Reality Check: Sometimes, where there’s smoke, there’s smoke.
Some of the people around me think Michelle has been fooling around. A revenge kind of thing. They didn’t tell me, of course. They told the reporter. So the guy came to me and Michelle with all this gossip, so off the wall it was almost funny.
Here’s the big picture:
“Michelle has a boyfriend right now,” a friend told the reporter. “She’s had one for a while. But she has double standards. Dennis is not allowed to, but she is.”
First, I was going to just ignore all this shit, but then I was afraid if I did, I would be accused of sweeping it all under the rug.
“The guy’s supposed to be doing this tell-all book, and he leaves all the sleazy stuff out trying to protect Michelle. He’s kissing Michelle’s ass.”
So instead of ignoring it, I’ve decided to put it all to rest. Let’s take it one rumor at a time.
First up is the motocross “boy toy.”
That was a fun night.
Me, Michelle, a couple of friends—the usual bunch—were hanging out at Josh Slocum’s. Michelle got pissed at me for something—no news there—and she left with a couple of people to go to another bar. They came back. She didn’t, so I was like, “Where the hell is she?”
I was the only one wondering; or so the story goes.
“We all had our suspicions it was that guy from motocross.
Everybody knew something was going on with that guy,” recalled a friend. “She actually had the balls to go to his [Dennis’s] restaurant with this kid when he [Dennis] wasn’t there to have a couple of drinks.”
I ended up driving all over Newport Beach at like four o’clock in the morning trying to find her ass. Friends took this to be a sign that I was jealous. Meanwhile, a friend of a friend spotted her car parked at the motocross boy toy’s house. Newport Beach is a very small town. So we drove over there. I let the air out of her tires, had a change of heart, pumped the tires back up. Then I went home and waited. Come daylight, she showed up. I called her on it, and she said she and the motocross boy toy were only friends. She was just trying to score some free riding lessons for our son D.J., who was maybe four at the time.
I bought it.
“I don’t think he wanted to believe she was actually cheating on him,” a friend told a reporter, “actually sleeping with somebody else.”
So that’s the rumor. Some of the basic facts are true. We were sitting around drinking at Josh Slocum’s one night; and Michelle did disappear and end up with the motocross guy. I did go looking for her, but it didn’t have anything to do with jealousy. The reason I was chasing around after Michelle is that I didn’t want her to be driving drunk—didn’t want her to get hurt. I was so pissed she had disappeared, that when I finally found her, I let the air out of her tires. The whole thing had to do with worry, not jealousy. I’m just not a jealous guy. There’s not a man on the planet who can make me jealous. If somebody is trying to fool around with my woman, I just go up and shake the guy’s hand, say, “How you doin’?” No big deal.
Here’s what Michelle said when she heard the rumor.
“This motocross guy is 24 years old,” she told the reporter as if the kid’s age alone were enough to put it to rest.
“My [teenage] daughter’s even friends with him,” she continued. “I met him at a motocross event, and we all became friends. That was it. He was gonna teach our kids. Teach our little boy [how to ride]. That was it.”
As for Michelle parading him around at Josh Slocum’s: “This guy and his friends would come into the restaurant. Dennis had met them.”
And what about the night in question?
“I was drunk. I walked down to Villanova, which is a restaurant down the street,” said Michelle. “I called [motocross guy] to come get me because I was too drunk to drive. And I obviously didn’t feel like dealing with Dennis—that’s why I left the restaurant in the first place.”
So the motocross guy and the man he worked for showed up.
“His boss and his wife drove my car. I rode with [motocross guy],” said Michelle, “We all went back to [his] house,” where they all ended up sitting around in the living room.
“Where the cheating became a deal was [Dennis] slashed my tires. I wasn’t able to leave blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.”
So Michelle stayed for what was left of the night, and a rumor was born.
“They made a big deal out of that one night, me being drunk,” continued Michelle. “But nothing happened. If I cheated on him, I’d tell you, ‘I cheated on him.’”
And what did I say when the reporter asked me point-blank if I thought Michelle was cheating with the motocross guy?
“No. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all.” So this was a really big deal with my friends, and I could have cared less—just another little ripple in the polluted pond of Dennis Rodman’s love life.
Rumor two also involves motorcycles. Remember Michelle’s overnight trip to Big Bear that ended badly and her week-long excursion to the Black Hills Motor Classic in Sturgis, South Dakota? Opportunities, so the story goes, for Michelle to fool around with “a lover,” we’ll call “motorcycle man.”
“Bullshit,” said Michelle.
“I know who you’re talking about,” she told the reporter. “You’re talking about a friend of mine that I’ve been friends with for going on eight years. And he will be a friend of mine until the day I die.”
The motorcycle guy sealed the deal with Michelle the night her husband allegedly beat her up.
“The actual night that happened, this guy put me and my daughter in a hotel—the very first night it happened. That’s how long [we’ve] been friends,” said Michelle. “I chose not to have him in my life for a while, because I was too busy chasing Dennis around and not being friends with my friends.
“And up in Big Bear, I was literally with him, another guy, and two of my girlfriends.” Michelle continued. “So it was three girls and two guys. And all of us girls had a bedroom, and the boys had a bedroom in our friend’s cabin. So there was nothing.
“In Sturgis, same deal,” she said, speaking of the sleeping arrangements.
“He is a friend, and he will remain a friend for good,” she continued. “There’s just nothing to tell. And Dennis—it bothers the hell out of Dennis—he can’t stand it.”
“That you’ve got this old friend,” said the reporter.
“He can’t stand it. I turn to this friend because this friend is very intelligent. He’s got his shit together. And I turn to him for advice. And it bothers Dennis.”
She’s right about that one.
“Anyway, no, I’m not cheating on him,” continued Michelle. “And I would not see another man until we were completely separated or I was divorced. I won’t go there. I just won’t do it again [like she did with her first husband.] And the one time I did cheat on him, and Dennis knows about it…Iwas lonely. I wanted a man to treat me good, pay attention to me, and that was it.”
Which brings us to the third rumor, somehow linked to the internal combustion engine. In this one, Michelle left me for some valet parker.
“Where do you get these stories?” Michelle asked the reporter.
So why’d she really leave me?
“He was screwing around with some chick,” said Michelle. “That and because he wouldn’t involve me in his life.”
So after Michelle filed and we were “completely over,” she started “seeing a guy that was a valet parker.”
That one would have a happy ending, for me at least. After Michelle left the valet parker to come back to me, I went over to the restaurant where the guy worked. I figured Michelle had been talking his ear off for days, and I was like, “What do I need to do with Michelle that I’m not doing?”
He was like, “If you want to know what Michelle is about, just look at her back.”
What he meant was, check out that big “Mrs. Rodman” tattoo.
“He was trying to tell Dennis that what I’m all about is my husband,” said Michelle.
“And your husband is Dennis Rodman,” said the reporter.
“Yep, damn it.”
Going through all these rumors, I can see why some of my friends might have been suspicious. You stay overnight a couple of places with eligible guys, you go on vacation for a week with another man, it looks bad. But you can’t build your life around what other people think. And sometimes when “it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck,” it’s not a duck at all. It’s just, say, an AFLAC commercial.
“I’d love to know who these people are who say that I’m the one that’s cheating,” said Michelle. “But I should expect it. Anybody’s that’s gonna talk, they’re gonna say good things about Dennis, bad things about me. I’ve cheated on Dennis one time in six and a half years.”
While she was in a denying mood, Michelle took exception to all of us calling her jealous, saying her blow-ups were more about disrespect.
“This guy is screwin’ this other girl and then brings her in front of me,” said Michelle. “I don’t know if that’s about disrespect or jealousy. I’m not quite sure. Or me being pregnant with his kid and he’s got another chick over at his house he’s messing around with, and I see it.”
And as far as her knocking the shit out of me the day I came back from shooting the Super Bowl commercial in Houston?
“The guys is six-how tall, six-seven? Anybody with a brain would know that I couldn’t knock the shit out of him. How am I gonna knock the shit out of Dennis Rodman?”
That’s a question my jaw has been asking for about six years. To look at her, it doesn’t seem possible. And I am happy to hear that Michelle has been holding back—that there are limits to her violence.
“I’ve pushed him. I’ve hit him in the chest. I’ve used like open palms, but I’ve never actually socked him. Even the time I caught him naked behind the door, and I broke down the door—I slapped him. I never hit him.”
“So you’ve never hit him with your fist,” said the reporter. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly. Never with my fist. I don’t know how I could ever knock the crap out of this guy.”
“But you have slapped him.”
“Oh, yeah. Oh, heck yeah.”
“Upside the head?”
“No, on his face. And he deserved it, let me tell you.”
“So if somebody said you slapped him in the face, then that probably happened. That could have happened?”
“Oh, for sure.”
Reality Check: Sometimes, where there’s smoke, there’s smoke.