Is You Okay? (16 page)

It was nothing Tommy did. He was sweet and very confident. He took care of his family (they
actually
lived with him, and not the other way around, like Dwayne). Tommy had swagger and pull—he even got food delivered from the International House of Pancakes any hour of the day, which of all the things about him was the coolest, because IHOP doesn'
t
deliver. Tommy can get it any time he wants? Oh my goodness!

My friends were furious with me when I ghosted. They were, like,
He could hook you up with an agent, get you acting roles, take you on vacation to places where the beach has that sand that's as soft as baby powder!

I'll be straight—that sand thing was the real toughie when we went our separate ways.

If I had been younger, and fresh off the freeway from Florida, maybe I would have listened to my friends and let Tommy take care of me for a long time. That's what a lot of girls do when they get to Hollywood—they find a guy like Tommy, and they hang on for dear life. Not like a koala bear either, more like a parasite. That wasn't me, though—that
isn't
me.

There's this thing with famous people where they become the center of their own universe and the world kind of revolves around them. Sometimes it's because they've gotten really good at making themselves number one in their own lives,
but they've wandered from their path and lost hold of their Abby. Other times, it's not that they're conceited or selfish, it's just that they have so much talent and charisma that they cast a really long shadow.

That last one was Tommy. I wasn't mad at him for it, but I'd just spent three years in Tike's shadow, and doing that again in a different relationship wasn't something I was interested in. I was trying to find my own voice and do my thing in entertainment, so I realized pretty quickly that it was never going to work. I was a grown woman and I didn't
need
Tommy to survive.

About a year later, I was at a barbecue place near my church called Uncle Andre's when I met two guys standing in line behind me. One of them was a little shorter and very cute, the other was taller, not as cute, but well put together. The taller one had a degree and he was getting his doctorate, so he did all the talking. His name was Jamal. The shorter, cuter guy was his brother. His name was Shaqkobe.

I'm not joking. Shaqkobe. Like Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, the famous basketball players who were still teammates on the Los Angeles Lakers when I first arrived in L.A. Obviously I didn't believe him—that name was probably
some hustle they ran on girls (they probably learned it from an architect-trucker named Dwayne out on the open road).

I could tell Shaqkobe was used to my kind of skepticism, so he pulled out his wallet and showed me his driver's license. Sure enough, there it was: Shaqkobe. Sometimes, I think if I could have only one wish, it would be to take my iPhone back in time to 2006 so I could have snapped a picture of his driver's license as proof.

Still, Shaqkobe was
cute,
so I wrote my phone number down on a napkin and went on with my day. I didn't hear from him for weeks. Then one day I bumped into him at Ralph's, the big grocery store chain in Southern California, and he looked a mess. His hair was grown out and needed a trim. His clothes were a little ratty. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because who really goes to the grocery store looking like a million bucks? We talked and he apologized for not calling.

“We should go out,” Shaqkobe said.

“Yeah, okay. You still got my number?” I said.

“Nah, I must have lost it,” Shaqkobe said, “gimme it again.”

I guess I could understand how he lost it; after all, I
did
write it down on a napkin right as he'd ordered his lunch—maybe he used it to wipe sauce off his chin. So I gave him my
number again, and this time he called. We agreed to go out to a movie that weekend.

That night, Shaqkobe showed up at my house right on time and I met him out front. (Good rule of thumb to my young people out there: when you're older, and you live in an apartment, never let someone you don't trust yet know exactly which front door is yours. It'll save you a lot of grief, trust me.) I walked outside and he was waiting to open the car door for me, which was very nice, but there was something off about this car. I couldn't tell if it was a rusted-out hoopty, or if it was just dirty, or if it was just the orangey streetlights making it look bad. It was too dark to be sure, so I didn't want to say anything that could come off as mean. (Hey, he was a brother with a car!)

I didn't need any extra light to figure out the problem once I got in and he closed the door, though, because my eyes immediately started to water. Not only was the car packed with stuff, but it smelled like the stairwell of a parking garage or a restroom at a public park—and not one of those nice parks, like in New York City or London, either, you know, where people get engaged and walk their babies. No, this smelled like a restroom at a park where people pee anywhere they feel like it.

So we're driving along to the movie theater and I'm trying to make conversation while I breathe through my mouth, but it's not going well.

“So where do you live?” I say.

“You know, I'm in between apartments right now,” Shaqkobe says.

I start putting the pieces together, but he keeps driving along like everything is cool. When someone is between jobs, I'm thinking to myself,
That means they don't have a job
. So if someone is between apartments . . . oh good Lord,
I'm on a date with a homeless man!

Maybe the Shaqkobe I met at Uncle Andre's was only put together because his brother was there checking up on him, helping him get his stuff together. Maybe the Shaqkobe I met at the grocery store was the
real
Shaqkobe. He wasn't disheveled from being in a hurry like many of us are when we go to the store—he was disheveled from living in his car!

So we get to the movie theater, pick up our tickets, and I can finally relax a little because now I can breathe fresh air and watch a good movie for two hours without having to worry about the pee conversation we'll need to have before we get back in the car and he takes me home.

But first we hit the concession stand. We each order a soda and decide to split a large popcorn. The cashier rings it up, and immediately Shaqkobe starts fumbling around in his pockets looking for his wallet. I've seen guys do this with friends of mine. They try to get out of paying by taking extralong to find their money and hoping that their date will jump in because women are civilized creatures who don't like to hold up lines or make the people around them feel awkward. I wasn't even trying to hear any of that. So I just looked at him. Finally, he takes out his wallet and pulls out a card. It's a Ralph's grocery card. Shaqkobe's trying to pay with Ralph's reward points? Oh no, Shaqkobe's trying not to pay at all.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!?

Whatever—I'll pay for it, we'll watch the movie, I'll go home, and that'll be that. It's not like I didn't understand what it's like to have no money and need to be extrafrugal.

My dad growing up was so cheap you couldn't even call him frugal—that's too expensive of a word!

Dad was always generous with people, just not with things. Remember the old van we had that his wheelchair flew out
the back of? Well, that van also had those little triangle windows in the front doors that you could open in order to adjust the sideview mirrors. At some point, the latch on the driver's-side triangle window broke, so the window would never stay open, and when you drive a van with no air-conditioning and you live in Florida, any kind of closed window is not an option.

The smart thing to do would have been to get it fixed; the
cheap
thing to do was to find something to keep the window propped open. The Mr. Fix-It that he wasn't, my dad found the perfect solution in a half-empty spray can of Right Guard deodorant. I don't know where he found it, but it fit perfectly, and he drove with it in the window for months.

If that wasn't proof enough of his thriftiness, one day he hit a bump on the freeway and the can fell out the window. He stopped the van (this time he was kind enough to pull over to the side of the road) and made me go fetch it. Latches were expensive to fix, and this Right Guard can fit perfectly—who knows if he'd ever be able to find another perfect fit again. I guess if you were willing to let your daughter wander out into the middle of freeway traffic to retrieve your wheelchair, and you grew up in the kind of family where you'd get spanked for asking for an expensive cookie, risking the life of your firstborn for an empty can of deodorant doesn't seem all that unreasonable. And yet, when you take all that into
consideration and you think about all the health problems my dad faced, he always bought us popcorn at the movies and our car never smelled like pee.

Which brings me back to Shaqkobe . . . So we're sitting there in the theater, and the movie begins, and who pops up on the screen? Tommy, the famous guy I dated a year earlier. (He's one of the costars.)

Then I smelled something. It was really strong, so strong that I didn't think it could be him. But it never dissipated.
Is that his breath,
I asked myself,
or did he just fart?
In that moment it dawned on me:
OMG, this guy is passing gas, while I watch the guy that I used to date
. (FYI, Tommy ended up being nominated for an Oscar for that movie.) Hollywood ex on the screen, farting homeless man as my date.

This can't be happening. Is this really my life? What did I do in a previous life to deserve this?

The whole time I'm sitting there, breathing through my mouth—AGAIN!—staring at the giant movie screen thinking,
I could've been dating that guy! That guy up there on the screen looking all hot and cool and famous, we could be together right now. Instead, I'm stuck in this dark theater with a homeless
flatulation machine, and about to get a ride home in his pee mobile.

I decided right then and there: I'm done with black guys! I'm kidding, of course—I just needed to expand my dating horizons beyond random guys at the club, or comedy club guys, or guys who I met on line in a store. None of them had what I felt like I needed.