-size ambition had already gotten me much farther up the ladder than girls who spend their whole twenties in Hollywood. All I knew was that I was getting more and more famous, and getting more and more attention from men. Deep down, I longed for someone—my guitar-wielding Prince Charming—to just whisk me away from it all and promise to take care of me forever.

  Matthew Nelson was friends with the wardrobe person on the show, and he came to visit the set with his twin brother, Gunnar. They were Hollywood brats, the twin sons of Rick Nelson, one of the biggest teen idols of the 1950s and America’s top-selling singer—bar Elvis—between 1957 and 1962. Rick Nelson’s songs were among the first rock ’n’ roll tunes to be embraced by the mainstream—thanks to his parents and their family-friendly TV show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Matthew and Gunnar figured they had inherited some of their dad’s talent and had formed a band called Nelson, playing a radio-friendly blend of hair metal and easy listening that was especially popular among teenage girls. Their 1990 debut album, After the Rain, would sell more than a million copies, and onstage, they were matching Rapunzels who rocked, with Matthew on bass and Gunnar on lead guitar, blond hair cascading like golden showers.

  What is it with me and identical twins? I thought, smiling sweetly as they introduced themselves in my dressing room. Gunnar was the louder, more obnoxious of the brothers, and Matthew was a little more reserved. When Matthew shyly asked me for my phone number, I said yes. He wasn’t like the other hair rock guys, hanging out with porn stars and strippers, burying his face in pussy and blow every night. Matthew did not touch drugs or alcohol of any kind, and neither did Gunnar. They had seen what alcoholism had done to their father.

  In his later years, Rick Nelson had become a heavy substance abuser. According to various reports, the death of his father, Ozzie, as well as his unhappy marriage to Gunnar and Matthew’s mom, Kris, had pushed Ricky to spend two to three hundred days a year on the road, pill-popping and partying his way around the nation. Ricky was killed on New Year’s Eve 1985 in an airplane accident over De Kalb, Texas, with cocaine, marijuana, and the painkiller Darvon i
n his bloodstream. Having a father who became a cautionary tale deeply impacted the brothers, and they prided themselves in their sobriety.

  GOOD TWIN, BAD TWIN

  Matthew was the perfect gentleman I had been looking for—perfect, that is, except for his evil twin. Gunnar seemed threatened by me. Maybe it was because his brother was so devoted to me. Gunnar’s Beverly Hills girlfriend Laurel also behaved like an asshole toward me, in a sort of passive-aggressive way. For instance, she and Gunnar would often discuss their sex life in intimate detail in front of me, knowing that it made me uncomfortable.

  Ew, I thought, leaving the room.

  It didn’t help that things had become challenging with Matthew in the bedroom. Matthew always liked me to invent scenarios and fantasies, and describe them at length, otherwise he couldn’t get in the mood. I had always been a good storyteller, but Scheherazade I was not, and I found it tiring, having to conjure new sexual narratives night after night. I missed quickies, I missed hard, raw, spontaneous fucking. I wanted it to be more passionate than this.

  One night, I was at a Hollywood club called Spice when Rob Pilatus from Milli Vanilli grabbed my hand and led me to the dance floor. I had seen him several times out and about since we first met. But this was the first time we had danced so close to each other. As the beat intensified, I tried yelling something in his ear, but he shook his head.

  “My English is very bad!” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “Let’s dance now!”

  A beautiful man who does not require me to speak. What a relief.

  He pulled me close and put his arms around my hips. My buttocks rubbed on his crotch as we moved in the dark. He had model looks, and a break-dancer’s moves. For the first time in my life, I’d met someone who rocked the dance floor as hard as I did. When I turned around, his eyes were like emeralds glowing between his long dreadlocks.

  “Will you be my girlfriend?” he yelled, over the music.

  “Okay,” I yelled back. The following day, I told Matthew we were through.