The Last Black Unicorn

by Tiffany Haddish

  I am glossing over all the details, because they don’t matter. The point was, the man whipped me. He beat my ass.

  But now, shit was different. I was done taking this. I was ready to commit murder. I was ready to kill. I got in my car and left the house, and I drove to the police station.

  First the police station was closed when I got there. I’m like, What the fuck? How can a police station be closed?

  They had an emergency phone outside the front door, so I picked it up:

  Operator: “Yes? May I help you?”

  Tiffany: “I’m about to kill somebody. I’m about to commit motherfucking murder.”

  Operator: “Excuse me?”

  Tiffany: “I’m out here at the police station. Y’all need to lock me up, because I’m about to kill my husband. If y’all don’t lock me up right now, there’s gonna be a dead body.”

  Operator: “Where are you?”

  Tiffany: “I’m outside the police station, so y’all could lock me up, ’cause I’m about to make a murder.”

  Operator: “Don’t go anywhere. I’m gonna have one of the officers come out.”

  The policeman comes out.

  Police: “Ma’am, what happened to you? Are you okay?”

  Tiffany: “I’m fine. I’m just fine.”

  Police: “Do you need us to call you an ambulance?”

  Tiffany: “No, I’m just fine. I’m about to go make murder.”

  Police: “You’re gonna what?”

  Tiffany: “Make a murder.”

  Police: “Okay. Calm down. Tell us what happened.”

  So I tell him and his partner what happened. The whole time, they were looking me up and down.

  Police: “Okay . . . you do realize that you’re very damaged?”

  Tiffany: “I am fine. I am just fine. I’m telling you, you need to put me in a jail cell, because I hit that motherfucker with a pool stick, and I’m gonna go back and kill him, if y’all don’t lock me up. I’m going to commit murder. I’m gonna go to the hood, get a gun, and I’m gonna kill that motherfucker.”

  Police: “Ma’am, you need an ambulance. You are hurt.”

  Then, the other policeman started pulling out his camera. Started taking pictures of my face and my throat. He asked to see my arms. They were all messed up, with cuts and scrapes.

  Tiffany: “I didn’t even know that happened. Look, I’m gonna kill that motherfucker.”

  Police: “Calm down. Are you hurting anywhere else?”

  Tiffany: “My back hurt when he slammed me in the ground.”

  Police: “Let me see your back.”

  When they pulled my shirt up, it was all black and blue. They took pictures of that.

  Then, they had an ambulance come. I got in an argument with the paramedics.

  EMT: “We need to take you to the hospital.”

  Tiffany: “No, I need to go to jail. ’Cause I’m gonna go crazy on this motherfucker. I’m fine.”

  EMT: “Your blood pressure’s really high. You need to calm down.”

  Tiffany: “I don’t give no fucks. I’m gonna kill this man.”

  Finally the police decided to go to my house.

  Police: “Look, we have to go see him. If he’s injured, if he has damage on him, then you may end up in jail.”

  Tiffany: “You might as well take me there now. You might as well just start taking my fingerprints now, because I’mma kill that motherfucker.”

  They took me to the hospital, and went to get him. The police told me later that he was in the house with the door wide open. He was sitting there with his shirt off, watching a football game. He knew they were coming. The police arrested him, ’cause all he had was one bite mark on his wrist. I don’t even remember biting him. He didn’t have no other marks on him. Nothing.

  Tiffany: “No. I hit him with a pool stick, y’all. It should be a big ol’ bruise across his back. I hit him with that pool stick as hard as I could.”

  Police: “Ma’am . . . he was fine.”

  They arrested him. Then his whole family started calling me. They asked me to bail him out.

  Mama: “He wants to know if you’ll bail him out.”

  Tiffany: “I’m not bailing him out! No. I’m getting a restraining order and everything. You crazy if you think I’m finna bail him out.”

  Then, the next day I was hurting so bad. My back, everything. I could barely walk.

  I started bleeding like crazy. From my vagina. When the blood starting coming, I knew. I mean, I didn’t know I was pregnant before, but now I did. I was having a straight-up miscarriage. I don’t know if it was from the beating or the stress, but it happened.

  I guess God decided to send me a real fucking clear sign this time, didn’t he?

  That was pretty much the end of that. I filed for divorce and moved back into my old place.

  Let’s just all pause here and take a breath. Maybe get a drink, rest up. Because the story is not done, and we about to dive back into some intensity.

  • • •

  OK, you rested? Here we go:

  I left him, but I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with me, because I still wanted my husband back. Even though I had a restraining order and everything, it was still a part of me like, I think we can work through this.

  My friend had the same reaction you are having: “Girl, you crazy. This motherfucker almost killed you. Leave him alone.”

  I just thought . . . he had to see how much he hurt me. He saw how messed up I was. We had love. He’d never do that again. I know he can be a better person. We just got to get some counseling. We can get through this. We got to do this together. We just got to work together. No relationship is easy. It’s just work. We just gotta work at it.

  I didn’t act on these thoughts. I just had them, all through the divorce (which was quick and easy and painless) and afterwards.

  After the divorce . . . everything sucked.

  I was single now, but I didn’t want to be out there dating. Dudes would try to talk to me, but I just wanted my husband. That’s all I wanted.

  During this time that we were apart, his son went into foster care. Why that happened isn’t part of my story, but it did happen.

  He was in the foster system for six months.

  This really hit me hard. I was in the foster system, I knew how terrible it was. Even though I was divorced from his dad, I was actively trying to help get him out of there. I wanted him to be with his mom or even with me. I even helped his mom to fly out, and I was driving her around.

  When I think back about it, I was so fucking stupid with that. That whole situation drove me back toward my ex. It’s just my opinion, but I’m convinced he used that situation—that his son was in foster care, and the guilt he knew that would cause with me—to try to get me back with him. He knew I’d been in foster care, he knew I would not be able to resist helping his son, and that it would bring me back around him more.

  And it worked.

  I won’t get into more details. You would just start yelling at this page you’re reading, like some crazy person.

  We got married. Again.

  We got a bigger house, a better house. And the one good thing was that me and his son were super-close. His son knew what I had been through with foster care and all this stuff. He was lovin’ on me and everything.

  And honestly, it was okay for a while. He wasn’t hitting me or none of that.

  Then he started acting really weird. He started being on the phone for like two, three hours at a time, ducking off into his office. Running into the backyard to talk, being really secretive and stuff.

  I tried to have positive thoughts. I’d go on the computer and look through our wedding photos, to remember the good times.

  And then one time, I was going through the wedding photos, and there was a photo of a buck naked chick sucking on her titties, in the middle of our wedding photos. That led to a big fight. Nothing physical, just yelling.

  I was working on a movie then
, and I called him the next day, but couldn’t find him. I came home, because I had been a little mean to him in the morning. So I thought, I’ll come home during my lunch break. I’ll butter him up like, “I’m sorry for being mean to you this morning.” But, he was not at home when I arrived.

  Instead, there was an eviction notice on our door.

  Tiffany: “Why hasn’t the rent been paid? Why are we getting an eviction notice?”

  Ex-Husband: “Because I have a child. I’ve been talking to her every day. I have to pay $2500 a month. They’re garnishing my check. That’s where the money is going.”

  That’s why he was asking me for $1000 every month. He said it was going towards the rent. Turns out, he was paying child support. He had another child who was eleven, a little girl, who he basically abandoned, because he didn’t like her mom.

  • • •

  It’s funny, because a few months before, his mom was at the house, and she was telling me that he got a daughter. But she was drunk, and he was like, “You can’t listen to her. She drunk. Don’t listen to what she’s saying.” But, I should’ve listened.

  I had real issues about this.

  Tiffany: “Why would you do that? You found my dad for me. And you know how I feel about that. You would just abandon your child? You just let her be out there like that? And then you didn’t even tell me that you reconnected with her or that you was paying child support or that you got a court order garnishing your check? You didn’t tell me none of that?”

  He didn’t have nothing to say. I was like:

  Tiffany: “Fuck this shit. I’m done. I’m out.”

  So, I moved out. I got a divorce.

  And this time, it stuck. We’re still divorced, and we ain’t never getting back together.

  I know what you’re thinking: This was your breaking point? And not the ass-whippings?

  It seems like a really small thing, relatively. Compared to everything else.

  But the thing is, I couldn’t be with anybody, or potentially have a child with somebody, who could abandon his child. That was my personal boundary, and I had finally found it.

  He had trouble letting go. He kept texting, “I want my wife back.” He’d be calling my friends. To this day, he still calls my friends. And he’s like, “How’s my wife doing? I miss her. She’s still my wife. Even though we’re divorced, she’s still my wife.”

  No, we ain’t divorced. We twice divorced.

  The Long Road to Comedy Success

  I don’t want to make comedy sound easy, because it is NOT.

  After I got back into comedy, and got my first paid gig (“The Lesbian Bomb Show”), I started doing a lot of paid shows all over LA. Occasionally, I was getting out of town to Orange County or Colton, or something like that, or far off, like Lancaster.

  Back then, I considered a two-hour drive to be a serious traveling gig. I wouldn’t now, but then I was driving a little Geo Metro that sounded like a lawnmower. Ride in that shit for two hours, you feel like you done crossed America in a covered wagon.

  Right as I was getting going with comedy, I kind of blew up in the Bar Mitzvah scene. So I was traveling all over the country, doing Bar Mitzvahs. That paid better than my comedy gigs, but comedy was my thing.

  Then I got on the show Who’s Got Jokes? and that helped my career a lot. It was my first time ever being on television doing stand-up, and I won the first round of competition.

  I had to go to Atlanta, and I had never done comedy in Atlanta before. I’d only partied in Atlanta, so I really didn’t have a feel for the comedy scene. I didn’t know how they even felt about women comedians, or anything. I didn’t have a clue. That shit matters a LOT in comedy, and because I was not ready for the second round in Atlanta, I lost bad.

  It was in a civic center. There were like three thousand people there, and it was my first time being in front of that many people. And right as I walked out onstage, I realized, Tiffany, there are motherfucking cameras here.

  I was just so nervous, it was horrible.

  At the time, I had this goofy bit about the song “Chicken noodle soup, chicken noodle soup, chicken noodle soup and the soda on the side.” I would make fun of that song, do this goofy dance. I did that bit, but I screwed the timing up bad.

  I knew I had fucked up. It was so quiet in there. And nobody made a sound. And then some man just went:

  Man: “Booo!”

  Just out of nowhere. He didn’t even yell, it was more dismissive. And because none of the other three thousand people were making a sound, it echoed all around that hall.

  I looked into the audience, and all I could say was one word into the mic, real slow and serious:

  Tiffany: “Niggas.”

  That’s all I could say. I could get nothing else out of my mouth.

  I got disqualified. This wasn’t a black comedy club, and you can’t say that shit on TV. I was done. I failed. It was bad.

  First, I cried. I cried outside in the back of the civic center, hard. Then I started talking to myself and was like, You just bombed in front of all them people, all over TV. People are gonna be able to see that all over the world.

  Then I responded to myself, Yeah, people gonna see me, though, all over the world. Then, my daddy gonna see me, and then he gonna come visit me, and then life is gonna be great.

  I was trying to make myself feel better, and I did feel better.

  Even though I bombed, getting to the second round helped my career. I did some stand-up on a couple of late night TV shows, and then I ended up doing HBO’s Def Comedy Jam, and then Def Comedy Jam started getting me other shows.

  Then I got a movie with Mike Epps, and that started getting me to colleges. It’s kind of full circle, ’cause NYU wanted to charge me $30,000 a semester to attend, and now, I’m going to all these different colleges, and they’re paying me $2000 to tell jokes for like forty-five minutes. I felt like the dopest person in the world. I was getting paid to go to school. I wasn’t really learning anything, but still.

  Once I got divorced, it was like the floodgates opened. The quality of my comedy just got way better. I had more time to focus on the art of it, and I was getting to know myself better. I was paying attention to my feelings about things.

  In stand-up, you do need to be having fun up there like Richard Pryor said, but you have to know yourself well, too. You have to know when you make different faces, or do different things, you get certain reactions. You start learning and it’s like playing a piano. You just know exactly what keys to stroke, ’cause really with comedy, you’re like fiddling with people’s souls. You resonate on the same frequency as them, trying to get them to relate.

  To do that, you gotta put yourself out there. And in order to put yourself out there, you’ve gotta have an idea of who you are and how people react to that.

  A lot of shows during this time stick out in my memory. I did a show in Arizona that was sold-out, and the thing that I remember the most about it was this lady sitting in the front row. She had this mean face. She was mean-mugging me the first ten, fifteen minutes of my set.

  I made it my mission to make her laugh, and she would not laugh. It took me like twenty minutes to get her to laugh, and once she did laugh, though, she laughed so hard that snot flew out of her nose. After the show, I went out and danced all night in celebration. I was so proud of myself.

  Another time, in the middle of the show, the heel on my shoe broke. So I just did like ten minutes about my shoe, how cheap the shoe was, why the shoe broke, all that. When I came off the stage, this lady came up to me.

  Lady: “You were amazing. I peed on myself. I peed on myself.”

  Tiffany: “Oh, thank you. How many kids do you have?”

  You know, because women be peeing themselves after they have babies.

  Lots of bad shows, too. I used to host this room at the San Manuel Casino every Wednesday night, and this one night, a girl was definitely intoxicated. She kept talking through everybody’s set, and I was hostin
g the show. I kept saying, “Watch yourself. Let everybody enjoy the show. You need to be quiet. Calm down.” After the third comic, she started again, and it went off.

  Drunk Girl: “Yo, is this guy gonna be funny? Them others was stupid!!!”

  Tiffany: “Look, I’m getting tired of you talking to people all disrespectful, and if you don’t quit, you’re gonna have a problem.”

  Drunk Girl: “Bitch, you’re gonna have a problem, bitch.”

  I went the fuck off. She started gangbanging, throwing up signs and talking crazy, so I started banging back. I ain’t even from no gang, but I start representing my old hood.

  Drunk Girl: “Don’t trip. I’ll beat your ass right now, in front of everybody.”

  Tiffany: “Come on. Come, beat my ass, bitch!”

  At first, people were laughing, ’cause they thought I was just playing. Then I pulled my hair off. I took my shoes off, I took my earrings off. I balled up my fist, all furious, and I started praying into the microphone:

  Tiffany: “Heavenly Father, give me the strength and the power to beat this girl down to the ground, and teach her she ain’t never supposed to be this disrespectful to anybody, because I give zero fucks, Lord. Just give me the power to whip her ass. All these things, I ask in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

  I guess it was the way I said it, because people stopped laughing.

  By the time she got close to the stage, security had grabbed her. Then two big Samoan chicks, who used to come every single week, came down right behind her. And then, these other two black girls that came all the time, they started whaling on her. Security had to drag that girl out, to stop her from getting killed. I was yelling from the stage:

  Tiffany: “Bitch, getting your ass beat before you even get to the stage. We beating yo ass right now!!”

  Everything got settled, and I introduced the headliner. Poor guy, how’s he gonna follow that shit? And I was so embarrassed. I had prayed out loud, in front of everybody, for the Lord to give me strength to whip a girl’s ass. It was so unprofessional. I was so embarrassed that I went so ghetto, so fast.