Dirty Rocker Boys (12 page)

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 relationships. 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.

Oh, shit.

He walked toward me, grabbing a handful of ice cubes from a champagne bucket on his way over, then stuffing the ice down my shirt. I almost gave birth on the spot. “Hi, I’m Sebastian,” he said. “Will you watch my band tonight?” He had a giant coke booger hanging out of his nose.

I stood side-stage, watching Skid Row play, mesmerized. At one point Sebastian walked over and spat at me, which I believe was his way of saying hi. At the after-party, he was all over me like a rash. Frankly, after months of rejection from Jani, the attention felt good. Suddenly, Sebastian pushed me up against the wall of the dressing room, his hard crotch pushing against the unborn child in my belly. I glanced around the room, but everyone was too wasted to notice. When he stuck his tongue down my throat, I thought I might gag. But I didn’t push him away. A few minutes later, he came up for air. “I want to see you again,” he slurred. “Sebastian, this isn’t a good time,” I said, pointing at my belly.

The next night, Guns N’ Roses played again, and against my better judgment, I went back. I spotted Sebastian and went over to say hello. “Oh, hey, Bobbie,” he said, looking busy. “Meet Maria, my wife.” I held out my hand, smiling sweetly, feeling
like an idiot. I thought about Jani on the road. I imagined the number of unpregnant, uncomplicated groupies he was probably surrounded by at that very moment. My heart felt heavy with a mix of guilt, jealousy, and resentment. “Nice to meet you, Maria. You really missed a great show last night.”

When Jani came home a few days later, I searched for some sign that he still loved me, that he still thought I was beautiful. Kissing Sebastian Bach had reminded me what it felt like to be desired. I just wanted the same from my husband. But Jani seemed more shut down than ever and had thrown himself into his work. He was recording the new Warrant album that he hoped could weather the giant shit storm that was about to hit called grunge. Like the asteroid that crashed into the Earth 66 million years ago, grunge was about to crash-land on the Sunset Strip and wipe out the hair metal dinosaurs overnight.

Jani was an incredibly dedicated musician, though, so it shouldn’t have mattered. He was always writing, always recording. He wrote all of Warrant’s songs, words, and music. He would even write the parts out for every person in the band and hand them their part to learn. But because he was a cool guy, he still split the publishing with them. “Why are you splitting the publishing? That’s your bread and butter,” I asked him once. “I understand you want to be their friend, but to give them your publishing when you write all the songs seems crazy.” But he would just shrug and say that was the way it was. I felt like the rest of the band took Jani for granted. They would sit back and
wait until he had finished writing all the songs and then just show up to record.

Jani’s ballads were amazing, and I always thought he really had a real gift as a pop artist. But he was supposed to be glam, because that was what the industry was pushing, even though glam metal was already way past its peak by the time Warrant hit the scene. Jani was self-conscious of being known as the Cherry Pie guy, when, in reality, he had so much more to offer as an artist. Sometimes I felt like he blamed me.

We went to a party one night, and Jani was drinking, as usual, so much so that he was too drunk to drive home. So I drove. Instead of sitting in the passenger seat next to me, he sat in the back and started hurling insults at me. “Why are you treating me like this?” I asked him, hurt by his comments. “Because I can, and I enjoy it.” I couldn’t believe it. When he drank, something very dark in him came to life.

“You want me to fuck you?” said Jani a few days later when I tried to kiss him. “Is that even possible?” I was eight months in and craving attention. Jani had come home drunk and was not in the mood to be nice to me. These days, he rarely was. Eventually Jani decided to give me what I wanted—but not in the romantic manner I hoped.

“Take your clothes off and kneel on the bed,” Jani said. He grabbed some scarves and tied my hands to the frame of our four-poster bed.

“Wow, we are getting kinky tonight,” I said.

“Don’t move.”

Then he took a scarf and gagged me.

“For once in your life, Bobbie, you’re gonna shut the fuck up.”

Then he started fucking me in the ass. I had never had anal sex before, and wanted him to be gentler with me. Instead, it felt like he was trying to teach me a lesson.

It was like that scene out of
Last Tango in Paris
—cold, impersonal, and animalistic. It didn’t feel like Jani. Afterward, he untied me and collapsed next to me, panting. I got up and went to the bathroom and tried to make sense of what had just happened.
I must be such a bitch to have pushed Jani to that point,
I thought.
Maybe this is what I deserve
.
I better watch my fucking mouth from now on
. I splashed my face and then walked back into the bedroom. Jani was asleep. We never mentioned anything about it ever again. A few days later, when I joked about the incident with a couple of girlfriends, their reactions surprised me.

“What the fuck? That is weird, Bobbie,” one said.

“Really?” It hadn’t dawned on me that I should be concerned.

“Dude, that is not cool,” said the other, shaking her head.

The doubts in my head grew as fast as my belly. I thought back to my life a year ago, realizing I could never have imagined myself a wife and mom-to-be at the age of twenty-two, with a husband whose moods I could no longer understand or predict. Some days, I wondered if I was making the biggest mistake of my life. But there was no turning back now.

A few weeks before my due date, we were somewhere in the Midwest, traveling along a lonely freeway in the dead of night, headed toward the next stop on the Warrant tour. Jani and I were asleep in a bunk, with me on the outside so I could easily climb down out of the bed and get to the bathroom. When I was pregnant, my actual life felt like stopgaps in between pee breaks.

We were both sound asleep when the bus swerved violently as the driver tried to avoid something on the freeway. As the bus lurched to one side, it flung me out of the bunk and I landed on the floor. Jani was horrified.

“Bobbie, are you okay?”

“Yes, I think so,” I said, half-asleep and confused as to what was happening. But when we got the hotel, I went to the bathroom and realized I was not okay. There was blood on my panties.

“Jani, call an ambulance,” I screamed.

Lying on a table in the emergency room, I felt like the star of a bad horror movie. Doctors took my pulse and monitored my heart rate, and tried to stem the increasing flow of blood from my womb. I could see in their eyes that all was not well. Because I’d had the surgery on my cervix a few years prior, it was barely holding the contents of my womb in place. The shock of falling out of the bunk on to the floor had weakened it even further, and I was in danger of going into labor.

“She’s losing the baby!” said the surgeon, and my heart froze. In that moment, all my doubts and misgivings about becoming
a mother disappeared. It dawned on me that all I wanted, all I needed, was to have my baby. I was crying, screaming, staring wildly at Jani as he held my hand, looking terrified.

“The placenta is tearing away from the uterus,” said one of the doctors. “I think we’re losing her.”

I was sobbing through my oxygen mask. All I could think was to pray out loud and ask for help. “God, please don’t make me lose this baby! I promise I will not regret this pregnancy! Please, God!” Then the strangest thing happened. The bleeding just stopped. My heart rate stabilized. The doctor’s face relaxed. “I think you’re going to be okay,” he said. “Both of us?” I asked? “Both of you.” From that moment on, I was nothing but grateful for the baby that Jani and I were about to have. Never again would I entertain a single thought of regret.

On January 15, the day before my scheduled delivery by Caesarean section, Jani came home with an announcement. “Hey, I decided we are not naming the baby Taylar.” We had decided on Taylar five months into the pregnancy, after tossing around alternatives including Tresor (my mom’s idea) and Trooper (because of the near miscarriage). “What do you mean, we’re not calling her Taylar,” I growled. I was watching a movie in bed with my mom, who had flown in to help me with the birth. “I just don’t like that name anymore,” shrugged Jani, unapologetically.

I could have strangled him. I was huge, I was miserable,
and I was in no mood to renegotiate baby names. I picked up an alarm clock and threw it at Jani’s head. He ducked. Then I picked up a pillow and hurled it at him, then a notepad and whatever else I could reach from the bed.
“Our daughter’s name is Taylar!”
I yelled. Jani retreated into the kitchen, and my mom followed him. “Well, I guess you guys are keeping that name,” she said, giving him a hug, and he nodded.

The following day, my mom, Jani, and I drove to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills and prepared to deliver our baby. “I have to do a bikini shoot in two weeks, so make sure the scars are low, and be sure to laser some of the muscle tissue; I want to be skinny after the baby is born,” I told the doctor, who rolled her eyes. “Oh, and I don’t want to shit in front of anyone.” I had heard that 90 percent of the time, when you’re having a baby, you crap yourself.
No way am I doing that,
I thought.
No way.

The doctors had decided to book me for a Caesarean because of my unusually narrow hips. Most women experience pelvic widening during their pregnancy, but mine refused to grow into the birthing kind—I was what they call “all belly.” From behind you couldn’t even tell that I was pregnant, but if you swiveled me to the side, I had the girth of a Hummer. Toward the end of my pregnancy, it was as though Taylar had taken up my entire body. She would move and it was like an alien was visibly squirming around my stomach. You could see her little hands and feet with her ten toes moving under my skin. It was weird, every time Jani and I fought, Taylar would
intervene, by getting the hiccups in my stomach. Jani and I would notice my stomach jumping every two seconds, and nearly always, this would diffuse the tension. To this day, Taylar is incredibly sensitive to emotions.

The doctors set me up facing the door, so that anytime anyone would walk in, it was like a meet ’n’ greet with my pussy. “Hey, you guys wanna maybe turn me around?” I pleaded, horrified. But to no avail. Suddenly, I felt nothing beneath my hips—they had given me the epidural. This shit was on. A six-foot-tall black male nurse was assisting. He had to work the baby out of my womb by applying pressure to my belly. He was so big that he broke two of my lower ribs, although at the time, of course, I couldn’t feel a thing. Then, at 8:30
A.M.
on January 17, 1992, our daughter, Taylar, was born, with a full head of spiky white-blond hair, just like Billy Idol. Seriously, it looked like she had a puppy on her head. “She’s got angel hair,” gushed the doctor. “No wonder you had so much heartburn, Bobbie—that’s always a sign that the baby’s going to have hair.”

Then the doctor called out, “Does anyone want to see her uterus? It’s outside of her body.” My mom, of course, said yes. “Oh, it looks like a roast beef,” she said.

It took me several weeks of rehab in the hospital before I was able to leave. Jani had gone to Florida to record, so I went back to Baton Rouge with my mom and was there for a couple of months before I saw Jani again.
I’ll show you, motherfucker,
I thought, remembering Jani’s taunts about my figure. I got
ripped. I ate five grams or less of fat per day, and I did cardio five days a week. When Jani showed up in Baton Rouge, he couldn’t believe it. My body was in better shape than it ever had been. “Will you put a bikini on and go ask for sugar next door?” he said, floored by my abs. “Sure, asshole.”

My mom tried to teach me what she could about being a good mother, and I absorbed it as best I could. I couldn’t believe the overwhelming feelings of unconditional love I had for our little baby, Taylar. Upon returning to L.A., I tried to be the best new mom I could be—even though oftentimes it was a solo gig, because Jani was working nonstop, either on the road or in the studio. One day, like a good Valley mom, I decided to take Taylar to the mall. She was less than two months old, and I was excited to show her off in some of the cute outfits I had bought her. I washed all her little rompers and onesies—I had finally figured out how to do laundry properly, and had started a lifelong love affair with fabric conditioner—and picked out the outfit I wanted her to wear. I took it out of the dryer, and it was still just a little damp, which I didn’t think was a big deal. I got her dressed and got the stroller together, and we went to the mall. When we came home she was sniffing and crying. As the day progressed, so did her fever. I was horrified and called my mom. “I think I made Taylar sick,” I cried, realizing that putting my baby in a slightly damp outfit and wheeling her around an air-conditioned mall probably hadn’t been my most genius idea ever. Taylar couldn’t sleep well for weeks
because her nose was so stuffy, and I had to carry her around on my chest almost twenty-four hours a day until she finally got better.