The Last Black Unicorn(39)

Tiffany: “When are you coming to see me?”

Ex-Husband: “I’ll come see you right now.”

Tiffany: “Yeah, right. You ain’t coming to see me.”

We got off the phone, and I went back to drinking and didn’t think nothing of it. I woke up at five in the morning to start getting ready for the movie. I was hungover and getting ready to go to set. I was braiding my hair in these little crackhead braids, so I could play this drug addict in the movie. I got a knock on my door. I thought, I didn’t order no food.

I opened the door, and there was a chubby, plain-looking guy in a polo shirt, just staring at me like he was expecting me to say something.

Tiffany: “Who are you?”

Ex-Husband: “It’s me. It’s Ex-Husband.”

Tiffany: “How do you know what room I’m in? How did you know to come here?”

Ex-Husband: “I just looked you up. It’s not hard. I called the front desk, they said what room you’re in. Here I am.”

That motherfucker drove seven hours. He drove all the way from Atlanta for me. And all I’m thinking to myself is, This motherfucker is ugly. He’s fat. He is not hot, and he is just not very attractive.

Later, he said the same thing to me. He said, “When I first saw you at the door, I was thinking, This bitch has got skinny. She looks like she on drugs. She wore the fuck out. I’m not feeling this at all.”

Yeah, but I was TRYING to dress like a crackhead, for the movie. He wasn’t trying to be fat and ugly, he just was.

Tiffany: “Well, you can stay in the living room part. You can sleep on the couch. It folds out, if you want to go to sleep. I’m about to go to work.”

I went to work, came back to the room. He’d cleaned up the room, bought flowers and stuff. He took me out to a really nice restaurant. The next day, he took me shopping.

He didn’t try to fuck me, he didn’t try to kiss me or nothing. So I started thinking he was gay, because why you buying me stuff, and taking me to nice restaurants, and not trying to fuck me?

Then he went back to Georgia. The next weekend, I drunk-dialed him, and he showed right back up the next day, and he took me out again. That’s when Harry Potter was hot, so I got him to buy me the whole Harry Potter book series. I got him to buy me some stuff from Victoria’s Secret. I was like, If he’s gay, he can just buy me everything. Fuck it.

I don’t mind hanging out with gay dudes. I just really thought he was gay. Then the following weekend, it was his birthday.

Ex-Husband: “I’m going to fly you to Atlanta so you can see my house.”

Tiffany: “I don’t need to see your house. I’m not going to care about your house.”

Ex-Husband: “No, I’m going to fly you Sunday. It’s my birthday.”

He flew me to Atlanta, and that was the first time a man flew me somewhere, so I was feeling super-special, even if he was gay.

At this point, I’d been talking to him seriously for a few weeks, and he’d been buying me stuff and being so nice and flying me places and he even found my daddy. Yeah, he wasn’t all that hot, but damn—no man had ever been this good to me.

After he picked me up from the airport, we pulled up to his house. In my little pea-brain, I thought this was the most beautiful house in the whole wide fucking world. I was telling myself, I don’t care if he is gay, I am fucking the shit out of him. He’s going to get the business. I don’t care if he’s gay and ugly and fat, I’m going to fuck him.

So I did fuck him, and he wasn’t gay. It was like my soul had left my body. It was like, This is your husband, girl. You need to lock this in. He knows what he’s doing. He was all cool.

Then when we were done, I was like:

Tiffany: “So where my ring at? Ain’t you supposed to be giving me a ring or something?”

Ex-Husband: “What? You really want to get married? We can do that. We can do that shit today.”

Tiffany: “Yeah, I want to get married. I want my ring. It better be pretty and stuff, too.”

That day, he drove me up to Virginia to meet my dad. I met my dad in person, and he filmed all that. After I met my dad, we drove back down to Atlanta.

Don’t get me wrong—there were signs of craziness during all of this, but I didn’t think much of it. I know what you’re thinking, MORE signs of craziness? As in, more than what you’ve told me?

Yeah, there were. This is when I confirmed that he wasn’t really filming his vacation on that cruise ship. He was just filming me. I only got to see the cruise video one time, but yeah, it was real stalkerish. It’s creepy. He was hiding the camera under a jacket, following me around. The camera was pointed at my booty a lot. It was crazy.

But you gotta understand my mind at the time. I’m thinking this is God’s work. Like this is exactly what I asked God for, even if he is not all that physically attractive, I can live without that. What’s important is his soul, and to me, his soul seemed like it cared about and cherished me a lot.

After that, I flew back to California. He told me:

Ex-Husband: “I’m going to come to California, and we’re going to have the best—you’re gonna have the best life, the best everything.”

The next week, he came out to LA, and he brought me a Dodge Charger.

Ex-Husband: “You can’t be driving in no Geo Metro, you drive this.”