Unruly
Page 18
The four-hour visits were pleasant and as unemotional as we could make them. Aisha was mostly all cried out and I didn’t cry at all. I had been too busy looking at my life, regretting my choices and understanding why I was there and why I’d never, ever be there again. Our visits reminded me of back in the day when we had been giddy and excited to tell each other entertaining stories that would make us both laugh out loud.
In the visitation room, Ish would hold my hand as she talked about Brittney and her newest teenage dramas. I would then tell her about what was going on with me, which was always much of the same. Aisha and I, as always, could talk about everything under the sun, but we were careful not to get too deep. Everything was already too heavy for us. The laughter was gone.
When the weather was warm, Jeffrey, Jordan and I would often hit the yard and play a couple of games of chess and checkers. I just listened mostly to my boys as they each told me of their elementary and high school adventures. We would talk about sports, and sometimes I would give them some life lessons, especially when Jeff Jr. would ask me questions about prison. I’d always say the same thing,
“You see where I am? This is the place that you never want to be. Some people romanticize prison, making it seem like some sort of badge of honor. Prison is not to be proud of. I’m ashamed of it. I should’ve never been here.”
It was painful to watch them grow from a distance. It was painful to see that they could still grow without me. It felt tragic that I wouldn’t be at next week’s big football game or able to help Jordan with his book report. I kept smiling and hugging and telling them how much I loved them. I was missing so much.
I loved my boys for being with Aisha and helping her through this. The one who didn’t visit often was Brittney. There were reasons. She had acting classes on Saturdays and I didn’t want her to miss them. I didn’t want the kids to miss anything that they had to do to visit me in prison. I also understood that she didn’t want to see me like that. Brittney didn’t want to be participate in anything that would take two more years out of her life with me.
The fact that we were not separated by a glass wall made the visits even harder. The feel of Ish’s warm hand in mine, the feel of her lips when she kissed me goodbye, was tough. Saying goodbye was the worst part of the visit. I never wanted to let them go.
MY OLDEST CHILD, Brittney, is a beautiful, talented young woman who is determined to have her own successes, without my help. I look at her and I see that she’s just like me. She has a lot of energy and she wants to be an actor and she will. Brittney and I have a strange and strong relationship. Brittney has endured the majority of my absences throughout her young life because of my career. For her, there have been too many disappointments. Her frustration at my absences can only pale in comparison to my own fury at failing her.
AT THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, my son Jeffrey reminds me of me. He thinks it’s cool that Ja Rule is his dad. He’s real laid-back and cool most of the time, but his fatal flaw is that he has an explosive temper, just like me. He watches my every move, so I am forced to be a better man. The only way that I can truly be a role model for him is to be the man I want him to become.
I tell my boys: “Don’t make the mistakes I’ve made.” “I went through what I have so you don’t have to.” “I had to learn everything the hard way so you don’t have to.” I sound like a broken record sometimes, but I’m just making sure that they know how much I care. They are young Black men in America and there’s a lot that they need to know. I try to shield them from too many tough conversations, but life continues to bring us the big questions and even tougher answers.
My kids have always gone to school with kids of all cultures. It’s more important to me that they become comfortable with all kinds of people because that’s the world we live in. Aisha and I share Black history and a Black perspective with our children, as much as we can. The irony of Black success is that no matter how far we climb, we’re always reminded of who we are in the eyes of others. I teach them those kinds of lessons, too.
My youngest son, Jordan, is ten, and he’s too young to understand most of what has happened to me. Jordan reminds me of myself when I was young. He’s never afraid to dance or sing in front of strangers, which is exactly how I was as a kid. That boy is totally animated and creative.
The one thing prison did do for me was to give me some time to rest and reflect on my life. I thought about the many mistakes that I made. Prior to being incarcerated, I was spiraling out of control. I was riding around with a gun. What if I had to use that gun? The twenty months could easily have been twenty years.
I needed this time to think, too. It allowed me the chance to think about how I was living. When I started out in music, I thought I could take everybody with me. But that wasn’t the case. Some people are not ready for this journey because the vision is not theirs. I learned that some people can see only what is in front of them, while others have large dreams and a determination to get there. I used to run with twenty, thirty people. I couldn’t control them all. This was particularly troubling because what they did would reflect upon me and my image. If someone in my crew did something bad, all the news will report is Ja Rule’s entourage did this and that. I’m the one who pays the price for their poor decisions, as well as my own. I had to learn this the hard way.
Prison also gave me the time to learn who I am. I recognized that I have to control my circle and those in it. I realized who my real friends were because they were the ones to visit me in jail. I saw who hung around during the upside and walked away during the downswing. Now people can come, but not necessarily sit at my table.
OTHER THAN VISITOR DAYS, prison days were long and hopeless. Prison was like Groundhog Day. Everything was painfully the same. The days stretched out before us like a blank sheet of paper and each of us had to decide how we were going to fill it, but a lot of us didn’t know where to start. I had a job. They had me doing lawns and grounds in the morning and porter work in the afternoon. It wasn’t bad, it got me out of that filthy cell. It got me outside.
During rec time, I hit the weights. I gained about thirty pounds. People thought I was lifting Toyotas in that bitch. Seriously, working out allowed me to free my mind from everything that was constantly swirling around in my head. It’s the only way to do your time. In prison you have to think inside the box because you don’t want to get yourself reminiscing of things that are outside the box because it hurts too deeply.
Those of us who didn’t have jobs would stay as idle inside as they had been outside. Some guys were sleeping late, getting into mischief, fighting with one another or trying to mentally prepare for the day they would be released.
My first few nights in prison, I would have the craziest dreams. I felt like I was seeing demons. It was as if the devil would come into my cell and hold me down. I was seeing evil every night. I would wake up to COs with their flashlights in my face. All I could see of them were shadows. It would take hours for me to fall back to sleep. I would stay up staring out the window and then start writing.
I was so grateful that Aisha was able to send me boxes of food, so I didn’t have to eat the chow. Since I was working out and getting healthier than I had ever been in my life, I wanted to eat good food. I was only able to receive thirty-five pounds per month and Aisha would carefully measure and weigh the boxes, sending twenty pounds at the beginning of the month and fifteen towards the end. She would send me sliced fresh meats for sandwiches, green vegetables, organic oatmeal for breakfast and fresh fruits. My ride or die always comes through for me.
One critical memory was that there was a crisis with my oldest son, Jeffrey, while I was away. L’il Rule had a friend from school. He was invited to sleep over at their house with some other boys about a year ago. A few days after the sleepover, the child’s father called Aisha saying that his Rolex watch was missing from the house. As much as he told Aisha that he didn’t think that Jeffrey had taken it, we understood why he was calling. . . . Of course, bl
ame it on the Black kid. Even if his father is Ja Rule. Even if Jeffrey has always had his own gold and diamond jewelry. . . . It just boils down to the fact that Jeffrey was the Black kid at the sleepover, so he was the most likely candidate to have lifted the watch. Aisha was enraged.
Where was Jeffrey’s father when that shit went down? Away in prison, fitting the stereotype, further burying my innocent son in four hundred years of our painful history that never seems to end. The pain of my son even having to deal with that man’s suspicion is still more than I can bear. After yelling into the phone with Ish, I punched the four cement walls that held me. My skin crawled with the rage that I wasn’t there to set that man straight; man to man, father to father. I wasn’t there for that man to see in my eyes that I’ve been through too much to raise a thief. But I wasn’t there to defend my son’s honor, which pains me to this day.
EVER SINCE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, PS 186, I have been interacting with a variety of races. I have the ability to fit in wherever I am. I could play with white kids and Black kids with no problem. Nothing has changed.
Part of my prison sentence was spent in state facilities where I met Alan Hevesi and Dennis Kozlowski. When I was sent to federal prison, they wanted to put me in solitary confinement for my own protection. But I didn’t want to live alone in a dark closet. I wanted to be in general population with other guys like me. It was a breath of fresh air. I was happy to be around a larger group after being at Mid-State.
In state prison I spent my time in protective custody with older white millionaires and tycoons.
They stay in their circles and keep us in ours. You best believe, when they come into our circle, there’s money to be made, but most of it for them. It’s kind of funny that I would meet these guys in prison. Alan Hevesi was the former New York State Comptroller, who admitted to taking $1 million for his own personal use. Then there was Dennis Kozlowski (I called him “Koz”), the former CEO of Tyco Corporation, an industrial conglomerate (now broken up) that was referred to as “Little GE.” He allegedly took tens of millions from his employer to support a lavish lifestyle. Larry Salander, owner of Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, allegedly stole millions from artists and art collectors such as actor Robert De Niro and professional tennis player John McEnroe, whom he had been a personal friend with for years. All of these rich muthafuckas allegedly stole millions of dollars. I realized they were just like me. We’d all gotten caught up in the sticky web of temptation.
I learned a lot from those guys, but the most important thing I learned is that the predator of temptation is colorblind. Although the system may treat white inmates better than Black inmates or celebrities better than the “general population,” when you look into the eyes of guys from both sides, they all have the same look of shame, sorrow and regret. If all of us could have just turned back the clock one minute or one hour before we made that wrong decision, we wouldn’t have been there.
We were inside when Obama’s reelection campaign was in full force. Alan Hevesi and me kicked it a lot about politics. He was a Democrat, like me, so we had a lot in common in this area. Hevesi was also a Knicks fan so, whenever we could, we’d watch the games together. We were all just regular dudes doing time.
Dennis Kozlowski kept to himself a lot. He acted as though he was above everyone else. I don’t want to judge him because everyone deals with disgrace differently. “Koz’s” job in prison was being a laundry porter. He stayed to himself a lot in the laundry room. Ironically, he was the worst laundry porter I had ever seen. He always brought our shit all balled up in a bag. We referred to his room as his office and we all would bust out laughing at the irony.
Larry Salander, the art dealer, was another great dude. He shared a lot with me about art, and the way value is determined. He believed that the classic paintings by Monet or Renoir should value much higher than a Warhol or Basquiat. It was not that way in the marketplace, and it drove him crazy. Speaking to him reminded me of the Banksy film, regarding how we quantify art and its value. He was passionate about it and he reminded me of myself. He had created a once very well respected, internationally known art business based on passion and the compulsion to change the art world, whether it needed changing or not.
But these white boys don’t mean nothing to me, and I don’t mean nothing to them.
Dominick was a seventeen-year-old guy who was important to me. He was doing one a half to three for getting in a harmless fight at school. The thing is, Dominick, a Black kid, went to a white school and the white parents pressed criminal charges against Dominick. Even though Dominick’s parents are hardworking, middle-class people, it didn’t protect their son from the realities of life.
I took Dominick under my wing. We played basketball and talked a lot as I shared my life’s experiences. I also looked out for him as I would my own son, even though Dominick has a father. Talking to Dominick made me think of my own kids. I’m always willing to help, because in our community, our kids are us and we are them.
ON MAY 7, 2013, I was released from federal prison, and everything is back to normal, as if I never left. I’m still touring the world for shows, only this time my wife is right by my side. I’m back on the sidelines of football games and wrestling matches with Jeff and Jordan. And I’m happy to say I was able to see Brittney graduate, and even prouder to say she’s now in college at Hampton University. I don’t think my kids are going to be anyone’s job security.
I’m currently working on my new album, Genius Loves Company, my new reality show called Follow the Rules, as well as producing and starring in several upcoming movies. And somewhere in the midst of all of that, I managed to add “author” to my list of accomplishments by bringing you my life story, my memoir, Unruly.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people who have helped to make this book a reality, too many to name them all. First, I would like to thank God, who makes everything possible. I want to thank my family: you all mean the world to me and I appreciate your contributions to Unruly. Thanks to Carol Mann, my literary agent. You were right, Tracy Sherrod would be a devoted, caring editor. Kim Green, it has been nice working with you, but next time I’m going to buy you a tape recorder! I sincerely appreciate my Flavor Unit family. Thanks to Queen Latifah and Shakim. A special thanks to my manager, Ron Robinson, for clearing the permissions (not!). My HarperCollins family has been incredible in many ways: Thanks to Jonathan Burnham, Kathy Schneider, Leah Wasielewski, Katie O’Callaghan, Leslie Cohen, Kathleen Baumer, Robin Bilardello and Richard Ljoenes. Thanks to Kyran Cassidy for the legal read: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!” Thanks to Muhammad Ali, Tupac Shakur, Steve Harvey, Michael Jordan, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy Jr., Malcolm X, Mao, and Mandela—your example and discussions about manhood have been invaluable and have influenced me in many ways.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEFFREY ATKINS, more popularly known by his stage name Ja Rule, is a rapper, singer, songwriter and actor from Queens, New York. He has released seven studio albums since 1999 and has sold over thirty million records worldwide. In addition to having Grammy and American Music Award nominations, he has won several awards, including MTV Music Awards, World Music Awards, Teen Choice Awards, NAACP Image Awards, and GQ’s Man of the Year Award. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and children.
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CREDITS
Cover design by Richard Ljoenes
Cover photograph by Guzman
COPYRIGHT
UNRULY. Copyright © 2014 by Jeffrey Atkins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means
, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-0-06-231617-2
EPUB Edition JULY 2014 ISBN 9780062316196
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