American Outlaw (39 page)

I looked uncertainly at my two girls.

“Well?” I said. “It’s a long drive back. Should we get on it?”

“Yes,” Sandy said, extending her hand down to Sunny. After a moment’s hesitation, Sunny clasped on, and they began to move forward. “Let’s do it.”

I felt hopeful.

——

And so, our family expanded once more. It was an exciting time for all of us: for Sandy, to be a mother for the first time; for Chandler and Jesse Jr., to be siblings to someone who really needed it; for Sunny, to slowly unfold into an environment filled with warmth and support; and for me, to feel like a dad who finally got his game right.

I’d become a parent so young. It had taken me a long time to grow fully into the role. But I felt like I’d finally arrived at my destination. I’d identified the people about whom I cared most deeply. I’d committed the rest of my life to making sure they were happy and safe.

“I’m turning into a regular family man,” I remarked to Sandy, as we prepared to spend Friday and Saturday nights at home with the clan, fitting together puzzles with Sunny, watching movies with the older kids.

“Would you ever have predicted it?”

“What, me being this
boring
?” I laughed. “I guess not. But weirdly enough, I kind of like it.”

It was a good thing that I did, too, because recently, I had started to feel like my family was the
only
thing that I was running right.

West Coast Choppers, according to the plan that I’d set up in my mind, was supposed to have focused me during what I saw as a transitional time. It was supposed to take my mind off the fact that my main project for more than half a decade,
Monster Garage,
was over and done with. But instead, the shop was just getting on my nerves. Without intending to, I had let it grow into a kind of unruly monster over the years. I had more than 145 employees on my payroll, and even keeping their names straight was a challenge at times.

“Who’s
that
?” I frowned.

“Her name’s Susan. She’s been here six months, man. She’s one of the accountants. Don’t you remember?”

Things had just gotten way too big for me. And unfortunately, I had never learned to delegate very well. I wasn’t one of these crafty CEOs with ten underlings running his arms and legs for him. Instead, every single goddamn tiny decision seemed to run directly across my desk. Every sale, every customer complaint, every bit of shop drama: it all came to me.

But the real killers were the lawsuits.

“I can’t believe it,” I exploded, one day. “
Another
one?”

They had been coming in, like biblical plagues, over the course of the last several years. Ever since I had married Sandy, my legal luck had turned to shit. The leeches had come out of the swamp, suing me more than half a dozen times. In 2007, the California Air Resources Board accused me of churning out bikes in violation of their clean-air standards, and they stuck their hands deep in my pockets, even though I offered to recall each of my bikes and make them smog compliant. Later that same year, a customer going through a messy divorce wanted to renege on his deal to buy a custom chopper, but
I’d already spent his down payment on labor, so I refused; he sued me, too. In 2008, even my freaking
lawyer
sued me.

I don’t know if I had a sign on me, saying “Take my money!” Maybe I’d kicked around in the spotlight too long, let my brand get too well known, because things had sure been simpler when I was selling fenders out of my garage. I think people thought that because I was married to Sandy, I had access to her money, which wasn’t true. She and I kept our finances separate. Both of us understood it was the path of least drama.

But if the intention was to wear me down, my various litigants were succeeding. My legal bills were enormous, and I went from feeling like West Coast Choppers was my retreat, the one place where things made sense, to not even really wanting to be there that much anymore. I couldn’t help but feel like I was milking the cash cow for everything it was worth. And that had never been my style.

“It just doesn’t make me happy anymore,” I told Sandy. “There’s so much stress associated with being there.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Sandy sympathized. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Unless you can make me excited about doing something I’ve done a million times before, over and over again,” I said, “I think the answer might be no.”

I hated to act ungrateful. I knew that I’d achieved every blue-collar guy’s fantasy, having created what was probably the biggest and most prestigious custom motorcycle shop in the world. I’d built it up from the ground, from absolutely nothing, just by my own sweat. But now I couldn’t help but wish to be rid of it. I couldn’t help but want to be free to do something, anything, else with my life.

“I think we need to go out to a nice dinner,” Sandy suggested. “Just you and me. I’d like some alone time with my amazing husband.”

“Yeah, all right,” I agreed. “Maybe that’ll help.”

“Make the reservations,” Sandy said, flashing me her famous smile. “I’ll get dressed.”

But even that didn’t seem to work out for us.

“Jesse! Sandra! Can you give us a shot? Can you give us a second?”

“Sandra, when’s the football movie starting? You guys start filming yet?”

The paparazzi battled with one another to get a photograph of Sandy and me entering the restaurant. It was just kind of lame, to have to battle through this horde of photographers just to get into a space of borrowed peace for about three hours.

“I wish just once we could go out and be totally left
alone,
” I grumbled.

“Let’s try wearing disguises,” Sandy suggested, smiling.

“Nah, these guys have radar,” I sulked.

“Don’t let it ruin your dinner,” she said. “There’s no point.”

“I won’t,” I said. But inside, I had already kind of let it spoil my mood.

It just felt like my chances to ever be normal again had completely faded away, and forever. To ninety-nine percent of the people out there, I was Sandra Bullock’s husband, the owner of West Coast Choppers, some reality TV star. But that’s not how I really felt as a human. I was a regular old dude from Southern California. Not a sophisticate, not a hero, just an average dad who liked football and racing. But I’d allowed the media to construct an identity for me, because it seemed like the right thing to do from a business and personal perspective. And now I was trapped inside of it.

Against all odds, I’d become a
personality.
That truly baffled me. In a shoe box at home, I had an old black-and-white photograph of myself on
Romper Room
when I was a kid—we’d lived half an hour away from where they filmed. Who in the hell would have predicted that someday I’d be stumbling around, playing an adult version of myself on so-called reality TV? It was just so unlikely, a
one-in-a-million occurrence. And yet as much as I found it odd, and not really in accordance with my own vision of myself, I couldn’t exactly bring myself to give it up, either. Fame annoyed me, but at least that massive block of attention showed that people cared. If I quit TV, what exactly would I have
left
?

So I ventured forward, not really knowing what the hell else to do. The producers for the
Apprentice
had been on me for years, trying to convince me to do the show. To this point, I’d never really been interested, but now, I forced myself to listen to their pitch.

“Look, Jesse, it’ll be fantastic! I promise. We got Andrew Dice Clay!”

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” I said drily.

“We’ve got Dennis Rodman!”

“Incredible.” I yawned.

“We’ve got Scott Hamilton lined up, too,” the producer pleaded.

“Scott Hamilton’s doing the show?” I perked up. “Seriously?”

“Sure,” she said. “Interested?”

“Yes,”
I said decisively. “Sign me up.”

I’d been on the fence: like a lot of America, I considered the
Apprentice
a little hokey. But the mention of Scott Hamilton tipped the scales. I’d been trying to find a way to hook up with him for more than twenty years, ever since I’d stolen his Porsche from outside the San Diego Sports Arena in 1986.

The story was a strange one: I was seventeen years old, and in the prime of my car thieving days. I’d already stolen another Porsche the month before, ripped it down to the bare essentials, sold what I could. Now I was looking for parts I could transplant into the shell I already had. I was cruising downtown San Diego and found myself at the Sports Arena, where Stars on Ice! were having their big day. Right outside the arena, a green Porsche 911, with a vanity plate reading “ISKATE,” just pleaded to be stolen.

So I burglarized it and drove it away.

I knew it was Scott’s car, and later, when I got more well known,
Scott had found out that I’d been the guy who’d ripped it off. I’d never really managed to make a good apology, though, and I’d always felt kind of like an ass about that, particularly because Scott Hamilton was known to everyone as a really sweet guy. I figured doing the
Apprentice
would give me the opportunity to work alongside him, and make my amends.

And in fact, it did. We hit it off immediately, and gradually we became real friends as the filming wore on. It took me a couple of weeks, but finally, I screwed up the courage to say to his face, “Hey, Scott, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am for what I did.”

“Jesse,” he said, “I forgave you for that a long time ago. You’ll always be my favorite thief.”

It was amazing, just how good that made me feel.

As for the rest of the show? I kind of surprised myself by how much I enjoyed it. They gave you the opportunity to work pretty hard if you wanted to, which I respected, and when it came down to it, how well you did was contingent on how well you functioned with your team. I worked with some awesome guys: Herschel Walker, Clint Black, and of course Rodman. He and I got into a little on-screen drama, when I suggested that he might have a drinking problem, but I never regretted saying it.

“I can kick anybody’s ass at
any
task,” I remember Dennis saying, when he was defending himself in front of Trump.

“What would you say to that, Jesse?” Trump asked me.

I thought about it for a second and replied, “I’d say, Dennis, why don’t you kick our asses at being a good person?”

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.