Jax wore a gown with eye-popping decolleté - I figured she was trying to divert attention from "us" onto her bosom, which was glorious in any case. I didn't mind her showing off her chest - as long as I knew it was only me who got to actually get her out of that gown afterwards and that I was the only one who got to fondle the delicious body inside that dress. We stopped for her to be interviewed by the various entertainment television people, the fashionistas, the foreign press, the Aussie and Japanese press - for all I know, she spoke to the Martian press that night. Everyone wanted to ask first about her and me. I refused to discuss it and turned every question aimed at me back to Jackie, showing a deferential side of me that I'm sure was a shock to a lot of people. Crowe? Being a wallflower at a premiere? Yeah - it was Jackie's night, not mine. Fuckwits who couldn't grasp that.

Anyway, the film was well received, as I had suspected it would be. Jackie in a film where she is a femme fatale in Victorian London suspected of murdering two husbands by the time the movie starts, and accused of trying to poison the third - well, you can imagine. She was a very glamorous suspected murderess who is vindicated at the end after falling in love with the very detective who was investigating the third husband's untimely demise. Love conquers all.

Would that real life were as forgiving.

Immediately after that premiere and the ensuing coverage by the world's entertainment press, we were deluged by a firestorm of requests for interviews, endless speculation in endless issues of the tabloid papers, endless occasions ruined by paparazzi jumping out of the trees to flash cameras in our faces. I couldn't even play handball on the court of the Bel Air Hotel grounds - behind their ten foot high walls - without some bozo swinging off a tree limb with a camera to get shots of me in my sweaty work out clothes. Then the paper that bought the photo doctored it to add about 30 lbs to me and came out with the cover story, "Crowe eating his heart out over wandering Jackie?" claiming that I was eating everything in sight because Jax was supposedly doing the dirty with any one of a dozen young Hollywood types who were flavor of the month right then.

The following week, it was her turn to have doctored photos and outright lies printed when the Screenstar Insider came out with supposed long-lens pictures of her sunbathing naked on my yacht in the Mediterranean. This was interesting because not only had she been in Australia visiting her family for her parents' 30th wedding anniversary that week, but I didn't own a bloody yacht, hadn't rented one, hadn't been outside of my farm in Nana Glen for almost three weeks myself when those pictures were supposedly taken.

The press will lie about anything to sell newspapers, tv air time or whatever. There are a few honest, above-board people I'd trust myself with. They go through my press agents to arrange interviews or pictures or television time - the rest of them largely just make up any shit they want to about anything they want to write about. The London tabloid press is particularly virulent.

Anyway, after Jax' premiere, she went off for almost four solid weeks of publicity junkets to support the film, which was being touted for several major awards. I had commitments in New York to do some ADR looping for a film I'd completed the previous winter. So we headed off in two different directions, not to meet up again for a month. It was how the pattern of our whole courtship and the subsequent marriage was to be - apart most of the time, lonely and full of sexual frustration, then thrust back together for a few days or a week only to find we had to get to know one another all over again. The sex was always fantastic, but you've got to be able to have more than that. We were both so caught up in other pressing business, we short-shrifted our relationship instead of making more sensible arrangements so we could have at least a quarter of our time together and three quarters doing movie stuff. Instead, we had maybe 5% of our time together and the other 95% only talking on the phone or by email. You can't build a relationship on that.

So, the marriage was doomed before the ring was even on Jax' finger, which is a real pity because that diamond-encrusted platinum band set me back a sum that would have given me a stroke a dozen years earlier when I was waiting tables to supplement infrequent film earnings back in Oz.

We were married in a huge cathedral in Sydney. It was a gorgeous Saturday morning and it seemed like half the world was there, either by invitation or because they came to gawk or because they were circling overhead in helicopters trying to steal photos. Even inside the church, the droning sound of the choppers intruded on the music and our vows. It was definitely an indicator of how things were going to go. I was too stupidly in love to realize it just then.

We honeymooned on a beach island off Queensland. It was one of those exclusive resorts for the rich-rich. There were beautiful white sand beaches, clear warm waters to swim and snorkel in, a beautiful "cottage" - four bedrooms, gourmet kitchen staffed by a chef trained in Paris, great room with an entire wall of glass overlooking the sea, and a master bedroom with a waterfall outside the sliding doors that fed the most beautiful swimming pool I'd ever seen. Everywhere were orchids and hibiscus and drinks with little paper parasols in them. Everything was drowning in tropical scent, sensuality, luxury and the taste only lots of money can provide. I think that was the only time we were actually almost alone together for the next year.

Of course, it wasn't long enough, and we both had films to make in opposite ends of the earth, so we parted after a night of mind-boggling sex, promising to keep in constant touch until we could get together again after our films wrapped. We would, we also said, take alternate weekends when possible to visit one another on-set.

Things never turn out the way you plan them. Jackie's film went over schedule by almost three weeks, and then she was stuck in Prague because of a bomb threat at their airport that grounded all planes for several days. I was equally as stuck in Banff, Canada, finishing work on the outdoor scenes of a murder mystery in which I was the intrepid Mountie - no, no red coat or horse or singing - chasing down the bad guys in the snow-capped mountains. You know how much I love freezing cold weather. About as much as I like getting frostbitten balls. I was so unhappy that our planned meeting half way in between in New York went bollocks up - I'm sure I was a joy to be around for a bit there.

Anyway, we managed to get together a week later in California, but were stalked by the usual army of press. We were basically trapped in a borrowed beach house in Malibu the entire time. We were over- tired, overly emotionally starved for one another, oversexed and overly short-tempered. The fights over basically nothing were mind-boggling. Jackie can out-shout me when she wants to, and when her voice gives out, she throws things. I took a couple of good hits that week from flung books and once from an ashtray she threw at me from across the living room. It was difficult to lie to friends that I'd run into a door or some other lame excuse to explain the black eye, cut cheekbone and bruised chin. Of course, I didn't throw things at Jackie or get physical with her, so she didn't have any wounds to show. Not external ones, anyway. No, I fought dirty - I wounded with words.

I think my methods were dirtier. They certainly were more devastating. I have a knack for sussing out the one thing that will aggravate, irritate or hurt her the most and then aiming a comment in her direction at the worst possible time so it inflicted the most damage. It was a talent I would hone to razorsharp perfection during the time we were married. It was a talent I don't care to ever use on anyone ever again. It killed our marriage, and damn near killed me.
 

I'd married Rusty with such passionate hope that we'd be the ideal Hollywood couple. We'd have our careers, but we'd each nobly sacrifice so we could be together a large amount of the time. We'd never spend more than two weeks without seeing one another, we'd promised, and we'd be flexible and understanding of the demanding schedules we both had. After all, we were both equal stars in the film world galaxy, we both knew the realities of dealing with schedules, press, photographers, publicity and trying to juggle all that while maintaining some degree of a normal life in private. We were both, we assured one another, smart and wise in the ways of the business we loved. We would succeed where others failed.

Of course, with that kind of naïve optimism, we were bound to fail and we failed spectacularly.

The honeymoon was idyllic. I often wished we could have just stayed there on that Queensland beach forever and told Hollywood to go fuck itself, but we weren't smart enough to do that. No, we had to maintain our careers. We spent over 80% of that year we were married apart from one another.

When we were alone together, often behind privacy walls to keep out the intrusive press - who managed to get to us anyway - we got so stir crazy we'd pick fights with one another over anything, stupid things - just to have a break from the monotony of not being able to relax like normal people. I fell back onto a behavior I'd had with Joe - I got physical when I was angry. I think it's because Russell can argue so well and so long about anything, and with such a vocabulary that it just overwhelmed me. I'd get so fired up, my red-head's temper flashing white-hot, that nothing would come out of my mouth. So I'd pick up the nearest object and heave it at him. I connected often enough I'm surprised I didn't do more than give him the occasional scrape or bruise.

It was the night I found myself trying to lift an antique brass tray the size of a double bed and fling that at him, that I realized the arguing was getting out of hand. We were ten months into the marriage, both of us vastly unhappy, and here I was wanting to bean him with something the size of that damned tray. "Don't throw that," he warned me, actually looking alarmed. Normally he just ducked. He was quite good at it by then.

I stared at him, panting. He stared back from a safe distance away with a sofa between us he could duck behind if he had to. I started unbuttoning my blouse. "Oh, God," he said in a whisper. We met in the center of the living room and ripped each other's clothes off right there. We didn't speak except to urge one another to do incredibly sensual things. We sank onto the priceless Tabriz rug and fucked ourselves blind. "I hate you!" I told him at one point.

"Well, I hate you right back, only better," he grunted, flipping me over to make me come yet again when he mounted me from behind. "You love it, you know you do - that's why you hate me, because nobody's ever seen to you like I do."

Damn him. He was right. "Just fuck me," I gasped, and made sure he saw to me until we were both too tired to move. We lay in a sticky tangle on the floor after that. I turned onto my side and fished a sneaker out from under my lower back. No wonder I'd felt uncomfortable. I flung it to one side. Propping my chin on my hand, I looked at my sweaty, sated husband. "I didn't really mean it when I said I hate you."

Rusty cracked an eye open to look at me. He grunted softly, rolled onto his back and sighed. "Yes, you did, luv - you meant it at the time you said it. You're just sorry now because you're afraid."

"Afraid? Me? I'd like to know what the fuck of!" My temper was flaring again. I was already wishing I hadn't thrown that sneaker out of reach. One can blop someone pretty hard with a well-aimed sneaker. Those rubber soles really sting.

"You're afraid that I believe you," Russell said in his overly patient tone that really got to me. "You're afraid that we argue too much and make love too little." He turned to face me, noting my reddened cheekbones I'm sure. "See? Even now, you're getting wrought up again, Jax - you want to whack me with that shoe, admit it."

I sat up, shoving my hair back out of my eyes. I was so furious, my blush extended down over my neck and chest, down onto my tits. I leaned toward him so we were eye to eye and snarled, "I wish I had that poker from over by the fireplace, I'd shove it up your ass, you self-important, strutting nobody from New Zealand."

He'd stared at me for an astonished moment, shaken his head, and gotten to his feet. "There's no point in continuing this discussion," he told me as he stepped over me on his way to get clothes to put on. "I'm leaving."

I climbed to my own feet and shoved my legs into jeans, pulling a jersey on over my head. If he was going to be clothed, I was certainly going to be clothed - I guess I felt it was like a knight facing another knight for a joust only not wearing any armor. "You are not leaving!" I shrieked at him. "I'm still talking to you - I want us to stop all this bickering and be happy again!"

He laughed bitterly, holding the keys of his motorcycle in one hand and his leather jacket in the other. "Jax, if I could turn a switch and take us back to where we were before things got so crazy, I would, but I can't. I'm not magic. I've found that I'm, regrettably, way more human than I would have ever thought. This marriage is killing me. I want out."

I could tell by the expression on his face that he was as shocked by that last sentence as I was, but, stubborn is his middle name, and he didn't take it back. "Get away from the door, Jax," he ordered me. When I didn't move, he took hold of my arms and just set me to one side. I was so shocked by the gentleness of his grasp that I let him go. He was starting up the Harley by the time I snapped out of my trance. I grabbed the keys to my Porsche Boxter and ran out the door after him.

He was half a block down Sunset Boulevard by the time I was out the gated exit after him. I know he knew I was behind him because I saw him glance back over his shoulder and then the bike started going faster. I raced after him, knowing that car could catch just about anything short of the Space Shuttle. It was three in the morning and the streets were deserted except for the two of us fools. He raced ahead of me for a couple of blocks, then a light turned red and he had to brake the bike. Instead of stopping, it flipped onto one side and slid through the intersection in a spray of sparks. I was going so fast that when I slammed on the brakes, the car fishtailed and I felt the awful thump-thump as I ran over something. "Rusty!" I screamed, and threw myself out of the car when I finally got it stopped.

I could hear sirens off in the distance, getting closer, so somebody had obviously called the police, as well they should have. He was in a heap, all bloody, trying to get up but falling back each time he managed to lift his head. I got to him and saw that I'd run over the bike and not him, thank God, but he wouldn't let me comfort him. When I tried, he turned his blood-streaked, scraped face to me and said icily, "You've done enough, don't you think, Jax?"

I guess he looked on that as the ultimate throwing of something. This time I'd really outdone myself - I'd thrown a Porsche. I was just lucky and glad it hadn't hit him but had only crumpled the motorcycle. I was so scared, so horrified, so terrified I would really lose him that I accepted what he said and just sat there staring at him until the police and ambulances came.