I booked the Allen Theatre in Cleveland to tape the Seriously Funny special. I knew I had made progress when I was able to sell tickets instead of giving them away, and I could afford the flight there. I was unfortunately traveling lighter than last time because Torrei, who I’d been separated from for almost a year, wouldn’t let me bring Hendrix and Heaven to the taping.
“What if you come with them?” I tried.
“I ain’t bringing them no-fucking-where.”
It’s the only special of mine that the kids missed.
Meanwhile, the Cavaliers were there. The Browns were there. Shaq was there. LeBron was there. And I lifted the lid off that theater, dropped a ten-ton thermonuclear device inside, lowered the roof, and then pressed the red button.
Okay, people, I’m running out of metaphors for good comedy shows. The point is that a lot of folks laughed a lot of times. But man, that doesn’t sound as good as it felt up there on stage that night.
After the show, I rejoined the Plastic Cup Boyz and a local promoter backstage, poured myself some tequila, and informed them: “I’m about to write another set. We going out again. But this time, we gonna go bigger.”
They looked at me like I was crazy—and like they needed a break.
“We don’t rest after a success.” I lifted my red plastic cup and put an arm around the woman I was with. Her name was Eniko. “We raise our goals.”
We toasted to many more years of brotherhood. Then the promoter asked me: “Is that your wife?”
83
* * *
THINK I SHOULDA JUST DONE CHAPTER NUMBERS WITHOUT TITLES
Me: Hey, Eniko!
Eniko: What do you want?
Me: I’m about to tell the story of how we met. Remember, I was in DC at a nightclub after a show on the Seriously Funny tour and I saw you, but I didn’t talk to you. You were wearing a purple dress.
Eniko: We kept running into each other that whole weekend. The next time you saw me, you cracked a joke because my friends and I were taller than you. It was the most random thing to say, and we just started laughing.
Me: First of all, I’m an attractive man, so I saw that I had caught your eye.
Eniko: Did you? No, I wasn’t even really looking.
Me: I caught you looking!
Eniko: You had a certain charm about you. You did.
Me: That would have been the end of it, but on my last night in town, Na’im was meeting up with a girl and her cousin, so he took me along.
Eniko: And I was the cousin!
Me: It was crazy that she was the same woman I’d been running into for the past two days. I thought you were amazingly cute, so I serenaded you—I grabbed the mic in the DJ booth at this dance club we went to and I just started singing. Some of the worst singing you’ve probably ever heard in your life.
Eniko: It was silly. I liked it.
Me: You were laughing. After that, we had a conversation outside.
Eniko: I enjoyed it. It seemed natural, and I laughed a lot. I thought, “Okay, this guy’s hilarious.”
Me: See, I keep telling everyone that the fun guy always gets the girl.
Eniko: Whatever. We talked and exchanged numbers. But afterward, my girlfriends were like, “Girl, he married. You don’t need to be around him!”
Me: I remember telling you, “On paper, I am married, but you have to understand that this is not what it looks like. I’m not living at home.”
Eniko: Shady!
Me: Exactly. The fucked-up thing is, so many women have heard that from so many men that they don’t believe it when it’s actually true.
Eniko: We talked on the phone and Skyped for two months after that. I still wasn’t sure.
Me: I’m a sex symbol. My body looks like somebody drew it. How could you not be sure about this?
Eniko: A married sex symbol. A month or so later, you were in Baltimore, and that was the next time I saw you.
Me: It was just a quick hi and bye. But we had an interesting chemistry.
Eniko: (Laughs.)
Me: Why’re you laughing?
Eniko: It was just funny. You wanted me to hang out after the show, and I wouldn’t do it. I’m not gonna be your hookup while you’re in town.
Me: I’m what you call a ladies’ man. The ladies know I’m a keeper, so they play that long game. I figured I’d wait it out.
Eniko: After that, a few months passed, and then I met you at that festival in Kansas City.
Me: To this day, that’s still one of the most fun days of my life. You got on a plane to see me, so I knew for sure you were interested. We went to Gates Bar-B-Q and just ate and laughed. We went to the movies. It was like a high school date. Then I had a comedy show later. That was the weekend we hooked up, but when you look back, it took quite some time.
Eniko: It was just a few months. I don’t know what you’re used to.
Me: I was used to, “Hey, what’s going on? You want a drink?”—then the next thing you know, bam bam bam bam. I had a plethora of those, so when you get someone who’s different and your vibe with them is different, the other stuff stops mattering and you start thinking about just that one person.
Eniko: Well, it wasn’t quite that easy.
Me: Okay, it took me a little while to get there. We were both stepping out of serious relationships. And I had the attitude of She’s definitely moving up to the top of my list, but the last thing I’m gonna do is be somebody’s man again at this point. Y’all can kiss my ass. I’m a rolling stone.
Eniko: But then . . .
Me: . . . you look up, man, and you just find yourself slowly falling into a goddamn relationship, and that’s exactly what happened.
84
* * *
The moment I realized that my relationship with Eniko was getting serious was about seven months after we met. She came to Los Angeles a few times to visit me, and one day we got into our first disagreement. I don’t even remember what we were arguing about. When the time came for Eniko to leave, her eyes started watering. And I thought, You don’t cry about what you don’t care about.
With any other woman, this would have been an alarm warning me to pull back. It was surprising when I felt moved by her level of emotion instead. I told myself: This here is a good woman. It’s time to invest more of myself and my attention in her and see if this can go somewhere.
She was gorgeous—black, with pieces of Jamaican and Chinese. She had a great sense of humor; she could hold her own in a greenroom with the Plastic Cup Boyz; she accepted me as I was; she supported my career and touring; and even when we didn’t agree on something, we always treated each other with respect.
She stepped into the picture at the worst possible time, which was actually the perfect time: My life was in debacle mode. I’d left my home. I was heading into divorce. And I was fucking around a lot on the road.