Call Me Russell

by Russell Peters

  We stayed together for about eighteen months, until I met Jeanette. Like Sherrie, Jeanette was another Anglo-Indian beauty, and I was completely enamoured with her from the moment we met. We were together only for a few weeks, but it was the first time that I’d forgotten about Sherrie in two years. However, like my relationship with Sherrie, this one was doomed.

  One night, I was trying to get in touch with her but couldn’t find her. I ended up driving past her house and saw her ex-boyfriend’s car in the driveway. I was pissed, so I drove around some more before I returned to her place. The car was gone and I went in to see her. The first thing out of my mouth was “I saw Roger’s car.” She didn’t deny it. Then I asked the gayest thing ever: “Did you kiss?”

  “Yes,” she replied, and I walked out quietly.

  I was so pissed off that I actually hated her. And when I say I “hated her,” I mean I really hated her. The hate was completely disproportionate, of course, but it was totally in keeping with how I reacted to everything in my early twenties. Eventually, I stopped hating her and we became friends.

  Jeanette had a cousin named Angela who she said really liked me, so I started seeing her. She was a nice girl from a nice family. The only problem was that I was no longer a nice guy. I’d been hurt twice and wasn’t ready to fully commit. Looking back, I was completely immature, too. Within the first year of us being together, I had started to fool around on her. I was doing stand-up and DJing a lot and was starting to become a “name.” My DJ name was the very imaginative DJ Russell and I was playing a lot of Indian parties, where I had a lot of chicks throwing themselves at me—which was completely new to me. I was never hot with the ladies before, and so I took full advantage of it. I’d also never hung around Indian people before, and it was all new to me. Angela had no desire to come to any of the parties and preferred to stay home. I, on the other hand, was going out all the time.

  I was a punk. I was screwing around with girls all over the place.

  I had no sense of consequences and no consideration for other people’s feelings. I was a punk. I was screwing around with girls all over the place, getting into fights and completely selfish. Over the six years we were together, I screwed around A LOT. Angela suspected that I was screwing around, and so did her friends and family. Thing was, I told myself that I could do anything I wanted and that she was never going to leave me. By the end of our relationship, her family hated me.

  In 1996, I met this girl named Rachel at a Christmas party. She was this ridiculously hot, half-black/half-Chinese chick and—oh my God—I had never met a girl this pretty before. Even more incredible was that she was actually into me. I was still with Angela and broke up with her to go out with Rachel. Two weeks after we broke up, I called Angela and she was crying. It’s not like there was call display. I just called and she was crying. I was like, Wow! She really loves me! So we got back together. But the thing is, I never broke up with Rachel. Rachel and I were still together and would remain together for the next two years. Over those two years, I was seeing both Angela and Rachel. Angela’s parents lived in the west end of the city and had a rule that I had to leave their house by ten-thirty at night. Rachel was a nurse and lived in the east end of the city. After leaving Angela’s, I’d drive east and pick up Rachel after she finished her shift. I’d spend the rest of the night with her and end up back in Brampton by four in the morning.

  My parents never liked Rachel. She thought it was because she was half-black, but she was wrong. It was actually because she was “the other woman.” I mean, Dad did call her The Blink—because of her being black and Chinese. When she’d call, my dad would yell out, “Russell, The Blink is on the phone!” Whenever I’d go out to clubs and parties, I’d always bring Rachel with me. Nobody even knew about Angela—she never wanted to go out anyway. Even if she did want to go out, I was such an asshole that I literally made her stay home.

  Eventually, it all came crashing down around me. One day, while we were broken up over something stupid, Angela came over to my parents’ house. While I was in the shower, she was waiting for me in my room. As she waited, she came across this shoebox filled with tons of pictures of me and Rachel, plus pics of me and other chicks from Ireland, England and other parts of the world. There were also letters and cards from various women—my entire cheating hard drive.

  I came out of the bathroom and she told me that she had to leave. I didn’t think anything of it, until she just stopped coming around and stopped phoning. Christmas came and she wasn’t there, then New Year’s. It was weird, and I panicked. It was more ego than anything—I was no longer in control. I was depressed and even ended up breaking up with Rachel because I wanted to get back together with Angela, but it was too late. She’d already moved on and started seeing another guy, whom she ultimately married … What am I? Russell Peters, last stop before marriage?

  In December 2001, I met Shivani, whom I call “Beauts.” I was hosting a show at the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto, where she was presenting something. She wore a sash that said MISS INDIA-CANADA BEAUTY PRINCESS. It was the funniest title I’d ever seen, but I thought she was cute and wanted to meet her. By May 2004, I got engaged to Shivani. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. I really, really loved her and still love her to death. But we got engaged for all the wrong reasons. My dad had died two months earlier, and I thought that getting engaged would cheer up my mom. Plus, I saw marrying Shivani as a tribute to my dad, who also loved her a lot. Dad’s hearing was pretty bad, and when my brother or I would refer to her as “Beauts,” he thought we were saying “Buick.” He ended up calling her Buick until the day he died.

  She is a sweet girl and gorgeous, too—perfect in every way—but for someone else. Unfortunately for me, our relationship had shifted from lovers to friends. I’d developed a whole Madonna-Whore complex and just couldn’t shake it. We broke up in September of 2004 because I knew that it wasn’t going to work out in the long run.

  I never once fooled around on Shivani. But we did break up a few times during our relationship, and then I’d fuck around like crazy until we got back together. That I still love Shivani to death has been a sore point for some of the girls I’ve gone out with since.

  The breakup with Shivani coincided with the great leap forward in my career. I was sleeping with a lot of women at that point but was putting most of my energy into my stand-up. I wasn’t interested in having a girlfriend or a long-term relationship. I was on the road nonstop and was having a great time in every city I went to. I had my first threesome in San Francisco—it was great.

  I even dated a porn star, Sunny Leone, who was actually a really cool chick. She was smoking hot. We met in Sacramento the night before I taped Outsourced. We started dating about two years later. Now, when I say she was a porn star, I should mention that her thing was strictly girl-on-girl stuff. There were no guys involved. While we were going out, she went on The Howard Stern Show and told them that she was seeing a guy who had given her the best sex she’d ever had (ahem, me!!!!). Sunny was a great girl and we had a good time together. We broke up when she decided to start doing guy-girl sex in her movies. I mean, here’s the thing: when most women come home from work, their feet are sore …

  In those early L.A. years I just wanted to learn the lay of the land (excuse the pun). I’m a normal heterosexual man, so I did what I needed to do. I dated a few different girls, but it didn’t take long for me to find myself with an actual “girlfriend.” “Kelly” worked at the Beverly Center, which is where I met her while buying shoes for Shivani. (Shivani and I had not been together for years at that point, but I must admit that I continued to buy her gifts whenever I got the chance just because she’d been there when I was broke.)

  Kelly was Cuban and Salvadorian and was really pretty. She wasn’t the brightest girl (Paris Hilton was her idol), and the stuff that she used to say made me laugh—which isn’t an easy thing to do. Sometimes I’d meet girls who thought they were funny and would try to be funn
y with me, and it never worked. Kelly was incidentally funny. Even though Kelly was born and raised in the States, she completely mangled the English language. She was a master of malapropisms without even knowing it. She once referred to Martin Luther King Day as Martha Luther King Day, and instead of Copenhagen, she referred to it as Coco Heaven. She usually knew she was screwing things up and never tried to hide it, which I always liked about her. My family was a bit suspicious of Kelly since she was my first real girlfriend since Shivani. They thought she was with me only for my money and didn’t trust her. My mom wasn’t very nice to her when they met. Mom wouldn’t even look at her when we had dinner together—but then again, my mom’s pretty leery of any women I bring around. My brother, who has no threshold for people who can’t speak properly or whom he doesn’t find very bright, wasn’t that nice to her either.

  We had a rollercoaster relationship, and when we broke up, she didn’t take it well. One night I came home and was getting ready for bed. It must have been around four in the morning. I opened the closet door and she leapt out! She scared the shit out of me and I flipped out. She had broken into the house via my bathroom window, which was about twenty-five feet from the ground but parallel to the neighbour’s driveway support wall, which was about three feet away. She jumped from the wall to the bathroom window—which I had left open. She crawled in. If she’d fallen, she could have broken her neck.

  Two Christmases ago, she jumped on a plane and came to see me in Toronto. She wasn’t going to leave until we got back together. I guess when you’re in your early twenties, this seems like a good idea—romantic and spontaneous. It actually sounds like something I would have done at that age. I get it. But when you actually do it, it’s completely impractical. She had no return ticket and two suitcases full of her stuff. I guess if we had gotten back together it would have been a great story to tell on Oprah—“That’s right, Oprah. I just showed up at his house and told him that I loved him and wasn’t going to leave until he took me back!”

  “You go, girl!” Oprah would have answered.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I was cold and distant and had her back on a plane to L.A. within seventy-two hours.

  We were on and off for a while after that, but it all ended when I met Amanda. Amanda was twenty-two years old and worked at a shoe store at Yorkdale Mall in Toronto. To me, Amanda looked like Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (which was made six years before she was even born). She was half-Italian and half-Chilean and had no interest in me, which only made me want her more. I ended up calling her and we went out. She was really pretty, and I was really into her, far more than she was into me. Even though our age difference was the same as the age difference between my parents, my mom thought she was too young for me and was, once again, not very welcoming to her. “I was a much more mature twenty-two-year-old,” she’d say to me.

  Here’s the thing: I don’t think Mom is going to like any girl I bring home.

  Here’s the thing: I don’t think Mom is going to like any girl I bring home. She doesn’t care about any girl I claim to be serious about unless that girl works in a K-mart cafeteria and has a high-school education. Being short, plain-looking and simple would probably help, too. Like I’ve said before, I’m a mama’s boy and let my mom get away with a lot. She’s definitely enjoying a very comfortable lifestyle now and doesn’t have to worry about anything—which I love, because, well, she’s my mom. But she reminded both Kelly and Amanda, “You may be his girlfriend but I’m always going to be his mother.” Mom may give off a folksy demeanour, but don’t be fooled—she knows exactly what she’s doing. It’s going to take a very special woman to know how to handle her and still remain in her good books.

  Amanda and I had a very intense relationship as well. But it was filled with the same stuff that I went through in my early twenties—paranoia, insecurity, jealousy and those stupid fights that you mistake for passion at that age. “I’ve just never loved somebody this much before and it scares me”—that type of thing. I was trying to convince myself that she was the one. I’m not an argumentative guy, especially with a woman because—let’s be honest, guys—you can’t win an argument with a woman. Unfortunately, at the time, she couldn’t control her own temper and the fights became more and more public, at which point I had to get away from the situation. It was poison.

  I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, I’m not different from any other human being on the planet. I just wanted to be loved and I wanted to love someone. Throughout all of these women, all I was ever looking for was love. And yeah, sure I slept around and had threesomes and did whatever I had to or was able to do or was afforded to me from the profession I had chosen. If I was still Russell, the guy that worked in the mall, none of these opportunities would have presented themselves, and I wouldn’t be writing this book because it would be a pretty boring story. But at the end of the day, all I ever wanted to do was find that one and now I think I’m lucky to have found her. Also, that’s why it’s easier for me to write this paragraph now because I know that this is all behind me and that it’s a different life ahead of me for the next forty years.

  In July of 2010, I got engaged to a beautiful Latina from Los Angeles, Monica Diaz. I must admit that I’ve known Monica for only six months, but it didn’t take long to realize that she’s the one.… I’ll tell you more in the paperback version of this book.

  I SAW A WHITE GUY DRIVING A CAB THE OTHER DAY. WHO THE HELL DO THESE WHITE PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE COMING OVER HERE AND STEALING OUR JOBS?

  I MET GEORGE CARLIN on October 24, 1992. It was a day after my dad’s birthday—which, to be honest, wasn’t a big deal to me at the time, not the way it is now. That night, in Atlanta, the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series against the Braves, and as is the case when Toronto celebrates anything—the Grey Cup, hockey playoffs (minus the Stanley Cup because, well, we haven’t won one since 1967), the fans poured onto Yonge Street. I was one in a crowd of thousands of people who were out there partying and going wild in celebration of the big win.

  I realized it wasn’t just that this guy looked like George Carlin, he was George Carlin.

  I was with all my friends, walking on Yonge Street just north of College when this old guy walked past me, and he looked just like George Carlin. Being a smart-ass, I yelled out, “Hey, how ya doin’, George?” And then I realized it wasn’t just that this guy looked like George Carlin, he was George Carlin. Holy shit! I was completely freaked out. My eyes were probably popping halfway out of my head.

  I immediately ditched all my friends and worked my way against the throng of humanity, trying to catch up with Carlin. Next thing I knew, there he was right beside me. I heard myself asking him, “What are you doing here?”

  And he said, “What, am I not supposed to be here?”

  And I started babbling on, saying, “Oh my god, oh my god. Wait!” And then I went on about how I’ve got a mix tape in my car with dubs from one of his records and how I really wanted him to hear it. And this was all true, by the way: I had taken bits of his comedy material—a line from one bit and another from something else—and laid it over a hip-hop beat. So at this point, I was so excited and nervous that I didn’t know whether to shit or wind my watch. But somehow, I managed to say to George—to George Carlin!!—“So, can I walk you to your hotel?” And he said sure.

  So Carlin and I walked together to his hotel, and I’m sure I barely stopped talking the whole way. When we got there, we hung out for a bit and he gave me an autograph. I still have that autograph, and it means the world to me that this man—one of the top names in comedy—took the time to be generous to some no-name kid he ran into on the street.

  George was the nicest guy in the world to me that night, and he gave me the best advice that I ever got about comedy. He told me to get on stage as much as I could, wherever I could. He said, “It doesn’t matter when, how, where, just get up there and try it.” He told me that if you’re at a bar and there’s a band playi
ng and they take a break, you should ask them if you can have a couple minutes on stage while they’re resting. He put into my head that night, at such a young age, that comedy was a craft, that is was something you could actually get better at with practice.

  After receiving his advice, all I could think to offer in return was, “My mom makes really good Indian food. I can drive you back to our place and she’ll cook you up a great meal.” I was such a geek and really had no clue about anything at the time, but George was just pure goodness. He turned down the dinner invite graciously. Before I left, I said to him, “Hey, maybe one day we’ll work together,” and he said to me, as though it were as probable as the next sunrise, “Maybe, kid. You never know.”

  In July of 2007, comedy legend George Carlin was not well. He had just gotten out of the hospital from having surgery and was doing some tune-up shows before he taped an HBO special. One of these shows was happening in L.A. at the Hermosa Beach Comedy and Magic Club, and knowing that I’ve always been a huge fan of Carlin’s, the manager of the club asked me if I wanted to be part of his show. My answer? “Can I please, please host the show?”

  The long and the short of it: they let me host for George Carlin. And that night, when I got on stage to introduce him, I couldn’t help it—I got all teary-eyed. I told the audience the story about when I was a kid and met him on the streets and what a great guy he had been, how totally nice he had been to me for no good reason. Then, George came out and, laughing, he said, “You’re embarrassing me, kid. I’m not that nice.”

  That night was one I’ll never forget. I had come full circle and gotten to share the stage with my hero. I was so happy to be there with him. I took a picture with George after the show, and I’m sure glad I did.

  George passed away ten months later, in June 2008. The world lost not only one of the best comics to ever grace a stage, but a man with uncommon human decency and a really big heart.