Sex, Lies and the Dirty (9 page)

The ride in the Lexus with the Pink song is the last time I see Amanda.

I’m sending her money and have called her a few times about taking Iris
²⁶
for the week, but I get no answer. I honestly don’t miss being with Amanda. The hardest part is not having my dog anymore. I’m alone now. Alone and single, and that state of being makes it so much easier to be Nik Richie. The attachment that Hooman Karamian had in marriage no longer exists. I’m free now.

I’m free to do whatever the fuck I want.

I can chase that American dream.

25
“So What”.

26
My pit bull at the time.

Lohan

Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan are the “it” couple right now,
and in a stroke of genius, Justin Levine books Sam to deejay Mansion in Miami—not necessarily because he likes her as a performer, but because he knows that if Sam’s there, Lindsay is going to be there, too. So Lindsay ends up getting booked for $25,000 as the headliner with Sam making an undisclosed amount (possibly less). I actually get booked too, but because Lindsay is headlining and she’s a Hollywood Alister banging a chick DJ, her clout overshadows Nik Richie. That’s the way it works in this business.

I have to break a celebrity scandal to get any publicity.

All Lohan has to do is sneeze wrong and
TMZ
is all over it.

So I’m looking to stir the pot tonight in Miami, telling Levine, “I’m going to break those two up tonight.”

“Get the fuck outta here,” he waves me off. “Not happening. They love each other.”

“Justin,” I say, “Lindsay
isn’t
a lesbian. Am I the only one who sees this?”

“Fuck off, man. You’re wrong,” he tells me.

At Mansion, Sam checks her equipment while Lindsay does the red carpet. She’s wearing a tank top dress (sequined, checkered black and bronze), no bra, hair casually pulled back. People take pictures. Flashes everywhere. These will serve as the “before” photos leading up to whatever disaster happens tonight. People expect this from her now.

So Sam, Lindsay and I all end up on the main stage inside the club, a platform where the DJ booth is set up overlooking the lower-level dance floor. Sam is cueing up songs in her headphones and smoking a cigarette. Lindsay and I are drinking, watching Sam. It’s dark and kind of boring. I’m thinking that if I hit on Lindsay (who actually looks decent tonight) that
Sam will go nuts and they’ll get in a fight. There’s a PR chick that we’re supposed to talk to if we need to use the bathroom, so I tell this girl that if Lindsay needs to go, make sure to grab me so I can go too.

A couple of drinks pass where Sam is spinning, smoking cigarettes, and Lindsay and I meander. Sometimes we’ll nod our heads to the music or casually chat. People are looking on from the rope that separates the platform from the rest of the club. Taking video, pictures. Security stands around waving flashlights at people to move away from the rope. Eventually the PR girl is telling me that Lindsay is going to the bathroom, so I sidle up to them, ready to navigate the stairs and hallways. Lindsay takes my hand, leading the way through the dark.

The PR girl opens the bathroom door for us to walk through and stands guard outside. It’s candlelit, but the light makes my pupils shrink. Lindsay goes straight for the toilet, pulling her dress up and sitting (no underwear), and one of her breasts is hanging out the top of the dress. I start to wash my hands and she asks me, “So, what’s your story?” before doing an uneven line of coke off her wrist.

I say, “Nothing…just, y’know…partying.”

Nik Richie kicks out the cast of
Jersey Shore
from Miami Beach, Florida hot spot Mansion nightclub.

I’m watching Lindsay do coke to my right, that pale tit hanging out, and it takes a couple of seconds to kick in that it’s intentional. I’m supposed to see this. She wants me to. And she’s doing more coke, raising her eyebrows at me like, Want some? She sniffs. Snorts. She swabs a little in her mouth and I’ve heard about this kind of thing on TV and in the papers, but it’s different seeing it: the chick from
Mean Girls
doing blow on the toilet next to me. She’s not the same girl anymore. Something’s changed. She’s lost her way, and seeing it is freaking me out. The PR chick is knocking on the door because she thinks we’re fucking, and I take that as my cue to leave. It’s too much. Too real.

I walk myself back to the DJ booth where Sam is smoking a cigarette, cueing the next track up on her laptop. Sam shrugs at me like,
Where’s Lindsay?
So I get up close, up in her ear and say, “She’s doing coke in the bathroom. That chick is crazy. How do you put up with it?”

And Sam says, “Ugh! I
knoooooooooooooooow
,” in a girly way I didn’t think she was capable of, but other than that she’s cool and down-to-earth, sort of like a dude. We’re chatting in the DJ booth, laughing and giggling over Lohan drama, then Lindsay comes back and sees the two of us. She’s wiping her chest off because someone spilled a drink on her during the walk back. Lindsay sees Sam and me getting along (I’m basically hitting on her) and flips shit.

Sam asks her, “Babe, are you okay?” motioning to Lindsay’s wet chest.

Then Lindsay is yelling, “I can’t believe you’d fucking cheat on me like that! What the fuck?!”

And I try to intervene, telling her, “Lindsay, I’m not going to fuck her. She’s a lesbian. It’s cool.”

She doesn’t even bother trying to talk to me. Lindsay turns to the nearest security guy and yells, “Get this fucking guy out of here!” before she turns back to rip into Sam some more, causing a scene. Nobody can hear exactly what’s being said over the music (which, ironically, is “Womanizer” by Britney Spears), but their body language toward each other is clearly one of an argument. Everyone points. Laughs. Another camera flashes to capture the moment: the “after” photos. They feed the media another story.

Justin Levine escorts me out of the DJ booth. He’s supposed to kick me out of Mansion altogether since that’s what Lindsay wants, but he puts me in the back corner booth instead. I get a couple bottles of Grey Goose and chat with this half-Asian chick, Stephanie, who’s gorgeous, but I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger. We recap the fight and talk shit on people
instead, drinking the rest of New Year’s away together at Mansion. It’s a little boring. New Year’s is typically a letdown anyway.

When I get back to the hotel that night there’s pounding and yelling. Screams. Mirrors are being broken and I don’t even bother calling the front desk to report it because I’m drunk and figure someone’s going to get to it soon. Come to find out that Lindsay and Sam are in the room above me. Justin Levine fills me in the next day, telling me that Lindsay absolutely shredded the room to the count of $13,000 in damages. It’s on the news.
TMZ
’s all over it. Radar Online. All those guys. There’s video of the argument from Mansion coming to me through my e-mail. Pictures of Lindsay and Sam at the airport are being published moments after they’re taken. I’m going through my e-mail and a server at Dirty Pretty is telling me that Charles Barkley just got a DUI. He was there last night with Michael Strahan and the guy that played Urkel on
Family Matters
and wants to know if I want the receipt.

I say “yes” and the drama continues. It never stops.

Chuck

Charles Barkley’s daughter is submitted to the site.

I don’t need to be told it’s her because the chick looks exactly like Chuck. In the pictures she’s posing with a bottle of Smirnoff vodka with a friend, and then there’s another one where she’s doing a four-way kiss with some girls. Typical college stuff. She’s underage, but it’s only a big deal because of who her dad is. Thousands of girls at U of A just like her are getting away with this sort of behavior, but whatever. I do the job. I play Nik Richie. I bag on her a little and flip a Charles Barkley line, the “I am not a role model” one.

And I say: How could Charles raise his daughter to be like this?

The investors contact me a few days later saying that Chuck wants the post taken down, but he’s not going the legal route. He’s not sending a cease-and-desist letter or any of that shit.

My investors say, “Charles wants to know if you want to play golf with him.”

I say, “I don’t get it.”

In this business, when someone makes you an offer, that means they want something back in return.

“Well, Charles would like the post taken down, so I guess what he wants to know is, what’s it going to take? Golf? Tickets? What do you want?”

“Since when did I start taking posts down for fucking tickets?”

They say, “Yes, well, it’s not your typical M.O. However, we think it would be a really good idea for you to make an exception here,” they say, stressing the word “really.” They’re trying to strong-arm me. “Having Charles in our corner might come in handy later.”

They have a point, and the post has been up a week anyway, so it’s old news by now. Everyone has already seen it by this point, so I say, “Fine, I’ll take it down…whatever.”

“Fantastic, Nik. Would you like us to reach out to Charles for a tee time?”

I hang up.

Three months later:
I’m in Scottsdale with Eric Chavez
²⁷
and Jermaine Dye
²⁸
at the bar in the W Hotel. It’s a casual night. We’re catching up on stuff, talking about baseball, the site, bullshit like that. Jermaine mentions how he’s afraid to hang out with me considering what he’s seen on
The Dirty.

“This is gonna be crazy, man,” he says, as if it’s my goal to get him into trouble tonight. Or maybe he just assumes that trouble follows me.

Randomly, Charles Barkley walks in and notices Jermaine and Eric. They start talking, Chuck orders a drink and has a seat with the group of us. Chuck doesn’t know me, so he thinks I’m just a friend or brothers with Chavez. The Nik Richie thing doesn’t register nor do I say anything to bring it to his attention since I’m not sure how he’ll react to it. I took his daughter down, but I didn’t do it in a timely fashion and I kind of snubbed the guy. He probably thinks I’m an asshole. His attention is mostly on Eric and J.D. anyway so I’m not too worried about it. I also made sure to let the guys know not to let it slip that I’m in charge of
The Dirty
.

Chuck wants to know what we’re doing after this. What he actually says is, “So what are we doing next?” kind of inviting himself along and taking our quiet night up a notch in one move.

We go to Dirty Pretty.

We get a table in the back corner of Dirty Pretty.
The four of us are chilling in the booth, scoping out chicks dancing to hip-hop music through the beams of light, and Chuck is telling jokes. He keeps name-dropping guys like Michael Jordan and Shaq and trying to be funny, but none of us are laughing at him. The server comes up and asks us what we want. Chavez, J.D. and I all order some kind of vodka mix since we have a bottle of that on the table. Grey Goose, I think. Since Chuck has to be cool or whatever, he orders a six-pack of Heineken (which probably cost about $80). So
the server gets Chuck his beer, and she does this quickly because he’s Charles Barkley and the rumor is that Chuck tips like a motherfucker. He’s sipping on his beer, making bad jokes, and I’m like, “Chuck, you’re not funny, dude,” and that pisses him off a little because he’s used to people laughing at whatever he says.