The Last Black Unicorn

by Tiffany Haddish

  Tiffany: “Man, I’m sick. I’m not well. I need to go home. I’m going to go home, all right? I’m so sick. I cannot function right now.”

  I left. I got in my car. It was raining bad. I got in my car, and I started full-on crying. Like, heaving sobs, makeup-stained tears running down my face, all that shit.

  I pulled myself together, and I started to drive off. I got down to the street, and all of a sudden I was like, What the fuck was on that damn tape? What the fuck was on that tape? I need to know what the fuck was on that tape.

  I parked a block away, and walked in the rain back to his place. My hair was fucked, but I gave zero fucks at this point. I broke into the apartment building that he lived in with his mom. I hopped over this gate and jumped into the dumpster. I was diving in that dumpster for like an hour looking for that tape.

  And I found it.

  I was so dirty. I just remember feeling like a piece of shit. I felt like garbage—I literally had actual garbage all over me—but I had to find out what the hell was on this tape.

  This was one of those mini-videotapes, and I needed an adapter to play it on my VCR. Once I had the tape, I drove around for about three and a half hours looking for an adapter. I drove all the way to Orange County, still smelling like garbage, trying to get one, but no one had it.

  I bought a pack of cigarettes. I didn’t even know how to smoke. I went home, and I smoked like three cigarettes. I was going, I hope this kills me right now. I have no idea why I thought three cigarettes was going to kill me, but I did. That’s how fucking loopy I was right then.

  At 5 a.m., I called my friend Anna. Her work involved some kind of media stuff, and I remembered she had the same kind of video camera as Titus had.

  Tiffany: “Can I borrow your camera?”

  Anna: “What do you need it for? What’s going on? It’s 5 a.m., what you need a video camera for? You murder someone?”

  Tiffany: “I just need it.”

  Anna: “Why do you sound like that?”

  Tiffany: “I just smoked cigarettes.”

  Anna: “Why are you smoking cigarettes?”

  Tiffany: “This motherfucker scratched my face, and I found his videotape in the dumpster and I just hope I die.”

  Anna: “What does that have to do with cigarettes? What is going on?”

  Tiffany: “Anna, look . . . you want weed? I’ll get you some weed if you let me borrow that camera.”

  Anna: “Okay, yeah. Bring me some weed, and I’ll bring my camera.”

  I got the weed and went over to Anna’s. I guess I was in worse shape than I realized.

  Anna: “Tiffany, you need to calm down. You should probably hit this weed.”

  Tiffany: “Fuck the weed. I just need that video camera. I need to go home and watch this tape.”

  Anna: “Tiffany, I ain’t givin’ you the camera till you hit the weed and have a drink. You need to relax.”

  She opened a bottle of Cisco. It was peach Cisco, because we classy. We sat there, 7 a.m., smoking weed and drinking peach Cisco. Then I calmed down a lot.

  I went home and plugged the video camera into my TV. Oh man, it was so bad. Lemme try to explain it.

  It’s that girl, Bertha, that his sister told me about. It starts out with them talking.

  Bertha: “I’m better than your girlfriend, Tiffany. I can do everything better than her. She’s not all that. You always talking about her like she’s so special, but she’s not special.”

  Titus: “She is special. But I’m going to have to teach you how to do it better, because you’re not making me enough money. I’m going to teach you how to suck a dick right.”

  Bertha: “Okay. Show me how to suck your dick right.”

  Titus: “Now, when Tiffany sucks my dick . . .”

  I just started bawling out of control.

  The whole tape was “Tiffany does it this way” and “No, when Tiffany do it, she don’t do this. She do this.” And she was all into it, “Does Tiffany do this? Does Tiffany do it like this?”

  I cried hard. For a long time, I just cried and cried. I cried until I cried so much that I got fucking dehydrated. I cried all the fucking water out of my body.

  Then I started to get pissed. I realized this motherfucker is giving this bitch all my fucking tricks. Ain’t that some bullshit?

  Then he started fucking her. And he’s fucking her without a condom.

  And my birthday is time-stamped at the bottom of the fucking video.

  I wasn’t crying no more. I started screaming at the TV. I was screaming at the TV like some crazy woman, I was so mad.

  And that bitch’s face. Oh hell no. You ever see them chicks that got the big gums and little baby teeth? That was her. That old dog-mouth bitch was staring at me as she got fucked by my man, on my birthday.

  I watched it probably about four times. I called him.

  Tiffany: “I’m done with you. This relationship is over. I’m not fucking with you no more. I fucking hate you. You a dog, nasty, dirty-dick motherfucker. You ain’t shit.”

  I was just going in on him, right? For, like, fifteen minutes, I used every curse word and bad thing I could think of. I didn’t let him get a word in, I didn’t listen to shit he said, I just went in on that motherfucker.

  A few hours later, he showed up at my house. He walked in and saw the tape playing.

  Titus: “How did you get that tape?”

  Tiffany: “How you think I got it, you dumb motherfucker?”

  Titus: “You fucking crazy. You a crazy bitch going in the trash like that. That shit is garbage.”

  Tiffany: “You best get the fuck out my house, before I commit murder.”

  Titus: “Oh come on Tiff, that doesn’t mean anything. I was teaching her. I was teaching her.”

  Tiffany: “Nah, you a fucking cheater. You a liar. Your sister was right.”

  He was thinking he would take the tape from me when he came over there. HELL NO! I hid that shit, then I called the police.

  Tiffany: “You best to get out of here. The police coming.”

  That phrase will scare off any black guy (except Obama . . . maybe). He left so fast, he didn’t even get his clothes and shoes and other stuff he had left at my place.

  Once he left, my anger subsided, and the sadness came back. I was just devastated. This hurt so much.

  He kept blowing up my phone. I ignored him. Then he got his mama, his grandmama, his aunties, all these people in his family to start calling me. They laid the guilt on thick, telling me that “You destroying him. He loves you so much. He’s so depressed. He can’t function without you.”

  I never told them that he cheated on me or that he made this sex tape or anything like that. I don’t know why. As much bad as he’d done to me, I just didn’t want to do that. I knew how much they put him on a pedestal. They really loved him. I didn’t want to destroy that.

  But they kept bothering me about him, making me feel like it was my fault. I know he didn’t tell them about all the shit he’d done to me. Then Anna pointed out some real obvious shit that I’d missed.

  Anna: “Why you lettin’ him hide his dirty shit? You should make everybody in that family fucking pay. They knew about that bitch. If the little sister knew, they ALL knew. They knew what the fuck he was doing. They knew.”

  She was right. They had to know. Ain’t no way the only person in the family to know the truth is some eight-year-old girl.

  I devised a plan. Oh, it was so fucking devious. It was straight-up evil . . . but that motherfucker, and his family, deserved it.

  First I got about fifteen bootleg copies of that movie Charlie’s Angels. It had just come out. Anna’s boyfriend was a bootlegger, and he helped me make some . . . alterations . . . to the movie.

  I made copies for all the family members who called my phone, all of them that called me and was telling me, “He love you. You’re doing him wrong.” Christmas was coming up, so I wrapped them up real nice, and I sent all fifteen copies to his family memb
ers as gifts.

  Then I ate a lot of corn. A lot. And I didn’t chew it so well. And I made a different present for him.

  Once it was ready, I called him.

  Tiffany: “I was tripping. I love you. I can’t live without you. You’re like the best thing that ever happened to me. I can’t be without you. I really want to be your girl. I just need you to stop messing with that chick.”

  Titus: “I’m going to leave her alone. No problems. I wasn’t making no real money off of her anyways. Fuck the pimp life. I’m not going to live that life. I’m not doing it no more. It’s just me and you.”

  I went over to his house, and I brought his shoes and other stuff back to him.

  Tiffany: “Babe, we should, for our first thing together, let’s go play basketball. We should play basketball.”

  Titus: “Bae! That’s what I’m talking ’bout!”

  He was about to put on some regular shoes, and I stopped him.

  Tiffany: “Nah, you should put on your Jordans, the ones you had at my house. You’ll be the freshest dude. You’ll be the shit on the court. You’ll be killing them out there. Put these on. If you’re my man, you’re going to be the finest dude out there.”

  Titus: “All right. All right. I like this.”

  He put his foot in the shoe.

  Titus: “What the fuck? What’s in this shoe?”

  He pulled his foot out and there was shit all over his foot.

  And the shit was full of corn.

  Titus: “What the fuck? Somebody shit in my shoe! Is that human shit?!? There’s corn in it!”

  Tiffany: “Yeah, all the shit you put me through, NOW YOU WALKING THROUGH IT, MOTHERFUCKER!!!”

  I took off running out of the apartment, because I figured he might try to do something. When you ruin a black man’s shoes, you never know what’s going to happen.

  But then I stopped running. I realized he wasn’t going to do anything. Besides being a coward—which he was—he was not about to track shit all through his mama’s house, right?

  Once I got outside, I could hear him yelling, screaming from his balcony, being all hysterical.

  Titus: “YOU A DIRTY BITCH!! YOU A NASTY, DIRTY BITCH!!”

  Later that day, his mom called me.

  Mom: “Why would you shit in his shoe?”

  Tiffany: “I hate your son. I fucking hate him. I mean, I love him, but I hate him. He’s a fucking loser. He’s a shitty-ass motherfucker. He wanna drag me through shit? Then he can walk in it, too!”

  Mom: “Girl, you fucking crazy. Something wrong with you. You have a mental problem.”

  Tiffany: “I didn’t have no mental problem until I met your raggedy-ass son.”

  Mom: “And he got shit all over my carpet, how am I going to clean this up?”

  Obviously, that broke us up for good.

  But my master plan was not over. There was one more chapter.

  Christmas Day came. I was at work at the airlines, at the ticket counter. My white manager came up to me.

  Manager: “Tiffany, there is a woman on the phone for you. She is very angry. She sounds black, and she is . . . very, very angry. I don’t normally like employees taking personal calls on shift, but she is, well . . . she is very insistent that she talk to you.”

  I already knew who it was, and what it was about.

  Tiffany: “Hello?”

  Mom: “MY CHILDREN SAW THAT!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU! MY CHILDREN SAW THAT!!”

  It was Titus’s mom. Remember the fifteen Charlie’s Angels VHS tapes I sent out to all of his family for Christmas?

  I had Anna’s bootlegger boyfriend splice in the porn that Titus shot with Bertha, right into the middle of the movie.

  He even made up a little title card that said “Titus’s Angel” that cut right to him fucking her.

  Oh hell yes, I went there.

  Mom: “WHY YOU PUT THAT FILTH IN MY HOUSE?!”

  Tiffany: “WHY YOUR SON FUCKING AROUND ON ME WITH SOME HORSE-MOUTH HO?!?! ON MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY!! WHAT’S UP WITH THAT???”

  Then his grandmother took the phone from her.

  Grandmother: “Oh my God, girl! You got my grandbaby dick out. I done had a seizure. I got these kids up in here watching Charlie’s Angels, and then all of a sudden, you got my grandson on here fucking this bitch.”

  The whole family—it was like the kids, grandkids, everybody—sitting there watching. His whole family saw that shit. They all saw what a fucking lying cheater he was, they all saw them big gums and those tiny teeth. They saw it all. I was tired of being framed as the bad girlfriend, when I wasn’t. Titus couldn’t hide no more.

  Then I heard his auntie in the background.

  Aunt: “My nephew got a big ol’ dick.”

  Grandma: “I should beat your ass. You better bring me every copy of that tape you got. Oh my God. You better not put my grandbaby dick on no Internet. I will sue you, bitch. I will have you killed, if you got my grandbaby dick out here like this.”

  Best revenge ever, right?

  That was the end of my relationship with Titus and his family.

  But the fallout was not over. Oh, no. In some ways, it was just the beginning.

  Because Titus tried to be a pimp (and failed), I ended up actually becoming a real-life pimp, but that’s another story altogether.

  The Pimp Gets Pimped

  The day after the Charlie’s Angels Christmas, Bertha called my house, looking for Titus.

  Bertha: “Hi. My name is Bertha, and I’m looking for Titus.”

  Tiffany: “Titus don’t live here.”

  Bertha: “Well, he calls me from this number sometimes. I can’t find him. He’s been missing for a couple of days.”

  Tiffany: “He’s been missing? Oh, you that bitch, ain’t you?”

  Bertha: “Are you Tiffany? Oh, it’s so nice to hear your voice. I hear so much about you. He’s always talking about you. You’re such a nice person.”

  Tiffany: “Oh no, bitch. I’m not nice. Just ask Titus how nice I am.”

  Bertha: “I don’t know why you’re so angry at me. I just work for him.”

  Can you believe this? I kept talking to her, and I started realizing this bitch is dumb as fuck.

  Tiffany: “Oh, what kind of work do you do for him?”

  Bertha: “Well, you know, like customer service–type work.”

  Tiffany: “Customer service–type work? Girl, keep it one hundred, because I remember him saying he wanted to be a pimp. So you a ho?”

  Bertha: “I’m not a ho. I’m an entertainer.”

  She told me about how she met Titus through his homeboy or whatever, and that she wanted to be in movies. She wanted to make money, and they told her that she could make money being in movies having sex with people, so that’s what she’d do.

  Tiffany: “So how much money are you making doing entertainment?”

  Bertha: “None, because he keeps all the money. But he gets my hair done, my nails done. He buys me clothes. He feeds me.”

  I know, right? To be honest, though, I didn’t have no place calling her a dumb bitch. I let that motherfucker lie to me too, just about different shit.

  I told her Titus wasn’t ever coming back to my place, so she didn’t need to call me again. Then the next day, she called me.

  Bertha: “Oh, you a nasty, dirty bitch! You shit in his shoes? You nasty, dirty bitch!”

  I guess she found Titus.

  Tiffany: “No, you the nasty, dirty bitch. You’re the one that’s out here fucking random motherfuckers on camera. And you don’t got money to show for it!! You giving your pussy up for nothing.”

  We was going back and forth arguing with each other over who was the nastiest, dirtiest bitch. Eventually, it came down to what all black women arguments come down to:

  Bertha: “I should come beat your ass!”

  Tiffany: “I wish you would come try to beat my ass.”

  Then she told me my address. That nigga told her where I live?

  Ber
tha: “I’ve been in your house before. I’ve been in your car. I’ve been in your bed.”

  Boy, I was fucking HOT. I hung up the phone and went to go see my girl Anna. She flipped it on me.

  Anna: “Stop arguing with that bitch and start fucking working that bitch. She’s stupid, so use it to work that bitch.”

  Tiffany: “I don’t even know what that means, Anna.”

  Anna: “You just as dumb as her! Listen, be nice. Turn her against him. Take his ho from him. Without no ho, he ain’t no pimp.”

  I thought about that shit all night. The next day, I called Bertha.

  Tiffany: “Hey, I’m not calling to argue with you or anything. I totally get what I did was kind of out of order or whatever, but really, I don’t want no beef or no problems.”

  Bertha: “That’s nice to hear, thank you, Tiffany.”

  Tiffany: “I’ve been thinking about what you said, and I just want to know. How are you out here giving up your body and not making any money off of it? It just don’t make no sense to me.”

  We started talking, and I asked her a bunch of questions.

  Tiffany: “You doing these pornos. How much are you getting?”

  Bertha: “I don’t know what I’m getting paid, because he takes the money.”

  Tiffany: “Girl, I could probably hook you up with some gigs, and I would just take 10 percent.”

  Bertha: “Really?”

  Tiffany: “Yeah. If you made $1000, I would only want $100. If you made $1500, I would just want $150.”

  Bertha: “Hmm. This sounds like it would be a good thing.”

  We started talking on the phone every day, and I kept working her. So now I was on the phone with her for about a week and a half, two weeks. She done became my friend. Right? I was like, I hate her though. I fucking hate her.

  Tiffany: “I’m telling you. You could make a lot more money, if you just work with me. You could even still be with him. He could be your man or whatever y’all got going on, but you should work with me.”

  She agreed, so I started looking in the LA Weekly, and I found her a gig to do like three porns. I got her $1500 for one, $700 for another, and the other one, she had to get fucked in the ass and her pussy by two dudes, so I got her $1800 for that. I took her to the sets, she fucked, I got my cut, and I gave her the rest.