American Outlaw (40 page)

You’re trapped,
I thought suddenly.
It came out of nowhere, but you’re trapped pretty good, aren’t you?

Before I met Sandy, I’d romanticized the stable, calm married life: the idea of me finally growing up. But now I missed leaning up against the fence at the dragster races in Pomona, laughing, talking shit, cracking jokes with my no-good friends. Too many people knew me now. I couldn’t escape. Not even for an instant.
Hell, I didn’t even have most of those old friends anymore. They all thought I’d pissed on them, gone Hollywood.

Mentally at a loss, desperate for something to make me feel like I had some sense of freedom, I ran through the list of things I
could
do to assert my independence over my life. Infidelity, unfortunately, was at the top of the list.

——

Sex is strange. For men, it’s on our minds every minute of the day. It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning; it’s the gold at the end of our rainbow. Sex is part of what makes us fall in love with a woman. It’s also part of what keeps us perpetually alone.

Ever since I had gained even a moderate amount of fame, I’d had women offering themselves to me—online, in person, and over the phone. I say that not to brag, but to tell you the truth about what fame does. I’m not special, by any means: the same thing happens to every man who makes his living in professional sports, music, television, movies, or politics. It’s part of what motivates men to strive to be famous in the first place. After all, when you take money out of the equation, what’s the point of being famous
besides
having your pick of attractive partners?

Throughout my life, I’d always had opportunities to hop on the train. But from the groupies at the concerts to the biker chicks who crowded our booth in Daytona, I’d mostly said thanks, but no thanks. It’s not because I was a great person; it’s just my nature to get emotionally caught up with the women I’m involved with. I’m into sex, but contrary to whatever biker stereotype got built up around me, sex is mostly a cerebral experience for me. If there’s no personal connection there, then it’s sort of pointless.

But with that said: I still did it. I screwed around behind Sandy’s back, and the whole world came to know about it.

I can’t go back, and I can’t save my marriage. What I can do is try to understand why I did it.

When Sandy and I first fell in love, I was so overjoyed to be with a woman who was obviously a superb person. And on the flip side of that same coin, I think part of what got her excited about being with me was my “bad boy” image. Opposites really do attract. During the initial period of our romance, we were carried along on the wave of the good we so clearly saw in each other: kindness, a willingness to give affection, our physical attraction, and a strong feeling of safeness we got from each other. But as we got to know each other better, I think we both came to realize that we really
were
a bit oddly matched. Sandy wasn’t rich, but she came from a stable, middle-class family—she’d grown up singing in a choir with her mom. I’d grown up with a dad who sent me a hooker in the middle of the day.

After Janine and I had split for good, a whole bunch of my friends had commented on how rash my decision to marry her had been. “Man, you thought you and
Janine
could make it work? You must have been
high.
” But weren’t Sandy and I almost an odder combination? I mean, I knew I could count on Sandy not to punch me in the face for snaking her parking space. But that didn’t mean we liked to do any of the same activities, or that the things that motivated me would do the same for her.

The more important factor, though, was the fact that I’d grown up in an environment where love hadn’t been shown to me on a regular basis. My dad had torn me down every time he could, and my mom had been pretty absent. Now I had a
great
woman who was telling me she loved me, but that didn’t mean I was in any shape to believe her. Sandy was an actress, after all. I think in the back of my mind, I always told myself she was pretending.

I never really trusted Sandy. It’s shameful to admit it, especially considering how hard she tried to let me know that I was accepted, and that she saw the good in me. But no matter how many times she told me, it just didn’t take. I nodded when she said she loved me. Inside, I was always thinking to myself,
Sure. We’ll see.

I guess I always felt like sooner or later, she was going to see the real me. And then she’d leave me. Well, I figured, if I was going to be left, then I wanted to make the first break. I’d reject Sandy before she could reject me. I’d expose myself as broken and incapable of love before someone else could beat me to the punch.

I have no problem admitting that I fucked up. I cheated on a woman I cared deeply about and I am so regretful. If there was any possible way to undo my actions, to communicate instead of cheating, to be able to say to her, “Hey, I think we need to change some things about our marriage, because I’m losing my mind in this world we’ve created for ourselves,” then I would. But I can’t. I transgressed against the vows of my marriage, and it doesn’t really matter whether I did that ten thousand times or just once. Once you’ve lied, there’s no taking it back. There’s no way to erase the deceit that you’ve created.

Instead, you have to live with it.

——

I probably almost blurted out the truth to Sandy more than a hundred times.

“How’s the steak taste to you, Jesse?”

I fucked someone. I didn’t mean to, but somehow it happened and I can’t take it back.

“Jesse? Anybody home?”

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “Sorry. I’m just tired.”

“Well?” Sandy said. “Everything taste okay?”

“It’s great,” I said, stiffly. “Just like always.”
And also, do you have a moment while I admit something that will end all happiness as you know it?

Being around my kids was almost as bad as being around Sandy. I’d always prided myself on being straight with them. I wanted to
earn
my kids’ respect, not demand it, and I knew that the only way to do that was through honesty and by being a decent person. Now
I was caught up in this big lie that followed me around from room to room like a dark cloud.

I’d never lived as a liar before. It was something to get used to.

I couldn’t look in the mirror for too long. I didn’t want to examine myself too closely.

I couldn’t listen to the lies I told Sandy, my weak cover-ups. I pretended that my voice was coming from someone else.

All the self-respect I’d accumulated over the years, through seasons of hard work, through refusal to quit even in the face of hardship, it was all gone, because I was full of shit and I knew it. My confidence was at an all-time low. And ironically, the sex that I’d sold my soul for wasn’t even good. There was no relationship and no personal connection. I was just there coldly, for myself, and even though I figured that detachment would make me feel less guilty about being unfaithful,
that
made me feel like a heel, too.

Months went by like this, the guilt mounting and my loathsome behavior making me feel like the lowest rat in the world. Then, one morning, I stepped out of the shower, and caught a good look at myself. I was a fully-grown man, complete with graying temples and a few wrinkles across the forehead. I wasn’t a child any longer. I had the power to stop what I was doing. I’d acted mindlessly. If I continued down this road, I’d lose everything, starting with my self-respect.

And so I stopped. The decision, arrived at in a moment, was final, and my execution of it was cold and definite. It was just like turning off a switch.
Bam.
It was all over. Several weeks after the fact, I realized that I’d quit drinking in precisely the same way.

It took a good long while before I began to feel better about myself—not to mention secure enough around Sandy to act like a normal human being.

“Want to go take a walk on the beach? It’s so beautiful out tonight.”

“All right,” I answered carefully. “That’d be great.”

We strolled along the beach in the evening air, arm in arm. Sandy was a trusting woman at heart, and that made me feel even more guilty. She’d never suspected a thing. Sometimes, I awoke sensing I loved her even more now, having gone outside of our marriage and finding no happiness there. I wished I could tell her. There was a story inside of me now—maybe if I phrased it right, I could share it with her.

I strayed, but realized that no one could replace you.

“Look up at all these
stars,
” Sandy exclaimed. “They’re so incredibly perfect. I mean, are we the luckiest people on earth, or what?”

No, I realized. I couldn’t tell her the truth.

“We are,” I agreed, gazing up at the black, quiet sky that loomed over our private stretch of beach. “We’re very, very lucky.”

That evening, as I walked along the beach with Sandy, I knew that I’d have to swallow what I’d done. I had no choice. It was the only plan that made any sense to me.

As time passed, strangely, our marriage began to gel again. I felt satisfied with my wife, and far less constrained by the specter of being known as Mr. Sandra Bullock. So what if I had to act in a certain way? So what if I couldn’t go to the racetrack anymore? Wasn’t being with a remarkable woman worth that much? In the grand scheme of things, was that really much to ask?

My creative lull also seemed to be on its way out, and that helped a lot. We’d developed a new reality show called
Jesse James Is a Dead Man,
where I performed challenging stunts. The show premiered on Spike TV, a new network for me, where it enjoyed moderate success. We didn’t break the world in two, exactly, but then, audiences were a little harder to overwhelm these days. More important was the fact that I’d created a show again, and I’d expanded my horizons for what I could do creatively. It opened the doors for future projects and gave me ideas about what more I’d like to do.

The bigger event for our family, though, turned out to be Sandy’s participation in a movie about, of all things, football.

“I think this film is going to do
really
well,” Sandy announced the day she returned from filming. “I don’t know, it’s just a feeling I have.”

“Pretty much every movie you do does well,” I reminded her.

“Oh, hush,” Sandy said, smiling. It was obvious she was finding it impossible to contain her excitement about the difficult role she’d mastered. “I’m
telling
you, this story is really special. People are going to relate to it.”

The film was
The Blind Side.
Based on a true story, it centered around a conservative Christian family in Tennessee who’d decided to adopt an exceptionally gifted, young black football player from an impoverished background. Initially, Sandy had turned down the role of Leigh Anne Tuhoy, the mother, feeling uncomfortable with the idea of enacting a woman whose philosophy in some ways ran counter to her core beliefs. But in the end she’d taken it on, and from the way she was acting now, she’d emerged gratified and energized by the challenge.

“I got the chance to stretch a little bit,” she explained. “I can’t tell you how good that feels for an actor.”

I just nodded, staying quiet.

Sandy’s instinct turned out to be right:
The Blind Side
opened in mid-November of 2009 to great interest. It had a huge opening weekend, taking in more than $35 million at the box office. Through all of Sandy’s success across the years, she’d never been part of a movie that had grossed that high in initial sales.

The Blind Side
kept rising. Incredibly, it made even more its second weekend, taking in sales of upward of $40 million. On its third weekend, it ousted the new
Twilight
movie, to become the number-one box office draw in the United States.

“This is wild,” Sandy breathed. “I knew it was going to be good, but
this
good?”

But the film hadn’t stopped yet. By January, it had grossed over $200 million, making it one of the most profitable sports movies of all time. And Sandy had earned strong reviews from critics across the board for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuhoy, the adoptive mother of Michael Oher. It appeared as if the award season might be a busy one for her.

“This really might finally be your year,” I said.

Sandy waved me off. “People like to make fun of my movies,” she said. “I’m just not the kind of actress who takes home statuettes. Which is fine! I don’t need them.”

“You’re so great in whatever you do,” I said.

“I do a certain thing,” she said, reasonably. “Either you like it or you don’t.”

“People
love
you.”

“But the critics never have,” Sandy said, with a wink.

This time, though, they did. Nominations poured in for Sandy: the People’s Choice, the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice, and then, the most prestigious of them all, the Academy Awards. They all lauded her performance, and presented her with the opportunity to join the ranks of the best and most celebrated actresses of the last century.

Needless to say, our house was a whirlwind of activity that winter. Sandy was constantly doing press junkets for her movie, taking interviews, and planning for the next award show. On January 6, 2010, we attended the People’s Choice Awards, where she took home the award for Favorite Actress. But that was just a warm-up. Nine days later, Sandy emerged victorious as Best Actress at the Critics’ Choice Awards, and then, just forty-eight hours afterward, she took home the same honor at the Golden Globes. The Screen Actors Guild Awards were on January 23. She cleaned house again.

“I’m going to have to buy you a storage unit,” I joked. “I’m not sure we have room for all this hardware.”

“Quiet, you.” Sandy laughed. She embraced me. I hadn’t seen her this happy in a long time. “Thank you so much for supporting me through all of this. I know you don’t exactly adore the red carpet.”

“I don’t mind it,” I said truthfully. “It’s good to be there next to you. I’m so proud of you.”