Dirty Rocker Boys by Bobbie Brown, Caroline Ryder Page A

helped me pack some clothes; then he drove me to the airport. “Are you okay?” he asked me. I couldn’t even speak. Igot on the first plane back to L.A., and cried the entire five-hour flight. Matthew had asked me to have my belongings out of the house by the time they got back from Hawaii, so as to avoid any further confrontation. Which gave me about three days to get my shit out. Tracey, my booker at Flame, came over and helped me pack up.
    “Tracey, I’m so fucking hurt,” I said, shoving clothes into a duffel bag.
    “Don’t get mad, Bobbie. Get even.”
    An interesting proposition. What would really get under Matt’s skin, I wondered?
    In a coat pocket, I found Kathy Conan’s number. She was the sweet girlfriend of Warrant’s guitarist.
    “Hey, Kathy, so Matthew and I broke up. Just wanted to let you know.”
    Exactly five minutes after Kathy and I hung up, the phone rang.
    “Hello?”
    “Hey, Bobbie, it’s Jani Lane.”

Chapter Six
SHE’S MY CHERRY PIE
    “This song is for Miss Bobbie Brown!”
    Jani Lane dedicated “Heaven,” Warrant’s huge lighters-in-the-air ballad to me on our first date. As the stage lights exploded in Shreveport, Louisiana, I surveyed the screaming fans and privately noted that Matthew Nelson had never, not once, publicly dedicated a song to me.
    “Jani’s so intense!” said my friend Tammy, who had come with me to the show. “He looks like he really means it, you know?”
    “Uh-huh,” I said, imagining Matthew’s face when he found out the Cherry Pie guy had dedicated a song to the Cherry Pie girl onstage. For a second, I wondered if maybe Jani was pursuing me as a publicity stunt—but no, Jani didn’t seem desperate enough for that. Manufacturing a love affair to boost record sales just didn’t seem his style.
    Jani had bought me a ticket from Los Angeles to New Orleans. I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone, combine my date with Jani with a visit back home. I hadn’t been back since leaving two years ago, and Baton Rouge seemed so dull. Mymom and Mr. Earl were just the same. The house was just the same. Everything was the same, except that I couldn’t step out the door without people recognizing me from Star Search or the “Cherry Pie” video. Wow , am I famous? I thought. Maybe .
    Tammy and I made the swampy four-hour drive north from Baton Rouge to Shreveport, past small church towns and old plantations. By the time we arrived, my skin was sticky and hot. “I forgot about this damn Southern heat,” I said, splashing my face at a water fountain in the parking lot.
    Warrant had just taken the stage in front of the packed venue. For all the rocker posturing, there was more to Jani Lane than the façade. He was truly charismatic. It was something to do with the way he moved, the way he commanded the stage. When he smiled, the room smiled with him. After the show, Tammy and I met up with Jani and the Warrant guys at a local bar. We drank Coors and shot pool. No velvet ropes, no VIP rooms. When the bar closed, the band called a taxi to take them to their hotel—they had to leave early the next morning to get to their next show.
    “I want to come home with you, Bobbie,” said Jani.
    “What about your show tomorrow?” I said.
    “I’ll catch a plane, don’t worry about it. I want to fall asleep next to you.”
    Tammy, Jani, and I went back to our motel room in Shreveport. Tammy passed out immediately in one of the two beds, and Jani and I lay together in the other. He was running his hand up and down my side, kissing my neck, tugging softlyon my jeans. I unbuttoned them, and he pulled them down, then my panties. All thoughts of Matthew drifted away as Jani unbuckled his pants and slowly, quietly, did what we’d both been thinking about all night.
    In the morning, I acted like it was nothing. In the early ’90s, sexual mores were still just as freewheeling as they had been in the ’80s. You could sleep with someone on the first date and own it. As