I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up (21 page)

When you’re a kid, pussy-now is where it’s at in my community. I used to hang around with these pussy-now dudes, hoping it would
rub off on me. They managed to teach me a lot about life. For some reason I couldn’t explain, I felt bad for them. These dudes had low riders and money and broads. I could never figure out why I felt bad for them; it didn’t make any sense. I wanted to
be
them! All through life, those dudes guided me. They’d do shit and tell me, “Nah, nigga. You go home. This ain’t your thing.” Even they knew I wasn’t cut out for it—before
I
knew. They kept me away from all the bullshit that they did.

One time, when I was twelve or thirteen, I wanted some money. I asked this cat if I could sell some weed for him. In front of all the other dudes, he said, “Nigga, you ain’t built for this shit.” Everybody laughed, and I thought he was disrespecting me. Later on, he
gave
me twenty dollars. I thought he was fucking with me some more. But it was actually respect, and I didn’t even know it. I
wasn’t
built for that. He was saying I was
above
what he was doing. That was a compliment, and I didn’t fucking get it.

I
wanted
to be a pussy-now type of dude more than anything. I wanted pussy and I wanted it
now
. To lose my virginity I had to fuck a girl who was hideous, that’s how bad it was. It wasn’t
romantic
: I just needed to get this thing off. I never masturbated, but I sure had dreams. In the dreams, it was so spectacular that I was like,
Wait until I get somebody to do this shit!
But all the chicks that inspired my hormones to go crazy, all the Catherine Bogatzes, those bitches wouldn’t have shit to do with me. You’ve got to be cool, or they won’t fuck you. They don’t fuck
nobody
people don’t think is cool.

But there was this one girl down the street who
would
fuck me. So what if she was so hideous that she looked like me? The important thing is that she was a loving human being. She was a sweet woman, and when she gave me some I couldn’t even believe it. Today I realize that I was having my first orgasm with a woman, but
I had no idea what was happening at the time. I almost started
crying
. I loved her so intensely for ten seconds, a feeling of love I can’t even explain. I
instantly
knew what this sex stuff was about, and I knew that I wanted to be doing it
a lot
for the rest of my life. In that moment, that she–D.L. was radiant to me. She was beautiful and warm and just
everything
. But after the ten seconds passed, I literally wanted her to leave. She couldn’t get out quickly enough. I can’t even describe how fast it shifted. I was like, “Oh!
Oh!
Bitch, leave.”

I was one of the fortunate pussy-later dudes because I actually managed to get one in. I’m sure a lot of my pussy-later brothers weren’t as fortunate. Take Tiger Woods. When Tiger Woods was in school, he was a buck-toothed chigger playing a white man’s game. No broads were trying to fuck him. His very name must have been sarcastic to them. “How’s it going,
Tiger
?” Now he gets so much pussy that they write articles keeping track of the number, which is another argument for pussy-later: On average, you’ll end up getting
more
pussy in the long term.

This pussy-now/pussy-later dichotomy is one I constantly see validated. These days, I’m friends with John Witherspoon. When people think of John Witherspoon, they often think of his character in
Friday
talking about how smelly his shits are. But don’t get it twisted: In real life, John Witherspoon is a very fancy dude. I’m sure his shits smell spectacular, like strawberries and champagne.

John and his wife always have really high-class social events at his house, and
my
wife always drags me there and to other fancy crap like that. LaDonna’s on the phone asking me to buy tickets to the Pasadena Playhouse so she can see August Wilson’s
Fences
or whatever the latest bourgie Jack and Jill Links thing is that month.
I couldn’t care less about some party for a play, but I love John so I go to his events. When John has his events, his wife takes care of the hostessing and he isn’t even there half the time. He and I will go back to a separate house that he’s built on his property so he can be by himself. He pours me wine that he don’t pour nobody else, and he shows me all sorts of cool shit.

In 2009, John was having one of these hoity-toity parties. I pulled up, and the dude who was the valet used to be the coolest cat in my neighborhood. I recognized him right away, and he recognized me right away. Now, you know you’re doing bad when you’re a black valet dude in Los Angeles. They’re
all
Latin. In all the years I’ve been valet parking, I’d only seen one black dude with a red vest on—until I pulled up to John Witherspoon’s house and saw the second.

It was the most awkward thing imaginable. I didn’t want to give this dude my key and a tip. I was immediately thinking back to high school, when pussy-later me was begging pussy-now him to let me smell his fingers. I
loved
the dude. I was very glad to see him—just not as a valet. It was hard, but proved my theory.

Pussy-now-type motherfuckers become valets, janitors, or factory workers. Pussy-later-type motherfuckers have different kinds of gigs. They’re managers. They’re referred to as “your honor” or “Mr. President.” Nobody was really trying to fuck Obama growing up, with those big ears and that goofy smile.

In 2010 I was getting my hair done in New York. On the TV this cat named Judge Kevin Ross came on. Just like me, Kevin Ross was a pussy-later dude. I know this because he also went to my high school. I said pussy-later-type dudes play chess, and Kevin Ross was
literally
in the chess club. Kevin was the student-body president of a school where it was all white and Asians—and us. Everybody thought he was a nerd. And we went to school with Japanese kids;
we’re talking about smart people from the
tap
. Kevin grew up to become a superior court judge in Inglewood, and now he’s on TV doing what he did, being exactly him: a pussy-later-type motherfucker.

White people don’t have to make a choice. They can be pussy-now
and
pussy-later. JFK, Donald Trump: They had pussy day in and day out. You can be a fucking loser your whole life, and then your father dies and leaves you a company or somebody hires you. But no black dads are dying and leaving real estate empires to their kids. The things young black men have to do to get pussy
now
are the things that prevent them from getting pussy
later
. We have to work that much harder just to compete with everybody else. At the end of the day, we have to make the choice: Are we working our minds? Or are we working our dicks?

There’s this mentality in our community that proclaims, “This is as good as it gets, so I better have it now. I can
only
have it now.” You don’t think you’re going to live a long time. When I grew up,
nobody
really thought about going to college. What was the point? Why
not
go to jail, when there ain’t nothing else out there for you?

But like me, Tiger Woods, Judge Kevin Ross, and Obama demonstrate,
It gets greater later
. I didn’t get that broad in high school, but I’ve got a great apartment in New York. I’ve seen the world, and on my terms. I didn’t get to go to a lot of parties, but all them girls would fuck me now. The bus driver knew what he was talking about: It
is
all right. I wouldn’t trade my life for his, even though he fucked Catherine Bogatz when she turned legal.

This pussy-now/pussy-later dichotomy isn’t original to me. Sociologists and economists have the same concept, only they call it “time preference.” It’s the basis of finance and the reason we pay interest rates. It goes a little something like this: If I offered you a dollar now or a dollar a year from now, everyone would prefer the
dollar now. I might be lying and I might not have the dollar next year. Thanks to inflation, that dollar will be worth very slightly less next year, too. But what about if it was a dollar now, and $1.50 next year? Or $2? At
some
point, people choose to wait.

The pussy-now, short-time-preference mentality means that people don’t think about the future
at all
. It’s like buying a TV with a credit card—and then owing the cost of two TVs in a year due to interest. These pussy-now types get four years of coolness and pleasure—and owe forty years of emptiness. This is a mindset that they are
taught
. If you believe that you have no future, then that belief will certainly come true. With black girls, that comes out as teen pregnancy. With black boys, it sets them down a more complicated path.

Even though they might not be thinking about the
future
, these boys can make their
present
better. But to do that would entail making the most of what they have now—and that is something else that they are discouraged to do. Then they would lose their ghetto pass.

T
HE
best way to better yourself is to get an education. There will
always
be a need for educated workers. You might have to take a pay cut in horrible economic times, but you’re not going to be out on the street. A landlord will be a lot more understanding if an educated man is late with his rent than if an uneducated man misses it. Being educated naturally engenders respect.

This is one of the things I feel most passionately about, and one of the biggest regrets of my life. That’s why I made damn sure that my kids were going to get an education. In May of 2011, my son Kyle was going to graduate from college and wanted me to give the commencement address at his school. Yet I hadn’t even graduated from
high school
. I felt like I would have been a hypocrite, telling the
kids to take advantage of their education when I didn’t avail myself of one. I was flattered, but I turned Kyle down.

My son went back and told the school my concerns. They said that they would give me an honorary doctorate if I spoke. A
doctorate
? Man, I was going to be Cliff fucking Huxtable alongside my graduating son. I might have only had a GED, but even I knew what a two-for-one was. I told the school that I would do it.

When it came time for me to give my speech and tell my jokes, I realized that Kyle was the very first male in my family to ever graduate from college. Standing there up on that stage in front of all the kids, I grew very overcome with emotion and started to get choked up. I was really tearing up when it hit me: A few minutes before my son had gotten
his
degree,
I
had gotten
mine
. My son was the
second
male to get a degree.
I
was the first!
Wow
. Me, a college graduan!

I went up to Kyle after the ceremony and showed him my certificate. “You went to school for four years,” I said. “I told jokes for fifteen minutes in front of some white dudes with collars on—and we got the same thing. I didn’t have to spend thousands of dollars.
I
got paid! I’m a
doctor
. It’s D
.R
. Hughley now!” Of course I was being absurd. My prize certificate was nothing compared to the knowledge and skills Kyle had developed to get his diploma.

Just like many, many black boys in this country, I took a wrong turn very early on. When I was in the third grade, they came to Avalon Gardens elementary and tested all the kids’ skills. They told my mother that I tested very high in language, reading comprehension, and reasoning. After I got those scores, every week these people would come take me out of class and take me to special studies. All the other kids would look at me like I was crazy. “Where are you going?” my friends asked me. “What are you
doing? What, you think you’re smart?” The fact that I was trying to learn was insulting to them.

Because of their reactions, I started messing up. I knew that if I spoke well, or if I acted differently, I would be ostracized. I decided I was going to be as dumb as everybody else. By the time I hit the eighth grade, I achieved my goal: I got
horrible
grades. I knew that if my mother found out, she was going to kick my ass. I would be grounded in the house for the whole summer, so I decided to change my grades. The thing is, our grades came on carbon paper. But since I had made myself into a
dumb ass
, I didn’t just change the paper that went home. I changed the
whole
paper—the part that went home
and
the part that went to the counselor’s office. I took the
brilliant
extra step of changing my grades to all A’s, which was sure to be noticed.