Where I felt insecure in the beginning was that I always felt that I was falling short of the potential he saw in me. I constantly worried that I wasn’t smart enough for him. He was so clever and treated conversation like a friendly competition that he had to win. He would get going, riffing from one subject to another so quickly that I would get lost. One minute he was explaining the start of his Rolex collection, and then another he was going on about a collector who he was jealous of, then the nature of jealousy, then the construct of time and the heft of it on your wrist . . . When I tried to leap back in and say something to add to the dialogue he was having with himself, he would challenge what I said, because that’s how he saw the give and take of conversation. Sometimes he wouldn’t let go of questioning why I thought a certain way until it had me second-guessing myself.
I’d get quiet, take another sip of alcohol, then another, and wonder why I couldn’t just sit on a couch with him without getting so anxious. I even asked one of my girlfriends who knew him for advice just based on her speaking to him. It was the start of a bad habit: asking people who were not dating John how to date John.
“You have to be a strong person to make a contribution in the conversation,” she said. “You can talk to him about anything because he just wants to learn about stuff. You don’t have to just talk about what you think he wants to talk about.”
So I spoke about what mattered most to me, and what I was most confident in: my faith. He found it fascinating but of course would challenge me on what I believed. I think he envied that steadfastness, because it was one of the few things in life he couldn’t quite figure out.
But I could only do that so much. My anxiety would soon take over, and because I am such a sensual person, my solution was just to give him love. The mix of sex and love was the easy part, because I had plenty of both to give.
We were able to see each other in secret throughout the summer and the start of my campaign to promote my album A Public Affair. As opposed to Nick, I wrote a fun album, an eighties radio throwback that was an ode to freedom. Not one single song was about him, even though people assumed the cover I did of Patty Griffin’s “Let Him Fly” was directed at him. It was my way of assuring myself that I needed to let go of Johnny Knoxville. I was proud that I had writing credits on ten out of the thirteen songs. The first single was “A Public Affair,” and when it came out June 29, Billboard called the first single “a perfect record.” It did fine numbers, but it was clear when I tried to promote the record that people weren’t ready to see me so happy after my divorce.
The album came out August 26, a month before John’s release of his album, Continuum. I got the highest first week sales of my career, but the numbers fell a lot immediately. That album was never going to do as well as In This Skin. Still, I was excited that John and I had albums coming out around the same time. We loved that we had this amazing secret we had kept.
And then we didn’t have it. The week of my release someone from my team broke the story to the tabloids. Coming just a week after my album came out, it looked like a full-on, amateur stunt orchestrated to sell both our albums. I fired the person. John was worried he seemed in on it and felt that his artistic integrity was in jeopardy.
I was in New York, and he exploded on me, breaking up with me over email. On August 31, he posted the cover of Public Enemy’s “Don’t Believe the Hype” on his blog as his response to the media. I was humiliated and thought he was out of my life for good. He wasn’t.
Still, I was trapped in the middle of promoting an album. I had hired a new PR agency and clicked with Lauren Auslander, who would later become one of my best friends. She was my age and understood what I was going through. I was lucky to have her with me in that tough time. The initial conversations with reporters were already a pretense to get to their “What about Nick?” questions, and now I had to play dumb when asked about John out of respect for him, too. I didn’t lie, I just said he was a musician I truly respected and that I had known a few years. I left out that he had put me on a pedestal and kicked it over on his way out the door.
There was one bright spot: the breakup was right before the MTV Video Music Awards, and one day I was in a VMA swag suite at New York’s Bryant Park Hotel. A swag suite is where they give celebrities things they didn’t need so they will become walking advertisements for products. I won a silver 2007 Chrysler Crossfire luxury sports car, a two-seater paparazzi magnet. I wasn’t really surprised, since of all the celebrities there, I was the one most likely to have a photo with a car featured in the tabloids.
Maybe because I was so depressed, I wanted to make something good happen. I had stayed in touch with the Casa Holgar Elim orphanage, which I’d first visited nine years before. With the money I’d made, I was able to help Mama Lupita make the place a comfortable home for the kids. Not just running water and electricity, but basketball courts and vans to take the kids to school. Doing my part helped me realize that I was blessed and reminded me that God had given me this grace. I didn’t take it for granted.
It seemed ludicrous that I was getting a free car now. I also knew that the week before, Mama Lupita’s van had broken down, and now she was using a beat-up old truck. I dutifully took photos with the car outside, giving the camera a look of shock as I held the key fob. When it was done, I motioned to the Chrysler rep as I took off my sunglasses.
“Um, is it okay if I swap this for a minivan instead?” I whispered.
She looked at my stomach. “Why would you need a minivan?”
“I’m not pregnant,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It would just work better for me.”
They gave me a white seven-passenger Chrysler Town & Country, which I later drove through the gates of the orphanage to hand the keys to Mama Lupita. The kids knew I was coming and had saved up money selling bracelets and necklaces so they could have a mariachi band greet me. Everyone was in clean red T-shirts, except for a few of the tinier girls, who had brightly colored dresses on. I lifted one girl when she hugged me, and we danced around to the music.
I was truly happy, and at least for that moment, no man could take that from me.
17
Desire and Possession
September 2006
I had planned everything. The “I Belong to Me” video was going to be my way of introducing my fans to me as a grown, single woman. It’s a ballad by Diane Warren, and there was a lot of pressure to make the video about Nick, but I resisted. Instead, I chose to show people my new life. I wanted the video to open with me on a mattress on the floor, just like I had had at my new house. Then I went to the mirror and cut my own hair, taking a cuticle scissors to give myself a jagged bob. When I washed the makeup off my face, so I could look myself, and my fans, in the eye, I cried real tears on that set, surprising everyone. I said good-bye to the old me, to the hopes I had for Nick, Johnny, and John, and just embraced Jessica.
I was very proud of it, but people weren’t ready to hear “I Belong to Me.” They thought it should have been, “I Belong to Nick.” I didn’t anticipate so many people being mad at me, but my real fans stayed true, and could see my heart. I broke a blood vessel in my throat before a round of live morning shows, so I couldn’t even count on my voice, but they got me through. “I’m sorry,” I told them over and over again. I was apologizing about my voice, but so much more. I was so sorry that I had let them down.