Like Me (19 page)

Brad is a thinker, a planner, and nothing that happens in his life just happens. He knows what he wants, forms a plan accordingly, and executes the plan. This is not a pejorative observation of him at all. In fact, I liked that about him. Anything he sets his mind to, he accomplishes. This was another quality that I admired and had put in the pros column of my figurative pros-and-cons list for Brad Paisley. I liked a person with vision, with the work ethic to follow through, and with the confidence to go after what he wanted. The problem was that he was now telling me that he wanted me…forever. He was starting to talk to me about forever and how someday he was going to want to marry me. Okay, now his characteristics of vision, focus, and resolve were landing solidly in the cons column of my list. I was scared.

I asked him if we could slow down. This came out of the blue to him because we really didn’t seem to have any problems. Well, except for the tiny little fact of my being a lesbian. I was hoping that I’d just fall out of favor with him. No such luck.

There was a night on the road, just outside of L.A., that was particularly dramatic. I was doing my best to pull away from him. I wasn’t very good at it, because it was all based on things that were false. For example, during the day of that show I
talked to him in my dressing room about how I needed space. He didn’t understand any of my reasons, and rightfully so—they didn’t make sense. He left my dressing room, frustrated, I’m sure, but respecting my request to be left alone for the day. Then I ruined it. There was something that happened backstage that was funny or weird. I don’t remember the details. But I just had to tell him, and I knocked on his dressing room door, grinning from ear to ear, to tell him this hilarious story that I just knew he’d want to hear, because we loved that kind of thing. The problem with all of that was that I forgot that I was supposed to be pulling away from him. It slipped my mind that I was “going through something and needed space” from him. Just as I imagined, he laughed at the story I’d come to tell him. Then his argument was, “Come on, Chel—don’t we have fun? Don’t we just ‘fit’?” I didn’t have a good argument why we didn’t. I said I didn’t want to talk about it.

I asked my tour manager, Joe Morris, to get me a ride back to the hotel near LAX. We were scheduled to fly out early the next morning to Phoenix for another show with Brad, and I just wanted to get to my room and get some sleep. I was back in my room and Brad started to call my cell phone. I ignored it. He left voice mails asking me to let him come to my hotel room so we could talk. I guess he had asked Joe or my band guys what hotel we were staying in. I just wanted to hide from him for a while. He’d call, I’d check the voice mails as he left them, and then I just stayed in my room and cried. Then there was a knock on my door, and I didn’t want to answer it. If he knew for certain that I was actually in the room, I knew he’d never leave, so I was as quiet as I could be.

I wouldn’t call his behavior that night abnormal or irrational, given that he didn’t have all of the facts. Had he known my secret and I’d asked him to give me space, I’m confident he would have. But as far as he understood it, I was the woman he loved, and I was with him. There were no obvious reasons why it
should be breaking down, so he was fighting to save something he cared about. I’m not sure if he knew without a doubt that I actually was in that hotel room, but he said through the door, “I’m not leaving this door until you let me in.” So he sat out there in the hallway by my door for over an hour. I quietly called my tour manager, Joe, and asked him if he’d come to the hallway and somehow convince Brad to just give up for the night and try to get some sleep too. Joe did that for me with no questions asked. None of that would have had to happen if I’d just been courageous enough to live my life honestly. Again, I was too afraid.

That kind of push and pull continued between Brad and me. I was driving him crazy with my erratic behavior, and our relationship finally started to come undone.

Shortly after the ordeal in L.A., my band and I had a midnight bus call from the Wal-Mart parking lot on Charlotte Pike just outside of Nashville. I’m not sure where we were headed. Brad and his guys had that weekend off.

He had been calling me all day long and I had not called him back. In a couple of his messages, he mentioned that he knew I was leaving that night for a show the next day and said he wanted to ride along with me so we could talk. I was ready to get away for a couple of days, alone. I arrived at bus call at about 11:45 p.m. I was in the back lounge putting my things away when Brad walked in. I was dumbfounded as to how he knew exactly when bus call was that night. He said that Joe Keiser, my production manager, had told him.

We started to talk in the back of the bus and I told him flat out that he was not going with me. He dug his heels in and said he was. I was angry with him for forcing the issue and he was angry with me for shutting him out. He started to get loud and that freaked me out. In all my years on the road, my band and crew had never seen or heard any kind of drama from me, and I certainly didn’t want them to hear us back there arguing. I told
Brad that I was through talking. He just wouldn’t stop. I suggested we go out to the parking lot to wrap up our conversation.

As we walked through the front lounge of the bus, all of my guys were up there and they just stared at the floor. They knew something was going on and that it wasn’t good. I have always been proud of not being late or causing my driver to have to sit around and wait on me. That night, my driver sat patiently and waited for me until 12:30. At that time, Brad and I were in his truck and I finally told him that I had to go. I got on the bus and walked back to the bunk area, not making eye contact with anyone, but I could feel them all looking at me. We were pulling out of the parking lot and I felt the bus stop for a second. I heard the door to the bus open and close. I looked up the hallway and there, on one of the front couches, sat Brad, with his arms crossed and his face red with frustration. I guessed he was going along for the weekend after all.

I
t was stressful and I tried everything I could, except the truth, to get him to see that this was not going to work out. The way he saw it was that I lacked trust in him or that I didn’t really believe in love. My parents had divorced a few years earlier, and I tried to use the demise of their relationship in my strategy. I played the pessimist and agreed with him that I just didn’t believe that love could last forever and that I was not a person he’d want to invest his heart in. This just sent him further into warrior mode. He was going to be the one to not let me down. He told me that he wanted to make me a promise of forever, that he wanted me to be his wife…whenever I was ready.

When we arrived back in Nashville early that next Monday morning, I got in my car and headed straight home. I had to completely disconnect from him. He asked if he could see me later that day. I told him no. A couple of hours later my phone started to ring. He began to leave messages again. He was crying,
hurt and confused. He was at my front door, but I refused to let him in. I went upstairs, turned on some music so I couldn’t hear the doorbell or the phone, and took a long bath. He was still outside in his truck. Waiting.

B
rad called my friends, asking why I wouldn’t talk to him. A couple of his friends would plead with me to just call him. They told me that it was killing him and that they’d never seen him like that. I didn’t doubt these things, but there was no way that I could explain it to him, in truth. I felt I had no choice but to do it the way I did it.

There was nothing about Brad’s behavior in the course of our relationship that was inappropriate. Yes, he was overzealous at times and a bit relentless in certain situations, but he was never out of line. I had been cruel to Brad, and I have cried a million tears about how I hurt him. I have not been ashamed of myself often, but I am ashamed of myself for choosing to be so cruel to another human being. Brad and I have seen each other in passing on a couple of occasions since then, and we exchanged pleasantries. Perhaps this book and my coming out will help him understand that time in our lives.

L
ying and hiding cause so much pain. Brad was not the first man that I’d hurt in this way. The circumstances were different with Brad, though, because we were intimate, which made me feel so much more responsible.

But there have been other men, with whom I simply wanted to share a friendship or work together, who developed feelings for me that I just couldn’t reciprocate. This was confusing for them and caused a great deal of hurt.

Occasionally, these men would confess their feelings to me. I know it wasn’t easy for them, and each time it happened, my heart was crushed too. I didn’t want to lose the friendship. I couldn’t say to them, “Oh … no, I’m sorry, there’s been a misunderstanding. I love you as a friend, but I will never be able to love you as a lover.” Had I felt able to tell the truth, I think it would have answered so many questions and freed them. I appeared available to them. They thought that I was a single woman who just hadn’t found the right man and I was waiting to be loved.

I’d tell them that if they had feelings for me it would ultimately damage our friendship. I’d feel trapped and pull away in an attempt to spare their feelings. This behavior likely caused them to see me a little differently. Perhaps they titled me a bad friend, flaky, unreliable, and cold.

I hate that I forced some wonderful men in my life to believe those things to be true about me. I wanted more than anything to be a loyal and dedicated friend, through thick and thin. I have certainly needed them in my life long after I had to push them out. People like me feel trapped and forced into doing things that don’t make sense to others—or to themselves, for that matter.

J
ulia had heard the rumors that Brad and I were seeing each other, and while she did make comments about the rumor, she never came right out and asked me if it was true.

After I cut Brad out of my life, I waited a while before I told Julia the truth about what had been going on between Brad and me. Even though I had ended things with him, I wasn’t certain that I wanted to be with Julia, unless a lot of things changed.

I spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out what to do. I decided that I wanted to work things out with Julia, so I told her everything. I suppose I could have gotten away with not telling her, but I wanted something more for us. She was angry and hurt, and we had long discussions about what to do. After a week of emotional upheaval, we decided that we were worth fighting for and began couples therapy. The irony of this wasn’t lost on either of us. We knew our problems stemmed largely from the fact that we couldn’t find a way to publicly be a couple, so our ability to solve our difficulties with the help of a therapist was limited.

J
ulia and I were feeling the benefits from our counseling, and we grew closer and healthier than we’d ever been. We were learning healthier ways to communicate our feelings to each other and how to actually hear what the other person was saying. Unfortunately, the necessity of living in the closet continued to be a strain.

Our careers progressed along successful paths, and we both worked hard.

I was in Nashville during another industry event, doing interviews. The Country Radio Seminar is one of the most hectic and exhausting weeks of the year if you’re a country music artist, but I was always up for it. That five-day event was about stamina, a good attitude, and the willingness to do whatever was asked by the record label. I had been doing live interviews all morning long and had a short, twenty-minute break before my afternoon of scheduled press was to begin. My record label had a hotel room suite for all of its artists to use for the week, and I went into the bathroom to freshen up my mascara and my lipstick.

I could hear a lot of commotion outside the door. I was being escorted that day, in typical fashion, by several people—my day-to-day manager, two label executives, and the label publicist—and the conversations became loud and boisterous at times.

I could hear them outside the bathroom, but I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, nor could I determine what the tone of the conversation was. I didn’t know if they were upset or excited; I just knew that everyone was talking loudly on top of one another. They had been behaving strangely for the past couple of hours.

Earlier in the day, as I was doing an interview, I had heard them in the hallway discussing something. Usually they never left my side when I was in an interview. I thought I heard one of them say, “No, we can’t tell her now.” I got scared. I thought there was a good chance that the label had discovered my secret and that they were going to break the news to me that everyone knew I was gay.

The anxiety washed over me, leaving me flushed and sweaty. I walked out of the bathroom and their chatter was immediately silenced. They looked at me and then down at the floor. No one would make eye contact, so I pretended that I didn’t notice they were keeping something from me. I calmly announced that I was ready to head back out and wrap up the day. My label publicist, Leslie Kellner, said, “Okay, but before you go, we need to talk to you about something.” I swallowed hard and said, “Okay.”

I did a quick rehearsal in my head about how I would need to respond. I needed to seem unaffected, yet I wanted to have a quick response of denial. I hoped that they didn’t ask me the direct question “Are you gay?” because I hated to lie about anything, and at that point I’d never had to flat-out lie about it.

“Oh, I’ve heard that rumor too…for years,” I would say, to dismiss their inquiry and make sure that they saw how a stupid rumor like that couldn’t rattle me. There was sweat on my top lip. I felt light-headed.

The secret they’d been keeping from me was that I’d been chosen as one of
People
magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People of the Year. I’d be going to New York for a secret photo shoot,
and no one could know about it until we were given the green light.