Zane's the Other Side of the Pillow (30 page)

Jemistry had the Linguine and Manila Clams for her entrée while I tried out the Lamb Chops with rutabaga purée. We went hard and both ordered desserts: She had the Turbodog Stout Chocolate Cake and I had the White Chocolate Bread Pudding Crème Brûlée.

After lunch—and waddling out the restaurant—we decided to go to a couple of tourist attractions. First, we stopped by The Cabildo on Chartres Street. It was a building that had replaced an original one that burned down in 1788. It was rebuilt between 1795 and 1799 and had served as the seat of the local government during the Spanish colonial period. It was also where the Louisiana Purchase was signed in 1803.

Next, we rolled through the Beauregard-Keyes House on the same street a few blocks away. Both Confederate general Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard—who had ordered the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in 1861—and Frances Parkinson Keyes—author of more than fifty books and short stories—had occupied the home about a hundred years apart. So they named the historical building after both of them.

Jemistry was getting worn down so we went back to the W and took a nap. We woke up, made love, and went to the Le Petit Theatre to see a smaller version of the musical
Hair
. Jemistry had never seen it but I had seen it as a child on Broadway. Some called it “The Ultimate American Rock Musical.” I felt like it was all of that and then some.

Hair
is about a group of young adults in the 1960s trying to maintain a balance of love, peace, and trust during the Vietnam War era. Most of the songs are classics, like “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” “Good Morning Starshine,” and “Easy to Be Hard.”

By the end of the show, most of the audience was dancing in the aisles, including us. We had an amazing time.

We ended up staying in New Orleans until January 3rd. We brought in the New Year among the masses in Jackson Square. Allstate kicked everything off at six
PM
with their Fan Fest, which included a concert. At nine, Eric Lindell and the Honey Island Swamp Band performed. At one minute to midnight, the official countdown began as the fleur-de-lis descended from the roof of Jax Brewery.

Jemistry and I counted it down together.

“Happy New Year, Mrs. Harris,” I said and then kissed her for a good minute.

“I really love you, Tevin,” she yelled over the crowd. “This is the first of many years we will bring in together.”

“No doubt.” I took her hand. “Let's go find a good spot to watch the fireworks.

We walked closer to the Mississippi River so we could watch the spectacular fireworks display. It did not disappoint.

“Love conquers all.”

—Virgil

T
J was born on Valentine's Day 2014. He was
twelve pounds three ounces
and twenty-three inches long. I ended up having to get a Caesarean. I was happy as shit about it, too. If I had had to push him out, the world would have come to an end because I would have turned Providence Hospital out.

Tevin was more excited than I had ever seen him. He was handing out cigars and you would have thought that the entire vascular unit had made a mass exodus from Sibley over there. The hallway near the nursery was flooded with people trying to get a look at the new prince. He looked like Tevin had literally spit him out instead of coming from my womb. I was definitely only the vessel. He had his miniature twin.

Estella sent me flowers but did not come anywhere near the hospital, to my knowledge. I appreciated that. While she and I could never be friends who hung out or talked on the regular, I was sure that her thoughts were genuine. I still had never revealed her daytime visit to Tevin and it was staying that way.

Adding to the chaos was a lot of my staff and faculty members from Medgar Evers. They were all over the hospital as well. One thing was for sure. TJ was going to have a lot of love in his life, several people claiming to be his godparents, and tons of gifts. Floyd and Tevin had made amends, even though Courtney had kicked him out of the house and filed for divorce. Both of them came to the hospital separately. Winsome also came by with her girlfriend.
They were still going strong. I had also decided to try again with her, after getting Tevin to cosign on it. We both agreed that since she was not lonely anymore, she had no real reason to try to sabotage our marriage. Floyd loved Tevin, Tevin loved Floyd, Winsome loved me, and I loved Winsome. Bona fide, genuine love doesn't simply die because everyone does not agree all of the time. People make mistakes. We are all flawed.

I had never gotten around to having a baby shower. I didn't really want one, to be honest. I figured that we would get a lot of repeat items, which ended up happening anyway in the upcoming weeks, and I was too anal to go through the process of trying to do registries at various stores. Even though most offered online registration, it was still too much for me. Part of being a new mother was going to be making sure that everything was the way that I wanted. I was hoping for more gift cards and cash than actual gifts. We ended up getting a mix of the two.

After all of the excitement had died down on the floor and in my room for the day, I sat up in bed, trying to get adjusted to the staples in my stomach, and asked Tevin to hand me TJ.

He was holding him in a chair by the window, staring at him like he was a piece of gold.

He brought me the baby as I lowered my hospital gown, and then held him up to my breast. I was going to have to get used to producing milk. My breasts felt like concrete slabs. I was going to have to pump several times a day while I was in my office, once I went back to work in the coming months.

Tevin wanted me to take the remainder of the school year off. I was considering it but didn't want to jeopardize my job in any way. He assured me that he could “manage” to get me a doctor's report stipulating that I needed the time off for health-related reasons. It was a thought. Being able to spend the time with TJ until after Labor Day would be a blessing.

As TJ was figuring out how he wanted to latch on to my breast for dear life, Tevin rubbed his head gently.

“See,” I said.

He looked at me. “Huh?”

“Look at his head. His big-ass head. Could you imagine what would have happened to it if I had been forced to push it out the birth canal?”

Tevin chuckled. “I have to give you that one. It would've been a mess.”

“I love you, Doctor Harris.”

“I love you, Mrs. Harris.”

We both watched as TJ ate his dinner and then watched late-night television together. We were all looking forward to our next phase of life together. After all, it was a one-shot deal.

O
riginally, I had come up with at least three different titles for this book. I am not going to say them because they are pretty damn good and I may or may not use one, or all, of them at some time in the future. Like all of my books, I had a purpose in mind when I sat down to write it. Also, like all of my books, the story and characters began to take on lives of their own, and many of them morphed into different people.

In this case, when I started the book, Floyd and Courtney were not even on my radar. It was my intent to make this book about two people—Tevin and Jemistry—and concentrate solely on their “situationship.” But the picture became much bigger when I decided to address other issues that plague a lot of couples.

What this book really boils down to is “a conversation.” It is meant to be a discussion piece for couples, singles, and anyone who is interested in trying to figure out why there is often so much drama and strife in relationships. Why some people seemingly go their entire lives not ever finding what it is that most people crave: true love.

Despite what a lot of people try to make others believe—that they are fine being single and doing them—I am not one to buy it. Maybe it's because I receive thousands of emails monthly from both men and women seeking advice about how to make love work for them. Maybe it is because I could never imagine my life with such an eternal void in it. Maybe it's because my parents have been married more than sixty years and I realized at an early age
that a healthy, nontoxic, non-dysfunctional household was actually possible if both people loved and respected each other enough to not only listen but to also comprehend.

So
The Other Side of the Pillow
is really a long-ass conversation piece. Instead of it being a nonfiction relationship book like
Dear G-Spot
, it is a fictionalized tutorial on how to communicate with emotional honesty, how to appreciate the difference between the ways that men and women view relationships, instead of fearing them, and how to either forgive or let go.

Too many people remain in unrealistic situations that have nothing to do with one party being good and another one being evil. They are simply unrealistic. Two people might be madly in love but circumstances will likely never present themselves that would afford them the opportunity to come home each night and fall asleep in each other's arms. Two people might possess character traits that are not equally yolked and may tend to do things that are not acceptable in the world of the other person. One person may be lazy, while the other is ambitious. One person might think they are the shit while the other person believes that they are not up to par. One person might have a low sex drive while the other person wants sex several times a day. There is no right or wrong in those scenarios. They are merely unrealistic.

Jemistry signified the typical bitter black woman in the beginning of the book, to the point where I had her reciting a poem called “Bitter.” A lot of women have been overwhelmed, overshadowed, and overexerted by men that they attempted to love who could never truly love them back. The reasons for the men not being able to convert to what the women needed range from lack of knowledge to lack of emotions.

Jemistry was ready to give up . . . for good. But then when she least expected it, love walked right into her life in the form of Tevin. There is something to be said about not searching for love
but allowing it to find you. Love was the last thing on her mind when she decided to express her feelings with that poem.

Now Tevin wasn't actually looking for love either. He was on the mend, even though his marriage had ended years earlier. In his mind, he couldn't fathom how he could be the total package that women always claimed to want: tall, dark, handsome, education, wealthy, and well hung, and yet be single. Sure, he could have dated women right and left, bedded them, and led them on. But that was not in his nature. He was a man who had never felt like conforming to whoredom because it was impressed upon most young men to do so. He had always yearned to be in a committed relationship and, as mentioned in the novel, he had witnessed the pain that his father's infidelity had caused both his parents. That was not a road that he wished to travel.

So I created a rare man who actually expressed his emotions without fear of judgment. A man willing to cry over, willing to fight for, and willing to sacrifice some of himself for a woman he deemed worthy of it all. Too many times women say that they want a man who will do all of these things and then turn around and make them feel bad when they open up.

Twice in the past two months, I have seen that in action on my Facebook page when I posted a couple of advice emails in particular. One from a married woman who was prepared to cheat on her husband who was “99 percent perfect”—her words not mine—with a man who had six kids by five different women. He had found her sexting and had cried instead of punching her lights out so she was convinced he had to be on the down low. Ridiculous!

Then I received an email on the weekend that I actually completed this book from a husband who poured his heart out. As I type this, there are more than seven hundred comments and counting on that thread and a lot of people calling him weak and telling him to “man up.” Again, ridiculous!

All of that is to say that women need to wise up and stop overlooking the men who are capable of loving them right and chasing after the men that will treat them horribly. Most of the women cannot help that kind of mentality. If it is what they witnessed growing up, then it is their normalcy. Relationships without a bunch of drama and nonsense throw them off-kilter. They often do not know how to accept love, especially if they do not even love themselves. It has become a generational curse.

One way to sum all of this up is this way and I am going to use an analogy. We really need to try to salvage the family unit globally. It is becoming more and more impossible to do so with so many accepting so much less. Also, with men and women not being able to relate to each other. It is like this:

Image two beautiful Clydesdale horses hitched to a wagon together (a married couple). They both have their eyes on the road ahead, trying to get to the same place (a healthy marriage and prosperous life). Like most horses, they both have blinders on so that they cannot see what the other is doing (they have a lack of communication). They have two ponies attached to them from behind (a male pony behind the male horse and a female pony behind the female horse). All the ponies can see because of their own blinders are the respective adult horses directly in front of them (their parents). So the male pony will learn from, imitate, and repeat the actions of his father, and the female pony will do the same in regards to her mother. Thus, the choices that the parents make, the way that they interact with each other, and the morals that they establish will be revisited on their children, and then their children's children, and so on.

That is why it is so important for people to truly lead by example. One cannot have several children out of wedlock, and then tell their kids that it is a sin to have sex outside of marriage. One cannot allow themselves to be abused over and over in the name
of love, and then try to tell their children that abuse is wrong. One cannot squander their money on material things, and then try to impress the importance of saving on their children. One cannot abuse drugs and alcohol for the entire childhoods of their children, and then tell them to “just say no to drugs.” One cannot sit on their ass, refusing to work—not due to health issues but just because—and then tell their kids that they need to be not only working but up out of their homes by the age of eighteen. I am sure you get my drift.