13 Harrowing and Uplifting Revelations From Bunnie XO’s Memoir, ‘Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic’

Mindy, her stepmother whom her father married when he was 37 and she was 17, was a terribly destabilizing force. Between her mother abandoning her (they later reunite), Mindy and Mindy’s sister, who would make Bunnie watch porn and beat her, it felt like Bunnie didn’t stand a chance. But one of the biggest results was that a five-year old Bunnie resented having to wear a blue bridesmaid dress as a tiny girl.

“[Mindy] had picked the most hideous powder-blue bridesmaid dresses, the fluffy, frilly 1980s frocks from hell,” she writes. “I was so mad I was being forced to even be in this clown show that I ripped the shit out of my dress. I tore it to shreds. To this day, I can’t wear blue clothes or even blue eyeshadow because of that blue dream scene they chose for a wedding. Barf.” It’s a rare moment of unintentional levity.

Time and time again, Bunnie seems to tap into some almost otherworldly ability to survive, but it’s also her childhood and young adult girlfriends, many of whom she’s still close to, who helped her get through. “I always preferred having female friends over male,” she writes. “I like to think it’s because in a past life, I was a witch who belonged to a coven of powerful, spiritual women who scoffed at
the men who fell to their feet and cast spells on any who wronged them. I’ve just always felt safer in numbers with women as my allies.”

Of course, the reason she may feel safer around women is because time and time again, the men in her life desert her, abuse her and cause nothing but pain.

In one of the most shocking and painful revelations in a book filled with them, Bunnie believes she and her father are meeting Mindy and her now little stepsister at Disneyland and her excitement is palpable. But as she and her dad drive from Las Vegas to California, it becomes clear they aren’t going to rendezvous with Mickey and Minnie.

“I had a date with Disney. And something about the idea of our trip to the Happiest Place on Earth made me feel full of love—I was excited to spend the day with my dad and sister. Hell, maybe even my evil stepmom. ‘Where’s Mom and Baby Sis?’ I asked?  ‘They’ll meet up with us later,’ Dad said. He was being weird, but I didn’t want to push it,” she writes. “An hour or so passed before the car slowed down and Bill turned into a parking lot. By then, the sun was up, and I could read the sign. It was some kind of hospital. ‘Are we stopping here before we go to Disneyland?’ I asked, confused. ‘We aren’t. You are,’ he said flatly. Dad led me inside, and it took about two seconds to figure out where we were. A mental hospital. A shrink met us at the door—she’d been expecting me.”

Even worse, when the staff determines that Bunnie isn’t mentally ill — she’s just a rebellious teen — and they call her dad and tell him to come get her and he expresses that he doesn’t want to and asks if they can keep her.

It’s hard to imagine looking at the gorgeous voluptuous creature Bunnie is now, but while working at a strip club in her early 20s, she went to California to Playboy’s office for a test shoot and was turned down. “I still have that series of Polaroids. I look so young, tiny, fresh-faced and excited,” she writes. “I still have the letter they sent me saying I wasn’t a good fit, too.” She tried again when a scout came to Las Vegas but was told she would have to lose 15 pounds off her 120-pound frame.

During her stripper days and before she became a sex worker, porn scouts tried to convince her to get into making porn movies with Vivid, which was a major studio for adult movies. The idea was to turn her into the next Jenna Jameson, the famous porn star.  She took meetings, and was even anointed with the name, but everyone she met with gave her the ick.

“People in the porn industry who aren’t doing the performing give me the creeps — the directors and the producers who get to keep their clothes on and make money off performers always looked so damn dead-eyed to me. Just soulless,” she writes. “And let’s be real: Stripping and porn are close cousins, but they’re two different things. And once you step over the wall into porn, there’s no coming back.”

Perhaps no story illustrates just how dysfunctional Bunnie’s life was than the story about her marrying her boyfriend, Eric, mainly to try to get him out of a domestic violence charge. It’s unclear if he had actually hit her, but she and Eric were calling the cops on each other on the regular by then and they thought if they married it would keep him out of jail before they went to court.  

“We got married at the courthouse despite everyone telling us not to. He wore blue jeans and a t-shirt with his signature beer in hand, and I wore a tight black sundress with my tousled blond hair in an updo,” she writes. “We were poster children for toxic love. We thought our brilliant move would sway the judge. It actually just pissed him off.” They try to escape to Canada but got turned away at the border because of a pending harassment charge against Bunnie.

The second marriage came a few years later with someone who seemed like a love match, Paulie, until five years after they tied the know, it came unraveled. “I kicked Paulie out of the house in a blind fury during an argument and didn’t speak to him for days after. He ended up cheating on me with some crackhead, and even though he came to me and admitted it, it was all I needed.”

The marriage didn’t last, but at least she got her nickname out of it. In case you’re wondering, her birth name is Alisa.

“What I carry with me most came from [Paulie’s] mom — she was a beautiful woman with blond hair and blue eyes, just like her son,” she writes. “Around the time the family was getting indicted [on RICO charges], she started calling herself ‘Kittie.’ I never knew why — but maybe it was a way to be someone else for a little bit. One day, we were in the kitchen, acting like a happy little family, and she waved me over. ‘Come over here, honey,’ she said. ‘I absolutely love you. You’re my little bunny.’ And just like that, I became Bunnie. I added the XO later.”

If you’re looking to get to their relationship, just skip straight to page 175 when they meet at a Moonshine Bandits concert in 1975. Moonshine Bandits are a country rap duo, known for songs like “Red, White & Boozed” and “I’m a HellRazor.” Jelly Roll had opened for the Bandits and when he asked her if she wanted a drink, she was instantly smitten: “I was—dare I say—mesmerized?” she writes. “This man was not my type. But shaking his hand felt like every star in the sky collided. My soul recognized his. It was as if I’d been looking for him my entire life.”

Jelly (or J, as she calls him) and Bunnie had developed a good friendship, even so far as Bunnie helping pick out a bed for his then-young daughter, Bailee, but they had not taken their relationship to the next level. When she tried, he deferred.

“I stripped naked and called J into my room,” she writes. “He walked in, hammered, took one look at me, and just about hit the floor. He was so shy! I sauntered over and sat him down and then got onto his lap. I kissed him and started to take off his clothes. And that man absolutely would not bang me.”

Instead, Jelly wanted to talk about their long-term goals together and separate, which they did all night. And then they even pinky-swore on their dreams. “By seven a.m., we’d landed on the same page and sobered up. ‘Pinky promise we’re going to make these dreams come true?’ he asked, holding out his little finger. I hooked mine around his. ‘Pinky promise,’ I said.”

Shortly after they met, she went on the road with Jelly Roll, who was making his living as a rapper.  “‘Would you care if I saw clients on the road? I’d be on my own tour?’” she asked. “‘Not at all,’ he said, totally calm. ‘Whatever you gotta do, baby.’ ‘Okay,’ I said, shaping up a plan. ‘I can book clients in every city you’re in. It’ll be my own little Whore Tour.’”

He respected her hustle even more after she told him her rates: “I won’t even go to dinner with someone for less than a thousand dollars, and you can’t touch me for way more than that, at least five thousand…. From day one, he never once made me feel bad for what I had to do to survive. He’d listen wide-eyed as I’d tell him stories, crazy things I’ve seen, big piles of money I’d made, wild tales of my high-profile clients.”

Much has been made of their comments over the years about how they conduct their marriage.

Bunnie seemingly sets it straight: “When J and I first got together, I was a hooker who saw nothing but men cheating on their wives. Pastors, lawyers, celebrities — anyone with a penis was unfaithful. J was used to having multiple relationships at the same time with different women. So when we first got together, we both frowned upon monogamy,” she writes. “That’s not to say that we agreed to go fuck whoever we wanted whenever we wanted — to me that’s what an open relationship is, and we aren’t in one. But if a girl wanted to come home with us, we more than likely wouldn’t turn her down. Now, here comes the part that might surprise you. J has always told me that I can sleep with other men if I want to…. We both live by the motto that we aren’t each other’s possessions and consider our relationship to be free, not open. Free will. Which means: I’ll give you the world sexually, but don’t fucking lie to me or ever let me be the last to know something.”

When Jelly does cheat on her a few years into her marriage, she is shattered by his 10-month affair, in part because he lied about it.

Following the death and funeral of Jelly Roll’s best friend and also having quit drinking, Bunnie struggled with anxiety and, for the first time, unrelenting depression. “A few days later I woke up with a feeling of heaviness in my body — and a sadness like I’d never felt before,” she writes. “But sitting with my thoughts was so overwhelming, I made myself venture out of the house. I made an appointment to go tanning. It was worth a shot. As I lay in the tanning bed, I was overcome with this feeling of eternal sadness. It was like I’d died and knew I’d never be able to come back. Lying under those lights, I saw myself in a vision. I put the barrel of a gun in my mouth. I pulled the trigger.

“What I saw was so graphic and overwhelming that I jumped out of the tanning bed. I threw my clothes on as fast as I could. With tears in my eyes, the only thing I could think to do was drive to the nearest hospital. I knew that I was about to hurt myself — and if I didn’t go to the hospital, my life would be over.”

The “darkness” remained with Bunnie for a long time, and the effects linger to this day. “It was so bad that I had to make sure we didn’t have guns I could get to, because I was so scared of picking one up and blowing my brains out. To this day I still won’t allow guns in our house unless they’re carried by our security team.”

Bunnie and Jelly Roll have been very open about their desire to have children of their own to join the daughter and son he has from previous relationships. Next is her “baby mama era” through IVF. “J and I have a surrogate, the sweetest woman ever, and soon I’ll be starting my IVF stims,” she writes. “We have decided to use my own eggs with J’s sperm — and we are trying for twins. I’m so nervous, because I’ve waited this long to have kids with someone I knew would be a great father — and to be able to make sure they have the best life. Some people frown upon our decision to bring babies into this world at our age, and I could give a f—. We’re going to raise these babies in love and give them everything we were never given.”