Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One

by Terry Crews

  I wasn’t going to let my brain atrophy, either, so I went to the library and filled up a gym bag with books on the entertainment industry. And when no one was looking, I sat and read book after book.

  It had taken me only a few weeks to realize that standing there for twelve hours a day, staring at a wall, was making my brain shrink. Every hour was one in which I could learn. I had to constantly grow, and I’m still like that. My kids know that my car runs on gas and audio books. The way I look at it is that in the hour it took me to get from here to there, I could have learned something that changed my life. I was actually feeling positive about my job, and my life, for the first time in months. And then, one day, I was sitting down on a chair I’d found, when my supervisor came by.

  “What are you doing sitting down?” he said.

  “We can’t sit down?” I said. “I’m doing my job.”

  “No, no, no, there’s no sitting down on your post,” he said.

  “Oh, okay,” I said, standing up.

  Meanwhile, across the street, one of his friends who also worked for us, and was wearing the same uniform as me, was sitting in a chair.

  “He’s sitting there,” I said, pointing across the way.

  “No, no, no, I’m talking to you,” my supervisor said.

  So I folded up my chair, and I stood for the rest of the day.

  Another day, that same supervisor came up and nodded at me.

  “Go get some lunch,” he said.

  I nodded back and walked off to get lunch. Another supervisor saw me.

  “Why’d you leave your post?” he asked.

  “Well, I was told I could get lunch.”

  “No, you never leave your post.”

  So I went back to my post, and I wondered what was going on. Was this a game, or a mere unfortunate coincidence? Was I being hazed like I had been in football camp, or did these supervisors never talk to one another about how things were done? The one thing I did know was that I never wanted anyone to ever have to discipline me. I wanted and needed that job too much. I decided I was going to do them one better. I threw away the chair, and I never sat again. I packed my own lunch along with my library books. I didn’t care what anybody else was doing. I vowed they would never have to correct me, ever again. When my supervisor saw me jogging in place, he couldn’t say anything about that.

  “I’m up,” I said, smiling.

  “Go get some lunch,” he said.

  “I’m good,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  I had my lunch in my bag, but I didn’t want them to see me eat.

  This was the best job I’d had in several years. Forget saving, but at least now we were at even, and we could eat and put gas in our car. On payday, I could never risk the extra time it took to have my check mailed to our house, so I always went into the security office to pick it up. There was one guy who loved to taunt me.

  “You used to play in the NFL, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I mean, what happened? Why are you doing this?”

  “Hey, man, everybody’s got to work, right?”

  I reached for my check. He pulled it back.

  “Was it drugs? Were you on drugs?”

  “No, sir, I was never on drugs.”

  “Oh, okay, so you just kind of messed up. It don’t make no sense, man.”

  I kept my eyes on my check the whole time.

  “Yeah, so what is it like in the NFL?” he said, holding the check.

  I didn’t want to answer, and I’d honestly become quite annoyed with all of the questions. But, looking back, if I was in his position, I’m sure I would have wondered the same thing. To say his interest was awkward was an understatement, but I was working, and for the moment, I had to avoid taking offense.

  “Yeah, you know, it was tough,” I said. “It was the NFL. May I have my check, please?”

  “Yeah, here you go,” he said, finally handing it over.

  I knew this was the best job for me at the moment, and I had to hang on to it.

  One day, I was standing at my post, with a book open, when my supervisor drove by and saw me. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “Whatcha doing, reading?”

  “Hey, man, now I understand,” I said, closing the book and looking at him straight on. “I would never do this if there were people around, but I’m watching the area. And if someone comes by, the book goes down. But when nobody is here, I’m picking up a book. My brain is not going to just fry. I’m sorry. If that’s wrong, then I’ve got to go. You’ve got to fire me.”

  Well, he looked at me, and it was a showdown. He didn’t say anything.

  “Dude, if you’re going to stop me from reading, go ahead and fire me,” I said.

  He looked at me, and he looked at me, and it was a full-on game of chicken.

  “No, man, go ahead,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  Whew. I opened my book back up, and nobody ever said anything to me about my reading again. I even wrote scripts standing up sometimes, too.

  During the months I did security on various film sets and locations, multiple people from the different productions kept saying the same thing to me: “You really need to try acting. You’ve got a great look.”

  “Ugh, thanks,” I said, but I had no intention of acting. I was an artist. I was going to work behind the camera. That’s where I belonged.

  Sometimes people could be pretty convincing, though. I was working on End of Days, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, when his makeup artist approached me.

  “What are you doing on this security detail?” he said. “You need to be in front of the camera.”

  “Okay, sir, thank you very much,” I said. “That’s cool.”

  But I couldn’t think about acting. I was all about holding on to the job I had.

  I WORKED EVERY DAY I POSSIBLY COULD FOR ABOUT A year and a half. Producers had started requesting me because I was in shape, and I was ironed up, and so I was always busy. And then, finally, I had a rare day off.

  My friend Trevor had called the day before, but I was tired when I got up in the morning, and I figured I’d call him back later. Rebecca had heard his message on the home phone, and she suggested I call him. When I did, he was freaking out.

  “Yo, Terry,” he said. “I was praying for you to call me. And you called me. Dude, get down to Venice Beach. Billy Blanks is down here. I’m down here.”

  “Whoa, whoa, what’s going on?”

  “They’re doing these tryouts for this thing,” he said. “You’ve got to come down. Dude, I promise you, you’ve got to come down here.”

  When I arrived at Venice Beach, there were 300 guys, running, jumping, doing obstacle courses, as part of the tryouts for this new show, Battle Dome. I found Trevor, along with Billy Blanks, and the show’s producer, Stephen Brown.

  “Okay, we’re going to run you through different courses,” Stephen said.

  Well, I usually worked out first thing in the morning, but for some reason, I hadn’t that morning. This meant I was fresh, and my muscles weren’t tired at all.

  I was up against all of these guys on Venice Beach. We were climbing ropes, doing the forty-yard dash. I beat everybody. Trevor kept pointing me out, and how well I was doing, to make sure the producers took notice. Then they put me in a wrestling match. I picked my opponent right up and slammed him right down.

  “Dude, this guy,” Stephen said.

  They had Access Hollywood film some footage of me.

  Well, I killed it. Everything they asked me to do, I did it almost two times better than all of the other guys. I drove home feeling lit up with how good I’d done.

  “Becky, I don’t know what that was,” I said. “I don’t know if they’ll ever call me or anything, but let me tell you something, it was stupendous. What a day.”

  I was sure the producers were going to call me. A week went by. Two weeks. And then months went by, and I was back to my routine, doing security and reading and writing my scripts standing up. I was work
ing on a movie called Next Friday, and they had me standing outside producer Matt Alvarez’s trailer, right by Ice Cube’s trailer.

  As soon as I got home and walked through the door that night, Rebecca was flipping out. We didn’t have a cell phone, so she’d been waiting for me to get home.

  “Battle Dome, they called,” she said. “They want to see you again.”

  When I phoned the producers for the details of the callback, I had a question.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Just be as wild and as charismatic as you can,” the producer said.

  So on the day of the callback, I went down to Cinema Secrets in Burbank and I had them paint my face in a pattern like Darth Maul. And then I went to a costume store, and I got a space age–looking leather belt, which I wore with spandex compression pants and boots. I looked absolutely ridiculous, like a total fool. But I was so hungry I was willing to do whatever it took. When I drove up to the Sony lot, the security guard took one look at my face and cracked up.

  “Come on, dude, this is a movie studio,” I said. “You can’t act like you ain’t seen nothing like this before.”

  “Aw,” he said, still laughing as he gave me a pass.

  When I walked into the audition waiting room, it was full of all of these huge meatheads who were also there to prove they had what it took to earn their big TV break. They all looked up at me and started laughing, all of them.

  “Ah, look at him,” one guy said, laughing and pointing at me.

  I didn’t know any of them, and I didn’t care what they thought. I found a seat and went into my own zone. I don’t care, you can laugh all you want, I’m giving it all I’ve got, and when we go home at the end of the day, we’ll see who’s laughing then.

  Finally, my name was called, and I did my lines as big and boisterously as I could. They paired me up with two different people, and again, I went BIG. And then that was it. “Okay, thank you, Terry,” the producer said.

  As I drove home, I was at peace. I’d given it everything I had, and I felt good.

  Several months passed by, and I was back to doing security and wondering if anything would ever come of my audition or my Hollywood dreams.

  And then, one Sunday after church, the phone rang. It was a lady from Sony, telling me that they wanted me to go in and meet with them the next day. I was so excited I could hardly sleep. By the time I got to the production office, I was really nervous. I had no idea what this meant. I was ushered into a room with several guys, including Stephen Brown.

  “Terry, you are one of our new warriors on Battle Dome,” he said.

  “I’m on the show?” I said. “I’m on the show.”

  “You’re in.”

  There was a moment where I didn’t know what to feel, and I was just hollow. The ground went out from under me, and the sky lifted up, and I was just floating. I had been struggling so hard for so long, and then, just like that, everything changed.

  I’m on a TV show. I’m an actor. I never even saw that as a possibility. But I am.

  We got picked up for twenty-two episodes, and we would be shooting for six weeks. My character was named T-Money, and he was one of the bad guys, this gangster from Detroit who listened to rap music. I was so excited. And then, just like with my college scholarship and the NFL, I got a reality check. They wanted us to start working out with their trainers right away. Which was great, except for the fact that we weren’t getting paid, and I’d already given my notice at the security firm. So I had to go back and take on more security shifts until we started shooting for real.

  And then I was not at all prepared for how dangerous it was. It wasn’t the other contestants I was worried about; it was getting my foot caught in one of the conveyor belts or other contraptions on the set. When we shot the first show, one of the games was basically King of the Mountain, except played on this cone that spun. So they put me on this thing, and I was battling this guy until I flew off. The next guy climbed up to fight the warrior on top. When he got thrown off, his foot turned all the way around so that it was facing the wrong way. From that day on, we were sending people to the hospital nonstop.

  Luckily, I didn’t go to the hospital. In fact, I became the show’s breakout star. To make the situation even sweeter, the security force in charge of the show was my old company. Of course, I was experiencing fame only on a small level, but that was still the best possible turn of events I could have imagined.

  “Hey, Terry, remember me?” my old supervisor said. “This is great, man. You’re doing good.”

  “Hey, man, hey,” I said.

  Truth be told, the old me would have been tempted to pull rank and refuse to let them guard me. But I realized I didn’t have to be rude to them. I didn’t have to think that way anymore. I’d gotten out. I was in a different place.

  But I still had a few obstacles along the way, like the Christmas from Hell. Shortly after I started on Battle Dome in 1999, we finally had enough money to fly back to Flint for Christmas. While we were there, Rebecca and I were invited to Detroit to have dinner with her longtime best friend. So we left the girls and little baby Tera with Big Terry and Trish. Now, I knew my father had relapsed in recent years, and so before we ever flew to Flint, I’d called him and given him a warning.

  “I do not want my kids to experience you drinking, and to experience what I did when I was a kid,” I said.

  He’d agreed to be cool, and I’d decided to trust him.

  Well, we were about to sit down to dinner when the phone rang and Rebecca answered it. I could tell from her face that it wasn’t good news.

  “Big Terry is going crazy,” Rebecca said. “Something is happening.”

  I got on the phone with my brother’s wife.

  “We’re taking the kids to your aunt’s house,” she said. “Big Terry is hitting your mother. The kids are here. They’re petrified. They don’t know what to do.”

  “Oh, no, I told him,” I said. “I told him.”

  My kids had never seen anything like that. I still had vivid memories of how awful and powerless I’d felt when I’d witnessed such violence in my home, and so I’d been determined they never would. The fact that Big Terry had done this in front of my kids seemed so disrespectful to me. Now I had to get that image out of their heads, because otherwise they would be shaken up forever. I definitely had been.

  I dropped my wife off at my Aunt Paulette’s house, and I called my brother. We met at our childhood home. When we walked in, it was horrible. I mean horrible. I can’t even describe how awful it was. Big Terry had hit my mother so hard that her tooth was knocked sideways. Trish was crying. The air itself inside the house felt different. This was supposed to be the holidays, but it was manic.

  “Trish, get in the car and go over to Paulette’s house,” I said.

  As soon as she left, Marcelle and I turned on Big Terry as one. It all came back, all of the years when we had listened from our beds to the rumbling in the living room, the many times we’d cowered in the doorway while Big Terry hit our mother until she cried, the many times I’d felt small and powerless and scared.

  “We’re grown,” I said. “You will never lay your hands on my mother again.”

  I punched Big Terry right in the face. I did. And then Marcelle punched him. All of those years of pent-up anger and grief came pouring out, and we beat him.

  “Please stop,” Big Terry begged. “Please stop.”

  I was crying, and punching him, and choking my words out through my tears.

  “Oh, now you’re going to cry,” I said. “Now you’re going to ask for help. I can’t believe you, you big old man, you’re running around here having everybody afraid of you for all of those years, and now you’re afraid.”

  Marcelle was letting it all out, too. We wailed on Big Terry, slamming him around that house, until Big Terry finally fell to the ground.

  “Please stop,” Big Terry cried, standing up.

  “Man, I’m not a little boy
anymore,” I said, knocking him back down. “And I can protect my mother now.”

  This went on for hours. Finally, our fight went all the way up to his bedroom, and he was just cowering there in the corner. All of a sudden, I couldn’t do it anymore. I had thought I would feel like he was finally getting what he deserved and it would make me feel better. But I didn’t feel better. I felt worse, because now I was a part of it, too. Now my mother was beat, he was beat, and this was my family at the holidays. It was just so horrible. I fell down onto my knees, and I cried. One good thing did come out of that mess, which was that he never touched my mother again. He realized we weren’t playing, which is how I think it goes with a bully. But there was nothing we could do to save that holiday. We all tried to put on a happy face, but I think we were shell-shocked. My mother’s tooth was sideways. We stayed our few days, and then we flew back home. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t glad to go.

  ———

  EXACTLY TWO YEARS AFTER WE MOVED TO LA, I GOT MY first real acting opportunity. The comedy of it is that if we hadn’t been starving, I would never have tried acting at all. That’s why I always say our struggle makes us who we are. If I’d had a comfortable job, and I’d been feeding my family without any problem, I would have kept pursuing my original dream of being an animator or a filmmaker.

  But after Battle Dome aired, I was given the chance to audition for my first movie. I met with the casting director, Judith Holstra, for what I thought was a quick one- or two-day part in a movie. I got the part, and the next thing I knew, I was in Vancouver, with a major role in the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, The 6th Day. My first day on set, a man approached me. It was Arnold’s personal makeup man, Jeff Dawn.

  “You look familiar,” he said.

  “You told me a year ago that I should be acting,” I said.

  “Oh my God.” He laughed. “I’m making people rich here.”

  Well, I wasn’t rich yet. Far from it. I’d just started acting, and I was scared I’d lose the part I’d been given. The production was shooting in Vancouver for four months. I didn’t need to be there the whole time, but I was determined to stay.