The Love Playbook: Rules for Love, Sex, and Happiness

by La La Anthony

  My message to guys: Sometimes you have to take a chance with a girl you think you have no chance with, because a lot of those girls are getting zero love.

  I loved being the cool popular girl, but I got tired of being seen as everyone’s sister. I wanted to have a connection. I wanted to have a boyfriend. I wanted to find love. And I did when I met Doug.

  I was a virgin because no one was pursuing me. Doug was one of the first guys to make me feel special in that way. I always wanted to prove I wasn’t this young girl. I didn’t want him to know how inexperienced I was. I tried to play it off. But I think I ended up telling him that this was my first time right before we did it and he was like, “Holy shit!”

  Back then, everybody was having sex. I don’t think any of my girlfriends were virgins. I definitely was the last of the Mohicans from my group of friends. So I was ready at this point. For him, it must have been crazy because he never suspected. But he was gentle and kind and made my first time memorable. But after he got it, I guess the thrill and excitement of being with me was over for him.

  Or maybe that was just his pattern . . . on to the next. He started coming around less and less. I started hearing rumors about other women, and our time together was spent arguing about why he wasn’t spending more time with me. I used to try to cook up schemes to make him pay attention to me. I was faking illnesses, hoping he would run to see me. I was getting really desperate, and I must have looked pretty pitiful.

  When a man knows you’re dependent on him, he can take

  advantage of you.

  Looking back, I know I opened the door for him to mistreat me because I didn’t come into the relationship on my own terms. I came in as a little girl who looked up to him, and I poured my everything into him. I relied too much on him. When a man knows you’re dependent on him, he can take advantage of you.

  It wasn’t long before I knew it was a bad decision to go to Howard for all of the wrong reasons. Once I actually arrived at Howard, things changed. Before coming to Howard, I talked to him just about every day for long periods. Even those first few months I was there were special. But things started to switch up quickly. I was no longer his priority. He stopped letting me come to the clubs where he would be hosting parties until three or four in the morning. I would wait for him, but some nights he wouldn’t come home. I was technically living in the dorm at Howard. But I spent every night at Doug’s.

  I made the mistake of making Doug my entire center. I totally depended on him for my social life. I never made friends at school and I really didn’t have a life outside of him. I made friends with his friends and his friends’ girlfriends and the jocks at his radio station, who I’m still cool with today. In fact, his best friend’s girlfriend at the time is still one of my best friends.

  But it was a mistake for me not to have my own friends and at the same time to alienate the people who loved me. It was a big mistake, because I didn’t have my own support system or shoulders to cry on when things went south. These were his people. Guys like Doug love it when a girl doesn’t have friends and family around her. It allows them to get away with just about anything.

  Doug had the car, he had the connections, he had the career. I was caught up in his life, and I never developed my own life while I was with him. This was my first year of college. I should have been immersed in being a freshman and participating in campus activities and going to school and learning. This was Howard—one of the best historically black colleges in the nation. I was in the nation’s capital. The Lincoln Memorial. The Washington Monument. The Mall. The White House. I should have been exploring D.C., making friends, and having college fun.

  Instead I was cooped up in an apartment most of the time waiting for Doug to come home.

  I only went on that college tour for kicks. I really knew that I didn’t need to go to college to pursue my career. I was already working at a major radio station in high school and moving up the ladder. I was learning my craft. Going to college to get a degree in communications would not give me the kind of experience I was getting every day. I knew this. So part of me was going to college to make my mom happy, but the biggest reason (which I can admit now) was because of Doug.

  Don’t get me wrong; despite knowing that I didn’t need to go to college to pursue my career, I was still amped to go. My mom had an associate degree and I thought it would be cool to have that degree under my belt. And I was excited to go to Howard. It turned out that I didn’t even get to have that college experience.

  I remember the day I got accepted to Howard. We were living in LakePoint, which was this hot apartment complex across the street from Titi Edna and Dice. It was where all the cool people lived (at least that’s how I saw it).

  I opened the door to our apartment and there was an envelope on the doormat with the Howard symbol and gold seal. It looked so professional. I opened it and it read: “Congratulations. You have been accepted . . .” And then it talked about the scholarship package and what was included. My memory isn’t always so great, but this moment is crystal clear. I can see that envelope and I remember how I felt.

  I was excited, because it meant I would be going away to school and I would be on my own for the first time. It meant I was an adult. It was also an enormous accomplishment. This was Howard, one of the best schools in the country. And I got an academic scholarship.

  “Somebody sent this to me!” was all I could think. I felt extremely special. I knew there was no way we could afford Howard, so getting that scholarship just made it seem to me that I was supposed to go to Howard. And Doug was in D.C.

  My mom was ecstatic when she found out that I was accepted to Howard. But she started questioning my decision when Doug showed up at my high school graduation. She knew then something more was up and she didn’t feel good about it.

  I allowed him to rob me and my family of rejoicing in that moment. College is a great place for young people to grow and expand their knowledge base and discover themselves. But I didn’t even get a chance to do that because I was so wrapped up in a man.

  I also lied to myself (as we often do) and said that Doug could help me with my career. He could teach me things I didn’t know about the radio business. He would help open doors for me and give me exposure in a bigger market. He didn’t open a single door. I left there with a broken heart, but with even more resolve to put my life back on track, to draw up a plan for my next move.

  It was crazy, because before this if you’d asked any of my friends or family if I could ever be wrapped up in a guy like this, they would have said, “Hell, no!” I was very independent. But I also had some insecurity. I can see now where I looked to him to fill in my blanks.

  I didn’t feel that I could turn to anyone—not even the men in my life, my dad and stepfather. As you know, John and I didn’t really communicate much. He and my dad also had a pretty rocky relationship. It was so bad at one point that my stepdad had a separate line put in the house that had a special ring so that when my dad called, he wouldn’t have to pick up the phone and speak to him.

  The tension between my dad and my stepfather was so bad that I just didn’t want to be around either one of them. I began to grow distant because the less contact I had with them, the less tension there would be. I started being more rebellious, too. I guess I was looking for a father figure (or some male authority) when I met Doug. I wanted someone I could confide in and who could teach me things. Doug was successful in an industry I wanted to be in, and I just thought everything he said was gospel. He seemed to have it all together.

  A lot of girls today gravitate toward an older man who becomes a father figure to them. This is a huge mistake. No man but a father (or stepfather, or uncle) can ever fill that role in your life. It’s actually kind of sick when you think of your man as being your “daddy.” Emotionally, it just makes you too vulnerable and an easy target for abuse. But I totally understand the need to have that s
trong male figure in your life. Doug filled that role for me.

  He started telling me what to do, and I thought he must know. My dad and I have a great relationship now. But he wasn’t around much because of his travels and I wasn’t available because once I was all in on this relationship, I shut everyone out. I turned my back on my whole family. My mom to this day, like Dice, also says this was the hardest time she went through with me. I know it hurt her deeply when she found out how he ended up treating me.

  The relationship began to unravel when I began to see that the rumors weren’t just rumors. He would interview celebrities and would flirt with them and I would think nothing of it initially. That was the job. Then he started having strippers come to the studio. They would come in and show off some of their moves. Then he started hosting parties in the strip clubs and I wasn’t allowed to come. Then I wouldn’t hear from him for a couple of days.

  He had mood swings, too. We’d be eating dinner and I would ask him a question and he would fly off the handle and throw the plate of food across the room against the wall. Things like that started happening more frequently.

  He bought me a Rottweiler puppy that we named Johnny Blaze. I was a Method Man fanatic and Johnny Blaze was one of Method Man’s alter egos. I loved that dog. Blaze stayed at Doug’s place because I couldn’t have him in the dorm, and I spent most of my time there anyway.

  We were eating dinner one night and Blaze came over to the table as he always did, begging for scraps, and he put his nose close to Doug’s plate. Doug got up, grabbed a broom, and whacked Blaze over the back with the stick end of the broom so hard that the stick broke.

  I lost it. Blaze was my baby. It was as if Doug had beaten my child. He never put his hands on me, but that was close enough. I put up with the cheating, the humiliation, the rage, and the embarrassment. But hitting Blaze like that woke something up inside me. I was done.

  I was crying hysterically, and when he left I called my father and asked him to come get me. My dad didn’t ask any questions. He flew in, packed up my things and my dog, and we hit the road back home to Atlanta.

  On that drive back, I thought of all the times when I should have left but didn’t.

  One time, he was making an appearance at a club, and he was in the deejay booth, on the microphone. I was near the booth in the crowd, watching him, as proud as I could be. A woman walked up to me and said, “I need to talk to you!”

  “About what?” I said. I didn’t know her.

  She lifted up her shirt and said, “I’m pregnant!”

  “So? Why are you telling me this?”

  “Your man’s the father!”

  At this point Doug must have seen what was happening, and he made his way over to us.

  “You’re lying!” I said, and we had an epic argument that shut the club down. It was crazy, because I never got into arguments—especially not over a man. It’s not my style. But Doug was right there alongside me, calling her a liar, so I felt I had a right.

  About a month later, he sat me down and told me that this woman was indeed having his baby. He said he had taken a paternity test, which I later found out was a lie. He knew all along that the baby was his. He said he wanted me to come with him to the hospital to see the baby; it was a girl.

  I was devastated. People, his friends, had been telling me that he was wild, and there were more than enough women willing to tell me that they were sleeping with him. But I brushed it all off because (a) I didn’t want to believe it, (b) he was a celebrity in town, and of course, people wanted to claim they were with him, and (c) I was just stupid.

  After months of not speaking to my mom the way I used to, I picked up the phone and called her and told her what had happened.

  “Now you’re going to the hospital to see his baby? You’ve got to get your mind right!” she told me.

  I told him I didn’t want to go to the hospital with him. But I still didn’t want to be without him, either. I wanted to ride or die with him. I didn’t want him to think I was jumping ship. And he was good at sweet-talking me and making me believe that he was sorry. He ended up not spending any time with his daughter, and I was happy about that. I felt like we could pretend that it never happened.

  Back then, I was clueless. I didn’t know to judge a man based on how he treated his kids. Instead of thinking, “What kind of man would abandon his kid?” I was thinking, “Great, he’s going to be spending more time with me.”

  How dumb! Not only was he not spending time with his kid, but he still wasn’t spending time with me. I heard he was messing around with another girl—a cheerleader for the Washington Redskins. That really hit my self-esteem. I was still a bit of a tomboy, and we all know how a cheerleader looks. I couldn’t compete with that, I thought.

  It was just piling up. So when he hit Blaze with that broomstick, it all hit me, too. It was time to go. When I left, I didn’t hear from him for a couple of days. He must have figured I’d be back. I always came back. I had left before, going back to my dorm for a day or two. I always came back. He didn’t take it seriously.

  I didn’t take his calls. I was able to move back into my old life in Atlanta, which I needed to do to get my mind off Doug.

  I had plenty of time to think after leaving. I came to the conclusion that my relationship with Doug was completely unhealthy. You think? That relationship made me never want to give of myself that way to any man again. I have to admit that I have held back just a little of myself in every relationship since. I never wanted anyone to have my whole heart to just crush it in his hands like that ever again. It was just too painful.

  No matter how bad you feel, no matter how horrible a situation seems, even if you think this person is the love of your life and you can’t go on without him . . . you can! There will always be another relationship. You will survive it. You just will.

  I let this man ruin what should have been a wonderful college experience.

  I know people who say they remember going to Howard with me. But those months I spent there were a complete blur. I don’t remember anything beyond being with Doug. I have no recollection, which is sad.

  When I’m having a bad time of it, Dice will reference that period of my life to remind me that it’s never that bad. She’ll say, “If you got over [Doug] you can get over anything.”

  It was the worst anyone in my family had seen me, except when I lost my grandmother. This period with Doug was damn near unbearable. I didn’t want to eat. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to live.

  But what I also learned was that no matter how bad you feel, no matter how horrible a situation seems, even if you think this person is the love of your life and you can’t go on without him . . . you can! There will always be another relationship. You will survive it. You just will.

  The other valuable lesson I learned was that when you’re ready to go, just leave. There is something better around the corner. It may not be that next dude, but it may be something even better. For me, had I not left when I did, I probably would not have ended up in Los Angeles on a top-rated radio show, which eventually led me back home to New York as a member of one of the hottest shows on television at the time—TRL.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Playbook:

  Have a Game Plan

  Playbook: 1. A book containing a range of possible set plays. 2. A notional range of possible tactics in any sphere of activity.

  One of the best things I learned from being in that relationship with Doug was that you should never tie your future to a man. I’m not saying that being in a relationship or having love in your life shouldn’t be part of your future. The right man will want you to be your best and pursue your dreams. A man who truly loves you will support you. Doug totally took me off my course. But because I had a game plan, I was able to get back on track.

  I’d known I wanted to work in radio since I was a teenager. Not everyone knows
what they want to do with their life at such an early age, but I believe that everyone should have some idea of what they want to do and be before they get into a relationship. If you go into a serious relationship and you don’t have a clue about what you’d like to do, then your future becomes all about him and his dreams. And while it’s great to support your man through his dreams, you won’t be happy unless you have some dreams and goals of your own, too.

  My dream was to be a radio personality.

  When I got back to Atlanta, I went to my former radio station, WHTA, and got my old job back. I called and told them, “College didn’t work out. I realized how valuable the hands-on training I got working with you guys was . . .” They welcomed me back with open arms.

  And I was happy to be back.

  I was able to go back so easily because of how I left. My mom always told me, “It’s not your entrance, but your exit.” How you leave a place is just as important as how you arrive. A lot of times people, especially young people, quit a job and they go out blazing with both middle fingers in the air. But you never know when you may need that place and those people again.

  When I left WHTA they didn’t replace me. That made it even easier to go back and settle into my old position. I knew my role. I wasn’t one of the stars; I was an accessory to the show. I wasn’t part of the credits or the drops, which said, “You’re checking out Chris Lova and Poon Daddy.” There was never any mention of me in the promos. It was all about them. And I was fine with that. I was happy to be in the background, on the air and making money doing it.

  I had started working at WHTA in high school. During the summer heading into my junior year, I was hanging out in downtown Atlanta at the opening of the Wu-Tang store. Remember, I was a Method Man fanatic. There were these kids there handing out flyers and putting up posters for some event that WHTA was hosting. I asked one of them why they were doing that. They told me they were interning at the radio station and started telling me all the exciting things they were doing there. I knew I wanted to be down.