Tag Archives: BDSM

book reviews

Repost: A review of Rock Monster: My Life With Joe Walsh, by Kristin Casey

Here’s another repost, this one about a book written by Kristin Casey, former stripper, current counselor, and rock star Joe Walsh’s ex girlfriend. It appears as/is, the way I originally posted it on May 8, 2018.

A couple of weeks ago, I was enjoying a lazy afternoon and happened to read an article on the Daily News about rock star Joe Walsh’s proclivities toward BDSM.  I probably shouldn’t have been too shocked about Walsh’s love for kink.  He’s always been drawn to life in the fast lane.  Walsh is also a notorious recovering addict and alcoholic and has been so for as long as I’ve known about him. 

I grew up listening to Joe Walsh’s music, both as an Eagles’ fan and as a Walsh fan.  The man can play guitar like no other.  He also has a wry, offbeat sense of humor that has always been appealing to me.  However, it’s not a secret that he used to party really hard.  Now, at age 70, Walsh is on his fifth marriage, having married Marjorie Bach in 2008 (sister of Barbara Bach, who is married to Ringo Starr).

In the late 1980s, Walsh was in his early 40s and freshly divorced from his third wife, Juanita Boyer (Jody).  He met Kristin Casey, former stripper turned author, at the Radisson Hotel in Austin, Texas.  At the time, Casey was about 20 years old and a college dropout.  Walsh had just done the “moonwalk” and snorted some cocaine.  Casey, in her infinite wisdom and tender years, determined that Walsh was the man she was gonna marry someday. 

Casey is not among the five women who have married Joe Walsh.  However, she did spend several years as his girlfriend, snorting cocaine, smoking crack, traipsing around the country and occasionally abroad, following Walsh in his rock star life.  She chronicles her life with him in her new book, Rock Monster: My Life With Joe Walsh.

Ordinarily, I might have put this review on my music blog.  I felt that my review of Casey’s book should go on this blog, though, because her book is not just about the life of a rock star’s girlfriend.  Rock Monster actually made me think and feel some things.  I think this review of the book deserves the negligibly larger audience it will get on my main blog. 

First off, Kristin Casey is a good writer.  She’s only a little bit older than I am, so I can relate to how things were in the late 80s and early 90s.  She was in her early 20s then, but I was a teenager.  All three of my sisters are older than Casey is; she could have been my sister had the stars aligned differently.  On some level, I feel a slight kinship to Kristin Casey.  We have a few things in common.  Of course, I was not blessed with a body that any man would want to see stripped in public. 

Casey, apparently, was a great exotic dancer back in the day and, based on her pictures, I can see that she was also very pretty.  It’s also plain to me that Casey is intelligent.  Her writing is mostly very solid, although I did notice that she misspelled Taylor Dayne’s name.  I hesitate to judge her too harshly for that.  I haven’t thought of Dayne myself in many years, although she was quite popular in the late 80s. 

Casey explains that she grew up with a very strict and disapproving Catholic mother, who went to church all the time and never seemed satisfied with her daughter’s achievements.  From a young age, Casey rebelled against her mother’s strict religious beliefs.  I don’t know why, but it seems like a lot of young Catholic women do this.  I can think of a couple of other memoirs I read of beautiful young women who were raised in strict Catholic households and turned to stripping.  Here’s just one review I wrote about a book written by former Catholic girl gone wild.  I know there have been others, although I’m not going to take the time to look for them right now.

Growing up, Kristin Casey was smart and liked to write.  As a youngster, she dreamt of writing books, and even tried her hand at a writing contest.  Unfortunately, she was terrified of failure and needed a lot of reassurance.  Her parents, particularly her mother, reportedly didn’t supply her with the attention or regard she needed.  She also failed to find any mentors in other places.  Consequently, by the time she was about to finish high school, she had become an alcoholic.  It would be easy for me to criticize Casey for “blaming her parents”, but actually, she seems to own her part of why she turned to stripping and drugs instead of exploring her dreams of being a writer.  She flat out admits that she’s not a resilient person; or, at least she wasn’t when she was much younger than she is now.

So there she was, 20 years old, living in Austin, a college dropout who was a knockout.  She and Joe Walsh started dating and very quickly, she became aware of Walsh’s exotic tastes, both in drugs and sex.  Although Casey was no stranger to exotic sex herself, Walsh’s love for BDSM was a new experience for her and something she apparently didn’t enjoy very much.  She doesn’t write too much about her bondage sessions with Walsh.  I get the sense that she was bored by BDSM and basically tolerated it for Walsh’s sake.

What Casey did enjoy was snorting cocaine, and she and Joe Walsh snorted a whole lot of cocaine.  In fact, one time they snorted some bad stuff that pretty much destroyed Casey’s nasal septum.  A doctor told her that if she wasn’t careful, her nose would be destroyed.  Casey’s solution was to attempt to use the substance in new ways, including rectally (which evidently didn’t go well).  She also started using crack.  At one point, she was so desperate for the stuff that she pawned a $1000 bracelet Walsh gave her for $15 so she could get a rock.

Meanwhile, Walsh, whose career had slowed somewhat since the Eagles first broke up in 1980, was still touring with other bands.  Sometimes Casey tagged along with Walsh, hanging out with the likes of Dr. John, Clarence Clemons, Billy Preston, Dave Edmunds and Ringo Starr.  Sometimes, she stayed home and waited for him.  One time, Walsh judged a Miss USA pageant and Casey later saw him on TV, getting out of a limo with one of the contestants.  He cheated on her and, though he had invited her to live with him, never really allowed her to make their house feel like her home.  She basically always knew that he could ditch her without a second thought if he wanted to, so she was caught in a situation where she had to look the other way when he stepped out.

Casey also includes some fun snippets about the rock stars and actors she met via Joe Walsh.  I particularly enjoyed her take on Stevie Nicks, who also dated Walsh back in the day.  I was a little shocked and saddened by a comment Casey made about Bonnie Raitt, whose music thrills me.  Apparently, Bonnie can be catty when she wants to be… but then, can’t we all?  As a music lover, I enjoyed reading about some of the people I can only dream of encountering.  On the other hand, I also think it’s sad that Casey was basically fucked up the whole time she was living that lifestyle.

Seriously…  Casey had so much going for her.  I think it’s a shame that she fell into serious drug abuse to the point at which she almost destroyed her nose.  I give Casey credit, though, because she isn’t defensive about her drug abuse.  She even writes about how Joe Walsh even tried to help her launch a writing career.  She was having trouble coming up with an idea of what to write about, so Joe offered to let her write a book about him.  The plan was for her to record him telling his stories and answering questions about his life.  Sadly, cocaine ruined that opportunity for her.  She was too blitzed to interview him coherently. 

Walsh did ask Casey to marry him.  In fact, Lionel Richie even offered to perform the ceremony.  However, as a condition of their marriage, Walsh wanted Casey to go to rehab.  She was unable to get clean.  You know your drug addiction is super bad when Joe Walsh wants you to get rehab! 

Fortunately, Casey’s story has a relatively happy ending.  Although she and Joe Walsh did not get married and live happily ever after, Casey did finally manage to get cleaned up.  She and Walsh briefly got back together after they both got sober, though they realized their relationship couldn’t work.  Casey makes it sound like they parted amicably.  And Casey did finally manage to write her book.  She now works as an “intimacy coach” and drug counselor.

Overall, I liked Rock Monster.  I think I’d give it at least four out of five stars.  I commend Casey for surviving her time with a rock star and being able to share her story with curious Walsh fans like me.  I also appreciated that Casey didn’t leave me thinking Walsh is a total asshole, even though he sometimes acted like one (but in fairness, so did she– cocaine does that to a person).  Her account seems very fair minded to me, especially given how crazy things were when she and Walsh were together.  It would be easy for her to be bitter and blaming everything on other people.  I’m happy to report that Casey doesn’t do that.  It sounds like she’s finally become resilient after all.   

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memories

Safewords…

It’s Friday, and I’m in the mood to overshare again. Well… maybe not overshare so much as remind everyone that we all have value and purpose, and sometimes you never realize what your true value is. You just never know all of whom you’ll touch in this life. And this particular anecdote is big on touching… kind of like this famous song by Divinyls.

Truth be told, I was never a fan of this song, but it fits with today’s lurid topic…

Picture it. It’s August 1999. I have just arrived at graduate school in Columbia, South Carolina. I don’t own a computer. Within weeks of my arrival on campus, it becomes very clear that I need a computer. I go to the computer lab in the library (I think) and order one from Gateway… or was it a Gateway computer from Amazon? Honestly, I don’t remember anything other than the fact that it was an Intel Celeron that came with a printer and cost $999, which was a fortune to me at the time. It definitely was a Gateway computer. Gateway was big at the time.

I was 27 years old and had zero sex life whatsoever. My computer arrived. I unpacked it and set it up. Before you know it, I was online. I lived alone in my apartment and didn’t have to worry about anyone looking over my shoulder. Remember… no sex life, and I was bored, lonely, and overwhelmed by the prospect of three long years studying for degrees I hoped would lead to a career more interesting than waiting tables. And I was nearing my sexual peak. Or, so the experts tell us I should have been. It wasn’t long before I started to explore some of the more chocolate areas of the Internet.

I’m not really ashamed about this now, especially considering where my explorations ultimately led me. At the time, it was kind of embarrassing and exciting all at once, especially when I realized I could connect with other people. I have alway loved reading, researching, and exploring subjects that fascinate me. In 1999, I was a little obsessed with sex– and I don’t mean plain old vanilla sex, either.

It was during this time when I stumbled across a Web site run by a guy named Tammad Rimilia. Tammad dubbed himself the “Gentleman Barbarian” and he was an expert in IT (information technology, that is). He was also a BDSM enthusiast.

Tammad made his Web site on Excite.com (an early popular search engine) and it included a number of essays, articles, and stories about BDSM. I also remember that he’d put in a link that read, “If you’re under 18, please go somewhere more exciting.” You clicked the link, and it would take you to the Excite landing page. Yes… a little corny, but kind of cute, too. He also had a little recording of his welcome, so a person could hear his voice.

As a young woman, I had done some reading about the subject and had read a lot of Nancy Friday’s books. I remember very clearly buying My Secret Garden at Waldenbooks and being terribly embarrassed about it, even though that book is about as old as I am and is very tame by today’s standards. The Internet was something different, though. For the first time ever, I had a whole world of information at my fingertips. Pretty soon, I was knee deep in new terminology about BDSM, learning terms like “Domme”, “Dom”, “sub”, “switch”, “safe, sane, and consensual”, and “safewords”.

Tammad Rimilia came across as a very friendly guy who would never hurt anyone. He wrote professional grade articles about the BDSM lifestyle, as well as goofy short stories about bondage that were more silly than scary. He explained his name Tammad was of Nordic origin and that he was seeking someone to share his interests with him, although it was plain to see that he and I could never be a match. For one thing, he was significantly older than I am and lived in a different part of the country. For another thing, he was a neat freak. I got the sense that it would be like a cat person trying to be with a dog person.

I probably read Tammad’s goofy stories more than his articles about Japanese rope bondage. I was more interested in escaping the rigors of school than learning how to safely and properly bind someone in an intricate rope harness. Actually, that kind of thing isn’t interesting to me, anyway– maybe if I were skinny and more of a submissive type. Still, he put kind of a friendly, harmless face on what was always a taboo subject for me. He made it seem less sinful and dirty, and more about fun. In a strange way, he vastly improved my sex life without ever having known me personally. He also helped give me the courage to share my own writing online. After all, if I could read and enjoy his cornball stories about BDSM (and they really were cringeworthy in an entertaining way), I could certainly write stuff that people might like.

Tammad was an anonymous guy who had once shared a picture of himself from the early 80s in a barbarian costume. I “met” Bill a few weeks after I discovered Tammad Rimilia. It turned out we were compatible, in all of the ways it matters. Besides being super easy to talk to and very attractive to me, he also liked my fiction. Although we instantly had chemistry, we were meeting through the computer and not in the vanilla areas of the Internet. It took awhile before I felt comfortable enough to meet Bill offline. But you can see where it led me twenty years later… I could thank a lot of anonymous people for helping me get together with Bill, but I would probably start with Tammad Rimilia. His was probably the first presence I encountered from the “less vanilla” part of the Internet.

I wish I could thank Tammad now for putting a friendly face on that world… which I’ve kind of left since those days. Unfortunately, Tammad died in a car accident on November 20, 2000. I remember the day I got the news. I was in my second year of grad school, studying first year social work; the year previous, I had done public health. The semester was about to end and we were preparing for exams. It was also my niece’s 8th birthday. Someone had posted on Tammad’s site that he had passed away at just 42 years of age. I was shocked and, to be honest, kind of sad. I’d never even met the guy, yet his life made a difference to me. He was so young to die and, I know, maybe people had been touched by him the way I had. It was even stranger to think I’d never met this guy or even interacted with him, yet here I was sad about his death… Here I was even knowing about his death. The Internet has, in some ways, made the world a little smaller.

Last night, Tammad’s memory popped into my head. I hadn’t thought about him in ages. I went looking to see if he still had a presence online, even though he’s been dead for going on 19 years. His site has been taken down, although I know some of his friends maintained it for awhile. Someone else has preserved some of his writings. I found myself reading, of all things, his article about how to insert a butt plug. I have never used one myself– my exploration of BDSM is really just that, and purely academic. However, I would imagine that if one were interested in learning how to properly use such a device, Tammad’s article would really be handy. I would much rather read clear, concise instructions written by a safe, sane, slightly goofy guy like Tammad, than have some crazy, sex-obsessed jackass shove one into me and tell me to shut up before he gives me something to cry about.

Anyway… it occurred to me that whenever you put something out there for public consumption, you never know how it will come across. I have heard from some people who don’t like what I have to say… but I’ve also heard from many more people who love my blogs. Whenever I think about how I fell into this Overeducated Housewife lifestyle instead of a career, and lament that I won’t be passing on any genes when I die, I remember that some people might remember me by these random posts. Maybe even nineteen years after I’m dead, someone will remember something I wrote or recorded. Who knows?

In the early days of the Internet, people used to refer to offline as “real life”. I don’t really hear it described like that anymore. Online is becoming “real life”, as real as anything offline, anyway. I met my husband online at a time when such a meeting was still considered weird and “novel”. Had it not been for the World Wide Web, I might be a profoundly bitter spinster living in the Deep South. I’m still kind of bitter and perhaps somewhat unfulfilled, but at least I’m not living alone, watching Divinyls on VH1, and reading smut to make the time pass. Thanks to Tammad for that.

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