Kevin: Come on, Dad.
Dad: I ain’t do it. The only thing I ever did was back before, with your brother. I brought him home one time and your mom wasn’t there. I wasn’t gonna leave him in the hall, so I went ahead and took the door off the hinges to let him in.
Kevin: (To writer.) See, he used the same method of getting in. Let me tell you something about my dad. He’ll give you every hero story in the world, but we all know the reality of it.
Dad: Boy, you think people gonna pay you for talking about me like this? Knock yourself out. Ain’t nothing wrong with my self-esteem.
Kevin: . . .
Dad: Let me tell you something about this boy here. Nancy sheltered him and his brother. And I understand that. That’s part of a mother’s love. Me, I knew that I had to get them out in the streets. So they gonna get robbed, they might get beat up, whatever. I wanted them to be exposed—give them some survival skills. That’s what I did. And in doing that, they saw some stuff.
Kevin: Oh, we saw some stuff all right.
Dad: Not enough stuff.
20
* * *
FREAKY TALES
Everyone was talking about sex in the gym locker room.
They’d done it in the car with this girl, at this other girl’s house when her parents were out, with this one girl during a movie.
After a while, I couldn’t contain myself: “Wait a minute—hold on. Huh? Everybody here done this? I’m the only one who hasn’t?”
I was a sophomore, and it was time to figure out this whole sex thing. I didn’t want to be the only virgin in high school.
One of my close friends on the basketball team was named Khalil. He was a year older than me, a great player, and, most importantly, popular with the girls. Because I was hanging out with him, other kids thought that I might possibly be cool. And I began to believe that if he was popular with girls, then I could be too.
To make that happen, however, I first had to do the one thing that every human being must do at some point in their lives, otherwise they haven’t really lived: accept myself.
I was short. I wasn’t good-looking. I didn’t have nice clothes, I didn’t have new sneakers. I was a mama’s boy—and my haircuts were pretty damn bad. These were facts: Anyone could see them. There was no point in hiding any of it or pretending otherwise. So I made the decision to be comfortable with it.
As the little guy, you have a choice to make if you want to be popular: You can be the tough guy and overcompensate for your mini-me self or you can be the funny guy and accept your size. An added incentive for choosing the latter is that it’s hard for someone to punch you while they’re laughing.
I chose to be the funny guy. Having nothing to prove is the most freeing thing in the world. Rather than constantly defending your ego, you can have a sense of humor about your shortcomings.
I was able to make this choice because of my ability to shoulder-shrug things. Because shoulder-shrugging is different than not caring: It’s having perspective. It’s looking at a bigger picture instead of being reactive. By having that outlook, I was eventually able to understand that if someone was making fun of my height or clothing, they weren’t making fun of who I was.
Was what they were saying true? Yes.
Did it make me inadequate as a human being? No.
Did it really matter then? Hell no.
And with that realization, I could laugh at myself too.
Most of the star athletes in school had no personality. Hanging out with them wasn’t a good time. Because I didn’t take myself and life so seriously, girls started to hang around me more. And that’s when I realized: The fun guy always wins.
This is because no matter where you are or what you’re doing, if you’re with the fun guy, you’re gonna have a good time. You could be sitting in an empty room watching television with the fun guy, and it could be one of the best nights of your life. You could go out for a cup of coffee with the fun guy and end up laughing more in one hour than you have all year. Even if you’re doing your laundry with the fun guy, you’re gonna have a great time because he knows the secret to life.
You want to know what that secret is? It’s two words: Have fun.
You can close this book now. Thank you for reading. Good night.
Or you can wait a little to find out how I lost my virginity, because otherwise a couple of weeks from now, there may be a knock on your door, and a man in a suit may be standing there and saying: “For one million dollars, tell me how Kevin Hart lost his virginity”—and you will not know the answer.
It would be a shame to lose that much money just because you decided not to finish a book.
Besides, I lost my virginity twice.
* * *
Her name was Angie. We didn’t go to the same school, but she lived in the neighborhood. One day we were in the backyard at Ms. Davis’s house, and we got to messing around. It was cold outside, and we were both wearing coats. She told me to lie down, and I lowered my pants a little so she could sit on me.
“Is it in?” she asked.
I had no idea whether it was in or what it was supposed to feel like. It was cold, and we were wearing tons of clothes, and I couldn’t feel a thing. “I don’t know. Is it?”
“I think so,” she replied.
“Okay.”
We sat there for a few minutes without moving. Then she stood up, and it was over.
I looked down and thought, Well, my dick is kinda wet, and I didn’t pee on myself, so something must have happened. I guess I got my dick wet.
I stood up and asked, “Are we friends?”
“Yeah, we friends.”
Afterward, I was totally confused. Did we just have sex? Is that what sex is like? I must have missed something because it wasn’t all that great.
I saw Angie two weeks later, and we did it in the backyard with our coats on again. This time, I made sure it went in. I must have felt it twenty times just to confirm this fact. I even moved around, because friends said that’s what you were supposed to do, and maybe it didn’t count if you weren’t moving around.
The first time, I couldn’t tell whether we did it or not. This time, I was certain we did it. So I double lost my virginity. I had to lose it twice, just to make sure.
Not long after that, word about her being with different guys got out in the neighborhood, and people started to say mean stuff about Angie. She always liked me because I never spoke about our business or said anything hurtful about her.
People do a lot of things to make life hard for themselves, but one of the stupidest is guys who desperately want sex talking shit about the women most likely to give it to them.
* * *