American Outlaw (25 page)

“I just can’t believe my dad doesn’t know his own grandkids.”

“It’s a lost cause, Jesse,” Karla said. “Forget it.”

It blew my mind, because I saw how adorable and how perfect my kids were. I couldn’t understand how people who were flesh and blood weren’t willing to make the effort to know them. I took the rejection personally, as if it was happening to me all over again, instead of my kids.

——

Months passed, and my shop and my kids grew. Unfortunately, so did the differences between me and Karla. Though we functioned as a team, the tension between us was mounting. The more we squabbled, the more I retreated into booze. The more I drank, the madder Karla seemed to get. It was a vicious cycle, and I didn’t know how to make it stop.

Then, in the spring of 1999, an event occurred that would change my life. A producer from the Discovery Channel, Thom Beers, called and proposed making a documentary about our shop.

“But why?” I asked, honestly flummoxed.

“Have you been watching TV lately, Jesse?”

“Not really,” I said. “I don’t have much time for it.”

“Reality TV’s hit,” Thom explained. “And it’s here to stay. Have you heard of
The Real World
?
Survivor
? These kinds of shows are leading the pack, nowadays. Viewers are starting to expect shows about real people.”

“I know what
Survivor
is, Thom,” I said, looking down at the long to-do list I had in front of me for the day. “And we’re definitely not that. So, unless you got something else to tell me . . .”

“Jesse,” Thom interrupted me, “we think that what you’re doing is absolutely unique. West Coast Choppers is very popular among a certain segment of the American population.”

“Gearheads, bike freaks.”

“Sure, gearheads. But with an hour-long show, the rest of America gets to see what you’re doing. It’d be great exposure. Come on, what do you say?”

I thought it over for a while. I still didn’t see what was going to be compelling enough over at our shop on Anaheim Avenue to rivet the American public to their seats—our high drama was going to consist of watching an average white boy try to make payroll at his greasy garage. But, I reasoned, Discovery was probably good at what they did. It couldn’t hurt to try.

The shoot was a disaster, though.

“You could not have come at a worse time,” I told Thom. “I’m getting ready to take five brand-new custom choppers to a huge annual bike rally in Daytona Beach, Florida.”

“Yeah, and?”

“We got a ton of work to do,” I snapped. “I don’t need any distractions!”

“More drama equals better ratings,” Thom said. He held up his hands. “Just saying.”

I almost eviscerated the camera crew. For two weeks, they lived in our shop, asking so many questions and being so invasive that I almost lost my temper several times. They seemed dead set on capturing every single step of what we did as a custom shop, from manufacturing the wheels to welding the frames to painting the flames on the metal.

They filmed us riding around Long Beach; filmed us talking with customers; filmed me feeding the sharks that I kept in a tank in the shop. They even filmed me squabbling with Karla over payroll, and by the time they got done with their work, I felt like an animal in the zoo who’d been prodded with a stick.

“Look,” I grumbled. “Can you explain to me why the hell you have all this footage of my dogs fighting each other?”

“Shows a deeper portrait of who you are?” replied a cameraman.

“No,” I disagreed. “And I don’t think footage of dogs trying to bite each other is important enough to be in the final cut of this show.”

“I’ll make a note of that,” he said drily.

Even though I hated the process and resented the strangers who had busted so rudely into my shop with their lights and cameras, I had to admit that secretly I dug the attention a little bit. Who wouldn’t have? I craved respect and acknowledgment just as much as anyone else, maybe a little more so.

Some months after the crew had completed their work, Thom invited me to Los Angeles to view a rough cut of the piece. I watched with a mixture of alarm and pride as the film slowly unfolded in front of me.

The version of myself on the screen rode his motorcycle to a beachside cliff in San Pedro and overlooked the Pacific Ocean wistfully.

“I feel like I spent more than half my life trying to kick the world’s ass, fight everybody, and stuff like that . . . and I’m not even really into it anymore. I just want to trip out, make the stuff I make, hang out with my kids.”

“This is cheesy,” I said to Thom. “Cut this part, okay?”

“Hold on,” he said, shushing me. “I love this section.”

“But don’t get me wrong,”
the me up on the screen continued,
“I’ll still punch someone. If they start shit with me, I’ll finish it.”

Beside me, Thom laughed. “You come off so real, Jesse!”

“I don’t even remember
saying
that,” I complained.

“We think that’s precisely what people will enjoy about you.” He turned on the lights. “You’re spontaneous, unguarded.”

“Thom,” I said, rising to leave, “I appreciate your enthusiasm. I really do. And I apologize in advance because, dude, this thing is gonna tank.”

The next two weeks were about the most nervous weeks of my life. I felt totally exposed by the footage that was going to air, and my temper was at its absolute worst. I sheltered myself in my
office, alone, as I waited for my national exposure and subsequent humiliation.

On the evening the show was to air, I was sitting in my office all by myself, my stomach clenched in a knot.

“Go home, Melissa,” I said.

“Really, Jesse? There’s some more . . .”

“I said
go home,
please,” I snapped.

She saw from my face that I meant business. “Uh, okay,” she said, grabbing up her bag and beating a hasty exit.

I wondered how I could have been stupid enough to allow a TV crew into my private life. How could I have been so prideful and naïve, to think that anyone would actually care what happened in the day-in, day-out life of a motorcycle shop?

Just then, the phone rang.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Is this Jesse James?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“My name is Jim Newsome. I live in Detroit. I just saw your show on TV!”

“What are you talking about?” I growled. “It hasn’t aired yet.”

“It has over on the East Coast! Man, I just had to call you—I
loved
it!”

“What?” I said, stunned.

“Sweet work, man!
So much
love going into those bikes!”

“I’m . . . glad you liked it,” I mumbled, still shocked.

“Like it? Goddamn, man! I
loved
it!” he exclaimed. “You know when you were on that bluff, looking out over the ocean, saying you didn’t want to fight anymore? Dude, that’s
me
! That’s how I feel every
day.
”

“Really?” I said.

“Keep on doing what you’re doing, man. You’re the best.”

As I hung up the phone, my jaw dropped slightly. There were people out there who related to me.

“Jesse,” Thom told me the next day. “The ratings are insane. They’re through the
roof.
”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not. Look, this show went crazy. So many people checked into our website, it melted our servers.”

I laughed. “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Enjoy the success,” Thom said. “And rest up, because Discovery is going to want to work with you again. I can
guarantee
that.”

The aftershocks were immediate and massive. Requests for custom bikes absolutely went through the roof. In the space of one week, I had a yearlong back order, with clients from around the world begging to be included at the end of the list.

“I think
I’m
going to have to hire an assistant,” Melissa told me. “I can’t deal with talking on the phone this much!”

“Hey, everyone,” I announced, “my
secretary
needs a secretary.”

Suddenly, the activity around our shop was like a beehive. We had visitors every day, folks from the Southern California area who had seen us on TV and wanted to be part of the gang.

“So this is the scary-ass dog I saw on TV!”

“That’s Cisco,” I said proudly. “Nobody mess with that pit!”

The prices for a West Coast Chopper bike rose. Now I could get away with selling one of the specials for well over $100,000.

“And see, our bikes work to showcase our products, too,” I explained to Hud. He’d come by on his way home from work to grab a few beers with me and the new hangers-on, who’d posted themselves up in the corner to ride the wave of our local celebrity.

“How’s that?”

“Well, man,” I explained, “think about it. You see some fool driving around in a crazy-looking bike, with a sweet-looking custom fender, a custom gas tank, and custom air filter. Maybe you can’t afford the bike, but you could throw down for a part or two, make your own chopper look smooth.”

“Genius!” somebody said.

I nodded, proud. Slowly, I was getting caught up in the success. It felt impossible not to. I was a homemade superstar, after all; a minor-league celebrity who’d somehow managed to hit a huge home run. I could drink in local bars for free on this for the rest of my life, probably!

But the best party was at West Coast Choppers. We had crowds at all times of the day, and especially after hours. The local Harley association annually put on something they called The Love Ride. I thought it was just dumb—a bunch of yuppies with their factory Harleys with tassels on the handlebars and all that crap.

“I wanna have the
No-Love
Ride,” I announced. “Let’s invite all the bikers around here and have a huge kegger at the shop!”

The No-Love Ride attracted fifteen thousand people. It was just madness. I bought a hundred cases of beer and we went through them in twenty minutes. The city of Long Beach had snipers on the roof before I was able to tell the police department what was going on.

I was married to the shop, and I loved it. I sat back just like Boyd Coddington, wheeling and dealing, taking outrageous offers for custom bikes well into the evening.

“Jesse?” Melissa said. “Karla’s on the line.”

“Oh,” I said frowning. “Well, yeah, put her through.”

“Hi there, moneyman,” Karla said. “Are we going to see you, tonight?”

“What do you mean?” I said. “Sure. I’ll be home later.”

“I mean for dinner.”

“Well, no,” I said slowly. “I have to work a few more hours, Karla. Look, I’ve got about a million things to take care of . . .”

Click.

“It was nice talking with you, too,” I said to the dial tone.

Our brand had gone crazy. Motorcycle magazines began calling with offers for photo spreads.

“Jesse, we want to have you on the cover of
American Iron.
”

“Yeah, I’d love to have a West Coast Chopper up there
,
” I said. “It’d be a great honor.”

“We want to have
you
up there with it, Jesse. How’s that sound?”

My first thought was to refuse, but then I just shrugged.
Hey, why fight it?
“Yeah, sure,” I said casually. “Whatever you need.”

Within a few months, my bikes and I had graced the covers of five different motorcycle magazines. A handful of writers hailed me as the wunderkind of the chopper world. I half believed them. It was heady stuff. Heady as hell.

“Think we might sell a few more T-shirts this year down in Daytona?” Rick asked.

“Dude,” I said, “I would not be surprised.”

I wasn’t ready for the craziness, though. People were literally knocking over other vendors’ booths to get to us. It was a sea of utter biker madness, and when the smoke cleared, we’d sold $680,000 worth of T-shirts in just under three days.

“Are you fucking
kidding
me?” Rick asked.

“Nothing would surprise me now,” I said. “Come on. Let’s celebrate.”

We headed to a bar and started slamming the brew. Straight away, I got a nice little buzz on.
Everything I’ve worked for all my life is coming to fruition,
I thought
. I’m on the top of the heap.

“Dammit, Rick, let’s walk the strip!” I cried. “Take in all the beautiful people, those who have made us rich!”

My eyes danced. The street felt hot and humid and bright. Sweating, I walked tall through the pack of revelers, my head turning to take in the jean shorts and elastic tops, women with boa constrictors wrapped around their thin shoulders, men with ferrets perched atop their heads elbowing aside brothers with gold teeth peeking out of broken mouths. A fat Jesus with a shower cap carried his cross through the mob.

“These are my people,” I explained to Rick.

“I may need a few more beers to deal with them,” he said.

We ducked into a strip bar, where I switched to vodka and cranberry. “Make it strong,” I warned the bartender, “or I’m leaving.” I frowned, watching an elderly-looking biker slut doing a full split on the filthy, beer-stained floor.
Hey, nice leather thong,
I thought, feeling the flush of the alcohol in my face.

We sat back in the corner, our backs pressed up against vinyl cushions, progressively getting drunker and drunker. Strippers with flabby stomachs circulated through the bar, proposing lap dances. We waved them away impatiently.

“I’m feeling sick,” I told Rick. “I need some dollar bills to throw at people.”

Rick handed me a handful of dollars. Slowly and carefully, I folded them over, twice, then three times.

“I used to play football.” I hefted them up toward the stage, one hand on my drink. “Watch me go.”

Drink after drink, I drained sweet liquid through thin red bar straws, laughing, as my dollar bills hit blond strippers on top of their hair. The grimy dollars fell to the floor, looking diseased in the purplish neon of the Daytona nightclub.

The phone in my pocket rang. I looked at the number. It was Karla.

“Hi,
honey.
”

“Where are you?” she said.

“We’re at the club, baby,” I said. “Me and Rick.”