“Where are we going?” I said finally.
Mel swiftly replied, “Back to my place in Queens.”
I shot Dev a glare that could have pierced through an ice sculpture had there been one in the backseat with us. She shrugged her shoulders as if she was slightly clueless and that’s when I really started to get pissed. All I wanted to do was go home and be in my own space and use my own bathroom and sleep in my own makeshift bed.
“I don’t feel like driving back to Jersey tonight, then going all the way back to Queens,” Mel stated. “You guys can stay at my place and I’ll take you home in the morning.”
I sat in silence. I could not respond without rambling profanities. By that time, we were on some highway or another and basically out of the city and sure as hell out of my comfort zone, so what was I to say? I felt like I had a one-way ticket to hell.
After roughly five minutes of silence, I blurted out, “Well, do you have some place for all of us to sleep? How is this going to work?”
I knew that Mel had an extra bedroom, but in the few times that I’d gone to his place, I never saw him so much as crack the door open. It was always closed. I joked to Dev once that he was probably hiding a huge weed-growing operation.
“Don’t worry, you and Dev can share my bed. Que and I will sleep on the futon.” Clearly, Mel had everything preplanned and mapped out.
I thought to myself, yeah right. Since when have you known a grown man to give up his bed to a chick that he is trying to get with and her friend; only to have to turn around and sleep on the futon. I don’t think so. At that point, all I could do was take his word for it and keep my eyes on Que who was not to be trusted.
Mel lived among a sea of apartments. Each one looked like the next. When we finally arrived at Mel’s apartment door, I wanted to go to sleep as quickly as possible. Mel gave us T-shirts and shorts to sleep in and he was very hospitable. However, it didn’t take long to figure out that the plans had changed yet again. Dev and I would be sleeping on the futon in the living room. After Mel gave me a blanket, I grabbed my purse, went into the bathroom and hastily changed, obviously leaving on my bra. When I climbed on the futon and into my corner for the night, I could hear Que still running his mouth and trying to get some attention. Needless to say, I had no intentions on being polite and entertaining his ass. It was four in the morning, the sun would be coming up soon and all I wanted was sleep.
The last thing that I remembered before dozing off was Dev lying on the futon next to me. Mel was sitting on the floor by Dev and they were watching TV, chatting it up about the night. I must have been extremely tired. Normally I could not fall asleep with so much activity going on.
I had been sleep for what felt like hours when all of a sudden, either I was dreaming or actually feeling hands touching me. A warm body was attempting to spoon me.
My reflexes shot into action and I jumped up. “What the hell are you doing?”
Dev and I didn’t get down like that so I knew it had to be Que. I could barely make out his face in the darkness of the living room. I was instantly livid.
“Shhh! You know what’s up. Why you think you here?” Que exclaimed in a hushed tone.
“You better back up off me, that’s what I fucking know!”
“C’mon, girl,” Que cooed.
“I don’t know what you thought this was, but do not touch me.” I seethed, pushing what I could of his chunky body and stubby fingers away from me.
He snatched my arm. I quickly felt his strength and the intensity of his grip.
“You acting like you don’t know what the deal is,” Que whispered as he grew agitated.
I had been known to talk a lot of shit and most of the time I could back it up, but to say that I was not afraid at that very moment would have been a lie. Crazy thoughts were going through my head during those few seconds: Where the fuck is Dev? What if this drunk fool won’t listen to my objections and he continues to try and force himself on me? Damn it! I don’t even have my mace. Okay, I gotta pull it together and show no fear.
“I do know what the deal is,” I said, as I snatched my arm away using a thumb-breaking self-defense technique my dad had taught me. “I’m trying to sleep and I wake up to some perv trying to feel me up. I don’t know you and I don’t know what you think I’m about. But I’m not the bitch to be fucked with. Yo’ best bet is to back yo’ ass up ASAP!”
He was buying into my confident act, so I continued. “What I suggest you do is take yo’ ass to sleep ’cause ain’t nothing going down over here. Understood?”
I swear I tried to give him the death look that said if you touch me, I will rip your balls off and feed them to you. It must’ve worked because his face changed and he backed up in silence. Who knows? He had probably done this before. I guess he thought that he was going to somehow punk me into having sex with him or letting him take advantage of me, but he’d picked the wrong one on the wrong night.
To make matters worse, there was no other couch in the living room. Only some antique-looking chair that was uncomfortable to sit in, let alone sleep on.
I knew that there was no way that he would waddle his big ass over to the chair to sleep, so I informed him of my rules. “I better not feel you so much as brush up against me if you plan to stay on this futon.”
He mumbled something slick under his breath before rolling over in the opposite direction. I let out a slight sigh of relief but that was the worst night’s sleep I ever had. Technically, I did not sleep because I was too paranoid to actually close my eyes for more than a minute. There I was, lying in some dude’s house in Queens, in a desolate area, next to his lightweight rapist cousin, who was way larger than me. I had no clue how to get home even if I said “fuck it” and left. We were miles away from any main road where I could potentially have an opportunity to flee. I faced the wall and my mind kept replaying the incident. Each time I came up with other comments that I should have or could have said. My anger forced a stream of tears to drip down the side of my face. I felt trapped, vulnerable, and violated. My legs were clutched tightly to my chest. I mapped out my plan of attack in the event that he tried again. I could not put my finger on the one thing that made me feel the most uncomfortable, but the feelings were all too familiar and I never wanted to feel like that again.
The next morning, I was mute. We piled in Mel’s car around nine. I had nothing to say to anyone during the ride to Jersey, Dev included. I was beyond pissed and they must have sensed it, so everyone left me alone. When we pulled up to our apartment, I hopped out, slammed the door, and made a beeline straight for the shower. I wanted to wash that night away. I was safe, but the reality was that things could have easily taken a turn for the worst.
After my shower, I went straight to Dev’s room. “So what the fuck happened last night?”
“What, what are you talking about?”
“Look, don’t ever put me in a situation like that again. I trusted you to take care of things and make arrangements to get us back to the apartment, but you didn’t do that. We ended up in Queens hella far out, no train station in sight, and I fall asleep with you on the futon only to wake up to Que’s fucking ass trying to take advantage of me in my sleep. To top it off, he got aggressive when I rejected him. Where the hell did you go?”
Dev batted her long, black eyelashes and stared at me confused. “What do you mean?” she asked. “After you fell asleep, Mel told me to come in the room for a minute which turned into me staying in there. When I left the living room, Que was asleep in the chair.”
“Well, at some point, he decided that he was going to climb on the futon with me. He tried to push up on me and then snatched my arm hella hard when I objected.”
“Oh hell no, I did not know all of that.” Dev folded her arms across her voluptuous chest.
“I’m sure you didn’t because you were in there doing you, but that’s exactly why I wanted to make sure that Mel took us or at least me home. I knew that if we stayed over his house,
it would make for an uncomfortable situation for me. Maybe not for you, but for me.”
“I’m so sorry, chick. I didn’t know he was a creep. That was totally out of line!”
“I felt extremely uncomfortable. It was a horrible night. I basically had to lie there next to this perv, hoping that he would not try something again.”
I never told Dev—frankly, I never told anyone—but there was an incident with Ivan, which was the only other time in my life when I felt sexually disgusted and violated. Que had no clue that his actions triggered negative emotions from the past.
Ivan’s house was somewhat of a social hotspot. We had just come from having dinner and his roommate had a few friends over. When his place was packed with people, it was natural for us to head straight to his room. We were watching TV for a bit before deciding to get in bed.
Of course Ivan and I had a sexual relationship, but that night was different. We ended up falling asleep with the TV watching us. As usual, he woke in the middle of the night horny and looking to me to satisfy his sexual craving. His signal was always the same. He would cuddle up next to me so that I could feel his bulging penis pressing up against my lower back. Then came the touching and soft kisses. That night I did not feel like having sex. I wasn’t in the mood. I was asleep and I wanted to stay that way.
They say that when you are married, sex is an obligation for a woman, but hell, we were not married and barely even dating exclusively. Our situation was complicated at all times and that night was no different. I always had my reservations about whether or not to be with him sexually. Who wants to readily give all of their self to a person sexually when that person barely acknowledges them emotionally?
The next thing I knew, we were kissing, which was by force of habit and not the excitement of passion. Ivan was clearly turned on but despite the kissing, I did not feel the same way. He had nothing but boxers on, so his fully erect penis was already peeking out of his shorts. My T-shirt had started to creep up my stomach and Ivan began to pull at my panties. Through intertwined lips I told him to stop and suggested that we go back to sleep. He kept kissing me and eventually I pulled my head away and turned my face toward the wall. I did not want to make him feel rejected, but I really did not want to have sex.
Maybe he thought that I was joking when I said no or maybe he didn’t care. He was tugging at my panties, pulling them down to my knees. I squirmed and asked him to stop. Ivan began thrusting his penis inside me anyway. I could feel his manhood pounding away at me as I lay there wishing he would hurry the hell up. Soon his thrusting began to burn for the lack of moisture between my legs. It blew my mind that he could not sense that I wasn’t into it. I said no several times more, but he kept pumping.
Once he was finished, his sweaty palm touched my shoulder, he kissed me on the lips, and then he rolled over. I did not feel a sense of fear, but I was definitely confused. What just happened? Did I have sex with my lover or was I raped? I had no clue.
I quietly crept into the master bathroom to clean myself up. Looking at my reflection in the mirror, I felt like a pitiful mess and I looked the exact same way. I wasn’t battered or bruised, but my body and spirit felt abused. I didn’t know what to say or do next, so I turned off the light, opened the bathroom door, and walked into the darkness to lie beside the man that suddenly felt like a stranger.
Only in the days that passed did I realize that I had, in fact, been raped. It stayed with me tucked away in a tiny dark corner of my soul. I was confused because I still had feelings for Ivan. I never told my girls from The Clique because I felt silly and I did not want them to judge my relationship. Essentially, I blocked it from the forefront of my thoughts. After a few weeks, I guess you could say I acted as if I’d gotten over it, but I promised myself that, if I could help it, I would never let anything like that happen to me again.
Chapter 3
New Life
The morning of my first day in the New York PR office, I was a nervous wreck, but I tried to play it cool. Am I ready for the hustle and bustle of the city? Will I get on the right train and get off at the right stop? Will my new colleagues like me?
Eighth Avenue and Fiftieth Street was my destination. I had to hop on the New Jersey Transit, then transfer to the C train at the Port Authority terminal in the city. I’d been haunted by dreams of riding the subway. In California, the closest I’d been to taking public transportation was the occasional bus ride in junior high. The overall concept was basically foreign to me.
I finally made it to the C train. Once I stepped inside the train car, I felt like the other passengers could sense my insecurity. I felt as though they were looking at me like I didn’t know where I was going. In reality, they probably couldn’t have cared less about my insecurities and didn’t even notice me.
I could hear Mary J. Blige blasting from the earphones of the hefty woman in hospital scrubs sitting beside me. I started to jam along to her music until I realized that I looked like an idiot. However, I would have been in good company since the man sitting directly across from me in the cramped, bench-style seating started showing his ass. Out of the relative silence on a crowded morning train, he started rapping what seemed like an impromptu performance of the most vulgar, explicit, and raunchy lyrics that his simple, ignorant brain could think up. I knew rap, and this man’s foolish nonsense came straight from his personal collection of bad rhymes. After the initial shock wore off, it was almost hilarious how serious he was about the crap he was spewing.
I casually looked around the train car to gauge the reactions of other passengers. Most people totally ignored him. Their facial expressions remained stoic. That must have been a sign that you were a true New Yorker. Thankfully, the train started to slow down. It was so crowded that I was having a hard time seeing the signs at each stop. I shifted my body and leaned my head to the right in order to peek through the people that were standing. I could see enough to figure out that it was my time to depart this unsolicited show. I exited stage left of the train car.
After navigating my way through the massive complex of buildings, I finally found the entrance for my office building. It was nothing spectacular and quite frankly, it looked like my co-workers had been working out of a temporary space. No décor on the walls, a drab paint job, and standard light-brown, yucky indoor/outdoor carpeting. Little did I know this would be even more temporary for me than it seemed. My first meeting of the day was with my new manager, Barbra. She was oddly petite, super chic, and wore red, cat-eye frames. I admired her bold style. I’d met her once before when she briefly came through the Los Angeles office on business.
The new situation was a complete contrast from my former manager in Los Angeles who turned out to be an insecure bitch who carried herself like a mix between a frumpy Wicked Witch of the West and a homely, wannabe, redheaded version of Carrie Bradshaw. She was a sad sight.
The Los Angeles Hollywood entertainment scene was large but small at the same time. I’d heard outrageous stories about my old manager before deciding to work with her. She used to fight with her subordinates, even going so far as to have screaming matches, which is completely unprofessional. But I needed the experience the job offered and I was up for the challenge. I gave my all on the job, following the lead of my Jolie. But the one thing that I would never do was allow myself to be disrespected.
I managed to do my work, fly under the drama radar, and stick it out in the Los Angeles office long enough for my boss to go on an unexpected leave of absence. That’s when I saw my opportunity to flee to the New York office. And I took it. The Wicked Witch of the West wasn’t around to object to my transfer request.
Before my departure to New York, I was in the office working on a project when one of the partners in the agency called in from the road. He needed a favor. This was typical since he was rarely ever in the office. He asked that I go into his office and retrieve specific information from his computer. I thought nothing of it and gladly agreed. He gave me his password and told me
to call him back once I had the information. I rushed into his massive corner office with floor-to-ceiling windows and sat at his spacious, modern, glass desk to retrieve the files. I phoned him from his desk and supplied the information requested.
When I hung up the phone, I clicked on the start menu to log out of his computer, but my curiosity got the better of me. I wonder what that wicked witch has been saying about me? My boss was a habitual shit talker.
I had great intuition and when I followed it, I was never steered wrong. At that moment, alone in the partner’s office, it was all too easy. His email inbox was already open, so I hit the search button and began to look through the emails that were from my manager. I was on edge and my eyes were scanning the screen at a rapid pace. Any one of my coworkers could’ve walked in without notice and caught me in the act.
My hands were slightly shaking, but I clicked through as much information as I could as fast as I could, skimming through the emails that caught my attention. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. What I read blew my mind! The woman was crazy and insecure, but I did not know that she was actually out to sabotage me.
The first email, from only two days prior, read: “So now you are letting her transfer to New York. I thought that you were going to fire that bitch?” She actually referred to me as a bitch! I was in shock. His response, “If she requested to go, then I’m going to let her go. We can take care of everything else later.”
This was my first lesson in how truly treacherous and foul people can be in the business world—especially in entertainment. Oftentimes, it’s not about the work that you do. It’s about how much ass you kiss to make people like you.
I finished scanning a few more scandalous email messages and ultimately read enough to know that my time at the agency was coming to an end. I was fine with moving on as long as I made my way to New York first. I knew I could brace myself for whatever came later. But first things first; I had the New York office to deal with.
Preseason Love Page 3