Basement Files: Bad Kitty

When I first heard that Kitty Kelley wanted to do an unauthorized biography of me, Neil Wickstrom, I have to admit I was pretty flattered. I mean, I knew she'd done some serious hatchet jobs on Nancy Reagan, Jackie O and Frank Sinatra, but those were famous people who deserved a comeuppance. Here I was just an average American guy who'd led a pretty decent life, so, seriously, how bad could it be?

In fact, I didn't even know Kelley was working on my biography until my friend Mark called me one night last March. He said some woman had called him out of the blue, said she was writing a book about me and asked him about our friend Chris Neihoff's bachelor party.

"A book," I asked. "Seriously? About me? That's cool. So what did you tell her?"

"Well, I told her about me and Chris having to help you down the hallway of that Marriott and how you told us you couldn't make it and then you lurched into the concession alcove, lifted the lid on the ice machine and yakked all over the cubes."

And I had to smile, 'cause that's a classic Neil Wickstrom story. I wasn't crazy about it being in the book, mind you, but you gotta mix the bad in with the good. I understand that. You know, balance and all. And, really, it doesn't make me look all that bad. I mean, what dude doesn't have a criminal vomit story?

But then maybe a week later, I hear from Anica, my old girlfriend from Newport Beach. She says she told Kitty about the time she came home from work early and found me prancing around the house in her bra and panties (which I was doing in a funny Milton Berle kind of way, not a I-want-to-feel-frilly-and-feminine kind of way). And all the sudden I'm thinking, "Man, this isn't cool."

So I call Kitty Kelley up and I say, "Bitch, this isn't cool." And she says, "Well, I'm sorry, but that's the nature of an unauthorized biography." And I'm like, "Lady, I got a wife now. And kids." And she says, "I can only assure you it will be scrupulously fair and thoroughly fact-checked."

But when Neil Wickstrom: Darkness in the Soul (Random House) came out two weeks ago, I quickly discovered that, in Kitty Kelley's hands, fairness is rarely factual and the factual is never fair.

I guess the revelation that's garnered all the press attention is Kelley's charge that I had incestuous sex with my cousin Janet. Look, I understand that incest is a horrible thing, easily the most serious societal and sexual taboo. And I know a story like that is gonna grab the headlines. But facts alone, stripped of all context, don't tell the whole story. Not by a long shot.

For instance, does Kelley mention that Janet and I were little more than kids, barely in our early 30s then, and just beginning to explore our sexuality? Does she mention that Janet was drunk and lonely and said she'd had a crush on me since we were kids? No, because that wouldn't fit her pet theory that I'm some kind of morally bankrupt sexual predator.

Does she mention that I offered to pay for Janet's torn dress? Or that I walked Janet part of the way to her car? Again, no. Nothing that might make Neil Wickstrom look the slightest bit decent. Does she mention that Janet was way thinner then and looked nothing at all like the matronly Janet who appears in the picture in the middle of the book? Nope. That kind of exculpatory nuance is nowhere to be found in Darkness in the Soul.

Everywhere you turn in this book there are lies. On Page 132, she quotes my college "friend" Richard as saying I once confided to him that I'd loved being spanked as a child. That I craved the exquisite humiliation of being forced to strip down to my little white underwear. That I was drunk with the pleasure of powerlessness beneath my mom's strong hands and furious blows. And that even now, in college, I had a thing for big, strong women who would hold me down, tickle me until I ejaculated, and then mock my impotence.

Now I ask you, does that sound like something you'd say to a friend who you knew would turn right around and tell it to your unauthorized biographer? Come on, use your common sense. Nobody would do that. And yet people are believing this shit.

I mean, this chick just lies about everything. Kelley spends a whole chapter on the night I refused to eat lima beans and was forced to remain at the table until I'd cleaned my plate. It's Kelley's contention that I spread the beans around trying to create the spatial appearance of consumption. (True) That I fed five or six of the beans to my dog, Rex. (True) And that I ended up stuffing the rest of the beans in my pocket. (Also true)

So what's my gripe? Well, I see Kelley three nights later on Larry King saying she's got two sources for every allegation in the book. Okay, first of all, Rex has been dead 28 years and he wouldn't have ratted me out anyway. So that leaves my mom, who screamed at me from the laundry room and made me come look at the all the mealy lima beans smushed into the little holes of the washer tub. (And who later spanked me, which I didn't enjoy. At all.)

So who's the second source, Kitty? Hmmm? It's like this with all your books. The stories are true, but they're all lies.