The Dirt (30 page)

Nikki had almost caught up. “Come on, dude. Come on!” I yelled. He dove and caught the bottom of the step I was standing on. The train was dragging him now, with his body squirming and his feet kicking in the dirt. I grabbed his arms and pulled him up to where I was.

“Oh my God, dude! This is the best!” we yelled telepathically at each other. “We just hopped our first fucking train!”

And, then, as we saw Fred and the hotel fade into the distance, the excitement wore off. We had no fucking idea where we were, where we were going, and we had absolutely no money. The train was picking up speed, chugging faster and faster. We looked at each other, terrified. We had to get off this thing. It didn’t seem to have the slightest intention of stopping anytime soon. We couldn’t do this: We had a show the next day.

“Okay. One, two, three,” we thought at each other. And at three, we both dove off, tumbling against the rocks on the ground, which left bruises, scrapes, and welts all over our bodies. We followed the train tracks home, finally reaching the hotel as the sun rose.

Before the
Theatre of Pain
tour, we never would have let go. We would have let that train take us to the end of the earth if it could. We never used to think about anything before we did it. We’d only think about it when: (A) it was too late, or (B) someone got hurt.

But it wasn’t like that anymore after Vince’s accident. Something had changed. Sure, we still partied, went crazy, got fucked up, and stuck our dicks in anything. But it wasn’t the same: Partying led to addiction, addiction led to paranoia, and paranoia led to all kinds of stupid mistakes with huge repercussions. Even fucking wasn’t the same: Fucking led to marriage, marriage led to divorce, divorce led to alimony, alimony led to poverty. Everything was different after the accident: We became conscious of our own mortality—as human beings and as a band.

“Hi,”
I said.

“Hi,” she replied.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Well, bye.”

“Bye.”

That was it, dude. That’s all we fucking said. It was brief, it was awkward, and it fucking changed my life. The place was the Forum Club, the event was an REO Speedwagon concert, the chick was Heather Locklear, and the guy who introduced us was my accountant, Chuck Shapiro. Chuck, who had taken me to the show because he was also REO Speedwagon’s accountant, knew Heather because his brother was her dentist. That’s how these things work, by alignments of a million chance events. Some call that luck, but I believe in fate. I have to. I made a million mistakes with that chick, and she still fucking went out with me.

I thought about her again a week later when I was flipping through the TV and saw an episode of
Dynasty
with Heather in it. I instantly called Chuck and begged him for her digits. He called his dentist brother and hooked me up like a true friend

The next afternoon, I took a deep breath, kicked my feet up on the couch, and called her. The conversation was just as awkward as our first one. My TV was on mute in the background, but as we made uncomfortable small talk, I saw her face appear on the screen in
The Fall Guy
. I took it as a sign that we were meant to be.

“Hey, turn on your TV,” I told her. “You’re on channel four.”

She flipped on her set. “Um,” she informed me, “that’s actually Heather Thomas.”

I wanted to hang up right then, grab a gun, and shoot myself in the fucking head. God aligns everything perfectly for me, and I always manage to fuck it up.

She took pity on me and suggested we meet anyway that Friday night. I’d never dated anyone like Heather before. She wasn’t the kind of chick I could take back to my van like Bullwinkle, or have group sex with in a Jacuzzi like Honey. She was a real woman, a good girl, and more famous than me—three things I’d never experienced on a date before.

I was nervous as shit beforehand. I primped myself in the mirror for hours, popping zits, combing my hair, fussing with my shirt collar, dabbing cologne strategically around my body, and making sure all my tattoos were covered. I arrived early at the house where she lived with her sister and dawdled outside until it was exactly seven o’clock. I felt like a fucking trained monkey in my stiff white button-down shirt and black pants. I buzzed the doorbell, fidgeting nervously, and a girl who looked just like Heather opened the door. I didn’t know what to say because I wasn’t sure if it was Heather or her sister. I waved sheepishly, walked inside, and waited for her to give some sort of sign betraying her identity. Then, at the top of the staircase, I saw a white dress. Now, that was Heather. She descended slowly, without a word, like in
Gone With the Wind
.

She looked so fucking hot that I wanted to run up to her, tackle her, and tear her clothes off. “You look beautiful,” I told her as I gently took her arm. Her sister watched me carefully, and I could feel her sizing me up, determining whether I was right for Heather or just a clown.

We went out for Italian food, then watched some lame stand-up comedy because I thought it was something that normal people did on dates. That night, we talked about everything. She had gone out with a lot of uptight rich guys and cheesy actors like Scott Baio. But she’d never been with a rocker. I could tell this was a point in my favor after she asked to see my tattoos. She was a good girl who fantasized about a bad boy, and I knew that even my starched collar and Drakkar Noir cologne couldn’t cover up the fact that I was that bad boy.

We went back to her house and drank champagne, but I was too scared to make a move. I didn’t want her to think I was just after a one-night stand or trying to mack on a famous actress. By the time I left that night, we had made a million plans together.

We slowly started hanging out more—going to dinner, movies, parties. Eventually, I started spending the night at her house. But she would not put out, dude. I’d get her drunk and try to mack on her every way I could for weeks, but she wouldn’t go all the way. That was another thing I had never experienced before, and because of it, we actually grew intimate and became friends. She had a bubbly personality, a great sense of humor, and loved playing pranks as much as I did. She showered me with flowers and I learned to love it. Any guy, I decided, who says he doesn’t like flowers is insecure about his masculinity.

After a month and a half, I was so worked up I couldn’t take it anymore. We finally fucked, and she had made me wait so long that I savored every second, because believe me, it only lasted for seconds. But we did it again and again that night until we were sure we were in love, because when you are with someone you don’t love, once is usually enough.

The next morning, I was hanging out by her pool in my boxers when her father stopped by the house. Heather flipped out: She may have been famous for playing the sexually aggressive, domineering bitch on television, but in real life she was as prude as they came. She was so worried her dad, who was the dean of the UCLA School of Engineering, would disapprove if he saw all my tattoos. I covered myself with towels. But even though there was ink peeking through, her dad didn’t seem to mind.

After we fucked, the relationship flew to a whole new level. One day, we were watching dirt-bike racing on TV and I told her I’d love to try that. The next day, there was a dirt bike outside my house. No one—male or female—had ever done anything that generous for me before. We were slowly realizing that we wanted to be together for a long, long time, maybe even forever.

When I left her to tour
Theatre of Pain
, playing “Home Sweet Home” every night, I felt alarm bells going off in my head. That was what I wanted my whole life. I wanted to make a home, like my parents. I was always the gangly tagalong, running around L.A. looking for a father or mother figure. Maybe it came from the fear that my dream analyst said I picked up from my mother: I was scared of being alone, of being out of communication. The longer the
Theatre
tour dragged on, the more I knew what I wanted to do.

When I was home on break during Christmas, Heather and I were driving on the Ventura freeway in a limousine. I stood up and stuck my head through the moon roof.

“Hey,” I yelled to Heather. “Get up here and check this out.”

“What?”

“Come up here!”

“Do I have to?”

Slowly, reluctantly, she stood up. As soon as her head popped through the opening, and her body pressed against mine, I asked her: “Will you marry me?”

“What?” she said. “It’s too loud up here. I can’t hear you.”

“WILL YOU MARRY ME?”

“Really?” She looked at me skeptically.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out a diamond ring. “Really.”

“What?”

“REALLY!”

When the tour ended, we married in a courtyard in Santa Barbara. I wore a white leather tuxedo and she wore a white strapless dress with white sleeves that started midway down her arm, leaving her tan shoulders and thin, delicate neckbone uncovered. It was the biggest wedding I had ever seen: five hundred guests, skydivers dropping in carrying big magnums of champagne, and white doves that flew through the air after we said our vows. Rudy, one of our techs, gave us the best toast ever: “To Tommy and Heather,” he said, raising a champagne glass. “May all your ups and downs be in bed.” Then he took the champagne glass and smashed it over his head. I glanced at the tables where Heather’s family was sitting, and they all looked like they were having second thoughts about the marriage.

It was one of the happiest days of my life. All my friends were there, including half the Sunset Strip scene. It seemed like everybody was in big bands now: Ratt, Quiet Riot, Autograph, Night Ranger. The only problem that afternoon was Nikki. I asked him to be my best man, and he showed up a mess. He was emaciated; he sweated constantly; and his skin was pure yellow, dude. He kept excusing himself to go to the bathroom, and then he’d return and start nodding off in the middle of the ceremony. As a best man, he was so fucked up on heroin he was useless. I couldn’t believe he was shooting up at my fucking wedding.

T
he day after I returned home from Tommy’s wedding, there was a hand-delivered letter from our accountant, Chuck Shapiro, waiting for me in the mailbox. “You have been spending five thousand dollars a day,” he wrote. “Five thousand dollars times seven is thirty-five thousand dollars a week. Per month, that’s one-hundred forty thousand dollars. In exactly eleven months, you will be completely broke, if not dead.”