American Outlaw - Jesse James [134]
My life was falling apart, and there was nothing to do but watch it happen. I got a text from Robert Downey Jr., who I’d developed a friendship with. The text read, simply: “What a glorious shitstorm.” I laughed for a full minute.
I needed diversion, so I tried to have some fun with the paparazzi. I developed a routine: I’d drive sanely to school when I was dropping my kids off. But as soon as the kids were out of the car, it was go time, and we were on a racetrack. I barreled down back alleys and one-way streets at 130 miles an hour, threatening my own life and limb on a pointless, high-speed chase to nowhere. Testament to their incredible, leechlike hold, the paparazzi never gave up: if I lost them, they’d always show up for the next leg of the race.
Infidelity wasn’t a new story to Hollywood, but we were in the Internet age now. There was no getting away from constant twenty-four-hour news, gossip sites, the endless supermarket tabloids. News was nonstop now. And my story was just trashy enough to interest the average American. I was just big enough, just famous enough, and just tattooed enough, that you didn’t feel a need to sympathize with what I might be going through personally.
The punishing days wore on. I worked all day in the shop, pushing myself relentlessly, clocking in fifteen-hour days. But at night, I wasn’t sleeping. I twisted and turned, little snippets from the voices on TV pushing themselves in behind my eyes.
. . . serial philanderer . . .
. . . Nazi . . .
. . . mistresses emerging on a daily basis . . .
My kids saw how beat down I was. I couldn’t help it. They even tried to cheer me up.
“Dad,” Chandler consoled me, “it’ll be all right.”
But I wasn’t actually sure if that was true. There was nowhere to hide. Every day, it seemed more and more photographers would show up, increasing the numbers of their little tailgate party. Three of the four sides of my house were visible from the road. They had me cornered, all right.
On the fourteenth day of my siege, I drove the kids to school, ignoring the insults thrown at me from the leering mob. I made my way over to the shop, too disheartened to take anyone on a chase. I arrived at West Coast and shut off the truck. Predictably, six of the most stalwart photographers hopped out to torment me with their cameras.
I stood there like a dumb animal as they loaded and unloaded on me. I closed my eyes, hoping that somehow, when I opened them, I would be alone. That I would have woken up to discover this was all some kind of horrible dream.
“All right,” I said finally, humiliated and starting to feel angry. “You guys done for today? Got what you needed?”
“Whatever, Jesse,” said this Mexican cat with a shaved head. He edged closer to me, continued to shoot directly at me.
“Get the fuck out of my face,” I said, dangerously quiet.
“Ha. Yeah, sure, man,” he said, chuckling. He wore a beat-up suit jacket over a white button-down dress shirt.
“I’m not kidding,” I warned him.
“Dude, why are you freaking out on me?” he sneered. “I’m just doing my job.”
“You have to leave,” I whispered, seething. “Now.”
“Why are you tripping?” he asked. “Fuck, dude. Chill out, already.” He shook his head, as if he was annoyed, then continued to snap off shot after shot, determinedly.
I could feel the anger rising in me. All of a sudden, I felt just like the messed-up, angry teenager I used to be, when if I was mad enough at someone, I’d do anything to fuck them up, and if they locked their door, I’d smash their window, yank them out of their car, and beat the shit out of them.
There were no consequences back then, I had nothing to lose. And what scared me very badly at this moment was the fact that, my pulse quickening dangerously, I was starting to feel precisely the same way. A sick feeling rose in my throat. I saw red, and somehow I knew that if I didn’t leave that very instant, I was in real danger of doing something terribly violent.
Trembling, I shuffled away from the photographer. I