The Last Black Unicorn(17)

Mama: “Tiffany, this is all your fault. I could have been at my house, counting my shit. Tiffany, this is your fault. This is your fucking fault.”

Tiffany: “Mama, it’s not my fault. Why did you spit on that poor man?”

Mama: “I fucking hate you, Tiffany. I fucking hate you. This is all your fault. All your fucking fault.”

They took her to the hospital. They ran her file and stuff.

Police: “Oh, she’s a mental patient.”

Tiffany: “She’s not a criminal. I’ve been telling you this for an hour!”

Now remember, my lip was bleeding. My eyes were swollen, my ribs were hurting, and everything.

Police: “Who did that to you?”

Tiffany: “My mom did, but no, I do not want to press charges. I just want her to get help. She just needs help. She needs the right doctors.”

She went into a mental institution then. She has been in and out, ever since.





Titus the Boyfriend


I’ve had some messed up relationships, but none were more fucked up than my time with Titus.

I met him in 2001, when I was coming back to LA from Daytona Beach. My friend Shamona and I had gone to the Black College Reunion, which was the new name for Freaknik (if you’re young, you probably don’t know what Freaknik is, and I’m not even sure if you can YouTube that shit, it was that long ago. So go ask some old person, and they’ll tell you all about it).

I was waiting at the gate to board, and I looked at this guy who was watching a video with his homeboy. They had one of them old school handheld video cameras (this was before iPhones), and they were hunched together watching the tiny screen. I looked over their shoulders to watch, too.

The video was basically a black Girls Gone Wild. It was chicks shaking they asses and twerking, and the guys were smacking asses and grabbing booties, and all this stuff.

Tiffany: “Ooh, you guys had a good time, huh? Y’all had a blast.”

They whipped around, looking scared, like they been caught . . . and then we all started laughing.

Now, let me pause real quick, and give you some background. Black College Reunion was like when all the salmon go upstream to spawn, and they squirting mating juices everywhere—that was basically Black College Reunion. Except with more DMX playing in the background.

But me and my friend Shamona, we thought we were better than that. We were the girls there who acted real uppity and classy. When dudes tried to talk about “Shake that ass!” we’d be like, “Ugh! Buy us drinks!” We were real snobby, talking about how we didn’t do that stuff . . . but of course we went to Black College Reunion knowing what it was.

So we weren’t any different, we just fooled ourselves.

I talked with them for a while, and as we were boarding, Titus saw me use my employee pass.

Titus: “Oh, you work for that airline?”

Tiffany: “Yeah, I work for them.”

Titus: “Oh, that’s crazy, I work for an airline too. Where you work at?”

Tiffany: “LAX.”

Titus: “I work at LAX, too!”

Tiffany: “That’s cool.”

Titus: “Hey, you smoke weed?”

Tiffany: “No, I do not smoke weed. I don’t do stuff like that.”

Titus: “Oh . . . well, I do.”

Tiffany: “How you smoking weed and working for the airline? They drug test me.”

Titus: “There’s ways to get around that.”

That exchange basically sums up Titus. Sneaky and small-time.

? ? ?

Anyway, we talked all the way to LA. I remember in that first conversation, all the red flags were there. The dude lived with his mama, even though he was twenty-one and had a job! I should have run, but I was twenty and dumb.

We exchanged numbers, and we started talking and stuff. Just like friends or whatever. But basically, nothing was happening at all. So one day, I just laid it out.

Tiffany: “Look, I’m kinda talking to somebody. If you’re not trying to be, like, my man, ain’t really no reason for us to even be hanging out or whatever.”

Titus: “What? We ain’t even kissed or nothing!”

Tiffany: “Yeah, but I’m just saying. If you’re trying to be my man, then you need to let me know, because I kinda like somebody.”

And so then, he stepped it up a notch and took me on dates, and we started making out and shit. He introduced me to his mom, his sisters, the granny, everybody. I liked everybody, and they liked me. I introduced him to my siblings.

So we started being serious and being together all the time. We eventually got our work schedules matched up, so we’d be at work at the same time. Then we’d leave, we’d go places, and we basically did everything together.

He’d always be everywhere I went. He was around me so much, my cousins starting calling him “Tag-along.” Other than that nickname, there ain’t even anything funny or interesting to write about the first eight months of our relationship. It was a normal, early twenties relationship.

But then he met a pimp, and everything changed.

I can’t remember his name, but he looked exactly like the rapper Suga Free. This pimp, Fake Suga Free, had two hoes. I remember the girls, too. They was nasty.

After Titus started hanging around him, one day we got to talking.