The Last Black Unicorn(35)

But that’s not why I dated him. To be honest, I dated him for racist reasons.

I dated him because he was white. At least, I thought he was. I didn’t ask him, I just assumed.

I found out the truth when he went in for surgery on a torn rotator cuff. I went with him to the hospital to help him afterwards, because I’m a good girlfriend. When he was asleep, I wanted to see if we was healthy—you know, because we’d been hooking up without a condom for a while.

So I went through his charts, and right there, plain as day on his blood test, it said he’s African-American. I went up to the nurse, all confused.

Tiffany: “He’s not African-American. Why y’all got this on here? He came in here with me, I know him.”

Nurse: “No, that’s his chart. That’s what it says.”

I got sad, because I really thought I was dating a white man. When he woke up, I gently broached the subject: Tiffany: “You black?!?!”

Old Boyfriend: “I don’t normally talk about it.”

He didn’t know his mom. He was raised by his white, English father in London. When he asked his dad about his mom, his dad was like, “Your mom was mixed, but she was a harlot.” Some English people call a ho a harlot, I guess. So his dad was calling his mom a ho.

You know the sad thing? If he’d been white, I might have kept dating him.

Well, maybe. There were other problems. He was also old.

He kept asking me to have babies with him. That didn’t make sense. Here he was, sitting around with a messed up shoulder, already sixty, and he wants me to have a baby.

First off, he can’t hold a baby with that shoulder!

Second, I’m not about to have to change your diaper and the baby’s diaper. That’s too much work.

Third, he already had two grown kids. What if they have babies? Now I’m getting grandpa dick. I don’t want grandpa dick. I’m cool with baby daddy dick, but grandpa dick is no good.

That’s how I felt, anyway. But he was the best boyfriend I ever had. If he was like twenty years younger, it would have been cool.





Toxic Shock


This isn’t really a boyfriend story, but it kinda fits in this chapter, ’cause I wanted this doctor to be my boyfriend. Here’s how it went down.

When I was thirteen—right before my mom hit that baby with a two-by-four and I got put in foster care—I got toxic shock syndrome.

I got toxic shock because I was using a super-absorbent tampon and I probably should have just been using a junior-sized tampon. I didn’t even know how to really use it right. I had the applicator in there and everything.

I went through the school day, I got home from school, and then I took the tampon out. I was itching and scratching all over. I just felt so sick. I was telling my mom, and my mom was like: Mama: “She’s just faking. She not sick. She’s just faking.”

Grandma: “She got a fever though, she got a fever.”

Mama: “She all right. She going to be fine. Just take this Herbalife. That’s what you need to do, just take this Herbalife.”

To this day, I hate Herbalife because of this incident. She was making me swallow these pills, but soon as I swallowed them, I threw them up. Anything I drank—water, juice, whatever—I threw up.

Mama: “Oh, she acting. She acting. Stop acting like you sick. Stop acting like you got a problem. You just acting.”

Then she whipped me. That whipping hurt, but it also felt so good, because my body was so itchy. Every time the belt hit me, it was like a good scratch.

Then, when my grandma came over, I was completely dehydrated. I had scratched holes in my legs and my feet. You know when you run outside after the ice cream truck in the summertime and the bottom of your feet burn? That’s how it felt all over my whole body. My tongue had swollen up. I was so dehydrated from vomiting constantly.

My grandma was not having this:

Grandma: “She need to go to the hospital. I’m taking her to the hospital.”

Mama: “Don’t take her to the hospital. She don’t need to go to the hospital. She faking. She faking.”

Grandma: “This is why you gonna end up losing these kids.”

My grandma ignored her and took me to the hospital. Later on, they told me that if she hadn’t brought me in when she did, I would have died that night from dehydration alone.

I had toxic shock. That was my first time getting a Pap smear. I was thirteen. They had to break my hymen, all that shit. Two people stuck their finger in my butt. It was the worst.

But there was this sexy doctor that came in. I’ll never forget that doctor. He was black and really strong and he was scary handsome. He was pressing on my stomach and stuff.

Doctor: “Does that hurt?”

I would try to be all sexy and cute, and say it seductively.

Tiffany: “Owwww yes . . . it hurts. Owwww.”

It really did hurt, but I was trying to be cute about it. He left the room, but I wanted him to come back. I wanted him to come back, because I thought he was so handsome.

Tiffany: “I need the doctor. I need the doctor.”

Nurse: “What’s the matter?”

Tiffany: “It’s hurting. It’s hurting so much in my lower stomach and in my area. It’s hurting.”

Nurse: “You sure? Here, I can give you some pain medicine.”