on my cabinet doors and all over my new Max Studio Frida sandals. The damn things cost too much for me to be lounging around the house in them, but I wanted to represent for Jackie. I always tried to look good when Jackie’s friends came over. Not because I wanted them ogling me—which they did anyhow, whenever they thought Jackie wasn’t looking—but because I was a reflection of my man and liked to carry myself accordingly. To me, there was nothing worse thana clean-cut man with a busted female at his side. The snakeskin exterior of the shoes would survive the drenching, but the interior would end up smelling like mildew from the beer soaking in.
“Two hundred dollars down the damn drain.”
“Gina, what the hell was that!” he barked from the other side of the door.
“Nothing, baby,” I lied.
“Then bring yo ass on, a nigga thirsty!”
“Okay, I’m coming. One mess in the living room and one in here,” I muttered to myself. “Relax, Gina,” I said under my breath. The words sounded convincing enough, but I still didn’t believe them.
I pulled open the right side of my stainless steel refrigerator to get Jackie another beer, and to my dismay we were out—at least out of Heinekens. Apparently the one now pooling on my kitchen floor was the last of the Mohicans. Thankfully, I had a Corona stashed in the vegetable bin. I was saving it for myself, but it looked like I’d be paying the house with it. Trying to ignore the beer drying on my feet and soaking into my instep, I sliced a lime for the lip of Jackie’s beer and put my game face on.
When I stepped through the swinging door and into my living room, my heart sank as I beheld the mess Jackie and his stooges had made of it. The weed and cigarette smoke was so thick that my eyes stung. It would take weeks for me to get the stench out of my furniture. I hadn’t taken two steps when I heard the crackle of a chip that had escaped from the bowl, pulverized beneath my soggy heels. I didn’t even have to see theCheez Doodles stains in the soft cream carpet to know that I’d have to have it professionally cleaned . . . again. Beer bottles and cups were sitting on everything with a flat surface, including my autographed
Best of Patti LaBelle
CD box set. For all the hell I went through to get it signed, there wasn’t a court in the land that would convict me if I went postal on those Negroes.
A card table was erected in the middle of my living room, with Jackie and his shiftless-ass friends huddled around it, engaged in a game of poker. If you added all of them together, Jackie’s friends weren’t worth a bucket of piss. They were loud, disrespectful, and just overall pains in the ass. But as the saying went,
birds of a feather
. In the center of the chaos sat Jackie, my husband and keeper of the last five years.
Jackie, for as much of an ass as he can be, is a prize catch. He had baggage, as most men do these days, but he kept his baby’s mother at a distance, and spent time with his daughter. That turned me on about him. My dad was in and out of my life, so I really can’t respect a man who isn’t doing what he has to for his children. Back in those days, Jackie was working as an associate publicist for a major house during the day and working in the mailroom at another house at night. Considering that he had degrees in law and business management, I thought he was selling himself short. About nine months into our relationship, he made me eat my words. Jackie had taken the contacts he made—and stole—while working at the two houses and opened up his own literary agency. One by one, he started picking off authors and buttering up editors. By the time the industry even realized what was going on, Jackie had signed three of the top authors inurban fiction and was negotiating book and film deals for a former member of the 1925 New York Rens, whom everyone thought was dead. If you wanted talent, you had to see Jackie, and when you sat with him,
“Two hundred dollars down the damn drain.”
“Gina, what the hell was that!” he barked from the other side of the door.
“Nothing, baby,” I lied.
“Then bring yo ass on, a nigga thirsty!”
“Okay, I’m coming. One mess in the living room and one in here,” I muttered to myself. “Relax, Gina,” I said under my breath. The words sounded convincing enough, but I still didn’t believe them.
I pulled open the right side of my stainless steel refrigerator to get Jackie another beer, and to my dismay we were out—at least out of Heinekens. Apparently the one now pooling on my kitchen floor was the last of the Mohicans. Thankfully, I had a Corona stashed in the vegetable bin. I was saving it for myself, but it looked like I’d be paying the house with it. Trying to ignore the beer drying on my feet and soaking into my instep, I sliced a lime for the lip of Jackie’s beer and put my game face on.
When I stepped through the swinging door and into my living room, my heart sank as I beheld the mess Jackie and his stooges had made of it. The weed and cigarette smoke was so thick that my eyes stung. It would take weeks for me to get the stench out of my furniture. I hadn’t taken two steps when I heard the crackle of a chip that had escaped from the bowl, pulverized beneath my soggy heels. I didn’t even have to see theCheez Doodles stains in the soft cream carpet to know that I’d have to have it professionally cleaned . . . again. Beer bottles and cups were sitting on everything with a flat surface, including my autographed
Best of Patti LaBelle
CD box set. For all the hell I went through to get it signed, there wasn’t a court in the land that would convict me if I went postal on those Negroes.
A card table was erected in the middle of my living room, with Jackie and his shiftless-ass friends huddled around it, engaged in a game of poker. If you added all of them together, Jackie’s friends weren’t worth a bucket of piss. They were loud, disrespectful, and just overall pains in the ass. But as the saying went,
birds of a feather
. In the center of the chaos sat Jackie, my husband and keeper of the last five years.
Jackie, for as much of an ass as he can be, is a prize catch. He had baggage, as most men do these days, but he kept his baby’s mother at a distance, and spent time with his daughter. That turned me on about him. My dad was in and out of my life, so I really can’t respect a man who isn’t doing what he has to for his children. Back in those days, Jackie was working as an associate publicist for a major house during the day and working in the mailroom at another house at night. Considering that he had degrees in law and business management, I thought he was selling himself short. About nine months into our relationship, he made me eat my words. Jackie had taken the contacts he made—and stole—while working at the two houses and opened up his own literary agency. One by one, he started picking off authors and buttering up editors. By the time the industry even realized what was going on, Jackie had signed three of the top authors inurban fiction and was negotiating book and film deals for a former member of the 1925 New York Rens, whom everyone thought was dead. If you wanted talent, you had to see Jackie, and when you sat with him,
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