فصل 10

10

The Ex-Husband

I just got to warn you straight up: this story is bad.

And not bad in a funny way, like the Roscoe story, or the Titus story. Like, this is just flat-out bad. This story is probably going to frustrate you. It might even get you angry.

I almost did not put this in the book. I mean, there isn’t much here that’s funny, to be honest. But I ended up putting it in, because of three reasons:

1. It’s the hard truth about my life. I will always tell the truth, even when it’s not fun.

2. I hope some young girls can learn from my mistakes and avoid what I went through.

3. I believe everything happens for a reason, and as bad as this was, I believe it’s made me better and helped me get where I am.

With that in mind, lemme tell you about my experience with marriage, domestic violence, and self-delusion.

It all started when I went on that cruise with Titus. The one where he brought $50 for the whole cruise? That one.

On the plane, I met this guy who was a cop. I ain’t even going to say his real name, it don’t matter. I’ll just call him Ex-Husband. Me and Ex-Husband talked for a while, and he seemed nice. It turned out he was going to the same cruise I was, and he wanted to take a cab with me there.

But I had Titus, and I wasn’t all that into this guy. But he was a policeman, and I thought, This will be a good friend to have. It’s always good to have police friends, especially black police, because there aren’t a lot of them.

You already read about all the nonsense that went on with Titus. Well, I left some details out of that story, because I knew I was going to tell them here. Part of the reason Titus was so upset was because of Ex-Husband.

This dude was straight following me around the cruise the whole time. Like everywhere I was at, he was there. And he always had a video camera filming everything. Like I was singing karaoke, he was filming that. I would be in like a shuffleboard contest, he’s filming that. Ping-Pong, he was filming that. We was swimming in the pool, me and my boyfriend, like hugging on each other, he’s filming that.

Titus got in an argument with me, started yelling and cursing at me, because this man was following me around with a camera.

Titus: “Are you fucking this guy? Why is this guy following you everywhere with the goddam camera? Who the fuck is this?”

I think Ex-Husband even got that on camera. He filmed the argument!

Now, obviously he wasn’t standing there filming us like a camera crew would do. That would have been really weird. I wasn’t even positive he was filming us, he was sneaky about it. He was always around with his boy and their camera, but I thought maybe he was just filming his vacation. This was back when people did that shit. Everybody was walking around with cameras. Everybody was filming everything. In 2001, that shit was normal.

It all came to a head when I was in the cruise talent show. I was singing James Brown’s “Sex Machine,” and man, I was into it. I was kinda drunk, so I was gettin’ sexy, yelling into the mic, all of that. The crowd loved it.

Titus was in the crowd, and I guess he was getting all anxious about me being sexy, so he runs up to me and throws a jacket around my shoulders, like James Brown.

Then Ex-Husband runs up and throws his boxers and a key to his cabin on the stage. I am serious, the dude took his boxers off somehow, and then threw them onstage.

Well, that changed the whole dynamic.

Titus was hella mad. But he wasn’t even man enough to yell at Ex-Husband. He just yelled at me!

Titus: “You fucking him?”

Tiffany: “I didn’t even ask that man to do any of that, he just did it himself!”

Titus: “You fucking him, ain’t you? Where you fucking him at?”

Tiffany: “Why don’t you go ask him?”

Now mind you, Titus came on the boat with $50, so he’s highly intimidated. Basically, he’s intimidated by Ex-Husband because the dude has a job. And like, money from that job.

Then everywhere we went, Ex-Husband was always trying to do stuff for me. Trying to buy me a drink in the casino. Trying to buy me stuff at the port.

Then Ex-Husband came up to me at the end of the cruise, with Titus standing right there:

Ex-Husband: “Maybe we can exchange numbers or something. I live in Georgia, but you know, I’ll call you.”

Then Titus be over here talking shit. TO ME! He pulled me aside, yelling at me.

Tiffany: “Why you bitching at me? You don’t even say, ‘Hey man, that’s my girl.’ Or whatever, and you want to cuss me out, like yelling at me?”

Titus: “No, you talk to this motherfucker. I’ve been avoiding them, you tell them. That’s your job.”

Tiffany: “Fuck you. You acting like a bitch.”

I pulled away and gave the dude my number. Titus was pissed off, but you know what, I was pretty much done with him.

Besides, he lived in Georgia. I wasn’t never going to see this dude, anyway. I gave him my number mainly because Titus was being such a pussy. We ended up talking on the phone maybe once a month or so. One day I was just like, “Man, you’re old.” He was like thirty-two. I was like, “You’re too old for me,” and I hung up.

I ended up changing my number, and I moved and all this stuff, and I didn’t even think about him enough to update him. So then he couldn’t find me, and I forgot about him mostly.

Five years later, he calls me up out of nowhere. I remembered who he was immediately. We talked for a second, but I was curious how he found me.

Ex-Husband: “Tiffany, I been looking for you for five years. I’m so excited to talk to you again.”

Tiffany: “Well if you wanted to talk to me, why didn’t you look me up sooner?”

Ex-Husband: “I couldn’t spell your last name. Then I saw you on Bill Bellamy’s Who’s Got Jokes? and I saw I was spelling your name wrong.”

Tiffany: “Yeah, but my number ain’t listed.”

Ex-Husband: “Yeah, I know. I got your phone number from a dude I know who works at Sprint. I’m police, that’s easy.”

After he told me everything he did to find me, I asked him:

Tiffany: “If you could find me, maybe you could find my dad?”

Ex-Husband: “Oh, I’ll find your daddy for you, but it’s going to cost you.”

Tiffany: “I’ll pay you whatever you want. Whatever you want, I’ll pay you.”

In my mind, I’m thinking I’ll give him a couple hundred dollars, maybe a couple of dates or something. That’s it. Then he’s like:

Ex-Husband: “Well, I want you to marry me.”

I just start busting up laughing, but he was serious.

Ex-Husband: “Tiffany, I’m telling you, I want you to marry me. I’ve been watching this video I found, you know, when we was on the boat. Every time I’m sad, I watch you. You make me happy. I don’t even really know you, but you’ve made me happy over the years. When I’ve had arguments with my girlfriends, I put in our little cruise video, and it just, you know, it makes me happy. I know we weren’t on the cruise together, but you were my whole cruise.”

I thought it was so cute, but I still wanted to see if he was serious.

Tiffany: “Well, I don’t know. If you find my dad, then maybe we could talk about that.”

Ex-Husband: “I’m going to find your dad.”

I know what you’re saying right now, because it’s what everyone says at this point in the story:

“That didn’t creep you out?”

No motherfucker, it did not!

Now you’re probably asking, “Why not?”

That’s how you know I’m crazy. Because I literally thought that this call was a sign from God. I thought God had answered my prayers. Just two months before, I was praying to God every day:

“Please send me a man that love me. That care about me. That want to see me flourish. That want to just be there for me, and support me, and do what I want to do. Like just really want me to be happy. Please send me somebody like that.”

Then boom, I get this phone call. I was like, What? Damn God, you work fast. And he gonna find my dad? You awesome, God, I’m in.

I didn’t tell him much about my dad, because I don’t know much. I just knew my dad’s name, his birthday, and where he came from.

Three weeks went by . . . and my dad called me.

For like ten years, I had been trying to reach him. I’d been looking for him since I was sixteen. I did not think he would find him. And this dude straight found my daddy in three weeks.

I was crying, because I recognized the voice immediately. He started telling me stuff about my family, that only the family would know.

After the call, my mind went racing. God or not, I thought to myself, Damn, I’m not really going to honor this. I can’t really marry this dude. I don’t even remember what he looks like.

He had a Myspace page, and his picture on his Myspace page was so damn little, you couldn’t see what this motherfucker looked like. I called him up, still crying after talking to my dad.

Tiffany: “Man I’m so grateful. You found him. I don’t know if I can honor our agreement. I don’t even remember what you really look like. The pictures you got online is wack.”

Ex-Husband: “We going to see each other. We going to see each other.”

I didn’t believe him. He was across the country from me.

We still kept talking on the phone. I booked a movie in New Orleans like the next day, and two weeks after that I was in New Orleans.

I always talked to him on the phone, but I never told him where I was in New Orleans. I never told him what hotel, the name of the movie, or anything.

At that point in time, I was very superstitious. It was mainly because of Kevin Hart. He gave me this advice as I started to get going:

Kevin Hart: “Don’t be telling people everything that you’re doing, because motherfuckers will try to make you fail. Just do your shit. You ain’t gotta tell everybody you got a movie. Just do the fucking movie, Tiffany. Like don’t tell people where you’re at, because they’re going to come for you. They’re going to come for you. Because people will be trying to do bad stuff. They think bad thoughts, and they jealous, and they will try to fuck you up.”

So I never told him what the name of the movie was, what kind of part I was playing, nothing. I just said “I’m working,” that’s it. “I’m working. I’m in New Orleans working.”

One night, I was out drinking at the Cats Meow all tipsy, and he called my phone.

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.”

Tiffany: “Great, cool. I can live with this sort of life.”

He drove a Dodge Charger from Atlanta to LA. For me.

Honestly, part of the reason I was looking past the craziness was my own arrogance, in a way. I had started thinking I had the best cootchie in the world. I was thinking, My pussy is the best pussy ever. There must be midgets in my pussy doing magic tricks on his dick or some shit. Like, no man had ever brought me cars from other states, so it MUST be something about me.

Turns out, he had a tracking device on that car. He was tracking everywhere I went. He was just watching me, that’s why he brought it. He also had one of his former police partners, one of his buddies who lived in LA, watching me. So that dude was following me around when he wasn’t in town.

I didn’t know any of this, I found all this out later on. Just checking to see what I was doing is what he said. He said he was doing it to keep me safe, but really he was a stalker.

I could have seen the signs then, if I wanted to. For example, one day I didn’t answer the phone at all, I just didn’t feel like talking, and he just popped up in my house. I thought that was . . . unusual.

I kept telling myself that he did this because he cared about me. But really, he was controlling me. That’s what it was about. Not love, not caring, it was about control.

But I either didn’t know any better, or I wasn’t willing to see it. I looked past his issues, so I could have a man in my life who did things for me.

Even though we were “engaged,” he formally proposed to me at a comedy club. I was onstage, and he was going to come up to the stage and give me the ring, but then he got scared for some reason. When the show was over, when nobody was around, he was like:

Ex-Husband: “Will you marry me?”

Tiffany: “Yeah, but why did you wait till nobody was around?”

All my friends was like, “He’s ugly, Tiffany, you can do better. Like, he fat. He’s ugly. Yeah, he really love you and stuff, but he’s wack. Like, you could do better.”

I thought they were all haters. I just thought they were jealous or whatever. Because he drove a car out for me, he gave me a ring, and he was giving me an allowance, too. I thought that was super-dope. That’s how you know I was stupid. He was giving me like $100 a week, and I thought that was so fucking awesome. I thought that was the shit.

Not that I needed it, but it meant a lot to me. Because to me, if a man cares about you, he gives you money. He works hard for his money, so if he gives it to you, he cares.

So even though all my friends hated him, I just thought they were jealous. And none of them knew all the crazy stuff. At least not yet. But crazy can’t hide forever.

He moved out to LA soon after that. And he had a son with him. He told me he had three kids, and he brought his son with him, the eight-year-old.

So now we are living in my one-bedroom apartment. Me, him, and his eight-year-old. I did not like that at all. We only lived there for a month, and then he got this house, and the house was great, but it was far. It was like seventy miles outside LA, in Wildomar.

I thought he was doing it for me. He wasn’t. It was to keep me away from everybody and make me feel like I didn’t want to do comedy anymore.

But I still kept doing comedy, I just did it in Wildomar. I just found places out there, did the casinos and stuff like that, did shows in San Diego. That shit used to piss him off.

Ex-Husband: “You don’t need to do this comedy stuff. I’m making money, you don’t need it.”

Then as soon as he was saying that, he would lose his job (he was doing private detective work), or get laid off, and so then I had to be supplementing everything. So I started booking movies and all these other really good-paying gigs.

Then as soon as we got married, he had all kinds of demands on me around taking care of his son.

Ex-Husband: “You need to go to the PTA meetings. You need to pick up the kid and take him to soccer.”

Tiffany: “Can he go home to his mom for six months, so I can learn how to just be a wife for a little bit? Can I just learn how to do that part for a little bit? Then he can come back, and then I can assume the mommy role? Because this is stressful.”

I loved the little boy, but I was instantly being thrown into this mommy role. And honestly, it made me feel like I was nine years old again, taking care of somebody, trying to do my thing, too. I was trying to learn how to be a wife and be a loving partner and all this also.

I was confused as fuck. That was a lot for me, because I was also trying to do my comedy. I was trying to do this for real. And then he told me he don’t want me talking about his son onstage, but his son is funny as hell. He’s doing really crazy, funny stuff, and I really want to talk about it, and he tells me don’t talk about him? Then he tried to tell me not to talk about him, either. But my whole world was those two. What else am I going to talk about?

There was all kinds of stress like that. Basically, he was trying to shrink my world down, until it was nothing but him and his needs. But I wasn’t about to let that happen, and I didn’t see what he was doing at the time.

Then the relationship got violent.

I was drunk one night, and I just kept saying over and over:

Tiffany: “I want to eat. I want to eat. I want to eat when we get to the house. I can’t wait till we get to the house. I’m going to eat that cabbage that you cooked. Oh man, it’s going to be so good. I’m about to tear that cabbage up.”

Only a drunk person could be excited about eating cabbage, so you know I was drunk as shit.

I honestly don’t remember how it happened, but we were in the kitchen, and I was trying to heat up the cabbage, and he choked the shit out of me. He told me I needed to shut up and listen, I talked too motherfucking much, and he choked me.

Now look—we’ve all been around drunk people we wanted to choke the fuck out of. And if I was raving about eating cabbage, then I was probably in that category. But still, it’s different to want to choke a drunk person, and to do it to your wife.

When he was choking me, at first I was just like, What the hell? Like, I could not even believe I was being choked.

Then my survival instincts kicked in.

I grabbed the pan on the stove next to me, and I hit him with it. He dropped his hands, and staggered a bit.

Now that I had my senses, and I could breathe, the rage came.

I threw a vicious right hand and punched him in the eye. That staggered him more, I guess he didn’t expect me to fight back.

I grabbed the first thing I could find, which was some pet spray—stuff for the carpet, for pets, you know? I sprayed that in his face. Apparently, that shit don’t feel good, because he started covering his eyes and screaming.

I didn’t stick around after that, I just wanted to get the fuck out the house.

But as I was running, somehow he caught me and tackled me and sat on me. He closed the door and just sat on me. He sat on me for about forty-five minutes, until I was just not moving or whatever.

He sat on me so long, because I kept fighting. I’d be still for a second, and just like bam, you know, flip out and try to get up out of there.

Ex-Husband: “You need to listen to me. You’re disrespectful. You’re ornery.”

Tiffany: “But you picked me. You married me. You came looking for me. I didn’t come looking for you. If you don’t like who I am, why the fuck you here? Let me up, and I’ll go.”

Ex-Husband: “Just shut the fuck up.”

But I wouldn’t shut up. That ain’t my thing, shutting up. He sat on me and lectured me, telling me how fucked up I was as a person or whatever for like an hour. Finally, he got off me, and he dragged me into the guest room and locked me in the guest room.

Ex-Husband: “You’re not coming out till you’re calm. Bitch, you stay in the holding tank.”

I was a prisoner. In my own home.

Ladies, a quick word of advice: that shit is a felony. I did not know it at the time, but someone locking you away without your consent is straight-up kidnapping. A felony. I should have just called the police, but I didn’t know that.

He kept me in there till the next day.

Ex-Husband: “Are you ready to be a mature adult now? Are you ready to talk up a conversation like a regular adult?”

Tiffany: “Yeah, let’s talk.”

He opened the door, and I walked straight out to the bedroom, got out my suitcase, and I started packing my shit.

Tiffany: “You can talk to me while I pack my shit. I’m leaving. I’m out of here. I’m going go to my grandma’s house.”

Ex-Husband: “Not in my car. You’re not taking my car.”

Tiffany: “That’s okay. I’ll take my Geo Metro.”

That thing was barely working, but I wouldn’t get rid of the Geo.

Tiffany: “I still got my apartment. I’ll go back to my apartment with my ornery ass.”

Ex-Husband: “No. You don’t got to go nowhere. I’m out of here. I’m leaving.”

He just got in the car and left. That was easy. Then his mama called me:

Mama: “Why did you send my son home? What the hell?”

Tiffany: “I didn’t send him nowhere. Your son choked me. Your son sat on me. Your son locked me up. Your son is abusive.”

I took pictures of my throat and stuff and sent them to her.

Mama: “Oh you’re a great actress. You’re a wonderful makeup artist.”

Tiffany: “I ain’t no makeup artist. Did you see my makeup at the wedding? I did that myself, and it was horrible, so knock that shit off.”

I ended up taking him back. He apologized, sort of, and sent me gifts, and I felt terrible about everything, and we got back together.

I felt like maybe it was my fault, because I was intoxicated. Maybe I wasn’t listening. Maybe I was doing too much wrong. So maybe it was my fault. That’s how I felt at the time.

I know, I know. You’re right. I should not have taken him back. It’s easy to sit here now and evaluate this and see I made the wrong decision. I know that.

But it wasn’t easy for me, at the time. A lot of women who suffer physical violence go through this. You get in a bad relationship, and you don’t—or you can’t—find your way out. It’s easy to talk about leaving him. It’s hard to do it. Part of you really thinks it will get better, and he said it would.

Obviously, it didn’t get better.

One night at the Laugh Factory, a bunch of friends from high school came in and saw the show and had a great time. Afterwards, we went next door, and they had drinks. I didn’t have any drinks because I had to drive seventy miles home, I just danced around. I got home about 2:30 a.m. and I hadn’t called him to tell him I was going to be out with them or anything. He was very upset.

Ex-Husband: “Where the fuck was you at?”

Tiffany: “I was with my high school friends, they showed up to the show to surprise me! Man, it would have been so great if you would have been there.”

I was all smiling and happy. He just lifted me up off the ground by my throat.

Ex-Husband: “Don’t be standing here lying to me, smiling in my face, telling me you were dancing with some bitches, you a motherfucking liar.”

Tiffany: “I’m not a liar, you can look on Facebook. The pictures are on Facebook.”

He was choking the shit out of me, my eyes like went red, and I was just looking at him. I didn’t try to hit him back or nothing. I was just like . . . I couldn’t believe it. I thought to myself, This is how I’m going to die. I’m going to die, because I was having fun with my classmates. That’s what I was thinking.

Then he just dropped me.

Ex-Husband: “Anytime you just change your mind about what you’re going to do, when you get sidetracked, you call me and you tell me where the fuck you at, because I need to know. It is my job to protect you, and you have to tell me where you at, and what the fuck you’re doing, because I have to protect you. It’s my job as your husband to protect you.”

Tiffany: “But I was safe. I felt safe. I didn’t need you. I don’t need you to protect me.”

I slept in the guest room for like two weeks after that. I thought I was going to leave, but I didn’t. Once I had taken him back after the first incident, I guess that was it. I accepted that this was part of our relationship.

A few months later, I had to go to Montreal to do the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival. I was scheduled to be there for two weeks. I had a great time the first week. The second week, he came to visit me.

He would not leave my side, and all I wanted to do was hang out with all the comedians down in the lobby. We’d be talking and cracking jokes and stuff, up till like three, four in the morning, just hanging out, laughing, and talking. Dom Irrera was there, and he and Dom were talking, and he basically spent an hour telling Dom how everybody’s fake and phony. Saying stuff like he knows they’re all trying to fuck me and all this stuff.

Tiffany: “What if they are trying to fuck me? I’m not going to fuck them. They would have to like gang rape me to get me. Like, I’m not going to do that.”

Ex-Husband: “Yeah, bullshit, bullshit. You’d probably like it.”

Then Tom Green comes over, and he is talking to me and making me laugh so hard. I was just laughing and laughing, and that shit was making my ex-husband so mad. He grabbed me by my collar, he was like, “It’s time to go to the room now,” in front of everybody. Just snatched me by my shirt, and pulled me to the elevator, and threw me in it.

Jo Koy was in the elevator, and I think Adam Ray was, too.

Jo: “You all right, Tiff? Is everything okay? Are you good? Are you good?”

Ex-Husband: “She’s fine. She’s just fine. You all stop fucking talking to her. Getting tired of everybody talking to her motherfucking ass.”

Tiffany: “I’m okay guys. I’m okay. I’m all right.”

I was just trying to make a silly face, trying to be cool, or whatever. Anything to avoid the mortifying embarrassment I was feeling.

Once we got to our hotel room, he was so quick. He snatched me by the neck and slammed me into the wall.

Ex-Husband: “Don’t you ever fucking embarrass me like that again. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I had a knot on the side of my head from where he slammed me into the wall, and all these marks on my throat, where he had dug in his nails. I’d had enough.

Tiffany: “Look, straight-up you need to leave, or I’m going to call the police on you. You’re going to go to jail in Canada. I’m going to call the police.”

He refused to leave, so I go to grab the phone, and he rips it out of the wall.

Tiffany: “You really need to leave or I’m going to the police. I haven’t been to the police before, but there’s nail marks on my throat, I’m getting a knot on the side of my head. You need to leave. You really need to go back to California, get the fuck up out of here, because I’m calling the police.”

Ex-Husband: “I ain’t going nowhere. I ain’t going no-motherfucking-where.”

Then I just got really quiet, really calm, like just curled up in the corner, just got really quiet. I let him yell at me. He went into the bathroom, and I bolted out the door, down the stairs, and now I was running around the streets of Montreal.

I was running past the other comedians—full-on running. They were calling out, “Yo Tiff, where are you going? What you running for? What you running from?”

I wasn’t about to stop and talk to them. I was too embarrassed, too scared, too upset, too fucked up to talk to anyone. I needed help, but I wasn’t about to ask for, or take, any.

I roamed the streets of Montreal till about eight o’clock in the morning. Just walking around. Just roaming. Anything I saw that looked like him, I ran down another street. I was tripping. When I got back to the room, about nine o’clock in the morning, he was gone. All his stuff was gone.

During this time in my life, I had dedicated myself to becoming a better wife, so I had started studying with Jehovah’s Witnesses. He liked that.

Ex-Husband: “Yeah, I’ll never be a Jehovah’s Witness, but you should be one, because they know how to be submissive. They’re submissive to their men. They do whatever their men tell them to do, so that’s what you should do.”

The Jehovah’s Witnesses do Bible study on Skype. When I got back to my hotel room at nine in the morning, they hit me up on Skype for our regular Bible study.

JW: “What happened to you?”

I hadn’t even looked at myself, and when I saw myself on the Skype . . . I saw there was a knot on my forehead, there were all these welt marks across my throat.

Tiffany: “Oh man. My husband came out here, we got into it, he choked me.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in divorce. Not for any reason. They were all like:

JW: “You need to get a divorce. You have to get out of this.”

Then the lady leading the Bible study calls her husband. Her husband’s an elder, but she gets him on Skype right away.

JW: “Look at Tiffany. Look at her. She needs to get a divorce. Don’t you think?”

He is an elder, he is big-time. At first, he started off with the normal lines:

Elder: “Nobody gets divorced. We could talk through this. You could work it out.”

JW: “LOOK AT HER FACE!”

He got real quiet. Then he said in a solemn voice:

Elder: “You have to get a divorce. When you come back from Montreal, you’re staying with us. You have to get a divorce. You cannot be in a relationship like this. This is not going to work, Tiffany. This man is not godly.”

They started reading all the Bible scriptures to me about it. I was crying and stuff, and I had a show to do in a few hours.

Tiffany: “I really need to take a nap. I got a show.”

I went to sleep.

I woke up confused about where I was. I had forgotten that I got my ass whipped by my husband. My reflection in the mirror was a shock.

I put makeup on my neck and pulled my bangs over the knot on my forehead.

When I got to the stage, the lights were unexpectedly bright. They were hot. When my makeup started running, everyone there could tell I had been beaten. They could see the marks.

But everybody knew already, they didn’t need to see the marks. Those comedians around the elevator and lobby told everybody.

Everywhere I went, people would ask me, “You all right? We heard you got beat. Are you okay? You need help?”

I told everyone I was good.

But I wasn’t good. I was in a bad way. All those people there wanted to help, but I couldn’t receive their help. All I could do was push them away, and then go back to the dude that was abusing me.

Why?

I ask myself that a lot. I don’t know the answer. Maybe because I didn’t want to be a quitter. I felt like it was my first time making a commitment in front of God, and getting married was a big deal to me. I’d never been baptized or anything like that. So this was the biggest commitment that I’d ever made in my life, and I didn’t want to be a quitter, I wanted to find a way to make it work. I didn’t want to seem like I just gave up.

Even though I got beat up. Even though the Jehovah’s Witnesses were telling me to get out. Even though a different pastor, from the Baptist Church, was also telling me to get out. It was like God was sending me all these messages to get the fuck out, but I still couldn’t.

Maybe it was just that I didn’t know any other way to be loved. Maybe this was the only man that I had ever thought truly loved me. Maybe I just couldn’t leave that, no matter how bad it was.

I don’t know. It’s still hard to think about this.

On some level, I felt like if I loved him enough, I could heal him. I could heal him from being mad, from being so vicious.

It was like those Twilight movies. It was the same thing for me. I can keep him from drinking human blood. I can bring him deer blood, I can heal him. I just have to love him the right way. I just have to figure out his language, learn how to speak his language.

I even went and talked to his mama:

Tiffany: “How did you show him that you loved him?”

Mama: “Girl, once I burned him with a hot comb, because he was messing with my butt.”

Tiffany: “Okay, so I need to burn him with a hot comb?”

Mama: “He was a terrible child. I had to lock him in the house and tell him don’t touch nothing until I get back from work.”

That was not good advice. So how do I do this? I just really wanted to be a great wife.

Really, I wanted to be a better wife than my mom was.

I wanted to be supportive, not a pushover. But actually take care of the kids, actually take care of people. If I say I’m going to do something, to do it, to have it done. Just better than how she was to me. I wanted to clean the house. Make sure my man don’t have no roaches in his house. My mom had roaches in the house. We would never have a roach issue, thank you very much.

So I recommitted. And things got worse at home. He set down new rules for me.

Ex-Husband: “You’re not allowed to get text messages or phone calls after ten o’clock, because that’s disrespecting our marriage. I don’t care if your grandma can’t call you after 10 p.m., I don’t care if somebody died, that’s disrespecting our marriage.”

I went along with that. I made everybody talk to me between nine and five o’clock. Business hours. I legit told that to people.

Even though I’m a comedian, and sometimes clubs would be like, “Hey, can you come and do this spot?” I didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t talk to them. I told them, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it. If you don’t call me during business hours, I can’t talk.”

Finally, the tide started to turn. I started to see the light. But it wasn’t because of anything physically abusive he did to me. More abuse did come, but the last straw was something very different.

One night, we were driving away from the Laugh Factory, and he got a text message. His phone was in the center console, and it popped up on the screen.

Lisa: “Why you be lying?”

I saw that and I knew. Before I even knew, I knew.

Tiffany: “Who is Lisa?”

Ex-Husband: “What are you talking about? You’re seeing things.”

Tiffany: “No. No. No. Who is Lisa, and why does she say you’ve been lying?”

Ex-Husband: “You tripping. You seeing things. Something wrong with your eyes.”

Tiffany: “Oh, now I’m blind?”

Ex-Husband: “You know you can’t read.”

Tiffany: “No, I can read now, and this says Lisa: ‘Why you be lying?’?”

Ex-Husband: “No. You tripping.”

I grabbed the phone, and I started texting her: “Why?” She texts back in two seconds, like she’s a professional text messager.

Lisa: “Because you said you was giving me some money to get my nails and hair done tonight.”

I texted back, and I read my message out loud, “?‘Well you know my wife be spending up my money.’?”

As I texted that back, he got so mad. He grabbed me by the head and pushed my head into the window. He was trying to get the phone, and I was pulling the phone back.

Tiffany: “Nigga, what is wrong with you? Like what the fuck is wrong with you? What did I tell you about putting your motherfucking hands on me? Get your motherfucking hands off of me!”

Then he pulled over, and he took the phone from me.

Tiffany: “Why you don’t want her to know that your wife’s spending your money? What’s up with that? What’s up with that? What’s up with that? What’s up with that?”

When we black women repeat our words, you know shit is bad. Well, shit was bad.

Ex-Husband: “You need to shut the fuck up.”

Tiffany: “No. You need to shut the fuck up. I told you to keep your motherfucking hands off of me, and you put your hands on me, and you know what’s going to happen. When we get where we got to go, somebody’s getting their ass beat, and it ain’t going to be me.”

I poked him in the side of the head. When I poked him in the side of the head, he went ballistic.

Ex-Husband: “I’m not afraid to fight no one, and I’ll pull your ass out the car.”

Tiffany: “Pull me out the car, motherfucker.”

He waited until we got home, and then it was basically an MMA fight. Except he was big and trained in hand-to-hand combat by the police academy, and I was small and fighting for my life.

He choked me a bunch of times. I scratched at him, I ran from him, all of that. I hit him, but my punches didn’t do shit. He’s a big guy. I hit him as hard as I could with a pool stick a few times (I found that in the back of his car). He grabbed me by the throat and threw me into a shelf at one point. It was like being tossed around by the Incredible Hulk. I thought my eye socket was broke. My lip was busted. I was tore up.

I am glossing over all the details, because they don’t matter. The point was, the man whipped me. He beat my ass.

But now, shit was different. I was done taking this. I was ready to commit murder. I was ready to kill. I got in my car and left the house, and I drove to the police station.

First the police station was closed when I got there. I’m like, What the fuck? How can a police station be closed?

They had an emergency phone outside the front door, so I picked it up:

Operator: “Yes? May I help you?”

Tiffany: “I’m about to kill somebody. I’m about to commit motherfucking murder.”

Operator: “Excuse me?”

Tiffany: “I’m out here at the police station. Y’all need to lock me up, because I’m about to kill my husband. If y’all don’t lock me up right now, there’s gonna be a dead body.”

Operator: “Where are you?”

Tiffany: “I’m outside the police station, so y’all could lock me up, ’cause I’m about to make a murder.”

Operator: “Don’t go anywhere. I’m gonna have one of the officers come out.”

The policeman comes out.

Police: “Ma’am, what happened to you? Are you okay?”

Tiffany: “I’m fine. I’m just fine.”

Police: “Do you need us to call you an ambulance?”

Tiffany: “No, I’m just fine. I’m about to go make murder.”

Police: “You’re gonna what?”

Tiffany: “Make a murder.”

Police: “Okay. Calm down. Tell us what happened.”

So I tell him and his partner what happened. The whole time, they were looking me up and down.

Police: “Okay . . . you do realize that you’re very damaged?”

Tiffany: “I am fine. I am just fine. I’m telling you, you need to put me in a jail cell, because I hit that motherfucker with a pool stick, and I’m gonna go back and kill him, if y’all don’t lock me up. I’m going to commit murder. I’m gonna go to the hood, get a gun, and I’m gonna kill that motherfucker.”

Police: “Ma’am, you need an ambulance. You are hurt.”

Then, the other policeman started pulling out his camera. Started taking pictures of my face and my throat. He asked to see my arms. They were all messed up, with cuts and scrapes.

Tiffany: “I didn’t even know that happened. Look, I’m gonna kill that motherfucker.”

Police: “Calm down. Are you hurting anywhere else?”

Tiffany: “My back hurt when he slammed me in the ground.”

Police: “Let me see your back.”

When they pulled my shirt up, it was all black and blue. They took pictures of that.

Then, they had an ambulance come. I got in an argument with the paramedics.

EMT: “We need to take you to the hospital.”

Tiffany: “No, I need to go to jail. ’Cause I’m gonna go crazy on this motherfucker. I’m fine.”

EMT: “Your blood pressure’s really high. You need to calm down.”

Tiffany: “I don’t give no fucks. I’m gonna kill this man.”

Finally the police decided to go to my house.

Police: “Look, we have to go see him. If he’s injured, if he has damage on him, then you may end up in jail.”

Tiffany: “You might as well take me there now. You might as well just start taking my fingerprints now, because I’mma kill that motherfucker.”

They took me to the hospital, and went to get him. The police told me later that he was in the house with the door wide open. He was sitting there with his shirt off, watching a football game. He knew they were coming. The police arrested him, ’cause all he had was one bite mark on his wrist. I don’t even remember biting him. He didn’t have no other marks on him. Nothing.

Tiffany: “No. I hit him with a pool stick, y’all. It should be a big ol’ bruise across his back. I hit him with that pool stick as hard as I could.”

Police: “Ma’am . . . he was fine.”

They arrested him. Then his whole family started calling me. They asked me to bail him out.

Mama: “He wants to know if you’ll bail him out.”

Tiffany: “I’m not bailing him out! No. I’m getting a restraining order and everything. You crazy if you think I’m finna bail him out.”

Then, the next day I was hurting so bad. My back, everything. I could barely walk.

I started bleeding like crazy. From my vagina. When the blood starting coming, I knew. I mean, I didn’t know I was pregnant before, but now I did. I was having a straight-up miscarriage. I don’t know if it was from the beating or the stress, but it happened.

I guess God decided to send me a real fucking clear sign this time, didn’t he?

That was pretty much the end of that. I filed for divorce and moved back into my old place.

Let’s just all pause here and take a breath. Maybe get a drink, rest up. Because the story is not done, and we about to dive back into some intensity.

• • •

OK, you rested? Here we go:

I left him, but I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with me, because I still wanted my husband back. Even though I had a restraining order and everything, it was still a part of me like, I think we can work through this.

My friend had the same reaction you are having: “Girl, you crazy. This motherfucker almost killed you. Leave him alone.”

I just thought . . . he had to see how much he hurt me. He saw how messed up I was. We had love. He’d never do that again. I know he can be a better person. We just got to get some counseling. We can get through this. We got to do this together. We just got to work together. No relationship is easy. It’s just work. We just gotta work at it.

I didn’t act on these thoughts. I just had them, all through the divorce (which was quick and easy and painless) and afterwards.

After the divorce . . . everything sucked.

I was single now, but I didn’t want to be out there dating. Dudes would try to talk to me, but I just wanted my husband. That’s all I wanted.

During this time that we were apart, his son went into foster care. Why that happened isn’t part of my story, but it did happen.

He was in the foster system for six months.

This really hit me hard. I was in the foster system, I knew how terrible it was. Even though I was divorced from his dad, I was actively trying to help get him out of there. I wanted him to be with his mom or even with me. I even helped his mom to fly out, and I was driving her around.

When I think back about it, I was so fucking stupid with that. That whole situation drove me back toward my ex. It’s just my opinion, but I’m convinced he used that situation—that his son was in foster care, and the guilt he knew that would cause with me—to try to get me back with him. He knew I’d been in foster care, he knew I would not be able to resist helping his son, and that it would bring me back around him more.

And it worked.

I won’t get into more details. You would just start yelling at this page you’re reading, like some crazy person.

We got married. Again.

We got a bigger house, a better house. And the one good thing was that me and his son were super-close. His son knew what I had been through with foster care and all this stuff. He was lovin’ on me and everything.

And honestly, it was okay for a while. He wasn’t hitting me or none of that.

Then he started acting really weird. He started being on the phone for like two, three hours at a time, ducking off into his office. Running into the backyard to talk, being really secretive and stuff.

I tried to have positive thoughts. I’d go on the computer and look through our wedding photos, to remember the good times.

And then one time, I was going through the wedding photos, and there was a photo of a buck naked chick sucking on her titties, in the middle of our wedding photos. That led to a big fight. Nothing physical, just yelling.

I was working on a movie then, and I called him the next day, but couldn’t find him. I came home, because I had been a little mean to him in the morning. So I thought, I’ll come home during my lunch break. I’ll butter him up like, “I’m sorry for being mean to you this morning.” But, he was not at home when I arrived.

Instead, there was an eviction notice on our door.

Tiffany: “Why hasn’t the rent been paid? Why are we getting an eviction notice?”

Ex-Husband: “Because I have a child. I’ve been talking to her every day. I have to pay $2500 a month. They’re garnishing my check. That’s where the money is going.”

That’s why he was asking me for $1000 every month. He said it was going towards the rent. Turns out, he was paying child support. He had another child who was eleven, a little girl, who he basically abandoned, because he didn’t like her mom.

• • •

It’s funny, because a few months before, his mom was at the house, and she was telling me that he got a daughter. But she was drunk, and he was like, “You can’t listen to her. She drunk. Don’t listen to what she’s saying.” But, I should’ve listened.

I had real issues about this.

Tiffany: “Why would you do that? You found my dad for me. And you know how I feel about that. You would just abandon your child? You just let her be out there like that? And then you didn’t even tell me that you reconnected with her or that you was paying child support or that you got a court order garnishing your check? You didn’t tell me none of that?”

He didn’t have nothing to say. I was like:

Tiffany: “Fuck this shit. I’m done. I’m out.”

So, I moved out. I got a divorce.

And this time, it stuck. We’re still divorced, and we ain’t never getting back together.

I know what you’re thinking: This was your breaking point? And not the ass-whippings?

It seems like a really small thing, relatively. Compared to everything else.

But the thing is, I couldn’t be with anybody, or potentially have a child with somebody, who could abandon his child. That was my personal boundary, and I had finally found it.

He had trouble letting go. He kept texting, “I want my wife back.” He’d be calling my friends. To this day, he still calls my friends. And he’s like, “How’s my wife doing? I miss her. She’s still my wife. Even though we’re divorced, she’s still my wife.”

No, we ain’t divorced. We twice divorced.