My Life Outside the Ring (33 page)

I went out seeking company that night, and I had plenty of company at Oz. “Hulk, you’re so strong!” “Hulk, oh my.” I sat there and drank and drank and enjoyed the company of all these adoring young women till the place closed down. Until the house lights came up, I felt like I was the Wizard of Oz!

I had a pretty good buzz on by the time I came back to the house. Don’t even get me started on how stupid that was to be out drinking and driving. Imagine if the cops had pulled me over. After what Nick had been through? They would’ve thrown me in jail just to make an example out of me. I wouldn’t have blamed them one bit. My mind was so messed up, every decision I made was bad. I could’ve killed someone. In fact, I could have killed someone in more ways than one, because I think I brought my gun with me. I think I had it in the car. Can you imagine the headlines if I’d been pulled over drunk with a gun in my lap? Why the hell did I bring the gun in the first place? Or did I? I honestly can’t remember. I was really a mess.

So I walked back into the house in that ridiculous condition, and there I was confronted by the photos of my so-called happy family again. Going to the strip club, drinking, getting all that attention from the girls—it didn’t solve a damned thing. In fact, it made me feel worse. I felt more alone than ever.

That’s when I sat down on my chair in the bathroom. A big bottle of Captain Morgan’s and an open bottle of Xanax found their way to the counter. The gun found its way to that counter, too. I can’t tell you how. I can’t tell you if I sat down with the intent to kill myself. I don’t know the answer.

I used to keep that gun in a safe, the same safe where Linda kept some of her really expensive jewelry, but I’d have these crazy paranoid thoughts sometimes. After Phil Hartman, the
Saturday Night Live
star, was shot and killed by his own wife, I started having these visions of Linda getting all drunk and grabbing that gun and shooting me in my sleep. What’s really crazy is Phil Hartman’s wife was from Thousand Oaks, and when we had a home in California it was right there. Linda and Phil’s wife used to drink at the same bar down at the bottom of the hill.

So I started moving that gun. I’d hide it in different places in the house and then forget where I hid it and have to search for it, worrying the whole time that Linda had it. I’d make myself crazy over this stupid gun that I’d only fired twice, ever, at a shooting range. It was nuts. So I have no idea where I picked up the gun that night, or why, but there it was. Waiting for me.

I know that some time the next morning I took a phone call from Eric Bischoff. He was real concerned. He wanted to make sure I was okay. I told him I was. I wasn’t. I took a call from my neighbor Steve Chapman, too. He was real worried. I told him I was fine. The phone rang a few times after that, and I just didn’t pick up. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just sat there, popping half a Xanax at a time—not the little pills, but these big horse-pill Xanax—and washing them down with the rum.

There were times when I thought that whole bottle of pills would go down easy. A bunch of those pills with the rest of that bottle. I’d heard that wasn’t a painful death—that you’d just go to sleep and that’s it.

Then I noticed the gun in my hand.

I was careless with it—running it up and down my right leg. Scratching the side of my nose with it. Feeling the cold steel of the barrel as it dragged across my cheek. I’d learned years earlier to never put your finger on the trigger unless you were ready to fire. It was basic gun safety: You keep your index finger pointed straight ahead, and you don’t curl it over that trigger unless you mean it. But I kept my finger pressed right to that trigger the whole time. Right on it. Firm.

Just three pounds of pressure is all it would take—nothing for these big hands of mine—and if I moved that finger like an inch in the right direction, like flicking off a light switch, I could have blown my brains out.

I remember how it tasted when I put the barrel in my mouth, and the sound it made when the metal clicked against my teeth.

It was real weird behavior—like I was psyching myself up to do the deed. Mystifying myself into thinking it was the right thing to do.

People might look at a guy like me and think,
He would never commit suicide
. But I was so depressed I just kept thinking,
This would be so easy
. I understand now how it’s possible for
anyone
to get themselves into such a trance that the actual suicide could happen by accident. It’s seductive. And like I said before, when I make my mind up on something, you can pretty much count on the fact that I’m gonna follow through. Whatever the cost. Whatever the pain. Whatever it takes: When I’m in, I’m in all the way.

Add to that the haze of the pills and the booze and it’s some sort of miracle that the gun just didn’t go off. Heck, the tips of my fingers are still numb from that Tombstone incident way back in the ’90s. Which means I probably could have pulled that trigger without even knowing I’d done it.

Boom!
The end.

Two days into
this mess, my phone rang again. I looked at it. I didn’t recognize the number, but it was a 310 area code. The Beverly Hills area. Not many people have my cell phone number.
Could it be Nick or Brooke calling from that rental house Linda’s got in L.A.?
For some reason, at that second, I was real curious. So I picked it up.

“Hi Terry. It’s Laila.”

It was Laila Ali—my cohost on
Gladiators
.

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

This girl I barely knew had picked up on the fact that I was having a real hard time on the
Gladiators
set. Days had gone by, and she was still thinking about it. She was thinking about me. I was floored. Why did she care?

The funny thing is, I’d met her dad a bunch of times. He was the guest referee at the very first WrestleMania—holding my arm up when I won the championship belt. Right there in the ring with me in the heart of Hulkamania. Whenever we saw each other, the greatest boxer on earth used to hug me and whisper in my ear, “You’re the greatest of all time, Hogan.” I got such a kick out of that—that this guy I idolized, who was truly the greatest, would say that to me. And here his daughter is calling me up out of the blue to see how I’m doing. She cares how I’m doing. She wants to know if I’m okay.

You know what? I wasn’t okay. Not until that moment. For some reason, that phone call snapped me out of it. I can’t explain why. Who knows why things happen the way they do? Was there a
reason
it happened? I can’t help but think,
Yes.
I’ve never told her this, and she might not even understand the depth of the impact she had on me, but Laila Ali saved my life. With a simple phone call. By simply thinking about me, and caring enough to call me and ask me how I was doing. At that moment, that call saved my life.

Laila invited me to go to church with her—to a place called the Agape Church (pronounced “a-GAH-pay”), a place I had never heard of and that had absolutely no meaning to me at that moment. But I loved the idea that she would offer something like that. Something so personal.

At that time in my life, for somebody who was almost a stranger to say, “Hey, we love you and we miss you and we care about you, and we wanna make sure you’re doing good,” was just shocking. It was so the polar opposite of what I’d been hearing from Linda for so long.

She didn’t stop there, either. She told me to call her back if I needed to talk. “Here’s my other numbers in case you can’t get ahold of me,” she said. “If you get a hold of my husband, have him page me or call me so I don’t miss your call.” She was being so nice to me. She didn’t want anything from me, or need anything from me. She just wanted to make sure I was okay. It caught me so off guard. When I hung up that phone I broke down crying like a baby.

Maybe other people get phone calls like that every day. Maybe I’ve been living under a rock all these years. But for me, that was it. After I stopped crying I got up from my chair. I took a shower. I ate. I slept. That feeling of bleeding inside, that emptiness, that depression, wasn’t gone, but the flow of it had slowed just enough that I could move again.

The next day
I flew back to L.A. I went back to the set. I gave Laila a big hug when I saw her, and I got back to work. I never did go to church with her. We were only there for a few more days of shooting, and I just don’t think I fully absorbed what a good idea it would have been for me to go with her to that church. It would take me quite a while to learn to be fully aware of the people who were reaching out to help me.

It still wasn’t easy for me to be on that set, performing the way everyone wanted me to perform, but somewhere in the middle of those December days I started psyching myself up for something better.

I realized that those moments with the gun in my hand were as low as I’d ever been, but I’d been low for a very long time. Even before Nick’s accident, I just felt angry or depressed or fed up all the time.

I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I was determined to change things.

I got way too close to the edge, and I told myself I would never go down that dark road again.

I was gonna get through this. Not only was I gonna get through this, I would somehow rise above it all and fix everything that had gone to shit in my life and be happy again!

Yeah, I know. Even I thought it sounded pretty ridiculous. I had absolutely no idea how I was gonna do any of that. I trusted the feeling, though. I trusted my resolve. I trusted my instincts. I trusted my gut. That’s pretty much how I’ve made every big decision I’ve ever made in my whole life, and I knew that nothing had ever mattered as much as my resolve to be happy at that moment.

What I didn’t know was that my will would be tested before December was even finished.

Backing Away

When
American Gladiators
wrapped for Christmas break, I headed home to Tampa again.

I’ll be honest: I was still worried about what might happen when I walked back into that house—when I saw those pictures again, when I laid down alone to go to sleep in that big bed that Linda and I used to share, knowing my family wasn’t there. I had made up my mind to get through this, but that certainly didn’t mean it would be easy. What if I freaked out again?

I tried not to think about it as I came home from the airport. I must’ve had my head buried worse than I thought, because I didn’t even notice that all the lights in the house were on when I walked up to the front door. I put my key in and turned the lock and pushed the door open.

I froze. What the hell was going on? The house was all decked out with greenery and Christmas lights. I walked in and saw there was a fire going in one of the fireplaces. I rounded the corner and saw another fireplace lit up, too. There were like fourteen fireplaces in that house. Were they all on?

It smelled like a turkey dinner was cooking. It smelled delicious. There were Christmas trees set up.

All of a sudden someone steps out from the kitchen. “Hi, honey.”

It was Linda!

I felt like I’d stepped into
A Christmas Carol
. Was I dreaming?

It staggered me. And if this was a ghost, was it Christmas Past or Christmas Future?

Linda’s hair was all hot-rollered up like she wore it in the ‘80s. She had an apron on, and pink lipstick, and these long pink fingernails. I couldn’t figure out if she looked like the young Linda I fell in love with, or if this was more
Play Misty for Me
—like a
Fatal Attraction
moment.

She had a big smile on her face. “Merry Christmas! Welcome home!” she said, and she came over and put her arms around me. “Give me a hug,” she pleaded.

I didn’t hug her back.

It was weird. Like
Clockwork Orange
weird. I’m seriously thinking,
What the fuck?