by Mike Tyson
And I still hang out in the ghetto. I’m just a ghetto rug rat. Sometimes I’ll look over at Farid and say, “Why are we here, Farid, when we could be on a yacht in Saint-Tropez? Why are we with these broke-assed niggas?” Because those broke-assed niggas are our people. They’re struggling day and night. I love those rotten, dirty motherfuckers even though I can’t trust them as far as I can throw them.
I can take anything. I think about Nietzsche a lot. I know what the Overman is. I know I can endure without killing anybody, because I’m always close. Some people don’t have any decency or respect. When we’re out and we see a guy like that, I’m thinking, I wish he would say something to my wife, I’d blow his brains out. Those people are out there but I’ve got to stop that way of thinking. I’m trying to restrain that, to be this new guy. But how much of my balls do I have to cut off to be this new guy?
Why am I not worried about fucking other people since this is going to be my last time around? All my life that’s all I thought about. But now I’m not thinking about fucking nobody else. Am I grown up now? What am I doing being married with two kids? I’m a street dog, I’m not a house dog. If I still thought in my mind that I was this hoe-entangling motherfucker with the big schlong I wouldn’t live like this. So either I’m suppressing my ego or I’m just losing my spirit. I’d like to think that I’m with my wife and not fucking around because I’m ready to be down and I love her. Or is it that I’m just broken down and I don’t have any balls anymore?
All that rage and energy that propelled me to fuck all those women, where did it all go? Why have I lost that sexual growl? Is it just a function of getting older and losing hormones? I might see a girl and think “Wow” but I don’t have the desire to say “Hey, baby.” And don’t tell me about Viagra or Cialis. That shit ain’t the same thing as natural desire. It doesn’t make the mind function. It’s like having a gun with no bullets. It doesn’t give you the fantasy you need in your mind.
All my life all I could ever do was make money for people. My love was always under the circumstances of Mike Tyson providing stuff. Who would I be if I was never Mike Tyson? How would I form relationships? I don’t know what it’s like to go outside and initiate a conversation with someone. I’ve never had to do that. Sometimes I look at myself and I say, “Mike, you’re a pussy. What the fuck are you doing? You’re going to die soon. You’re going to give all this pussy up and you are going to be with this woman that you’ve been sleeping with since she was twenty-four for the rest of your life?” I’m sure that my wife sometimes feels that I’m overbearing because I’m with her too much. I’m that way because I want her to know that the reason I don’t go out much is to show her that I’m here with her. We’ve had those trust issues before. But then I become a burden to her, being home a lot.
I can’t find a balance between the two. I’m not a balanced person. It’s not like I can say, “Well, I’ll just find another woman to be devoted to.” If I’m not going to live this monogamous life with Kiki, then we’re going to get in trouble now. I’m going to do drugs, I’m going to fuck a bunch of strippers and prostitutes, I might catch a disease, and I might make some guy jealous and he’ll blow my brains out.
I’m not a relationship guy. I don’t stand up for myself in a relationship. And I don’t like that about me. If I’m not a pussy in a relationship, then I’m dominating them. Either I’m a henpecked bitch nigga or I’m going to start brutalizing the woman. One or the other, there’s no middle ground. And I don’t want to brutalize them, so I wind up being the wimp.
I’m insecure when it comes to being in a relationship. And why not? Growing up all I saw was men beating their women, women scalding their lovers, or a man killing another man over a woman or vice versa. That was my culture. Now I’m in a relationship where I’m suppressing my baseline normal to be in a normal relationship. And the selfish addict in me is saying, “Where’s my reward? I think I deserve more for behaving this way.” I want a reward for improving myself as a person. In a million years my wife would never understand what my baseline normal is. It would scare her to death. My baseline normal is having a bunch of girls in here, no matter if it’s their mothers or their sisters, and fucking them. No female species allowed on the premises without fornication. It’s that crude. I threw all that away. I spared my wife and the babies from all my diseases and all my filth. And I want something back.
I can’t believe I’m even in a relationship. I don’t think I’m a good catch. I’m ignorant, I have a lisp, I pronounce words the wrong way sometimes but still people want to give me pussy and be in my presence because I’m Mike Tyson. But I’m the worst catch. I’m a self-centered brat. I can’t live with myself; why would anyone want to live with me? Whenever I’ve been in a relationship I’d always think, Bullshit, this can’t be real. This woman doesn’t love me. How can I be more special than any other people?
Sometimes I think that one of the reasons I got married was to stop women from setting my ass up. It’s better to be married to one woman and be happy with what you have than to be a mark, a sucker to a whole fucking constellation of women.
For me life is a constant struggle for survival. I tell my wife that and she says, “No. The world is beautiful and positive.” My wife is a facilitator. She takes care of people. She wants everybody to be in happy mode, satisfied and not angry. That’s not a reality in life. Kiki wants to be a friend to everybody and when you are a friend of everybody, you are an enemy to yourself.
“Hey, try to put your arms around the world,” I tell her.
She just calls me a miserable vegan. But you just can’t make everyone happy. If you’re not conscious, they’re going to fuck you, hurt you, and take advantage of you. She doesn’t see the evil in people that I do. I look at the world through the eyes of hell.
I’m starting to freak out now that my name is in the papers all the time and I’m constantly on television again. I’m worried that I can’t deal with fame and that I’ll get violent again. My wife keeps saying, “You can handle it now.” But I just don’t like it when I’m a target. Now that my wife is writing, maybe she’ll get some more shows launched. Then she’s in this whole writing world. I get very overprotective about her because she’s all I have. I don’t have forty-five other bitches anymore. I focus my whole energy on this family and all of that energy might be overbearing sometimes. I’m scared. And when I’m scared, that dickhead Iron Mike comes out.
Now I’m an entertainer and I’m entering a whole different world—the world of showbiz. I’m dreaming and thinking that one day we’re going to hit the mother lode and things are going to be great again and I can take care of my kids and I can die with dignity, but that’s not going to happen. Everybody knows how show business can be. And if I get screwed, that’s just going to trigger all the times that I got played by Don and then I have to go into that mode where someone is going to get hurt. That’s the world of show business? Then meet my world of violence. And then I’m back in the joint and my wife is married to somebody else and he’s probably fucking my daughters. That’s how it goes.
There’s no doubt that I have some self-hatred issues. I’ve done some bad things to people. I can read any of the great books on morality—the Torah, the Koran, the New Testament, the Bhagavad Gita, whatever, and I just know I’m going to hell. And I was born in hell. And any time I came up in life it was one step out of hell. I think that part of the reason that I gave away so much money (and I’m not talking about buying prostitutes cars) was because I’m an ignorant child and I believe this was a way to cleanse my sins and buy my way back to heaven. I was kind and giving to people because my soul was so black from my earlier deeds.
What am I doing with my life? I love entertaining people but I’m only happy for that little time that I’m up on that stage. I was happy for a moment when I was boxing but a lot of it went away when Cus died. I never wanted to be Iron Mike. I hated that guy. That’s the guy I had to
be in order to survive. But I’m stupid for doing that.
Sometimes I don’t know if I was even made for life. I think I’m an aberration of fucking nature. I’ve got to deal with people constantly shooting at me and throwing arrows at me. And nobody hears if I scream out in pain. I hate my life, I hate myself. If I had balls, I’d kill myself. That’s it, that’s how I feel. . . .
Then my little sweetheart Milan walks into the room and my cloud is lifted.
This is my reward for acting responsibly, right here. When she’s away at school, I’m always grouchy and the minute she comes in, my whole life changes. This is where my ego stops, right here. I think about some of the crazy things I’ve done, like that road rage incident in Maryland. I’m so mad at myself. I had no hope back then. Even if those feelings came back I can’t even fathom acting out now. I’d never want to disappoint the situation now like I did with my other kids. I could never be at the point of being so out of control that I would jeopardize Milan or Rocco. I’d have to be shot first. I’ve learned to bite my tongue because of my kids. A lot of times when I want to say things that are going to be nasty, I just bite it. It’s my turn to embrace these responsibilities. This stuff is not as stressful as fighting. I might blow it up, but it’s nowhere near as stressful.
I can’t believe how my kids with Monica turned out. When I was younger I would have despised kids like them. They had it all, the nice house, the nice car, European trips since they were young. They had maids their whole life. The corners of the wall remind me of the beatings I got from my mother. My son doesn’t have that fear. I always thought kids should sacrifice to get things. That was my upbringing with Cus. You win this fight, I’ll give you this. If my son does something good or not, he’s still going to get it.
I just didn’t have any love or security growing up. I look at my children and tease them and say they’re wimpy kids, but that’s what would have happened to me if I grew up with love. I’d have been just as wimpy. Hey, this is how I am now getting love late in my life. I’ve done things like biting Evander’s ear that have caused my kids to be teased. That’s just something they have to deal with. They surely haven’t been picked on and teased worse than I was. They haven’t been snatched off the street and beaten. They all go to private schools and, on paper, they have cool friends. My friends were pimps and killers, robbers and thieves.
I don’t have any parenting skills at all, not even to this day. I know my wife must think I’m a Neanderthal, but I’m doing my best. My older kids should be grateful that they didn’t have my father as their father. He wouldn’t be laid back waiting for a check every month. He’d tell the girls, “You don’t need anything from me. You’re sitting on your moneymaker.” I never told anybody to sell her pussy. They’d see how bad bad is if my father had got their mothers pregnant.
Speaking of kids, I’m taking care of that fifteen-year-old boy that’s still in me. I have the tools, I can do that now. He hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still traumatized, but he’s living a productive life now. It’s awesome. I could never do this when I had $300 million. I’m out here raising kids, being a respectable husband, not having to worry about giving my wife a venereal disease. I’ve never been in this space in my life before, and this is just going to be so awesome. I never thought I was the settling type, I thought I deserved the world, but I feel safe here. This is where I want to be. I get to nurture my children and grow deeper with my wife and it feels good in my soul. That’s why I’m here.
I could never go out at night again. That’s just not going to happen. I could never be me again because a lot of people would be unhappy. I believe I keep the peace by being at home a lot, because people would never think I’m somewhere doing something I shouldn’t be doing. Sometimes I think my wife would rather me go out sometimes. When you’re around too much you can become overbearing. I don’t care who you are. The real me probably wants to have some friends and shoot dice, have fun. I don’t do that anymore. Now fun is hanging out with my little girl and getting to know her and Rocco. And hopefully developing a better relationship with all my other kids. My oldest daughter Mikey is living with me now in Vegas. That’s been great. But I don’t have any man cave where me and my friends could go to smoke cigars and watch football.
Another reason I stay in the house is to avoid getting involved with people outside. Before I went out on my Undisputed Truth national tour I stayed in so I wouldn’t come into contact with strange people giving me bad vibes. I’d go outside for a minute or two and then come right back in. When I used to go out a lot it felt good but at the end of the day I was paying out of pocket to settle suits, apologizing to a bunch of people on television and maybe even doing time. So I don’t go that route anymore. I stay in the fucking house because I don’t want to get into an altercation. Can you believe that shit? But it’s necessary. Cus had programmed my mind to be a switch. I could be an emotional wreck and in the blink of an eye, boom, it changed. Sometimes I’m uncomfortable to go outside because I don’t know when that shit is going to click. I really don’t. When I’m outside on the street, I’m so scared of myself—how I might perceive a situation to be something it’s not. I have a lot more power over it than I did when I was younger. When I was younger I was programmed to attack all the time. That’s why I got into so many street brawls when I was champ. My ego got attacked. Cus was an ego guy too.
“This guy said what to you? What did you do about it?”
I was a little fucking kid and he was going, “What did you do about it?” That’s a part of me I always wanted to go away. I just never know what might trigger that shit, even an innocuous “Hey, guy” and then, boom, I was ferocious.
I have a pretty upside-down schedule now. I go to sleep at about six or seven, unless my wife gets me to watch a TV show with her, then it might be nine. I wake up at midnight or two a.m. Then I ride the stationary bike for an hour, do the Treadmaster, and then do squats. Today I did two hours with weights for my legs.
By then, Kiki is up. When I see her take both my babies and leave the house, I think they’re never coming back. That’s my biggest fear now. I’m in terror while she’s gone. It’s sad whenever my family isn’t here and I’m alone. I used to love being alone but that was before I had this family situation. I never even think about doing anything wrong now. I would never want to go to jail. My whole job in life now is just to take care of my family and try to help people less fortunate than us. I can’t believe I’m like this.
Because of the horrific things I’ve seen in my life, I get extra cautious. I’m always telling my wife to lock the doors, to keep her eyes on the place, to watch the workers. I tell her about my experiences where I was in a house talking to some friends and then I left and I heard that a few hours later everybody in the house got killed. So these ugly stories play in my head. My wife thinks I’m absolutely insane. They’ve never met anybody like me. If a stranger comes into the house, I think, Who is this guy? Who brought him in here? Then, after he leaves, I may ask her to get out the sage and cleanse the energy in the house. My borderline normal was to go into someone’s house and scope it out, then after I left, the thugs came in with the guns and screamed, “Everyone get down.” That was my borderline normal.
When Kiki and the kids are gone I have plenty of time to think. I think about what a weird childhood I had, depending on my mother most of the time. How did I get out of that lowly, pathetic environment? How does a guy like me come out of Brownsville and become heavyweight champ? When you go back in history you see that the only thing I had in common with most of the champs was our poverty. Jack Dempsey was a fucking hobo. I tried to draw on that to make sense of my story but it didn’t click. How did I meet this guy Bobby Stewart who introduced me to Cus? How did Cus get me to think so gung ho? How did my mind just click and say, “Let’s do it?” Where did that thinking come from? Was it just from the way I would follow people when I was young? And then I morphed into this boxing me
ntality.
Cus was telling everyone that lightning had struck him twice and he was going to have another heavyweight champion. But I was only thirteen. I never had an amateur fight in my life when he first saw me.
So how did he know when he died that I was going to be that guy? He never saw me really being mean to anybody. He didn’t really see my confidence and arrogance grow in the ring. I wonder what he would have thought about who I became. He was a hard guy. He’d say stuff about other fighters like, “This guy is gutless. Leave him there to die.” Cus believed that in the ring you should die on your shield, you don’t quit. But now I realize that nothing is more important than life. There’s no trophy, no belt, no glory more important than life and the people you love. I used to be the first to want to die with honor in the ring. Not anymore. That’s a sucker’s game. And I was probably the biggest sucker that ever came into this game.
I just knew that I was the champion of the world before I even had that belt. That was who I was. I still had this other entity Mike Tyson who I really didn’t come to grips with. I didn’t know who the fuck that guy was. I was this super champion–type guy and I never found out who I was in there. You’d think I was one of America’s most wanted. Probation officers wanted detailed reports of where I was any time I went out. People were really afraid of me. I was such a little pussy kid but my image was so badass. That was pretty intoxicating. I always wanted to show people that I wasn’t afraid so I overcompensated. I thought I had to be tough and mean because Cus escalated that mentality. “Superior,” that was his favorite word. I was a superior fighter.
If Cus was around right now he’d say, “Mike, you should be fighting. Are you crazy?” But I don’t regret a minute of it. All of the great fighters, Ray Robinson, Peter Jackson, Joe Gans, Tony Canzoneri, ended up in the gutter or working in some goddamn hotel lobby sweeping up. They were so extreme in their passion for fighting that they never thought about exit plans. But whatever they went through afterwards, it was worth it to have that championship. Just to have one year of living Mike Tyson, the champ’s life, I would be a bum sucking rat piss in the gutter. Shit, yeah.