Priceless Inspirations (4 page)
Girls and young women who see my show write to me all the time, asking me to answer questions about their relationships. They’ve seen some of the stuff I’ve been through with guys and dating on the show, and they want my advice about their own situations. They ask me all kinds of questions about how to meet a guy who’s about something, how to tell if a guy really cares about you, when to have sex and when to break up.
The answers to all of those questions are all pretty much the same. It’s all in the people you associate with, who you hang with and what they show you about themselves. You have to learn to pay attention to what guys
say
and what they actually
do
. That’s been the most important thing for me in choosing who to be with and who to stay away from. You have to choose guys who want you for more than your body, who have got something going on in their lives and who care enough about you to support the things you want to do.
How did I learn these lessons?
The same way I learned most things--the hard way. I learned from choosing the wrong guys, like the players and the pretty boys, and realizing they weren’t what I needed at all.
As a person who did it all wrong, I can tell you what
not
to do and offer you these priceless gems from my experience.
His name was Mitch and he was one of the cutest boys in school.
He was in this group called The Fire Flame that danced and competed in talent shows all over the city. Lots of girls had seen him perform and lots of girls liked him. I took it up a level. As far as I was concerned, he was my boyfriend.
It was 1996 and I was 12.
I was living with my Uncle Nat, my Aunt Kris and their two kids. Uncle Nat thought 12e was way too young for a boyfriend. He was determined to keep me from getting into trouble and he was determined that I would follow the same rules that he’d set for his own children.
He picked me up every single day from school. Someone had run into the back of his car, and it hadn’t been fixed yet. The back was all crumpled and he had to tie the trunk down with a piece of rope to keep it from flying open as the car moved. It was embarrassing. He would park right out front in that raggedy car and wait for me, so that everyone at my middle school could see him. I hated that; it made me feel like a baby. Every school day he did it-parked there and waited. Sometimes he waited a long time, because I didn’t want to ride home with him. I wanted to walk home with Mitch, who lived near the school in a neighborhood called “The Goose.” I’d slip away from the school, meet up with Mitch and we’d walk a bit, usually only as far as a little bench at the bus stop near an apartment complex called Frenchman’s Wharf.
We’d sit on the bench together, hugging on each other and talking, until Uncle Nat would pull up on us and make me get into the car. I’d get in trouble every time, but nothing he did stopped me. The next day, I’d sneak out of school and Mitch and I would be at the bus stop again.
He was the first boy I ever kissed, and, of course, Uncle Nat pulled up on me and Mitch just as we were hugging up to kiss some more.
I didn’t hear the car. We weren’t far from a really busy street and there was all kind of noise anyway. Of course, I was all into the moment of feeling Mitch’s soft lips on mine. The kissing might have gone on for a while, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Nat pulling up right in front of the bus stop in his busted old car.
“Get your ass in the car,” he yelled at me.
I pulled away from Mitch and scrambled into the car. I was so embarrassed. I felt like everybody on the whole street was looking at us. There was a whole group of Mitch’s friends walking nearby. Mostly, I was embarrassed that Mitch had seen my uncle talk to me like that. It made me look like a little baby.
“Why you trying to be fast?” he shouted at me. “Why are you sneaking off with this little boy? Don’t you know how much trouble this is gonna lead to? And you just 12 years old!” He ranted and raved the whole way home. He took away my telephone privileges and I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything for a week. I had to come straight out of school and get in the car or he’d make my punishment even worse.
I took my punishment, but as soon as the week was over, I was sneaking off to be with Mitch again and finding ways around Uncle Nat’s rules. I felt like I had to. All the girls had a crush on Mitch, including all the girls at my school, girls at other middle schools, and even girls at the high school where he was already a freshman. All the girls liked him. Those girls were willing to do
anything
to be with him and most of them didn’t have anyone pulling them back, locking them down, or telling them “no.”
Compared to them, I had so many restrictions. I wasn’t allowed to go to the movies with him. I wasn’t allowed to go the dances. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even walk to the bus stop!
I blamed Uncle Nat. His rules made me angry. I couldn’t wait to grow up. I couldn’t wait to get out of his house. I couldn’t wait to be free to do what I wanted to do!
Since Uncle Nat didn’t allow me to accept phone calls from boys, I figured out how to get around him. Nat worked evenings and Aunt Kris worked days. I told Mitch to call in the gap, the hours between when Nat left for work and Kris came home.
I even figured out how to get to go out with Mitch. I lied and told Uncle Nat I was going to my friend Sarah’s house. We were both on the dance team and I told him I would stay late at her house after performing at the football game.
I realized that my uncle was right. Mitch was fast. I was 12 and not quite as grown as I thought I was. I was more than a little scared by some of the things Mitch wanted to do. Mitch wanted to have sex. He wanted to break my virginity
He asked me to come to his house when his mother wasn’t going to be home. I thought I loved Mitch and I thought I was ready. After all, most of the other girls at my school had already started having sex, or at least they said they had. I was one of the few left. Mitch knew that, too. It was one of the reasons he wanted to be with me. He wanted to be my first.
I was gonna go, but at the last minute I chickened out. I don’t know why exactly. I really didn’t see anything wrong with having sex. Like I said, most of the girls were doing it. Something didn’t feel right about doing it then, especially with Mitch, who had so many girls. I guess I was starting to get the vibe that he just wanted me for sex. I didn’t do it.
I dated him for the whole eighth grade school year. When I got to Marian Abramson High School, the same school where Mitch went, I found out all about him and I was glad I hadn’t had sex with him that night.
Mitch was a boy. Worse than that, he was a playboy, messing with lots of girls at the school, cruising around like he thought he was something. He was still trying to come around me, but once I knew I wasn’t special to him, and that he just wanted
all
the girls, I wasn’t entertaining him anymore.
I was disappointed in him, but I was glad I hadn’t let him break my virginity. He wasn’t worth it.
Toya’s Priceless Gem: A boy will tell you anything to get you in the bed with him. Don’t fall for it, no matter how cool he seems. If he’s really cool, he’ll wait for you to be ready. Don’t be just another jump off. Wait for someone who loves you enough to be patient
.
Keith vs. “Dream”
I know you’ve heard the saying “looks aren’t everything.” It’s true. It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to see past a guy’s looks. I used to
love
pretty boys. You know the really good-looking guys with the smooth skin, perfect hair and cool clothes. I used to love boys who had that swagger to them. I used to think the only thing that mattered was that he was pretty and I was pretty. I thought that being a couple of good-looking people would make us happy, popular and cool.
I wanted the guy that all of the other girls wanted because I thought if I had the popular boy, I would be popular, too.
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it
. I dated pretty boys and popular boys, and dating those boys ended up being just a crazy mess for me all through school.
Keith was pretty. He was tall and handsome. He was also a year older than me and one of the most popular guys at my high school. When he played basketball on the courts near my Aunt Grace’s house, which is where I was living at that moment, I’d talk with him a bit after his games. Nothing serious, but he definitely knew who I was.
We had one class together in the period just before lunch. I was only a freshman, but I used to skip out on the cafeteria and go to lunch outside the school with the seniors. One day we started talking after class, and the next thing I knew, we had left the school and gone to one of his friend’s house. Almost as soon as we were alone, he started talking about sex.
I don’t remember exactly what he
said
, but it was clear what he wanted to
do
. He started going on about how beautiful I was, and how much he cared about me and all that. He was kissing me and rubbing me and I was getting into it. Clothes started coming off and things got really heated.
At the last moment, and I mean the last moment, I called it off. It was happening too fast, and I guess I still didn’t feel ready. I had an idea in my mind about how it should be, and fooling around at his friend’s house wasn’t in the plan. I didn’t want to just give it up during the lunch break and go on back to school. Having sex with his friends right there in the next room made it seem like I was some kind of freak. I wanted better than that.
Keith didn’t force me to have sex with him like some dudes would have done. At the same time, he wasn’t happy about my saying “no.” I learned later that, for him, sex was all I was about. He wasn’t really that interested in me at all. I was just another girl he could brag to his crew that he’d had.
I still really liked Keith when I met this kid that everyone called “Dream.” He performed in shows around town in a group. I met him for the first time right after my high school talent show. He and his group had performed, and after the show, me and some of my friends were in a nearby convenience store getting some snacks. Dream was there with his boys.
“Hey, hand me them doughnuts!”
Those were the first words he ever said to me.
I didn’t know him yet. Like I said, I still liked Keith and Dream wasn’t really my type. I thought he might be trying to talk to me, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know him like that. I snatched up a pack of doughnuts and threw them at him.
“Damn,” Dream smiled and shook his head at me. “If you gonna come at me like that, you ought to at least get to
know
me first. Let me give you my number.” He scribbled his phone number on the back of a piece of brown paper bag and handed it to me.
I found out later that he was a rapper, though he wasn’t anything near as successful as he is now, and people all around New Orleans knew him. His thing was that he’d leave these raps on his voicemail and people would call him up just to listen to them. If you hit him on his pager, you’d hear his latest rap and there were new ones all the time. People would call his pager all the time just to hear the raps. He’d already been with Cash Money Records for six years when I met him in 1997.
People always think I knew about Dream’s record deal when I first met him, and that I had some plan to hook up with a bailer or a rapper. I really didn’t know who he was or what he did. Sure, I thought it might be cool to hook up with a guy like that, but I wasn’t really going out searching for that. Besides, I was 13 years old, still just a kid. Like most 13 year olds, my life was high school. I was thinking about dating the guys on the basketball team. That was my idea of a popular guy. When I met Dream, all I knew about him was that he’d just performed at my school’s talent show. Even after we’d started chilling together a bit, I didn’t know much about all that. I didn’t ask much about it either. We talked on a different level than that. In the beginning, what I knew about Dream was just that he was charming and sweet and fun to be around. He was still not my type, but he was gentle and kind to me.