Priceless Inspirations (5 page)

I don’t remember why I called him that first time, but I did. Then it got to be like a habit. I would hit him on the pager when he came from school. He’d call and we’d talk for hours, talking about everything you can think of.

That’s how we discovered that we’re related-sort of. My aunt’s husband’s daughter’s (my cousin by marriage) uncle was Dream’s stepfather. You got it? My cousin-in-law and Dream were cousins by marriage. Or something like that. We used to call each other “cousin” because his stepfather was sort of my uncle. My cousin-in-law even lived in Dream’s neighborhood. I’d go over there and spend some time at her house, then I’d meet Dream and we’d spend a little time talking and kissing. He was very affectionate.

Even then, I didn’t know he was as well-known as he was. At school, I had all of these girls running up in my face asking me, “Are you dating Dream?” or “Are you dating Wayne?” Depending on which question they asked, they got different answers. If they asked me if I was dating Dream, I said “yes.” If they asked me if I was dating “Wayne” I said “no.” I didn’t know they were the same guy. It even cost me my friendship with a girl that I was tight with. She had been dating this guy named “Wayne” and she wanted to
keep
dating him ‘cause he was paying her mama’s bills and buying her all kinds of stuff that she was constantly bragging to her friends about. When she asked me if I was seeing him, I said “no.” Then, when she saw me with him, she stopped speaking to me. She thought I was being dirty. I honestly didn’t know him as Wayne. I called him Dream. To this day I call him Dream.

When I realized that Dream was the one paying that girl’s family’s bills, it was the first time I realized that he had
real
money. I knew he always had cash, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. He was always trying to buy me presents, things like designer backpacks to match my tennis shoes and that kind of thing. He bought me and my cousin stuff all the time, but he never said much about his money. He didn’t say, “I just signed a record deal.” He didn’t say anything. He just kept buying me stuff.

When Keith found out that Dream was spending time with me, he only had one question for Dream--“You have sex with her?”

Dream didn’t answer that question. He was a man. Keith had no business asking. He was a boy.

Toya’s Priceless Gem: A real man doesn’t talk about who he did what with. Only boys need to brag
.

When I heard about what Keith had asked Dream about me, I was mad. I was even madder when they became friends after that. Then it went around school that I dated and had sex with guys’ friends, and that I was just a jump-off who would go from boy to boy until I had dated everyone in the crew. The haters were running me down constantly, saying spiteful stuff about me. The truth was that Dream and Keith hadn’t even known each other until the day Keith walked up to Dream and asked him if I’d slept with him.

All the talk and Keith and the haters actually just brought me and Dream closer together.

A little while later, he invited me on a trip to Houston with him as a part of Cash Money Record’s promotion tour of his ħ’rst album with
Hot Boys
. I told my Aunt Lisa a big old lie. I told her that I was staying with my cousin Demetria for the weekend, and then I boarded the plane without so much as a dime of my own in my pocket.

It was stupid and dangerous. He could have gotten bored with me and left me there, stranded. He could have gotten mad at me and dumped me somewhere with no money and no way to get home.

At the time, I wasn’t worried. Dream always took care of me, and he had promised to pay for everything. He was proving himself to be everything I’d ever wanted in a man-kind and caring, charming and sweet, thoughtful and loving, ambitious and outgoing. He was young, only 15, but so was I. I believed in my heart he was the one for me. I believed that at last, I’d met a real man. I believed it so completely that I didn’t care that when I got back from Houston, my aunt had called the police on me.

She found out when she caught me in a lie. I had told her that I was spending the night at my cousin Demetria’s house, but then she called over there and Demetria’s mom told her that we were in Houston. She didn’t know I’d told my aunt that lie. Demetria’s mom really thought my aunt knew where I was.

When I got home I was busted. The whole neighborhood was standing in front of my house, along with the police. Aunt Lisa had called them to get them tell me not to ever leave town without my guardian’s permission again.

It was a big mess. I was angry with Aunt Lisa. I didn’t feel like all that was necessary, but now I understand. If my daughter did that to me, I’d be sick with worry.

I didn’t see it that way when I did it. All that mattered to me was being with Dream. We were young and we both changed as we grew older. Now, we’re just good, good friends. The sweetness, the gentleness and the kindness that Dream showed me gave me a new model for what I wanted and needed from a man.

Toya’s Priceless Gem: A real man can be any age. He’s the one who listens to you, encourages you and doesn’t pressure you
.

The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t

Because of who Dream was and how fast his career caught fire, there were lots of girls-girls who liked him, girls he liked back, girls who wanted to have sex with him, girls who he had sex with. In high school, I used to get into fights over this, sometimes really serious ones.

It was a mistake.

I can’t say you should never fight. You can’t let people punk you, and sometimes fighting is the only way to defend yourself. If someone puts their hands on you, then you have to defend yourself. My attitude made it worse. Instead of avoiding battles with these girls, unless someone actually put their hands on me, my attitude was the opposite. If some girl starting talking about fighting me, I’d be like, “Okay, bring it.”

I entertained those girls, and of course, that was all the encouragement they needed.

Once, I got suspended from high school for a whole year after a fight with a girl who was nearly a foot taller than me and at least fifty pounds heavier.

It started over some words this girl had written about me in the restroom--“whore” and “dick sucker” and other really nasty stuff. I knew she’d done it because I heard her talking about what she’d written while I was in the stall. When I came out of the bathroom to where Dream and Keith were waiting for me in the hallway, I said something about her and what she’d written. Loud. Loud enough for the girl to hear.

“What did you say?” the girl said.

I repeated myself, with attitude. I knew where this was going to lead, but I wasn’t backing down.

I said, “I don’t appreciate you and your girl writing that stuff about me!” She rolled her neck at me. “And what you going to do about it?”

I hit her.

Her girl jumped in it, then my friend got in it, then my cousin joined in. It turned into a brawl right there in the hallway before the teachers and the security people at the school broke it up. I came out of it with a black eye, welts and scratches all over my face.

Keith and Dream just stood there. Neither one of them tried to break it up. They didn’t try to stop it from happening. Why should they? They thought it was funny. They thought it was cool to see a bunch of girls get into it over them. They liked it. It made them look like they were worth fighting for, I guess, so they didn’t do anything.

I got put out for a full year. I remember going home that day with my face all bloody and swollen. I was with Uncle Nat again and he just shook his head.

“Why you gonna let these girls make you ugly?” he said sadly. “Ain’t no boy worth that.”

Of course, he was right. I wish I could tell you that I listened to him; I didn’t.

I got in lots of fights through high school, almost all over Dream. Most of them could have been avoided if I’d had a different attitude, and if I’d been less “bring it on” and more “I don’t care.” They would not have happened if I’d realized that any man who wanted me to fight over him wasn’t really a “man” at all. Since I entertained it, and because I was ready to fight at the slightest comment or look, I ended up fighting all the time.

After a while, even Dream didn’t like me fighting. He got tired of seeing me all scratched up and bloody. I felt like I had to do it. I felt like fighting for him was one way I could prove my love.

I was wrong.

It was my mistake to think that fighting other girls would make Dream love me more. It was my mistake to think that “winning” in a fight would make me a winner in my relationship, when the two really didn’t have anything to do with each other. It was my mistake to believe that I could “fix” the relationship by fighting the other girls Dream was involved with, when what would have fixed it would have been to let Dream go when it was clear he wanted to be with girls who weren’t me.

Toya’s Priceless Gem: When you’re fighting for love, you’ve already lost it
.

SEX AND LOVE

Like most girls, I thought that if I had sex with a guy, it would mean that we were in love. I really didn’t know that sex and love were two very different things. Sometimes sex and love have everything to do with each other, and sometimes they don’t. Not understanding that sex and love are different, especially for guys, is one of the ways that girls get their feelings hurt.

I had sex with a guy I loved and got pregnant with his child. I watched his feelings for me change, just like I was afraid they would. I watched him cheat on me, or least have sex with other girls, even though he said he still loved me.

I got my feelings hurt again and again, because I trusted the words “I love you.” Every time another girl showed up, claiming to have had sex with my man the betrayal went right through me. How could someone who said they loved me treat me this way?

My mistake was that a part of me believed it was possible for someone to both love me and treat me badly. After all, my mother and father said they loved me, and they gave me up.

Finally, after years of heartache and pain, I learned that while sex and love aren’t the same, a man who really loves you doesn’t hurt you again and again, unless you give him permission by taking him back again and again.

If you’re caught up in a lot of drama with a guy, I can save you a lot of trouble and pain if you can follow this hard, little priceless gem:

Just stop
.

Stop feeding into it. Stop chasing him. Stop fighting over him. If he loves you, he’ll come back. If he doesn’t come back, you’ve got to move on.

How do I know?

Been there, done that, and made the mistakes to prove it.

Love and Sex

I let Dream break my virginity during Mardi Gras. It hurt so much that I almost wished I hadn’t done it, but by then I knew that Dream was the one I’d give myself to.

I probably could have waited. Dream wasn’t pressuring me, but almost every girl I knew was already having sex. I felt like I was missing out on something. I worried that, with all the other girls being sexually active, I wouldn’t be able to hold on to Dream unless I grew up a bit.

I know now that was the first mistake, doing something because everyone else was doing it and not because I wanted to do it or because I thought it was right for me. I hate to say it, but now that I’m a mother and my own daughter is getting to that age, I think it’s good to wait, but if you can’t wait, use protection.

I had also been lucky. A lot of girls my age had been molested when they were younger. I knew girls who had been forced to have sex by men in their families—cousins, uncles, stepfathers and even brothers. Others had been raped by their mother’s boyfriends or by guys who they thought they were safe with. My own mother was raped by her sister’s husband and though I didn’t know it at the time, my brother Walter was
that
man’s sons, not my father’s. When I finally learned about that, I also understood why there was so much tension on my mother’s side of my family. There were a lot secrets over there.