Game Over (6 page)

6-
Bamboozled

H
ave you ever been somewhere where people are telling you that you’re supposed to be but inside your heart, you know you’re not supposed to be there? Well, that’s how I felt about college. I know it was supposed to be about getting an education and all that good shit. But college isn’t for everyone, myself included. At least, that’s how I felt by the end of my sophomore year. God, I hated that place every second I was there.

I felt like I was inside a shell. I didn’t have anything in common with most of my fellow students. Although most of us came from the hood, we hadn’t come from the same place. We couldn’t really relate to each other. When I look back now, it was obvious that I was just young, immature and missing the spotlight I’d grown used to, especially when I would watch Hip Hop videos, award shows, and interviews.
My longtime friend Ayanna from Brooklyn was dating Spliff Star so listening to her tell me places Spliff and Busta traveled to excited me. The shit always had me feeling like I was missing out on something, not realizing I was blessed for being able to get an education. I was worrying about the wrong things.

Mingling with college kids was no match for kicking it with celebrities. College life couldn’t compare with life
on a tour bus. I was used to seeing new cities and meeting new important people. I was used to parties and rubbing elbows with the entertainment elite. I was used to everything and everyone around me moving fast. On the Hard Knock Life Tour I was a part of Hip Hop history as it was being written. In college, I was confined to a damn campus like I was in prison or something. It was too silent and slow. The difference between my current life and the life I wanted to go back to was too extreme.

My major in Nursing
took boring to another level, it was nothing like I’d expected or hoped. The classes were like watching paint dry. The job at the bank was so super lame I wanted to get up and walk out. I only stayed because I knew I really had no other choice if I was going to be independent. Mom still wasn’t checking for me financially because of the Paul situation. I knew if I begged her and gave her the puppy dog eyes, she’d come through like any mother would for their child but I was determined to stand on my own. I had gotten so used to being on my own that I had developed pride. I couldn’t go back to her and ask for money without feeling like less than a woman. Besides, Paul was taking care of the bills and Jason covered everything else. Of course I still had Dame in one of those bottles where you cracked it open upon an emergency. Most people know how it goes: you use to get used. Even though I had all of that going on, I knew how important it was to stay in school. My Aunt Leslie had become my role model, graduating with a degree in Nursing. She was the reason why I’d chosen Nursing as a major in the first place. Still, I felt unsatisfied.

Although
I liked Paul and lived with him, I was more interested in his money. Yeah, the shit sounds foul, but it is what it is. With Jason, I had strong feelings, something I hadn’t experienced since Smiley. The last thing I wanted him to think was that I wanted him for his celebrity status or his money. Don’t get me wrong. Those things were nice too but I wanted his heart much more. Jason and I had clearly clicked. We were friends
first…
the lovers thing was secondary. There was no feeling in the world like that. I definitely didn’t want to lose it.

Dame was in the shadows also. I was still fucking with him. But the situation was similar to the one
I had with Paul, just a little more complicated. Obviously, since Dame had much more money and he was becoming a force to be reckoned with in the music industry, I tried to keep things tighter with him than Paul. But all that changed in the spring of 1999.

I was driving through Harlem one day, happy to be
in New York. I’d been back from college for a little over a week. As I was driving, I saw Dame’s Bentley double parked in front of a barber shop. That was one of the things that always turned me on about Dame. Although he was making moves in the music industry and appearing in videos, he still kept it hood. Most rappers and executives sign that contract, move to the suburbs and never look back. Some act like they’re scared of where they come from. Dame wasn’t like that. He didn’t fear being in the streets that had created him. If anything, he felt right at home there.

Anyway, I hurried to find a parking spot, anxious to
meet up. Every time I got with him, a shopping spree, a meal at an expensive restaurant or something out of the ordinary was almost always a given. I couldn’t wait to get with him this time. Besides, my bags that I’d left with him earlier in the week were still in the trunk of his car. I pulled to the curb and parked right behind him. He was coming out of the shop as I turned my car off. As usual, his gear was crisp and his jewels were shining. It was always that way with him. You would
never
catch Dame looking any other way.

I
hopped out of my car. He saw me and immediately headed towards me as I made my way around the hood of my car to the curb happy to see him. He instantly began ushering me back towards the rear of my car in a hurry. When we reached it I looked in his face and could see something strange in his eyes, something I’d never seen in them before.

“My girl’s in the car,” he said before I could say a word.

Disbelief spread through my veins. I felt hot inside. I looked at his car….then back at him….then towards the car again. From where we were standing, I could see the back of some female’s head over the headrest of the passenger seat. I wanted to spaz the fuck out. Yeah, I was fuckin’ him, Jason and Paul. Yeah, it was all possibly karma coming to bite my ass. And? So what?

At that point my flaws didn’t matter. He
’d gotten caught.

My eyes saw red.

“Your girl!” I yelled at him.

“Yeah, my girl,” he returned
nonchalantly.

The way he said it made me stare at him for a moment. He placed
gangsta type emphasis on ‘
My Girl
,’ like he was married to the chick or something, like he hadn’t just been banging my head into the headboard recently. He’d turned into Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde again.

For a moment, I couldn’t react. I couldn’t speak. I was pissed off.
Adrenaline pumped through my veins. I wanted to haul off and knock Dame to the ground especially when I realized I was just in that front seat four days ago. That same arrogant expression on his face told me it was just the way it was, and I had to accept it. Surprisingly, the girl in the front seat never got out. I never saw her face, and it never dawned on me to step to her. I guess because Dame had just confirmed my status. Finally, despite my pain and pride, I said, “Dame, I just want my clothes out of your car.”

Dame
popped the trunk, gave me my clothes and I left. As I pulled away from the curb a part of me wanted to shout out in rage or kick some shit around. I felt like a damn idiot, like I needed to cry to show I’d been punked, but not a single tear would fall. Once again, my heart hardened. This was the first time another woman had been put in front of me.

Needless to say, I fell all the way back from Dame’s ass after that.
We still talked but things were different…way different. Months passed and he became less available. Even Paul too. Whatever exactly Paul had going on regarding his grind, it must’ve been good because he was still spending every weekend away from Delaware and never attempted to spend one weekend with me. He was probably cheating too. He’d never gotten caught but I didn’t trust him. I trusted no one.

My mother’s words rang in my head
: “Men will be men, Winter.”

Jason, on the other hand, I treasured. He was becoming my heart. Since Paul was gone more often, that gave me time to get with Jason a lot more. As far as I had seen, Jason wasn’t fucking with other chicks. He hadn’t quite got to the level where groupies were all over him yet. And he was still down to earth, still cool.
Even without Dame’s big pockets, I preferred him over Dame.

Guilt filled my heart when I was with him. I felt like I was playing him when he didn’t deserve to be played. He’d never crossed me. He’d always been real but I wasn’t being real with him. Although we weren’t quite an official item
—our relationship bordered between friendship with the possibility of something more—he still deserved to know what he was getting into. I didn’t want to hurt him. I couldn’t tell him though. I just couldn’t.

I wanted to have my cake and eat it too, I guess. That’s always been my damn problem. I wanted to keep all three men in my life for selfish reasons, even if it meant hurting the one I really had strong feelings. But
a few months later of that same year, I was forced to finally cut one of those men loose.

One night, I was watching an awards show. Jay-Z received an award. I was proud of him. He was doing his thing that year. Then he said something that made my heart plunge to my stomach…

Jay congratulated Dame on the birth of his new baby girl.

My stomach dropped to the floor like I was on a rollercoaster ride. In a sense…I was.
Of course, I knew there had been other bitches. I knew Dame wasn’t being faithful. But a
baby
? Are you serious? I was in absolute shock behind that shit. Especially after my phone started ringing and someone told me the female’s name was Rachel Roy. All women want their men to cheat with someone wack so we can talk shit. I couldn’t. And I even thought about the fact that she was probably the chick in the car that day.

Obviously, I shouldn’t have been pissed. I shouldn’t have given it space to rent inside my head. I was playing him and he’d been playing me. Still, though, it just didn’t seem fair. I felt like I had been played worse. I felt like he had gotten the best of me.
After taking all his wet saliva all that time.

When I spoke to Dame
a few weeks later, I wanted to see him face-to-face so I could slap the shit out of him. But we just talked via phone. I simply said, “What, nigga, you couldn’t tell me? I’ve been messing with you for over a year. Didn’t I deserve to know you was having a baby?”

As if my feelings meant nothing, he said
without remorse, “That could’ve been you, Winter, but you wanted to go to college.”

St
unned by his answer, those words were all I needed. Those words were my wake-up call. From that point, my motto basically became, “Get what you can get from these niggas, Winter, before they hurt you first.” I couldn’t love another man. I couldn’t take a chance on getting played again. I can’t say that I didn’t learn a lot from Dame during my time with him. A lot of what I learned follows me in business today but he also taught me to be leery of men. They may wine and dine you but that doesn’t mean you’re special. You could be one in a million.  

Still, despite the heartaches, I kept hanging onto the thought that just maybe someone in that world would marry me. Even though I had seen the
worst, there were always signs that I could have a healthy relationship with somebody I would be able to really love and have fame and fortune with. Like my long-time friend Ayanna. When I got word that she was pregnant by the man of her dreams, the news made me think hard about relationships once again.

Ayanna had gotten pregnant, out of wedlock by
Spliff Star, who was Busta Rhymes hype man and closest homie. I immediately had worries. I’d known Spliff for years. The two of us were crazy tight and had a bond between us that I cherished. In fact, it was that bond that made me warm up more to males than females. The two of us were just that cool with each other, him always looking out for my best interest and telling me how guys really think. I guess that was why I was so tight with so many dudes. Because of Spliff, I gave them all the benefit of the doubt.

But I still had reservations
about Ayanna’s pregnancy. It was happening at the wrong time. Ayanna wasn’t ready for a child. Shit, she was in the exact same position I was in: no money, going to college, immature and partying every night. That wasn’t going to work. But most importantly, she had a misconception of what being the wife and baby mama of a rapper was all about. All she saw were the clothes, money, spotlight and parties. She didn’t know what happened behind the curtains and underneath the tables. Most rappers didn’t have the money people thought they had. Also, since they’re entertainers, they’re never home and rarely faithful. Ayanna would basically be stuck with a child she’d most likely have to raise on her own the best way she could. Spliff was my dude and I hated to imagine he might be that way, but I’d been around enough cats in the industry to know what was what.

Ayanna’s reality was going to change drastically. She’d probably have to drop out of school. And as in love with Spliff as she was, she would probably depend on him for support. I knew the worst was yet to come. As time went by, she
began to see for herself. While she was stuck in her dorm room, she began to hear about Spliff’s partying and womanizing. She got a chance to see for herself what it was like to call her man’s phone and not get an answer. She was getting a dose of what it really was like to be the girlfriend of a rapper. She also thought Spliff wasn’t financially well off. Fact is, he was. He just didn’t share his money with her. It hurt me to know Spliff hadn’t kept it one hundred with Ayanna but there was nothing I could do. Their relationship was their relationship. I loved them both and didn’t want to come in between them.