by Tiana Laveen
Isis, you were a big deal, and you still are. You literally changed the world before you’d even reached your first birthday. Your mother and I had no idea your conception and birth would be so crucial, so monumental. All we wanted was another child, someone else we could love hard and share with. You exceeded our desires, and then some.
All parents have expectations for their children, or at least they should. I’d imagine you know by now what my expectations are of my children, you specifically. I don’t envision myself keeping that a secret, or being a passive parent. For instance, I expect you to be true to yourself. I expect you to be honest with others, and not fabricate or purposefully mislead. I expect you to take school seriously. I expect you to be respectful to your mother and me. That doesn’t mean agreeing with everything we say, because you are your own person, but it does mean expressing yourself in a courteous manner. I’m not always courteous; matter of fact, most of the time I’m not, Isis. But…I am honest. I am also honest enough to tell you that many of the things I expect from you and your brothers, I do not practice. Does that make me a hypocrite? Possibly, but that also doesn’t make me wrong for wanting you to do and be better.
There are so many things I expect, and I’m sure by the time you read this, you and I probably have had a few disagreements along the way. Matter of fact, I can guarantee it. I know what type of father I am. I am a loving father, a devoted father, but I am also very flawed, Isis. Right now, at your age of three, you think Daddy is perfect. I can see it in your eyes when I hold you. You believe I am incapable of doing any wrong, and that simply isn’t true, but that is the perception of a young child who is loved and cared for. I will never tell you I am picture-perfect or pretend to be something I am not. I am human; I have made numerous mistakes, and will continue to do so. Matter of fact, I’ve been making mistakes my whole life.
Some of them involved situations that are difficult for me to admit and discuss with you, Isis, but I must, because I need you to be prepared and armed. Also, you need to know that when I come down on you, it is about something I know firsthand about, not because I want to spoil your fun or make your life miserable. I love you more than my own life and anything in this world. I would never want to be the source of your grief and tears, but I know from time to time, I will be through my efforts to protect you, my daughter. To fully protect you however requires full disclosure.
“You still there, baby?” He became suddenly paranoid that Xenia’s silence meant the woman had fallen asleep! Reading this aloud proved far more difficult than he imagined, and what a waste it would be if his one-woman audience had clocked out.
“Yes honey, I was just not interrupting anymore, so I could listen completely to you is all.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks…just making sure.”
I never want you to walk around being afraid to live your life. I don’t want to smother you, but I will always guard you, no matter what. As long as there is still life in my body, you will have a father. And after I pass away, you will still have one then too, looking over you, each and every day.
Saint paused, needing a minute to catch his breath.
Now, Isis, here comes the tricky part. This is the part of the letter that I wish you’d just skip over, ignore and forget. But, I know you won’t. I first need to give you a little background. When I was a child, Isis, a little boy—I felt alone. Sometimes, when children feel alone, like no one cares, they do careless things. This is not an excuse for what I am about to confess to you; it is me laying out the groundwork and facts of how everything came to be. Being a teenager is oftentimes a confusing time in a child’s life.
Hormones are raging, peer pressure is a daily occurrence, and there is a need to fit in, to belong. I also lost my mother at a young age. Isis, I loved my mother so much, and was what many would say, ‘clingy’ when it came to her. You may or may not recall this, but Dakarai acts with your mother how I acted with mine. I always wanted her around; she was my best friend. I was a child that didn’t quite fit in. I had problems, and I lived in a neighborhood that seemed to hate and love me, all at the same time. The Bronx you see today is a different Bronx from the one I grew up in. I have old photos I will show you, but I lived in extreme poverty. The place I lived in made international news, Isis. The South Bronx was described as a war zone in a country that professed to be free. My father was one of the few working people that lived there. He was a schoolteacher. My mother worked at a small grocery store. They loved each other very much, but I had a strained relationship with my father. When a boy feels fatherless, he sometimes gets ideas of what a man should be from the wrong places and people. I was trying to fit in, trying to find out who I was, where I belonged, and I did not understand that some people were not what I should have been trying to emulate or aspire to be like. I was basically looking for love in all the wrong places.
Isis, I began to have sexual intercourse at the age of fourteen. No child should be sexually involved at the age of fourteen. The maturity level is simply not there, for such a responsibility. I began to smoke marijuana soon after. I was drinking as well. I no longer cared about my life or anyone else after my mother was killed. It was a downward spiral. Amazingly, I kept my grades up, but I didn’t care about school, either. Honestly, I was just naturally academically smart, so it wasn’t a struggle for me. I could read something once and retain the information. I am not bragging, just stating the truth. I could put little to no effort in it, and still make the necessary grades. My intelligence, however, did not save me from my fate.
I was smart enough to pass a geometry pop quiz with flying colors, but not smart enough to not try and go selling cocaine. I was tested when I was seventeen, and had an I.Q. of 167, Isis, but that did not prevent me from being one of the stupidest motherfuckers you would have ever come across in your entire life. Yes, Daddy cussed. I try to not curse around you a lot, but by the time you get this, I’m sure that would have be thrown to the wayside because you’re older, and well, that’s what I do.
Unbelievably, by the grace of the Creator, I never contracted a sexually transmitted disease, nor did I get any girl pregnant. This is not typical banter a father tells his daughter; it is more reserved for sons, but that has been a mistake, in my opinion, that our culture condones. Fathers need to sit down with their daughters as well, and speak to them candidly about these matters. You need to understand the man’s perspective regarding this, so you can make more informed choices. I am baring my soul to you, giving you this embarrassing, shameful confession because you deserve it, and it could help you. It isn’t for my benefit, it’s for yours. I even hesitated, but had to ask myself—if I was willing to tell Hassani and Dakarai these things and not blink an eye, why should I not tell you? That wouldn’t have been fair. You have the right to know.
With that being said, I will continue with this disclosure. I was what you would describe as wild, out of control, promiscuous, a drug user… I drank too much, had a terrible attitude, my mouth got me into plenty of trouble and I was gifted, but didn’t know what to do about it or how to control it. I am talking about all of our gifts, the ones we were born with, Isis. I knew I was different; my mother had confirmed it, but I was living in a world I felt rejected by. I pushed it down, ignored my psychic abilities and gifts because they made me even odder, as far as I was concerned, and that’s the last thing I wanted. I wanted to just be seen as normal. Not the half Korean and Egyptian kid living in the majority Puerto Rican and black neighborhood; not the guy with the tall, strict father who wore wifebeaters after work and would bark at everyone out the window as he held a cigarette in one hand and his Koran in the other. Not the guy whose mother got run over in the street, not the boy who got all A’s, not the one who could move things without touching them, and all of that other business. No! I just…wanted to be…normal! But I wasn’t normal, Isis. I was far from it, and I’d never be such.
I ran from all of this. I somehow pulled myself together after seeing one too many of my friends ki
lled from street life. I decided I was going to stop eating bad foods and not drink alcohol as much. I was going to stop running the streets, acting crazy and belligerent with authority figures. I was even going to stop arguing with my father but the one thing I didn’t stop, Isis, was having sex. It had gotten too important. I actually needed it. I would wake up in the morning, grab my phone and literally go through a list of girls to call. Instead of getting up and having breakfast, reading or exercising, I was up trying to find someone to have sex with.
As I got a bit older, enrolled and was accepted in college, instead of it stopping, it got worse. I did not see women as women though, Isis. I saw them as objects, something for me to get my rocks off of. Because I was considered fairly attractive and charismatic, it wasn’t hard to make these connections and get my fix, so to speak.
I used all my God given talents for evil. I was using women, Isis. I was using their bodies, after toying with their minds. I became addicted to sex, and didn’t even realize this until it was far too late. The worst part was, I was a sex therapist, a damn good one if I say so myself, but couldn’t even see myself for what I truly was. I had to have sex at least three times a day, and even that wasn’t usually enough. Again, I know this may be uncomfortable for you to read, Isis, I am your father, I get that, but I was not rare, sweetheart. There are plenty of men just like me walking the streets, with this same problem. We are predators, and that is why I am warning you, baring my soul to you like this.
I was hurting and sick, and didn’t know how to get well. Women became my medicine. I would literally feel the high, Isis, starting from when I’d be driving over to a hotel to meet some woman or picking her up to take her. Some of these women I barely even knew. With so many of them, their faces and names began to blend together. I never forget a face, Isis, but I was starting to when it came to my conquests. All I saw were their bodies. They became faceless to me in that regard. All I cared about was how they could make me feel, and how I could make them feel as well. Though my addiction was selfish, my ways to sustain it were not. It became very important to me that I could be sexually proficient because I wanted to be craved. I spent a lot of time investing in this aspect of myself.
While one addict spends a large amount of time lying and scheming in order to get his drugs, and possibly breaking into homes, I was reading, watching, observing. At first, I did not watch adult movies to get off, for instance. I watched them to see how to please a woman. I would get instructional videos, books, everything I could get my hands on so I would be a better lover than I had been the day before. It became so bad, I developed a reputation, and yes, the calls stopped because I no longer had to solicit women, Isis. Once I was twenty-one or so, I’d made a name for myself and the women started to come after me. Lots of them. Beautiful women. Professional women. But most of all, broken women. I don’t want you to be broken, Isis. I don’t want you to be so vulnerable that a man like the one I used to be is attracted to your energy and walks in your life, only to purposefully destroy it.
You are a girl now. But one day, Isis, you won’t be a teenager anymore. You’ll be a grown woman. Right now, you may be interested in dating. I’d prefer you to be fifty before you seek romantic companionship, but I realize that isn’t reasonable or realistic.
A muffled laugh and a sniff on the other end of the line had him pause. Xenia sounded like she’d been crying. Hell, he was on the verge of doing so himself.
“I…I put another smiley face there after I wrote that.”
She chuckled again. “Okay baby, keep going…”
“Okay…”
You will attract boys to you because you are what you are, and we’ve discussed it by now. You will also attract them because you are beautiful and if you continue to look like your mother…—yes, I lied a bit earlier, you do look like her, your almost a dead ringer, Isis but you’re so beautiful, I tried to claim you all to myself…—Anyway, if you’ve stayed that way, I am certain I will be threatening and waving guns around at your suitors. They won’t be able to resist you.
“I…put another smiley face right there, too.”
“…Saint, if you stop and tell me about one more smiley face, you will be met with the dial tone! Again! Now stop. Every time I get into it, you pull the rug out from under me and tell me about these cartoons! I’m emotionally invested now!”
“Okay!” Saint laughed, and lay back onto the pillow.
Due to this attention, you will be making choices. Some of those choices may be good ones; I hope the majority of them are, actually. I eventually did make a good decision, too. I saw myself for what I was. There came a point in time, Isis, when I realized I was extremely lonely and the road I was on only made things worse. I had hundreds of people around me. I had joined an organization that specializes in the uplifting of interracial relationships, particularly pertaining to beautiful, black Goddesses dating Rainbeaus. I became a sensation, also due to the books I’ve written and conferences I attended as the keynote speaker, which I’m certain you know all about by now. I was entering a new phase of my life, and I wanted the type of relationship I was encouraging other men to have and seek out. I wanted to walk my own talk, Isis. I realized I had not attracted this particular woman because of what I was doing.
At the time, I was still engaging in unhealthy activity and having a lot of sex, even though, at that point, I was spiritually bankrupting women, as well as myself. The type of woman I wanted would not be attracted to someone behaving in this matter. So what did I do? I sought help. I went to someone in my field of expertise, that I trusted, and let him pick my brain so I could stop this behavior. The first and hardest hurdle though, Isis, was to admit what I’d become. Isis, your father is many things—some of those things I am proud of, some I am not. I am not proud of this, but I have now used it to help others. Isis, I am a recovering sex addict. I say recovering because once you are addicted to sex, you are always addicted to it; you just manage it, and that’s what I’m doing. I do not cheat on your mother. I have no interest in having sexual activity with any other woman except her. Have I been tempted to make love to another woman? I can say emphatically that I have not. Am I still attracted to other women? Most definitely. The reason being is because I am a sexual creature, despite the addiction, just as we all are. I am in tune with my sexuality, I’m comfortable with it, I accept it. Just because I find another woman alluring though does not mean I take it to the next level.
I love your mother too much to ever risk losing her. I put in too much work, time and energy into getting that woman, to ever let her go. I will get into our love story in a moment, but I want to switch directions for a moment here.
When a young man approaches you to date, Isis, you will have a decision to make. Now, I’ve noticed a trend as of late, and unless something drastic happens, I don’t see it changing anytime soon. This trend Isis, is that young men are actually not approaching young ladies to go on dates anymore. So, I have to even wonder now why I wrote that previous sentence. I unfortunately, don’t feel many men will be asking you out; rather, they will be asking you to come by their home, or to stop by and see you. They will not court you as they are supposed to.
This was not the case when your mother and I met. Things were going downhill then, but dating still existed and was expected to some degree. With the younger generations, people are simply hooking up. There is not even a phone call, merely a text message, and then things are happening that should not be. If I were a teenager in your generation, Isis, it would have been even easier for me to feed my addiction. Women are accepting anything. When I was a teenager, I had to scrounge up some money many times to take the girl out to the movies, or to get a bite to eat. The women didn’t want to be with a broke bastard, and it was painfully clear that if you couldn’t do something for them, you weren’t even getting a kiss, let alone anything more than that.
You had to wine and dine these women and sometimes they still may have gotten the short end of the stick, but at
least they wanted something before they put out. They knew they were worth more than being free. This is not to say there is a price to be paid for companionship, but there should be some level of investment.
Now, all a guy has to do is flash a little money and he can hit it before he has even offered a down payment. This situation has forced guys to not even try anymore, Isis. They don’t have to. It is like a pill made for one to lose twenty lbs. overnight. Most people who desire to lose excess fat would take it, versus going to the gym. And in that lies the problem. There is a universally growing lack of appreciation. People only truly treasure what they have to earn and work for.
I want you to never sell yourself short, Isis. I don’t care how popular or good-looking the guy is, how wealthy his family may be, and what he has told you, he needs to be a gentleman. He needs to back up what he says with action.
If he wants to see you, he needs to ask to come over. He needs to pick up the phone and call and then he needs to bring his ass over to the house. Your mother and I expect to meet any young man who is taking our daughter out. I need to meet him, not to read him, Isis, but to see the face of the person I am entrusting my child to. I expect the young ladies Hassani and Dakarai will date to expect the same treatment of my sons, so please believe me when I say this is no double standard. Your brothers are being raised on how to treat women and what to expect from their future girlfriends and eventually wives; and you are being raised to know what to expect from a man, as well as how to treat your future partner. I know that everything I described I was not, but only a person that has been through hell can accurately tell you how hot it is…
I’m writing this letter to let you know Isis…to let you know…