by Mike Tyson
I wanted to create some sort of legacy for Exodus up there in heaven. I wanted her to know that her father was conducting himself in a dignified manner and that he was dealing with his fury and taking it to a whole other level of life. I lost Exodus but I had Milan. I wanted Milan to have a sister close in age so that they could grow up together. I really believe in my heart that Milan was a gift to help me through this tragedy even though she could never take Exodus’s place. This was a chance for me to be a responsible dad with her. And then from being that guy with her I could work on re-creating my relationship with my other children. For years and years I had gone through the motions of going to A.A. meetings and reading the book and working my program. Then all of a sudden, my daughter died and that knowledge just kicked in without me even knowing it. Just autodrive, boom. It didn’t happen overnight, and I’d have some slips down the road, but it was there in me. Mike, work on your lust. Mike, work on your conduct with women. Mike, put that blow away. Mike, lose that weight and get healthy. Mike, don’t look at a woman longer than three seconds. I don’t want to sound spooky, like I was possessed or anything, but the rehab teachings just clicked in my head.
I knew I had great discipline from my time with Cus, but everything I had done with him was from a posture of being superior to everyone else. Now I was using those same tools but from a different point of view, from humility not superiority. But I still had that megalomaniacal theory that I could do it. Even though it was going to be treacherous and hard, the megalomaniac in me said, “It will be done and you will suffer.” That’s what I had been used to all my life. Nothing mattered but the accomplishment of the deed.
But it was still a theory. A week after Exodus’s death, all that pain just got to me. Kiki and Rita were out somewhere and I just told my daughter Mikey to lock the door behind me and I went out and scored some coke. I am a scourge from hell when I’m on my addiction. I started slipping for a few days. Kiki was so frustrated and worried that she couldn’t help me anymore. Nobody could stop me from getting high. So Kiki reluctantly begged me to stay home and do the coke if I had to just so she would know something bad wouldn’t happen to me. So one night I was up all night at home coked out and Kiki was up with me talking to me. First thing in the morning, she had to meet with her probation officer. We had some heavy talks that night and we decided that we were going to get married soon. So when she left, I was still emotional and I kissed and hugged her repeatedly. Then I went out to the balcony and waved good-bye.
“I love you,” I said and blew her a kiss as she got in the car.
Kiki met with her probation officer and she gave Kiki her final random urine test. After a few minutes, the probation officer came back into the room.
“Cocaine came up in your system,” she told Kiki.
“That’s impossible. I don’t do drugs,” Kiki protested.
“This is a very serious matter, Kiki. You’re breastfeeding your infant daughter. A positive coke test can start the process of removing your child from the home and placing her into protective custody with a foster parent.”
“What?? I didn’t do coke!” she said. “Wait. Can you get a positive test for coke from kissing someone?”
“I’ve never heard of that. But if you think that might be the way that the coke was introduced into your system, why don’t you stay here for an hour and we’ll retest your urine. If it was something as trivial as that, it should be out of your system by then,” her probation officer said.
That was when my cell phone rang.
“You fucking motherfucker,” Kiki screamed. “They’re going to take my baby away because of your fucked-up addicted ass. I just tested positive for coke. Now your addictions are fucking with my family. I could lose my daughter! How could you do coke before you kissed me good-bye this morning?”
She had me there. I was a licker when it came to my blow. And I’m not talking about licking no little bit of residue off that folded sliver of paper that the coke might be in. I’m talking about a jar of coke. I stuck my tongue down that jar and I hit pure cocaine. So much that you don’t even feel your tongue anymore.
I hung up the phone and told Mikey to lock the door again and I just started walking. I walked twenty miles from my place in Henderson to the ghetto in West Las Vegas. I was high and sweating like a motherfucker and people were pulling their cars over and offering me a ride.
“Mike, get in the car, man,” they’d say.
“No, don’t fuck with me, man. I’m going through some shit.”
“Do you want me to call the cops?”
“No, no, I’m okay,” I said.
Napoleon once said, “There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.” I was taking a hundred thousand steps. Kiki had waited an hour and taken her test and it had come back negative this time but I didn’t know that. I just kept on walking and when I got home I got some coke and I binged for two days.
Then it was my turn to flunk a piss test. My piss came up dirty. I wasn’t that worried because my lawyer’s partner was close friends with my probation officer, but this time he didn’t just let it slide. So between my test and Kiki’s probation officer reporting the kiss incident, I was looking at possibly getting my ass sent back to prison or at the least having to go back to Arizona and be put under much more rigorous probation. That would have meant that Kiki and I would have been separated because she was under probation here in Vegas.
“Mike, if you go to prison, as your girlfriend I don’t have any rights, I’m on probation too,” Kiki told me one day. “I may not even be able to visit with you, even though we have a child together. That’s why I want to be married too. We were planning to get married anyway.”
“All right, when do you want to do it?” I said.
“Honestly? Tomorrow,” she said.
“Why not tonight?”
It was about six p.m. on June sixth, just about ten days after Exodus had passed. Kiki Googled “wedding chapels” and made some calls and the person at the chapel at the Las Vegas Hilton said they could take us right away. Kiki was making it sound like it was a practical thing but I loved that crazy woman. I didn’t want to marry her so she could visit me in prison with the baby, I wanted to marry her because I didn’t want to live without her. We had been talking about it for a while and she had told me that she wasn’t giving me an ultimatum but if I didn’t lock her down, she wasn’t going to wait years and years to get married. She might take another situation if it came along because she wanted to be married.
Right after I suggested that we get married that night, I got this Herculean pain from a pinched nerve or something in my neck. We were driving to the Hilton and I was writhing.
“You don’t have to marry me. I don’t want to force you into marrying me,” Kiki said and started bawling.
“I want to marry you, but I’m just in such fucking pain, baby. Why does it always have to be about you? Why do I got to be happy and giggling like you? I’m in so much fucking pain.”
I was a mess. I had cold sores all over my mouth from doing coke. I was grossly overweight and now I had this pinched nerve. Meanwhile, Kiki had done all the wedding bullshit. She was superstitious, so for something blue she put on a blue panties. For something borrowed, she was wearing her mom’s bracelet. She had plenty of old stuff so that was no biggie. We got to the chapel and I couldn’t believe that the guy that was marrying us looked just like Slick, the black pro-wrestling manager who managed Big Boss Man. We both looked so bad that we didn’t even want pictures but then we broke down and got some. We started looking through the pictures and the guy that married us said, “That will be a donation of seventy-five dollars and up.” How do you come off setting the price for a donation? I felt like he was getting ready to call the law on us like we were going to run off with the pictures.
We got home and Milan was crying so Kiki ran upstairs to breastfeed her. Rita was sitting there watching TV.
“Mom, we just got married,” I told her.
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“Get out of here! Who married you?” she said.
“Slick from the WWF,” I said. Then I told her the truth and she was so excited.
But we didn’t exchange rings or go on a honeymoon. We wouldn’t get the rings for another year and the honeymoon was over in a couple of days. Kiki and I had never fought. We were cool until we said, “I do,” and then we starting fighting like a motherfucker. When the reality hit me I thought, What the fuck is going on here? I was still in my addiction and I was just overstepping the boundaries a lot. I was fighting them about leaving the house. I was doing a good job; instead of doing coke every day I was doing it once a week now. Then it went from once a week to once every two weeks, then once every three weeks to once a month.
Every time I slipped I felt shame because now I was coming home to Kiki and her mom and our little baby. I’d come back sweating like a pig, burning up, and Rita would put the cold compresses on me while Kiki was running her mouth at me.
“Don’t you see your mother? Don’t fucking say nothing,” I told Kiki. “Be like your mother.”
“My mother is not married to you,” she said.
A week after my birthday I went out with a friend and I stayed out all night doing coke. Kiki couldn’t sleep because I hadn’t come home so she started Googling my name to see if I had been arrested. Then she let out a scream and ran into Rita’s room.
“Mike is dead! I just saw it on the Internet.” They reported that I was out celebrating my birthday with friends and that I had succumbed to a massive heart attack.
Rita got on the phone immediately and called the coroner’s office.
“Do you have a Mike Tyson there?” she asked.
“Why do you ask?” they answered.
“Because he’s dead,” she said.
“How do you know he’s dead?”
“That’s just the point. We don’t know if he’s dead, that’s why we’re calling,” Rita said. “This is his mother-in-law and his wife. We’re trying to find out if you have his body.”
They put Rita on hold and then another guy picked up.
“No, we don’t have anyone here by that name.”
The next day, I walked jauntily into the house.
“Hey, guys,” I said. I was high as a kite.
“You are such an asshole,” Kiki said. “I was looking for you and I went online and it said that you died of a heart attack.”
I started laughing.
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” I paraphrased Mark Twain.
Kiki didn’t think it was funny. She grabbed Milan.
“I’m getting out of here,” she said and stormed down the stairs to the car.
“Where are you going?” Rita asked.
“I’m just leaving,” Kiki said. “Are you staying with him?”
“Yeah, somebody needs to,” Rita said.
“Don’t worry, Momma. I’ll take care of you,” I offered. As if my high ass was in any condition to take care of anyone. I could barely stand up straight.
Kiki blew off some steam and came home. She was worried that she had forced me into marrying her and that’s why we were fighting and I was slipping out.
“Do you feel like you settled with me?” she’d ask me.
“You know that no one can make me do anything I don’t want to do,” I reassured her.
I was getting sick of the slips myself. A few weeks earlier The Hangover had come out and it was a runaway smash. I was still getting high but I called up Todd Phillips, the director.
“When is the next fucking movie, Todd? Yo, I want in that movie, Todd. Don’t play me, man.”
In July we all went to L.A. to the Teen Choice Awards because The Hangover had been nominated. I brought Rayna, my daughter with Monica, and she was so excited to meet the Jonas Brothers. They were hosting it and they wanted to do a skit with me where I was a sadistic barber and I cut off one of the brothers’ hair.
A few weeks later we were back in L.A. for the ESPY awards. That visit didn’t go as well as the last one. We were so broke that we couldn’t even afford to stay in the hotel room that ESPN put us up in for any additional days. When the show was over, Kiki and I had a fight on the way back to the hotel so when we got there she and Milan and Rita and Darryl went up to the rooms but I snuck off and went and got our car. I had brought some coke with me without them knowing it and I had snuck off periodically to do it and to have a few drinks so I was pretty high by now. I started the car and then remembered I had left my phone on the valet bench where I was waiting so I got out and got the phone but locked myself out of the car.
All the people from the show were spilling out and I saw this young Caucasian lady who I had had a one-night stand with a few years earlier. She was staying at the hotel too.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I said.
She took one look at my face and got scared. She could see I wasn’t right.
“No, no, I’m just going back to my room,” she said and scurried off.
Okay, I guess it was only a one-night stand for her too. So I called AAA and they came and opened the car and wouldn’t even take any money. I got behind the wheel and I pulled out. A friend of mine was having a cocaine party at his house in Beverly Hills so I wasn’t going to miss that, but I had no idea how to get to the freeway to Beverly Hills from this hotel in downtown L.A. I guess I was weaving a bit and then I made a weird turn. Then I saw lights in the rearview mirror and I heard a siren and then an amplified voice: “Pull over to the side of the road.”
I not only pulled over, I pulled up onto the fucking curb I was so high. Oh shit, I thought. I was going straight back to jail. The cop got out of his car and approached my vehicle. I rolled down the window.
“Mike Tyson! Holy shit!” he said. “Hey, you were great in The Hangover. We’ve been following you for a while, Mike. You’ve been swerving all over the road.”
I must have gotten this from Cus but in a tenth of a second, as soon as I detected any friendliness from him, I opened up all my love on him. I had to do something because my license was suspended and I had no documents in the car.
“Hey, guy, I’m sorry if I was driving erratically because I’m kind of lost. I’m trying to find my friend’s house in Beverly Hills but I don’t know how to get to the freeway. Can you help me with this address?”
I handed him my friend’s address. He took the paper and he went back to his car. He was taking an awfully long time so I got paranoid that he was checking my record and would see my license suspension. I was sweating bullets when he came back to my car.
“Okay, Mike, we got it. Why don’t you just follow us and we’ll escort you there.”
Yes! I had played my get-out-of-jail-free celebrity card tonight. I didn’t think that officer was going to show me any love but he did. They got me to the party and then they actually escorted me to the front door!
My friend looked pretty shocked to see me and two LAPD police officers there.
“We’re leaving Mike Tyson in your custody and you’d better make sure he gets home safely in the morning. If we hear that he was driving we have your address on file,” the one cop said.
There’s no bigger buzzkill than to show up at a coke party with two cops. So as soon as the cops pulled away, everybody left the party. So I went back into my car, high and drunk as hell, and somehow wound up at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. I dropped my car off and I went into the hotel to have a drink and make a call to score more coke. When I came back, the valet wouldn’t give me my car keys.
“You cannot drive like that, man. I’m keeping your car,” he said. So I called Kiki and told her to come pick me up. Before she got there I had changed my mind and I hailed a cab instead. I went down Sunset to my friend Mark’s cigar bar. He wasn’t in but his partner was there. As soon as he saw me, he looked so concerned that he immediately kicked everyone out and closed the place and called Mark. Mark came and picked me up and drove me to my friend Jeff Greene’s house.
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sp; Meanwhile, Kiki had rushed over to the hotel and found the car but not me. But she was getting calls from friends of hers with Mike sightings. By the time she got to the cigar bar I was long gone. We eventually met up at the Andaz Hotel on Sunset and spent the night before returning to Vegas.
I had a few more relapses when we were back in Vegas and Kiki decided it was time to send me back to rehab. This time we had zero money and she certainly wasn’t going to send me to a cushy summer camp for celebrities place like Wonderland or Promises. She thought I needed a real program. So she went online and found a program called Impact, about an hour outside of L.A. in Palm Springs. She read the online brochure and thought that all that discipline they were talking about would be good for me. I needed some no-frills, no-nonsense approach, not some bullshit celebrity pampering. She didn’t know anything about rehabs so she had no idea that this place was looked at as the rehab place for lowlifes and dead-enders. She kept beating up on me until I finally agreed to go.
I copped a couple of eight balls of coke and packed a bag and off Darryl and I went to California. I was doing my last hurrah with the coke when we got to the place. I checked in and then one of the rehab counselors asked me if I had any drugs to surrender. So I gave him what I had left which was almost an eight ball.
“That’s good,” he said and disappeared in the back. When he came out again, he was acting strange. This motherfucker did my coke. And it was some good coke too. They had a junkie running the rehab! They showed me to my room and it was in a trailer. The whole place was basically a trailer park.
I was not a happy rehab camper. The place was crawling with violent meth heads and some court-sanctioned gangbangers who I really thought I might have to fight. I lasted the night and then at eight a.m. I told them I was leaving. They called Kiki and told her that I wasn’t happy and wanted to leave. At eleven a.m. they called her back.
