There Goes My Social Life (20 page)

So let's get this straight, America.

Marriage, unborn babies, and even gender = oppressive.

Divorce, abortion, and surgical mutilation = emancipating.

But my own life—and probably yours—doesn't play out that way. In real life, getting married and staying married is a pathway to higher levels of financial stability and peace. In real life, having an abortion causes death, regret, and other health complications. In real life, you can't surgically enhance yourself to self-realization.

I thought that having sex outside of marriage would be fun and exciting. I thought that having an affair could be justified. After all, I didn't know he was married when it all started.

I thought that drugs wouldn't affect me, that I could still make good decisions and be healthy.

I didn't anticipate that these decisions would leave me worse than broke, emotionally devastated, and with a sexually transmitted disease.

Finally, I found a nice but small apartment that had two bedrooms and a doorman. I moved everything I owned to that house. I had 750 boxes of things. Gina, God bless her, did the best she could, but we couldn't walk through the hallways it was so crowded.

As we were standing in our new place, Lola and I—both at the same time—just broke down crying. I took her hand, led her into the bathroom, shut the door, and climbed into the bathtub. It was the only place free of boxes.

“I can't breathe here,” she said.

“Me either.”

We cried for twenty minutes, sitting in the tub in an apartment we'd never seen before. Finally, I was able to get a handle on my emotions.

“I promise you this,” I said, clearing my throat. “Mama's gonna make this beautiful. This is gonna be all right. We're gonna be fine. We're gonna do it one room at a time, one day at a time.”

And that's exactly what we did. Lola, Gina, and I unpacked each box and tried to make the apartment into yet another home. And there, while unpacking the boxes, I made a decision that would affect the rest of my life. No more men. For real this time. I was going to get work, take care of myself, and try to forge a path for Austin, Lola, and me that didn't rely on anyone else. I had no money, no job, and no agent. Because I was broken emotionally and broke financially, I couldn't do anything but call out to God. Finally. After all of those years sort of running away from God, I know He got my attention. This is when I went to Him and made a promise.

The author of Psalms wrote, “How I long for your precepts! Preserve my life in your righteousness.”

We are living in a unique cultural moment. On every side, the society seems to be pushing our boundaries . . . telling us that God's laws and order are oppressive. That's why we must dig our feet into the ground and make the decision to believe in God's truth, not the culture's lies.

God has given us a choice. In fact, it's the same exact choice He's given all other cultures and all individuals. In Deuteronomy, God instructs: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.”

Now is exactly the time that Americans need to choose correctly. I was finally ready to try.

“Okay, God, I give up,” I cried. “I surrender. Let's do it Your way from now on.”

TWELVE

YOU SHALL TWEET THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

—Leo Tolstoy, quoted in the
Wall Street Journal

N
ow that I realized I was a conservative—and had been all along—I started paying more attention to politics. I was amazed at how Democrats and liberals made every single solitary thing about race. Every single thing. The common assumption was that
black people
=
Democrats
. Anything a white man or a Republican said was questioned as having some sort of racist undertone.

Once, while surfing the Internet, I saw what was described as a “gotcha” video that a liberal website filmed during a Romney junket, in which the candidate told a room full of white donors the following:

         
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. . . . These are people who pay no income tax. . . . [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

The liberal website presented this like it was the death knell to his campaign. “Romney doesn't care about minorities,” was the spin. “Look what he says to a room full of white people when he thinks minorities aren't watching!”

Only rarely did people actually deal with the substance of his claim—that a large percentage of Americans are not paying taxes. Was he right? CBS reported: “So is it true that 47 percent of Americans don't pay income tax? Essentially, yes, according to the Tax Policy Center, which provides data showing that in 2011, 46.4 percent of American households paid no federal income tax.”
¹

Of course, I only saw a snippet of Romney's speech that night, so I don't know if he went on to talk about the fact that nearly two-thirds of the no-income-tax-paying demographic do pay some sort of payroll tax, or state, local, sales, and property taxes. I don't know how he nuanced his claim, how he explained it. The liberal website released just enough to make him sound calloused. Even though the substance of what he said was right, he was being raked over the coals for being a white guy speaking the truth. I thought the “47 percent” comment was hilarious, as did everyone I know.

A few weeks later, I had gotten sick of all the conversation about Romney hating blacks. As a black woman, I decided to speak out. And, since it was 2012, I spoke out through my Twitter account—and inspired the Twitterstorm I told you about in chapter one.

         
Vote for Romney. The only choice for your future.

To my delight, the interview with Piers Morgan went really well, and I was very proud of how I did on the show. But here's the thing. After I came back home, I was still in the same situation.

“Gina, how much money do we have in the account?” I asked, which caused her to frown. “Just tell me.”

“You have $100 in checking,” she said. “Nothing in savings . . . or anywhere else.” She kindly didn't mention that I also had overextended credit cards to the tune of $62,000. Plus, I owed the IRS. I tried not to think of it, but it's hard when you have to take care of yourself and kids.

I got a lot of Twitter hate over my Romney endorsement. But one day I got a letter about my tweet in the mail—an old-fashioned, handwritten letter written on actual paper. That got my attention.

“I just wanted you to know that what you did—endorsing Romney on Twitter—took a lot of guts.” My eyes glanced down to the signature—Nathan, an attorney from Georgia, of all places. He had found my agent's name online and written me a letter. He went on to say that he had been a presidential candidate's chief of staff. “If you ever want to do politics for real, let me know.”

I held the letter and bit my lip—was what he was saying a real possibility? Though I had never considered myself a political activist, I did like the idea of speaking my mind. In fact, the backlash made me more committed to speaking out. No one is going to silence me.

“Nathan, I got your letter, and wanted to thank you for sending it,” I typed into my iPad. I went on to suggest that we keep in touch. A few months later, I got an e-mail from Nathan that would change the direction of my life.

“I'm going to be in Los Angeles for the Republican National Committee meeting,” he said. “It will probably be boring—there ain't nothing cool about the Republican Party—but wanna come?”

I wasn't sure about the Committee meeting, but I was intrigued by this Southern lawyer who thought I had a future in—of all things—politics. We met at an Italian restaurant. At 6'2", his imposing presence was offset by his Southern accent and “aw shucks” persona. He told me about his wife, his three daughters, his suburban megachurch, and—of course—politics.

The Republican National Committee was a complete bore. We met the Party chairman and the head of minority outreach—a portly older white gentleman with a comb-over, who didn't know what to do with me. There were a lot of nervous white people telling me how they were going to reach black people in the next campaign cycle. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. There were even a few black people there—who really didn't want me there because, apparently, they liked being the only black people there.

I could tell that I didn't fit into anyone's mold—the Democrats', or even the Republicans'. I was just me. I was someone who had never read Edmund Burke, but knew that conservative principles worked in everyday life. I was—and am!—what most Americans are. I could immediately tell that the RNC was not going to be where I began the next chapter of my life. But I kept in touch with the Georgia attorney.

In fact, I began to rely on his judgment.

“Do you mind looking at this script?” Within the day, he'd respond with an “I'm no expert but this is stupid,” or “Don't do this” comment.

Another project my agents gave me was a pseudo-reality show that attempted to convince people in a Southern small town that Jesus had come back.

“They want you to be like a newswoman?” Nathan asked me on the phone. I could hear the incredulity in his voice. “This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Who the hell is sending you this crap?”

“I need to fire this guy, Natey,” I said. “Would you do it for me?”

He did. And after that I informed him that he was my manager. I heard a long silence on the other end of the phone and I heard him typing. “Natey, didn't you hear what I just said?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I'm just Googling what the heck a ‘manager' is.”

He didn't know one thing about Hollywood, but he did know how to run political campaigns.

“Okay,” he finally responded. “I'll run your campaign. But I don't know what I'm doing. This is your life.”

“There is no format anymore. This is new territory. Plus, I trust you.”

“That's your problem,” Nathan said. “You need to stop trusting men. In fact, if you want me to be your manager, there is one condition. I am banning you from getting married for at least the next two years.”

“What?” I asked, not believing that I heard him correctly.

“As far as I can tell, every bad financial and career decision you've made had to do with a man—particularly when you marry them,” Nathan said. “You can look at this morally or you can look at this financially. But if you want me to work with you I'm banning you from getting married for the time being. You can have one date but not two.”

I know it sounded unorthodox, but I couldn't argue. Men were my Achilles' heel.

After some rounds with some high-profile networks and producers, I could tell that Nathan had figured out Hollywood well enough to know that it wasn't brain surgery. It was basic human interaction. Even though he had a Southern drawl and a nice demeanor, they seemed to take him seriously enough. There were many amazing opportunities on my horizon, but they weren't happening fast enough.

“This is great for the future, but not for right now,” he said of one job that arose. “It'll take a show two years to be in development and I need you to make money now.”

I didn't quite understand how much financial pressure we were under. Without my knowledge, every month, Gina would call Nathan and tell him that we were out of money.

“What do we do?” Gina would ask him. “Stacey has no money for food.”

When I would travel for work, everything would be paid for. However, the hotel always made me put down a credit card for “incidentals,” in case I got something from the minibar or the hotel restaurants. Well, none of my credit cards worked, which put an immense amount of stress on me. It was frankly embarrassing that I'd gotten myself into such a financial predicament. I needed to start producing some income. In September, Nathan pulled me aside for a heart-to-heart. “I'm going to come up with a three-point plan and if I haven't done everything in a year I'm firing myself.”

“Why would you do that?”

“If I can't show progress, you need someone else.”

“I'm listening,” I said.

“This is what we're gonna do,” he said, holding up three fingers. “First, we're gonna get you paid for your opinion.” He pointed to his first finger, and I laughed. I could totally imagine him laying down the law to his kids. Then, he touched his next finger. “Second, I'm going to make you the ‘cool kid' again, so you can get back to acting.” And finally he said, “Third, I'm going to figure out how to get you a book deal. Natey had started writing a speech about my life, and after about eight pages of single-spaced legal pad notes, he realized that this was more than just a speech.

“You think you can do all that?”

“If I can't, I don't deserve to be doing this. But first, pack your bags.”

“Why?”

He had gotten frustrated with the Hollywood crowd.

“I'm taking you to New York.”

“I can't afford bus fare,” I said. “I sure as hell can't afford to go to New York.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “You're coming anyway.” On his dime, we went to New York to meet with Roger Ailes, the legendary founding CEO of Fox News. Nathan had met him once after his duties with the presidential campaign he had run were over.

“Where are we staying?” I asked. Of course, Nathan was paying my way, so I had no right to be picky. But that didn't stop me.

“The Marriott Marquis in Times Square,” he said. “It's right there, it's got a thousand rooms.”

“We can't stay there!”

“Why on earth?” Nathan asked. I could tell he had no idea what it's like to be in New York and to have people recognize you.

“Trust me,” I said. “I can't stay there.”

We got a different hotel—one more used to dealing with people in the public eye. Nathan grumbled because it was more expensive, but soon he understood the necessity. I walked out of the hotel and there were already people waiting to take my photo. I walked straight back inside and got a “disguise”—simply a hat and shades . . . like all celebs in movies use.

“I'll need a car service too,” I told Nathan, pointing to my five-inch heels.

“No way! It's one city block,” he said. “Look, I got three daughters and a wife. I don't need this from you. Those are going in your purse. We're not doing a car service to accommodate your footwear.”

In retrospect, he was right. I changed into comfy shoes for the walk and changed back when I got to the studio.

“No one else dares talk to her like that,” Gina marveled, which caused us all to laugh.

“No one else dares call me Natey.”

A month or two later, Nathan called me.

“I think we can check off number one.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Roger Ailes just called me, and said, ‘You're the guy who introduced me to Stacey, aren't you? What do you think she's doing?'”

I let out a scream of exuberance.

“Let me finish?” Nathan said.

“Talk faster!”

“Ailes, like me, saw the potential in you to really become an important voice in American culture.”

I did a couple of shows a few times as a guest, and we had a deal by May. In four months, Nathan had already accomplished one-third of his stated goals.

On the day that I spent my very last dollar, the Fox check came.

God gives you what you need, when you need it.

An acting job came up in Florida.

“Miami?” I asked Nathan. “This week?”

“I'm not giving you a choice in this matter,” Nathan said. “You're completely broke. This is a job. This is how capitalism works. You work, you get paid, you eat.” Again, the lessons of life are conservative.

“I can't believe you get away with what you say to her,” Gina mumbled.

“We're business partners. I make money if you make money, so this is how you make money. Until you've got cash flow, you'll do any legitimate job that's not immoral that pushes your career forward,” he said.

I smiled.

“And by the way, you can go ahead and check off the second item on my list,” he said.

Also, Samsung contacted us for permission to use a clip of
Clueless
in one of their commercials. Thankfully, they paid me a huge amount of money for it. I knew it was God—not Nathan, not even myself—Who was giving me opportunities to get back on my feet.

With money finally coming in, Nathan set me up with an accountant, advised me to be frugal—and how to cut costs!—and warned me that I had to start living differently. Thankfully, I have been well received at Fox and everyone is being very supportive and gracious. It is a welcome feeling to be appreciated, after so many people in my life have told me to keep my mouth shut.