My Life Outside the Ring (26 page)

It all came natural to Nick. He was quiet on camera but had a real natural instinct when it came to the “acting” part of reality TV. It got to the point where the producers knew they could rely on him to do things that were way outside of his character just to try to make some magic happen on screen. Like when he was up in his room one day, just sitting at his computer while Linda and I filmed a scene downstairs in the kitchen. The producers asked him to go to the window and toss water balloons at the neighbors. They wanted to show him exhibiting that typical rich, spoiled-brat, obnoxious-little-brother behavior. Nick would never do that in real life. He was actually a much more serious and focused kid than anyone ever saw on TV. But it created scenes that the producers could work with in the editing room.

As for Linda? This was her moment to shine. It’s like she had been waiting twenty years for the cameras to be pointed her way instead of mine. She only wanted to be seen with full-blown makeup and perfect hair—and she put some of that attitude on Brooke as well. “Put on a different dress. Make sure your hair’s blown out!” She was right, in a way. We were trying to build Brooke’s career, and you wanted her to be as appealing as possible.

There were times when I’d give the producers the keys to the house, so they could come in super early in the morning and shoot us in bed while we were still sleeping. I didn’t care if my butt was hanging out or I had drool on my pillow. That was part of the appeal of the show—to let people into the Hogans’ “real life.” Linda didn’t like it. On those days, she would set her alarm really early and get up and brush her hair and her teeth and get some basic makeup on before the camera people ever arrived. Just as I suspected might happen, Linda got bored and fed up with the whole process real quick, but we’d all signed contracts and we had to do this according to their schedules.

There really were schedules, too. They would need to shoot a scene with me from 8:30 till 9:30 a.m., and then they’d need the whole family from 10:00 to 12:45. Then there’s a lunch break. It was pretty regimented. Even if you weren’t filming you couldn’t go running off to the mall or something. If I was cooking breakfast for the kids and happened to cut my thumb off, they’d want to be sure Linda was close by so they could get her reaction and not miss the magic, you know?

But for all the headaches, the show itself worked. When it launched in July 2005,
Hogan Knows Best
had the biggest debut of any show in VH1 history.

Suddenly, my whole family was living a red-carpet life. They were invited to all the big parties: MTV Awards, the Grammys, not to mention the after-parties. They were getting that big-star treatment. Even Linda seemed really happy for a while. We were all riding high. I loved watching my family get a chance to bask in the glory of that spotlight.

I started working with a top-notch publicist in New York City named Elizabeth Rosenthal, who landed us stories in
People
magazine and booked the whole family on
Larry King Live
. We did CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. I appeared on Jay Leno, and we all went on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. It was wild!

We had money flowing in. We had offers flowing in. This red-hot record producer, Scott Storch, suddenly showed interest in working to get Brooke’s recording career back on track. VH1 upped us for a second season.

It was all rolling out just the way we’d hoped it would.

In public, we
were all having the time of our lives, but that public image only further masked the problems that were growing behind the scenes.

Most of the cracks in my marriage didn’t show up in the first three seasons of that TV show. There were moments where Linda or I rolled our eyes at each other’s behavior, but that was just about the extent of it. There were plenty of times when Linda would lose it and start cussing me out in front of the crew, but no one wanted to see that kind of ugliness on TV. So the producers never aired it. They aired the footage where we hid our true feelings and just pretended to get along like a normal—if somewhat eccentric—couple.

Off-camera, an entirely different story kept unfolding. Linda’s complaining about how miserable she was reached epic proportions. Every day she talked about how much she hated Florida. Every day she talked about how much she hated our neighbors and never wanted to see them. Anything you can think of, she’d find a reason to hate it.

Her drinking also started to affect the family. It seemed like every night she would get into the wine, and before long she’d start cussing everybody out—including Brooke and Nick.

I can’t tell you how many nights I went to bed and the last words I heard before my head hit the pillow were “Fuck you, Terry.” It got so bad, she wouldn’t touch me. We’d go to bed and roll over, and there was no physical contact whatsoever. Just the “Fuck you” ringing in my ears.

At her worst, she said those same words to the kids. If I ever said F-you to one of my kids, I wouldn’t be the same person. It would shake me to my bones. But when she was drunk, she didn’t hesitate to use foul language in front of the kids. I even heard her use the C-word on Brooke.

The next morning we’d wake up, and everything would be fine. She’d act as if nothing happened. I’d try to talk to her about it, the kids would try to talk to her about it, but she just wouldn’t hear us out.

She blamed me for everything. I kept blaming myself, too, thinking I had let her down, thinking I had somehow caused her to be this miserable.

The drinking reached a point where it seemed to affect our social life. After Linda got her second glass of wine in her, people would start to leave. They probably didn’t want to be present for the Jekyll and Hyde act that I had witnessed one time too many.

The night we wrapped filming on the very first season, we held a wrap party at this bar called Shephard’s on Clearwater Beach—the in spot where all the twentysomethings love to party.

Linda was drinking and she refused to leave. When I tried to pull her off the dance floor we got into a huge fight, right in front of everybody. “It’s only three thirty in the morning!” she screamed. “I’ll stay out as late as I fucking want!”

The next morning, Linda got on a plane to California. I called her parents and told them how bad things had become, and even Linda’s mother, Gail, told me she thought Linda needed help. She had received so many phone calls from Linda just complaining and moaning about everything in her life. It was clear to me that she’d crossed the line with her drinking.

So Gail and Joe picked Linda up at the airport that day and drove her straight to the Betty Ford Clinic.

A few days into her stay, Linda started calling me, begging me to let her come home. I didn’t know how to handle it, so I actually called Gail for advice. “No, don’t let her out. Don’t let her out,” Gail begged me. “It’s too soon.”

But Linda begged. Publicly, Linda’s attorney would later say she was only in there for evaluation.

The thing is, Linda had the right to leave whenever she wanted. It wasn’t jail. I think she was too afraid to walk out of there without having one of us give her the okay.

I’m the one with the soft heart. She knows that, and after just ten days, I let her come home, and she swore up and down that she would never drink again. The kids begged her to stay true to her word: “Please, Mom. For us.” She swore to it. “I’ll quit for the kids. I promise.”

Her promise only lasted about three days.

I was so afraid of setting her off, I soon found myself tiptoeing into the house each night. If I had been out wrestling and came home at two in the morning, I would walk in to the stench of alcohol in our bedroom. She reeked of it—that nasty, fermenting smell that oozes from your pores and floats out on your breath.

Her anger came roaring back. And the blame for everything.

And the disappearing. When Brooke went through some surgery in 2005, I coincidentally had to get knee surgery at the exact same time. Neither of us were supposed to get out of bed for a few days. If I ever wanted to wrestle again, it was real important that I let that knee heal. Of course, that was just one of the more memorable times that Linda decided to disappear and let us fend for ourselves.

Not knowing where she was or when she’d be back, I wound up hobbling around trying to take care of Brooke and get Nick everywhere he needed to go. My doctors freaked out when they heard I was walking, but what was I supposed to do? Linda left me with no choice.

Miss Miami

It’s hard to comprehend when I look at it in retrospect, with a clear head, but Linda’s rage and fury was so frequent it just became expected. It was almost routine. Her cussing and swearing and disappearing felt like the new “normal” in our household. In fact, we were bombarded by so many moments of misery that anytime she said something positive it was shocking. And in 2006, she started saying all these really great things—about Miami.

As we filmed the second season of the show, we spent more and more time in that city, where Brooke was recording some new music. I’m not sure what it was about that town, but Linda suddenly became intoxicated with Miami’s “ambiance.” She raved about the restaurants, and the people, and the excitement. She loved that she could actually get a “decent glass of wine.” She loved the celebrity culture there, and the money culture there. I think it reminded her a little bit of what she thought she was missing in Beverly Hills.

Suddenly she started talking about wanting to move to Miami full-time.

With the properties we owned already, we were stretching ourselves thin. The thing about multimillion-dollar mansions is the maintenance and upkeep can be tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. The gardeners and maintenance crews, cleaning crews, electric costs. Our caretaker, George, worked full-time just for us, and he barely had time to get everything done. It’s an overwhelming amount of money and effort just to keep those places operating. So buying another home in Miami scared me. I was hardly wrestling at all—which meant I was hardly bringing in the millions I once made.

But I was desperate. I was desperate to make Linda happy. So we sold a home we owned in California and started seriously shopping in Miami. We wound up buying a spectacular $12 million property on North Bay Road—right next to the owners of Market America, whose guesthouse regularly played host to people like Jennifer Lopez and Eva Longoria. It was a road where members of the Bee Gees lived. Where Shaq had a home. Just a spectacular spot.

Linda was flying high for a while. She loved it. She felt like we were suddenly living where the action was. It was go, go, go.

There were plenty of problems when we moved in, of course, that were all played out on season three of
Hogan Knows Best
. The place had some issues, including a lack of garage space for all of our various vehicles, and a lack of space for all of Linda’s dogs. Well, that was the price of living in the big city, right? We’d make the best of it and make it work because Linda was where she wanted to be.

Wouldn’t you know it? Linda’s high wore off after just a few months. Little things set her off like crazy. Her car kept getting towed, and rather than finding a solution to the parking situation, she just kept parking on the street and blaming everyone else for the lousy parking laws in Miami.

She started flipping out and cussing and swearing again. She also started crying for what seemed like no reason at all. Nick and Brooke and I would all try to help. We all asked what was wrong and what we could do to fix it. But she never had any kind of answer.

Then she started disappearing again.

In November of 2006, we were barely settled into this new $12 million house when Linda flew off the handle and took off.

It was the day before Thanksgiving. Linda’s hairdresser, Tracy (and her assistant), came down that morning to do Linda’s hair. According to Tracy, Linda had some wine as she sat in the chair. She always liked to do that. It was relaxing for her. But on this day, for some reason, Linda worked herself into a tizzy about how unhappy she was and she got up and walked out the door. Tracy wasn’t sure what set her off, but at that point in our marriage it could have been anything. And I mean
anything
. The wind would blow a door shut and she’d yell, “Who slammed the fucking door! I’m sick and tired of doors slamming! I’m
leaving
!”

Whatever it was, by the time I came home she was gone. I tried calling her, but she never picked up. I went driving all over South Beach that afternoon trying to find my wife, but I never tracked her down. That night I told the kids not to worry. “I’m sure she’ll be back. She’s never missed a holiday,” I assured them.