You Only Get One Life (16 page)

The TV show ran for seven months during which Kelly commuted with me between LA and Rome. I made so much money and I could have had any man I chose: I was at that level of success where nobody cared what I looked like or what sort of person I really was. It was all about fame and that made me feel quite lonely. I was withdrawn outside of the job: most days I would work my butt off and then just
go home, turn on the computer, play a game and crash out. Kelly started getting really worried about me. I began to get paranoid about other people. Did anyone want me for who I was? Would they still like me if I was ordinary Gitte or did they want to spend an evening with Brigitte Nielsen?

Kelly told me my fears were just bullshit. ‘Get over it – have some fun,’ she said and offered an antidote to my solitary life. ‘Why don’t you go out and get laid?’ But I didn’t think it was such a good idea and so things went on: I lived my life in the studio and went home to sleep…until I saw an article in a magazine that had been left on set. I flipped through the pages glancing at the Italian until I saw a feature on an American footballer. A huge picture of him dominated the article and it made me remember Kelly’s suggestion. I’d never heard of this Mark Gastineau but I said to Kelly, ‘Okay, you get in touch with this guy. I want to meet him!’

‘But he’s back in the States,’ she protested. ‘You should be looking here.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘This is the guy I want to meet. Get it organised.’ According to the article Mark was not only really nice but he grew up in a conventional religious family on a ranch in the wide-open spaces of Arizona. He had been around horses all his life and he wasn’t a movie star, he was a sportsman. It was something different that attracted me to him. ‘If I can have anyone,’ I said, ‘then he’s the one I want.’ And Kelly and I laughed about it – here was the guy who had grown up in a Western saddle on a farm, he had taken part in rodeos when he was 12 and he started playing American football when he was in high school in 1979.
Then the New York Jets signed him on a major contract. I got carried away with the story and latched on to elements from my own upbringing in Denmark, which seemed to be reflected in Mark’s early years outdoors. I also saw a powerful man who played sports.

Within a couple of weeks Kelly had arranged for me to meet Mark at the Beverly Hills Hotel when he came to LA to do PR for his team.
Oh my God!
was my first thought on meeting him in my room – he looked like a tank. He was large in both directions, weighing about 130 kilos and measuring almost two metres. I had never seen such a massive individual in my life. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester were like little boys next to the colossus that was Mark Gastineau. But the thing about Mark which you wouldn’t know from looking at him was that he was also fast as a cat, seemingly untroubled by his bulk.

After a couple of drinks and a chat I began to think that maybe I’d made a mistake: there was no fire, no excitement. I didn’t feel what I thought I would feel having read that article but that didn’t mean we couldn’t part on good terms – except that he wouldn’t leave. He kept insisting on staying, although it was getting late; he was pushy and it was kind of embarrassing. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but you have to sleep on the couch.’ It was an uneasy moment – he was famous enough to be insulted by that and anyway, I didn’t know him – he could easily overpower me if that’s what he wanted, but he respected me and I thought then that was pretty cool of him, though of course, it wasn’t at all cool to have refused to leave in the first place.

We kept in contact after that first night for whatever
strange reason: I was over from Italy often enough to catch up with him on a friendly basis. I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t cut him off completely. Part of me was fascinated by him and intrigued by that astonishing body. I was open to his telephone invitation. ‘Come to visit me in Arizona,’ he said. ‘I’d like to show you where I come from.’ Rather wide-eyed, I agreed without thinking about it. It was a plane ride from Los Angeles to Scottsdale and I almost immediately regretted my decision when I arrived at the smallest airport I’d ever seen. It was a little bit spooky.

The place was deserted, the walls were cold and I realised how little I really knew about Mark as I looked around, clutching my small suitcase in one hand. It all felt very strange and where was he? I waited and waited as the few people on the same flight disembarked and then I really was completely alone. The airport was poorly lit and it began to feel like a scary movie: airports feel weird when they’re empty.

Angrily I thought to myself,
What the fuck were you doing? You arrive alone, you don’t have his number – you’re a complete idiot!
Still clutching my suitcase I wandered around the gloomy terminal building looking for a phone. I had a few coins and I thought I would call someone. Anyone. My plan was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream. Long and loud, it sounded like nothing human. It was a maddened bear about to attack. It was… Mark. Of course – why not? That fucking guy! It was inevitably my Mark – he had decided to freak me out by jumping out at me from some shadowy corner.

I readied myself for a fight and saw a big grin break out over his face.

‘Aha!’ he said, laughing. ‘I’ve been here all the time – watching you!’ Not quite the reassuring words I might have hoped to have heard. He continued, ‘But you look
great
!’ He sang out ‘great’ like a delighted child, making the word two syllables. I thought he was nuts. Then he grabbed me – he picked me up bodily.

‘Welcome to Arizona!’ he roared. ‘Beautiful Arizona!’ It was like he was delivering the pay-off to some tourist commercial. And with that he started swinging me around. Now, I hadn’t even been with a guy who could lift me out of bed – let’s face it, I’m a giant woman – and here I was seeing terminal lights blur around me as I was whirled about as if I were a doll, accompanied by Mark’s deafening roar. I joined in the racket, screaming for him to put me down. When he did, he took one look at me, one look at my suitcase, took it in one hand and my hand in his other and we walked out of the airport.

I’m not sure what I was expecting by the time we got to the car park but I guess under the normal circumstances, which these certainly weren’t, it would be a big old American pick-up truck or maybe a footballer’s limo. In front of us was a dented wreck, filthy outside and inside too, and the smell emanating from it was overpowering. I wasn’t so bothered about what kind of car it was, but I did think he might have gone, ‘Okay, she’s coming to visit me…’ and have washed it at least. My father had an old Volkswagen, so I wasn’t being picky, but at least Dad’s was clean inside. Mark was a superstar – it was all just so weird that his car should be like this. Everything about this trip was weird. Maybe Mark was simply a cowboy, a down-to-earth
guy. That was what had attracted me in the first place. But now I didn’t know any more. I had no idea what the fuck I’d been thinking or how I’d gotten myself into this.

We made our way out of the grimy airport and hit a series of small roads heading deeper into Arizona. Outside Scottsdale and away from Phoenix the tarmac gave way to dirt tracks and we bumped to who knew where. It was pitch-black and I sat nervously by this big bear of a man in his smelly lair in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t really know him, did I? And what could I do if the plan was for me to end up in a hole somewhere out in the desert or worse? By now, I was really paranoid and panicky. Forget houses – this guy was as big as a hotel.

I turned in on myself.
You’re young, naive, spoiled and dumb
, I realised. Terror gripped me and it took a while to notice that we had come into an area that even in the darkness I could just about make out wasn’t too unlike Palm Springs in California. Mark swung off the road and up a long drive then parked in front of a big, beautiful villa. In daylight it would look like Wisteria Lane from
Desperate Housewives. All right, Gitte
, I thought,
this might not be so bad
. Mark seemed to have heard my thoughts. ‘Aha!’ he said, again that teasing laugh. ‘We’re here, honey! And don’t worry because I’ve got no furniture in the house at all.’ Oh, and I had just started to relax. The lights were on in the house… had he recently robbed it or something? But he got out of the car and took out a key for the enormous double wooden doors that reached up to the roof.

Inside there was wood everywhere and thick, cream, wall-to-wall carpet. And, just as he’d said, nothing else. It was a
500-square-metre house – that’s a lot of nothing. Our voices echoed emptily up to the high ceilings. I remembered myself breezing through busy Los Angeles airport earlier: I couldn’t even get back to Scottsdale when I had no idea how we’d got here in the dark. This was not safe.

‘I’m going to have furniture soon,’ said Mark unreassuringly, ‘but let me show you around.’ He dragged me around this enormous, lifeless house. The master bedroom was scariest – it seemed even larger because it contained just two old mattresses slung on the floor. Their presence was worse than if the room had been completely empty. I couldn’t take my eyes off them and how they seemed to speak of some horrifying plan. Stupidly, I started to babble away. ‘Very nice… so you’ll have furniture soon… how lovely…’ But the terror was rising in a scene that only lacked the accompaniment of screechy violin stabs to make it complete.

I tried to guide him to any other room, but we ended up back in the bedroom and once more he lifted me bodily and this time he threw me on the mattress. He placed his huge body on top of mine and pulled my head towards him. I thought my last moment had come, but he only whispered in my ear, ‘Whatever happens, don’t be afraid, but if you are at all frightened… Look up.’ It was unbelievable. Look up at
what
? Look straight up… I’d been so transfixed by the mattresses and the ceilings were so high that it was only then that I saw the hundreds of heart-shaped balloons floating way above me, each inscribed with, ‘I love you’.

The relief was incredible as tension flowed out of me into laughter. Mark stood up and reached out, jumping to grab
one of the balloons by its string. ‘This is for you,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I am a little crazy but I’m a gentleman – a crazy gentleman.’ And he took me for dinner. We ended up having a surprisingly enjoyable evening together. I realised the whole episode had only been about getting to the balloons and he’d wanted to scare me because he thought it was romantic. Was it really that? I didn’t know. But I had been right in the first place – he was lovely, yet even so, I thought to myself, I should have known better.

With the sun shining the next morning I could see the area around his place was stunningly beautiful. His horses were nearby and there were quite a few other houses not so far away. Mark explained the house was empty because he had just divorced and his ex had the furniture. For some reason connected with the divorce he didn’t have access to his money and all he could use at that point was the house itself and that delightful car which he’d picked me up in. At least it all made sense to me now.

Mark didn’t appear to be worried about the situation. He was crazy about being in Arizona and totally relaxed about everything else. For him, it was like – ‘Don’t have anything… got a house, no furniture, fucked-up car outside and… hey – what’s wrong with that?’ And I thought,
Yeah! What’s wrong with that? If you like the guy, who cares?
It was somehow refreshing when everyone else I knew was obsessed by how much they earned, how much other people earned and how many possessions they had; this was kind of cool. Still, I remained a little nervous of him, but at the same time we seemed to be working out. If you really like
someone, it doesn’t matter about being taken to a five-star restaurant by limo.

Mark’s furniture problem was partly solved by me bringing a bunch of my stuff from LA to his place and we moved in together. I kept my house on but I enjoyed the peace and quiet of Arizona, where I could be free of all the media bullshit. There were no long lenses pointed at us and nobody to check where we were eating and what we were up to. My world began to change. I met football players and all kinds of people who were involved in sport. Once Mark and I took a limo on the playing field when the Jets played the Washington Redskins in 1988. This was hallowed ground and no wife or girlfriend was usually allowed. It was a great game which they won and the press were out in force. And after all the fuss we could sneak off and go back home to Arizona and our down-to-earth lifestyle.

The spontaneity I had lacked in my marriage I found with Mark, who believed that as long as we were happy, everything was okay. We seized each day as it came and life was never boring. He loved nature as much as I did and often we would go into the stunning White Mountains nature reserve or gaze out over deep lakes which were popular with anglers. Mark the bear-man took me to see the genuine article in their habitat and even as I write this, I think I could easily go back and live there again. Summer there was really hot and winter properly cold – all four seasons were vividly defined in the wilderness. Mark’s untamed character made sense.

We took off on two-day fishing trips, going out with the dogs and sleeping under canvas. Mark built fires and
together we stargazed under blankets, sometimes not even sure of how we would track our way back home the next day. This time away from the spotlight meant everything to me. Seeing the Salt River was amazing too. It made me think of how I used to run away from being bullied at school and now I was escaping limos and finding myself again: I felt at peace and at one with myself. I got myself back into horse riding and that gave me a sense of harmony which I hadn’t felt for a long time. And I could always drop back into my working existence when Mark was playing – I flew to Italy or New York but now I knew that I had a sanctuary to come back to. Sometimes during the football season we would go and stay in a house he had in New Jersey.

It was no longer so hectic that I needed someone to organise everything for me so when I moved to Arizona it was without Kelly. She was incredibly upset because she thought that no matter where I went or what I did, we would be together. And I do wish on some level that I’d kept her on with me, but I was in love and I had a new life. I would never have a friend like her again. We met up when I started writing this to talk about the old days and, just as with my brother, it was as if we had never been apart. I do hope that we will have a chance to get together again in the future. She’s a Louisiana girl with the big accent to match and a sassy style which I miss terribly. I have to admit that I left her stranded but I was relieved to find when we spoke again that she had become a very successful estate agent in Atlanta. I was really happy for her. At the time I was too wrapped up with Mark to think about much else and thought that I might never leave the desert.