Four Feet Tall and Rising (26 page)

Once we got to booking, they had no idea what to do with Hercules. They put him in a holding cell by himself, where he howled and moaned to be reunited with me. Poor Hercules, behind bars. We’d been captured as part of a DUI sting, so the
place was filling up with drunks. The guy sitting beside me was so confused. He kept leaning over to me and saying, “Did they bring us to a dog pound? I’m not hearing a dog in prison, am I? Man, I gotta stop drinking.”

I sat there for several hours before a cop came to let me go. He actually said, “You’ve been so cooperative and you’ve never been in trouble, so call someone to pick you up.” They didn’t realize I’d been in prison before. Maybe my name change had confused things a bit. Whatever the reason, I kept my mouth shut, called one of the Little People working the event, Tonya, and had her drive Hercules and me back to the hotel. Four hours later, I called a taxi to take me to the impound yard to get my car. I had to change the tire before I could even drive off the lot.

I was worried I had put Mechelle and Intuitive in a tight spot. I was convinced it was gonna ruin my whole career before it even got off the ground. I couldn’t keep the DUI a secret from them. It could all go wrong when we were so close to making it to air. And more than that, I worried that I’d just blown the one opportunity I had to really make a difference for pit bulls. But I had to tell Intuitive. It was the right thing to do. To their credit, Intuitive didn’t blow up on me. We all had a lot riding on the success of the show, but more than that, they wanted to make sure I wasn’t pulling a Lindsay Lohan, and trashing my career out of some sort of self-sabotage. I let Mechelle know, “It won’t happen again. I’ve learned my lesson.”

I had learned my lesson, although I was surprised it took
me until I was almost forty-one to learn it. There were times when I had been so shit-faced coming home from a gig in Vegas that I’d find myself driving down the wrong side of the street; one time, I ended up at the Hoover Dam for no apparent reason. It really made me think. What right did I have to drink and drive? Absolutely none. If I was gonna drive, it would have to be one drink, then stop. If I wanted to party, then I’d just have to fork over the sixty-dollar cab fare to get home, and not bitch about it. Sixty bucks would have saved me a fortune. When all was said and done with the legal fees and fines, that one lousy night out cost me over fifteen grand. More than that, I was lucky no one got hurt. I wasn’t gonna press my luck anymore.

Two days later,
Pit Boss
, episode one, aired. They’d been promoting the show heavily, but I was still guarding my hopes against disappointment. When I watched the show, all I could think was, “We got on the air, it’ll go for the six episodes and that’s it. But we achieved it. I get another notch on my belt to say I did that. Now I can move onto something else.” I had no idea what had just happened.

Episode one hit the ratings clean. Then the second episode’s numbers came in even higher. Before the third episode even aired, I got called into the Intuitive office. “They are renewing you.” Animal Planet had ordered another eight episodes to fill out the first season. It just blew up. Overnight. We went from being nobodies to somebodies. I had no idea so many people watched Animal Planet. People started recognizing me in the streets, yelling, “Pit Boss! ”

We thought we were busy before. We hadn’t seen the half of it. Little People that hated me were now anxious to be my friend. The number of Little People wanting to be repped by Shortywood doubled. Client calls doubled, if not tripled. I had to institute a new policy about the size of the jobs. They had to be big parties, major blowouts, with big commissions attached. We just couldn’t handle the smaller gigs anymore. We didn’t have the manpower.

We went from a small operation that only Los Angeles rescue groups knew about to a rescue that was now being recognized across the United States. Our rescue got so big, we couldn’t afford it. Taking care of the dogs, helping people adopt the dogs, donating money to different rescue groups, arranging for dogs to get their shots, to be spayed and neutered. It was too much. We were used to handling fifty e-mails and calls a day, between both the entertainment requests and pit bull rescues. The numbers went up to one thousand e-mails and calls a day. It got so crazy, we had to shut down the pit bull rescue line, no longer answer the entertainment line at all, hire some temporary help, and delegate, delegate, delegate. We needed a reality check. I sat my team down and said, “Guys, we gotta do something else. We need more income coming in. This show is gonna bankrupt us!”

People think ’cause you’re on TV you must be rich. They don’t understand reality TV pay. Life was better, hell yeah, much better, don’t get me wrong, but my personal expenses went way, way up. My life had to change. I had to move off the boat and into an apartment with more security features,
an extra bedroom for the dogs. It wasn’t a luxury situation by any means. My furniture was still IKEA. My neighbors weren’t celebrities, but there was a bit more privacy.

Privacy was getting harder and harder to come by, and for a Little Person, that’s saying something. There has never been a day when I could move through the world anonymously. I have always been looked at, stared at, noticed. For so many years, I just ignored it. I didn’t like to complain about it like other Little People would. If my friends would ask, “Why is everyone staring at you?” I’d just point out the obvious. “ ’cause I’m a fucking midget with a pit bull, why do you think? ”

Once
Pit Boss
started airing, I was stared at for a completely different reason. I was recognized as a TV personality, and whatever limited anonymity I had left was completely gone. That was fine. That was the life I chose. I knew that to be an advocate for the dogs, I had to step in front of the cameras and give the people a show. I knew that by doing this, the sacrifice was privacy. This time, I knew when people were staring at me, it was ’cause of
Pit Boss
, and not ’cause I was a fucking midget with a pit bull.

But I hadn’t really thought it through. I was grateful for the fans, excited to be reaching so many people, but I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be able to shop at Walmart or Target anymore. I couldn’t go to my usual grocery store, Trader Joe’s, or if I needed toiletries, I couldn’t just swing by the CVS. An errand that used to take me ten or fifteen minutes would turn into a forty-five-minute ordeal with photographs and autographs and people stopping me to talk about their dogs.

Then there were the death threats, the critics, and the crazies. There were people angry that I promoted a “killer” breed. They blasted me with e-mails, letters, and phone calls, calling me every name in the book, telling me to never set foot in their city with my dogs ’cause they’d slaughter us all. I was actually attacked by a hysterical drunk woman who slapped me across the face three times, screaming that Hercules was a killer and that he shouldn’t be allowed into restaurants. There were breeders that said my stance against breeding pit bulls was gonna “wipe out the breed.” They considered me an enemy, not an advocate. There were people running rescue organizations that were mad at me ’cause I couldn’t personally help them place a dog or give them money or show up at their events. They’d cuss me out and yell, “I’ll never watch your show again.” There were people who thought I was a fraud. People posting nasty things about me online. People flooding my inbox with requests to help a pit bull in Maine, when I lived in California. Sending me the same e-mail over and over and over again. For as much love as we got from fans, we got an equal amount of craziness and hatred.

What was hardest of all was stopping my weekly visits to the projects. There were old enemies, and even some old friends, who were jealous of the success of the show. I’d seen guys who’d made good come back to the projects and get jumped or robbed. I didn’t want to end up like Jerry. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t get caught hanging out with guys who were still selling drugs or robbing people. If a bust went down and I was standing there, it would destroy my reputation
and the show. There were kids out there watching my show, kids who were being inspired to help animals, kids who were writing in and donating their allowances to save pit bulls. I couldn’t do nothing to lose their trust. I had to pay closer attention to my circle of friends. I had to stop clubbing and partying in public, where every single person is carrying a cell phone with a camera built in. The show was a monster. That was a good thing. It just meant my life had to change.

It also meant the business had to change. For years, Shortywood had been funding the rescue operations, but now the whole operation had flipped on its head. I was adamant that we were not gonna live off the popularity of my dogs. The whole point of rescuing pit bulls was to help the dogs, not use them. Still, we needed some way to raise income to keep up with the new demands.
Pit Boss
had brought us a platform, a way to reach people, but we couldn’t rely on donations. We weren’t even a nonprofit. We were a glorified transport system!

I don’t remember who came up with the idea, but the solution seemed to be opening an online store, Shorty’s Store, where we could sell stuff and use the profits to help cover our rescue operation expenses and fund four charities, three of which we’d been working with for years: Furbaby, Karma Rescue, and the Linda Blair Worldheart Foundation. The Watts Youth Foundation was basically defunct now. It had fizzled out during my travels, though now that I was back in Los Angeles, I’d grab some kids from the projects and take them to Universal or the beach. That was on my own dime. With my recent rental in Mexico, I’d also started volunteering at the
Door of Faith Orphanage in Baja. I wanted to include them in our charitable giving. Kids and dogs, both were okay by me. So the decision was made. We’d open an online store. We’d sell things like a Hercules bobble head, dog collars, T-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs, key rings. Where we were gonna get this stuff or store this stuff was a completely different issue. The office was already packed with people, dogs, and costumes, so the only option was my apartment. The dogs would share my bedroom with me and I’d turn the extra room into storage for the store.

I hadn’t anticipated endorsement deals. The first offer came from a company that wanted me to promote their substitute nicotine chewing gum. I told the guy, “You realize I smoke, right?” He said, “Yes, but you could encourage people to stop smoking.” I am many things, but a hypocrite is not one. I wasn’t gonna take money from a company, lecture people about smoking, and then turn around and have a cigar. Even if those checks would support the dogs, the answer was no.

Then I got a personal invitation from Diesel cigar maker A. J. Fernandez to visit his cigar factory in Nicaragua. He wanted me to come down and check out the factory, the farms, and the tobacco-processing facilities. If all went well, I’d put my name on a cigar. Ten percent of the proceeds would go to Shorty’s Charities and I’d get to smoke a bunch of cigars. No-brainer. I was on the plane.

I got to the factory and there were probably a good five hundred people there rolling cigars. The management team, A.J., Alex, and Kris, gave me the grand tour, explaining how
the business was run, how cigars are rolled, what kind of tobacco is used, how the wrapper came from Pennsylvania, but the filler was grown in Nicaragua. They sat me down at a workstation and showed me how to roll a cigar. I was given the royal treatment.

The whole time, I could tell that every eye in that factory was on me. One thousand eyeballs staring right at me. It was weird. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Yes, I was used to people peeking out of the corners of their eyes to watch me, but not full out staring, and not five hundred people at the same time. Finally, one of the managers came over to talk to one of the owners. He asked, “Everyone wants to know. They have a question. Please forgive us for being rude, but why are you, the owners, kissing this peasant’s ass?”

Whoa.

In most Central American countries, a Little Person is always the peasant. They’re poor. They’re a circus act. They’re marginalized. They’re a pariah. They certainly aren’t on TV, and they’re not doctors or lawyers or teachers or even factory workers. They have no status at all. They are non-people. For me to have an entourage, for the owners of their company to treat me as someone important, seemed ludicrous to them. The owners explained to the manager, “Mr. Rossi is an American businessman. He owns a business and he is on a TV show.” The manager went back to give this new information to the workers, but they were completely baffled. They just couldn’t understand it. How could a Little Person own a business? Why would a Little Person be on TV?

I had never experienced outright prejudice in such a blatant, in-my-face kind of way. I didn’t blame the workers. They’d never seen anyone like me. It made me understand how far we’ve come, as Little People, to redefine what is possible. The discrimination that my father faced in Texas. The stares that Nonnie, Mom, and me had ignored our whole lives. That was nothing. There were Little People in Nicaragua who were peasants, PEASANTS, ’cause they’d been born small.

Even further back, during World War II, Hitler massacred all the Little People. Only one family survived. A family of seven musical entertainers and only ’cause the Führer himself had a fetish for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Too bad his fetish didn’t stop them from being tortured and put through medical testing. In the Middle Ages, my people were court jesters, if they were lucky. If they weren’t lucky, they were … well, peasants.

Me, I’d grown up knowing I could be anything I wanted to be. It may have taken me twenty goddamn years to get my shit together, but eventually, I’d ended up the businessman I’d always said I’d be. I never let my size determine the size of my life. I was never afraid to become bigger and better, to push myself to jump off a building or start my own company. If you’re standing in the way, I’m gonna knock you over, no matter how big you are, so I can get to where I’m trying to go. Move, excuse me! Move! If that’s how you look at life, no matter how big or small you are, then you are gonna succeed. You don’t let nothing stop you.