IN APRIL 2000, Ice had set me up in a two-bedroom condo in Santa Clarita, about thirty minutes north of Beverly Hills. A few weeks later, he landed a great-paying gig on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and was headed to New York. Ice had been my safety net, and I knew that if I got myself into any trouble, he would help me out. But now he had some bad news.
“Hey, babe,” he said. “I have to let you go.”
He said he was pretty sure that with the skills he had given me, I would be okay.
“You’ll be more than okay,” he said. “You’re going to make it. And when you do, find me and buy me a white Benz.” I’ve held on to those words all of these years. I made the promise, and I meant it.
“Bye, Ice.”
“Good-bye, baby girl.”
Meanwhile, Fred and I hadn’t spoken much after our date, but Chuck insisted that Fred was really into me. So I naively continued to play cat and mouse with him, via his voice mail. Once in a while, he would call me back. I wanted him more than ever, but he was elusive. I found myself fantasizing about him day and night. I made up things in my head, and whenever I did speak to him, I took all of his words to heart and sometimes even out of context. I wanted to believe that all those sparks I felt when we were together were real, that I didn’t imagine them.
Then, finally, we got together. My hands shook as I drove to his office, speeding along the 405 freeway. I checked my makeup and popped a few mints. My breathing was heavy and so were my expectations. Walking down the long hallway to his opened door, I whispered to myself “Relax,” and “Breathe.” The office was officially closed, so most everyone in the building was gone for the day, with the exception of a few stragglers. As I approached Fred’s doorway, I felt a quivering in my knees and thought I would just drop to the floor.
His voice saved me. “Close the door,” he said.
His workspace looked mostly like a living room, so I kicked off my shoes and joined him on one of the sofas. We talked for a while, but I really don’t remember much of the conversation because as his lips were moving, all I wanted to do was inch closer to them. I didn’t want to talk; we had done enough talking. I wanted my turn on this ride. So, while he was in midsentence, I interrupted by gently biting then pulling his bottom lip. He grabbed the back of my head and fused our mouths together. I grabbed on to his flesh and heaved myself across his lap, straddling this wild man. Before I could begin to own this intensity, I was on my knees. I looked at his pierced penis with a sick admiration. He was what I wanted, and to actually hold him in my hand at that time felt like a privilege. He was allowing me to finally have him, to taste him. And again, I felt powerful here.
I was turned on by the fact that this was a man who so many women wanted, and this man wanted me. Onstage, he commanded crowds of people, millions, and at this very moment I commanded him. It was as if he and I had traded places in the world, and I was important. At that moment, and moments like it, I didn’t feel inadequate or mediocre.
“Make me cum and I’ll marry you,” were the only words I remember Fred saying to me.
I was so caught up that for a hot minute I might even have believed him. But before I knew it, my power trip was over. Few words were spoken and I was basically dismissed. Leaving was awkward and plain awful. Reality set in: I’d allowed myself to be seduced by the dream and the wakeup call was harsh and unpleasant. I left Fred’s office feeling dejected, and even more than that, naive and silly.
After my encounter with Fred Durst, I was in need of a self-esteem boost. I looked up Ja Rule, and we continued to hang out throughout the summer. Our nights consisted of plenty of sex, drugs, and liquor. We walked around the hotel in our robes. His suite always seemed to be full of people—label executives, other artists, women, hangers-on, you name it. We drank heavily and popped XTC pills in rapid succession. We traveled in huge numbers and bounced from club to club. I felt I was a part of something real for the first time in my life. I was liked and accepted, and the perks were addicting. We could go anywhere and do anything. Everyone watched when we moved and all the other girls wanted to come along. I was where other people wanted to be and felt special.
There are quite a few memories of my time with Ja that will always stay with me. We used to have deep conversations about anything and everything. We spoke about his personal struggles and career plans. He spoke tenderly of his family, his grandmother, and a sister who’d died sometime before. In tribute to her, he has a tattoo of her name and angel wings on his back.
In the midst of my trysts with Ja Rule, I still longed to be involved with Papa, but he was ignoring me. For four straight months, I called, with no response. Yet I refused to give up. I needed the acknowledgment. Then he finally called me. When I heard his voice on the other end of the phone, my eyes began to tear. I was exasperated but remained composed. The meeting was set, and I was on my way.
As I was getting closer to the studio to meet Papa, I began to notice that familiar feeling of insecurity. My hair wasn’t right, my clothes weren’t new, and I just wasn’t up to par. But when I arrived at the studio and began to take the long, winding walk to the back room, all eyes were on me. My self-doubt disappeared with each step. When he saw me again for the first time in four months, his eyes seemed to dance. He instantly grabbed his backpack and we left.
We talked all the way to his hotel. He made me laugh and then, to my surprise, I made him laugh, too. He was really listening to me and liked what I had to say! It was as if we’d known each other for years and we were friends. I didn’t feel nervous or inadequate. I felt beautiful and appreciated. I was dizzy with delight and for a moment the reality whizzed through my head: I was with him. I had admired him from afar as a young girl and dreamed of this moment almost a decade before, and here he was, and he was interested in me! As we walked into the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, an overwhelming need to prove my worthiness came over me. It was as if I had to show him I was worth keeping around, that I was worthy of his presence. I had to thank him for choosing me and do it in a fashion that would make him want to keep choosing me for years to come. Once again, I turned to sex.
He sat in a chair in the living room and turned on the television. I’m pretty sure that there was some sort of verbal exchange, but I blocked it out. The only thing I registered was the insatiable need to feast, to take from him. I needed to feel his energy and rock him to the core. Without thinking, I dropped to my knees before him and began to tear away at his clothes. His reaction was surprising, as if he didn’t expect this. But after he found his home in the warm, wet confines of my mouth and throat, he lay back and exhaled.
My body was on fire, and as I worked on Papa, I began ripping away at my clothes. I was at home here with him. I loved his body and this part of him that I wanted to ingest. He moved around in that chair to the point that it lifted off its front feet. There was a sort of levitation happening as we moved to the bedroom. I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t let our skin separate. It was as if he became my lifeline, my sexual IV. For the next six hours, he filled me up and then drained me. He pounded and he stroked, and he made me want to live and die at the same time. I thought my heart would stop and that I would take my last breath there on that bed. We were wet and sticking to each other, and with every breath he let go, I sucked in. He pulled me and pushed me and threw my body around, having his way. And from that day on, he would be my Papa.
Yet just like that, he, too, was gone. He just got up and walked out. It was six in the morning and he had a flight to catch. His home was a long way from Los Angeles, but I knew he’d be taking a part of me with him, which made me feel satisfied for the moment. I twirled around that hotel room like a schoolgirl with a new dress. I was walking on air. I was ready. I just wasn’t sure for what.
Although I was hanging out with hip hop’s elite and enjoying the best restaurants, had access to any club or party, and wore the hottest fashions, I had nothing to call my own or to support me and my son. When Ice-T left for New York, my sense of stability quickly faded. There was no safety net, so in many respects, I was back at square one. Not to mention, my drinking and experimentation with drugs had begun to get out of control, and I hadn’t spent much time at all with my son. I became a hustler of sorts—bouncing in and out of strip clubs and selling myself in every way. I had gotten to a very desperate point where I could only have sex if it was accompanied by perks. I expected and received money from every man in my life, especially celebrities. I used sex to keep them happy, and when they were happy, they were generous. I needed to survive now that Ice was gone and I didn’t know any other way. Plus, I’ll be honest. I was good at using sex to get what I wanted and needed. That’s all I knew.
In addition to using sex and depending on it to get what I wanted, I couldn’t be alone. So I would pack clothes for a week or two and just bounce around. The condo had nothing in it really, because it wasn’t a home. And I had no idea what it took to turn it into one. Ice taught me a lot of things about Los Angeles and survival. But no one ever taught me how to live.
I did experience genuine happiness around this time. I became involved with a young man. I was twenty-one, emotionally going on thirty-five, and he had just turned eighteen but physically looked much younger. I had seen him at a party the day before we met. We noticed each other, and those three seconds became six as we moved in slow motion around each other. Just as quickly, I blinked and he was gone. The following night, after another party, a girlfriend said she knew him and would take me to his house. Although he’d just turned eighteen, he already had his own home and vehicle and lived very much the life of an adult. We were let in by his cousin, who said Ray was sleeping upstairs. Soon Ray stumbled down the stairs, having just been woken up and coming off a late night out. His eyes opened wide and were immediately drawn to me. Almost like there were clouds under his feet, he floated toward me and we were introduced. “Hi, I’m Ray.” You know him as Ray J, the younger brother of singer Brandy.
Not much else about that night was committed to my memory, but it began one of the happiest times in my life. It was easy to fall in love with Ray. He brought back a part of my youth that had been stolen from me years before. Ray was single, with no children, which equaled no drama. And at that time I lived my life the same way. So much so that I never told Ray about my son—or anything else about me for that matter. When I went out with him, I felt “official.” I was a girlfriend, and that’s entirely different from being just a lover.
Ray and I spent months together as I juggled him and Papa like a circus act. My relationship with Ray made Papa uncomfortable and even furious. Papa knew everything about me and accepted me just the way I was, but the one thing he could never tolerate was me loving someone else. And I loved Ray J. It was the first time since Papa and I met that I had given so much attention to another man. It was not normal, and Papa didn’t appreciate the change. Now, when Papa needed me, I wasn’t always available.
This new relationship was special to me because with Ray J, I had someone to spend time with in public, as a couple. We held hands and let people know we were together. I was proud of that. Because Ray is a member of a tight-knit, well-known family, it’s not surprising that they didn’t approve of me. They knew I was older than him and they were concerned for him. What’s more, before meeting me, Ray had just gotten out of a longtime relationship with one of the members of the girl group 702. His family had become accustomed to her being part of his life, and here I was—a virtual stranger. Eventually, however, certain members of his family accepted us and we were free to enjoy our relationship.
When Ray and I made love, we would go for hours on end, each hour more satisfying than the last. Being with Ray was always sweet and innocent. His kisses were long and his lips were full and light as they met mine. He was young and still a bit inexperienced, and shied away from oral sex, but he would kiss all around my lower regions and make my body quiver just the same. It was with Ray that I discovered my ability to orgasm without penetration or copulation. I would be excited just from his touch. Ray was with me because he liked me. It was pure and this purity was so new to me that it had become more erotic than being with any other lover. After our lovemaking, we would pass out, him holding me and me feeling loved.
Ray and I created a stir around town and people began to wonder what it was I saw in him. He was so young and wasn’t yet respected as a major player among men. What no one could’ve possibly realized was that it took a younger man to make me feel young again. We were silly together, and we enjoyed spending long afternoons and nights together. We saw our favorite movies, like Big Momma’s House, starring Martin Lawrence and Nia Long, three or four times and enjoyed them each time as if it were the first time. I felt free with Ray. He awakened a desire in me to get my youth back and hold on tight.
Ice had come and gone, and Fred was out of the picture. But my relationship with Ja was ongoing and became more intense as we ate, drank, and slept together. Our sex became a constant in my life and he himself became the drug. I was also hooked on the atmosphere. Being around Ja Rule and Murder Inc. felt like being around family, the one feeling I had always longed for. We all knew we were up to no good and I loved it—that is, until I found out that not only was Ja still in a relationship with his teenage sweetheart, but they were also expecting their second child.
I entered my relationships with Ice, Ja, and Papa knowing they had other women, though none was married. I remember the first time it really registered for me that Ja had another relationship and responsibilities, separate and apart from the carefree, wild life he led in Los Angeles. It was early one morning at the hotel, and whoever the other girl was we’d brought back with us the night before was gone—it was not uncommon for Ja and me to pick up other women and have threesomes. We were wild and disregarded all the conventional rules and authority. The phone rang, and I stayed quiet as Ja answered. The woman on the other end of the phone was frantic, not letting him get so much as a word in.
All he could squeeze in was, “What girl? Somebody told you what?”
He eventually slammed the phone down while the woman was still in midrant. He pulled me close as I lay on his chest and we passed out.
That’s how it was with Ja. One crazy adventure after the next, and I was so out of it then that there are a lot of things I’ve long since forgotten. But then there are some incidents that I will never forget. Like the night I thought Ja was going to die. We were getting ready to go out, as usual, and true to form, we started popping XTC pills and guzzling Rémy Martin straight from the bottle. It seems as if he took more than usual from the time we woke up until about ten at night. This was a little scary.
He had disappeared for a while to another room—probably to be with other girls, which was also common. About forty-five minutes later, there was a soft, weak knock at the door. I opened it and there he stood in a cold sweat. He was shaking and having a hard time walking. There were a few other girls in the room with us and they all just stood there, watching. They were new to our clique. They didn’t know Ja like I knew him. I led him into the bathroom, but before he could make it, he began to throw up.
At the time I was so caught up with Ja that all I was thinking was that I needed to protect him. I didn’t want any vomit to touch his skin. I cared deeply for this man, regardless of anything or anyone else. Ja purged for a few minutes, and just like that, he was better. I offered to get him some water, but he refused. Instead, he grabbed the Rémy bottle, guzzled, and we kept the party going. Sadly, he was amazing that way. He never stopped. He was always “on” when others were around.
Meanwhile, Papa and I stayed in touch constantly. He had been working in Los Angeles a lot and I jumped at the chance to see him. He became my refuge at times. Unlike with Ja and Murder Inc., there were no wild parties, no entourages, no other girls, and no self-abuse. Our time together was quiet and special. We watched movies and ordered room service. He would preview his projects and let me hear his work. My favorite memories are of him giving me private live shows in his boxers. Most of all, we were friends—friends who also had incredible sex.
I accepted early on that no man is perfect. Although Papa was being unfaithful, he loved and valued his family and fiercely protected them from his life as an entertainer. I respected Papa’s space and his privacy, and do so even now. It gave me chills when he spoke to his family in front of me. I felt privileged to be with him, a man who was so loved by the people in his life. He brought me a certain sense of calm. But it was typical of me to further complicate things, so it should be no surprise that somehow Dr. Dre entered the mix.
Chuck introduced Dre to me a week after I arrived in Los Angeles. Nothing happened right away, but when I visited Chuck on the set of one of Dre’s videos, things quickly took a familiar turn. I met Dre at the Universal City Hilton near Universal Studios on June 8, 2000. Far from the luxury of L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills, Dre and I met in the hotel’s Lobby Lounge, where we ordered drinks and made small talk. It was uneasy and awkward. We both knew what we were there to do, and I couldn’t figure out why we were stumbling around it. I didn’t find him terribly attractive physically or even sexually, and our personalities didn’t particularly mesh. But power is an overwhelming thing. I felt important sitting there with him. Everyone knew his face, and I’m sure they suspected he was up to no good, being at the Hilton around midnight with a woman. But here in Hollywood, it’s common and often expected.
Room 2257 was small and quaint, but it didn’t matter. I knew he wouldn’t be staying long, so I cut the conversation short and joined him under the sheets. It was still very awkward, and it wasn’t as if he drove me mad like Ja or Papa or even Fred. I felt nothing. I just knew this was an important man, one of the highest-paid, biggest-selling artist-producers in the world. As he got on top of me, I was empty and cold. I stared at his face, his eyes, and it was only when I ran his résumé and status through my head that my insides began to feel warmer. He left shortly afterward, and I was okay with that. Thinking back on it, I really don’t know what led me to that hotel room and into Dre’s bed. It was another example of my doing without thinking, for all the wrong reasons.
I hopped back on the merry-go-round and ran back to Ray, back to that place where I was safe and where having sex felt natural. Around this time, Ray had begun to work on an album. I remember vividly the night he recorded the song that would change everything. “Where Do We Go from Here” was a song about meeting someone and spending so much time with them, even beginning to love them, and wanting to know if it could, or should, be more. Ray stood in the recording booth, belted out that song, and accompanied it with tears. He cried, and I cried witnessing it.
I loved this boy so much and wanted nothing more than to stay with him. But I knew that one day I would have to go, that one day he would know who I had been with and render me unworthy of the affection he was now showing me. As much as I loved Ray, I was too deep in my lifestyle, with an undeniable reputation, to go back. I was still greedy. I wanted it all. I wanted Ray’s love. I wanted the carefree, bling-filled lifestyle of hanging with the likes of Ja and the laid-back, mind-blowing sex and friendship I relished with Papa. And more than anything, I wasn’t ready to settle down. The first time I’d tried to settle down with a man led to my wanting to die. I wasn’t going back there. So I knew the end for Ray and me was near and inevitable.
Later that night, when the recording of the song was finished, we lay in bed and played it over and over. We held on to each other and cried silently. It was all so overwhelming, and I knew that night he loved me, too. Before long, it was time for him to go away and record in Atlanta. I knew the separation would be difficult, but I really thought we could make it. What I didn’t know was that by this time, Ray was beginning to find out about me, and we were growing apart. I deeply wished I were someone different—that I was a normal girl without all the baggage, the sordid past. But I was who I was, and I had done what I had done. It was impossible to turn back. I couldn’t undo all of the abuse and the men. If he wanted to leave, I couldn’t stop him. Hell, I couldn’t blame him.
What I could do, what I was also very good at, was run. And that’s what I did. I ran right to Papa again. I ran to the man who accepted me and away from the boy I knew couldn’t afford to. He was still in an impressionable stage of his life, and just the way I had swept in and made him think I was wonderful, his friends and peers in the industry would soon prove to him that the image I portrayed was all an illusion.
I almost wanted Ray to hate me so we could end it right there, quickly. In order to protect my heart, I wanted to let him go first because I knew he was about to do the same to me. So that’s what I did. Late on a Saturday night, I called Ray and told him all about me and Papa. Naturally, he wasn’t happy. He said some awful things to me, called me horrible names, and slammed down the phone. What he couldn’t have known is that for the next six months, I cried every day for him. I genuinely missed him more than I’d missed any other man I’d ever known. When he hung up that night, it closed the door on a relationship that I still treasure.
However, this thing with me and Ja wouldn’t stop. We spent a lot of time together, and as the months passed, he gained more and more notoriety as an artist and as a Hollywood bachelor. There were girls everywhere, and my position in his life became blurred. I was beginning to feel as if my time with him would be up soon. How right I was.
I was at Chuck’s office one day just shooting the breeze when I picked up a copy of a music magazine. There was an article celebrating hip hop dads and their kids. This must have been around Father’s Day. The magazine featured five or six fathers, including Ja. I knew he had a daughter who was about five at the time, but the article went on about him and his longtime girlfriend and how she was expecting another child. Although it was known that Ja had been with his teenage sweetheart for years, I found out in that article that while Ja and I had been together in Los Angeles, she was at home in New York pregnant.
The Ja I knew and the life he led…I chuckled to think of him as this family man. I thought to myself, She’s so stupid! I felt as if I was the one who knew everything; I was the gatekeeper of the treacherous secrets of his life while he was in Los Angeles. I finished the article with a smile on my face, until the last line. Ja’s wife was five-months pregnant. It was the exact amount of time that I had been in his life. My heart sank, and I couldn’t blink as my eyes swelled with tears. Who was stupid now? Who was getting the real Ja? Not me and not any of the other women who’d been part of his world. We were all replaceable and temporary; she, however, was permanent.
Later that night, I met up with him at a local club. All of his friends and label mates were there, so I tried for a long time to hide my pain. I laughed and ordered drinks, danced around and popped pills. I tried to appear normal, but inside, everything was different. He mingled and flirted relentlessly with other women. I felt the heat of jealousy crawling up my neck, blanketing my face. Then I blinked, took in a long slow breath, and snapped. I grabbed champagne bottles and glasses, whatever I could find, and hurled them at his head. I ranted and raved, cried and blurted out words that were sure to make him leave me right then and there.
He seemed confused as he called out to me, “Come here! Come here, crazy girl!”
I was afraid to move closer. There was a pool table between us, and that table may very well have saved my life. But even in the middle of all my chaos and acting out, he wouldn’t let any of the others restrain me. It was like we had an unspoken understanding. He knew I was hurt and that my outburst could be justified. He might not have known exactly what caused it, but he knew that there were enough possibilities to choose from. He knew it was time, that it was the end.
I left the club shortly after and drove recklessly, crying uncontrollably. Like with any breakup, even if it is the right thing to do, I started to have regrets about my temper tantrum. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it to be over despite the reality check. I didn’t want to drive all the way home to my empty condo. Instead, I wanted him to tell me he understood why I had snapped and that I could be with him for the night. I wanted him to touch me like he had before, like he did on that first night.
So instead of going home, I drove to that familiar street where my life in L.A. had all started. I drove to Orchid Avenue, parked in front of the Orchid Suites Hotel, and dialed his number. He sounded tired and uninterested in what I had to say, but didn’t hang up.
“Ja, I’m sorry. It was the drinks and then I took some X, and I just got all emotional. Baby, I’m so sorry…”
I cried out to him to forgive me. I wanted for him to feel sorry for me and to let me come to him.
“It’s cool, Ma. Don’t worry about it.” The tone of his voice said it all. He was done with me.
I sat in my car that night and cried until it hurt. My eyes, my throat, my chest—it all hurt. I sat there in my car, thinking about the hotel in front of me, wondering how I’d gotten into this mess. I wanted my old room back. I wanted to be back sitting among those outdated clothes. I wanted to undo the moment when I stepped into my first club, the moment when I popped my first pill. I wished I had never seen Ja’s face—or any of their faces. I wanted so badly to be a little girl minus the rape, the mother-daughter drama, and the men. The only beacon of light was my son and my relationship with Papa. He was all I had left. Back then, I just couldn’t stand the idea of being alone.