American Outlaw - Jesse James [124]
I don’t know. Maybe he thought I was being a dick, especially since I’d had a drinking problem myself. But I didn’t want to come off like I was better than him; I really believed what I said. Rodman was such an awesome athlete, and he had this unique jokester personality. He didn’t want people remembering him as the guy who started pounding vodka at ten in the morning.
Being on the Apprentice kept me entertained. The way they cut the show together was a little cornball—that fake-drama music is the worst—but the actual experience of doing the show was great. I dug the challenge of being a bellman, or baking cupcakes, or designing a costume for a comic book character; whatever they threw at me, I tried my best to succeed at it. I got fired toward the end of the show for not bringing any real donors to the table for my charity—maybe Trump expected me to ask Sandy for a whole bunch of money or something, but I had no interest in doing that.
And then it was over, and I was back to twiddling my thumbs professionally. Bikes were my bread and butter—I’d built this whole empire in Long Beach. Still, for my whole life, I had always prided myself on being ready to move on to the next big thing. Now was no exception: I was waiting for the next big inspiration to hit my brain, to give me a new direction and inject my life with some much-needed excitement. But it wasn’t happening.
During this time, Sandy was often working. Occasionally, she’d be gone for weeks, or even months, on end.
“I don’t want you to go,” I remember telling her.
“Got to,” she said, smiling. “This is my job, remember?”
“Well, how about I stow away with you?” I joked. “Live in your trailer?”
“That would only be, like, the best thing in the world,” Sandy said. “But I’ll be back before you know it. I love you.”
It was an odd time for me. I felt fatigued with the reality I’d created for myself, but there was no one to complain to about it. Everyone on the outside looking in at my life probably would have said, What the hell are you complaining about? I got a mortgage, a nagging wife, a clock-punching job I hate. You married America’s sweetheart! You have money, and freedom, and fame. So shut the fuck up.
And that’s precisely how I would have thought, too. When I was younger, the absolute last dude in the world who would have gotten my sympathy would be some famous guy, lamenting the glamorous problems of the elite. It just wouldn’t have sat right with me. But now that I was inside that situation myself, things felt a little bit more complicated.
There was pressure stacking up from every direction, particularly on a business level. I’d spread myself increasingly thin with the various operations I’d developed over the years: my Walmart clothing line; my restaurant, Cisco Burger; my production company, Pay Up Sucker Productions; as well as a whole merchandising operation and the manufacturing facility that we’d connected to the bike shop. All told, the Jesse James conglomerate I’d built up spanned an entire city block. If I wanted to step away from that, it would have to be one hell of a step.
I’d love to just fucking blow it all up, I found myself fantasizing, as I sat behind my desk at West Coast, blinking my reddened eyes. How sweet would that be?
It was a great image. All this responsibility gone: no more staring down at yet another payroll sheet, calculating just how much money I’d have to bring in this month to make all the labor worth it. No more hordes of people outside, craning their necks, desperate to catch a glimpse of the action. My life could shift back into a more manageable gear. I could return to the average workingman grind, just me in a small garage somewhere.
But if I closed West Coast down, it would hurt Sandy. That was the catch. In the eyes of the public, my fate was directly tied to hers. So just like I couldn’t punch somebody’s teeth out on the red carpet, I couldn’t really fuck up businesswise, either, because it would reflect badly upon her, and probably affect her successful image.
You’re trapped,