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Mascots and Bar Mitzvahs: High School Years

School was hard for me, for lots of reasons. One was I couldn’t read until, like, ninth grade. Also I was a foster kid for most of high school, and when my mom went nuts, I had to live with my grandma. That all sucked.

I got popular in high school, but before that, I wasn’t so popular. Kids would tease me all the time in elementary and middle school. They’d say I got flies on me and I smell like onions.

The flies thing came from the moles on my face. I got one under my eye, I had one on my chin, and so on. That was kind of mean.

The onions thing was because my mom used to make eggs in the morning with onions in them. Every damn morning, I had to eat eggs and onions. That would just make you stink. The whole house would stink.

Yeah, it was mean to say I stunk like onions, but . . . I did stink like onions.

Kids used to make fun of me all the time about shit related to my mom. She didn’t know how to do my hair. From kindergarten on up, I had the craziest hair.

I had long, pretty hair, but she didn’t know how to do the ballies, or put it in a cute little ribbon. She only knew how to do the afro puffs, or just one big ponytail, but she didn’t comb it all the way through, so I’d look like a cone head.

You know—black women, we got complicated hair. If you do it right, it’s beautiful. But if you don’t, it looks like some crow’s nest.

In the black neighborhoods, little girls’ hair is always cute. They’ve got the barrettes and all that. It’s a big thing to have good hair as a black woman.

But not me. I had naps, and it was crazy. I would love when I would see my auntie Mary, because she would do my hair, and it would last for a few days. I’d try to sleep pretty. I’d put panties on my head, so I don’t mess it up, and I’d sleep pretty.

But there was one nickname that stuck for a long time:

Dirty Ass Unicorn.

I had a wart growing on my forehead. I thought it was just an ugly mole. You couldn’t help but notice. It was spiky and big, and I could not hide it. I used to try. I would wear bangs and stuff, nothing worked. It was growing out of my head. It was like a flower, and spiky, and it would curl into itself, like a horn.

The kids would make so much fun of me, they would talk about me so bad. It would make me so mad, it would hurt my feelings so much. I just wanted to hurt them back, but I didn’t know how to hurt them back or what to say, because I actually did have this horn.

So all I could do was hurt myself. I would take scissors and I would try to cut off my horn, and then it would bleed. It would bleed down my face.

In school, in class, I would cut it off, and I would just sit there and wait for people to notice me. I would be bleeding down my face, and when they did notice, they’d freak out:

Kid 1: “Tiffany’s bleeding!”

Kid 2: “Oh my God, oh my God, she cut her horn off, oh my God! Teacher!!”

They’d be trying to like take care of me, getting me paper towels and stuff. It made them care about me. Hurting myself made them stop hurting me and care about me.

Teacher: “Tiffany, why’d you do that?”

Tiffany: “Because they keep talking bad about my horn. I want to cut it off, so they can’t talk about it no more.”

The teachers never had no response to that.

Then I’d be walking around for three or four days with a hole in my forehead, ’cause I done cut it off. Then it would just grow right back. Like, in five days, it would be right back.

Finally, one day I was crying about this to my grandma. She grabbed me and started looking at my head:

Grandma: “Child, that ain’t no damn mole. That a wart.”

Tiffany: “What’s a wart?”

Grandma: “It’s nasty is what it is. You got HPV. What’chu been touching on, child?”

Tiffany: “What’s HPV?”

Grandma: “It’s a nasty wart that nasty people get after they do nasty things.”

That was messed up by my grandma. Now that I’m older, I learned that skin warts is nothing like genital warts. They’re totally different. But in my grandma’s eyes, I was nasty. I was doing something nasty.

The good news is that she got it burnt off. She took me to the doctor to confirm it was a wart and then burnt that shit right off.

That’s how the Dirty Ass Unicorn died and the Last Black Unicorn was born.

• • •

High school was way better for me.

I went to a school called El Camino Real. It was 3 percent black. It was mostly white and Hispanic and Asian—and pretty much all of them were rich.

I got bused from South Central LA. I woke up every morning about 5 a.m. to catch the bus at 6:15. I had to walk to the bus stop in the cold every morning. I mean, this is LA, so it’s not like there was snow. But for me, sixty degrees is freezing.

What was funny about high school was that all the things that got made fun of in elementary school, they were valued in high school. I was a great talker and had a unique style—“poor as fuck chic”—these were good qualities in a rich suburban school, where everyone else was the same. I stood out.

But the truth is, the main reason I ended up being successful in high school was because of everything I did while trying to get with this one dude, Audie.

I was stalking him. I would send him candygrams. Remember candygrams? I sent him A LOT of candygrams. I gave him a Snickers every week, till we was in twelfth grade. That dude probably has a mouth full of cavities because of me. I would try to write him notes, but I was illiterate, so everything was wrong. It was the worst:

“Audie, yo how bout we date er som fing?”

I was in ninth grade, and straight up I could not read or write.

I could only read three-letter words or things you see on TV. It was like first- or second-grade reading level.

You wanna hear some real crazy shit? I was in AP classes (where you can get college credit in high school), while not being able to read!

I could not spell or read, but I knew how to talk. I would game people. I would game everybody. It’s easy to game school, once you realize that the rules are bullshit and you can get around them.

For example, whenever I had to read something, I would get someone else to read it to me. There was this one dude who was really smart, and he had a deep voice. I would be like, “Oh my God, Curtis, could you read this to me, I love hearing your voice.” I had the greatest memory, so if he read to me I would memorize it instantly, and then if we had to read out loud in class, I would just say what he had said.

The problem would be when I would “read” the wrong paragraph. The teacher would say:

Teacher: “What are you talking about, Tiffany? You read the last paragraph. I want you to read the first one.”

Tiffany: “I got to pee, I’m sorry.”

I’d get up and run out the classroom. I had a lot of those types of emergencies my ninth-grade year.

Multiple choice tests were easy to fake. I would make people laugh, make ’em want to be my friend, and then, they would let me copy off of them. Essay tests were harder to fake, but I found a way. Here’s what I did:

I would just tell the teacher I was sick, or find a way to take the test later. Then I’d ask a friend, “What’d you say on your essay? Tell me everything.” They would tell me, I would memorize their words, and I’d just repeat them. My essay would be full of misspellings and grammar mistakes, but it would pretty much have whatever somebody else’s essay had.

Now, it seems crazy that I could not read or write. My memory was really good, so it didn’t make no sense. I just couldn’t read. You know what it was? I just didn’t believe I could. I thought I was stupid.

Before high school, I was told I was stupid every day. My stepdad used to tell me I was stupid all the time. My mama said it every day. My grandma sometimes. Definitely other kids at school. I believed I was stupid, so I guess I just didn’t think I could do it. I never tried.

I used to hate when people called me stupid. That would make me so angry. I would want to fight you for calling me stupid. But you know what’s so funny? As an adult, when I was working at the airline, one of my coworkers called me stupid. I said:

Tiffany: “You call me stupid one more damn time, we’re gonna have a straight-up fight in here.”

Coworker: “You do realize I’m trying to tell you that you’re funny. I think you’re funny. That’s why I’m saying that. Like, you stupid funny.”

Tiffany: “Oh, shit. My bad. I won’t fight you over no compliment.”

I started thinking, maybe all these years people been trying to tell me I was funny. Here I’m thinking they were trying to say I’m dumb, ’cause I felt dumb.

But back to being illiterate and trying to date Audie:

Audie ended up outing my lack of reading and writing, but not on purpose. Audie was in drama class, so I got into drama class. My thinking was that Audie was the only black dude in drama, and if I joined, I would be the only black girl in drama. I thought to myself, I bet we going to be kissing. We’re going to have to be husband and wife or something. They’re going to have to put us together. This school racist. They’re going to have to put us together.

But no. These motherfuckers had to be all liberal and integrated and shit. Audie got to have a Hispanic wife in the play. But I’m going to have to be a single mom?

Tiffany: “Why do I still got to be a statistic? This is not fair. I want to kiss Audie.”

Teacher: “What?”

And the shitty part was that Audie was cool with it. Man, I sent him so many Snickers, and he never gave me any sugar.

It was the drama teacher who figured out I couldn’t read. It was the end of my ninth-grade year. She asked me to stay after class, and by this time, she knew my hustle. She trapped me.

Miss Gree: “Tiffany, I want you to try this part. It’s a role opposite Audie.”

Tiffany: “Yeah, girl, I’m in!”

Miss Gree: “Great, I thought you might like it. Here, read this page, let’s see how you do.”

Tiffany: “Okay, Miss Gree, lemme take the script home and work on it, and I’ll do it for you tomorrow.”

Miss Gree: “I love your work ethic, Tiffany. But no. I’m going to need you to read this right now.”

Tiffany: “Uh . . . I’m not feeling well though, for real.”

Miss Gree: “You seemed very healthy thirty seconds ago. This must be a rapid virus.”

Tiffany: “Oh yeah, it could be Ebola. I better get to the nurse before I infect you.”

Miss Gree: “Tiffany . . . can you read?”

Tiffany: “I can read!”

Miss Gree: “Then just read this paragraph before you go see the nurse. Read this and you have the part.”

Tiffany: “You so pretty, Miss Gree. Did you change your hair?”

She was like no, no, no, no, no. She caught me.

But she was so cool about it. She didn’t tell anyone. She got me out of nutrition class, and had me come in every day and learn to read with her. She took me from first-grade level to ninth-grade level in like, a month. She just sat with me and showed me, and it was no problem.

Once I could read, man, it was like I had a superpower! I wasn’t stupid! All them words made sense!

She had me get into competitive monologue. I had already been in a drama festival as part of a team, and my team won first place for Macbeth, but I was just a witch. Easy shit, like, “Double double toil and trouble.” Super easy.

Now she had me do the Shakespeare Festival. It was a monologue, so I played all the characters. I was doing pretty well at some of the smaller competitions, but then there was the big one.

And I won first place. I beat out 375 drama kids.

When they called me as the winner, it was just me standing there onstage along with this one white guy. We were the finalists. He had won every year previously, so everyone expected him to win again. When they called my name, I kinda freaked out. I remember just being like, “Whooaaa.” I was just trembling all over, and then I started doing the Running Man right onstage. The lady who was presenting the award got mad:

Presenter: “Act like a lady. Act like a lady!”

Tiffany: “I am! I am!”

I think that’s the very first time I had an orgasm. I’m pretty sure I had one onstage. Then, I didn’t know what it was. I just started trembling and freaking out and getting sweats and tingling. Man, I was so happy.

You know what I was most happy about?

This would mean I was going to be able to buy my first pair of shoes on my own.

You see, I had made a bet. A week before the big competition, my aunt’s boyfriend was down on me:

Boyfriend: “You’re not gonna do it. That drama shit is a white thing. You’re not going to make it.”

Tiffany: “I’ve won before, at smaller meets. I did good.”

Boyfriend: “They ain’t gonna pick you. This Shakespeare. This a white thing.”

Tiffany: “I bet you I’m gonna win!”

Boyfriend: “Child, please. I bet you $100 you ain’t gonna win.”

When I got home, I ran in with my trophy:

Auntie: “You won?”

Tiffany: “I sure did. Got my trophy and everything!”

Boyfriend: “You didn’t win! You robbed some white kid for his trophy!”

Best believe I got my $100 out of him. And I used that $100 to buy a pair of Doc Martens boots.

Everybody had them, and most importantly, Audie said he liked girls that wore Doc Martens boots. He didn’t think I could ever afford a pair. Until then, I had been wearing Payless shoes that looked kind of like the boots, but they were regular shoes. I’d wear black socks all the way up to my knees, so it’d look like I had it going on. But I didn’t. I didn’t have it going on.

But I won. I beat 375 drama kids for a pair of Doc Martens boots.

• • •

The next day, I missed the school bus and went all the way to the Shoe Warehouse and bought my Doc Martens boots, and then I caught the MTA to school. I showed up at the school about three or four hours late and I was like, bam! Stomping through school in my Doc Martens boots.

And then Audie still didn’t like me. He still didn’t want me.

So I became the school mascot. My tenth-grade year, I became the Conquistador, the Spanish soldier mascot of El Camino Real High School.

At first, I tried to join the cheerleading squad, but the cheerleaders had too many rules. Their rules were nonsense. Like you can’t cuss, you got to be on time, you have to wear mascara every day, you have to have your hair done pretty every day. All these rules. And you can’t just dance when you feel like it. I was like:

Tiffany: “What kind of rules you got for the mascot?”

Teacher: “The mascot doesn’t have any rules.”

Tiffany: “That’s what I want to be, then—the mascot.”

Nobody had tried out to be the mascot, except me. So I got it.

The first time I mascoted, I didn’t have the uniform yet. It was too big for me, so I had my grandma do alterations on it. I had a T-shirt, and I wrote on it in big black letters:

“Will have uniform in 2 weeks. Grandma doin’ it.”

People loved it.

My routine was dope. I would be running up and down the field with my megaphone, telling people what to do, leading cheers.

Tiffany: “El Cam, what?”

Crowd: “Mino!”

Tiffany: “El Cam, whaaaaat?”

Crowd: “MINO!”

Tiffany: “You know!”

Crowd: “WE KNOW!”

I would pass out candy, I would bring people down from the stands and do dance-offs, I would do all kinds of fun stuff like that. I would be watching ESPN to see what the professional mascots do, and then I’d be ripping off their techniques. I was pretty awesome at this.

The only reason I even wanted to be on the cheerleading squad (or, later, a mascot) was so I could be with the football players, because Audie also played football. But also, there was some other fine guys that played football, so I figured this would be a great way to get a boyfriend and get laid.

None of that worked out, but I did become the most popular girl in school. They even put a plaque on the wall with my name on it. It’s still on the wall. And best of all—by my senior year, I was getting PAID to be the high school mascot.

I was paid $50 a game. That was unprecedented for my high school.

See, that happened because Audie told me he couldn’t be with me. It was during my eleventh-grade year.

Audie: “I can’t date no mascot. I’m not going to have no mascot girlfriend. They going to be calling me the mascot assistant. I don’t think so.”

To make Audie jealous, I had gotten another boyfriend on the football team. He was a grade under me, and he used to carry my bag for me. So they started calling him the assistant mascot.

Audie: “See man, that’s why I don’t fuck with Tiffany. I ain’t no assistant mascot.”

My senior year, my boyfriend broke up with me, because he got tired of his friends calling him the assistant mascot. He didn’t want to get clowned like that. I told the principal I had to quit. I told everybody I quit, because I’m looking for a boyfriend. They thought it was a joke, but then when they saw I wasn’t at the first game my senior year, they was like, “We ain’t going to the next game.”

The attendance numbers went way down. Like, half the people didn’t show up to the second game, because the Conquistador had retired. The Dean called me in:

Dean: “What’s it going to take to get you back on the field, Haddish?”

Tiffany: “A boyfriend.”

Dean: “I can’t get you a boyfriend. What else can we do?”

Tiffany: “A boyfriend is what I need.”

Dean: “How about we give you double credits?”

Tiffany: “I got credits. I go to summer school every year. I got credits. I need a boyfriend.”

Dean: “Tiffany, please, be reasonable. I can’t get you a boyfriend. How about we compensate you the candy sales?”

Tiffany: “No. I want a boyfriend.”

Dean: “What else, Tiffany? What else?”

Tiffany: “Fine . . . gimme $100 per game.”

Dean: “No, we can’t give you $100. How about $25?”

Tiffany: “$75.”

Dean: “I can’t do $75. I can’t very well compensate you $75 from candy.”

Tiffany: “No, this ain’t about candy. This is my time for not having no boyfriend. I’m going to need to get my hair done. I need to get my nails done. I’m going to have to start being a fly chick if I want a boyfriend, and being a mascot is not going to help me get no boyfriend, so I can’t do it.”

Dean: “$50, Haddish, and that’s the most I can do, and you’re going to have to bring the candy receipts.”

Tiffany: “You got it. You got it, Mr. Dean.”

Boom! I was getting paid $50 a game my senior year. I had my hair and nails done, too.

• • •

Being paid to be a mascot was cool and all, but what was really cool was that it got me my first real paying entertainment job.

I became an “energy producer” at Bar Mitzvahs. Energy producer is what white suburban people call a “hype man.” I was basically the Flava Flav of Bar Mitzvahs.

I used to get that party cracking. And eventually, I got into MCing and DJing. I did it for eleven years. I did over five hundred Bar Mitzvahs.

It started when I was at a school dance. I was tearing it up. There was a big circle around me, ’cause I was dancing and having fun with people and all that. Whenever I party, man, there’s always a circle. They was like, “Go Tiffany! Go Tiffany!”

The school dance had a professional DJ. He came up to me afterwards:

DJ: “Tiff, you’re amazing. Do you ever do parties?”

Tiffany: “I love to party.”

DJ: “I’d love for you to work for my company. We do executive parties and Bar Mitzvahs. Here is my card, give me a call, let’s set up a meeting.”

I’m thinking this dude is disgusting. The problem was, I didn’t know what a Bar Mitzvah was. I had no clue. It just sounded nasty. I thought he was so nasty, but I didn’t want to be rude to him, so I took his card. I took it back to my grandma.

Tiffany: “Grandma, this man asked me to dance at executive parties and Bar Mitzvahs. Can you believe this?”

Grandma: “Girl, you better call him. That’s getting close to your people.”

Tiffany: “What do you mean ‘getting close to my people.’?”

Grandma: “Girl, you Jewish.”

Tiffany: “No, I’m not. I’m a Jehovah Witness.”

Grandma: “No, you not a Jehovah Witness. You’re Jewish. Jehovah’s Witness is a religion. Your people is Jewish.”

She was talking about my father. He is actually Jewish. My father’s from Eritrea, which is right next to Ethiopia. There are actually a lot of Jews in the Horn of Africa, and even though he was black, he was still Jewish.

Tiffany: “My people?”

Grandma: “You’re Jewish. Your people. You know, you need to know about your other side of the family. Your daddy’s side.”

Tiffany: “Well, why don’t I even know my daddy?”

Grandma: “?’Cause he made some mistakes and he had to get on. He sent money though. All them dance classes I got you when you was a little girl and gymnastics classes you took when you was a little girl. That was from your dad. He would send me money and I would put you in the classes.”

Man, no one ever told me that. That was crazy to me, that my daddy had been sending money and stuff.

Grandma: “We calling that man.”

Tiffany: “I don’t want to call that man. He want me to get on the bar and show my mitzvah.”

Grandma: “What are you talking about child?”

Tiffany: “You know, showing my mitzvah! I don’t want to be no stripper, Grandma!”

Grandma: “Oh Lord, child please.”

I had thought “Bar Mitzvah” meant you get on the bar and show your mitzvah—you know, like your cootchie. Because the way he was talking to me, I was creeped out, and that’s what I thought he meant.

She called that man and she drove me all the way to this man’s office, at his house. It wasn’t no damn office. He was only eighteen. He’s just running this little DJ company out of his mama’s house. He set his room up, and the name of his company was Enterprise Entertainment, because he was into Star Trek. He had painted the whole room black, and it had glow-in-the-dark stars all over it. He had a futon that he called his couch and a little desk.

His name was Tim. We called him DJ Timbo. Me and my grandma were sitting there on his futon as he explained the ins and outs of Bar Mitzvahs. He had started with his uncle (DJ’ing at a company called Hart to Hart) when he was twelve, and then he split off and started his own company.

He wanted me to be his first employee at his company. He thought we could do well.

Grandma: “You think that a little black girl is going to do okay at a Bar Mitzvah, baby? You think that she can work at a Bar Mitzvah?”

DJ Timbo: “I definitely think so. She has the energy. She has a great smile. Great personality. I think she can do it.”

Grandma: “You want it, baby?”

Tiffany: “Yeah.”

Grandma: “How much you going to pay my baby?”

DJ Timbo: “I’m going to give her $40 a party.”

Grandma: “You want to make $40 a party?”

Tiffany: “Sounds good to me.”

Then he started booking me for parties. I’ll never forget the very first party I did. I got to work it with the brother of DJ Timbo, Thomas Ian Nicholas. He was in the movie Rookie of the Year. He was working the party too, so I was like, “Oh my.”

He was dancing with me, and he was like, “This is how you got to do it.”

I was like, “Boy, this kid is sure trying to be helpful to me. He must think I’m hot.”

At the end of the party, I asked him for his number. He told me I was a weirdo, and he didn’t give it to me. I had been too aggressive.

Anyway, afterwards, DJ Timbo wrote me a letter and mailed it to me. Like, physical mail. It said I was horrible. He said that I needed to not be following one kid around the whole time, especially one that’s also working the party. I had to be more dedicated, more focused. You have to keep your eyes on the whole party, and all that stuff. It was a serious rundown of everything I did wrong. He wrote:

“And here’s your $40. If you think you can do it, give me a call back, and if you don’t think you can handle it, don’t call me.”

As soon as I read that, I called him:

Tiffany: “Man, I can do all of this and then some. Boy please, when is the next party?”

The next party, I was pumped up. Dancing with everybody. Dancing with the old people. Dancing with the young people. Getting all the people to follow me. Doing all my routines and stuff. I was doing stuff that I did on the football field for the games. At the Bar Mitzvahs, I was doing waves and all kind of stuff. I killed it. And that was my weekend work for like, ten years after that.

After two years, I ended up becoming one of the MCs. I started making like $200 a party, $300 a party on the weekends. For a teenager, that’s dope.

• • •

The only downside to the Bar Mitzvahs was that I killed a man once.

I’m not even kidding.

At this point, I was about twenty. I had been doing Bar Mitzvahs for four years, and I was good by then. I would do a Bar Mitzvah right.

This one was up in the Valley. I was dancing, getting the crowd hyped, and I saw an old man over there, just looking mopey. It’s my job to get everyone hyped, so I danced over to him.

Tiffany: “Come on, you want to dance with me?”

Old Man: “No, no, no.”

Tiffany: “Come on, you know you want to dance. You know you want to!”

Old Man: “No, no, I’m old, dance with the young people.”

He was saying no, but I could tell he meant yes, so I grabbed his hand, and he got up with me, and he came to the dance floor. And then I grabbed him by his tie and went all in.

Tiffany: “Yeaaaaaaaah boy, get it done!”

Old Man: “Whooooo!”

And he was into it and enjoying it, and people were cheering, and the party started to jump off.

I let go of his tie, and we started dancing a little simple two-step. And then I turned around on him and gave him a little booty pop, right? Just a little one, right in his old man crotch, like pop-pop. I sprang back up and kept dancing, and then I saw people were staring at me, shocked.

I turned back around, and he was on the ground. On his back, holding his chest.

Tiffany: “Oh shit. Oh shit!”

Everybody was rushing over. There were some doctors in attendance who were working on him, and they called an ambulance. They were doing CPR on him and all of that.

But it was the weirdest thing: he was smiling the whole time. I swear to God that man was smiling.

The ambulance came, and they took him to the hospital. And with the ambulance came the police. So, I just knew I was going to jail. I just figured that since I’m the only black person at this party, the police are there for me. They’re going to say I killed this man. I was fixing to go to jail, that was it. I was trying to figure out who to call, and mentally preparing myself for going to jail.

Police: “Okay, I think that wraps it. If we have any other questions, we’ll let you know.”

And they just left. What’s going on?

That man ended up dying in the hospital. I was home, I’m thinking the police were going to show up to my house any day now to take me to jail.

And I decided I quit. No more dancing, no more Bar Mitzvahs, nothing. I was done. I stopped doing them. DJ Timbo was calling me and calling me, telling me people were requesting me.

Tiffany: “I can’t do it, I can’t. I just can’t right now. This is not a good time. I don’t feel safe.”

DJ Timbo: “Tiffany, they are asking for you specifically. They want you there.”

Tiffany: “I don’t feel like people should be around me. I’m not safe.”

DJ Timbo: “Tiffany, your ass is not deadly.”

Tiffany: “No, my ass is deadly. That man is dead.”

DJ Timbo: “Tiffany, that man was old. It was his time. He was probably happy. It was probably the first time he ever danced with a black girl in his life. It was the happiest moment of his life.”

But Timbo couldn’t talk me into doing them. That man hadn’t wanted to dance at first, and I made him, and then I booty popped him . . . and now he’s dead! I just felt like a booty assassin.

Then, I got a letter from his daughter. She tipped me—she sent me a big tip and told me thank you. She said they’d never seen him that happy, they hadn’t seen him smile like that or that happy in a long time. And she said that they knew this was coming, he was in his late eighties, and they had been waiting for him to pass. And they appreciated everything that I did, and I should not blame myself.

She made some good points. And you know, she did tell me to dance with everybody. She specifically said to get all the older people up. So maybe she wanted me to kill him? I don’t know.

After that letter, I went back to doing Bar Mitzvahs. At that point, they were paying me $400 a party. The money was too good.