Tales Of A RATT (36 page)

The tour worked it's way up the west coast. We had a show in San Francisco, and then we were off to Seattle.

When we got to Seattle, I was hanging out on the bus, waiting for showtime, and looked out the window. There were three really hot chicks out there. Two of them looked like twins. I told Joe Anthony, who worked for us, "Go see if those chicks would like to come in and say hey.” He did, and they all came on the bus.

That's when I met Traci and her sister. I was instantly mesmerized with Traci, who was all dolled up for a rock show, and looked as incredible as any woman I've ever seen.

It was a moment that would wind up costing me a part of my soul. I've been a rock star for a very long time, and, I've done a lot of rock star things; including women. As I've said before, we were Pi-RATTs out to pillage and conquer, so having a chick on the bus wasn't anything new.

It had been a LONG time since those days, and with what was going on in my personal life, I wasn't ready for what happened next.

Traci and I hooked up that night, and it was everything that I had been missing in my marriage. In one bat of her eyes, I remembered what it was like to FEEL. I was wanted by someone, and I didn't realize how much I had missed that feeling. Moreover, I was smitten and had a lot of love to deliver.

Traci started coming out on the road and visiting me, and I fell for this girl really hard, really quick. It wasn't planned. I wasn't looking for anyone. In fact, I didn't want anyone at that time. But I hadn't felt like this in a VERY long time. That's the way it was, and I was helpless to stop it.

I gave myself the usual, testosterone-laden explanations. Jeni and I were getting a divorce. We had verbally agreed to it. I wasn't doing anything wrong. Why should I pass this kind of love up? It didn't make any sense.

Pick your clichéd rationale, but honestly, I wasn't out to hurt my family, and I didn't see how it would end like that. I also didn't see some of the more obvious questions about Traci that most people NOT in love with her saw from the very beginning.

I was in love for the second time in my life. What are you going to do?

It was still an awkward situation, though, and the guys in the band picked up on it. They didn't understand. Traci was young. I was thirty-eight and she was twenty-three. Hey, it was what it was. We didn't care about the age thing, and my life was changing. Everyone needed to accept that. I had found my muse.

I guess my first mistake, the one that started Jeni thinking, anyway, was that my habits completely changed. I hadn't been calling Jeni from the road, which was something I always did. I was avoiding her because of Traci. I just didn't want to talk. Everything had been decided, as far as I was concerned, and I didn't want to address it.

I didn't want to talk to her.

This really bothered Jeni, I guess. I got the periodic calls of, "What's going on? Why aren't you calling me?” In the back of my mind, I started hearing that little voice of reason. The phone calls from Jeni told me that she didn't think our marriage was finished. Not completely. And, she was thinking that when I got back, we would pick up the pieces.

It couldn't be that way, though. I wanted this relationship over. I was done. Not to mention the fact that I was in love with the twenty-three year old blond that Jeni had mockingly threatened me about.

I started getting that bowling ball feeling in the pit of my gut. I had to be very careful how I dealt with the whole Traci / Jeni thing, or it was going to have lasting implications on the boys.

Making this issue worse was the fact that it wasn't a great time of year for this to go down. I got home off the tour on December 17, right before Christmas.

As usual, I made a substantial deposit into the bank, all of my tour income, and when I went to check it, the account balances were off by quite a bit. I called Jeni.

"I made a deposit into the account, and this is what's in there. According to my records, it should be this amount.” She went off like a cannon; totally flying off the handle! Whatever. It was clear that two months on the road didn't change a damn thing. I just hung up the phone and headed for the house. I hung out with the boys, having a good time. Then when she got home, I was sitting on the bed and preparing for the maelstrom that was about to come.

She came into the room and tried to kiss me. That turned me off immediately. I was like, "Don't.”

She looked confused, and completely upset about that. I looked at her and said, "We've got to talk, Jeni.”

That dreaded "we need to talk" vibe.

"You know what we talked about before I left. I'm getting a place the first of the month. I'll stay through Christmas and make everything right for the boys, but after that, I'm done.”

She was like, "What the fuck? You've got a girlfriend, or something?”

What's the old saying? The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry? Well, I don't know about the plans of mice, but a man's plan can get fucked like a Tijuana whore in about ten seconds!

I looked Jeni square in the eye...and lied. I told her, "No.”

I didn't want to lie about it, but there was no way she was emotionally prepared for Traci. There was just no way. So, I thought I was doing...well, maybe not the right thing, but certainly the BEST thing. And, of course, like most things that begin with a guy's dick and end in his heart, it all came back to bite me square in the ass! But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I looked at Jeni and went, "Don't act surprised. You knew this was coming. It was going to happen, and we made this decision two months ago. Let's not make this harder than it is.”

It got real weird through Christmas. We went out to a party for the holiday, and I just couldn't deal with it. All the bullshit Christmas cheer, and the revelry spirit of the holidays sucked, and I missed Traci in the worst way. I told her, "Get a ride from someone. I gotta get out of here. I'm going home.” She was fine with that, and I split.

It just so happened that the party was at Don Dokken's house.

Jeni came home that night, fully drunk-enraged. She was yelling, screaming and breaking shit all through the house. "I know about that fucking whore in Seattle!”

I was, needless to say, unprepared. What I had done in an effort to make this transition a little smoother had now come back on me in a big way. I looked like the typical, lying, cheating bastard that all of the movies on the Lifetime channel are about.

I wasn't that guy, though. However, no matter what I said, from that point on, I was never going to be trusted by this woman I had spent two decades with. She was never going to believe me again.

If I could get my hands on the cocksucker who told her...!

"Where did you hear this?”

I knew the answer, of course. She heard it from Don. I had confided in him while I was on the road. He was, after all, my bro. I thought I could trust him. I couldn't.

That was the second mistake I made during the course of my break-up with Jeni. I trusted someone I really shouldn't have. People like that will hurt you if they can; and Don Dokken could. He snitched me off.

It was really eerie how that whole thing went down with Jeni. That night, before she got home, the power had gone out on our side of the street. I ran an extension cord from our neighbor's house so we could power a few things, but it made for a very creepy night, given the way everything happened.

It was a really bad, really horrible night.

I moved to a hotel immediately after Christmas. It was really depressing. Really weird. I felt like complete shit. I finally found a townhouse in Redondo Beach, and I leased it. I remember buying furniture for it, because I had left everything behind. I took nothing other than my clothes when I left. I left a bunch of my gear in the garage. I just had to get out. The weight of the split was making it hard to breathe.

I had given Jeni $8000 in cash that I had from the tour. We hadn't done anything with the accounts, yet. Honestly, given how bad everything turned when I got home, I had no idea what we were going to do. But, I had assured her that everything would be paid for, and nothing would be neglected. It was going to be all right. She and the boys wouldn't want for anything. In fact, I'd just bought her a brand new car; a Ford Thunderbird, Anniversary Edition. It was a really nice, beautiful car.

Cars and money don't do the trick, though. In short order, people started getting into Jeni's ear. I was at Best Buy, picking up things for the townhouse, and when I got to the line, my bank card wouldn't work. I called the bank, and they told me that all the accounts had been frozen.

Panic began to creep up on me. The band was leaving overseas soon to continue the next leg of the tour. I had financial obligations, and without money...

"What do you mean, the accounts are frozen?”

"Well, your wife had the accounts frozen.”

I'm calling her and going, "What are you doing? I'm leaving for Japan in a few days, and I've got to take care of my bills and expenses. You can't do this with the bank accounts.”

She goes, "You're not taking the money!” Like I said, this woman was never going to trust me.

We had to split the accounts 50/50. Right there. On the spot. When I got back from the tour of Japan, we immediately started divorce proceedings, and it was a very morose time. I took a picture of this fax I got from her. I had one of those really old fax machines that didn't cut the pages, and the piece of paper stretched the entire length of my house. Un-fucking-believable. The thing must have been forty pages long.

As bad as things were with Jeni, it was the opposite with Traci. Traci moved to LA with her twin sister. I wanted her to move in with me, but she didn't want to leave her sister to live by herself. I wound up setting them up in an apartment right around the corner in Redondo.

Traci would stay with me every night, but she and her sister both worked together. They drove together. They ate lunch together. They drove home together. They hung out together. It's like they were joined at the hip.

I had heard of twins who had separation anxieties, but I'd never seen it before. Traci and her sister had it really bad. It was really bizarre, looking back on it. Looking back on it, I'm surprised I didn't find the two of them walking the halls, hand in hand, and writing REDRUM all over the place.

There was no way I would have picked up on those vibes, though. Not at that time. I was crazy, out of my head, stupid in love with Traci. Believe me, when you're looking at the world with your "love glasses" on, you tend to miss the details. Jack Nicholson could have shown up at the door, all wide eyed with his axe in hand, and I would have thought he was there for firewood.

You gotta learn some lessons the hard way, folks. That's just the way life is.

I was only getting a couple of hours of Traci's time a day, and it was starting to eat at me. Traci was my sense of stability at a time in my life where stability simply didn't exist.

I was telling her, "I want you to move in. Let's get married as soon as the divorce is final.” But, my voice fell on deaf ears. There was no way she would leave her sister.

I was starting to feel like I was in some UFC Championship Fight, and some big son-of-a-bitch was just beating me senseless. I was being hit from every direction.

The divorce was brutal. I'm paying my lawyer and hers. We're trying to hash this out, but it's not working out anything like we had planned. In fact, it was turning into something the total opposite. We were going to make a couple of lawyers a lot richer than we were making ourselves.

The reality of Traci came around full force shortly before the divorce was final. It was at this point that I realized my third mistake; the mistake that almost cost me one of my sons.

Per our agreement, I had the boys for two weeks and Jeni had them for two weeks. Traci had to get up at five in the morning to go to work, so she always went to bed early. About 9:30 pm, there's a knock at the door.

It's Michael.

"Uh…what's up, son? What are you doing here?”

He goes, "I left something for school in the bedroom upstairs.”

Okay. Tense, but it was okay. I let him go upstairs to get his stuff. Traci was sound asleep in our bed, so it shouldn't be an issue, since his stuff was in his and Marcus' room.

When he comes back down, I can tell immediately that he's really bothered by something. I go, "What's wrong?”

"Who's up in your bed. Dad?”

"I thought you were getting something out of your room. What were you doing in mine?”

For whatever reason, he had to go into my room. So, I just said, "It's nobody. We don't need to discuss it right now. I'll talk to you about it tomorrow.”

I had told Michael that his mom and I were splitting up back when I was leaving for tour. But, I think he completely blocked that out, because he denies ever having the conversation. It was becoming clear that whatever I had thought about my boys, Michael wasn't going to handle this split very well. Not very well at all.

But, I would talk to him about it at a better time. Maybe I could give him a better understanding of the what’s and whys of the divorce.

I say good night to him and go back to the couch to finish watching television, thankful that I had dodged a potentially bad moment with my son.

A minute later, I hear this SMASH! SMASH! SMASH! from my front patio area!

I had all these potted plants out there. There were a bunch of palms and ferns that blocked people from being able to see inside the house from the patio. Jeni had come around the front of the house and started knocking those off and breaking them, screaming, "You fucker! Where's that whore? Where is she?”

I go out there, stunned by what I'm seeing, and say, "You've got to split. Right now. If you don't, I'm going to call the cops.” It was an ugly scene.

Hell hath no fury, right?

I go out to make sure she had left, and she had written all over my truck in lipstick. Alright. I can deal with that. Mentally, she wasn't in a good state of mind. I feel bad that it happened that way. But, for years, we hadn't been happy. We were just raising our kids.