Priceless Inspirations

by Antonia Carter

  “Get your ass in the car,” he yelled at me.

  I pulled away from Mitch and scrambled into the car. I was so embarrassed. I felt like everybody on the whole street was looking at us. There was a whole group of Mitch’s friends walking nearby. Mostly, I was embarrassed that Mitch had seen my uncle talk to me like that. It made me look like a little baby.

  “Why you trying to be fast?” he shouted at me. “Why are you sneaking off with this little boy? Don’t you know how much trouble this is gonna lead to? And you just 12 years old!” He ranted and raved the whole way home. He took away my telephone privileges and I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything for a week. I had to come straight out of school and get in the car or he’d make my punishment even worse.

  I took my punishment, but as soon as the week was over, I was sneaking off to be with Mitch again and finding ways around Uncle Nat’s rules. I felt like I had to. All the girls had a crush on Mitch, including all the girls at my school, girls at other middle schools, and even girls at the high school where he was already a freshman. All the girls liked him. Those girls were willing to do anything to be with him and most of them didn’t have anyone pulling them back, locking them down, or telling them “no.”

  Compared to them, I had so many restrictions. I wasn’t allowed to go to the movies with him. I wasn’t allowed to go the dances. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even walk to the bus stop!

  I blamed Uncle Nat. His rules made me angry. I couldn’t wait to grow up. I couldn’t wait to get out of his house. I couldn’t wait to be free to do what I wanted to do!

  Since Uncle Nat didn’t allow me to accept phone calls from boys, I figured out how to get around him. Nat worked evenings and Aunt Kris worked days. I told Mitch to call in the gap, the hours between when Nat left for work and Kris came home.

  I even figured out how to get to go out with Mitch. I lied and told Uncle Nat I was going to my friend Sarah’s house. We were both on the dance team and I told him I would stay late at her house after performing at the football game.

  I realized that my uncle was right. Mitch was fast. I was 12 and not quite as grown as I thought I was. I was more than a little scared by some of the things Mitch wanted to do. Mitch wanted to have sex. He wanted to break my virginity

  He asked me to come to his house when his mother wasn’t going to be home. I thought I loved Mitch and I thought I was ready. After all, most of the other girls at my school had already started having sex, or at least they said they had. I was one of the few left. Mitch knew that, too. It was one of the reasons he wanted to be with me. He wanted to be my first.

  I was gonna go, but at the last minute I chickened out. I don’t know why exactly. I really didn’t see anything wrong with having sex. Like I said, most of the girls were doing it. Something didn’t feel right about doing it then, especially with Mitch, who had so many girls. I guess I was starting to get the vibe that he just wanted me for sex. I didn’t do it.

  I dated him for the whole eighth grade school year. When I got to Marian Abramson High School, the same school where Mitch went, I found out all about him and I was glad I hadn’t had sex with him that night.

  Mitch was a boy. Worse than that, he was a playboy, messing with lots of girls at the school, cruising around like he thought he was something. He was still trying to come around me, but once I knew I wasn’t special to him, and that he just wanted all the girls, I wasn’t entertaining him anymore.

  I was disappointed in him, but I was glad I hadn’t let him break my virginity. He wasn’t worth it.

  Toya’s Priceless Gem: A boy will tell you anything to get you in the bed with him. Don’t fall for it, no matter how cool he seems. If he’s really cool, he’ll wait for you to be ready. Don’t be just another jump off. Wait for someone who loves you enough to be patient.

  Keith vs. “Dream”

  I know you’ve heard the saying “looks aren’t everything.” It’s true. It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to see past a guy’s looks. I used to love pretty boys. You know the really good-looking guys with the smooth skin, perfect hair and cool clothes. I used to love boys who had that swagger to them. I used to think the only thing that mattered was that he was pretty and I was pretty. I thought that being a couple of good-looking people would make us happy, popular and cool.

  I wanted the guy that all of the other girls wanted because I thought if I had the popular boy, I would be popular, too. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. I dated pretty boys and popular boys, and dating those boys ended up being just a crazy mess for me all through school.

  Keith was pretty. He was tall and handsome. He was also a year older than me and one of the most popular guys at my high school. When he played basketball on the courts near my Aunt Grace’s house, which is where I was living at that moment, I’d talk with him a bit after his games. Nothing serious, but he definitely knew who I was.

  We had one class together in the period just before lunch. I was only a freshman, but I used to skip out on the cafeteria and go to lunch outside the school with the seniors. One day we started talking after class, and the next thing I knew, we had left the school and gone to one of his friend’s house. Almost as soon as we were alone, he started talking about sex.

  I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was clear what he wanted to do. He started going on about how beautiful I was, and how much he cared about me and all that. He was kissing me and rubbing me and I was getting into it. Clothes started coming off and things got really heated.

  At the last moment, and I mean the last moment, I called it off. It was happening too fast, and I guess I still didn’t feel ready. I had an idea in my mind about how it should be, and fooling around at his friend’s house wasn’t in the plan. I didn’t want to just give it up during the lunch break and go on back to school. Having sex with his friends right there in the next room made it seem like I was some kind of freak. I wanted better than that.

  Keith didn’t force me to have sex with him like some dudes would have done. At the same time, he wasn’t happy about my saying “no.” I learned later that, for him, sex was all I was about. He wasn’t really that interested in me at all. I was just another girl he could brag to his crew that he’d had.

  I still really liked Keith when I met this kid that everyone called “Dream.” He performed in shows around town in a group. I met him for the first time right after my high school talent show. He and his group had performed, and after the show, me and some of my friends were in a nearby convenience store getting some snacks. Dream was there with his boys.

  “Hey, hand me them doughnuts!”

  Those were the first words he ever said to me.

  I didn’t know him yet. Like I said, I still liked Keith and Dream wasn’t really my type. I thought he might be trying to talk to me, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know him like that. I snatched up a pack of doughnuts and threw them at him.

  “Damn,” Dream smiled and shook his head at me. “If you gonna come at me like that, you ought to at least get to know me first. Let me give you my number.” He scribbled his phone number on the back of a piece of brown paper bag and handed it to me.

  I found out later that he was a rapper, though he wasn’t anything near as successful as he is now, and people all around New Orleans knew him. His thing was that he’d leave these raps on his voicemail and people would call him up just to listen to them. If you hit him on his pager, you’d hear his latest rap and there were new ones all the time. People would call his pager all the time just to hear the raps. He’d already been with Cash Money Records for six years when I met him in 1997.

  People always think I knew about Dream’s record deal when I first met him, and that I had some plan to hook up with a bailer or a rapper. I really didn’t know who he was or what he did. Sure, I thought it might be cool to hook up with a guy like that, but I wasn’t really going out searching for that. Besides, I was 13 years old, still just a kid. Like most 13 year olds, my life
was high school. I was thinking about dating the guys on the basketball team. That was my idea of a popular guy. When I met Dream, all I knew about him was that he’d just performed at my school’s talent show. Even after we’d started chilling together a bit, I didn’t know much about all that. I didn’t ask much about it either. We talked on a different level than that. In the beginning, what I knew about Dream was just that he was charming and sweet and fun to be around. He was still not my type, but he was gentle and kind to me.

  I don’t remember why I called him that first time, but I did. Then it got to be like a habit. I would hit him on the pager when he came from school. He’d call and we’d talk for hours, talking about everything you can think of.

  That’s how we discovered that we’re related-sort of. My aunt’s husband’s daughter’s (my cousin by marriage) uncle was Dream’s stepfather. You got it? My cousin-in-law and Dream were cousins by marriage. Or something like that. We used to call each other “cousin” because his stepfather was sort of my uncle. My cousin-in-law even lived in Dream’s neighborhood. I’d go over there and spend some time at her house, then I’d meet Dream and we’d spend a little time talking and kissing. He was very affectionate.

  Even then, I didn’t know he was as well-known as he was. At school, I had all of these girls running up in my face asking me, “Are you dating Dream?” or “Are you dating Wayne?” Depending on which question they asked, they got different answers. If they asked me if I was dating Dream, I said “yes.” If they asked me if I was dating “Wayne” I said “no.” I didn’t know they were the same guy. It even cost me my friendship with a girl that I was tight with. She had been dating this guy named “Wayne” and she wanted to keep dating him ‘cause he was paying her mama’s bills and buying her all kinds of stuff that she was constantly bragging to her friends about. When she asked me if I was seeing him, I said “no.” Then, when she saw me with him, she stopped speaking to me. She thought I was being dirty. I honestly didn’t know him as Wayne. I called him Dream. To this day I call him Dream.

  When I realized that Dream was the one paying that girl’s family’s bills, it was the first time I realized that he had real money. I knew he always had cash, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. He was always trying to buy me presents, things like designer backpacks to match my tennis shoes and that kind of thing. He bought me and my cousin stuff all the time, but he never said much about his money. He didn’t say, “I just signed a record deal.” He didn’t say anything. He just kept buying me stuff.

  When Keith found out that Dream was spending time with me, he only had one question for Dream--“You have sex with her?”

  Dream didn’t answer that question. He was a man. Keith had no business asking. He was a boy.

  Toya’s Priceless Gem: A real man doesn’t talk about who he did what with. Only boys need to brag.

  When I heard about what Keith had asked Dream about me, I was mad. I was even madder when they became friends after that. Then it went around school that I dated and had sex with guys’ friends, and that I was just a jump-off who would go from boy to boy until I had dated everyone in the crew. The haters were running me down constantly, saying spiteful stuff about me. The truth was that Dream and Keith hadn’t even known each other until the day Keith walked up to Dream and asked him if I’d slept with him.

  All the talk and Keith and the haters actually just brought me and Dream closer together.

  A little while later, he invited me on a trip to Houston with him as a part of Cash Money Record’s promotion tour of his ħ’rst album with Hot Boys. I told my Aunt Lisa a big old lie. I told her that I was staying with my cousin Demetria for the weekend, and then I boarded the plane without so much as a dime of my own in my pocket.

  It was stupid and dangerous. He could have gotten bored with me and left me there, stranded. He could have gotten mad at me and dumped me somewhere with no money and no way to get home.

  At the time, I wasn’t worried. Dream always took care of me, and he had promised to pay for everything. He was proving himself to be everything I’d ever wanted in a man-kind and caring, charming and sweet, thoughtful and loving, ambitious and outgoing. He was young, only 15, but so was I. I believed in my heart he was the one for me. I believed that at last, I’d met a real man. I believed it so completely that I didn’t care that when I got back from Houston, my aunt had called the police on me.

  She found out when she caught me in a lie. I had told her that I was spending the night at my cousin Demetria’s house, but then she called over there and Demetria’s mom told her that we were in Houston. She didn’t know I’d told my aunt that lie. Demetria’s mom really thought my aunt knew where I was.

  When I got home I was busted. The whole neighborhood was standing in front of my house, along with the police. Aunt Lisa had called them to get them tell me not to ever leave town without my guardian’s permission again.

  It was a big mess. I was angry with Aunt Lisa. I didn’t feel like all that was necessary, but now I understand. If my daughter did that to me, I’d be sick with worry.

  I didn’t see it that way when I did it. All that mattered to me was being with Dream. We were young and we both changed as we grew older. Now, we’re just good, good friends. The sweetness, the gentleness and the kindness that Dream showed me gave me a new model for what I wanted and needed from a man.

  Toya’s Priceless Gem: A real man can be any age. He’s the one who listens to you, encourages you and doesn’t pressure you.

  The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t

  Because of who Dream was and how fast his career caught fire, there were lots of girls-girls who liked him, girls he liked back, girls who wanted to have sex with him, girls who he had sex with. In high school, I used to get into fights over this, sometimes really serious ones.

  It was a mistake.

  I can’t say you should never fight. You can’t let people punk you, and sometimes fighting is the only way to defend yourself. If someone puts their hands on you, then you have to defend yourself. My attitude made it worse. Instead of avoiding battles with these girls, unless someone actually put their hands on me, my attitude was the opposite. If some girl starting talking about fighting me, I’d be like, “Okay, bring it.”

  I entertained those girls, and of course, that was all the encouragement they needed.

  Once, I got suspended from high school for a whole year after a fight with a girl who was nearly a foot taller than me and at least fifty pounds heavier.

  It started over some words this girl had written about me in the restroom--“whore” and “dick sucker” and other really nasty stuff. I knew she’d done it because I heard her talking about what she’d written while I was in the stall. When I came out of the bathroom to where Dream and Keith were waiting for me in the hallway, I said something about her and what she’d written. Loud. Loud enough for the girl to hear.

  “What did you say?” the girl said.

  I repeated myself, with attitude. I knew where this was going to lead, but I wasn’t backing down.

  I said, “I don’t appreciate you and your girl writing that stuff about me!” She rolled her neck at me. “And what you going to do about it?”

  I hit her.

  Her girl jumped in it, then my friend got in it, then my cousin joined in. It turned into a brawl right there in the hallway before the teachers and the security people at the school broke it up. I came out of it with a black eye, welts and scratches all over my face.

  Keith and Dream just stood there. Neither one of them tried to break it up. They didn’t try to stop it from happening. Why should they? They thought it was funny. They thought it was cool to see a bunch of girls get into it over them. They liked it. It made them look like they were worth fighting for, I guess, so they didn’t do anything.

  I got put out for a full year. I remember going home that day with my face all bloody and swollen. I was with Uncle Nat again and he just shook his head.

  “Why you gonna
let these girls make you ugly?” he said sadly. “Ain’t no boy worth that.”

  Of course, he was right. I wish I could tell you that I listened to him; I didn’t.

  I got in lots of fights through high school, almost all over Dream. Most of them could have been avoided if I’d had a different attitude, and if I’d been less “bring it on” and more “I don’t care.” They would not have happened if I’d realized that any man who wanted me to fight over him wasn’t really a “man” at all. Since I entertained it, and because I was ready to fight at the slightest comment or look, I ended up fighting all the time.

  After a while, even Dream didn’t like me fighting. He got tired of seeing me all scratched up and bloody. I felt like I had to do it. I felt like fighting for him was one way I could prove my love.

  I was wrong.

  It was my mistake to think that fighting other girls would make Dream love me more. It was my mistake to think that “winning” in a fight would make me a winner in my relationship, when the two really didn’t have anything to do with each other. It was my mistake to believe that I could “fix” the relationship by fighting the other girls Dream was involved with, when what would have fixed it would have been to let Dream go when it was clear he wanted to be with girls who weren’t me.

  Toya’s Priceless Gem: When you’re fighting for love, you’ve already lost it.

  SEX AND LOVE

  Like most girls, I thought that if I had sex with a guy, it would mean that we were in love. I really didn’t know that sex and love were two very different things. Sometimes sex and love have everything to do with each other, and sometimes they don’t. Not understanding that sex and love are different, especially for guys, is one of the ways that girls get their feelings hurt.