Dennis Rodman - I Should Be Dead By Now: The Wild Life and Crazy Times of the NBAs Greatest Rebounder of Modern Times

Dennis Rodman
with Jack Isenhour

Copyright 2005, 2006, 2013 by Dennis Rodman and Jack Isenhour

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61321-074-1

Printed in the United States of America

To all my kids

Without your love and support,
life would not be worth living.

Thank you for understanding
what Daddy is all about.

C hicago, May 23, 2005. Its 10:45 p.m., and Im running late not the first time. The changeover from Dennis into Dennis Rodman is taking a little longer than usual. Its a top problem. Ive got the tails of a solid black, button-front shirt tied off just below my nipples revealing the tattoo of two charging bulls, the ripped stomach, the pierced navel, but its still not right.

This top problem had come up about five oclock after this pretty white girl showed up at our suite at the Allegro Hotel toting a manila grocery baga fucking grocery bagfull of sequins, buttons, seamstress supplies, with the job of converting a T-shirt supplied by the event sponsor, a leading rum company, into some kind of Dennis-Rodman-fabulous top. Well the T-shirt hadnt made it, and somebody got on the phone trying to track it down while the pretty white girl pulled out this stack of hats. Id asked for a pinstripe. I try the thing on, and its sitting on top of my head like a donut perched on a bowling ball. The pretty white girl says something like, You need an extra large. No shitmost six-foot-eight guys would be wearing your larger sizes. I would have said something, but I was too busy checking out her piercings.

Shes got nose rings, lip rings, earrings, brow ringssilver metal sticking out everywhere. And shes got multicolored hair that looks like woven cotton candy, and shes wearing jeans, a T-shirt, a jacket, and a pair of platform shoes in some neon colorseems like it was lime greenthat looked like the gold ones I wore with the psychedelic Cleopatra outfit for my New Years Eve bash back in 1997. Long story short, this is a girl who would look good on my arm if I had a taste for pretty white girls.

Thats a joke.

So the pretty white girl is talking, and she says the folks who sent her over said that the rum companyT-shirts were too big that they would just hang on me. This came from people whod been in the same room with Dennis Rodman.

Let me give you an idea just how fucking dumb that is:

Were riding up to the suite in a packed elevator, and the guy behind methis six-foot-something reporter whos following me aroundis bitching that my butt is hitting him in the chest. He could just nod and bite a chunk out of my ass. So Dennis Rodman is tall. Theres more. Ive been lifting weights religiously for about 20 years now, and so Dennis Rodman is also wide. Theres not an extra-large T-shirt on the planet that would be hanging on my ass.

The pretty white girl is going on, something about mesh T-shirts, cut-outs so my tattoosfront, back, arms, and sidewill show, and Im counting the girls piercings, trying to figure out who has more, me or her, not that you can ever be sure with your clothes on and your legs crossed. Its looking like shes the winner.

Anyway, all this turns out to be a waste of time. The T-shirt never arrives, and I tell the pretty white girl to forget about the mesh shirt. So, left to my own wardrobe devices, its now 10:50 p.m. in Chicago; Im still late, still having a top problem. I stroll into the suite living room and ask DarrenDarren Prince, my friend and agent, the guy whos going to negotiate my way back in the NBA how the top looks. Now Darren is a great agent, but when it comes to fashion, hes just another clueless white guy.

Okay, whatever, he says.

The boy just dont get it.

Should I wear the shiny shirt? I ask.

Darren looks stumped. He checks out his watch. Its his job to get me places on time when hes not negotiating my way back into the NBA.

Fuck it. I throw the shiny black shirt on over the tied-off black shirt, and were out the door.

These days Dennis is content to ride around in your standard full-sized passenger car, but Dennis Rodman is still riding in style. And tonight not even a limo will cut it. At first, I think the thing is some new model of Bentley or Rolls. But this sleek silver car with copper highlights, which looks like an SUV on steroids, is something called a Maybach, an upscale Mercedes retailing for about $350,000, the driver tells us. The driver is upscale himself. Hes a Harvard graduatea basketball player no lesswho played in the CBA. An Ivy League graduate is driving around Dennis Rodman, a proud dropout from Southeastern Oklahoma State. How fucked up is that?

What I like about the Maybach is it has plenty of legroom, and for a guy who is all legs, that matters. Not that Ill be getting one any time soon. While Im doing all right, my days of swapping Bentleys when they get dusty are overat least for the moment.

So the driver sees a little open roadin downtown Chicago, mind youand decides to demonstrate the Maybachs power. He stomps on the cars zero-to-sixty-in-four-seconds gas, and it feels like falling backwards off the high dive. Damn! Ill take two.

Minutes later, we pull up to a club called Reserve located in a brick building just across the street from the ELelevated train. The professional autograph people are at the curb waving shit they want signed, but we bypass them as the security guy leads us around to the side. Were out of the car and up a set of steep, dimly lit stairs to the back entrance. Theres a five-minute wait while the security people get it together, then the door flies open to a wall of noise.

The place is fucking slammed, people shoulder to shoulder, pushing, shoving, screaming when they spot me. The dance music is ear-splitting. First time I saw a crowd like this, I thought, No way were getting through, but, like always, the security guys surround usme, my two bodyguards, one of the bodyguards girlfriends, her friend, and the reporter bringing up the rearthen make their move. Reaching out with horizontal arms held shoulder high, they keep us in, outsiders out, as we steadily snake our way through the crowd to a small stage where the DJ whips the crowd into a frenzy. Out of nowhere, four dancers appear and fall in line behind me.

The dancers are stenciled from the bikini line to the neck with body paintsome kind of rum-company motif that seems to be different for each girl. Theyve also got fake black tattoos running up and down their arms and legs. Then theres the pasties. Im not sure what theyre made oflooks like smoky plastic, just like at the strip club the night before. But if seeing open-air nipples is your thing, better stay out of Chicago.