فصل 05

5

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.

Titus: “You know, I could probably be a pimp.”

Tiffany: “What? You ain’t no damn pimp! You’re a baggage handler!”

Titus: “I dunno. Fake Suga Free thinks I could do it.”

Tiffany: “Why you hanging out with that guy? You’re not a pimp, you’re a baggage handler. And I like that about you. I like that when you come home from work, you smell like luggage. I like men who smell like their work. It means they have a job.”

Titus: “Pimping is a job.”

Tiffany: “I DON’T WANT MY MAN SMELLING LIKE A PACK OF HOES!”

Titus: “Yeah, but I could probably make more money pimping.”

Tiffany: “Yeah, but you could also end up in jail. And what if you get, like, bad hoes? Then you’ll lose money. It don’t make sense.”

He dropped it for a while. Then he got fired from his job with the airline.

Titus: “I’m finna go to full-time pimping.”

Tiffany: “If you finna be a pimp, I’m finna be outta here.”

Titus: “Okay, fine . . . I won’t be no pimp.”

So he got a new job working in a cosmetics factory, boxing makeup.

But he became real distant. We weren’t hanging out all the time like we used to. For example, I would drop him off at work, and then I was supposed to pick him up. Then he wouldn’t call me to pick him up, and I didn’t know what he was getting up to.

And he would ask to use my car, which was fine. But then I wouldn’t see him for two days.

Yeah, I know, I know. In retrospect, the signs were obvious. What’s funny is that it took a child to point them out to me. I mean literally an eight-year-old child.

One day, I was hanging out with Titus’s mom and his sisters, and this one sister—who was, I repeat, EIGHT YEARS OLD AT THE TIME—spoke up.

Sister: “You know he cheating on you, girl. He cheating on you with this girl he met at the strip club. He pimping her in pornos.”

Tiffany: “What? Titus ain’t pimping nobody.”

Sister: “Yes he is.”

Tiffany: “You making this up.”

Sister: “No I’m not!”

Tiffany: “Would you say that in front of your brother?”

Sister: “Yeah!”

So we got with Titus:

Tiffany: “What did you tell me about Titus?”

Sister: “That he cheating on you, girl. He cheating on you with this girl that he tried to get to be a stripper. Her name is Bertha.”

Tiffany: “Bertha? How you gonna be a stripper with the name Bertha?”

Titus: “She lyin’! She don’t know what she’s talking about! She lyin’!”

I believed him. I didn’t believe the little girl. I don’t know why I didn’t believe her, because she had nothing to lose by telling the truth. I was thinking maybe she was watching too much TV or something. Like I said, I was twenty-one and stupid.

Three months go by, and slowly things got worse. To the point where we were basically broken up, except not completely. You know how with some relationships, the breakup takes months to really get momentum and be real, but you know it’s there long before? That’s how it was.

It just so happened that I was scheduled to go on a cruise with my auntie. Titus had zero interest in that, until we were ready to break up, and I told him I wouldn’t be seeing him for a week.

And now Titus wants to go on the cruise, too.

Titus: “Oh, you not going on a cruise, hell no.”

Tiffany: “Oh I paid, I’m going on a cruise.”

Titus: “No, y’all finna be on there hoeing.”

Tiffany: “Are you crazy? I’m not hoeing with my auntie, she’s twice my age.”

He was really passionate about this idea that I was going on this cruise to get wild and hook up with a bunch of men. Yeah I know, he’s projecting shit on me that he is doing behind my back. I can see that now, but I did not see it then.

The problem was that he didn’t have any money to pay for the cruise. So, he got his mama to give him the money to get a ticket.

And get this: motherfucker comes on the boat with $50 in his wallet. For the whole weeklong cruise. The whole week with fifty bucks? Like, really?

The whole trip, he was just awful. Everywhere I went, if a man talked to me, Titus was all up in my business.

Titus: “Oh, you tryna holler at that dude? That man tryna get with you?”

It didn’t matter if I was talking a ninety-year-old in a wheelchair with oxygen tubes, Titus would be trippin’.

Titus: “Oh you want some old ass now? That it? My dick is too hard for you now?”

Every few minutes, it was something. If I was dancing or having a good time, he’d come over.

Titus: “What you dancing for?”

Tiffany: “Because I like it, it makes me happy.”

Titus: “Why you gotta be all happy?”

Tiffany: “It’s a damn party, motherfucker! On a cruise! Why you think we’re here, this ain’t a fishing boat!”

Titus: “Oh, I see how it is, you lookin’ to ride the Ho Boat to Ho Island!”

What’s funny is that on that cruise I met the man who I would eventually marry, and then who would end up becoming my ex-husband. I had no idea at the time that any of this would happen. We just met a normal way. He said “Hi” or whatever, and we talked for a while. I wasn’t even into him, but when he told me he was a policeman, I was like, Oh, it’s always good to have police friends.

And then my future ex-husband starting acting weird, following me around the boat, filming me from a distance. And of course, Titus hated that, and he would yell at me about it, as the dude was lurking around, filming us.

What can I say? It was just all fucked up. But it gets worse.

The cruise was the week of September 11.

Of 2001. Uh-huh. THAT 9/11.

We were in Jamaica, and the Jamaicans started freaking out, talking about “Your Twin Towers are down!” Titus was all mad about that, too.

• • •

Once we got back to the boat, they were saying that all the airports were shut down. We were supposed to be back in the States the next day, but they were saying that nobody would be able to fly home. They let us stay on the cruise an extra four days, for $300.

Me and my auntie decided we would pay it and stay on the cruise. Titus couldn’t afford to stay. Why not? Because he and his $50 was broke as hell, that’s why!

I was not about to pay for him. He was so upset, so mad about that. He ended up having to sleep in the airport for a night, and the next day, he got to fly back to LA.

When we got back to LA, we were still together, but not really. On the one hand, we were breaking up, but just couldn’t seem to actually do it. On the other hand, I still thought I was going to marry him, and I thought I could trust him. I felt this way even though he would take my car and say, “Oh, I’m just going to go to the store and I’ll be right back.” And he would be gone for, like, twenty-four hours.

I just figured he was with his friends or whatever. I didn’t need the car, because I was at work, anyway. You know?

It didn’t really dawn on me that he would be with somebody else, because I thought he loved me.

Then I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t know what to do.

So I freaked the fuck out.

This whole pregnancy thing made me feel like such a loser. I felt so stupid. I still had all these dreams and goals for myself that I wanted to accomplish, and here I was knocked up by this broke-ass loser.

It made me really look at the big picture. I was just barely living in this little studio apartment. Titus was living with his mama. Titus didn’t even have a car or a job. He just came on a cruise with $50 on him. How are we going to raise a kid? I only make $400 a week at my job, and then with the Bar Mitzvahs, I’m clearing $2500 a month. That’s not enough to raise a kid.

I can’t have no baby by this man. I can’t even be with him. I don’t even like him anymore.

When I first told him, he wanted the baby.

Titus: “Yeah, that’s right. That’s mine.”

Tiffany: “What the fuck are you talking about? How we gonna pay for this? You ain’t got no job!”

Titus: “It’s all right, baby, that’s why they got welfare. We be aight.”

Tiffany: “Is you fucking retarded? I’m not going to be no welfare mom!”

I did not want to have an abortion, but at the same time, I did not want to have a baby with that man, in those circumstances. What kind of life would that be for the baby?

What if something happened to me? This man couldn’t even take care of himself, how was he going to take care of a child? If I died the kid would inherit what? A Geo Metro? That’s not a good inheritance.

And honestly, I was not ready to be a mom. I hadn’t even gotten to experience life at this point. How could I raise a child, you know?

I felt the weight of the world on me. I felt like if I had this baby, it’d be the biggest mistake of my entire existence.

I felt terrible, I felt like I was going to go to hell for this. But you know what? I’d rather go to hell and die without a baby on Earth, suffering, than have a baby here on Earth that suffered. That ain’t right.

We were still arguing about it, then he took my car to go pick up some food for us . . . and he didn’t come back for two days. Then he walked in.

Titus: “You should probably go ahead and take care of that.”

On the way to the clinic, he was trying to shame me. You know how when somebody’s like, they want you to do something, but they don’t want to feel bad about their role in it? They want you to take the blame for it, so they don’t have to feel bad about themselves?

Titus: “If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. It’s all on you. You want to kill my baby, that’s on you.”

I fucking hated him right then.

I remember the clinic so vividly. As I walked through the door, something came over me. I hate to admit this, but it’s true—I became very happy.

It was like a total one-eighty from how I felt in the parking lot to how I felt once I went through that clinic door. I felt like I was doing the most responsible thing in the world. I just felt really, really joyous. I knew, as painful as it was, this was the right thing.

You go into a room, then they put you on this bed. I was smiling the whole time. This one lady, this Hispanic lady notices.

Hispanic Lady: “Why are you so happy?”

Tiffany: “I guess because I know that I’m not going to be in this trap. I know I’m not going to be in the trap anymore.”

She just smiled back and rolled her eyes.

They put you to sleep for a little bit, for like ten minutes, and do the procedure. Then when I woke up, I reached down between my legs, and I felt the big ol’ maxi-pad thing they put on you.

I jumped out the bed, and I started to dance. I started full-on dancing.

Nurse: “Ms. Haddish, you can’t dance. Ms. Haddish, you are scaring people!”

Tiffany: “I’m free!! I’m free!! Thank God almighty, I am free!!”

I started doing the Running Man, and then I ran my ass right into the ground. Those drugs they give you are strong.

They made me sit down and act calm. I looked over and there was a Mexican lady, she was awake and looking at me like I fucking lost my mind. Then there was another girl in the room, and she was just full-on crying. Here I am just as happy and joyous as can be. I kinda felt bad about my dancing, and I was chill after that. Not everyone was happy about being there.

When I walked out, I was just smiling. I’m like a little doped up and kind of woozy or whatever, but I’m really happy. I’m like genuinely happy. Titus was so mad that I was so happy.

Titus: “So you just joyous, huh? You just joyous?”

Tiffany: “Yeah, we don’t have no stress no more. There’s no stress. We got a second chance.”

Titus: “That’s all right. I’m going to just get you pregnant again in two months. You’re just going to be pregnant again.”

Little did he know, I had gotten a Depo shot when I was in there. I didn’t even tell him. This man was not trapping me again.

Things actually got cool again for a few weeks. It seemed to be getting better. He’s not disappearing. Then my birthday came up, and he said he needed my car, because he was going to an interview.

Tiffany: “Okay. But it’s my birthday.”

Titus: “Yeah, I’m going to take you over to my grandma’s house, use your car, go to my interview. I’m going to come back, and we’re going to go out.”

He didn’t come back until the next day.

Tiffany: “Yo, what happened? No call, no nothing? Where were you?”

Titus: “I had got caught up in some stuff, but it’s all good. I’m going to take you out today.”

Tiffany: “I got to go to work. This is so stupid. I don’t get it. Why would you even do that? You just ruined my birthday. You ruined my birthday.”

Titus: “Stop tripping. You’re tripping. Just relax. I’m going to make it up to you.”

Three days go by. I go over to his house—which is his mom’s house, ’cause he don’t have his own place. I was ready to forgive him. I don’t know why I was, but I was. And most importantly, I was now healed up from my abortion, and we can have sex again, for the first time since I was dancing for joy.

I went in his room, and I saw he had a video camera on his TV. I don’t know why, but I had this weird feeling come over me.

Tiffany: “Let’s do something freaky. Let’s make a movie.”

I grabbed the video camera, and I started recording. He immediately got all mad, snatched the camera from me, scratching my face in the process.

Titus: “You need to mind your motherfucking business!”

Tiffany: “What is wrong with you? What’s on that tape where you got to be acting like that?”

Titus: “Ain’t nothing on this motherfuckin’ tape. You just need to mind your motherfuckin’ business and stay out my shit!”

I tried to reach for the camera, and he snatched it away. He took the tape out the camera, went out the house, and threw it in the dumpster.

I knew. All of it dawned on me, right then in that moment. Not like, consciously, but I knew. I felt it in my body.

Was I smart enough to admit that shit to myself in the moment? Hell no! I just said to myself, You need to just chill. You love this dude. You need to chill. I still didn’t know that I should listen to my gut and my feelings and my body.

When he came back in the house, I decided to change up. I just started being real sweet and nice, and we started kissing and stuff.

Tiffany: “I just want you to hook me up. I want to get me some head.”

So he went down on me and gave me some head. Once he was done, he was all hard and ready to penetrate me. He was literally right about to put it in, and I mean like, an inch before his penis touched me, I pulled away. My body was screaming at me, and not in a good way.

Tiffany: “Ooh, wait. No. I got to go to the bathroom. I got to boo-boo.”

I sat in the bathroom for like thirty minutes. I was crying, because it all hit me at once.

I knew everything was true. His sister was right. I could just feel it in my bones. I was talking to myself, Oh God, everything she said is true. I’m so stupid.

This man was betraying me so much right now. A feeling of disgust for him came over me. I was disgusted by him, and I felt disgusted for myself for being so blind. You know?

I was crying so much. You know how you do that quiet crying, like the tears are coming out and you’re breathing hard, but you don’t want nobody to hear you crying? I remember I was just covering my face, just trying to hold it together, tears running through my hands.

And quite frankly, the head was not good. It wasn’t. It was, like, the worst.

Eventually, he came banging on the door.

Titus: “You all right in there? What the hell?”

So I started making throw-up noises, acting like I was puking. I was just so disgusted with him, I needed to find a way out.

Tiffany: “Man, I’m sick. I’m not well. I need to go home. I’m going to go home, all right? I’m so sick. I cannot function right now.”

I left. I got in my car. It was raining bad. I got in my car, and I started full-on crying. Like, heaving sobs, makeup-stained tears running down my face, all that shit.

I pulled myself together, and I started to drive off. I got down to the street, and all of a sudden I was like, What the fuck was on that damn tape? What the fuck was on that tape? I need to know what the fuck was on that tape.

I parked a block away, and walked in the rain back to his place. My hair was fucked, but I gave zero fucks at this point. I broke into the apartment building that he lived in with his mom. I hopped over this gate and jumped into the dumpster. I was diving in that dumpster for like an hour looking for that tape.

And I found it.

I was so dirty. I just remember feeling like a piece of shit. I felt like garbage—I literally had actual garbage all over me—but I had to find out what the hell was on this tape.

This was one of those mini-videotapes, and I needed an adapter to play it on my VCR. Once I had the tape, I drove around for about three and a half hours looking for an adapter. I drove all the way to Orange County, still smelling like garbage, trying to get one, but no one had it.

I bought a pack of cigarettes. I didn’t even know how to smoke. I went home, and I smoked like three cigarettes. I was going, I hope this kills me right now. I have no idea why I thought three cigarettes was going to kill me, but I did. That’s how fucking loopy I was right then.

At 5 a.m., I called my friend Anna. Her work involved some kind of media stuff, and I remembered she had the same kind of video camera as Titus had.

Tiffany: “Can I borrow your camera?”

Anna: “What do you need it for? What’s going on? It’s 5 a.m., what you need a video camera for? You murder someone?”

Tiffany: “I just need it.”

Anna: “Why do you sound like that?”

Tiffany: “I just smoked cigarettes.”

Anna: “Why are you smoking cigarettes?”

Tiffany: “This motherfucker scratched my face, and I found his videotape in the dumpster and I just hope I die.”

Anna: “What does that have to do with cigarettes? What is going on?”

Tiffany: “Anna, look . . . you want weed? I’ll get you some weed if you let me borrow that camera.”

Anna: “Okay, yeah. Bring me some weed, and I’ll bring my camera.”

I got the weed and went over to Anna’s. I guess I was in worse shape than I realized.

Anna: “Tiffany, you need to calm down. You should probably hit this weed.”

Tiffany: “Fuck the weed. I just need that video camera. I need to go home and watch this tape.”

Anna: “Tiffany, I ain’t givin’ you the camera till you hit the weed and have a drink. You need to relax.”

She opened a bottle of Cisco. It was peach Cisco, because we classy. We sat there, 7 a.m., smoking weed and drinking peach Cisco. Then I calmed down a lot.

I went home and plugged the video camera into my TV. Oh man, it was so bad. Lemme try to explain it.

It’s that girl, Bertha, that his sister told me about. It starts out with them talking.

Bertha: “I’m better than your girlfriend, Tiffany. I can do everything better than her. She’s not all that. You always talking about her like she’s so special, but she’s not special.”

Titus: “She is special. But I’m going to have to teach you how to do it better, because you’re not making me enough money. I’m going to teach you how to suck a dick right.”

Bertha: “Okay. Show me how to suck your dick right.”

Titus: “Now, when Tiffany sucks my dick . . .”

I just started bawling out of control.

The whole tape was “Tiffany does it this way” and “No, when Tiffany do it, she don’t do this. She do this.” And she was all into it, “Does Tiffany do this? Does Tiffany do it like this?”

I cried hard. For a long time, I just cried and cried. I cried until I cried so much that I got fucking dehydrated. I cried all the fucking water out of my body.

Then I started to get pissed. I realized this motherfucker is giving this bitch all my fucking tricks. Ain’t that some bullshit?

Then he started fucking her. And he’s fucking her without a condom.

And my birthday is time-stamped at the bottom of the fucking video.

I wasn’t crying no more. I started screaming at the TV. I was screaming at the TV like some crazy woman, I was so mad.

And that bitch’s face. Oh hell no. You ever see them chicks that got the big gums and little baby teeth? That was her. That old dog-mouth bitch was staring at me as she got fucked by my man, on my birthday.

I watched it probably about four times. I called him.

Tiffany: “I’m done with you. This relationship is over. I’m not fucking with you no more. I fucking hate you. You a dog, nasty, dirty-dick motherfucker. You ain’t shit.”

I was just going in on him, right? For, like, fifteen minutes, I used every curse word and bad thing I could think of. I didn’t let him get a word in, I didn’t listen to shit he said, I just went in on that motherfucker.

A few hours later, he showed up at my house. He walked in and saw the tape playing.

Titus: “How did you get that tape?”

Tiffany: “How you think I got it, you dumb motherfucker?”

Titus: “You fucking crazy. You a crazy bitch going in the trash like that. That shit is garbage.”

Tiffany: “You best get the fuck out my house, before I commit murder.”

Titus: “Oh come on Tiff, that doesn’t mean anything. I was teaching her. I was teaching her.”

Tiffany: “Nah, you a fucking cheater. You a liar. Your sister was right.”

He was thinking he would take the tape from me when he came over there. HELL NO! I hid that shit, then I called the police.

Tiffany: “You best to get out of here. The police coming.”

That phrase will scare off any black guy (except Obama . . . maybe). He left so fast, he didn’t even get his clothes and shoes and other stuff he had left at my place.

Once he left, my anger subsided, and the sadness came back. I was just devastated. This hurt so much.

He kept blowing up my phone. I ignored him. Then he got his mama, his grandmama, his aunties, all these people in his family to start calling me. They laid the guilt on thick, telling me that “You destroying him. He loves you so much. He’s so depressed. He can’t function without you.”

I never told them that he cheated on me or that he made this sex tape or anything like that. I don’t know why. As much bad as he’d done to me, I just didn’t want to do that. I knew how much they put him on a pedestal. They really loved him. I didn’t want to destroy that.

But they kept bothering me about him, making me feel like it was my fault. I know he didn’t tell them about all the shit he’d done to me. Then Anna pointed out some real obvious shit that I’d missed.

Anna: “Why you lettin’ him hide his dirty shit? You should make everybody in that family fucking pay. They knew about that bitch. If the little sister knew, they ALL knew. They knew what the fuck he was doing. They knew.”

She was right. They had to know. Ain’t no way the only person in the family to know the truth is some eight-year-old girl.

I devised a plan. Oh, it was so fucking devious. It was straight-up evil . . . but that motherfucker, and his family, deserved it.

First I got about fifteen bootleg copies of that movie Charlie’s Angels. It had just come out. Anna’s boyfriend was a bootlegger, and he helped me make some . . . alterations . . . to the movie.

I made copies for all the family members who called my phone, all of them that called me and was telling me, “He love you. You’re doing him wrong.” Christmas was coming up, so I wrapped them up real nice, and I sent all fifteen copies to his family members as gifts.

Then I ate a lot of corn. A lot. And I didn’t chew it so well. And I made a different present for him.

Once it was ready, I called him.

Tiffany: “I was tripping. I love you. I can’t live without you. You’re like the best thing that ever happened to me. I can’t be without you. I really want to be your girl. I just need you to stop messing with that chick.”

Titus: “I’m going to leave her alone. No problems. I wasn’t making no real money off of her anyways. Fuck the pimp life. I’m not going to live that life. I’m not doing it no more. It’s just me and you.”

I went over to his house, and I brought his shoes and other stuff back to him.

Tiffany: “Babe, we should, for our first thing together, let’s go play basketball. We should play basketball.”

Titus: “Bae! That’s what I’m talking ’bout!”

He was about to put on some regular shoes, and I stopped him.

Tiffany: “Nah, you should put on your Jordans, the ones you had at my house. You’ll be the freshest dude. You’ll be the shit on the court. You’ll be killing them out there. Put these on. If you’re my man, you’re going to be the finest dude out there.”

Titus: “All right. All right. I like this.”

He put his foot in the shoe.

Titus: “What the fuck? What’s in this shoe?”

He pulled his foot out and there was shit all over his foot.

And the shit was full of corn.

Titus: “What the fuck? Somebody shit in my shoe! Is that human shit?!? There’s corn in it!”

Tiffany: “Yeah, all the shit you put me through, NOW YOU WALKING THROUGH IT, MOTHERFUCKER!!!”

I took off running out of the apartment, because I figured he might try to do something. When you ruin a black man’s shoes, you never know what’s going to happen.

But then I stopped running. I realized he wasn’t going to do anything. Besides being a coward—which he was—he was not about to track shit all through his mama’s house, right?

Once I got outside, I could hear him yelling, screaming from his balcony, being all hysterical.

Titus: “YOU A DIRTY BITCH!! YOU A NASTY, DIRTY BITCH!!”

Later that day, his mom called me.

Mom: “Why would you shit in his shoe?”

Tiffany: “I hate your son. I fucking hate him. I mean, I love him, but I hate him. He’s a fucking loser. He’s a shitty-ass motherfucker. He wanna drag me through shit? Then he can walk in it, too!”

Mom: “Girl, you fucking crazy. Something wrong with you. You have a mental problem.”

Tiffany: “I didn’t have no mental problem until I met your raggedy-ass son.”

Mom: “And he got shit all over my carpet, how am I going to clean this up?”

Obviously, that broke us up for good.

But my master plan was not over. There was one more chapter.

Christmas Day came. I was at work at the airlines, at the ticket counter. My white manager came up to me.

Manager: “Tiffany, there is a woman on the phone for you. She is very angry. She sounds black, and she is . . . very, very angry. I don’t normally like employees taking personal calls on shift, but she is, well . . . she is very insistent that she talk to you.”

I already knew who it was, and what it was about.

Tiffany: “Hello?”

Mom: “MY CHILDREN SAW THAT!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU! MY CHILDREN SAW THAT!!”

It was Titus’s mom. Remember the fifteen Charlie’s Angels VHS tapes I sent out to all of his family for Christmas?

I had Anna’s bootlegger boyfriend splice in the porn that Titus shot with Bertha, right into the middle of the movie.

He even made up a little title card that said “Titus’s Angel” that cut right to him fucking her.

Oh hell yes, I went there.

Mom: “WHY YOU PUT THAT FILTH IN MY HOUSE?!”

Tiffany: “WHY YOUR SON FUCKING AROUND ON ME WITH SOME HORSE-MOUTH HO?!?! ON MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY!! WHAT’S UP WITH THAT???”

Then his grandmother took the phone from her.

Grandmother: “Oh my God, girl! You got my grandbaby dick out. I done had a seizure. I got these kids up in here watching Charlie’s Angels, and then all of a sudden, you got my grandson on here fucking this bitch.”

The whole family—it was like the kids, grandkids, everybody—sitting there watching. His whole family saw that shit. They all saw what a fucking lying cheater he was, they all saw them big gums and those tiny teeth. They saw it all. I was tired of being framed as the bad girlfriend, when I wasn’t. Titus couldn’t hide no more.

Then I heard his auntie in the background.

Aunt: “My nephew got a big ol’ dick.”

Grandma: “I should beat your ass. You better bring me every copy of that tape you got. Oh my God. You better not put my grandbaby dick on no Internet. I will sue you, bitch. I will have you killed, if you got my grandbaby dick out here like this.”

Best revenge ever, right?

That was the end of my relationship with Titus and his family.

But the fallout was not over. Oh, no. In some ways, it was just the beginning.

Because Titus tried to be a pimp (and failed), I ended up actually becoming a real-life pimp, but that’s another story altogether.