American Outlaw - Jesse James [113]
But I do know she realized that, deep down, I wanted more than anything to save Sunny from the pain of a truly unstable environment. In the months that followed, she kept me focused on the goal, and tried to help me stay upbeat in the process of the slow, plodding case.
Eventually, we settled into a normal kind of life in Orange County, or at least as normal as was possible for a famous movie star and her “heavily tattooed biker boy toy” husband.
“What should we have for dinner?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Hell, let’s just go to the supermarket and see what hits us.”
If we’d lived in Hollywood, it would have been more difficult to go to a Safeway and push around a shopping cart, but in Huntington Beach, things were often kind of laid-back. People seemed to understand that Sandy and I were in our home zone, and they mostly left us alone. I appreciated that, especially since Sandy was so nice that she’d inevitably humor whoever it was that managed to lure her into a conversation. I felt like it was important we were allowed to roam free in at least one little corner of the world. I didn’t really feel like ceding the privilege of buying a carton of eggs for the rest of my married life.
“How about the gym?” Sandy asked me, after our successful foray to the supermarket.
“I go to Gold’s.”
“Lead on.”
And we did. Sandy and I worked out at odd hours, when the gym was less likely to be full of people, but the point is, we went. We packed an old gym bag, wore sweatpants, and hung out with each other by the machines. We really tried our best to be a normal couple. And to an extent, there in the beginning, it worked. I know that I myself had never taken my own celebrity seriously. I was a metalworker, for Christ’s sake, and I was still putting in fifteen-hour days. There was nothing glamorous about that.
And Sandy, for her part, was about as down-to-earth as you could get. That was her whole appeal. She was an uncommonly pretty woman, but nonetheless, hers was the type of beauty that seemed almost attainable by most of the attractive women in America. She wasn’t an intense, bitchy, ruthless megastar; nor was she ultra-chic, irresponsible, and moody. Sandy was grounded. Normal, even. She was the superhot version of regular. That’s why America loved her.
As our marriage developed, I felt surprisingly pleased with the way my life seemed to be playing out. I’d struggled for such a long time, willingly placing myself into the oddest of configurations possible: head breaker, football nut, porn-star hubby. Finally, it seemed that I was on a sane path. More and more, I found myself wanting to take advantage of my stable foothold to do something half worthwhile, something that might help other people.
“I can’t stop thinking about going to Iraq,” I told Hildie Katibah, the producer with whom I’d discussed the project several months before.
“Jesse, you know I think it’s a great idea to do a show over there. But we already talked to Discovery. It’s not popular with the network.”
“Fuck them,” I said. “I’ll put up my own money.”
She cleared her throat. “You may have to form your own production company.”
Though it seemed a daunting task, I was stubborn. I just really wanted to do something positive. I realized I wouldn’t be stopping the war, but that wasn’t my intention. I knew that kids who’d enlisted in the army were my kind of people. They were blue collar; they understood how machines could be your allies when nothing else made much sense.
“Then I’ll form a production company,” I said. “Just tell me what needs to get done. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
I don’t know why I was on such a mission. Maybe it was because people were telling me that I couldn’t—opposition always added fuel to my fire. With Hildie guiding me, I formed Pay Up Sucker Productions, a company that would bear the cost of getting us over to Iraq, filming there, and procuring the necessary permits from the U.S. government.
“Boy, I sure hope