Love Made Me Do It (14 page)

The volume wasn’t as loud as it had been.  But it was loud and clear.  So I started popping pills and doing a few lines here and there.  Those were more acceptable drugs to buy in my own neighborhood.  Everybody was doing it and as long as I wasn’t getting huge quantities. I would be under the radar.  I needed to fill a void inside of me that only drugs could fill.  I had become a closet addict.  No one knew how serious it was for me even the ones who thought they knew me best. 

Against my better judgment I called my lover.  Just like all the other times when we hadn’t spoke for a while. It was a little weird and perhaps even a little dry but I didn’t give a fuck.  He belonged to me when I wanted it and vice versa.  An hour and a half later he was picking me up on the side of my house. 

I hopped my ass in that passenger seat leaned in and kissed him.  I held the side of his face to let him know it was real and that I needed him. I hoped to God that he needed me too.  He took off for the hills behind my house; he had a blunt already rolled. 

I loved the smell of cocaine burning in the air.  The windows were fogged up and I was naked telling him to get in the back of the truck with me.  We literally stayed naked, sweaty and high until the sun started coming up.  I was satisfied and shaking.  Being too high isn’t good when you have taken a break.  Your heart can’t take the starting and stopping that’s how the most damage is done. 

He dropped me off on the side of the house and waited until I was in the house.  Then he turned up his beat and took off down the street.  An hour or so later I started throwing up all over the place.  I told my sister to call 911.  Obviously, I was not built for this lifestyle.  This time I was picked up from the emergency room, by my grandma.  She didn’t let me off the hook that easy, I was lectured all the way home. 

No need to say anything back because I knew it would only be lies.  I was tired of lying.  All the other areas of my life were pretty squeaky clean accept when it came to him and things I did with him.  I took head to those words that came from my grandma.  I stopped taking all calls from him.  My friends were back in rotation.  I was running the streets and looking damn good while doing it.

I met some-one that I heard had the “juice” with the girls.  Supposedly a ladies man, so I was going to see what he was all about.  I shall call him the “jack rabbit” for years to come that name will be very relevant in my life but in the end he was a sorry ass nigga just like the ones before him. 

The jack rabbit was in my extended circle and there was plenty women who knew him.  So I tried my luck.  We would spend hours on the phone and we started getting close.  I would take out of town trips with him to pick up and drop off duffle bags.  So now that I wasn’t using drugs, bad boys became my high. 

The thrill in life is what made my blood pump. The jack rabbit had a level of shadiness that hung over his head.  But for the most part it never bothered me.  I was excelling at work; my family life was back in tact so I kind of didn’t care.  Party’s came and went.  I just continued to make sure that I was in appearance looking my best. 

My lover and I were barely on speaking terms and that was fine with me. I was too busy for the bullshit anyway.  Sometimes it bothered him that he couldn’t get ahold of me and sometimes it bothered me.  But it was what it was.  So after a few weeks of phone tag, on a lonely night I decided to give my lover a call.  He didn’t answer. 

So I carried on with the rest of my night.  My neighborhood friends were a good pick me up.  As I walked around the corner, I thought to myself…
where is this nigga at? If you wanted to talk to me so bad then why didn’t you answer the phone?
I sat down in the garage with my friends. 

This was what life was about, friends that turn into family.  My phone starting ringing in my pocket it was like 1am. I pulled out my phone my heart started beating out of control.  It was my lover…but now I had an attitude and didn’t’ want to talk.  So I didn’t answer.  Then he called two more times.  I answered on the 2
nd
call, with an attitude.  I recall the conversation going like this.  “Hello…yeah, what’s up?” “Oh where are you at?”….. “I’m in my neighborhood.” “No you’re not; you’re at some nigga’s house.” 

This conversation was going nowhere fast.  So I hung up on his ass.  When he called back I let my friend answer the phone.  My lover started asking my friend hella questions. I gave my friend the cue to hang up the phone.  He called back and I answered the phone. 

This was the back and forth that we went thru all the time.  It was the sickest love, that I ever seen yet alone been involved with.  So we did the back and forth on the phone, while I sat in a garage full of my homies. 

Then my lover dropped a bomb on me “That’s why I fucked her,” I was speechless to say the least.  Here was karma coming back for me in the worst way.  So I fucked your best friend and you go and fuck a girl that was my friend.  I listened and tried to think of an appropriate response. 

But all I could do was cry and hang up the phone.  I stayed in the garage with my homies until about 4 in the morning feeling sorry for myself.  I was embarrassed that I was constantly riding an emotional roll coaster.  So I walked back to my house drunk and riddled with shame and guilt.  He fucked her, and I fucked his friend maybe we could just be even now.  Maybe with God’s help we could move forward.

That was purely a wishful thought.  Lying in my bed I started thinking about my life once again.  None of those thoughts made me happy.  I had the jack rabbit on deck but my heart belonged to my lover.  I didn’t think that was ever going to change. 

Morning time came.  I did an internal check, to see where my emotions were at regarding the news that I heard the night before.  I was still hurting.  So I decided to give her a call.  I paced around the house with an attitude.

I needed to get some shit off of my chest with this broad.  I opened up my phone and began searching for her name.  I still had it.  I hit talk once I got to her name.  She answered on the second ring.  The conversation became so ugly.  She told me that he had been her man and that she was going to come to my house and whoop my ass.  At first I was totally speechless. Listening to how much of my business that she really knew. 

Just a few months back she wanted to be a permanent fixture in my life. I didn’t want any parts of that she was nothing but a headache.  We went back and forth.  But at the end of the day I was just a fool on my front lawn going off on a broad that wanted me…but wound up fucking my soul mate.  They were both a waste of time and a waste of my energy.  I put that situation on the back burner and tried to focus on my party life, my friends and of course the jack rabbit.

The jack rabbit was small in stature and in the bed.  But the jack rabbit had me content for that moment.  They say the best way to get over someone is to get underneath someone else.  We hung out, and had sex.  But it wasn’t enough to really solidify it as a real relationship. 

At 25 I felt like I needed more in a relationship, at least something that had substance.  As much as I loved men I couldn’t properly digest all the stress that came with that territory.  A man was like a full time job with no pay.  That’s probably why my history will show you, that it was very rare that I kept both at the same time successfully.

The jack rabbit was still in my life and things were going well. The sex was average, sometimes it was really good depending on if we were getting along or not.  The saying goes “It’s not the size of the boat but the motion in the ocean.”  They lied.  I don’t care how good the motion is, if the penis is small like the one that he had.  It’s the love that makes it feel good. 

Years and years down the line his small penis became the joke of me and my friends.  He was one of the stingiest lovers I’ve ever had.  But no one is perfect and for that moment and many moments after that. I loved him.  Loving has never been a hard thing for me to do.  I either love a person or I dislike them.  Once I love you, I just always love you. 

When loving another person it has to be for real.  That other person has to know it.  Some people can handle that type of love and to others it’s foreign and scary.  The jack rabbit started doing disappearing acts and not showing up where he was supposed to be, when he was supposed to be there. 

One of the last times he spent the night at my house. He had a gun hidden underneath my bed.  I was so pissed.  I woke his ass up and asked him… “Why in the fuck would you bring a gun to my grandmother’s house?”  He didn’t say one word he just took his gun and got dressed and left. 

So at that moment I knew that I had to take a few steps back from him.  It was pretty easy after a week of no talking and thinking about that gun incident.  I was in and out of contact once again with my lover.  When we were in contact, the sex was amazing the getting high was amazing.  So, since I was on hiatus from the jack rabbit. I was a little more attentive to what my lover was doing and could we do it together. 

My lover was receptive to my flirting.  We were in a lot of hotels, motels and his good mama’s house.   Obviously it was not going to be long, before we were at each other’s throat.  The jack rabbit never had a chance when my lover, was in close proximity. I was torn between two men that were no good for me.  One was just a little safer. 

CHAPTER 22

I ONLY KNOW THAT THIS IS HELL

Disappearing acts had become quite regular with me.  No one was too surprised when they started happening again.  I couldn’t help it.  I was really on drugs and I was really in love.  Even to this day love scares the shit out of me, because I am still learning to enforce my personal boundaries. 

I was disappearing with my lover.  I was no longer talking to the jack rabbit and ignoring my friends.  I was only sleeping at home two to three times a week.  I was getting bad.  We fought.  I got clean.  We made up.  I started using.  There were good times.  But there seemed to never be a choice for me.

Either I prayed for the wrong thing…or there was a lesson that I had yet to learn.  Something had to give.  Well I wasn’t broken yet so I guess I would hang in there a little while longer.  I started living with my lover at his dear mama’s house.  Only she didn’t know.  To be honest, I am not even sure how I wound up living there.  But I know it was hell, a hell that I put myself in.  Living in a house full of people without them knowing, was pretty hard.  There were foster kids living there and they were young and nosey.  We slept all day, and the good thing is that no one ever knocked on his door when they knew he was sleep. 

So for about a month or so, we just chilled.  Ate hella food, went on drug binges, and fucked like wild animals.  All, under his mama’s nose, she never had a clue that I was there.  Some nights we would be so high and horny that we would go out and watch the prostitutes on Wilson Way in Stockton.  We would watch and talk the hoes that we saw getting in and out of cars.  I was fascinated. I had never seen a hoe in real life.  It looked scary.  Watching the hoes car hop turned him on. 

I could only imagined where this new found fetish would take our relationship.  Our biggest issue was the lack of money.  The lack of money only equaled black eyes for me and no high.

Out of disparity on a cold, dark ass night he dropped me off across from an old bar.  On a side street in Stockton and told me not to call him until I have money.  If I never called he would kill me.  When I refused to get out the car, he simply said.  “You’ve fucked for free.”  So I got out.  He threw two rubbers on the seat. I wiped my tears and closed the door. Here was my opportunity to run.  Here was my opportunity to call for help.  The only opportunity I had and I didn’t take it.

I looked around trying not to panic.  I don’t know what exactly I was looking for.  I didn’t even know what I was going to say exactly.  I just hoped that nobody killed me out here.  But if they did I hoped that it would be quick and fast.  I walked around trying to look normal, that’s when a truck caught my attention.  He was signaling for me to come over to him.  I was so scared.  But I got in the truck.  He was old and creepy and he wanted a hand job.  I didn’t want to touch it or him.  It was small, wrinkly, and pale.  I hoped that he killed me.  I put my hands around his dick and started a really fast jerking motion with my left hand.  Tears raced down my face.  

My lover knocked at the window, and told me to get out.  He asked me where the money was.  I handed it to him and I followed him back to our truck.  That is one of the worst days of my life.  Often people ask me why I stayed, why did I take so much?  I thought you were supposed to stick by a person no matter what.  That’s what loyalty was.  That wasn’t loyalty that was stupidity. There were many days when he wouldn’t let me eat.  He would eat right in front of me and not offer me shit. 

I started losing more weight and I was being dropped off on a corner damn near every night.  The corners were filled with a bunch of cut throat hoes that really had to do this to survive. I was too cowardly to break away from the abuse and the drugs.  I would rather go out in public and proposition a stranger for sex, than get my ass beat.

He dropped me off on different corners and I was expected to come back with money.  I swear he watched too many pimp movies.  It didn’t really work that easily.  I met a few girls along those few months that taught me a few tricks to get over.  I also met girls who tried to get me to come home with them to their “daddy”. 

There were the girls who were run-aways, girls who made a lot of money… there were girls who were on drugs, and then there were girls whose dudes made them do stupid shit.  I fell into a few categories. 

I would be lying if I said I made all this money.  But I will be telling the truth, when I say I was getting the shit beat of me when I made no money.  I was out there to get enough money for us to get high that night.  I was snuck in and out of his mama’s house and I only ate when he felt like giving me food. 

There was a train table in his room and that is where I slept… Under, the train table.  The train table circumference was smaller than that of a twin bed.  So you can imagine how small and tight that space was.  Unless, he was being nice or wanted to have sex I stayed under there. It was rare that I even wanted to be touched.  I felt so disgusting, so ugly, and so worthless.

Unless he said it was okay.  I did not come from under that table.  I peed under that table in plastic red cups.  When it was time to go out and make money he let me shower.  I put a piece of paper in my pocket every night that had my mother’s name and phone number on it. 
If you find me please call mother.
  It was a real scary situation that I had gotten myself into. I hoped that someone would kill me.  Some nights I begged God that someone would kill me.  I was sleeping with strange men for money and had a drug problem.  That was progressively getting worse. 

The tricks that I picked up were creepy, and needy.  There was the white supremacist that breathed so heavy. I just knew that he was going to kill me.  Half of his upper body was covered in racial slurs and logos.  There was the highway patrol that picked me up on Christmas Eve that was beyond creepy.  There was the man that wanted me to urinate on him and I couldn’t.  But I did manage to drip hot wax on him, and hog tie him with the stereo cord.  He really liked that.  Then finally there was the man who caught asbestos cancer and wanted to talk all night.  He gave me $500. 

My lover took that money and left me in a motel 6 room with a half a quarter piece of dope.  I didn’t see him till the next day well after check out time.  This routine went on for about two months or so.  It was never easy.  Oh!  How could I forget the man that gave me the counterfeit money and the dude who tried to kill me?  But whenever I complained or cried. I either was beat up, denied drugs or was laughed at. 

I stayed under the table like a well-trained animal.  Some days he would be gone the whole entire day 8 hours or more.  There weren’t even any sounds from a T.V for me to listen too.  No food aroma for me to whiff.  Just silence.  Sometimes his mama would come in and sit on his bed, and talk on the phone for hours.  I would be two feet from her scared to even move, let alone breathe. 

I felt disgusting and I am sure I looked it.  He had hit me so hard a few nights prior it was hard to walk.  I was damn near paralyzed.  But yet I had no bruises.  He was becoming a professional.  He didn’t even need to leave a mark in order to cripple me.  How in the fuck was I going to get myself out of this situation?  God always made a way.  I just had to listen this time. 

This night was kind of special we had a bunch of money and he went and copped a bunch of drugs.  I felt kind of good.  I could smoke away my problems and ignore how gross I had become.  Shortly after dividing up the drugs he said he would be down stairs watching a porno.  This was fine by me.

I rolled four blunts loaded with crushed up Crack.  As I started smoking the 2
nd
blunt I started hearing some moaning from down stairs.  I was thinking to myself….
damn can you turn the damn T.V down.
I realized that it wasn’t the T.V when I heard a woman’s voice cry out my lover’s name.  I immediately got up, tucked my drugs in my bra and started getting dressed.  He heard me.  He raced up the stairs and told me to lay the fuck down and roll another blunt.  I wasn’t going to be doing either. 

I charged past him, trying to see who the girl was.  I never saw her.  When I got close to the front door he opened it up and booted me out on the porch.  I had no jacket and was wearing a mini skirt, sandals, and a thin ass tee shirt.  I had a shoulder bag with my wallet, a box cutter and my flat iron in it.  Those were the only things I owned. 

The wind chill was barely tolerable.  I was shivering as I took a razor blade to the side of his truck.  WHORE.  That was the best word to describe him.  Stupid as fuck are the best 3 words to describe me.  I ran away.  But, not far enough.  He found me.  He actually found me twice.  The 1
st
time he found me.  He kicked in a friend of mine’s front door.  He let me live that time because she had a new born baby in the house.  Or I would have been dead.  The 2
nd
time he seen me I was walking and he spotted me and drove up on the sidewalk and tried to run me over. 

I was way off into an area of life that I was unfamiliar with.  But I did know.  That it was survival of the fittest. 

CHAPTER 23

BIG MAMA’S DAY CARE

I finally made my way back to San Jose.  I slept over a friend of mine’s house so I could have the chance to think about where I was going to go.  I needed to get my shit together.  I had no other choice but to go to my grandmother’s house.  I was well rested, but there was no way to hide the fact that I was skinny.  I was so thin.  It was disrespectful to my-self and to others.  It was heartbreaking to think about those times in my life.  I was a total let down. 

I knocked at the kitchen window and she came and let me in.  I started crying and she just hugged me.  I said “Grandma, I don’t have anywhere to go, can I please stay here…I’ll do better I promise?”  She told me that she had a daycare and that she would have to see if it was okay.  Ultimately she let me stay. 

I can’t believe how disrespectful we can be as human beings, myself included.  When I think back at how many people really had my back. I could never consider being disrespectful to any of them at this point in my life.  I always turned into the fat and happy Meka when I was at my grandma’s house.  I was relaxed and motivated.  That same song and dance I was doing was old.  I was almost 30 years old.  Life was creeping up on me faster than I anticipated. 

I felt free.  I hadn’t felt that in a long time.  The majority of the reason was because I was away from my lover.  Plus I wasn’t using.  The remaining was my will-power.  A good job was never hard to acquire.  Back on pace… I had a job, bought a lil’ bucket and life was starting to get good again…well more like decent.

Everyone was little bit less suspicious of me.  Questions did not stop.  I could barely pee in peace.  However, it was gestures like that, that helped pull me out of the hell that I was in.  Those gestures stuck with me and always will.  My attitude was up and down.  Detoxing from drugs would sometimes take a toll on me.  Those drugs really fucked up the part of my brain that processes happiness.

Drugs fucked up your life and they can fuck up the lives of your loved ones.  Those drugs did all that to my life and I’m just now starting to get it back.  Maintaining a good attitude was mandatory at my grandma’s house.  I wasn’t paying any bills.  So I walked around smiling or I stayed in my room. 

I re introduced myself back to my friends.  Hoping to be forgiven, luckily I was always welcomed back.  Allowing them to see me while I was “sick” was hard for me.  But since I loved them so much I wanted to be around them.  And not miss out. 

I partied, I chilled, I drank.  I fucked around with jack rabbit…again.  Then it started again, it had been at least 2 or 3 months since we had spoken.  My lover called and said that he was moving to Vegas.  I had heard that before.  But I listened to the fake dates and fake plans.  I was tired of him.  Oh my God, I swear he was like the Devil.  Every time I tried to shake his ass….he was back.  However, I knew he wasn’t the Devil.  Close, but not the Devil.  That Crack Cocaine was the Devil.  My Lover was just his right hand man.

CHAPTER 24

HE MOVED

He really moved and he called me from fabulous Las Vegas.  I felt some type of way about the move.  I just don’t know what that feeling was.  It was nice that he was away.  With my lover out of the way, maybe now I could breathe.  If the Lord didn’t save me now… I didn’t want to be saved.  Period. 

My same routine was back in full effect.  Family, friends, work, parties and normalcy.  I was going to fight to keep from fucking this up.  That actually worked for a little while.  I was normal.  I was involved with my family, I was working, I was taking care of my business and I was hanging with my friends.  I swear that’s all I wanted out of life.