I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up (2 page)

My region was known as the “goal post,” since it had never made goal when it came to sales. I was the youngest sales manager in the history of the
Times
, and the first one to be black. I guess they thought I could do something different. But apparently some of the staff didn’t
want
to do something different. When I walked into my office on my very first day, there was one of those black mannequin heads for displaying wigs. In case I didn’t get the message, the note attached said,
GO HOME NIGGER
. I wasn’t shocked. Hell, I’d been called a nigger all my life. What shocks me is when people think we’re a post-racial society. Obama’s election was fueled by his race. The opposition to him is fueled by race—and the deference to him by his own people is also fueled by race.

I stepped out of my office and called out to the entire sales floor. “I don’t know who you all think you’re scaring,” I said, “but I’m not leaving. I’m not scared. I’m going to step out. When I come back, I want this wig head off my desk.”

I did just like I said, and when I came back, the wig head was off my desk. The
Times
sent its security force down from L.A. to investigate. “I got it,” I told them. “I’m fine.” And I
was
fine. I had a kid to take care of, and a new house. I just had to hustle that much harder. Three months after I started, the area made goal for the first time. For the next year straight, we kept making goal. As a reward, the paper sent me on free trips—with all these old white
Times
dudes who hated me. It was a gas.

I was psyched that I could come through after Ron took a chance on promoting me. But he never got excited. “Don’t get drunk on the numbers,” he told me. “Don’t ever believe it. You’re never as good as you think you are, or as bad as people say you are.” Ron always had these little sayings. It was like Yoda and Confucius had a kid who happened to be a middle-aged white dude.

This is around the time when I started doing stand-up. I would do my job in Ventura, then drive to host comedy shows in the suit and tie I wore for work—and I never stopped wearing them to this day. The thing is, these comedy clubs were not in white Ventura or in ivory Lompoc. I had to drive about three hours each way to get there. Obviously it was going to catch up to me at some point—which is why I passed out onstage one night, between Jamie Foxx and a bunch of other young comedians.

Immediately they took me to the doctor. “You didn’t pass out,” the doctor told me. “You fell asleep. You’re not getting any REM sleep, and you’re exhausted. You need to take some time off of work to rest.”

I was a manager so I still got my salary—and still did my shows. I came back to the doctor after a while, still out of it. “You
still
haven’t gotten your sleep,” he told me. “I’m going to take you off another couple of weeks.”

I got put on long-term disability at work, which meant that I’d be able to collect my salary for six months as long as I checked in with the doctor. That gave me time to focus on my stand-up career. Even though I was still getting a check from the
Times
, LaDonna and I now had a new kid to feed. Buying a house had taken all of our money. The only place that was regularly hiring black comics at the time was not-so-white Atlanta.

One day, Ron called my wife to check up on me when I was across the country performing. LaDonna is the worst fucking liar ever. She tried to make excuses, but Ron saw right through it. Hell, he saw through my college-letter bullshit, so LaDonna didn’t really stand a chance. “Darryl’s not there, is he?”

“No!” LaDonna blurted out—and hung up the phone.

When I came back to work to report what was happening with my disability, Ron took me aside. He knew that I had been doing
stand-up, and that I was just trying to do what I could to launch my career while taking care of my family at the same time. He knew all this, and he understood. “I’m going to keep your benefits alive for a year,” he told me, “and I’m going to keep your salary alive for a year.” He did all that and more. My bonus should have $20,000, but Ron upped it to $30,000 for making goal. If there were any issues at work, Ron ran interference for me while I was gone pursuing my dreams. That window of time was what I needed to make it as a successful stand-up comedian, and the rest was history—or so I thought.

In 2005, I was playing a gig in Canyon Country. Ron came with his new wife. I hadn’t seen him in years, so it was really cool to catch up after all that time had passed. When he went to get us a round of drinks, his wife could not help but gush. “He is so
proud
of you,” she told me.

I admit it, that made me smile. “Man, that is so nice.”

“You know, he lost his job because he gave you that bonus.”

I could not believe what she was telling me. “
What
? He did?”

“Yeah. He got fired because he gave you that discretionary bonus and because he kept your benefits alive for that long. Then he got divorced. He totally hit rock bottom. It was a while before he got back on his feet.”

I was in shock. When Ron came back to the table with our drinks, I had to find out what happened. “Ron, my man, did you lose your gig because of
me
?”

“Forget all that. Let’s talk about something else.” And that was that.

From then on, Ron and I stayed in touch and would talk on the phone from time to time. Eventually, though, I had to find out the truth. “Man,” I said, “I gotta ask you why you did that.”

“Why I did what?”

“Why did you jeopardize your career, your marriage, your
everything
for me?”

“Well, first off,” he said, “if I had known that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have done it. But I just knew you had something. I
knew
you did.”

“Man, I can’t thank you enough. I was grateful then and I am grateful now.”

Then Ron, the middle-aged white dude who happened to be the son of Yoda and Confucius, dropped another one of his sayings. “Every time you’re onstage,” he told me, “you have the obligation to tell the truth. Be truthful, be straightforward. Never be afraid for people not to like you.”

Even though Ron had gotten hired back at the
Times
and had found a new wife, for a while the dude had lost it all because he believed in me. That’s why I take what I do so seriously and say what I mean and mean what I say. That’s why it’s not enough for me to
ask
why. It may sound funny, but to me this shit ain’t no joke. When I’m onstage, when I’m on the radio, when I’m doing an interview, I have to call it like I see it.

Somehow our communities have gotten fixated on this idea that things have actually gotten better. It’s to the point where they act like it’s a completely different world. We so want to live in the future and not the present that it has warped our coping mechanisms. I would argue that those old rules would often still serve us well. I try to pass on those same lessons to
my
kids, but I’ve got someone fighting me at every turn: my wife. She lets them do whatever the fuck they want, even though whatever I’ve said has been validated time and time again.

When my son, Kyle, was about nineteen years old, he got into the habit of wearing his pants hanging off his ass.
He
thought he was so cool. But
I
knew he was sending out the wrong kind of message. “Boy,” I told him, “you better stop dressing like that!”

“Aw, Dad!” he said. “I voted for Obama!” He genuinely felt that now that Obama was president, we had reached the promised land. I even have friends who say Obama is the best president in history. The only standard where
that’s
true is on the color scale.

I knew that my son would find out the hard way that that wasn’t true. “All right,” I said. “You’ll see.”

So of course one day Kyle
did
see. There’s an exclusive jewelry store in Los Angeles that I have a very good relationship with. The owner has been over to my house, and we eat together and we drink together all the time. Our families have known each other for over fifteen years.

I sold them a watch, so I told my son to go pick up the receipt and the money. He walked up to that fancy jewelry store, dressed
exactly
like I’d been telling him not to dress. When the security guard saw him, he immediately pulled a gun on Kyle and put him on the ground. The store had had two armed robberies in the preceding couple of months, and the guard was sure this was going to be the third. Why else would a young black kid be in there, dressed like that?

When things finally got sorted out, my jeweler friend called me. The man was in tears. He felt
horrible
. He could not apologize enough. I wasn’t particularly happy about it, but I couldn’t get mad at the guy, either. My wife, on the other hand, got all worked up. “I can’t believe they would do that to my son!” she yelled.

Well, I could. I not only believed it, but I’d predicted it. Maybe I didn’t predict the exact
circumstance
, but I knew some shit was going to go down at some point for my boy. It was inevitable.

When Kyle got home, his mother took time to cry with him and tell him how insulted and hurt she was. After they were done with that spectacle, I called him up to my room. “It’s a shame,” I told my son, “that you got a gun pulled on you. But
most
motherfuckers I know have had guns pulled on them.
You
lived through it. I feel bad that it happened to you, but now you know that
I don’t just tell you shit for my health
.”

“I’m a good kid!” Kyle insisted.

“The world don’t know that. The only people that know you’re a good kid is
me
and your mother. That’s it! That’s all you’ve got. When you look back on this day, realize that you should
listen
to your dad. I’m not trying to stop you from living. I’m trying to
get you
to live. I
want
you to be where you want to be. It’s my gig to help you get there in spite of how fucking stupid you are!”

I want to raise my son to face the world as it is, not the world he wants it to be. My son didn’t fall off a bed or hurt himself
physically
. But I’m sure he’ll remember that lesson just like I remember why I got that scar above my eye. My son actually learned from it, and that felt great to me. There is nothing that makes a parent angrier than when your kids make the wrong choices, after you told them it’s a mistake. And there’s nothing that makes a parent
prouder
than those extremely rare occurrences when your children do actually listen to you.

I’d always told my son that if he got pulled over by the police and asked questions, to be as respectful as possible. I reminded him about what every black man knows, to keep his hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. That way, the cops know immediately that you’re housebroken. You get the rules and know how things are supposed to be. “But if the police ask you anything that you think is beyond your capacity,” I explained to Kyle, “you say two things.
First, ‘Sir, I know you’ve got a job to do and I respect you.’ Second, ‘I’m not going to say one other thing. Call my father.’ I don’t care what they say to you after that, you don’t say one other thing. I don’t give a fuck if you’re forty years old when this happens. I don’t care. Because boy, you didn’t have these experiences. You don’t know this shit. You live in a world where you think everything is great. But that world doesn’t exist. It’s cute, it’s a great notion. The brochure is a motherfucker—but I ain’t ever been there.”

Sure enough, at one a.m. one night Kyle got pulled over coming home from a club. “Have you been drinking?” the policeman said.

“No,” my son told him. “I don’t drink.”

“Where are you coming from?”

“The club.”

“Well, where have you been tonight? Because we had this report …” That’s what the cops always say. There’s
always
some mysterious motherfucking report.

To his great credit, my son said, “Sir, I know you’ve got a job to do and I respect you. I answered every question I could. I’m not going to answer another question. I want you to call my father.”

Society will tell you that the more you talk to the police, the better shit will be.
That’s not true
. That’s the kind of shit they tell you on
Ironside
: “If you don’t have anything to hide, why hide anything?” That ain’t real. Motherfuckers get in legal trouble for talking too much, not talking too
little
. Don’t most people
in life
get in trouble for talking too much? When has shutting the fuck up and minding your own business not worked for
anyone
? In marriage, in school, in church, in the library, at the restaurant:
Shut the fuck up
! Your dumb ass might even learn something.

“I don’t feel comfortable,” my son repeated. “You can call my father.”

After twenty minutes of this, the police let him go. They didn’t even bother calling me. My son raced to our house at precisely the speed limit. When he found me, he told me how elated he was that what I said worked.

“See?” I said. “I’m not telling you shit that’s going to fuck you up.”