I’d come to know Aeron as a kind, gentle man with a propensity to love and comfort. We were quite the couple by the time Aeron moved in, and he’d already brought me home to meet his mother, brother, sister, and extended family. Though it was my first time meeting his family, it wasn’t my first time hearing about them. Aeron and I had a few mutual friends who had told stories about Aeron and his family in passing and who warned me about them once he and I began dating. Word around town and in the entertainment industry was that his mother was crazy and that he was a “mama’s boy.”
It didn’t take long for me to find both rumors to be factual.
His mother, Mona, was nice enough upon meeting me and she did a very good job at befriending me, quickly. His sister, Samantha, and brother, Jonathan, were darling, calm spirits and the complete opposite of their erratic, spotlight-craving brother. I adored both of them, as well as their significant others. Jonathan’s girlfriend and mother of his child wasted no time, however, pulling me aside to affirm all the wacky stories I’d heard about Aeron’s mother and his emotionally incestuous relationship with her. When Aeron’s father left the family over twenty years before, Aeron became the man of the house. As his mother’s eldest son, as well as an impressive breadwinner since his first film role at the age of nine, Aeron replaced his father in the home and in his mother’s heart. Soon, I would realize I wasn’t just his girlfriend—I was his mother’s competition.
As the end of August approached, Aeron and I had only been together just shy of two months, but in that short amount of time so much happened. We battled my chronic bronchitis, Jonah was born, and we were pushed together by an intruder. I continued to carry on a relationship with Wayne, finding it impossible to give up one for the other. So I juggled my love affair with the rapper along with my new family life in Los Angeles while helping to care financially for Aeron’s newborn son, Jonah, in Chicago, sending money and boxes of supplies often. Aeron wasn’t much of an earner, his acting career having hit a slump; therefore his responsibilities would have to become my responsibilities if I wanted to keep him in my life and close to me.
In a nutshell, I had to pay him to stay.
I didn’t want Aeron away from me for too long. I grew accustomed to having him around the house, and in no time, my houseboy became my boyfriend and we were making plans for the future. Now I didn’t have to be alone on birthdays and holidays. I had someone with whom I could share my actual life, someone with whom I could be normal and forget all the fame and privilege I’d acquired in the couple of years since Confessions of a Video Vixen was published. I was creating a bubble in which to live and Aeron was a big part of it; I was willing to do whatever it took to keep that bubble from bursting.
So, I paid off Aeron’s smaller debts and gave him money and supplies to send to Chicago. If Mona needed money, I gave it to him to give to her. It felt like I was supporting everything and everyone around me, all in hopes of keeping my bubble intact—all in hopes of being normal and creating the family I never had. With me, Aeron needed for nothing. He lived in a million-dollar house on a hill with access to my cars and my money. There was a maid, a pool man, and a gardener to take care of the grounds, and there was me—always making him feel loved. All he had to do was stay good. But soon the real Aeron would rear up and show himself to be far uglier than his clean-cut, church-boy public image or at-home caregiver persona. There was a dark, evil man living inside of him and it would only take a conversation about Wayne to bring it out.
Aeron and I made plans to spend the night of August 24 celebrating my twenty-ninth birthday. We enjoyed dinner at Yamashiro, a legendary Japanese restaurant high in the Hollywood Hills. The night was a perfect mixture of laughter, kisses, and sake. It was going so well, I tipped the bathroom attendant one hundred dollars on the way out of the restroom. I was happy. After finishing dinner and drinks, we motioned for the valet to bring Aeron’s car. As we waited, we walked through the Japanese garden just in front of the restaurant, which overlooked all of Hollywood and Los Angeles. The night air was chilly so Aeron wrapped me in his jacket and his large, strong, manly arms.
This was normalcy and safety at its best.
We were on our way to the W Hotel in Westwood, a suburb of West Los Angeles, when Aeron received a call from his brother, Jonathan, who was working as a security guard at a strip club on the unsavory east side of town. Aeron asked if I minded making a detour. The night was going so well, I saw no reason to protest. So we hopped into Aeron’s car and made the fifteen-minute drive to the east side to meet his brother. When we arrived, Jonathan greeted us, showed us to a booth in the nearly empty club, and sat with us.
Soon, and for whatever reason, the conversation turned to music. Aeron began to bash Wayne and his work, already fully aware of my relationship with the superstar rapper. Aeron was part of a musical family, each and every one of them talented but none of them successful. He played local dives and had been in the studio since I met him back in 2000, trying to break into the music industry and become a recording star. He hated being referred to as an actor, even though acting had always been his bread and butter.
Basically, Aeron was jealous of Wayne, not just because of his success in the music industry but because of his relationship with me. As hard as he tried to steal me away from Wayne, there was nothing he could do, and as much as I wanted to be a part of this normal couple and this bullshit normal conversation where the have-nots hate on those who have accomplished more than they ever would in their lifetimes, I couldn’t sit by and let anyone talk badly about my love. No matter what, I was still in love with Wayne, and more than that, I respected and revered him. Jonathan defied Aeron, making it clear that he was a fan of Wayne and his music—as did I. However, my protest was taken more harshly.
“That noise Lil’ Wayne is making is not real music. That shit is garbage. That man can’t even play an instrument but he’s calling himself a musician!”
“Actually, he does play an instrument and it doesn’t matter whether you think he’s a musician or not; he sells more records than you’ll ever sell with that old-head music you like to make. Nobody’s listening to that shit you create. It’s a new millennium. Get into it.” As a struggling musician, Aeron was desperate to be appreciated and admired as an artist by the world and by me, his girl.
But I never could.
Aeron rose from the table in a huff, walked away, and stood alongside the stage as a stripper danced for him. He peeled a few one-dollar bills from a very small stack and tossed them her way. One dollar. Two dollars. Three dollars, four. It was laughable. I was accustomed to big money—mine and those of my associates—and looking at his pathetic ploy to seem like a big fish only made me want to show him just how small he really was. I was reeling from his comments about Wayne and thought he had no place and no right to talk about him that way. I was angry and grew even angrier as I watched him pretend to be some sort of big shot, draping five one-dollar bills in the G-string of a busted stripper in an empty club in East Los Angeles. I wanted him to know he was nothing.
I wanted him to know he wasn’t Wayne.
So, intoxicated, I walked over, slapped him as hard as I could, and stormed out.
Aeron followed closely behind as I walked out to the abandoned parking lot, Jonathan trailing behind us. As I walked toward his car, Aeron wrapped those same big, strong, manly arms that had once warmed me around my neck, placing me in a chokehold and squeezing like a boa constrictor.
I gasped for air. I clawed at his arms, face, and neck.
“I can’t breathe,” I whispered, nearly lifeless.
“Go to sleep, bitch,” Aeron chanted, over and over, until I passed out and fell to the ground, splitting my lip and gashing the side of my face. Jonathan urged him to stop but did nothing more.
An employee of the club called the police and after just a minute of unconsciousness, I came to, alone and on the pavement in the parking lot. The world spun as I gasped for breath, my pink shirt red with blood. Aeron was long gone and I knew where he was headed—my place. I scrambled to find my phone inside my purse, called a cab, and left before the police arrived.
I begged the driver to get to my address as soon as he could, hoping to beat Aeron there and secure the house before he could get in, but as the cab pulled up to my house, Aeron was already speeding off. I rushed inside to find he’d taken all of his things, relieved he took nothing of mine. Battered, bruised, and bleeding, I slid down the wall of my bathroom, crying. Anyone with self-respect would have known this was the end and would have cut their losses and moved on.
Anyone with self-respect.