The Last Black Unicorn(18)
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.