After I’d gone out of my way to get her a spot, her words felt like a slap in the face. Though I understood that sometimes when advice comes from a person you’re in a relationship with, it sounds more like criticism.
From then on, pretty much all Torrei talked about was how she was going to make it as a stand-up and get a television show and write a book and do it all much quicker than my dumb self. She soon started trying to insert herself into any opportunity I had.
The Torrei who’d moved to L.A. had no interest in being famous. I didn’t know this Torrei. At one of my shows, a couple walked over and asked for my autograph. “Y’all want this motherfucker’s autograph?” she asked them. “He ain’t shit!”
A week later, I returned home from a run of shows to spend time with the kids and saw Torrei in the living room with a stack of scripts. “Hey,” she called out. “I need you to read these. Let me know your favorite. If you agree to do it, they’ll put me in the show too, right?”
In Hollywood, I’d met many sycophants who tried to befriend and use me to get opportunities—not knowing how hard I’d worked to get those opportunities for myself. I looked at my wife and it felt like she had turned into one of those people. She may have hated me as a person, but suddenly she loved me as a vehicle.
Then one day, my father called. We didn’t talk about anything of substance. He just went on about how my mom had raised me too soft and that he wished he’d stuck with her so he could’ve made me a man.
I replied that I was happy with how things worked out. If he had stayed with my mother, and they had fought like they did throughout my entire childhood and adolescence—screaming, hitting, chasing each other with hammers—then I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.
After I hung up, I thought about all the times I’d shoulder-shrugged the violence in my relationship: It’s all right, we just fist-fought a little bit and smashed some stuff. Let’s put it behind us and move forward. I know we called each other bitches and motherfuckers all night, but that’s okay. Let’s sweep it under the rug and be nice to each other again. There you go! It’s like nothing ever happened.
Love isn’t supposed to be violent. I’m not a violent person. Torrei’s not a violent person. Even when we weren’t loudly fighting, we were silently resenting each other. We had to end this cycle that my parents handed down to me and that we were now handing down to our kids.
Once I had these thoughts, my last rationalization for enduring the marriage was gone: I wasn’t saving my kids from a broken home by staying with Torrei. The home was already broken—and only by leaving could I fix it.
A few days later, I walked out the door with just the clothes on my back. I was thirty years old and my head was finally clear. “Keep everything,” I told her. “I got the rent. I got the bills. I got everything. But we are done.”
I knew I wouldn’t be coming back. Torrei knew it too. “After all you’ve put me through, you’re just gonna walk out that door?” she asked.
“You may hate me today for this, but tomorrow you’ll thank me for it.”
“I’ll hate you even more tomorrow.”
She was right. It definitely took more time than that.
I checked into the W Hotel and wrestled with my conscience for weeks. I was still wracked with guilt and doubt at times, but what helped was spending time with my kids and seeing that I was a better dad to them without the distraction of trying to survive a bad relationship. You can be a great soldier on a battlefield, but you can’t be a great father on one.
Slowly, over the course of years, we both became ourselves again. We learned to be much better parents. And we continued the process of growing up emotionally that getting into a relationship at such a young age had delayed.
The lesson learned from all this is that if you’re not careful, your dick will get you into relationships that your head can’t fix. But the deeper lesson is that what’s important in a relationship is the bricks that every one of your words and actions lay down, because together they add up to the home that you’re going to live in for quite some time.
Brick by brick, I’d built an unstable house with Torrei, one that was doomed to collapse. But the experience enabled us to build great homes afterward for our kids, our partners, and ourselves.
Life Lessons
FROM BREAKTHROUGH
* * *
Don’t do drugs. Instead, prove everyone who doubted you wrong. It’s a bigger high. If this sounds self-centered, that’s because it is. I’m a selfish guy. How else would it be possible to write a book this big about myself?
With Eddie Murphy at the Laugh at My Pain premiere party
82
* * *
I GOT NOTHING. NAME THIS ONE YOURSELF.
Your dream is a huge boulder. It takes a lot of effort to get it moving. But if you can budge it just a few inches on the right terrain, then it starts picking up speed all by itself. And since Shaq’s All–Star Comedy Jam, my career had started rolling.
My club dates began selling out on a regular basis, so we started stacking two shows a night in most cities. When I performed for four days at Carolines in New York, they had to add weekend matinees as well—and all ten shows there sold out.
Promoters noticed the number of tickets I was selling, and my booking agent Mike Berkowitz called one day: “I know you’re not interested in doing package tours, but a lot of offers are coming in. There’s a new Kings of Comedy tour they want you on, and they want you on a couple rap tours. The reason I’m calling is that these offers altogether are worth more than a million dollars.”
When I first heard that, I had to sit down and catch my breath. Then I started thinking: I’d spent more than four years beating up the road to build a personal brand, one which I had total control over. I’d formed a brotherhood of loyal and talented friends. I’d told the guys that if they believed in me and stuck with me through the hard times, I’d reward them and take care of them when the good times arrived. I couldn’t just throw away my name, work, and integrity for a big payday.
I told Berkowitz to pass on all of them. Sometimes a good opportunity can still be a backward step.
Instead, we decided to make a move that both excited and terrified me: If I was selling out ten shows at a 250-person-capacity club, then I could probably sell out one night at a 2,500-seat theater. So we started testing out theater shows—and although they didn’t all sell out, they were successful enough to justify doing more.
Every time I waited by the side of a stage to perform on that tour, I had a flashback to standing in the same spot during the Def Comedy Jam tour at the Liacouras Center in Philadelphia, promising myself to get my shit together so that one day I too could be headlining big venues.