It's almost 4am and I can't sleep. Not even dozing off.
Today a friend of mine was pilloried in the press for domestic violence. Coupled with a picture of his wife with a bruise, he was murdered on social media.
I watched it happen and I didn't say a fucking word.
Even though I knew it was bullshit.
We'd watched it build like this since before they were married. We'd watched her manipulate and fuck with him for years.
We didn't say a word. To each other yes, but never to him.
When your friend is in an awful, abusive relationship - man or woman - and you risk weighing in that their counterpart is a demon - you know the odds are they will jump right back into the fire and then dump you from their life for being honest.
Most of us have been on one or both sides of this coin. Choosing to be blinded,or removing the people who have clearer eyes that can guide you.
The fact that Hollywood and the entertainment industry at large - fuck, society as a whole - turns a blind eye to domestic violence is abhorrent.
But the tides have turned in such a way that the mere allegation that such a crime has occurred leaves the person accused as guilty without due process.
Bingo and I have known Johnny Depp for a few years now. We have watched Amber Heard fuck with him at his weakest - or watched him at his weakest from being fucked with - for the entire time we've known him.
And we didn't say shit.
Because he's Johnny Depp.
And we didn't want to be thrown out of the circle for saying that The Emperor was being Stripped of His Clothes.
It isn't my place to name people who agreed with us but I couldn't name one person closely associated with him that didn't feel the same.
But nobody said shit to his face.
Bingo and I were at Johnny's house for most of that Saturday until just before the alleged assault. We assumed initially that his dour mood was because of his Mother's death the day before. But he opened up in the most vulnerable of ways that it was not only his mother but that Amber was now going to leave him, threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn't agree to her terms. Blackmail is how I would imagine other people might put it, including the manner in which he is now being vilified.
We stopped not saying shit.
Bingo and I together and then separately told him how much we were aware of this manipulative asshole, how his closest circle had all agreed on this since the day we met and that we all feared that telling him outright might alienate us all.
Love makes you do funny things.
I told him the truth and I half-expected to be asked to leave.
But I wasn't seeing Johnny Depp. I saw a naked Emperor. And we told him to get dressed.
Other people came in and out during the afternoon, all verifying that we'd been cowardly, saying things only behind his back for so long.
He seemed dumbstruck that nobody had ever come clean about this and he thanked everyone for being honest.
He still pronounced his love for Amber but was presciently aware that she was going to pull off some kind of ruse to fuck him over.
He hadn't slept in days with anxiety.
You'd call him a paranoid if you didn't know better.
But he knew better and he was right.
As he finally felt like he could sleep, we left him. From what we now read in the news, later that night the police were called to his house for a domestic dispute. Finding no criminal act had occurred and no signs of physical abuse, the police left.
Everything Johnny had told us that she'd been threatening had actually come to be.
It blew up in the news, raced through the internet like a plague and blew up on Twitter like it was the McMartin Child Abuse Scandal. People are swarming with torches on social media.
I watched it all happen ahead of time and I watched it come to fruition today. And I haven't been able to sleep again because I didn't say shit to defend him.
Why?
Because I felt like in defending him I would just come across as a sycophant trying to attach myself to a sensationalized story in order to further my career. A latter-day Kato Kaelin. And now as the sun is coming up, I realized not saying shit to defend him is a far worse crime of ego; to leave a friend hanging so you don't look like a suck-up.
I - and the "we" that were there - aren't suck-ups or apologists. We were witnesses.
I didn't jump into the fray because I was weak; it was because I didn’t want to look like a name-dropper.
I'll name-drop now. Johnny Depp is my friend.
But any one of my friends will tell you I always call them out on bullshit. Abusing women is bullshit. Johnny doesn't abuse anyone. And he told me that day ahead of time that she'd pull some kind of shit like this.
Johnny Depp got used, manipulated, set-up and made to look like an asshole. And he saw it coming and didn't or couldn't do anything to stop it.
He may never talk to me again for saying it but I'd never forgive myself for not coming to his defense out of fear or ego.
I stand up for my friends and I tell the fucking truth.
