By the next morning, I knew just what to do. I went to the grocery store for a six-pack of Japanese beer, came back to the room, and sat at the desk. I opened my laptop and a bottle of beer, plugged in my headphones, pressed play on a playlist filled with Wayne’s songs, and began to write. How to Make Love to a Martian was born in that cramped hotel room, in the middle of a series of crises, at a time when I had no idea what the future held for me. With all that was swirling around—the rejection, the wandering, the instability of my life and relationships—I honed in on the one person I feared losing the most.
Wayne.
The idea of someone you love being sick and the possibility of them dying, today or any day, somehow manages to override any fear, worry, or doubt you may feel for yourself. My heart was filled, not with sorrow for my own circumstances, but with love and appreciation for Wayne, now more than ever, and I had to write it down. I had to leave it behind for someone to read, so others would know that Wayne and I were here and that we loved. Ironically, it was the hateful words of my other lover that broke my writer’s block and sent me on this journey to recap my five-and-a-half-year relationship with Wayne.
The words poured out as the music played. I couldn’t stop my fingers from hitting the keys at eighty words a minute. I entered a zone, a parallel place in my mind; I stared at the screen, barely ever looking down at the keyboard. I was writing for the first time in four years and I didn’t want it to stop! I was obsessed with the book for three days, almost forgetting the world around me until I received a call from David, the manager of an apartment property about which I’d inquired online. It was the only thing that could make me stop writing.
I made an appointment to see an available unit in David’s building the following day. It was about two weeks before Thanksgiving and I promised my son we would have a place to live before the holidays. I prayed to God and begged Him to help us find a home by then and I never doubted it would happen, being careful not to override my faith with fear, just as Deneen taught me. I wanted God to know I trusted Him and no longer wanted to fight against His will. From that point on, I only wanted what was best for me.
So, I kept my spirits high and my faith higher.
The small courtyard-style apartment building was perfect. As David and I entered the breezeway on our way to the unit, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace and tranquility. Lush gardens and bubbling fountains calmed me instantly. The suburban location of the building was just what we needed and the price of the unit was spot on. There was nothing about the building or the unit that didn’t fit my hopes or expectations. So, despite my poor credit and recent eviction, I confidently filled out an application. David ran my credit and checked my references. I kept a good relationship with one of the managers of my prior apartment complex; though I’d broken my lease, she didn’t know why, as I’d cited my reason for leaving as the recent flea and roach infestation in my unit that had gone unchecked. So, she gave me a good reference. My credit wasn’t the best, but David overlooked that and focused instead on the six- figure income I made the year before and claimed on my taxes. I waited on pins and needles for days, working to get David everything he needed to fulfill my application. Then, just one week before Thanksgiving, my application was approved!
But there was just one problem—I was already nearly out of money, again. I gave David the $500 deposit and I still had to write a check for $1,900 more by my move-in date. Then there was the cost of the movers, the closing bill for my storage unit, and the money I had to pay to turn on the utilities. I needed help. So, begrudgingly, and out of other options, I called Bruce.
“I think I’m going to get a hotel room at the Intercontinental. Wanna meet me there?” Bruce proposed. He never came right out and said what he was doing. He always beat around the bush and acted as if what was going on between us was something other than what it was. I really just wanted him to say, “Oh. You need money? Cool. Come fuck me and I’ll give it to you.” But the nature of our relationship wasn’t something I think he wanted to admit or even say out loud. Some people are too ashamed to admit what they do, but not enough to stop doing it. This time, however, I had a trick up my sleeve.
Naturally, I wouldn’t leave Naiim alone in the hotel to go pick up the money from Bruce at another hotel way across town. What loving mother would? So, he and I piled into the car and made the trek across town in rush-hour traffic. It took us nearly two hours to get there. On the way, Bruce continuously called to check on my progress and I alerted him I was inching ever closer, never mentioning I was with Naiim.
I pulled into the hotel’s drive, and as the valet opened my car door, I assured him, “You can leave it here. I’m just picking up a package and I won’t be long.” Naiim and I made our way through the hotel’s lobby, into the elevator, and to Bruce’s room. I knocked lightly, and as Bruce answered the door, his eyes opened wide to find me standing there with my son. I smirked.
“I can’t stay long,” I said as we entered the room. “Valet is holding my car and Naiim needs to get to bed.” Naiim stayed close to the door, his intuition telling him Bruce was up to no good with his mother.
“Come in, Naiim. Have a seat!” Bruce said.
“I’m good,” Naiim insisted.
“Yeah, I wasn’t about to leave him in the hotel by himself. It’s a derelict hotel with all sorts of questionable people coming in and out of there. It wouldn’t be right,” I explained, still smirking. I had him between a rock and hard place. If he refused to give me the money now, he would essentially be admitting that our relationship was based solely on sex and that if he couldn’t have sex with me, he wouldn’t help me—in front of my son. And he couldn’t very well demand I have sex with him when my son was in the other room.
Naiim and I only stayed for a few minutes as Bruce peeled $2,000 from a large stack of hundred-dollar bills and handed it to me. I knew this wouldn’t be the last time I had to deal with Bruce, but at least for the moment, he wouldn’t be allowed to take advantage of me. Back in the elevator, as Naiim and I headed back down to valet, I smiled. I hadn’t won the war, but this small victory was mine.
I didn’t have to break my promise to Naiim.
He and I moved into our new apartment the day before Thanksgiving.
It seemed as if my luck was beginning to take a turn for the better. Still, I was far from fully recovered from the damage done over the past five and a half years. Now that Naiim and I were in our new place, I had to fight hard to keep it, and since I was still receiving rejections from the nearly thirty publishers to which I submitted book proposals, I would still need Bruce to help me survive. Even though my writer’s block had lifted and I was in the middle of writing How to Make Love to a Martian, it wasn’t a book I wanted to sell to a publisher to have printed and promoted around the world. Martian was a very intimate, personal project, and though I wanted to share it with my fans and Wayne’s, I didn’t want to profit greatly from it, especially at a time when his health was so delicate.
Instead, I was submitting something less personal.
Not every publisher turned me down outright. There were a few who may not have wanted to publish the safe and practical relationship guide I submitted but who were sure to respond with requests for what they really wanted from me. As one publisher asked, “Can she submit a list of men?”
A list of men.
There I was, having fought for my life for over five years—having been dragged through the mud by an abusive husband, having fallen apart at the seams, starved myself, and struggled to break free—and when it finally seemed there may be a way out from under the rubble of what used to be my life, I was being asked for a list of men!
What kind of list did they want? A list of the cabdrivers I’d met during my travels? Or maybe they wanted a list of all the waiters and maître d’s that had filled my empty wine glasses over the years. My gardener, pool man, gynecologist? What exactly were they asking me?
My agent tried his best to make the request seem less insulting than it was, but it was clear—the gossip and rumors that had been swirling around about me for the past handful of years were affecting my ability to get work. I wanted to write about something real, something true to my life and important to me. I was no longer a twentysomething with a long history to tell. I was well into my thirties, a divorcée and single mother, a woman who had lost everything she worked so hard to achieve, a domestic abuse survivor, and now a starving author, dying to work.
I could have sold out and given in to what those publishers wanted from me but I figured I’d done that before. From the very beginning, I’d given my publishers and even a sector of my readers what they wanted, going against everything I wanted for my life and career. Confessions wasn’t meant to be my first book; I was pitching The Vixen Manual. I didn’t want to write The Vixen Diaries; I was still rooting for The Vixen Manual! And with Diaries, I felt forced to reveal the name of the character in Confessions known as Papa, after my editor threatened I’d have to return the $250,000 advance if I didn’t. Then there was SatisFaction, the book I had nothing to do with. I hated the topic, the title and subtitle, and the cover, and I didn’t even write it! So much of my career had been built on what other people wanted of me, and at the end of it all, I was the only one who’d lost. Everything had been so contrived and choreographed. There were dozens of people with their hands in my books, making decisions without me, and my writing had become less about me and more about satisfying the machine. I was determined to move forward in my career and to rebuild my life, but do so with integrity and by writing only about the things that were important me, staying true to my art and to myself.
So, I turned down those publishers who wanted this phantom list of men they thought I’d been collecting over the years. As I grew older, I grew wiser, and my relationships became more substantial. Though I wasn’t living the sort of wild, sex-crazed life the public imagined, I did have very important people in my life that I wanted to protect. My private life actually became private. Still, there had to be something I was willing to write that would interest a publisher.
All I needed was one.
In the meantime, I continued to depend on Bruce, humbling myself to his possessive, demeaning treatment of me. By December 2012, just three months after my residual checks had come in and three months until the next ones would arrive, I was completely out of money and was back to leaning on Bruce to help me with rent, groceries, and monthly bills. On the third of December, he asked if I needed help and I admitted I did before he agreed to take care of my monthly expenses. Days went by and then weeks. Soon, it was the twenty-sixth of the month and my new landlord was growing increasingly impatient. I called and texted Bruce for three weeks straight but he never responded. This was his usual game—to offer help and then keep me waiting, begging for money.
I was practicing faith and patience and praying but by the end of the month, I’d had enough with the psychological and financial abuse. If Bruce really wanted to help me, he should have done so by then and not had me waiting and begging for weeks. Fed up, I sent him a text message.
I’ve been calling you for three weeks and I haven’t heard from you. You offered to help me and then disappeared! No matter how badly I need the help, I’m not going to continue to beg for it. Either you’re going to do it or you’re not. But don’t have me depending on you all this time if you’re not going to come through. I could have been working on another way to get it done instead of trying to track you down for almost a month!
It didn’t take long for Bruce to respond. After not hearing from him in all that time, it took exactly one irate text message to get him to answer me. He called my phone right away and as I answered, all I could hear was yelling. We bantered back and forth for several minutes, pleading our cases. Whatever he was saying went in one ear and out the other and his words were quickly forgotten, except for a few.
“How do I know you’re not going to do the same shit you did to me at my other apartment? You knew I needed the rent and you knew how much I needed, and you promised to help me but you purposely shorted me! That’s how I wound up getting evicted! And now this! Now you want me to fucking beg for the help you offered me? How much of this shit do you expect me to take?” I yelled, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“Well, I wasn’t about to pay for some other motherfucker to lay his head in your apartment, and what you need to realize is that sometimes you have to beg for what you want when you’re at someone else’s mercy!” Bruce responded, sternly.
And there it was.
Finally, Bruce admitted that he shorted me on purpose. In that moment, he proved how much pleasure he got from dismantling my life and from my begging for his help. His words rang in my ears, playing themselves back over and over again. This was it; this was where it had all led me. Silently, I vowed to never forget those words and to hold them against Bruce, always. But that was not the moment to buck against him; I needed his money too much. So, I grit my teeth, bore the abuse, and did whatever it took to take care of my son and me.