by Mark Anthony
I began by slowly shaking my head and saying, “See, Toni, it’s like this. I’m not saying that I have the worst marriage in the world, nor am I saying that I don’t love my wife. What I am saying—or should I say, how I feel—is, I feel like I have to be real with myself, and if not I’ll drive myself insane.”
Toni, who was standing up, said, “I’m trying to understand you, but—”
I interrupted her and said, “Okay, I’ll try to explain myself better. Toni, there is something in me that just knows that things are not gonna work out between my wife and myself. You don’t know how frustrated I feel inside my heart. I feel like I am constantly living two lives just to make things work between us. My marriage is going on five years, and I have felt like this since six months into it. I just can’t keep this up, and that’s why I know that there is nothing wrong with me being with you.”
I knew I was jacking things up. I wasn’t being convincing enough. I also realized that if I wanted to sound confident, then I would have to feel and act that way. From that point on, I sat straight up and began to look into Toni’s eyes. Thoughts of my wife were creeping into my mind, but I swatted them away like an irritating fly.
Toni responded, “Lance, I think I know what you’re trying to say, but like I told you at Juniors, you still made a commitment to your wife, and you should try to honor it.”
I butted in, “Toni that’s just it. I have been trying, and it’s not gonna work.”
Toni asked, “So how is being with me gonna change things?”
“Being with you, Toni, is gonna change everything because I know that if things work between me and you, then that proves that my marriage was destined to end. Toni, why else would I even be pursuing you if things looked mad bright for the future between me and Nicole?”
Trying to pull out all the punches, I continued. “Toni, I don’t want you to think that I’m a dog or anything like that. Don’t think that at all, because if I was a dog, I would have cheated on Nicole a long time ago. But I’ve been faithful for all this time. I was doing what you suggested, in that I was trying my hardest to honor my commitment, but, Toni, think about it, why should marriage, day in and day out feel like such a laborious chore? Marriage shouldn’t be like that. It’s not fair.”
I think I was beginning to get through to Toni as she shook her head and explained, “Lance, since I’ve met you, I’ve been breaking all kinds of rules that I said I would never break. Rules, that if I were to see another woman breaking, I would label her as a skeezer or a chicken head. Lance, I really do think I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t see how things can work between me and you.”
Yes, I thought. I knew I had Toni steered in the direction I wanted her to go. I just had to continue to bait her. Sounding like Keith Sweat, I came off like I was begging or pleading as I went on. “Toni, I know I don’t have all of the answers. I don’t know exactly how this is gonna work between me and you, but I know that with every absolute ounce of my being that I want things to work. Toni, listen to me, ’cause I’m not trying to run game on you. I’m too old for that. I promise you that I’ll do everything I have to do in order to make this work.”
At that point Toni sat down. I knew I was causing her to consider crossing a line she thought she could never cross. Toni remained quiet. I knew I had said enough, and I didn’t want to interrupt her. I thought about saying something stupid in reference to Toni’s man out in Las Vegas, but that would definitely have been a major error. I wondered what she was thinking about, so I asked her.
Toni informed me, “I’m just thinking, you know, about your wife and stuff like that.”
That was the last thing I needed Toni to be thinking about, so I had to come up with some serious game very quick.
“Toni, you ever been on a scary roller coaster?” I asked.
Toni replied, “Yes.”
Just as I was gonna expand on my game, I felt my pager going off. It was on vibrate, so Toni didn’t have a clue that I had been paged. I discretely looked down and checked the number, and it was Nicole. I paid it no attention, and I went on.
“Toni, I asked you that question because I see the wheels turning in your head. You’re thinking about every scenario. You’re thinking about how are we gonna speak on the phone. You’re asking yourself when are we gonna have the time to go out. You’re thinking about, what if Nicole and I end up getting a divorce.”
I took Toni by the hand to reassure her, as I said, “Toni, I have had those same thoughts for five years, but I’ve finally been able to honestly answer a lot of my own thoughts and questions. Toni, think of that scary roller coaster, or bungee jumping, or skydiving. You know it’s scary, you know the dangers, but deep down inside you still want to experience it. And Toni, the thing that stops people from experiencing the joys of the ride is the fact that they stand in front of the roller coaster and they think. They don’t have to say anything. All they have to do is just think. Then before you know it they back out and say, ‘Nah, nah. It’s too scary. I’m not getting on.’ See, Toni, when people do that, they rob themselves of experiencing the things that deep down inside they want to experience.”
After saying that, I was like “damn!” I mean, I was even shocked as to having pulled that game out of my hat. I wanted Toni to think about what I had just said and at the same time I didn’t want to keep rambling on to give her the impression that I was gassing her. So after having said all of that, I asked Toni if I could use her phone. As she went to her bedroom to retrieve her cordless phone I realized that it was already a little past six o’clock. When Toni came back with the phone I called my wife.
I didn’t want Toni to know who I was talking to so when Nicole answered the phone, I asked that common question, “Yo, you paged me?”
Nicole, who finally sounded like she was in a better mood said, “Yeah, I paged you, baby.”
“What’s up?” I replied.
“Thank you for the flowers.”
“You’re welcome,” I nonchalantly replied.
Nicole went on to say that she was sorry for not speaking to me that morning. She added that she knew that I was also sorry for what had happened last night. Then she asked about my and LL’s whereabouts. Toni was still standing right next to me, and I didn’t want to lie. I played things off by saying, “Oh. I had to fix my friend’s air conditioner, so I went there right after work, but LL is at Tiffany’s.”
Nicole asked, “When will you be home?”
“Oh, in like a half,” I replied.
Nicole who wanted to verify my response asked, “You mean a half an hour?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so I’ll see you later.”
I hung up the phone and placed it down on the counter. Of course Toni asked me who I had been speaking to. I knew that she didn’t know who my sister was, so I simply lied and told her that I had been speaking to my sister. Knowing that I had to leave soon, I immediately asked Toni if she understood what I had been trying to get across to her.
Of course she still lacked a little confidence, but she told me that she did indeed understand what I was trying to say. I wanted to remove all of Toni’s insecurities and leave her house knowing that a relationship had been officially fostered from this point on.
“Toni, you want things to work between me and you. I know you do, because if you didn’t you wouldn’t have suggested that we talk about things. I’m trying to get an understanding between us. I have to leave, so I’ll get straight to the point. From now on I don’t want you overly thinking about things, a’ight?”
Toni shyly nodded in agreement.
I added, “I ain’t trying to back you into a corner or tie you down, but I want us to establish a relationship.”
Toni shook her head and smiled, as if to say she still had some things to think about.
I smiled, too, as I said, “See, there you go again, thinking. Stop thinking. Don’t think about anything except for the fact that I’m gonna do my part in tryi
ng to make things work between me and you. Toni, all I want is for you to tell me that from this point forward you’ll do your part in helping me make this work.”
Toni still was smiling as she walked from out of the kitchen and into her living room. I followed after her, and I hugged her from behind. I asked again, “You’re gonna try, right?”
Toni didn’t respond.
I had to jet, and I asked her to walk me to my car, which she did. We walked to my car without saying a word to each other. When we reached the Lexus I got in and sat behind the steering wheel. Toni was standing right beside the driver’s window, which was rolled down. I started up the car, looked at Toni, and asked her again, “You’re gonna try, right?”
Toni nodded to show me her agreement, then she bent over and gave me a peck on the lips. After the kiss, we both seductively looked at each other. Toni stood back and waved as I pulled off. I was in a slammin’ mood for the remainder of the night.
My wife and I made up. I managed to explain to Nicole that the reason I was upset and had snapped at her was because I had bet a lot of money on the game and I lost. That was a total lie but my wife, after reprimanding me for gambling, told me that she understood.
So with things good on the home front and things John Blazin’ between me and Toni, I was on cloud nine. I knew that I had a great dilemma to solve: Which of my two faces was I gonna wear around my wife? I knew that the face of evil was way too painful. All it caused was arguments, stress, and anxiety, but the face of good required tedious, hypocritical work. See, I didn’t have the gall to do like some men do, in terms of just walking away from my wife and kid. I didn’t even have the guts to get a divorce. Internally I knew that I cared way too much to just walk away from things or to get a divorce. Actually, there is no way that it would have even been about a divorce, because my family is still the most important thing to me on this planet.
It was more about feeling satisfied. I realized that just like prior to Toni, when I needed both Scarlet and Nicole in order to maintain my sanity, that I would now need both Toni and Nicole in order to maintain my current sanity. I was willing to put in the hard work. Just as Toni had made a vow to make the relationship work between us, I also made a vow to myself, that from this point on I was gonna be the best Christian family man who ever walked the face of the earth. And at the same time, I was gonna blow Toni away and be the best lover since Casanova.
THIRTEEN
Nicole and I had worked out a system that is designed to combat boredom in our marriage. We looked at many older couples such as our parents and tried to figure out why they weren’t as happy as they appeared to be in their youthful wedding pictures. Our brainstorming produced many hypotheses. But one major conclusion that we came to was the fact that many couples had stopped dating each other after marriage.
For Nicole and me, either Friday or Saturday was always set aside for just the two of us. On one of those days we would do things that led us to continue wanting to spend the rest of our lives together. Whenever we would go out on dates, we would make sure that we kept things spontaneous. One week we would go to a comedy club. The next week we would go out to Yankee Stadium or to a restaurant—you name it, we did it.
Lately I noticed that we had both been letting other things take a higher priority over our marriage. Nicole, who always has great intentions, was becoming very one tracked. Her every thought was church, church, church. Believe me, as the husband, I know that I have to be on a higher spiritual page than she is, but I can’t see how that’s genuinely gonna happen. I mean, I’m gonna put forth a hypocritical effort to make it happen, however, with Nicole’s church-church-church mentality, she was causing me to resent the fellowship of the congregants.
See, what happened between Scarlet and me, that really shouldn’t count against me. I mean, yeah, I’ll admit that I’m doing wrong in the sense that I’m creeping with Toni, but Nicole is no better because she is establishing a relationship with a mistress of her own, the church.
For example, granted that my supervisor had asked me a week in advance to work late on Friday, but I still knew that I would be home by ten o’clock that evening. I really wanted my wife and me to go out and do something. It had been a couple of months since we’d truly dated. Unfortunately, Nicole turned down my request to take her to a late-night movie. She informed me that the church was having a special Friday evening service, and she had already made plans to attend and she had arranged for a babysitter for LL. Nicole explained to me that the service wouldn’t end until midnight, at which time, she knew she would be exhausted and only looking forward to bed. Her suggestion to me was that I either stay home or use the night as a night out with the fellas.
Yeah, a’ight, I thought.
On my way home from work that evening, I knew that I definitely wasn’t trying to go home and go to sleep. Man, it was Friday night, and I wanted to unwind from a week of work and stress. I contacted Steve and some of the other fellas to see what they were getting themselves into. Most of my friends were split down the middle. Half of them were just chillin’ for the night, while the other half were planning on going out to a club. It had been a while since I’d been to a club, and I thought about joining them, but tonight wasn’t really a club night for me. I wasn’t feeling real Mackish. I wasn’t in the mood for dancing, and I didn’t feel like spending dough or buying drinks for some hoe.
Yeah, I didn’t feel like kicking it to females tonight, and that was the main reason that I would not have gone to a club, so I was like ‘forget the club thing.’ Scarlet was supposed to be stripping, or as she would put it, “dancing” at this club in Harlem, so I thought about surprising her by going to the club and checking her out and then maybe chillin’ with her afterward.
Although I was trying to avoid it, subconsciously I knew that I hadn’t exhausted all of my options for the night. I still had the opportunity to call Toni to see if she wanted to take my wife’s place and join me in seeing a movie. While still on my way home from work, I called Toni on my cell to see what plans she had for the night. And it felt sooo good to hear her voice, one that gets lively and excited because she is speaking to me. Yeah, and it feels extremely exemplary when Toni starts telling me that she missed me and the like.
“So what’s up? What are you doing tonight?” I asked.
Toni explained that since it was a Friday, the shop had been extremely busy. She told me she had just walked in the house after a thirteen-hour day in the salon.
“Oh, so that means your pockets are full of dead presidents and you’re gonna take me out tonight, right?” I asked.
Toni laughed as she said, “Yeah, baby, I’ll take you out. My treat. Where do you wanna go?”
“Well, I was thinking about seeing a movie, especially being that it’s so late and all.”
Toni responded, “Well you know what? Actually I’m exhausted from today, and I know that I have to be back at the shop at seven in the morning, so I was gonna just come home and get in the bed.”
Sounding kind of disappointed because I had a feeling that Toni was trying to reject my offer, I replied, “Oh, so you trying to front on me?”
Toni laughed and said, “No, no. Of course not. I was just thinking, being that I’m tired and all, why don’t you rent a movie and come over here, and we can just hang out?”
Toni definitely wasn’t gonna get any objections from me. I informed her that I would be at her place within the next forty-five minutes.
“What about Training Day? Have you ever seen that?” I asked.
“Training Day, with Denzel, right?” Toni asked.
“Yeah.”
Toni added, “Nah, I never saw that. Yeah, so rent that.”
“A’ight, so I’ll see you later.”
I knew that I didn’t have to stop at the video store because I had purchased Training Day for Nicole. She liked the movie so much that I bought it for her. I simply had to rush home, get showered and dressed, and I could jet over to Toni’s. The Ton
i rushes that I got were already starting to kick in. It was the same rush that I used to get back in the day when I knew I was gonna see my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time.
I dug deep into my romantic repertoire to see what I could come up with to complement the movie. In no way, shape, or form did I want Toni to be bored while she was with me. Being that I was still in Brooklyn, I decided to drop by the Canarsie Pier, a spot along Jamaica Bay just off the Belt Parkway. It consisted of restaurants and boats and all of the things that any bustling pier would have. You had your people who came to the pier to fish. Others came to relax and enjoy nature as they would sit on the benches, bicycle, walk, or Rollerblade on the boardwalk and the like.
At the pier you could also purchase all kinds of seafood. I am no cook, but the dishes that I do know how to make usually come out slammin’. I perfected my ability to cook certain dishes simply because I wanted to impress women. My plan that night was no different. I wanted to impress Toni, so I purchased three live lobsters. I knew that Toni liked seafood because she had ordered shrimp when we went to Juniors. I couldn’t wait to surprise her.
After having showered, I trimmed my goatee and my mustache to make sure my grill was on point. My attire was very casual—Air Jordans, baggy jeans, and a short-sleeve button-down rayon shirt. Before I left my house, I grabbed the movie and I also retrieved the Old Bay seasoning for the lobsters. Just to cover my tracks, I left a note telling Nicole that I had gone out and that I would be back home around two or three in the morning.
I hopped in my car, and before I knew it I was at Toni’s place. When Toni answered the door she looked as if she had just come out of the shower. She had a towel on her head, and she had on this sexy short silk robe. After hugging each other, Toni invited me in, and she explained that she had in fact just come out of the shower. She told me to have a seat in her living room while she excused herself to go change. At that point, all kinds of sexual thoughts were running through my head. The natural high that I was on began to elevate.