Dirty Rocker Boys

by Brown, Bobbie; Ryder, Caroline

  “Where’s Jani?” Jay asked me, one of the first times we met, on the dance floor at Spice. “Oh, Jani hates dancing,” I said, shrugging. “I’ll dance with you!” said Jay. We tore it up. Anyone who could keep up with me on the dance floor was a friend for life, in my opinion, and Jay, like me, was a club kid in the truest sense. He loved heavy metal but he dug electronica too; he knew his hip-hop, and he looked exotic. I had a feeling we would be in each other’s lives for a long time. Jani glanced over at Jay. He seemed uncomfortable. “Can’t you just find some girlfriends to dance with, Bobbie? Please?”

  I was partying more and more, pissing off my long-suffering manager and agent. Every time I failed to show for a meeting, I would avoid their irate calls and just send them a fax with “I’M SORRY” written in big letters. My manager, Janis Hansen, a former Playboy Bunny who founded a successful talent agency, almost dumped me several times. Especially after my audition with Steven Spielberg.

  I had been invited to read for the part of Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg’s action adventure Hook. The casting agent informed us that the role had gone to Julia Roberts but that Spielberg still wanted to meet with me, because he was interested in casting me as one of the mermaids. But I kept rescheduling my meeting with Mr. Spielberg, like a dumbass.

  “Bobbie, you know it was kind of rude of you to keep rescheduling on us,” said Steven, when I finally managed to make time to meet him. “People don’t do that to me very often. But I’d still like you to read for this part; I think you could be great in it.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m here now!” I said. “Let’s read this thing!”

  The double shots of whiskey I had downed to calm my nerves were having the opposite effect I had hoped for, and I was drunk as a skunk. I started twirling around and around on the office chair.

  “Bobbie . . . are you okay?” said Steven. No, I was not okay, I was behaving like a fruitcake, being an obnoxious dick to one of the most respected film directors in the world. Mr. Spielberg did not call me back. Go figure.

  “Every time you get in a relationship, all of a sudden you don’t give a fuck about your career and your guy is the only thing you care about. Have you noticed that, Bobbie?” My manager was pissed. It was true, but I shrugged it off, like I did all my failures and fuckups. My life was supposed to be effortless and carefree, full of glamorous rock star boyfriends and fun times—that was my image, after all. Every time I let myself care about career opportunities, I had to face my deep-rooted fear that, underneath it all, maybe I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, or lovable enough for any of this. It was much safer for me to laugh and pretend I didn’t care and act like having ambition was dumb and uncool, while burying myself in my relationship. In Hollywood, that kind of immature bravura will only get you so far. The models and actresses around me who knew what they wanted and took their goals seriously would slowly but surely overtake me as I sabotaged every major opportunity that came my way. Every time.

  I had been talking to Jive Records about possibly signing with the label and launching a pop career. They had seen me on Star Search and were looking for a cute Southern girl to groom into a pop princess. I had met with them several times, done voice tests at their studios, and met with their choreographers. My voice was okay, not amazing, but they especially loved the way I danced. Jani was confused.

  “You’re not even a singer—how come you’re getting a record deal?”

  The whole thing ruffled his feathers, because it underscored everything he hated about the music business. He and so many of the other musicians he knew had worked incredibly hard to get their record deals. So how come someone like me, a pretty face who never even wanted to be a singer, could have serious offers on the table? I wasn’t surprised at all, though. Things had always landed in my lap—from winning my first pageant to landing a modeling contract to becoming the Cherry Pie girl who got the Cherry Pie boy to being courted by Jive Records: I had never had to work for any of it. And I would only miss those opportunities once they were gone.

  When Warrant toured Japan in the spring of 1991, I went with the band as Jani’s companion for the entire monthlong tour. He wanted me with him as much as possible, probably because he was worried about the boys I was hanging out with when he wasn’t around. I unpacked my bag in the hotel room and realized I had forgotten my birth control pills. Fuck. I walked to the nearest pharmacy and tried to explain what I needed. Spermicide would cover it, I figured. Unfortunately the word for “spermicide” was not in my Japanese phrase book. I stood in front of the little old Japanese lady pharmacist using some improvised sign language for “sex” and “birth control.” After a while, she seemed to get it and nodded enthusiastically. She handed me a tube of gel with some writing on the side of it that I could not understand.

  What the fuck is “”? I said. She shrugged.

  Well, at least it had the same number of letters as “sperm.” I paid and waved good-bye to the old Japanese lady.

  A few days later, Jani and I were on the bullet train, speeding at two hundred miles per hour across the Japanese countryside. I had brought the spermicide in my bag. We snuck into the tiny bathroom and he pulled up my dress and unbuckled his jeans. We had sex up against the bathroom door, traveling at close to the speed of sound. “This is crazy,” I giggled as he kissed me over and over.

  I stayed with the band through the rest of the Japanese tour, through Australia, and then across the Pacific back to Los Angeles. A few weeks after we got home, Jani and I were at the grocery store and he leaned across my chest to grab some tomatoes. I squealed.

  “Ouch, my boob! It really hurts! What if I have boob cancer?”

  “Bobbie, you don’t have boob cancer.”

  I hadn’t gone back on my pills yet, and we were still using the spermicide I had bought in Tokyo. Even so, something didn’t feel quite right. I was bummed out. I was sleeping constantly. I felt gaggy around seafood. Keiko, a Japanese-American model friend of mine, came over one day. I showed her the tube of Japanese spermicide. Maybe that was what was making me feel sick? Maybe they made it with whale blubber?

  “Bobbie, ‘’ is Japanese for ‘lotion,’ ” said Keiko, looking at the tube. “You know, lube?”

  I took a pregnancy test and BOOM. Positive. I couldn’t believe it—the doctors in Baton Rouge had told me I would probably never be able to have children after the surgery to get rid of the cancer in my cervix just a few years earlier. I called my mom immediately. “I know Jani and I have only been together a few months but . . . we’re having a baby!”

  My mom, ever intuitive, could sense the giddiness in my voice. Things had moved faster with Jani than anyone had expected. She said something that surprised me. “You know, Bobbie, you don’t have to get married if you don’t want to. You can have the baby, and there are plenty of people in your life who love you and will help you.” I mulled over her words. “No, Mom, my baby needs a father.”

  “I support you in whatever decision you make,” she said.

  Not for a second did I consider not going through with the pregnancy. And Jani was thrilled, even though we had only been together four months. “Now you have to marry me, right?” he said, kissing me. He formally proposed over dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, Miceli’s in Hollywood, surrounded by singing Italian waiters. In our dessert was a ring. Without hesitation, I said yes. We planned to marry that coming July.

  As soon as Jive, the record label, found out that I was knocked up and about to get hitched, they withdrew their offer of a deal. (It took them a few years, but eventually they found the unpregnant Southern pop princess they had been looking for—her name was Britney Spears.) My modeling agency was equally irritated that I was pregnant so early in my career. They warned me that being married with a child is a real setback for a young model. I thought about all the hair metal videos and catalog shoots I would be missing out on and laughed. As far as I was concerned, this baby was a gift straight from heaven.

 
Once word spread that I was pregnant and marrying Jani, Matthew finally decide to get in touch.

  “Bobbie?” A lump formed in my throat as I recognized the voice on the end of the line. Matthew sounded depressed. He had been talking to my mom in the aftermath of our breakup, and confessed to her how Gunnar and his management had been pressuring him to break up with me all along. Now he regretted not standing up to them. Matthew told me that he still loved me and that he had made a mistake. “Please don’t marry Jani. Go with love, don’t take this other path. It’s a mistake.”

  “Matthew, I’m pregnant. Things are different now.”

  “Perhaps there are ways we can get around that.”

  “You’re crazy! You had your chance, Matthew. I’m not aborting my baby, if that’s what you mean. No way.”

  In that moment I had, unequivocally, steered my life’s path away from anything involving Matthew Nelson. The future, I knew, lay with Jani Lane.

  WEDDING BELLS

  Jani and I were married on July 27, 1991, in a fairy-tale Hollywood wedding, an explosion of silk, balloons, tulle, and champagne on the rooftop of the Wyndham Bel Age hotel. As the afternoon faded into evening over the Sunset Strip, the air filled with the soft, intoxicating fragrance of hundreds of pale pink Sterling Silver roses, among the sweetest-smelling flowers in the world. We had a decadent three-tier wedding cake, and I wore a wedding gown I designed with famous Beverly Hills bridal stylist Renée Strauss, who also styled the weddings of Dennis Hopper, Raquel Welch, Gary Oldman, and even the famous wedding scene starring Stephanie Seymour in the video for the Guns N’ Roses song “November Rain.”

  As my father walked me down the aisle, I realized that this day wasn’t about the cake or the dress or the gorgeous flowers or the centerpiece or my bridal veil. I felt our baby move in my belly, and something in me shifted—Bobbie Brown the freewheeling woman-child was faced with something she hadn’t experienced before. Adulthood. I smiled broadly at Jani as the ordained minister pronounced us man and wife. As we kissed in front of our guests, my heart pounded. I was only twenty-three, but this was some real, grown-up shit that was happening.

  As the evening progressed, the night got wilder and more surreal. Duff McKagan wandered in late after a Guns N’ Roses gig and then got up onstage with Jani to sing a version of “Hey Joe.” Rick Allen, Def Leppard’s drummer, was there, as were all the guys from Warrant, of course. Bobby Brown, the R & B singer, and my club buddy, came up to congratulate me. “So, where did you get the name Bobbie Brown?” he asked me, and I pointed at my father. “I was named after my dad.” He thought that was the coolest thing ever. “If I ever have a daughter, I am going to name her after me,” he said, and true to his word, on March 4, 1993, when Whitney Houston gave birth to their only child, he named her Bobbi Kristina Brown.

  My father, unlike the rest of the wedding party, had driven all the way from Baton Rouge to the wedding. His whole life, he hated to fly. It wasn’t anything to do with not wanting to sit with my mom and Mr. Earl on an airplane. It had taken a few years, but thanks to Mr. Earl’s gracious and open nature, they had all become friends. My father would even go to Sunday dinner with my mom and Mr. Earl at their house. Mr. Earl had done so much to raise us and help our family, my mom had wondered if he should walk me down the aisle as well as my father. “You know, like walk you halfway down,” she suggested. My mom was always practical like that. I thought about it and decided against the idea. “No matter what happened in the past, I don’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings, not on a day like this,” I said. “I support you in whatever you decide” was her response.

  Because I was already three months pregnant, I was too tired to party with everyone else until late, so I went home and climbed in to bed, exhausted. I lay there, waiting for Jani, my husband. My mind was spinning. “Forever” had been a word I had tossed around before, but now I wondered what that even meant. I thought about my mother and father, about my mother and Mr. Earl. They seemed like grown-ups, the kind of people who knew what “marriage” and “motherhood” were actually supposed to be about. When Jani came home after entertaining our guests all night, we didn’t have sex. Instead, we clung to each other in our sleep, dreaming of this new future and what it held for us both.

  MY GIRL SHARISE

  I was at our house in Sherman Oaks, pregnant, married, and chugging pickle juice. I became obsessed with pickle juice throughout my pregnancy—no wonder Grandpa John called me Pickle, I thought. Pickle juice, peach juice, caviar on toast, and guacamole. Guacamole every day. And the house was a mess. I was the opposite of a domestic goddess, the Antichrist of home economics—everything I tried to cook tasted like hell, and cleaning was something other people did. I had always been used to just being me, trying to have a career and living in the fast lane. It was hard adjusting to this new pace of life.

  As I watched TV and munched on pickles, I paused on some channel that was airing Mötley’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” video. Somehow, even though the song had come out four years prior, in 1987, I hadn’t seen it. I was transfixed. Dayum, those girls are hot, I thought, dipping my pickle in a tub of guac. The video had been banned by MTV because of nudity, which I thought was almost as dumb as that Canadian channel banning “Cherry Pie.” Shot at the Seventh Veil strip club in L.A., it features a bunch of strippers with incredibly firm tits and asses bouncing around onstage while Mötley Crüe sit around looking self-satisfied. Tommy looked super cute, as always. But honestly, the girls were cuter.

  A couple of nights later, I heard that Vince Neil from Mötley was doing a solo performance at Spice, so I figured I’d haul my tired, pregnant ass over there and drink Shirley Temples, with pickles on the side. Jani was on the road, and I was just dying to get out of the house. I put on a flattering dress and was grateful that at nearly four months, I was still hardly showing. I had been at the club not twenty minutes when Vince approached me.

  “I’ve been wanting to get to know you better, Bobbie,” he said, leaning in a little too close. His breath was overpowering. Was this asshole really hitting on me? “Yes, Jani and I were hoping you could have come to our wedding, with your wife,” I said. By now, his hands were on my ass. “So, where is your wife, exactly?” Vince looked nonplussed. “I dunno, Sharise is here somewhere,” he grunted, pissed off. I scanned the room and recognized Sharise Neil from the “Girls, Girls, Girls” video. She was a former mud wrestler who had a daughter with Vince, and from what I had heard, she was one sassy broad. “Ah, there she is!”

  I wanted to punish Vince for being such a sleazeball, so I marched over to Sharise and introduced myself, with Vince trailing me, in a panic. Sharise was just as gorgeous in the flesh as she had been in the video. “Hey, Sharise, I’m Bobbie,” I said, watching Vince squirm. “Vince had such nice things to say about you.”

  “Oh, really? Well Vince is a cheating son of a bitch,” said Sharise. “I give this marriage three months. You hear me, Vince? Now fuck off and let me talk to Bobbie.” I was impressed.

  BABY BLUES

  I don’t care what anyone says about being pregnant—unless you’re a meadow-skipping earth mama in bare feet, it pretty much sucks. “You’re getting kinda fat, Bobbie,” Jani pointed out. Jani was not the most tactful husband during my pregnancy, to say the least. Possibly, deep down, he was just as freaked out about what was happening as I was. On top of that, he had always been squeamish, and my swollen belly, my cankles, my constant need to pee, the veins in my tits—the physical changes associated with pregnancy—were grossing him out. It didn’t help that I was hornier than ever—and the more I begged him for sex, the more turned off he became. The heady romance that had brought us together in the first place was becoming lost in a sea of maternity wear and pickle juice. My being pregnant, needy, and “fat” was a burden he was not mature enough to deal with.

  I retaliated the way I knew best—with words. I have a mean mouth. I can cut a person to the core with my words, and it has been a problem throughout my relationsh
ips. But I was pregnant, horny, and mad. If Jani thought I was too fat to be fucked, I was going to make him pay.

  “You’re such a loser, Jani. You can’t even have sex with your wife. I’m sick of sucking dick all the time.”

  “Is that baby even mine, Bobbie? Or is it gonna come out black like Slash?” He could give as good as he got.

  “I guess we’ll have to wait and see, huh, Jani?”

  One night, when Jani was out on the road, Slash called and invited me to see Guns N’ Roses play in downtown Los Angeles. He had no idea that he had been the subject of our arguments. Slash was just a nice guy who felt sorry for me. I was six months along by now and wasn’t feeling too sexy, thanks to feeling constantly rejected by Jani. I fought the feelings of panic that welled up inside me from time to time, the sense that maybe I had made a mistake, that I was too young for all this, that I wasn’t ready to be a wife, let alone a mother. Fuck it, I’ll go to the show, I thought. I wanted to feel like a kid again, just for a second.

  I showed up at the venue and headed straight to the backstage area to say hi to my buds Slash and Duff. “I know somebody who wants to meet you,” Slash said, from behind his curtain of curls. “Really? You’ve gotta be kidding. I look like Mount fucking Everest.” I had forgotten what it felt like to be desired. A familiar thrill flooded my veins. “So . . . who is it?” I asked Slash.

  Skid Row was opening for Guns N’ Roses that night and their front man, Sebastian Bach, was one of the most beautiful men in rock. A cross between a heavy metal Viking and Lord Byron, he had a romantic, feminine face that was prettier than any girl’s. Mine included. I heard a high-pitched scream: “Heyyyy!” It was Sebastian, kicking open the door to the dressing room, in all his pouty, tight-trousered glory. “He’s crazy,” I whispered to Slash. “Yup.” Sebastian’s eyes scanned the room, resting on me.