Dating, Love, Sex; The Good, The Bad, The Crazy: Life with Rodney
​“Yo, whatever happened to Rodney?” Tarsha asked, pulling her feet up on the chaise and cradling a glass of their favorite rosé wine.
“Rodney? Who’s Rodney?” Monique asked.
Vanessa rolled her eyes. They often did a lot of reminiscing on Friday Vino Nights, but she was nowhere near interested in discussing that crazy, mean ass nigga Rodney.
Evelyn laughed. “You never heard the Rodney stories?” she stretched her eyes at Monique.
“No,” Monique looked puzzled. “Is it somebody from high school? Y’all know I don’t know your high school friends.”
“Yes and no,” said Tarsha.
Vanessa sucked her teeth, still uninterested. She had already made everyone comfortable on her back porch. They had all their food and wine and pillows. Her teenaged twins, Shaka and Ramonda were out at the movies, and her boyfriend Adam kept their toddler Tahir occupied up in the bedroom with their own entertainment of superhero movies and snacks. She had no reason to get up and busy herself until Rodney’s name dissolved into thin air.
“C’mon,” said Tarsha, “you gotta tell the Rodney stories.”
A thought seemed to jump into Evelyn’s mind as she gulped down some wine. “I just wanna know if the nigga still pissin in bottles!” she shouted.
“Pissing in bottles?” Monique, the most bourgeois of the crew, shrieked in horror.
Vanessa threw her whole body back on the lounge chair, “I don’t know okay... I don't know where he at, what he’s doing--”
Tarsha held up her phone for everyone to get a glimpse of Rodney’s Facebook page. “I wonder if she puts up with bedside piss bottles,” she noted his wedding photo.
Vanessa reached for the phone. When she got it in her hand, she stared. Somebody really married that crazy mutha fucka, she thought.
“You gotta tell me,” Monique quizzed.
Evelyn clapped her hands. “Yesss Rodney stories!”
Vanessa sipped her chilled rosé and cleared her throat:
Aight so, I started fuckin with Rodney when I graduated high school. He seemed nice. I liked that he sounded like LL Cool J over the phone, and he has broad shoulders. Y’all know how I feel about a nigga with shoulders. Anyway, he was from around my way, but it wasn’t until I graduated high school and he was a freshmen in college that we started seeing each other. So much crazy shit happened with him, from beginning to end, but I guess I’ll start from our first crazy episode in the beginning.
We were hanging out, killing time, or rather stealing an opportunity to be alone before going to this party. We up in his house, start kissing, making out, whatever... he takes me to his room, gets me down to my underwear, and then we hear the front door slam. This nigga jumps off the bed, runs to the door, and peeks out into the hallway.
I’m like, “Everything okay?”
He’s like, “Nah, my mom is home,” whispering and shit.
I didn't understand his panic. All I had to do was put my clothes back on. What was the big deal?
He slams the door shut and locks it and exclaims in a whisper, “Get down over there!”
I follow directions and dive on the other side of the bed. It’s beginning to dawn on me. I understood that it was inappropriate for us to casually have sex in the house, but apparently homeboy couldn’t have company either. I stayed huddled on the other side of his bed, shivering and sweating in a ball. What the fuck did you get yourself into tonight dummy? I asked myself internally.
There was banging on the door. “One minute!” Rodney shouted.
I almost shitted on myself. I listened as he opened his bedroom door.
“What the hell are you doing?” his mother asked.
“I didn’t have no clothes on.”
“Clothes or no clothes, ain’t no locked doors in my house and you know that!”
“I know, my bad.”
“Uh huh...” his mother’s voice faded down the hall. She didn’t actually plan on coming into the room. Thank God.
Rodney’s voice faded along with the door closing.
I peeked up over the bed from my hiding place between the bed and the wall, and then snatched my clothes and got dressed as fast as I could, so that I could hide more comfortably. Then of all things to happen, my cousin called my cell phone. And this was 2001... before features as simple as “vibrate” were available on all phones. So I’m in a ball on the phone whispering, “Gurl, this nigga can’t have company. He got me hiding in here. I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do.”
That hoe was hysterical on the phone. “You in the closet!” she giggled uncontrollably.
“No, I’m like on the side of his bed and shit.”
“Don’t he live on the first floor? Just climb out the window.”
“I'm scared to even stand up.”
She laughed even harder.
I hung up.
Long story short, we spent a good four hours cooped up in that room. His older brother even came in and laughed at me. Ironically, that was still the first time I had sex with him... very quietly, but typically the rushed teenager kind of sex.
I found out he was mean a few months later when I had to catch the last bus running at two in the morning near his house. We saw the bus coming but we were still about a block away. I said, “Run with me,” thinking I could decrease my chance of missing the bus if we’re both chasing it down.
That fool looked at me and said, “I ain’t catching the bus. You are. You run.”
So I missed the bus.
I had to call my mother and beg her to send me a cab, and to pay for it when I got home, because dude certainly walked off and left me on the curb alone on a dark and desolate street.
Either I didn't learn my lesson, or I truly believed that people changed because I got right back with his ass after leaving twins’ father, a whole seven years later. (Sigh.) I got a daily barrage of reminders of his crazed meanness. He would never pull the car to a full stop when dropping me off at work. He would still be going forty miles per hour while unbuckling my seatbelt, telling me I had to hurry and get out so that I wouldn’t make him late for work. One time, after we both partied at different clubs, he picked me up from where I was and I asked him to take me to breakfast. He ran a red light on the way, and cussed me from head to toe, blaming me for the ticket he would get from a camera light. That same morning he belittled me the entire time I ate my breakfast. “Look how you cut your waffle into those little squares. That's why you're so fuckin skinny. You play with your food!”
“So I'm supposed to shove an entire Belgian waffle into my mouth and risk choking, to put on weight or something? And if I'm soooo fucking skinny, why are you with me?”
I don't remember his response to that.
But the deal breaker was the mutha fuckin piss bottles!
So my drinking was definitely a little off the hook when I left Errol. I always had wine bottles lined up around the bed. There were some soda bottles too. I was a hot, drunk ass mess. At the end of the week I would gather up all the bottles in a bag, not bothering to dump them, as you’re supposed to do when your neighborhood recycles, and drop them right in the dumpster on the side of the house. I was a dirt bag, but it’s the one time I’m glad I failed to follow the rules. I probably would’ve died if I poured any of those bottles in my sink.
One morning, I get up and go to the bathroom. I come back and plop down on the bed. Rodney flinches but has both his arms under the covers. It looked like he was holding his penis, which did not require both hands, but whatever.
“What’re you doing, crazy?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he hissed, “and don’t move around so much.”
“You’re so dramatic, what're you doing?” I snatched the covers back and this nigga was peeing in a mutha fuckin soda bottle!
“Oh my God!” I yelped.
“Sshhhh!”
“You shushing me mutha fucka? You shushing me in MY got damn house cuz you’re pissing in a bottle? The fuck you pissin in a bottle for? I got a bathroom! I just came from the bathroom! You couldn’t wait?”
“You’re gonna wake the kids!”
“I don’t give a fuck! You gotta go! You gotta get the fuck out! That's it! You’re all the way crazy! Get out!”
“Its six o’clock in the morning. Where am I supposed to go?”
“Go home! Go pee in your own bottles in your own house!”
He rolled out of bed and got dressed, and then proceeded to snatch up other bottles. That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks. This was not his first time, nor the only day he had peed in a bottle in my bedroom. He was peeing in the bottles and putting them back where he got them from.
“What the fuck kinda sick dirty shit is this?” I screamed. “Oh my God, you gotta get the fuck out! You're fuckin crazy!”
“You’re not the neatest person yourself, y'know, with these bottles by the bed!” he attempted to argue back.
“They’re not mini toilets! Gooooo with ya pissy ass! Just goooooo!”
The porch roared with laughter while Vanessa sat shaking her head.
“I can’t believe pushing you out of a moving car wasn’t the deal breaker with you. You had to get to him pissing in bottles to break up with him!” said Monique.
Vanessa continued to shake her head. Evidence of her own amusement was in the way her shoulders bounced, and the slight grin on her face. “I was such a mess,” she said.
“You were both a mess,” said Evelyn.
“Why did you stay?” Monique probed.
“Oh no, I never saw him again after that.” Vanessa took another sip of wine.
“No, I mean before it got to that.”
“I don't know,” Vanessa admitted. “I wasn't lonely. Y'all know I'm not the lonely type. I think it’s that I swear to God I can change people by being a living example. I really thought he would soften up after a while and become a little more rational from just being around me.”
“You think you learned your lesson?” Tarsha tilted her head in question.
“Not with him... but yes. And now I don’t even keep a bottle of water by the bed.”
More laughter filled the summer night air.

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