by Bailey Thomas, Cynthia,Thomas, Peter,Short, Rochelle,Saunders, Keith
My parents divorced by the time I turned four. Shortly afterwards, my dad remarried and had a child with his new wife. It all bothered the hell out of my mother. Her existence became a dejected cycle of working, complaining and struggling. Very much like Peter’s father, she awoke each morning to a robotic existence that choked her motivation to create the future she wanted. It wasn’t instilled in her that there could more promise for her life, outside of domestic rituals.
The pressure of a failed marriage and raising two daughters had consumed her youth. She was unhappy, living with the awareness that she hadn’t established her own independence or career. The heaviness of her discontentment was always apparent. It was a justifiable resentment that I wholeheartedly understood. It wasn’t purposeful and I probably would have reacted the same way. Miserable people unknowingly do things as a way of insulating themselves from reality.
When I was ten, my mother began telling my sister Malorie and me more graphic stories about our father. We were naive to all the things that transpired in their marriage and loved him dearly. We looked forward to visiting him and riding in his fierce, shiny car. It was always clean and polished to perfection. To this day, a man’s dirty car is a litmus test for me. I wouldn’t have gone on a date with Denzel Washington if he’d picked me up in a dirty car. Well, not really! Maybe the date would have started with a carwash and cocktails. I believe my daddy’s obsessive cleanliness is partly responsible for my fascination with a spotless car. It could also be the reason I readily agreed to go on the carwash date with Peter that day he picked me up from the airport.
For a long time after our parents divorced, Mal and I maintained consistent contact with our dad and his new wife. We saw them as flawless, but our glorification of either prompted more stories from our mother about our father’s domestic mistreatment. She took a vested interest in showing us that neither of them was perfect. We would hear the particulars on how our stepmother relentlessly pursued our father until she “stole him.” My dad had been my mom’s first sexual encounter, but in contrast, our mom harped on how our stepmother was quite the opposite.
My mom resented her for initiating a relationship with my dad while he was still married. The closer my stepmother got to my sister and me, the deeper it dug under my mom’s skin. Malorie and I were sitting pawns in their chess game. What we thought were acts of kindness by our stepmother, were actually strategic maneuvers against our mom.
Around the time I was thirteen, my mother married into her second impaired relationship. He was a man who seemed happiest in the company of a cocktail. He was controlling and far from perfect, but was a great provider. In fact, my stepfather was the first entrepreneur in my life, owing two or three stores and a few restaurants. People went as far to label us “rich” because we had several cars and the nicest house on the block.
Unlike her marriage to my dad, my mother was an adult when she entered into a union with my stepfather. She could not blame any of their problems on her naiveté or youth. Even though he had his own set of issues, he always managed to take care of his business and family. Their relationship only lasted four years, and my only brother, Thomas, was the blessing that came out of it.
At seventeen, I started what eventually would amount to only a semester of college. Instead of having a two-hour commute driving from mom’s, I moved in with my dad since he was only ten minutes from campus. Staying in his home was the first time I noticed a stark change in my stepmom’s behavior toward me. She was petty, and mandated that I maintain my own separate supply of groceries and toiletries from the rest of the household, while she hoarded a stash of cakes, snacks and sodas under lock and key in her bedroom.
My social life was bound by a ten o’clock curfew. If I missed the cutoff, an inside mounted chain lock would override my house key. I saw that chain as a watchdog that alerted my stepmother of my arrival, forcing her to wake and grant me access into the house. My dad knew of her control tactics, but he never acknowledged or opposed them. I believe he initially tried to stand up to her, but she always won. It didn’t take long to figure out she wore the Levi 501’s in their family. It would have been a losing battle for me to challenge her authority. Her treatment of me infuriated my mother.
After living several months under my stepmother’s rule, I’d had all I could take. I moved nearby into my boyfriend’s place, whose name also happened to be Thomas. We were best friends and very much in love. He was nineteen and the first of many things for me. First boyfriend, first real relationship and the first man to tell me I was the most beautiful girl in the world. As crazy as it sounded, I believed him. It was an accolade I had never gotten from my father. Though I trusted and adored Thomas, our relationship became more of a brotherly-sisterly connection. He encouraged me to go north and pursue my dreams in modeling. He had a good intuition about where my life was headed. Just before my twentieth birthday, I was scouted by Wilhelmina Models and moved to New York.
Through the years, the relationship with my father remained a tense one, but I did all the right things expected of a good daughter. Even though he didn’t deserve it, I was diligent in sending birthday gifts, Father’s Day cards and little cheap box sets of cologne for Christmas. By his own doing, my father managed to live up to the disparaging image my mom had painted of him. I took solace in knowing that her hype of his bad behavior ultimately had no bearing on how I saw him. My outlook of my father was purely derived from my own interaction (or lack of) with him.
In our early thirties, my father called and asked to meet with Malorie and me. He wanted to share his side of what had gone down in his marriage to our mother. The mere request from him annoyed my mom. She couldn’t imagine what explanation he had to offer after all the years that had passed. Mal was mildly interested but mostly indifferent. I was eager to hear his side. His divorce from our mother and subsequent marriage had placed a serious strain between the three of us. Once Mal and I became adults, the tension in our relationship snapped like a rubber band. I desperately needed the closure.
My father opened his sit-down by sharing there had been some recent issues in his marriage. The effects had left him vulnerable and at odds with our stepmother. Looking back, I think he led with the sob story to garner sympathy from my sister and me. I felt badly that the woman he had so boldly put on a pedestal had fallen from grace and broken his heart. Still, a part of me was screaming on the inside, “Aha! Karma! That’s what yo ass gets!”
He was taking a slurp from the spoon of medicine he had dished out to my mother for so many years. My stepmother had wronged my father in a way that would have never occurred to my mom. It was astonishing to watch the same man who had stolen my mother’s confidence to leave him, be emasculated by the very woman he cheated with.
The problems in his second marriage seemed to soften him, and he admitted to making some really poor choices in his relationship with my mother. Some of his marriage war stories supported our mother’s versions. However, most of his accounts contradicted hers and leaned in his favor. He went on to apologize for the times he was checked out during our rearing, as well as his lack of financial support. He was regretful that he had only paid the very bare minimum in child support and cut it off the day we turned eighteen.
In the end, Mal and I accepted his apology. The three of us made a pact to be a family again and spend more time together. My mother was appalled by the truce, but happier than a pig in shit to learn his world had been shattered by his wife. Months later, my father patched up his issues with my stepmother and things went right back to the way they had been before. Unsurprisingly, my father failed to reciprocate Malorie’s and my efforts to rebuild our broken relationship.
In a funny way, my dad is responsible for my professional success, because I was determined that I wouldn’t end up with a man like him. He was a big part of why I never respected any marriage around me. As an adult, I loved being in committed relationships, but my true focus was al
ways on creating a life opposite my parents’ life. I wanted choices.
I didn’t want to lay in bed at night next a jerk that drained the worth out of me during the day. I feared ending up in a relationship that would smother my happiness, force me to become a mother before I was ready or marry the first man I laid down with. My backseat view of seeing my mother and aunts with mates who didn’t appreciate them, conditioned me to run like hell from marriage. Though I found getting engaged to be quite fun.
Peter’s Descent
I like the concept of two people getting together who are completely in love and devoted to one another. I have never been afraid of marriage, as long as it was with the right woman. My first marriage happened in my early twenties to a girl I’d known since the tenth grade. We weren’t high school sweethearts, but we attended the same school. I knew she was a loner and really serious about her books. She was a pretty girl who appeared innocent and sweet. The boyfriend type, who wanted to lock a guy down; making her by no means…my type! I’ve always been a gentle hunter, who allowed the young lambs to get away. High school was no different. I never wanted the challenge of a steady girlfriend. My only focus was on wiling out and hanging with girls who were giving it up.
I went away to college after graduation and came back home during the Christmas holiday of my freshman year. I got a job at Abraham & Straus department store in downtown Brooklyn. While working one day, I looked up and saw the same bookworm girl from high school. At first, she tried to walk past and give me one of those, that’s the asshole from high school looks. I managed to hem her up before she could sneak by.
I was surprised that we had enough in common to hold a twenty-minute conversation. It was the first time we had ever spoken or been that close. She was even prettier than what I’d seen from a distance: about 5’6”, fair skin, curly hair, big brown eyes and freckles scattered over her face. Maybe she was my type. It was just like me to flip some shit that was a definite “NO” into an absolute “YES.” I was about to mack down this exception to my “Don’t Pet the Lambs” rule.
I really didn’t know much about her, other than the fact that she had a royal asshole for a brother. I only knew him because we were in the same grade. He always missed school, and on the days he came, he was drunk or smoked out. We were living in very racial times where people overlooked shit strictly based on skin color. Both of her brothers had very fair complexions, curly hair and light eyes. They were on some DeBarge-look-alike shit. She was definitely a beautiful girl who resembled them, but her head was on right. Coming off the twisted racism of the ’60s, a dark-skinned brother like me (as my wife would say) was not “in fashion.” In those days in Brooklyn, you were fucked if you were one shade darker than Michael Jackson (the “Off the Wall” Mike).
I asked if she was available to go out with me that weekend, and she accepted without hesitation. My intuition was spot-on! She was one of those girls who wanted to lock a brutha down. She never uttered the words, but everything about her screamed it. We saw each other every day before I went back to school that January. I attended college in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and she was studying in Brooklyn. When it was time for me to head back to Oklahoma, she dropped out of school and moved there with me. She was really feeling me!
My true high school sweetheart was Chinese and Trinidadian. Her parents wanted her as far away as possible from my black ass. They had shipped her off to Edwards Air Force Base in Bakersfield, California. I had only moved to Oklahoma to be closer to her, but I no longer needed the hassle of the situation since my new girl was living with me.
When my soon-to-be wife made the move to Oklahoma, nobody threw her parade. Her parents were separated and she was being raised by her grandparents. Her grandfather pastored a church in New York and they all lived in a tiny apartment above it. He wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy over the idea that his granddaughter was sinning with a boy she’d known for only a few months. After a year in the Midwest, everyone was happy to see us move back to Brooklyn. The ’80s in Oklahoma was like living in Alabama in the ’20s. Being called “nigger” twenty times a day got old, real quick! I was over the bigotry, and being home gave me a sense of peace.
New York City infused me with mad confidence. Just being back there was enough to give me the balls to marry my girl. It was a terrifying move, but I figured it was the right thing to do after the display of love she had shown in leaving her family to be with me in Oklahoma. I’d been taught that the cycle of life for a man was to get an education, marry a woman you cared about, have kids, go to work every fucking day and make a life for your family. That’s what I was prepared to do.
We had a small church wedding with about fifty people. The reception was at the Ozone Layer, one of the hangout dives I frequented in Brooklyn. In our first year of marriage, we rented an apartment two blocks from my parents’ home in Flatbush. My wife gave birth to our first child on August 3, 1983 – a daughter we named Porsche Alexandria.
I wanted everything life had to offer, so I transferred to city college in Brooklyn and continued my studies at night school. Blacks in New York with college experience were treated a little better than ones without it, even if you didn’t have a degree. I landed a job with the City of New York. It freaked me out when I realized that my office sat directly across from the Abraham & Straus store where my wife and I had our first conversation.
I started off as a temporary employee, but my boss wouldn’t let up until he got me a permanent position as a social worker. My first assignment was managing a caseload of over 300 people. I was twenty-three years old and sharing a work area with four other case managers in their forties. Our five desks sat side-by-side, aligned in a row like some elementary schoolhouse shit.
My peers seemed to dig me, but they couldn’t understand how I had gotten their same job at my young age. Most of them had held their positions for twenty years or more. My white, female colleagues had been sitting in the same office chairs for so long that when they got up their asses held the form of the seat. All day long I stared at fucking family portraits, fake flowers, stacks of files and a shitload of paperwork.
It didn’t take long for me to start thinking there had to be a better hustle out there for me. I only hung onto the job for its benefits. My wife had sickle-cell anemia and got really sick in the last four months of her pregnancy. When she was hospitalized, my health insurance covered all her medical expenses. It was one of the only perks about the job that forced me to get up every morning and keep punching the clock.
The position was also the first time I’d worked in an environment with gay men. Both my supervisor and a coworker (whose desk was right next to mine) were gay. I was fascinated by them. I couldn’t believe there was such a thing as a man who really didn’t like pussy! I wanted to know how they got to be that way. My curiosity, and our mutual love of music, helped us bond. They always had hot tracks playing on their desk radios and we used music to get through the struggles of the ratched workday. We grew to be close friends. No HOMO, though!
After two and half years of the off the chain caseloads, I was done! I couldn’t see myself doing that shitty job for another eighteen years. Initially, I was amped about the opportunity because I thought I could help people better their situations. The city offered unbelievable incentives to folks on government aid, and paid for any program or schooling they wanted. Instead of using the opportunity to improve their quality of life, most people were hustling the system like scavengers.
This one particular family (the Festers), was the straw that broke my back. They were generational welfare hustlers. The grandmother had been on assistance for thirty years. These trifling-ass hoodrats were over 90 percent of my caseload. It was the type of leaching and ignorance that made me sick to my stomach. One day, I went to punch the time clock, and it hit me…I wasn’t changing their lives and they weren’t changing mine. The job had become like a jail, and I needed to get the hell out! I ripped up my ti
me card, threw it on the floor and headed straight to JFK Airport on a one-way flight to Miami.
When I landed, I hit a newsstand and picked up a Miami Herald before calling my wife. I went straight to the classified section, saw a job listing for a Wendy’s manager trainee program and took a cab to apply for the position. Back in New York, my wife worked as a restaurant manager at Wendy’s. When I picked her up at the end of her shift, I would sometimes wait in the restaurant lobby and watch her do her thing. I saw all the nuances involved in managing the restaurant and a large team. I knew I could do the job too. Before working as a social worker, I’d held jobs at Dunkin’ Donuts, Sizzler Steak House and KFC, so it wasn’t a stretch to say I knew my way around hot grease. I was hired on the spot to begin training as a store manager.
Three hours after getting to Miami, I made the dreaded call to my wife. I phoned her on one of those huge cell phones that was big enough to beat the shit out of somebody. She had already been calling my desk all day and suspected something fishy was going on. I tried to talk fast and explain to her that I couldn’t stomach my job another day. I told her the thought of paying our landlord $750 a month in rent for the next twenty years (like my father) made me want to vomit.
She asked how I expected her to pay the bills and take care of our daughter in my absence. I told her I had already found a job in Miami, and she could depend on me to make sure our expenses were covered. I wanted her to know I had everything under control, and I didn’t want her to be pissed that I had just taken off. After I said the part about finding a job in Miami, the phone immediately went dead. I remember yelling into the phone, “Hello? Baby? You still there?” Either she’d hung up on me or that big-ass dinosaur phone dropped the call. I never did figure out which happened.
