Since it was Wicked’s last chance to cash in on me, they decided to make my final film their biggest budget production ever. It was called Dreamquest, a special-effects-laden Chronicles of Narnia–style adventure tale (minus the biblical allegories) about a woman’s quest to save male fantasy. It was to be helmed, of course, by my ex-husband, Rod.
People always wonder if it’s hard for me to sleep with guys I don’t love on screen. The truth is that it’s hardest on the guys I’m dating. I can rationalize the sex if I have to because it’s work and I can disconnect myself. But there are few guys who can handle imagining —and knowing that other people are seeing— another man inside the person that they love, pumping away as she screams the exact same screams they hear in the bedroom with her. Thus, the challenge for me in having sex on camera is the rare instance when I know that, because of it, someone I love may be suffering.
And so it was that my brief period of domestic tranquillity came to an abrupt end. All hell broke loose. Jay was so adamant about me not sleeping with anyone on screen that he made Jordan seem like a swinger in comparison. A side came out of him that I had never seen before. He even took my picture out of the frame on his nightstand and replaced it with a photo of Chasey Lain.
One day, as we were driving to dinner in his Range Rover, he had me so wound up that I kicked the front windshield with my shoe hard enough that the glass shattered. I’ve always been a kicker, and in that period with Jay I also put my foot through a TV set and a screen door. I was constantly smashing stuff. The only problem was that it was usually my stuff.
Stomping out of the house after one of our fights over the movie, I returned to discover that Jay had changed the security code on the gates. I took off my heels, climbed over the fence, and ran half a mile up to the front door, but my key wouldn’t go in the lock. He had poured liquid cement in it. I called him on my cell phone, demanding that he let me in so I could get my clothes and leave his ass for good.
He refused and threatened to kill my dogs and burn my clothes. Then he threw everything I owned into boxes, destroying most of my dresses in the process, and left them in the driveway. I gathered my things and flew to Los Angeles.
I wished so badly that I hadn’t procrastinated on that last movie, and had just filmed it while I was on the road with Nikki. But I was stuck. After all these years and all these movies, it was supposed to get easier, not harder. When I was in my hotel room waiting to start shooting, Jay called.
“Jesus Christ, what?!” I snapped into the receiver.
“Listen,” he said. “There is not going to be a big fight this time.”
“Good.”
“I’m just going to drive over there and get you. And then I’m going to make you pay for this. I’m not going to allow any of this to happen anymore.”
“What the fuck is your problem?”
“It’s over, sweetheart. You’d better start running, little girl.”
We were on the phone for hours. The conversation was so brutal that I cried myself to sleep. He was so hurt that his voice shook. And it wasn’t a crying kind of hurt, it was an angry hurt. I wasn’t sure if our relationship could survive this.
The next day on the set, Joy was so sweet to me. She thought that if she could make the shoot a great experience, I’d stay at Wicked. She hadn’t accepted the fact that I was leaving, and that for the first time in years, I hadn’t confided in her. She had no idea what I was going through. Rod, in the meantime, was still at the top of his game as a director but at the bottom as a human being. He was already dating the newest Wicked girl, Stephanie Swift, and the only consolation I had on set was watching her tell him to shut up just like I used to.
For Rod, like any director, making the perfect movie took precedence over everything else. And because my trauma with Jay was getting in the way of my performance, he did whatever he could to sabotage my relationship. “Give me a fucking break,” he kept saying. “You’re not going to last six months with that guy. This film is going to be around forever. So let’s just make the best movie possible.”
Even things that appeared to be unintentional on set took on extra significance, whether Rod was putting me in a lesbian scene with Asia Carrera or accidentally using lacquer paint instead of makeup glitter on my face. I was so freaked out before my one and only boy-girl sex scene that I kept throwing up into the wastebasket in my trailer. I didn’t want to do it. I tried every possible excuse beforehand, even suggesting we use a stunt double, which I still think could have worked if anyone had cared to try.
Afterward, every cell inside my body was screaming, “Run.” I didn’t want to go home. I knew that if I returned to Phoenix, I was in for a shit-storm. But I’d spent the past year running. I wasn’t going to allow myself to do that anymore. I wasn’t going to fall into the pack-my-bags-and-never-look-back trap that seemed to be my biological destiny. So I summoned every reservoir of courage I had, and got on the flight back to Phoenix. Jay had told me to find my own way home, so I took a cab.
When I unlocked the door of our house, he was sitting on the couch in silence, just like my dad had been when I came home from the boat trip with Jack. I sat down in a chair across from him, and we just glared at each other in silence. With every second that passed, I could feel his anger building like a steam kettle about to boil.
After an hour, he finally looked at me and said softly, but with days of repressed venom trembling in his voice, “How… could… you… be… such… a… whore?”
Once that word comes out of a guy’s mouth, all rationality goes out the window for me. Within moments, we were in a huge screaming match, both damning each other to hell.
When my volume failed to shut him up, I became violent. I started smashing things. I kicked, toppled, broke, and threw anything in the house I could reach without a ladder. I think that, subconsciously, I believed that if I lost my temper, I could distract him. If I became psycho or broke my hand hitting a wall, I could change his focus to trying to calm me down or take care of me, instead of berating me for having gone through with the movie.
When he stormed out of the house, I picked up the phone and booked a three-week dancing tour. I had at least tried to face him and make it work. But now it was time to give in to the pack-my-bags instinct. I was probably in L.A. before he even returned home.
On tour, I stayed in the most expensive hotels, rented Ferraris in every city, and racked up over $40,000 on my credit cards. But for the first time, making money didn’t cheer me up. I didn’t know what to do. The answer to my problems was so obvious that it eluded me. It was like trying to find a lost hat that was on my head the whole time, because the only thing that was going to make me happy and complete again was to be with Jay. He was constantly on my mind. I was so sad and broken without him. After the way he had so immaturely dealt with the movie situation, I wanted nothing to do with him logically. But love is not an intellectual decision. You can’t look for it or hold on to it or run away from it. It comes and goes according to its own wild inclination, completely out of our control. All we can do is recognize it when we feel it, and try to enjoy it while it lasts —be it for a day or a lifetime. I was trying to fight it because I had taught myself, like most people, to fear love, because it makes me vulnerable.
One evening, I worked up the courage to pick up the phone and call him. “You know what, baby?” I began. “I’m tired of running. I want to come home.”
And he said, “Yeah, it’s time to come home.”
I blew off my last gig and booked a flight that night. When I saw him, I ran into his arms and he wrapped them around me. I felt safe. His anger had resolved itself into resignation, and then acceptance, and finally love. It was like everything that had taken place between us in the past six weeks had happened to two entirely different people.
We went home and talked about everything. In my absence, he too had realized that he loved me enough to want to make the relationship work, and knowing how much I had also been hurt had helped, along with time, to heal his wounded pride. We discussed not just the movie, but also the game-playing, the running away, even the dirty dishes and his long hair, which had to go.
I’d never sat down and had such a rational, productive conversation with a boyfriend before. By the end, we came to an understanding of what each other’s boundaries were. I went to bed that night not elated, but resigned to my fate. Because no matter how hard I’d tried in the months before, I just couldn’t fall out of love with the guy.
