by Jason Lee
After some time, I got annoyed at how long it was taking him to finish washing his car. The sound system continued to roar and thunder, playing Janet Jackson’s “Anytime, Any Place.” It was so loud that I couldn’t hear anything around me. Annoyed, I got out of the car and urged my brother to hurry up.
“Bro, you taking forever waxing your tires and shit.”
He looked up at me with a smirk on his face, knelt back down, and continued to wipe some more. I walked up behind him and made my request clear: “Yo, we need to go.”
Before I could even say much more, we heard a “boom.” It was the loudest bang I had ever heard. It was leading up to The Fourth of July, so I thought somebody threw an M-80 bomb—one of those big, loud firecrackers.
“Who the fuck…” I trailed off before noticing that the thigh part of my pants had exploded. My pants were hanging and frayed, and I was pissed because I thought somebody threw an M-80 at me. My brother jumped up. He had been shot before, so he knew what was happening.
I saw the panic spread across Link’s face, and I was confused. I didn’t know what was going on, but everybody was hysterical. A couple of seconds passed, and a crackhead ran up to me yelling, “You shot me!”
Everything was hazy, and I had no idea what he was talking about. “I shot you?”
He was holding his hands together and blood was squirting out of them. Blood was everywhere.
My brother, sensing that it wasn’t an accident, ran to the car and grabbed his gun. Then I heard another “boom,” this one seeming a lot closer than the last. The grocery store window across the street from where we were shattered. Then I understood what was happening: we were getting shot at. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know who the shooters were. All I knew was that we needed to get the fuck away from there. Janet was right: shit could pop off at “anytime” and at “any place” where we were from. That’s not quite what I had in mind though.
Right after the glass shattered, a frantic lady ran up to me and shouted, “Baby, you got hit!”
“What are you talking about?” I challenged. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t even feel the wound. I looked down, opened my pants, and there was a big ass hole in my thigh—maybe three or four inches in diameter. The bullet had cut right through. Whoever pulled the trigger didn’t hit me directly; the bullet had gone through the man's hand, hit the wall, ricocheted, hit me, and then hit the other wall. The second bullet went across the street, through a girl's back, out her chest, and into a guy’s side. The shot blew his chest out and killed him. The four of us had gotten shot with just two bullets. Later, I found out that I was shot with a 30 OT 6 rifle, also called an elephant rifle. The bullets were big and long—shit, to shoot an elephant I guess.
“Let's get in the car!” I yelled at Link. “Let’s leave!”
We jump in the car and drove off.
Once we got in the car, I was able to do a closer examination of my bullet wound. I saw the meat hanging out and my blood boiling. The jeans were burned into the wound, and my pants were all blown out. I was in complete panic, and my anxiety kicked in.
“Oh shit! It hurts!” I screamed at my brother. “Them niggas blew my fucking leg off!”
“You good!” Link was trying his best to calm my nerves, but I had no idea if I would live or bleed out on the backseat. He was driving so fast that I was praying we didn’t get pulled over and taken to jail while I had this big ass hole in my thigh. We finally got to Link’s house, and I got out of the car. I just sat down in the driveway, and his wife came out, puzzled.
“What happened?”
“Call 911! Jason got shot,” Link explained.
She stood there, blinked a few seconds, and repeated him, “Jason got shot?”
“Bitch, call 911!” he shouted back.
The ambulance picked me up, and my whole family was headed to the hospital.
***
Once I arrived at the hospital, they took care of me pretty quickly. I was a lot calmer after I was finally stitched up and in some new clothes. The wound didn’t seem as bad as it did with boiling blood and all that. I was glad that I was going to be able to walk and that I wasn’t going to die. My brother talked a little shit about how frantic I was in the backseat, but I knew how nervous he was before we got to the hospital. I wondered if he knew who those guys were and if he had any plans to retaliate. I wasn’t on any revenge-seeking shit, but I knew my brother. I didn’t want him to do something stupid.
I was there for a couple of hours before my dad walked in. I wasn’t thrilled to see him, but I appreciated that he thought enough of me to at least make sure that I wasn’t dead.
“I would have never thought you got shot,” he started. “I would have been out $6-$7,000 if you would have got killed.”
I stared into his eyes coldly. That's all you could come up with? At this moment, that's all you could think of? I don’t know if that was just the way my father shielded his emotions or if he was truly being an asshole, but I didn’t appreciate it. He wasn’t there for me growing up, and he couldn’t at least show a little bit of concern now that I was lying in a hospital bed? Damn.
Once everyone who came to visit me started to trickle out, I found myself just laying in the bed alone with my thoughts. I let myself drift back to three days ago when I met Queen Latifah. She said, “If it's meant to be, you'll find me.” I had time to find her. I knew she was on “Living Single” and that the show was on FOX, so I dialed 411 in LA, and asked for FOX.
When I reached someone from the network, I said, “This is Queen Latifah's cousin. I was just shot. I'm in the hospital. I'm trying to find her. I can't reach my family.”
“Oh my God!” the secretary gasped. “You need to call Warner Brothers Studios.”
She gave me the number, and I called the studio. “This is Queen Latifah's cousin. I was just shot in a drive-by. I'm in the hospital.”
They transferred me to Yvette Lee Bowser, the executive producer, and I told her the same story. “I can’t reach my parents. I need to reach Dana.” Yvette panicked and put me on the phone with a guy named Luther. I gave him the story as well. He transferred me to the stage manager, and then the stage manager ran the phone out to Dana’s trailer. She had just stepped out, so I asked the stage manager to take my number. I went through all of that and felt like my luck ran out.
Well damn. I almost got there, I told myself. She ain't gonna call back.
But she called back. “Hello, Jason? What's going on?” I’m sure she thought I was somebody else, and she said, “Wait, who is this?”
I sat up a bit and tried to put a little “cool” in my voice, “This is Jason from Stockton.”
“That little nigga with the mouth?" she shrieked.
“Yeah.”
She sounded like she wanted to beat my ass, “You got everybody up in arms telling them that you got shot! Folks up here stressed out!”
I said, “No, I really did get shot.”
She froze. “Why?”
I diverted the conversation, “That's not why I called. You told me if it was meant to be, I would find you. I found you, so what's up?”
She was amazed. “When you get out of the hospital, you and your friends can come to ‘Living Single,’ and I would love to see you.”
I got out of the hospital that day. They stitched me up pretty well, but I still needed to stay off my leg for a while. Two weeks later, Dana gave me her Sky pager. I texted her, and she called me back. I told her that my friends and I were ready to come to the studio, and she let us come. We drove down to LA., walked on set, and I never called her “Queen Latifah” again. We instantly connected. I walked around like, “Yo, I’m Dana’s brother.” I was really cocky. I made everybody know that Dana was my girl.
Dana and I connected so well that I was doing a little too much on the set of “Living Single.” I was acting like a diva. I had this whole attitude that because I was Queen Latifah's friend, I was the shit. I walked around like, “Can't nobo
dy tell me nothing.”
After visiting the set a few times, Erika Alexander, who played Maxine Shaw on the show, had connected me with the talent department. They brought me in, and they let me be an extra on the show. Anybody else would have been humbled, but not me. My arrogance was just too over the top and I needed to be brought back to reality. I was waiting in line for food, and I decided that the kitchen staff was making me wait too long. I got loud and belligerent in the lunchroom, and I was being really disrespectful.
In the middle of my episode, Dana walked up to me real smooth and said, “Yo, let me holla at you.” She pulled me outside and then told my ass about myself: “This is my fucking job. You need to relax and chill. Now you gotta come to my trailer to finish your dinner because you're doing too much.”
She took me to her trailer, and I remember feeling like my consequence wasn’t that bad. I got to hang in the trailer with Queen Latifah, so I saw it as a win.
My friends and I were going back and forth to the set of “Living Single” all the time. I truly valued the relationship I was building with Dana, not only because she was a genuine and caring person, but because she showed me a world different from the one I knew. The first time I came to LA, I saw Black people working—not killing each other, not selling drugs, but being productive. I fell in love with that world. It was enough for me to decide that I needed to be a part of it all. Yo, I gotta get out here. I don't know how to get out here, but I gotta figure it out.
5 Love on the Low
While I was making big plans to prepare for my LA move, I realized that there were some things in my romantic life that I needed to figure out. “Love” was something that still eluded me, and I wasn’t sure who or what that looked like for me. I was in a relationship with a girl named Nikki, and I thought I was in love with her. She was my girlfriend, but coming out of foster care and being in group homes, and not being around my family from age eight to 14, I really had a sketchy idea of what love was. I'd never been in a serious relationship when I was in those group homes, so this was my real, first relationship. I had girlfriends in the group home here and there, but in group home, you don't get to go out and see anybody. You saw them at school or you talked to them on the phone, but you didn’t get to go to their house. You didn’t get to go on dates, and you didn’t get to hang out.
I was attracted to Nikki, but the more we were together, the more I wondered if I was in love with her because I really was or because it was expected of me. My brothers wanted me to have girlfriends and everybody in the city was always talking about how cute I was with my long, curly hair. People always thought that I was a ladies’ man, but I was never like that. I never had a bunch of girlfriends. My brothers did, so I guess I was guilty by association.
The more I dated Nikki, the more I also discovered that she really wasn’t a good person. She didn’t reciprocate the love, attention, and time that I was giving her. After a while, I was just going along with the motions, and just having a girlfriend for the sake of having one. We were sexually intimate, but that became the foundation of our relationship. Her dad didn’t really like me—maybe because I was banging his daughter out whenever he wasn’t home. I guess I get it. Nikki and I were drifting apart and I was looking for more than what we had.
On top of that, I was facing an inward struggle; I had started to become attracted to guys. I had these feelings since I was about 14, but I didn’t really act on them until I was 18. The first guy I had been intimate with was my homegirl’s boyfriend. I know, scandalous, right? We were all hanging out one night, and I got a vibe from him that maybe he got down on the low. He used to collect CD's, and I used that as my opportunity to test my theory. I wanted those CD's because I love music, so I made my sexual encounter with him like a business transaction. I had to set it up that way so that it would seem okay to do it in my mind. If he wanted to mess around, I was all for it; I was feeling out his vibe so that I knew the right time to present my terms.
“If you wanna fuck, I’ll do it, but I want these CD's.”
He agreed, just like I had suspected, and we had sex. This was the first time that another male had touched me since my babysitter’s boyfriend all those years ago. With each kiss, lick, and thrust, I wasn’t sure if I was enjoying what was going on. When we were done, I got all the CD's, but I felt trashy—not necessarily because of the transaction, but it just felt wrong. I felt like I shouldn't have done that. I was still with Nikki when all this went down, so that made it even worse for me. It reminded me of the scene from Set It Off when Stonie had sex for that check. I was on some hoe shit. It also felt so wrong to have sex with another man.
I didn't do anything after a while, and I continued with my relationship with Nikki like nothing happened. Then I met another guy, and we messed around. We didn’t have anything serious; he mostly served as an opportunity for me to explore if being with men was something that I actually liked. I enjoyed having sex with him, but I wasn’t sure if it was just him I liked, the act itself, or both. I didn’t have a way to “test” other sexual experiences with other partners because Stockton was not a city where people were openly gay. Truthfully, I didn't even know what gay was. I didn't know about gay clubs or Pride. I didn't know how to find other gay men, but this guy had mentioned that he had messed with a guy named Calvin. He worked at Taco Bell, which was down the street from my house.
I don’t know what my end goal was, but I was thinking, I'm going to ride through Taco Bell and see what this guy looks like. I went inside and was met by two very effeminate guys. Then I noticed Calvin. He was masculine, good looking, tall, and brown-skinned.
Oh shit, I thought to myself. This was the first guy who I was attracted to that I really wanted to pursue, so I befriended Calvin. We exchanged numbers, and I would see him at parties around town. He didn't know that I knew about him liking guys, and I knew he didn't know about me. We became best friends, and we would hang out every single day. The craziest part of it all was that he lived across the street from my mom's house with his girlfriend.
Then we started to get really close. I was around 19 when I got an opportunity to appear on the “Ricki Lake Show.” I called the show and came up with a bogus ass lie just so the producers would be convinced to let us on the show. Once I sold them my story, we were officially invited to be a part. The name of our show was called “Girlfriend, Lose Your Jealous Streak or Lose Me Today.” I had two girls come with me; one was pretending to be my “jealous” girlfriend, and the other was pretending to be her best friend. I invited Calvin to play the role of my best friend, and he was thrilled to come along.
We got to New York and had plenty of time to kill. We had the show the very next morning, but we were just drinking and chilling. When it was time to go to bed, I turned the TV off and then there was this knowing tension. Calvin looked at me for a second, smirked and said, “Your ass is scary.”
I knew what he was talking about. At least I hoped that we had been on the same page with all the time that we had been spending together. Calvin was giving me an invitation to be bold, and I took him up on it.
“I'm scary? The fuck I'm gonna be scary about? What are you talking about?”
He started flirting again, “You know what I'm talking about.”
I played it cool. “You're the one that's scary.”
The room was dark. We were both in separate beds looking at each other face on waiting for the other to make the first move. It wasn’t that easy, even though I had been with other guys before. Our flirty banter continued.
“I know wassup,” Calvin responded. “What’s good?”
I had enough of all the coded talk and indirect invitations. “Well,” I began, “closed mouths don’t get fed.”
He dismissed me, “Well I'm not trippin.’”
The moment was here. I decided to stop being afraid and go for what I had wanted all along. I got out of the bed, walked over to Calvin, and it was on.
The next morning, we did the show, and
it was the most fun I’d had in a long time. I enjoyed everybody’s antics and I could tell that the crowd was loving us and eating the shit up. Every now and then, Calvin and I would exchange glances during breaks, and I would feel a weird flutter each time we stole those moments. The rest of our time in New York was blissful—we explored the city side by side and had more intimate moments before it was time for us to return to our heterosexual reality.
From that point on, I was in love with him. That was it. I didn't want to be with my girl, and I didn't want to do anything else except be with Calvin. I fell in love with Calvin because he was a dope person, but also because he was the first person to really make me feel loved. It was already a budding friendship that was building up to an epic romance. We would sit in the car for hours writing, rapping, writing poetry, and exchanging poetry about life and things that we were passionate about. We had so many things in common; I thought we were very compatible.
When we got back from “The Ricki Lake Show,” he enrolled in the college I was attending, and we would meet up and play dominoes. He would take me on trips with him to San Francisco, and that’s when I learned why Calvin was always so fly—he was stealing clothes from San Francisco and selling them at a fraction of the price. He was a professional booster. I hadn’t stolen anything of real significance since I was lifting jewelry off dead bodies, so Calvin taught me how he operated. We stole Tommy Hilfiger, Polo, Guess—you name it. We used to go and just steal shit all the time, and in a dysfunctional type of thrilling way, we became even closer. It was a Bonnie and Clyde type of relationship but on the retail level. Everybody in my family knew him, and I brought him around my brothers and my closest friends. I introduced him as my best friend even though there was obviously something more going on between us. I wasn’t sure how to “come out” and let everyone know that I was in love with Calvin. That didn’t fit who I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to do. I didn’t know how to be openly gay, so no one could know about Calvin and me.
