Chapter 6 Nostradamus #3
Inside the house I’d built a dance studio—of course I had—and installed a huge, heavy four-poster in the main bedroom.
The house boasted its original stone fireplace and a little cubby for an old-timey phone, all built in 1918, when it was erected.
There was a huge living room—the biggest I’d ever seen, I thought, after living in the 750-square-foot house up the hill—with an expansive bay window, and high ceilings stretching up to the loft area.
I had a pool table just like at my grandparents’ place in Indiana, only mine was in my dining room.
The kitchen in the log cabin was tiny, I suppose, but we spent most of our time outside barbecuing anyway.
During the Northridge earthquake in 1994, my huge four-poster bed slid right across the room.
One lamp fell and shattered, and a single brick flew off my fireplace, but other than that, those houses in the Canyon were sturdily built, especially my cherished log cabin.
The place escaped any real or lasting damage.
We were young and stupid, a bunch of idiot dickheads, but we threw great parties. I was home base, and I loved every second of it. We would run around that property like it was Lord of the fucking Flies, doing whatever we wanted to do.
It was a haven, for me and all my friends, even as I felt my boyfriend’s claws sink in deeper.
When I try to understand that relationship now, the only way I can do so is by excavating my early childhood.
My father had left when I was a baby; my mother had brought Lala into our lives, and had occasionally left me alone for hours, too.
I don’t suppose it takes a highly trained psychologist to see the abandonment issues—the truth was, I never felt like I was truly taken care of.
So when it seemed like someone was into me, really cared about me, well, I quickly bought in, even if it turned out to be bullshit.
I wanted to believe that I was everything to someone so badly.
I needed that validation because I didn’t really value myself at all.
If a man appeared to love me, and passionately love me at that, I never knew if that was the last time this was going to happen, so I put up with everything else.
I hated myself; I thought I was ugly and fat and stupid and uncool. This guy offered me protection and what I thought was love. I was desperate to have that, and it registered as some fun house version of happiness. I totally adored him.
I hadn’t had many lovers by then—I would describe myself as “still kind of a virgin” at the time, or at least inexperienced and naive.
We had waited a month to sleep together, and when we did, our bliss had kept us up until six in the morning (well, coupled with the first and last time I took ecstasy).
With the dawn breaking, he headed down to the 7-Eleven on Sunset and bought champagne and orange juice, and we sat outside on the swing, drinking and basking in the love we’d shared.
After that initial bliss, we never really had the romance of going on real dates—we’d just hang out in the house.
I introduced him to John Frusciante and the rest of that Chili Pepper crowd I knew.
John thought he was cool, but it didn’t stick.
We didn’t become one big happy house with two cats in the yard.
Pretty quickly, I was isolating, blocking out my friends, closing off the circle of people around me, staying in when previously I’d been out and about in Los Angeles.
I just became the girlfriend. I felt like this man took control of my friend group, talking poisonously about them to me, isolating me from them.
I had no idea what was happening behind the scenes.
I just thought I’d found the love of my life, and we were wrapped up in our own world.
Retrospectively, I can see that familiar pattern of cutting out friends so that someone can be the number one.
It was always the same thing: “No one loves you the way I love you.”
I know now that a lot of people hated him and wanted me away from him. But people so often don’t do anything about it, and so the dark and painful vortex kept spinning tighter and tighter.
It wasn’t just my mother and peers who had reservations about this guy: the cast of Married… with Children felt he was trouble, too.
In the spring of 1992, as part of the upcoming season 6 it was decided that Married…
with Children would decamp to England to film a three-episode story set in the UK.
I have no idea why anyone thought it made sense to have the Bundys in Britain—I’m not sure I can think of a less likely combination than raw Bundy bawdiness in the land of abject politeness—but there we were, filming at all the clichéd locations, like Buckingham Palace and Harrods and Hyde Park Corner and Heathrow Airport, as well as way out in the Kent countryside.
My boyfriend came with us, and my colleagues’ disdain became clear pretty quickly. In fact, I thought Ed O’Neill was going to punch that motherfucker out, he hated him so much. If I was ever to ask Ed about him, I’m sure I’d be met with a two-hour monologue of loathing even today.
I remember him causing trouble from the very beginning.
I couldn’t leave the house in tight clothes.
I always had to wear a bra. I wasn’t allowed to wear form-fitting clothes on the show anymore.
I had to change my whole wardrobe. The unhappiness made me gain weight, which he also hated. I was living in hell.
On the plane back from Europe, I ate two pieces of shrimp and some cocktail sauce. I remember the exact number—that’s how neurotic I was. I ate them in the bathroom so my boyfriend wouldn’t see, but he clocked my empty plate when I got back to my seat anyway.
“Why are you eating so much?” he said.
After that I started hiding food when I ate.
I was a TV star, and a movie star, a young woman who regularly appeared on talk shows and red carpets and awards shows, confidently striding through life, looking everyone in the eye.
In private, I was telling myself I’d never find anyone like him, never find anyone who was going to love me as much as he loved me.
I thought, I’m not good enough, not attractive enough to have anyone or have anything that I deserve.
As my fame grew, my self-esteem shrank—I wished someone would notice, but when you’re a celebrity, your life looks like a cakewalk.
My sad eyes were crying, but no one could see.
I felt his controlling nature worsen. During one altercation, I fell against my car in my garage.
The argument continued out onto the gravel path up to the steps that led to my house.
I think he pushed me, and I fell on the path, where I rubbed my face on the stones until I bled.
I did so because I was so desperate to be seen, for someone—especially someone I worked with—to notice, so I didn’t have to tell anyone with words.
I wanted to be saved.
In the end, I was.
In 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for president, Richard Dreyfuss had invited a bunch of actors to his house to establish a get-out-the-vote push, and he included me because he thought I represented the youthful side of Hollywood.
Richard handed us huge stacks of register-to-vote paperwork and asked me to take it to places where “the young people” congregated.
I had bought Rogues Retreat from the people who owned a spot in Hollywood called the Sunset Social Club, and I asked them if I could bring the registration forms to the club.
Before I headed to the club, my boyfriend and I had a terrible fight.
It had ended, like so many others, with him berating me, but I can’t even remember what it was about now—that’s how routine it had become.
When I arrived, I couldn’t shove it down.
The owners could see that I had tears in my eyes and that I was shaking.
The owner took one look at me and said, “You are of no use right now.” It was honestly nice to be seen, for once to be let off the hook.
He gestured over to a table with a group of young women.
“Go sit with them.” When I sat down, I could hardly breathe, but these women who I didn’t know at all rallied around me.
They ordered me vodka gimlets—my grandmother’s drink.
I loved them. At that table was Shannon, Carolyn, Tommi, and China.
Those women are still my best friends to this day.
They’re the only people I will let in my bedroom and the only people I will let lie in my bed next to me.
They saw me at my worst and rallied around a stranger.
They were punk rock bitches, and they weren’t going to let a man fuck with them or anyone they cared about.
It was a strength and resolve I desperately needed at the time.
I still think of how random that moment was, how easily it could have never happened.
There is something special about the way women see each other. The way we immediately had a shared language, especially when it came to understanding what I was going through with my boyfriend at the time.