Underneath It All (9 page)

             
With every physical touch he gave me I could feel the emotion behind it. He gave it to me like he knew he was meant to be with me. There was so much passion and it was deep and open. We were in the moment, taking our time and enjoying each other. He closed my legs so he could ease my panties off and as they dropped down to my ankles he massaged my feet before bringing his face back to my vagina.

             
He slid his hands upwards under my ass so that his palms rested on the small of my back. I felt like if he was able to take all of me in his mouth he would’ve. I had my second orgasm in life that night. He took his time and each touch turned me on more and more. I was overwhelmed with pleasure and satisfaction. For the first time I looked at sex as being what it was supposed to be. Yes it could be carnal, animalistic and rough but it could also be the act of making love and connecting with that person on a different level other than the physical.

             
It amazed me how we hadn’t known each other that long but we knew how to touch each other as if we had been dating for years. I brought his face close to mine and whispered in his ear that he had made me come. He smiled and asked if I was sure and I said yes. While looking into my eyes I felt him slowly slide himself into me. From the look on his face I could tell that he was in heaven.

             
Our sex was intense, wild, rough, and spontaneous. We would have sex for hours and hours and there would be times where we would have sex in different public places throughout Miami.

             
After that night we started going to the pool in the hotel and it was something about having sex in public with people watching but not knowing what we were doing that turned me on. I had never felt this feeling before with someone you really love and want to be with. I actually wanted to be around him not because I had to but because I really liked him and that’s what made me want to be with him even more.

             
One thing about our relationship is that we were always open with each other. He’s a Virgo and they’re very prideful and I remember having conversations of people we dated in the industry and who was who and we never hid much from each other or so I thought. He came across as an open book and he portrayed himself as someone who was really honest so I had no reason to doubt him.

             
He went out his way to do little things like sending me pictures of him at his kids’ games to make me feel like I was a part of the family. He was very attentive and I got gifts often for special occasions or for no reason at all.

             
This was the most fun I had ever had with someone and I didn’t want to share him or bring someone else into our relationship like I often did with Raul. This was all new for me and it was fun. For the first time I had someone who got his happiness from making me happy.

Chapter Twelve

Although

I didn’t want to I had to leave Envy and go back to Cali. I had some things lined up as far as work and I needed to meet with some producers then go to My Studio for my boy Devin’s party. Needless to
say we went out and had a ball. I was feeling real good about myself that night and as I was walking out to leave the club out of nowhere someone punched me in the face.

             
I fell back into the crowd and the people I was with didn’t do anything but ask me if I was okay. Once they saw that I wasn’t badly hurt or anything I heard someone say that the person who had hit me was Raul. I can’t put into words how mad I was. It was as if in that moment I transformed into an entirely different person. I was livid. I felt like Jennifer Lopez in
Enough
because that’s exactly how I was feeling. Enough was enough and I was so tired of him picking on me. I was tired of letting him control my life and get away with the bullshit that he had done to me. Everything I had tried to do for this man had backfired on me. Here I was trying to move on with my life, go out and have a good time and he had been bold enough to hit me in public. I snapped.

             
What pissed me off even more was the fact that he couldn’t even be civilized enough to ask me how our son was doing, or if he needed anything. He cared more about humiliating me and at the end of the day I could no longer handle being his punching bag. After he hit me I lost all of the fear I had over the years. I took off around the corner until I caught up to him and I just started hitting him. The first blow I landed was in his face and every hit I gave him was exactly the way that he used to hit me. I guess I learned from the best when it comes to being stone cold and hard.

             
It’s crazy how life works and how things are perceived because something that’s so bitter sweet, my breaking point, my enough is enough moment, the moment where I took back my control is used against me and I’m viewed as unstable, crazy, a live wire, a loose cannon, and everything else under the sun when no one really knows what happened. No one understands that that moment was huge for me. The only thing people focus on is what’s on the show and half the shit they show you have been edited down so much just for the benefit of ratings. I have to explain to my son why mommy is hitting daddy yet Raul gets looked at as the victim when he’s the one that used to beat me. All the times he stripped me down and made me wait in the hallway, locked in the incinerator asshole naked while I listened to my baby cry until he felt like he was ready to let me back in the house, no one knows about that. No one cares about that. He gets the credit and I get branded with a bad reputation.

             
I’m sure people heard my screams, I’m sure they saw the evidence but no one ever called the cops so there was never any proof, only the scars, only the emotional pain that he left me with. I watch that video because I have to remind myself every so often when people pass judgment on me it’s not because I’m a bad person, it’s because they don’t know any better. I dealt with a series of abuse that I never healed from, never dealt with because I was too embarrassed to talk about it. I’ve bottled all of this up inside of me and I’m just now learning that doing that isn’t healthy.

             
I think once he saw that I finally fought back and wasn’t going to take it anymore that was the moment he realized he had lost the power he once had over me. The girl that everyone thinks fights all the time had fought on camera not only to get my control, but to take my life back. That was the last time I ever looked at him as a human being. I say that because he knows all the things that he’s put me through and still to this day he won’t ever say that he’s sorry, he still seems ignorant to how much he hurt me and how much it killed me to have to leave and not succeed in giving my son the family he deserved.

             
So yes, I kicked him in the face, and no I don’t regret what happened. If anything I regret not being brave enough to do it sooner but I guess everything in life plays out and happens the way that it’s supposed to.              

             
After the fight the first thing I asked for was my phone and I immediately called Envy. At the time he was the only person I really felt I could trust and I needed to speak to someone in an attempt to calm myself down. Right away he was upset and wanted to know if I was okay. Even though he was just a phone call away he had this way of making me feel better and bringing me back down when I was upset or irritated with something. I was in a Rambo state of mind and Envy was able to kind of take away some of that anger and make me step back and think about the situation.

             
I couldn’t understand how Raul felt like he still had the power to put his hands on me and violate me. Given that I had to start over, that I was homeless for a minute and had to leave our son you would think that he would’ve felt like okay, this is it, I’ve taken everything I possibly could from her but no.

             
The only thing on my mind was revenge and what I could do to get him back. Even though I had hit him the way he hit me and I defended myself, it still wasn’t enough for me. Envy talked to me until I had calmed down and he said that the best thing to do was to walk away from it until I could come up with a smart, realistic way to respond. He talked to me for the remainder of the night and I fell for him more than I already had.

             
As time went on we became more intimate and I became really open and comfortable with him sexually. Everything we did was fun, spontaneous, fresh and sexy. The sex always got better and more exciting; we would do just about anything to make each other feel good.

             
It was nothing for me to be out and go visit him at a club he was working at or we would go out to dinner and catch up with each other when we could. By us being long distance, me in LA and him in New York I thought it was kind of dope because it gave us the space we needed yet it kept things new so when we saw each other it was like meeting for the first time all over again.

             
When I would come to New York it was mainly for work so my hotels were provided for and he would always have a party going on in the city so we would go out and have fun and then come back to my room. He told me that his house was in Jersey so I just figured that it made more sense to stay with me instead of driving back home after we had been drinking. It never clicked that I never went back to his place. If we weren’t together we were on the phone so there was never anything for me to question.

             
As time went on he would do sneaky things to see if I as cheating on him like question friends of mine to see if there was anyone else. As much as he didn’t need to be, I knew he was a little insecure by being with me. He knew that I was openly bi and as much as that turned him on I think he was afraid that I might leave him for another girl. He would sometimes ask me questions pertaining to my relationships with other girls and it would get annoying because in my head I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere yet he still had his own doubts.

             
As much as I loved him and wanted to be selfish as far as not sharing him with anyone else I started to think outside of the box as far as ways I could ease his mind about my bisexuality. I had one of my friends spend some time with us and I thought that a way to keep him sprung and open off of me would be to have a threesome. I presented her with the idea and she was all for it. Once we got back to my room I told her that I wanted her to suck him off while I watched. Envy had this big smile on his face but I could tell that he was shy and nervous yet turned on that I was doing this and making it okay for another girl to give him head.

             
From that experience alone I thought I had met my perfect match. I thought he respected me enough to be faithful and loyal to me and maybe it was the sex that had me in denial and even more naive but I really fell for him. I was gone off everything about him. I loved his work ethic, how he wanted to do better for his kids, his come up in the industry and the fact that I could be myself around him and talk to him about any and everything.

             
If he didn’t feel that way about me then he damned sure did a good job of making me think that he did. He went above and beyond for me. He was in the studio with J.LO one time and was able to get her to sign a CD for me as well as get concert tickets for me to see her. He even helped me put my EPK together.

             
In my mind I felt like he really loved me and was the full package so when we went to Miami for another one of our trips, I invited my sister Giselle along so she could meet him. For me things were getting really serious and I wanted him to meet King. I wanted to see how they would act around each other and more importantly, how he would treat my son. Allowing him to meet my son was a big step for me but I was ready to take that chance.

             
When Giselle and Envy met they embraced each other and instantly hit it off. She loved him and that put the cherry on top for me. We went out that night and had a great time and the next day we had to part ways.

I got a phone call from Antonio who was my booking agent at the time and he told me that he had sent my EPK to some producers at Vh1 who were starting to cast the next season of
Love&HipHop and that Mona Scott wanted to talk to me. I was excited because I had seen the show before and I thought this would be good exposure and provide me with the platform I needed to tell my story about being in the video world.

             
We had a phone call that afternoon and I talked to Mona for about an hour giving her information about myself. Of course I wanted to share my news with Envy so I called him and gave him the basics of our conversation and right away he expressed his disdain and said that he didn’t want me to do the show.

Here’s someone
who’s on TV just about everyday and if anything I thought he would try to help me and give me advice on how to capitalize on it.

             
I thought his reason for not wanting me to do it was simply because he didn’t want me to be on TV and I was a little thrown off by it. I was confused because he had paid for my EPK and acted as though he was supportive but now he was telling me not to do something that he knew I wanted to do. I got off the phone because I wasn’t really feeling what he was saying and I said that I would talk to him later.

             
Ironically enough Gisele just so happened to Google him and found out that he was married. The person I had fallen in love with was married to Gia Casey who was also the mother of his children. I knew about the kids but I didn’t know that he had already taken vows with another woman.

             
I was in shock. I replayed our whole relationship up to that moment and it clicked to me that all the signs were there but because he made me feel so good about myself I didn’t see anything else. I was blind to everything that had been right in front of my face. Everything that I needed to know about this man my sister had found in a matter of seconds on the Internet. I had spent three years not knowing that he was married, how is that possible? 

             
Everything that I ignored was suddenly clicking in my head. He worked Monday through Friday and on the weekends I was under the impression that he spent it with his kids when in reality he was also with his wife. It made sense that we were never any where together during that time and why he never skipped a beat as far as knowing what to say. This man was living a double life and he became so comfortable in playing two roles that he had it down to a science.

             
After speaking to my sister I called him and asked him if it was true, if indeed he was married and at first all he gave me was silence. He finally said yes and began explaining himself. He said he didn’t tell me because he was in the process of getting a divorce and because he had created this life for her where she never had to work and he wanted to make sure that she had a job and a place to stay instead of just pulling the rug from under her. I respected his explanation but I was still hurt that he had lied. I held the receiver as if it was the last thing that was keeping me together and I silently cried. I was embarrassed. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t tell me this earlier.

             
One thing I valued about our relationship was our honesty but we clearly weren’t as honest with each other as I thought we were. Everything between Envy and I went downhill from there.

Chapter Thirteen

              I

can’t even lie, I really did love him. I had opened myself up to someone who belonged to someone else not just casually but in a real commitment, the same one I wanted to make when I found the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I thought that person was going to be him but he was already taken.

             
Instantly I was worried about my karma of being what you call a mistress and not knowing. They always say you lose people the way that you get them and I didn’t want to later on in life get married only to find out that my husband now had some chic on the side while I was at home thinking everything was okay.

             
I soon found myself doing things that he used to do to me with other women. I guess it was my way of keeping that memory that sex could be so much more with someone you truly cared about. I’m sure that’s a big part of the reason why I am the way that I am with women. I loved how he made me feel and I imitate that now as if I were Envy. It may sound weird but that’s how I kind of keep him in my life although he can’t be.