Chapter 17 Love and Money #3
He saw right through it. Game recognizes game.
But he did take the bait. We ended up getting wasted in the club together, telling each other about our lives.
By the time the lights went up that night, I was in the backseat of his Escalade.
He draped me across the center console and just stared at my naked body before he slid into me.
Why does he know exactly what he’s doing? I thought to myself. This man flipped me every which way he could in that truck. And so started an exciting but short escape from reality.
Eric knew I was messing with that dude right away.
I’m not a good liar. If I’m going to cheat, I’m going to tell you about it.
Maybe directly, maybe indirectly. But you’ll feel my absence even if we’re sitting in the same room.
Back then, something about watching that man’s heart break in front of me brought me so much joy.
Maybe it’s because my father was my first heartbreak.
Maybe it’s because of all the shit these men had put me through so far.
I used to like to triangulate men and make them fight for my attention. It was like the affection I never had as a kid—fight for me, motherfucker, if you really want me. In some sick way, they were all paying for my dad’s mistakes.
I was truly tired of Eric’s shit. He wouldn’t get a job—all he wanted to do was chase me around, act jealous, and drink beer in the shower.
He even went as far as to come and stalk me at the strip club.
Do you know how hard it is to make money when your husband is in the corner hawking your every move?
He pissed me off so badly that one night, I left the club with Kdub out the back door and left Eric in there by himself. He caused such a scene that my managers had to kick him out and eighty-six him from the club permanently.
It wasn’t long until we both wore out our welcome in Texas. Cops were getting involved again. Old habits die hard, y’all. Except this time, I was smart enough to know the clock was ticking.
So we packed up and went back to Vegas. I rented us another house on another sugar daddy’s dime, and the cycle kept spinning.
We didn’t even like each other, and by this time he had hooked up with one friend of mine and started talking to another one.
I would beg and plead for him to leave, and when he did, I’d beg and plead for him to come back.
We made a cesspool, and we called it a life.
Kdub visited Vegas frequently, because like most d-boys, he liked to gamble.
I met up with him one night at the Luxor.
I was with my girl Tamra—partially because I enjoyed her company and partially because I needed an alibi.
We told Eric we were going to meet a client.
But this wasn’t work. It was purely pleasure.
We partied like we always did, and back in Kdub’s room, I couldn’t even form a proper sentence. Trying to be sexy, I suggested we take a bubble bath together. But Kdub wasn’t having it. He could see how fucked up I was.
I wasn’t fifteen bars deep, but I was lit as fuck. He told Tamra to take me home, because I was so sloshed and sloppy.
“Let me drive,” she insisted.
“Just get us home safe,” I said, reluctantly tossing her the keys to my Cadillac Escalade EXT. And there I was, just like I told you, singing along, feeling the cool night air on my skin until I got goose bumps. Riding on magic.
About halfway home, Tamra went to make a left turn.
WHACK. The F-250 hit us at seventy miles per hour.
You know the story: My Escalade flipped, and I didn’t have a seat belt on.
I flew through the car like a rag doll. Then finally, crack.
My face to the windshield. My legs whipped behind me.
The crunch. Tamra’s body suspended by her seat belt.
“Tamra. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” Thank God. Smelling gas, kicking out the window as the car filled with smoke, calling Eric for help while he called me a lying bitch, running like hell from the police, I don’t talk to police!
, running away from everything in my life and being too fucked up to get very far. Strapped to a gurney. Dark.
* * *
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. THE SWEET sound of my heart monitor woke me up.
I was in a neck brace with tubes hanging all over me and oxygen being blown up my snoot.
Grace was there, and Eric too. How did this motherfucker know where I was?
The first thing he said to me was “Give me your fucking phone.” I had my phone clutched to my chest. Had I been holding it the whole time?
Even doped up, I knew not to give it to him.
He’d find texts between Kdub and me, and I knew exactly what would happen: an explosion of catastrophic proportions.
I was vulnerable, on my back, in pain, and connected to machines.
Grace and I managed to kick Eric out before he could grab my phone, just before the doctor came in.
“Do you know what happened to you?” Doc asked.
“I was in a car accident. Is everyone else okay?” I asked, scared AF.
“Yes,” the doctor said. Then he shook his head looking down at his chart. “I don’t know how you were running from the cops. You split your C1 vertebrae in half like a wishbone. You should be paralyzed for the rest of your life from your neck down.”
Fuck. Paralyzed? I wiggled my toes. I could feel my legs. I could make a fist.
“But I can feel my feet,” I said.
“You’re going to need surgery,” he said.
Man, this was heavy. I was twenty-nine years old. I’d already been through so much shit in my life. But now I might be paralyzed? Where’s my Xanax?
All I could hear was Bill. My dad always told me: Once they start cutting on you, you’re never the same. Now, I’ve had surgeries since then. But I knew in my heart that this surgery wasn’t for me.
“Honey,” a nurse said. “I know you want to be tough, but if you even take your shirt off the wrong way, you could die.”
It was the most pain I’d ever felt in my life. The shock was fading, and pure agony was now screaming through me. I couldn’t believe what was happening. But something told me what I needed to do.
I told the doctors I’d take my chances. I said, God’s got me, and I signed an AMA form.
My cousin Stacy snuck some Taco Bell into my hospital room the next day even though the doctor told me I wasn’t allowed to eat.
By then, I’d had enough of being strapped to a bed.
I was alive. Bruised and beaten up, but alive.
The nurse was taking too long for my liking to come and discharge me, so I finished eating, ripped my own IV s out, and walked my ass out of that hospital. Very carefully.
I wasn’t supposed to survive. And while I still can’t turn my neck all the way to the right, I’m still here.
That split C1 vertebrae was just another thing that was supposed to stop me and didn’t.
That seems to be a running theme in my life.
I walk right up to death’s door and say nope.
Not a lot of people get this many chances, and I’m grateful for every opportunity I’ve ever been given to be better and do better.
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as the doctor had thought. Maybe my body just got it right this once and healed itself beyond what should have been possible. Maybe it was a divine miracle. Either way, God and the universe have never given up on me.
* * *
I’VE ALWAYS SAID THAT IN order to get over one boy, get under another.
So, always practicing what I preach, there was someone in the background of all that toxic noise of my first marriage to Eric and the adventures in the Escalade.
Toward the end of our marriage, a dude named Paulie was lingering innocently—almost—in my MySpace messages.
The thing with Kdub had come and gone. I was completely checked out of my relationship with Eric.
I just couldn’t take it anymore. So, one night I messaged Paulie and told him to meet Eric and me at a rooftop bar.
I had to see if he was as cute in person as he was online.
What better way to scope out my next sancho than with my current sancho?
This tattooed, blue-eyed, blond-haired, beautiful cutie walked in and my heart just about stopped. Even more appealing was that something about him needed saving. He was a boy-damsel in distress, and I could be a knight in glittery heels.
Paulie was a womanizer with a hell of a backstory. He’d been a child model and a child actor in Hollywood, and he came from this massive, mobster-type Italian family. He was a walking red flag, and red was my favorite color.
I was holding hands with Eric, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Paulie. When he walked by us, I whispered, “I want to make out with you” in his ear, my hand still wrapped around Eric’s.
* * *
I FINALLY KICKED ERIC TO the curb after the car accident incident—the dude wouldn’t even come get me from a crime scene.
Let’s meet up, Paulie’s message said. I was fucking ready.
I pulled up in my crop top, miniskirt, sky-high stilettos, and the Shelby Roush Stage 3 a sugar daddy bought me.
By then, I knew exactly what I wanted. We partied all night doing God knows what, but I sure as hell know how the night ended.
Paulie walked me out to my car like such a sweet, sophisticated gentleman.
And I draped my body across the hood of my car and looked up at him through my butterfly-wing lashes.
“Fuck me,” I said. His eyes widened, and it took him a minute to get his act together. But he managed to kiss me, right there on the hood of my Mustang. It was sexy as hell, making out on that car. I wrapped my legs around him, and his hands were everywhere.
“Wanna race?” I whispered in his ear.
“Hell yeah, I’ll race you,” he said, smirking.