None of that worked out, but I did become the most popular girl in school. They even put a plaque on the wall with my name on it. It’s still on the wall. And best of all—by my senior year, I was getting PAID to be the high school mascot.
I was paid $50 a game. That was unprecedented for my high school.
See, that happened because Audie told me he couldn’t be with me. It was during my eleventh-grade year.
Audie: “I can’t date no mascot. I’m not going to have no mascot girlfriend. They going to be calling me the mascot assistant. I don’t think so.”
To make Audie jealous, I had gotten another boyfriend on the football team. He was a grade under me, and he used to carry my bag for me. So they started calling him the assistant mascot.
Audie: “See man, that’s why I don’t fuck with Tiffany. I ain’t no assistant mascot.”
My senior year, my boyfriend broke up with me, because he got tired of his friends calling him the assistant mascot. He didn’t want to get clowned like that. I told the principal I had to quit. I told everybody I quit, because I’m looking for a boyfriend. They thought it was a joke, but then when they saw I wasn’t at the first game my senior year, they was like, “We ain’t going to the next game.”
The attendance numbers went way down. Like, half the people didn’t show up to the second game, because the Conquistador had retired. The Dean called me in:
Dean: “What’s it going to take to get you back on the field, Haddish?”
Tiffany: “A boyfriend.”
Dean: “I can’t get you a boyfriend. What else can we do?”
Tiffany: “A boyfriend is what I need.”
Dean: “How about we give you double credits?”
Tiffany: “I got credits. I go to summer school every year. I got credits. I need a boyfriend.”
Dean: “Tiffany, please, be reasonable. I can’t get you a boyfriend. How about we compensate you the candy sales?”
Tiffany: “No. I want a boyfriend.”
Dean: “What else, Tiffany? What else?”
Tiffany: “Fine . . . gimme $100 per game.”
Dean: “No, we can’t give you $100. How about $25?”
Tiffany: “$75.”
Dean: “I can’t do $75. I can’t very well compensate you $75 from candy.”
Tiffany: “No, this ain’t about candy. This is my time for not having no boyfriend. I’m going to need to get my hair done. I need to get my nails done. I’m going to have to start being a fly chick if I want a boyfriend, and being a mascot is not going to help me get no boyfriend, so I can’t do it.”
Dean: “$50, Haddish, and that’s the most I can do, and you’re going to have to bring the candy receipts.”
Tiffany: “You got it. You got it, Mr. Dean.”
Boom! I was getting paid $50 a game my senior year. I had my hair and nails done, too.
• • •
Being paid to be a mascot was cool and all, but what was really cool was that it got me my first real paying entertainment job.
I became an “energy producer” at Bar Mitzvahs. Energy producer is what white suburban people call a “hype man.” I was basically the Flava Flav of Bar Mitzvahs.
I used to get that party cracking. And eventually, I got into MCing and DJing. I did it for eleven years. I did over five hundred Bar Mitzvahs.
It started when I was at a school dance. I was tearing it up. There was a big circle around me, ’cause I was dancing and having fun with people and all that. Whenever I party, man, there’s always a circle. They was like, “Go Tiffany! Go Tiffany!”
The school dance had a professional DJ. He came up to me afterwards:
DJ: “Tiff, you’re amazing. Do you ever do parties?”
Tiffany: “I love to party.”
DJ: “I’d love for you to work for my company. We do executive parties and Bar Mitzvahs. Here is my card, give me a call, let’s set up a meeting.”
I’m thinking this dude is disgusting. The problem was, I didn’t know what a Bar Mitzvah was. I had no clue. It just sounded nasty. I thought he was so nasty, but I didn’t want to be rude to him, so I took his card. I took it back to my grandma.
Tiffany: “Grandma, this man asked me to dance at executive parties and Bar Mitzvahs. Can you believe this?”
Grandma: “Girl, you better call him. That’s getting close to your people.”
Tiffany: “What do you mean ‘getting close to my people.’ ”
Grandma: “Girl, you Jewish.”
Tiffany: “No, I’m not. I’m a Jehovah Witness.”
Grandma: “No, you not a Jehovah Witness. You’re Jewish. Jehovah’s Witness is a religion. Your people is Jewish.”
She was talking about my father. He is actually Jewish. My father’s from Eritrea, which is right next to Ethiopia. There are actually a lot of Jews in the Horn of Africa, and even though he was black, he was still Jewish.
Tiffany: “My people?”
Grandma: “You’re Jewish. Your people. You know, you need to know about your other side of the family. Your daddy’s side.”
Tiffany: “Well, why don’t I even know my daddy?”
Grandma: “ ’Cause he made some mistakes and he had to get on. He sent money though. All them dance classes I got you when you was a little girl and gymnastics classes you took when you was a little girl. That was from your dad. He would send me money and I would put you in the classes.”
Man, no one ever told me that. That was crazy to me, that my daddy had been sending money and stuff.
Grandma: “We calling that man.”
Tiffany: “I don’t want to call that man. He want me to get on the bar and show my mitzvah.”
Grandma: “What are you talking about child?”
Tiffany: “You know, showing my mitzvah! I don’t want to be no stripper, Grandma!”
Grandma: “Oh Lord, child please.”
I had thought “Bar Mitzvah” meant you get on the bar and show your mitzvah—you know, like your cootchie. Because the way he was talking to me, I was creeped out, and that’s what I thought he meant.
She called that man and she drove me all the way to this man’s office, at his house. It wasn’t no damn office. He was only eighteen. He’s just running this little DJ company out of his mama’s house. He set his room up, and the name of his company was Enterprise Entertainment, because he was into Star Trek. He had painted the whole room black, and it had glow-in-the-dark stars all over it. He had a futon that he called his couch and a little desk.
His name was Tim. We called him DJ Timbo. Me and my grandma were sitting there on his futon as he explained the ins and outs of Bar Mitzvahs. He had started with his uncle (DJ’ing at a company called Hart to Hart) when he was twelve, and then he split off and started his own company.
He wanted me to be his first employee at his company. He thought we could do well.
Grandma: “You think that a little black girl is going to do okay at a Bar Mitzvah, baby? You think that she can work at a Bar Mitzvah?”
DJ Timbo: “I definitely think so. She has the energy. She has a great smile. Great personality. I think she can do it.”
Grandma: “You want it, baby?”
Tiffany: “Yeah.”
Grandma: “How much you going to pay my baby?”
DJ Timbo: “I’m going to give her $40 a party.”
Grandma: “You want to make $40 a party?”
Tiffany: “Sounds good to me.”
Then he started booking me for parties. I’ll never forget the very first party I did. I got to work it with the brother of DJ Timbo, Thomas Ian Nicholas. He was in the movie Rookie of the Year. He was working the party too, so I was like, “Oh my.”
He was dancing with me, and he was like, “This is how you got to do it.”
I was like, “Boy, this kid is sure trying to be helpful to me. He must think I’m hot.”
At the end of the party, I asked him for his number. He told me I was a weirdo, and he didn’t give it to me. I ha
d been too aggressive.
Anyway, afterwards, DJ Timbo wrote me a letter and mailed it to me. Like, physical mail. It said I was horrible. He said that I needed to not be following one kid around the whole time, especially one that’s also working the party. I had to be more dedicated, more focused. You have to keep your eyes on the whole party, and all that stuff. It was a serious rundown of everything I did wrong. He wrote:
“And here’s your $40. If you think you can do it, give me a call back, and if you don’t think you can handle it, don’t call me.”
As soon as I read that, I called him:
Tiffany: “Man, I can do all of this and then some. Boy please, when is the next party?”
The next party, I was pumped up. Dancing with everybody. Dancing with the old people. Dancing with the young people. Getting all the people to follow me. Doing all my routines and stuff. I was doing stuff that I did on the football field for the games. At the Bar Mitzvahs, I was doing waves and all kind of stuff. I killed it. And that was my weekend work for like, ten years after that.
After two years, I ended up becoming one of the MCs. I started making like $200 a party, $300 a party on the weekends. For a teenager, that’s dope.
• • •
The only downside to the Bar Mitzvahs was that I killed a man once.
I’m not even kidding.
At this point, I was about twenty. I had been doing Bar Mitzvahs for four years, and I was good by then. I would do a Bar Mitzvah right.
This one was up in the Valley. I was dancing, getting the crowd hyped, and I saw an old man over there, just looking mopey. It’s my job to get everyone hyped, so I danced over to him.
Tiffany: “Come on, you want to dance with me?”
Old Man: “No, no, no.”
Tiffany: “Come on, you know you want to dance. You know you want to!”
Old Man: “No, no, I’m old, dance with the young people.”
He was saying no, but I could tell he meant yes, so I grabbed his hand, and he got up with me, and he came to the dance floor. And then I grabbed him by his tie and went all in.
Tiffany: “Yeaaaaaaaah boy, get it done!”
Old Man: “Whooooo!”
And he was into it and enjoying it, and people were cheering, and the party started to jump off.
I let go of his tie, and we started dancing a little simple two-step. And then I turned around on him and gave him a little booty pop, right? Just a little one, right in his old man crotch, like pop-pop. I sprang back up and kept dancing, and then I saw people were staring at me, shocked.
I turned back around, and he was on the ground. On his back, holding his chest.
Tiffany: “Oh shit. Oh shit!”
Everybody was rushing over. There were some doctors in attendance who were working on him, and they called an ambulance. They were doing CPR on him and all of that.
But it was the weirdest thing: he was smiling the whole time. I swear to God that man was smiling.
The ambulance came, and they took him to the hospital. And with the ambulance came the police. So, I just knew I was going to jail. I just figured that since I’m the only black person at this party, the police are there for me. They’re going to say I killed this man. I was fixing to go to jail, that was it. I was trying to figure out who to call, and mentally preparing myself for going to jail.
Police: “Okay, I think that wraps it. If we have any other questions, we’ll let you know.”
And they just left. What’s going on?
That man ended up dying in the hospital. I was home, I’m thinking the police were going to show up to my house any day now to take me to jail.
And I decided I quit. No more dancing, no more Bar Mitzvahs, nothing. I was done. I stopped doing them. DJ Timbo was calling me and calling me, telling me people were requesting me.
Tiffany: “I can’t do it, I can’t. I just can’t right now. This is not a good time. I don’t feel safe.”
DJ Timbo: “Tiffany, they are asking for you specifically. They want you there.”
Tiffany: “I don’t feel like people should be around me. I’m not safe.”
DJ Timbo: “Tiffany, your ass is not deadly.”
Tiffany: “No, my ass is deadly. That man is dead.”
DJ Timbo: “Tiffany, that man was old. It was his time. He was probably happy. It was probably the first time he ever danced with a black girl in his life. It was the happiest moment of his life.”
But Timbo couldn’t talk me into doing them. That man hadn’t wanted to dance at first, and I made him, and then I booty popped him . . . and now he’s dead! I just felt like a booty assassin.
Then, I got a letter from his daughter. She tipped me—she sent me a big tip and told me thank you. She said they’d never seen him that happy, they hadn’t seen him smile like that or that happy in a long time. And she said that they knew this was coming, he was in his late eighties, and they had been waiting for him to pass. And they appreciated everything that I did, and I should not blame myself.
She made some good points. And you know, she did tell me to dance with everybody. She specifically said to get all the older people up. So maybe she wanted me to kill him? I don’t know.
After that letter, I went back to doing Bar Mitzvahs. At that point, they were paying me $400 a party. The money was too good.
Laugh Factory Comedy Camp
I started doing comedy at fifteen. I was getting in trouble in school, that’s what got me into it. It was all because of this one teacher.
I was talking too much in class, and my teacher was always sending me to the principal’s office. The social worker was getting tired of coming up to the school, and the principal was tired of calling the social worker.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t just talking. This teacher kept saying I was racist, but I didn’t think I was being racist. I thought I was being funny.
My whole thing was just to make everybody laugh. If I could do that, then they’d let me copy their homework and they’d help me on tests.
One of the ways I made everyone laugh was to make up these imaginary friends. I had a female imaginary friend that I called Carmelita and a little bird that I called Cracker. I would talk to them in the hallways and during class, and if somebody sat down next to me, I’d be like:
Tiffany: “Wait, watch out. You’re sitting on Carmelita’s lap. She likes that, though. Wiggle on her.”
And they would jump up and be like, “What are you talking about?” And then, eventually, they would become my friends. People would be like, “You crazy. You silly. I like you.” It worked really well for me. It’s basically how I made it through school.
Every time we would take a test, I would turn my head toward my shoulder, and I would be like, “Cracker want a Polly?” I had some crackers, and I would crumble them up on my shoulder for my imaginary bird, and people would be laughing. Then they’d let me cheat off of them.
The teacher didn’t know I was cheating though, that’s not why she was always sending me to the principal’s office. During one test, I said:
Tiffany: “What’s the answer to number seven, Cracker?”
You know, because that was my imaginary bird’s name. But my teacher thought I was being racist against her.
Teacher: “You go straight to the principal’s office. You can’t be racist in here.”
This happened a few times, and everybody would laugh. I would just tell the principal the same thing each time.
Tiffany: “I was talking to my friend, my imaginary bird.”
Principal: “Oh, God, again with the imaginary friends?”
After like the fifth time, my social worker couldn’t take it anymore.
Social Worker: “Tiffany, you got two choices this summer coming up. You can go to the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp, or you can go to psychiatric therapy. Which one do you want to do, ’cause something is wrong with you.”
Tiffany: “Which one got drugs?”
Social Worker: “Therapy.”
>
I didn’t want no drugs, I had seen how those fuck people up. So I went to the comedy camp.
Laugh Factory Comedy Camp was kinda perfect, except how long it took to get there. I’d have to catch the bus up there from 54th and Western, and I would ride all the way up to the Laugh Factory camp. Riding that bus, you would see the demographics of the people change, as you went from South Central through Hollywood. I remember getting on the bus feeling poor. But as we would get to Hollywood, I would see a little bit higher class of people boarding the bus. I felt like I was literally moving up in the world.
I would go up there every week, and I got to meet a lot of different comedians. A lot of mentors would come in. Dane Cook showed up. Chris Spencer. All the Wayans brothers came one day. Harland Williams came by, and Quincy Jones.
I remember the day Quincy Jones came in there, I was like:
Tiffany: “What is he doing here? He ain’t funny.”
But he was saying how comedy is like music, and it’s about the rhythm of the words. Like if you really listen to a joke, it has a melody to the punchline. I got that, it really helped me.
Charles Fleischer was there. I was so excited about Charles Fleischer, ’cause he does the voice of Roger Rabbit. The character I’ve been emulating the most, just trying to be funny—and now, the guy who does this character’s voice is teaching me, talking to me.
I liked Charles Fleischer a lot, but he was all intent on telling me not to do bathroom humor, which I did not agree with. He was like:
Charles: “You’re a pretty girl. You shouldn’t do bathroom humor.”
I had a joke about going to a public bathroom, and then an old lady comes in the stall next to you, and she be making weird noises, and I imitated the lady’s noises and stuff. He said I shouldn’t do bathroom humor.
When he said I was too pretty to do bathroom humor, at first I was flattered. That was the first time a man told me I was pretty. Come to think of it later, that might have been a little creepy. But I think he was just trying to be nice, so it’s cool.
The Last Black Unicorn Page 2