The Art of the Pimp: One Man's Search for Love, Sex, and Money (39 page)

By the end of that first weekend, I thought,
She’s the one
. I know, I know. I think that every time, so maybe I’m self-delusional, but I really believed it. I also believed in her. She had real moneymaking potential and I wanted to tap into that by promoting her. A few weeks after she arrived at the ranch, I called Howard Stern. “I have a new girlfriend, and this one is really going to pop. You need to have us on the show.”

And Howard said, “When are you coming to New York?”

We flew out later that month and checked into the Soho Grand. Cami had lived in New York briefly, so on that first night she went off to visit her ex-roommates. “I’ll be back in an hour,” she said. She got back to the hotel at four in the morning, drunk, but I forgave her. How could I be mad at her? She was beautiful and so much fun and she was crazy about me.

We headed over to Howard’s later that same day. She was operating on practically no sleep, but didn’t seem at all hung over. I remember thinking,
I guess that’s why they call them functioning alcoholics
.

The moment we walked into Howard’s studio, his eyes popped out of his head. “Wow!” he said. “She is beautiful!” As the show progressed, it looked to me like Howard was falling in love with Cami. He kept going on about her perfect tits and telling her she was hot and fun and she absolutely ate it up.

Cami drank her way through our visit to New York and she drank on the flight home, from takeoff to landing. Maybe she was drinking to forget. Prior to coming to Nevada, she had worked briefly as a prostitute in New York, like thousands of other girls looking to make a buck. It’s a shitty, dangerous life. The girls advertise on shady websites, offering massages and such, and they never know who’s going to be waiting for them in the hotel room. They are also careless about protection. Many of them fall into the clutches of violent pimps, as Cami did. And when they get into trouble there is no one they can turn to since they are, of course, breaking the law.

Cami actually got busted at one point and spent two miserable nights in jail. That’s when she saw the light: She belonged at the BunnyRanch and I was happy to have her. She was a fast learner, too. I put her through the paces — smile, arch your back in the lineup, keep your breath fresh and your room tidy, etc. — and before long she was one of my top earners, scoring one weekly prize after another: A Louis Vuitton purse. An iPad. An iPhone. Gift certificates. Within a year, I had her on the cover of four magazines. Guys were coming to the BunnyRanch from both coasts, and from every city in between, to party with Cami. She was making great money, she was proud of herself, and she was crazy about me. And every couple of weeks she’d bring a girl back to the house to party with us, because I enjoy a good threesome from time to time.

What more could I ask?

Of course she partied as hard as she worked;
too hard
, in my opinion. I hardly ever drink and she hardly ever stopped. I should have known things were going to end badly, but I’m an eternal optimist, and I was little misguided, too. I kept telling myself she was the one and that I shouldn’t fuck up this relationship, when in fact I had no control over anything because she was the one leading us to ruin.

One night we were at the Playboy Mansion — Cami, two other BunnyRanch girls, and me — when Cami met a Playmate at the bar. I knew right away it was going to be a fun night. “My new friend wants to join us back at the hotel,” Cami said. “She’s never been with another girl. She wants me to be her first.”

I was ready to go back to the hotel then and there, but Cami was too busy chugging drinks. “Slow down, baby,” I kept telling her. “Let’s not blow this.”

“I’m fine,” she said, and kept drinking.

When we finally got back to our suite, Cami took a seat on the couch, poured herself another drink, and passed out before she had finished it. I thought,
Fuck this. I want to party
. So I took my two bunnies and the Playmate into the bedroom.

At around nine in the morning, Cami walked in and found me lying there in a tangle of shapely limbs. I opened my eyes and realized I was grinning. I must have been grinning in my sleep. “Jesus Christ,” Cami said, looking very unhappy. “I can’t believe I missed the party.” I swear to God, she had tears in her eyes.

After that, things began to change. She lost interest in threesomes. If I bugged her and asked her to bring a girl home, she’d always show up with a heavyset brunette, not the skinny blonde I would have preferred. It’s like she was taking a scale into the parlor and looking for the one that that weighed the most. “Hey, Cami,
are we ever going to party with a girl that weighs less than 130 pounds?” I asked her one night.

“Oh, honey that’s not fair,” she said. “These are nice girls.”

“I know they’re nice girls, but I also know what you’re thinking,” I said. “You’re worried I’ll want to run off with the next pretty girl you bring into our bedroom. But that’s not going to happen. I’ll want to fuck her, absolutely, but you’re the one I want to wake up with every morning, and that’s not going to change.”

For a while she believed me. Or maybe she didn’t believe me. Maybe she just drank more to tamp down the jealousy and insecurity.

Then one night we were back at the Playboy Mansion and a drunk girl leapt into my arms while I was having my picture taken. I felt my knee pop — it was like somebody had stuck a knife into it — and I went down. I had to be half-carried out of the Playboy Mansion, and Cami tended to me all night like a regular Florence Nightingale.

The next day the pain was worse, but I had some interviews to do in New York, so I hobbled my way to the airport with Cami at my side, and off we went. I got through the interviews, but the pain only got worse, and Cami and I returned to Nevada. Instead of going back to the house, where I would have had to make endless trips to and from the BunnyRanch, we moved into one of the bungalows on the ranch property, right by the pool. Cami was absolutely the best nurse a guy could ask for. She had exercise equipment brought in, hired a physical therapist and a trainer, and took the junk food out of the house. And every time she went off to work her shift, she tucked me in and gave me a sweet kiss goodbye. Or if I asked nicely, a blow job.

One day, FedEx showed up with a package. It was a beautiful
cane made entirely out of a bull’s penis, sent by my old friend Tucker Carlson. I’d never seen anything quite like it and to this day it is one of my prized possessions. So, Tucker, if you’re reading this, thanks, man. You are a true friend.

CAMI AND I SETTLED INTO
a pleasant rhythm. I was exercising, losing weight, and my knee was getting stronger every day. Cami also exercised and ate well. At one point in her life, she’d been a little chubby so she decided we’d both get healthy together. She overdid it a little — she actually dipped below 100 pounds — and I expressed concern, but she brushed it off saying she had never felt better.

We also got a second dog for her, a little Pomeranian, and he and Domino loved tearing up the house. It was crazy. We had turned into the perfect domestic couple. The only glitch was Cami’s drinking, which started a little earlier every day, and her new hobby: weed. On two occasions, she actually passed out on me and I had to take her to the local emergency room, where the doctors told her she was drinking herself to death. I got her home and ragged her mercilessly. “Baby, you’ve got to stop. I’m begging you. You’re scaring the hell out of me.”

She didn’t listen. In mid-December, though, she eased up a bit. She always went home to Vancouver for Christmas to be with her family, and I think she wanted to look good for them. I took her to the airport and kissed her goodbye, and joined her three days later, as planned, on December 23, her birthday. When I arrived at her hotel, she was drunk and we had it out. I told her I couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m not going to have you die on me. I can’t watch you kill yourself.” She cried and apologized and said all the right things and I bought into it.

I went back to the BunnyRanch for Christmas to be with my Bunny family, as always, and she joined me a few days later. I was very happy to see her. She looked good and made me believe she was going to get clean. For a couple of weeks, I was in heaven. It was just me and Cami and the two dogs — 
clean
 — with no sign of any drinking or drugs.

One night the following July, I found myself at the BunnyRanch parlor, chatting with the girls. Cami was off with a client and my knee was hurting and I got tired of waiting around. I decided to head home, ice the knee, and wait for Cami there, and two of the girls helped me to my feet. That’s when Cami reappeared in the parlor, and she misread the situation and absolutely lost it. She attacked one of the girls. “Stay the fuck away from my man!” I tried to reason with her, but she was out of control and I needed help holding her down. “You don’t care about me!” she screamed, in full view of the girls and the clients. “You never defend me! You don’t love me the way I need to be loved!”

That’s the way it always ends; that’s the way it’s been ending for the past twenty years. The girls go nuts. They think I’m going to leave them. Was it me, or was it the girls? Or was it a combination of the two? And if it was a combination, what did that mean? That I was attracted to insecure girls? Was
I
the insecure one?

I was getting dizzy just thinking about it. Maybe Ron was right. Introspection can be a dangerous thing.

CAMI AND I WERE AT
the house in the fucking gloomiest mood you can imagine. Nothing had been resolved. I had gone to bed sad and she had gone to bed angry and we had woken up in exactly the same place. If anything, she was more pissed off than she’d been the previous night. She wanted to argue and I didn’t, so I turned on the TV and feigned interest in a nature program.
Domino was at my feet, and he got that look in his eye:
Something is wrong here and I don’t like it.
He kept glancing over at Cami, who was on the couch working on her first drink of the morning and looking increasingly unhappy. At that point, Domino actually crawled into my lap, and Domino is no lapdog.

Cami started taunting me. The same old shit. I didn’t love her enough. I wanted to fuck other girls. She wasn’t hot anymore. I was bored with her. On and on it went. It got so bad that Domino was shaking, and from time to time he’d steal a look in her direction, as if he wanted to go over there and — much as he liked her — rip out her throat.

It finally got to a point where I couldn’t pretend to be watching that fucking nature show, and I snapped. “Goddamn it, Cami — stop! Stop right the fuck now. I don’t want to hear another negative word from you.”

But she couldn’t control herself. “What? You want to break up with me now? You going to throw me out? I’ve read Nevada law and we are
cohabitating
, motherfucker, and you can’t throw me out. I live here too.” I tried to be nice; I again begged her to stop, to take a time-out. I told her I couldn’t live in an environment where the air was so poisonous with rage that my own dog was freaking out.

By this point Cami had completely lost it, though. She had become an evil, crazy version of herself, screaming, taunting me. I finally hobbled out of the house, drove to Carson City, and checked into the Gold Dust. She called and called and I wouldn’t answer my cell, and the following day she stopped calling. I checked in with Suzette to find out what was going on, and she said Cami had just left for Vancouver. “You can come back now.”

I went home and Cami kept calling. She left horrible, ugly messages. Everything that had gone wrong in her life was my fault. I was an evil motherfucker. I didn’t know the meaning of the word love.

I remember thinking,
What the fuck happened? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I get my goddamn life in order?
But I couldn’t sit home and wallow. I had a business to run. I had five hundred women depending on me to make a living, just as I depended on them.

A few days later, Ron came up to keep me company. “There was this guy, Sigmund Freud. He had a theory. It’s called the
repetition compulsion
. You keep repeating your own history, thinking that next time you’re finally going to get it right.”

“You mean, with the girls in my life?”

“Not just the girls. With life in general. We all do it.”

“So how do we get it right?”

“Well, we don’t,” Ron said. “I think that’s sort of the point. Nobody ever gets it right.”

“I think I liked you better when we didn’t have meaningful conversations,” I said.

“Hey, don’t blame me. It’s not my fucking theory.”

I got up and hobbled across to the fridge to get a cold bottle of water. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Ron said. “You’re walking like an old man.”

“My knee is still totally fucked up.”

Ron shook his head in that way he does. “You know where this is going, don’t you?”

“What?”

“You and me.”

“Where?”

“We’re going to end up living together in a condo on Miami Beach.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said.

“Playing shuffleboard.”

“
That
sounds bad.”