One night Carmen and I were out drinking in Newport Beach, my hometown, and we decided to fly to Vegas. Then we decided since we were going to be in Vegas anyway, we might as well get married. Made perfect sense to a couple of drunk people. So Carmen called her best friend and a couple of other folks to be witnesses, somebody thought to bring roses, and we were on the way to the airport in the Bentley—George Triantafillo at the wheel.
So far, so good.
Carmen and I had been talking about marriage off and on, seriously and not so seriously, drunk and sober ever since Toronto. Today if someone asks me who was hottest on the idea, I’d have to say that tilts in favor of Carmen. She was the girl—no big news there. Not that I wasn’t for it. I was just waiting for the right moment. So were my handlers.
George, my then agent, Dwight Manley, and my lawyer didn’t want to see me lose everything I had to some gold-digging scumbag. Long before Carmen came along, they had a contingency plan in place. At any serious mention of marriage, George was to call Manley and then stall until somebody got there with the papers. Anybody who wanted to marry Dennis Rodman had to sign a prenup agreement. Once the girl signed, I could do whatever I wanted.
No signature, no marriage.
So George woke up Dwight Manley.
“Dennis wants to get married,” he said.
“Not until she signs,” said Dwight, as he dispatched my lawyer to the airport.
When we pulled up on the tarmac at the Orange County Airport, the plane was all gassed up, ready to go. George pulled the pilot aside.
“We can’t go yet,” he said. “We’re waiting for somebody,”
“Bullshit!” I said. Pre-nup or no pre-nup, I wasn’t going to wait. “We’re leaving now,” I said, and everyone got on the plane.
The pilot shrugged. “He’s paying the bills,” he said to George. “We’re leaving.”
Clearly, this was a guy who didn’t know George Triantafillo.
“No way,” George said. “If you start that son of a bitch, I’ll blow a hole in the engine.”
The pilot was bug-eyed. I don’t know what he was more worried about—the plane or George packing heat.
“That’s a million dollars,” the pilot said.
“Dennis can afford it,” said George.
Then the pilot, co-pilot, and ground crew gathered around and started yapping about George’s threat, and if they could get past that, whether it was legal for George to get on the plane with a gun. I tried to get them back on track.
“Come on, let’s go, fuck it! I don’t need no stinking pre-nup. She doesn’t want my money. She loves me.”
The pilot came out of the confab and informed us that he wasn’t flying anywhere with all the hassle. That was when I fired George for the millionth time.
“Cool,” said George, “but since you owe me a shit-load of money, I’ll be taking the Bentley.”
“Fine,” I said. “Go fuck yourself.”
By this time, Carmen had started crying. I couldn’t handle that.
“Fuck the plane,” I said. “We’ll drive to Vegas. George, give me the keys.”
“Don’t you remember, you gave me the car,” said George.
“Okay, whatever. Drive us to Vegas.”
“You fired me. I’m not driving your ass anywhere.”
“Okay, you’re rehired. Drive.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“I’ll double your salary.”
Done. So we were off to Vegas—I thought. Before we could get back in the car, George put in another call to Manley.
“Just drive them around in circles until they pass out,” said Manley. “I’ll meet you at Dennis’s beach house.”
About an hour later, I woke up just as we pulled into my garage at Newport Beach. “What the fuck is this?” I said. “We were supposed to go to Vegas.”
“Vegas is closed,” said George.
Motherfucker.
After that miscue, Carmen and I were even more determined. We kept trying to get married, trying to get married. Would you call that stupid? Would you call that idiotic? Would you call that downright immature? I don’t know what it was, but we wanted to get married so badly. It was something within us that wanted us to be together—almost as if it was out of our control. It’s amazing we didn’t get married sooner than we did.
Las Vegas, November 14, 1998. It was five o’clock in the morning and my right-hand man Thaer Mustafa and I were playing blackjack, winning for a change, at the Hard Rock. We had been up all night, of course, and I was pretty much wasted. Carmen had gone to bed hours before.
“Go get Carmen,” I suddenly said to Thaer. “I want to talk to her.”
Thaer knew better. Wake Carmen up, and you have a hornet’s nest. She’s throwing shit—yelling and screaming. There has to be a fire in the building to get her out of bed.
“You nuts?” answered Thaer. “I’m not doing shit.”
I went to my backup, this goofy security guard we had hired for the trip. This guy thought he was James Bond, but was really more like Barney Fife. So I called the clueless one over, whispered something in his ear, and he was gone. Thaer shook his head, expecting we had a 911 call in our future.
About an hour later, Deputy Fife and Carmen showed up, and Thaer couldn’t believe it. Carmen’s make-up alone usually took that long, but there she stood. Thaer asked me how Fife got her moving.
“I told him to tell her, ‘Get up. Dennis wants to get married.’”
Thaer was like, “Holy shit!” He even seemed happy for me for about a minute. Then he started worrying. “You’re wasted, I’m wasted,” he said. “How you going to get married right now?”
“Fuck it,” I said. “I love her. I want to get married.”
And this time, it wasn’t even faintly her idea. The four of us borrowed this Range Rover and headed over to city hall to get a license. It was maybe 7:00 a.m., and there was already a line. We paid our $35, and, license in hand, took off for this chapel that I knew about because it is right next to Olympic Gardens—my favorite strip club. The chapel was named “The Little Chapel of the Flowers.”
We woke up the reverend, opted for the basic $185 wedding package, which included “the groom’s boutonnière,” according to the New York Post, and Barney Fife went to work. He practically frisked the reverend before beginning a search for cameras and microphones. He was looking behind pictures, shining a flashlight into air vents, crawling around on the floor, looking under benches. Thaer and Carmen were making fun of the guy. Finally I said, “Dude, come on. That’s enough. Let’s get on with it.”
We were standing there at the altar, Carmen wearing “a dark colored pants suit and a black leather jacket,” and me “a baseball cap and khaki shirt,” according to the Post, and the reverend wanted to know if there was a ring.
Yes and no.
Carmen was wearing this, like, $80,000 ring that I’d bought her. It wasn’t a wedding ring, but it would pass. The reverend took the ring and started talking about unity, what the ring symbolized. He was going on and on and on because it was Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra. He was putting on a show, really getting into it.
Finally, I’d had enough.
“Listen, dude,” I said. “Get on with this bullshit before I change my mind.”
That set Thaer off, and he fell on the floor laughing. Carmen? Most women would go, “What’d you say?” and stomp out. Carmen didn’t blink an eye. She just looked at me and smiled. The reverend was shocked. I turned around to tell Thaer to chill, and then I started laughing.
Somehow, we made it through our vows, and, the deed done, the question was what to do for a reception.
“Why don’t we go to a strip bar?” I suggested.
Carmen was like, “I can’t. I have to get back to L.A.”
Some work thing. A Hyperion Bay shoot, I think. I had a car drop her off at the airport and ended up spending my wedding night, morning, whatever, partying with Thaer and Barney Fife.
Years later Carmen told a reporter for a website called FemaleFirst.co.uk that she knew the marriage was a mistake from the first, and she “… had a feeling of dread as soon as she got on the plane.”
“When I married Dennis, deep down I knew it was stupid,” she said.
Bullshit. She’s just trying to rewrite history. If ever there was a couple in love, it was us. I’ll go to my grave believing that.
The wedding was all over the news within an hour of us leaving the chapel.
Enter the spin doctors.
“From what I can determine, it’s not legal. It sounds like he was deeply intoxicated,” my agent at the time, Dwight Manley, told the New York Post two days after the wedding. “Obviously, anyone that would marry someone that was intoxicated to the point that they couldn’t speak or stand had ulterior motives of some sort.”The word “leeches” made it into print.
Manley’s spin was that this shameless gold digger named Carmen Electra had tricked a shit-faced Dennis Rodman into getting married. Carmen’s publicist was quick to deny it, “Inaccurate and untrue,” she said.
But Manley’s version stuck. Even today, the average person you ask on the street will tell you the same thing: Carmen scammed Dennis.
What a crock.
I heard Manley’s spin, and I was like “What the fuck?” My publicist sent a handwritten note to Carmen’s publicist, which appeared in print the next day.
“I love Carmen and am proud to be married to her,” the note read. “I apologize for any false statements given on my behalf regarding my marriage to Carmen Electra.”
I don’t remember this, but later Carmen would tell the Post that she “… drove out to see me to try and figure out what was going on. We watched it [the Manley statement] together on every news channel.”
Carmen was way pissed, of course. We ended up fighting, fighting, fighting—trying to figure out what to do about it.
She’s like, “End it! End it! End it!” meaning the marriage, so the public wouldn’t think she was some kind of conniving bitch. So we came up with this idea for an annulment. At that point, I was willing do anything to make her happy—so I’m like, “Where do I sign?”
What came next made it seem like I was schizo, listening to my Carmen-loving heart one day, my Carmen-hating handlers the next—but that’s not the way it went down. I was just trying to get the annulment done as fast as possible so Carmen and I could start fresh.
My lawyer filed the papers on November 23, 1998. The marriage was nine days old. In California, there is a form for just such sad occasions, the “FL-100,” which offers six—and only six— grounds for annulment. If you’re going for a divorce or separation, you have the nice, vague “irreconcilable differences.” But for an annulment, the only categories are: “petitioner’s age at time of marriage,” “prior existing marriage,” “unsound mind,” “fraud,” “force,” and “physical incapacity.”That’s it. Me? I don’t give a shit. Just get it done. So my handlers huddle, and they go with what they got. Since nothing else even remotely applies, they check the boxes marked:
Unsound mind (as in plastered)
Fraud
In other words, we were back where we started.
“IT WAS LIQUOR AFTER ALL,” screamed the NewYork Post, reporting on what they called a “bizarre flip-flop.”
Instead of clearing Carmen of charges of being a conniving bitch, the annulment papers reinforced the notion. The whole thing had backfired—and my signature is right there on the goddamn form. Did I read what I was signing? Nope. Did I ever tell anyone I was too drunk to know what I was doing? Nope. I’m not sure my lawyer understood the nuances of the situation.
“Dennis alleges he was so inebriated at the nuptials that he didn’t know which end was up, what he was doing,” he told the media.
Carmen’s publicist countered, but it was too late. The damage was re-done. “Carmen and Dennis mutually agreed upon the termination of this marriage several days ago,” the publicist said, “due to all the events that occurred.”
What-fucking-ever.
Meanwhile an enterprising reporter for the Post talked to folks at the Clark County Marriage License Bureau and the Little Chapel of Flowers in Vegas.
Both denied I was drunk. “We don’t issue a license if they are intoxicated, no matter who they are,” said a license bureau supervisor.
The clerk who actually sold us the license said, “He was fine as far as I could tell.”
“He was not intoxicated,” said somebody from the wedding chapel. “He said so himself, and you should take his word for it.”
Even Carmen waded in. “I’ve seen Dennis drunk before,”—no shit?—“and he didn’t seem drunk,” she told People Magazine.
“I asked him, ‘Dennis, is this really something you want to do?’
He said, ‘Yes,’ and he asked me the same question, and I said, ‘Yes.’”
Drunk, not drunk, it doesn’t matter. I knew exactly what I was doing.
The act may have been impulsive, but the sentiment was not. Carmen and I were crazy in love, and we were going to get married sooner or later, one way or another. It was inevitable. Now staying married—that was something altogether different.
By the way, the annulment didn’t take.
Why? I don’t know.
Despite all the uproar, Carmen and I were still married and looking to the future. Anyone trying to keep up with what was going on with us, need only have read the Post:
New York Post—December 8, 1998: “She’s a very classy woman, no matter what my manager or anyone said about that she conned me,” Rodman says, “You don’t have to be drunk to want to marry a woman like that. That decision I made was my decision and hopefully stays.”
New York Post—December 11, 1998: “I am still in love with him,” Electra says. “There is possibly a future for my relationship.”
Chicago Tribune—January 20, 1999: “As of Tuesday, [Dwight Manley] was Rodman’s former agent.”
New York Post—January 23, 1999: “Electra appeared on the Howard Stern show … [and] said the marriage is solid despite reports her hubby is two-timing her with Scores dancer Stacey Yarborough.”
New York Post—February 6, 1999: “After only three episodes starring Carmen Electra-the former Baywatch babe who married NBA star Dennis Rodman—the WB is pulling her struggling drama Hyperion Bay off the air.”
New York Post—February 23, 1999: “Rodman signed with the Lakers and the couple were ‘lovey-dovey,’ as the NewYork Post would report later, Rodman claiming he and Electra ‘were happily married, but living in separate homes.’”
After I signed with the Lakers, Carmen played the dutiful NBA wife, coming to games and all that shit. Of course, she never made it until halftime, and my right-hand man,Thaer Mustafa, was pissed from having to wait for her to get her shit together. I understood that. She was now a big-time celebrity, thanks to me, and the spotlight was going to be on her so she was feeling the pressure to look good. All I was saying was, “Start earlier.” Coming in late shows disrespect.
Anyway, when she finally arrived, it was more of the same. She was signing autographs, not paying attention to what’s going on.
Thaer was like, “This is your husband—watch the fucking ball game.”
Come a television timeout, she was dancing, and people in the stands were going crazy. Now I’ll admit the girl can dance, but this ain’t her show. This is a fucking basketball game. So I’m the frustrated husband, signaling “Sit her ass down! Get her to stop!” to Thaer. Not much chance of that—she was a whore for attention.
But I have to admit: the girl looked fine, and she was mine.
Looking back now, I realize that those early months were about as good as it would get for Carmen and me. Of course, I managed to fuck it up. I don’t know what I was thinking. There I was, 37 years old, and it had finally happened. I had met the love of my life and married her. It should have been a done deal. But three months into a marriage where I was supposed to be “forsaking all others,” I was still partying my ass off.
Same old Dennis.
Comes the inevitable in late March of 1999. I was still with the Lakers, Carmen was out of pocket somewhere, and, following a 99-91 win over the New York Knicks, I was holed up with female company at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. Another one of those enterprising reporters, this one from the London Times, would report I was in Room 821. Whatever the room, I was having a large time.
Then Carmen showed up.
I had come close to being caught red-handed before we were married. I was having a beach party at my Newport Beach house, 300-400 people, and the “adult industry” showed up. One of the girls took a liking to me, and we did what we did. Somehow, Carmen got wind of the party. She walked in the door, looking like the Bulls’ logo—smoke pouring out her nose. First, she cornered the girl, and then she turned on me.
“Did you screw her?” she asked. “Did you screw that porn star?”
“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
World War III.
It’s one thing to suspect somebody might be fooling around on you—it’s quite another to stand there face to face with the slut-ho competition.
But that was nothing compared to what was about to happen at the Beverly Hills Hotel. This dumb ass, who to this day bills himself as a super bodyguard, let five-foot-four Carmen Electra bully her way into the bedroom, where I was in bed with not one, but two girls—a buck naked ex-girlfriend who happened to be a masseuse and a Playboy/Penthouse model wearing one of my T-shirts. As for me, I had my earrings on.
It was like the Jerry Springer Show.
“Carmen went ballistic. She yanked the covers off the bed and started screaming at us,” the Playboy model told the London Times. “The whole thing was a nightmare. She was jumping up and down on the bed, screaming and cursing at the three of us.”
“The other woman and I were cowering in bed, while Dennis was lying back as though he hadn’t a care in the world,” the woman continued. “He said he had never seen me before, as if I just dropped through the ceiling and happened to land on his bed.”
After about 15 minutes of this, Carmen left—but she wasn’t done with my ass.
No, No, No. …
Later she was like, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck You! I’m going to be with somebody that’s going to treat me right.”
Who could blame her? You can’t fuck with a girl’s emotions like that—not that I meant to. I was just doing what I did, just being Dennis. And the Playboy/Penthouse woman had gone on and on and on in the Times, saying the “sex was fabulous,” and “we probably did just about everything two women and a man can do in bed.”
Now I had not only cheated on Carmen, but, with a little help from the media, I had embarrassed her in front of the world. I loved her, but I guess I didn’t show it.
We broke up, and I tried and tried and tried to get her back, but when you fuck up like that—get caught with another woman, make that two women—that’s probably the last straw. Still, I did everything I could to get her back, to get the magic back: flowers, gifts, crying jags, the whole deal.
Nothing worked. Nothing new.
No matter whom I’ve dated, it has always come down to that fateful day where she’s sitting here, I’m sitting there, and she’s asking, “Did you sleep with this girl? Did you sleep with that girl? Are you going sleep with that girl?”
Being straight up, real, I say, “Yep, yep, yep.”
You want Dennis Rodman? You have to accept the whole package. I don’t want to be your boyfriend if you’ll feel degraded when I sleep around. Don’t want that. We’ll just be friends. Carmen and I decided together that, since being married to me was hurting her so badly, we’d get divorced and try to date again, which seemed logical—so that’s what we did.
New York Post—April 7, 1999: “‘Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman have announced they have mutually agreed to end their six-month-old marriage under amiable circumstances,’ said the couple’s spokesman. ‘Miss Electra and Mr. Rodman are and will remain friends.’”
Turned out I was dead right about one thing: when we got divorced, Carmen didn’t want anything—not a penny.
Nothing, zilch, zero.
About a week after Carmen filed, the Lakers let my ass go after only 23 games. The grounds?
“Irreconcilable differences.”
Carmen started dating other people—rock stars Tommy Lee and Fred Durst—and we went for weeks without seeing each other or talking or connecting at all. I went nuts, trying to get her on the phone, driving by her house in the middle of the night, this and that. At my worst, I was curled in a ball moaning, repeatedly screaming, “I fucked up! I fucked up! I fucked up!” I was punishing myself for not being with her.
Most of the time, when I want to get over somebody, I go out and have sex with other girls.
Sleep with this girl.
Sleep with that girl.
But even that didn’t stop the pain.
Carmen must have been feeling the same way, because we got back together for a little bit, but because of the things I’d done and the things she’d done, it was never quite the same. I even stripped for her—she loved that—did this, did that.
All kinds of crazy shit.
Nothing. There was no turning back. Still, we continued to date off and on, going nowhere, until the fall of 1999 and the beginning of the end in South Bee-itch—Miami, baby—playground of the stars.