American Outlaw (18 page)

I got along pretty well with everyone in the band, especially Chad Smith, their drummer, who liked bikes, so when the Chili Peppers were about to go on tour to promote the album, they asked me along to work it.

“Of course,” I agreed.

What was especially memorable about that tour was not just that the Chili Peppers were performing an awesome album, finally coming into their own as superstars, but that Pearl Jam and Nirvana were the opening acts. I remember watching from the side of the stage as Kurt Cobain broke into “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time on a national scale. I had never heard of this guy before, but instantly, I recognized that he meant something. The crowd always went nuts for Anthony Kiedis and Flea—those guys owned every audience they’d ever met, make no mistake about it—but during the shows I worked, they
loved
Cobain. The entire audience hung on his every word.

Slowly, over the next several years, I grew into my gig. I became fairly well known among rock groups, recognized as someone who took his work seriously and commanded respect. I had no interest in drugs, and I think that, too, was attractive to the groups. Cocaine and heroin had savaged so many of their talented members. Gradually, I let my flattop grow out. I did a tour with Soundgarden. Slayer was next. White Zombie followed.

Bit by bit, I was becoming part of the scene. It was a peculiar little world that I had stumbled into, and certainly an interesting one for a young man. I was proud of being an insider, and if mine wasn’t the most glamorous of all jobs—I mean, I wasn’t exactly invited out on stage during encores—well, then, neither was welding.

I was getting to see places I’d never even considered visiting. The
blue-collar kid from Long Beach had somehow managed to get over to Europe.

“Let’s go out, let’s walk around, man!” That was my chorus. I’d rather have died than sit around in my hotel room at any given moment. I felt it was a terrible waste of time.

Almost all the bands had been to Europe before, though, and hence they were a little bit more reserved.

“We got a show tonight, Jesse. Ever heard of a nap?”

“You guys are practically in your coffins,” I said. “It’s sickening. Don’t you want to go out and
see
stuff?”

“You’re
security,
dude. Watch some TV. Start working on your potbelly.”

That wasn’t going to be my fate, though. I might have been hired muscle for a punk band, but I’d be damned if I was going to let a whole continent’s worth of sights go unexplored. With the enthusiasm of a total nerd, I began seeking out all the Italian frescoes and Renaissance museums I could find. No matter where I went, I couldn’t get enough of the architecture and the incredible attention paid to detail.

I wasn’t all about the high art, though; sooner or later, I’d inevitably find myself at a bookstand, leafing through European motorcycle magazines. I wanted my next cycle to be bitchin’, blow everybody else out of the water. And to do that, I needed it loud, fast, and most of all, unique. Because I was overseas, I felt like I had an advantage over the rest of the cats stuck stateside—cycles were more popular over here, and they had much more stylistic variance. I pored over hundreds and hundreds of motorcycle magazines in Sweden, France, Italy, and Spain, often purchasing them to examine more closely backstage or on the bus. I received a per diem for food, but I never used it. I filled up on apples and oranges at the hotel, and usually copped a free dinner backstage. I put all my money toward bike magazine research.

Backstage, when I had a free moment, I enjoyed talking shop with other bodyguards.

“I have patented the absolute
foolproof
way to remove a groupie from a hotel. No fuss, no hassle.”

“Do tell.”

“Well, you know how it is, man,” I said. “Your bass player was all stoked to get this chick inside his suite at midnight. But now it’s three in the morning, and he’s had his kicks. He wants her out.”

Sympathetic nods all around; clearly, this is familiar grist within the security guard community.

“So you’re stuck. Obviously, she doesn’t want to leave—no groupie worth her stripes is gonna leave without being told flat-out. I mean, she’s done
her
job, right?” I said. “Any decent human being would let her rest in his bed till morning. But remember, we’re not dealing with human beings, we’re talking about musicians.”

“Preach it.”

“So all of a sudden, she becomes
your
job, right? ‘Jesse! Get rid of her for me!’ You can try reasoning, but that almost never works, and you can’t touch the girl. No way. Then you’ve got a drama on your hands.”

“Can’t have that.”

“Of course not. So what
I
do,” I said, lowering my voice to a confidential whisper, “I breeze into the room, and before anyone can say a word, I grab the groupie’s handbag, and I fling it into the hallway. She’ll run after it like a poodle. At that point, I slam the door shut behind her.”

“No!”

“Yep. She’ll immediately start banging on the door like some psycho, but you have to ignore that. Then you just call down to the front desk, say there’s some crazy woman trying to break into your room—and if you wouldn’t mind, could you please have her ejected, immediately?”

“Genius,” my compatriots said.

“Give me a little credit here,” I said modestly. “I’m very good at what I do.”

When I was back in the States, I spent almost all of my free time in my garage, trying to get better at building motorcycles. Progress came slowly. I could slap a whole bunch of cool parts on my bikes, sure, and make everything kind of function as a whole, but from a design perspective, it didn’t feel like I was doing anything earth-shattering.

Still, I kept riding Harleys as fast as I could around Riverside and Long Beach, rattling my teeth, blowing off steam, having fun. Random security gigs continued to come my way. If they appealed to me, I’d accept them. When a dive bar in Anaheim called the Doll Hut requested my services, being the generous soul I was, I decided to appease them.

God bless the bar. Working security at one of those places was like a paid vacation. I was too tightly wound to take a night off—already, in my early twenties, I was well on my way to becoming a workaholic—but folding my arms in the fun, stupid, party atmosphere served fairly well as a social event.

After a few weeks of working at the Doll Hut, I got to be friends with a few of the people there. One chick, Kelly, and her rockabilly boyfriend, Mike, had grown up right around the corner from me. They were neighborhood folks, real cool people.

“Jesse, tomorrow night, I want you to come with us to Captain Cream’s!” said Kelly. That was a club in Mission Viejo where she worked. “There’s this
super
hot chick working there, and guess what? She’s
single
. We’ll introduce you!”

I agreed, and the following night, we all tooled over to the Captain’s together. As we came in the door, Kelly nudged me, pointing a lacquered nail toward the stage.

“There she is,” Kelly proclaimed, gesturing toward the sexy blonde on stage, who was writhing rhythmically in a red bikini. “Didn’t I
say
she was hot?”

I nodded, impressed, and waited for the bikini to come off. But Captain Cream’s was only a bikini bar, and the girls didn’t do full-on nudity. The suit stayed on.

“Geez, what a tease,” I sulked.

But I continued to watch the girl on stage. After only a few moments, I had to admit, she had it going on. I’d gotten used to the ultra-slutty, over-the-top, almost comic sexual pantomime that they served up everywhere else. But there was a kind of class to this woman. She had the perfect body and the perfect moves, but somehow she danced to entertain. By the end of her set, I was hypnotized.

“Let’s give it up for
Karessa
!” sang the DJ, as she moved off the stage.

“Karess-a?”
I laughed.

“What?” Kelly said. She looked at me, confused. “Her real name’s Karla.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, still smiling.

“Karessa’s a very good name,” Kelly said, eyeing me distrustfully.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Very classy.”

Later in the week, Mike called me up and said a double date was in the works; was I interested?

“Heck, yeah,” I said. “I’m all about it. Just tell me where and when.”

The four of us went to a Mexican restaurant in Long Beach. I was very nervous. At that point in my life, I hardly even knew how to function around real women. I just had no game at all.

“Tell Karla about what you do, Jesse,” Mike prompted me.

“I’m . . . I’m on the road a lot. With bands,” I stammered.

“Jesse’s friends with all these famous dudes,” Mike said, talking me up. “He’s in security. Keeps everyone safe and sound.”

“Sounds like a real
mental
workout,” Karla said, smiling. She was so pretty, she looked even more amazing in clothes than she did in the club. Her skin was tan and her hair blond. Every inch of her was confident and impeccable.

“Are you . . . making fun of me?” I asked, reaching for a handful of tortilla chips and stuffing them in my mouth, embarrassed.

“No
way,
” Karla said, smiling even bigger. “Why would I do that?”

Over the course of dinner and our subsequent conversation, I realized that Karla was mature and well-spoken. She was a dancer, sure, but she obviously had her shit in line, and knew who she was. With a tingle of excitement, I thought to myself,
Jesse James, you’re officially on a date with an
older woman
.

I ended up dropping Mike and Kelly off first. Then I took Karla to her apartment in Huntington Beach.

“Do you have roommates?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said. “I live by myself.”

“I guess you have your own wheels, too, huh?”

“Brand-new Mustang,” Karla said. Proudly, she pointed to her car in the lot. “
Well,
Jesse?”

“What?”

“Aren’t you at least going to come up and take a look at my place?”

I smiled, embarrassed. “I was sort of waiting for you to ask.”

We made out rather drunkenly for a few minutes at her place, but it was very late, and another tour was beginning for me early the next morning.

“I better go,” I said regretfully.

“Too bad,” Karla said, smiling. “I was just beginning to like you.”

“Do you . . . want to hang out when I get home from Europe?”

“Maybe,” she said, smiling slyly. “I’ll consider it.”

“All right,” I said. “What’s your number?”

She scribbled it down on a piece of paper and handed it to me. “Are you really going to keep this?”

“Sure,” I said. “Just ask for Karessa, right?”

She socked me in the arm. “That’s
so
funny.”

We kissed a final time, and then I made for the door. My hand was on the doorknob, when she cleared her throat.

“Hey.” I turned my head to look back at her. She shrugged, kind of shyly. “I really do want you to call me,” she said, finally.

I grinned. “I will.”

——

Karla stayed firmly in the forefront of my mind, and as soon as I returned home from my tour, I asked her out on another date. She accepted. That evening, over drinks, she regaled me with the latest tales from the bikini bar.

“A guy this weekend tried to get kind of wise,” Karla said. “I had to do
your
job, Jesse.”

“How’s that?” I asked, laughing.

“I had to beat the shit out of him!” she said.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all,” she said, cheerily. “Look, this jackass was trying to feel up on my friend Paulina, just being real rude and stupid. When she pushed his hand off, she spilled his drink all over his suit.”

“Criminal,” I said, taking a long pull on my beer.

“Isn’t it? So anyway, he got all pissed, and
backhanded
her!”

“Ooh,” I said. “Unwise.”

“Unforgivable. I punched him right in the head. And man, I about broke my hand! This idiot had a
really
hard head.”

“Try not to use your knuckles on somebody’s skull,” I advised, as I motioned for another round for both of us. “Recipe for pain.”

“So I’m a rookie,” Karla’s voice lowered conspiratorially. “Want to hear what happened next?”

“There’s more?”

“Yes! This jerk freaking punched me in the
face.
Broke my fucking nose,” Karla said, proudly. “That was the end of my night! I had to go to the hospital and get my nose set, so I can stay pretty. There was blood all over my bathing suit. Pretty sick!”

I was speechless for a second. “Yes,” I said, finally. “That’s frightening.”

She was an outlaw; that much was clear. And it became clearer, the more time we spent with each other. Karla had grown up an orphan in Pennsylvania. Her adoptive mother, whom she’d loved,
had died when she was just seven years old, and from there, she had bounced around to a bevy of foster homes. Unsurprisingly, she had failed to make deep connections there. At eighteen, she’d come to California. When the opportunity came up to start dancing, making real money, she had taken it.

“How, um . . .” I didn’t quite know how to phrase this. “How . . . um . . . ?”

“How old am I?”

“Yes,” I said, relieved. “How old are you?”

“Thirty,” she answered. “And how old are you, Jesse James?”

“Well . . . twenty.”

“Does the age difference bother you?” she asked. “Do you envision it to be a
problem
?”

“No,” I said honestly. She was a woman, in every sense of the word. Self-sufficient, strong, experienced, and totally gorgeous. I had no problems.

“Great,” Karla said, shortly. “Got any more questions?”

I began daydreaming about Karla when I couldn’t be with her. On tour, I often found myself smiling, thinking about the odd stories and adventures that she’d gotten herself into. And when I was at home in Long Beach, there was just no one else I wanted to be with.

“How about taking me out in that cool-ass Mustang of yours?” I asked her one day. “I’m in the mood to joyride.”

We drove out into the traffic, letting the warm Southern California air hit our faces. Normally, I hated to be in the passenger seat. But next to this exciting new girlfriend of mine, it felt perfect.