Ex-Husband: “I couldn’t spell your last name. Then I saw you on Bill Bellamy’s Who’s Got Jokes? and I saw I was spelling your name wrong.”
Tiffany: “Yeah, but my number ain’t listed.”
Ex-Husband: “Yeah, I know. I got your phone number from a dude I know who works at Sprint. I’m police, that’s easy.”
After he told me everything he did to find me, I asked him:
Tiffany: “If you could find me, maybe you could find my dad?”
Ex-Husband: “Oh, I’ll find your daddy for you, but it’s going to cost you.”
Tiffany: “I’ll pay you whatever you want. Whatever you want, I’ll pay you.”
In my mind, I’m thinking I’ll give him a couple hundred dollars, maybe a couple of dates or something. That’s it. Then he’s like:
Ex-Husband: “Well, I want you to marry me.”
I just start busting up laughing, but he was serious.
Ex-Husband: “Tiffany, I’m telling you, I want you to marry me. I’ve been watching this video I found, you know, when we was on the boat. Every time I’m sad, I watch you. You make me happy. I don’t even really know you, but you’ve made me happy over the years. When I’ve had arguments with my girlfriends, I put in our little cruise video, and it just, you know, it makes me happy. I know we weren’t on the cruise together, but you were my whole cruise.”
I thought it was so cute, but I still wanted to see if he was serious.
Tiffany: “Well, I don’t know. If you find my dad, then maybe we could talk about that.”
Ex-Husband: “I’m going to find your dad.”
I know what you’re saying right now, because it’s what everyone says at this point in the story:
“That didn’t creep you out?”
No motherfucker, it did not!
Now you’re probably asking, “Why not?”
That’s how you know I’m crazy. Because I literally thought that this call was a sign from God. I thought God had answered my prayers. Just two months before, I was praying to God every day:
“Please send me a man that love me. That care about me. That want to see me flourish. That want to just be there for me, and support me, and do what I want to do. Like just really want me to be happy. Please send me somebody like that.”
Then boom, I get this phone call. I was like, What? Damn God, you work fast. And he gonna find my dad? You awesome, God, I’m in.
I didn’t tell him much about my dad, because I don’t know much. I just knew my dad’s name, his birthday, and where he came from.
Three weeks went by . . . and my dad called me.
For like ten years, I had been trying to reach him. I’d been looking for him since I was sixteen. I did not think he would find him. And this dude straight found my daddy in three weeks.
I was crying, because I recognized the voice immediately. He started telling me stuff about my family, that only the family would know.
After the call, my mind went racing. God or not, I thought to myself, Damn, I’m not really going to honor this. I can’t really marry this dude. I don’t even remember what he looks like.
He had a Myspace page, and his picture on his Myspace page was so damn little, you couldn’t see what this motherfucker looked like. I called him up, still crying after talking to my dad.
Tiffany: “Man I’m so grateful. You found him. I don’t know if I can honor our agreement. I don’t even remember what you really look like. The pictures you got online is wack.”
Ex-Husband: “We going to see each other. We going to see each other.”
I didn’t believe him. He was across the country from me.
We still kept talking on the phone. I booked a movie in New Orleans like the next day, and two weeks after that I was in New Orleans.
I always talked to him on the phone, but I never told him where I was in New Orleans. I never told him what hotel, the name of the movie, or anything.
At that point in time, I was very superstitious. It was mainly because of Kevin Hart. He gave me this advice as I started to get going:
Kevin Hart: “Don’t be telling people everything that you’re doing, because motherfuckers will try to make you fail. Just do your shit. You ain’t gotta tell everybody you got a movie. Just do the fucking movie, Tiffany. Like don’t tell people where you’re at, because they’re going to come for you. They’re going to come for you. Because people will be trying to do bad stuff. They think bad thoughts, and they jealous, and they will try to fuck you up.”
So I never told him what the name of the movie was, what kind of part I was playing, nothing. I just said “I’m working,” that’s it. “I’m working. I’m in New Orleans working.”
One night, I was out drinking at the Cats Meow all tipsy, and he called my phone.
Tiffany: “When are you coming to see me?”
Ex-Husband: “I’ll come see you right now.”
Tiffany: “Yeah, right. You ain’t coming to see me.”
We got off the phone, and I went back to drinking and didn’t think nothing of it. I woke up at five in the morning to start getting ready for the movie. I was hungover and getting ready to go to set. I was braiding my hair in these little crackhead braids, so I could play this drug addict in the movie. I got a knock on my door. I thought, I didn’t order no food.
I opened the door, and there was a chubby, plain-looking guy in a polo shirt, just staring at me like he was expecting me to say something.
Tiffany: “Who are you?”
Ex-Husband: “It’s me. It’s Ex-Husband.”
Tiffany: “How do you know what room I’m in? How did you know to come here?”
Ex-Husband: “I just looked you up. It’s not hard. I called the front desk, they said what room you’re in. Here I am.”
That motherfucker drove seven hours. He drove all the way from Atlanta for me. And all I’m thinking to myself is, This motherfucker is ugly. He’s fat. He is not hot, and he is just not very attractive.
Later, he said the same thing to me. He said, “When I first saw you at the door, I was thinking, This bitch has got skinny. She looks like she on drugs. She wore the fuck out. I’m not feeling this at all.”
Yeah, but I was TRYING to dress like a crackhead, for the movie. He wasn’t trying to be fat and ugly, he just was.
Tiffany: “Well, you can stay in the living room part. You can sleep on the couch. It folds out, if you want to go to sleep. I’m about to go to work.”
I went to work, came back to the room. He’d cleaned up the room, bought flowers and stuff. He took me out to a really nice restaurant. The next day, he took me shopping.
He didn’t try to fuck me, he didn’t try to kiss me or nothing. So I started thinking he was gay, because why you buying me stuff, and taking me to nice restaurants, and not trying to fuck me?
Then he went back to Georgia. The next weekend, I drunk-dialed him, and he showed right back up the next day, and he took me out again. That’s when Harry Potter was hot, so I got him to buy me the whole Harry Potter book series. I got him to buy me some stuff from Victoria’s Secret. I was like, If he’s gay, he can just buy me everything. Fuck it.
I don’t mind hanging out with gay dudes. I just really thought he was gay. Then the following weekend, it was his birthday.