Three’s a Crowd

Connie had question after question. “Did you guys do this? Did you do that?”

I was cold. Rude.

I spoke to her in a way I hadn’t spoken to anyone in over three years—heartless.

She ruined the party.

I didn’t wanna talk to her. Didn’t wanna hear her either. Can’t even count how many times I hung up on her.

I never asked. Never questioned. I was having fun. But there she was, on the other end of the phone, caught up in everything we were doing—and in his lies.

And with every answer I gave, I could feel it—I was ripping a piece of her heart out.

I’d been on that side before. She was maybe three, four years younger than me. She was guileless when it came to the streets—sounded like a teenager, fresh out the gate.

She sounded like me at fifteen, getting my heart ripped to shit by Earl.

He’d been lying to her the whole time we were together. And get this—those two met during the week I took my kids to Cuba.

So, as long as I’d been with him, she was right there too—not far behind. She wanted him to be her man.

Only her man. So he played the part—pretended to be all hers, pretended to be the man she wanted.

A man he wasn’t.

I barely remember what I said to Q something like— “This is fucked up. I’m out.”

We broke up. I felt sick for weeks.

I figured after Connie found out the truth, after I heard the pain in her voice, that she was also going to be done.

Maybe. Maybe not. I never studied it. I was trying to sort out my own hurt. Six, seven months in, I walked away and it was hard.

I was alone, outside of my kids. In my own world when I met Q. Whatever once-in-a-while friends I had before disappeared once I got with him. Completely.

I had no one—and that’s exactly how he wanted it. He used to say, “Friends? They’ll either fri ya or end ya.”

Twist up the words, make it sound like wisdom—when really, it was just control. To keep me isolated. To keep me his. And even though I knew he was running game, after living the life I lived, the friends I had the pleasure of getting to know—there’s definitely some truth to that.

Q had all kinds of pimpology—manipulative terms, slick little lines.

Pimping is a mentality—it’s a mindset. It’s control dressed up as charm. Power masked as love.

That’s a huge red flag, by the way—when your man doesn’t want you to have any friends. It’s not about protection; it’s about control. It’s so you don’t have anyone in your ear, telling you what’s really going on.

No outside perspective while you’re caught up in the lies, the feels, the fantasy. It’s isolation. Straight up.

I had nobody to talk about Q with. It was a fucked-up situation from the get-go. Q also had that life—a life you don’t talk about. A life no one could even relate to unless they were live.

I had stopped talking to anyone connected to my past, so I just dealt with it internally. Stuffing it all the bin.

Q had me in his hood—west side. I loved that. It was almost like when I moved to Vancouver. Nobody knew me—it was a fresh start. It was all new—all but the hurt.

I was quiet. Sad. I was hurting. I missed him. And I knew he was missing me—had to be. I’ve done this dance before. Our souls were intertwined. We meshed. That electricity—you can’t fake that shit, and you can’t turn it off like a switch.

There was something cosmic between us—something rare. But he couldn’t see it. He didn’t want to see it. Even though I knew he fucking felt it.

Not long after that breakup—maybe four, six weeks—my phone was going off again. It was him. My heart sank. My face dropped. I wasn’t excited—it was almost fear. It wasn’t butterflies.

Something was missing. A piece of what we had—once solid, once whole—was just gone.

I was vulnerable with Q from day one. He fed off that shit. I wasn’t used to being soft like that. He had me right there, in the palm of his hand—and just before I let go, he fucked it all up. The armour snapped back. So did the mean.

I spent years picking up the pieces after everything that happened when I came back to Toronto. I’d grown soft, nice—finally. But after that mess with Connie? The hood in me came out. That version of me I’d buried deep. She didn’t just resurface—she kicked the fucking door down.

We got back together, but the vulnerability I once had with him was cracked. And the tough, hard-ass survivor in me was there.

It took time. But eventually, the butterflies came back. I tried to stay away. It wasn’t happening. He didn’t make it easy—He wouldn’t stay off my phone.

Eventually, I gave in. It started again as just sex. But it didn’t stay that way, not for long. We got close. Closer than close.

It was summer…

He had a sick bike. GSXR 1000. We were riding hard, everywhere—and I was fucking loving it.

We were riding here and there. Doing the patio thing, we even rode to Port Dover—Friday the 13th.

Clubs. Lunch. Breakfast. Dinner. Hangouts. That’s what my summer was full of. Oh, and of course, great sex.

That summer was fucking great, one of the best. I was having fun again. That little piece that was gone was starting to smooth over. But it would never be whole again.

It was like a tube of confetti that popped open and spilled everywhere—you’ll never get it all back into the tube.

Q liked talking about money, he was always on the money tip. With Q, I could see his brain working when it came to me: What am I gonna do with her?

It was like he needed a reason to be fucking with me, because he’s got that pimp mentality.

He even said it out loud: “What am I gonna do with you?”  I’d just laugh and say, “Come here,” all sexy—like I was saying, gimme some.

It was like—when we were all intertwined, with the cuddles, the laughs, the chemistry—the pimp mentality left. We were the same.

He couldn’t and wouldn’t acknowledge that. He knew he was enjoying himself more than he wanted to. He was catching feelings.

It’d come right back when I left, though. That pimp mentality.

He had that reputation among his boys he had to protect. He had to justify being with me. He was used to being a pimp.

But the pimp walls were disintegrating more and more with me as the days went by.

He—as a person—was evolving. We were 32, we were growing together. That pimp shit, just like my till-tapping days, were over.

It was beneath him and he knew it. He didn’t need the pimp game anymore—he was flush. Flush.

That pimp shit is hard to shake though! That was his mentality—and I got that. Once a pimp, always a pimp. “What’s in it for me?”

I understood him. I saw Q for exactly who he was the second I stepped into the spot, and I was cool with it. Cool with him.

Me seeing him—that was a huge part of the chemistry going on between us. The chemistry he tried so hard to defy.

It’s a big deal when someone can see you. When someone can accept you for exactly what—and who—you are.

Especially someone with his repertoire.

Almost a gift.

I came into a few dollars and I wanted my tits done—been wanting them done forever. We got to talking about it.

He came up with a plan: I’d give him 10 Gs, and he was gonna flip it into 15. On repeat. I’d get my 20 Gs back, and have the extra 10 to do the tits.

Sounded like a great plan to me.

I saw that as—maybe, you know—he realized he really liked me. That he hurt me with that Connie shit.

That was something I really wanted, and something he could make happen. We were both all in. 

In the back of my head, though—I knew who the fuck I was dealing with. I knew he saw it as some sort of investment.
And it was. Just not in the way he’d fantasized it’d be.

He flipped it.

During that flipping period, we were tight as fuck. In his mind, he had some sort of feeling that he was getting something from me. And I was sweet as fucking pie. Yes, Daddy.

I knew it was a gamble. I rolled the dice.

When it came time to collecting, there was a vibe—like I just might not get it back—any of it.

The thought did cross my mind. Probably his too. He was holding a few stacks for me, and he could’ve easily said—see ya, fuck off.

He didn’t. Because he had feelings for me. He wasn’t letting me go.

He also had this fantasy in his head—that I was gonna make him a million dollars with those tits.

I can remember vividly the day he reluctantly handed it to me. He wasn’t in a good mood, and I was fucking sweating bullets. It was an intense moment.

He gave it to me—phew—but not before making it crystal clear in a tone I didn’t like, that he didn’t make a fucking dime off of that. And he wasn’t happy about it.

I was!

I could see it in his face. He was the pimp—this wasn’t how it was supposed to work. So, he soothed himself with a fantasy.

I didn’t care what he was thinking. What he thought was gonna happen and what was actually gonna happen—two different things.

That move right there? It bonded us. We were tighter than ever.

Q had clients coming through now and then—people who had work done by the great Dr. Bell. Work I saw. Work I wanted.

While everybody else was paying five grand at the time—2005, 2006—to see some doctor at Yonge and Eglinton… I was in a Victorian-style mansion in Rosedale. Paying 10 Gs for top-of-the-line cohesive gel. That’s what’s up.

He came to all the appointments. We had a date set for August. All the feelings were there—pretty sure I was convinced by that time I was in love with him. I was fully invested—and so was he, with the 10 Gs.

Even though the tits gave me some sense of security—because my feelings had gotten that deep—I started getting more sensitive to the bullshit.

I could feel some shit was going on. I didn’t ask. I certainly didn’t fucking think it was Connie.

Not too long after the tits were done, I could feel him—distracted.

Then my phone rang. It was Connie. Again.

That bitch loved calling my phone!

Like—how many fucking months later was this? I hadn’t thought about that girl in forever. And there she was, popping up again.

Asking me some stupid-ass shit. Always some stupid-ass shit she already had the answers to— “Do you have a butterfly tattoo on your back? ’Cause I think I saw you on the back of Q’s bike.”

She was probably right behind us with a fucking pair of binoculars.

“Yo, did you see me with my butterfly tattoo on my back on Q’s bike?” She mumbled some shit. I told her to grow the fuck up, to get help and get the fuck off my phone.

Oh, she fucking saw me. But this fucking guy—he had her head all fucked up.

He lied to her so hard, she could be looking dead at the color red, and he’d tell her it was blue— and she’d want so badly to believe him that she’d call it blue too.

I talked down to her. Like she was a stupid fucking idiot. And I made her feel like one.

I had a way with words. And they could be downright cruel. And with her—they were.

She even called me out on that—said how mean and ruthless I was. Told me my words were disgustingly hurtful.

When she said that, I actually felt bad for her. A little sorry. She wasn’t like me. She didn’t raise herself by herself in the streets.

She had the cushy life.

This was her first time ever being with a G like Q. 100%. And he loved that—That vulnerable shit. Big playground. Wide open field.

Ya, it stung—knowing she was back on the scene, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time. 

More than a year in, my roughneck shit had started to surface. And he started to see it.

After that first phone call from Connie went down, and that little piece from what was once whole between Q and I, went missing—it was a piece of my soul and it was replaced with; grit. Darkness. Rude, defensive meanness.

What I’m about to tell you? It’s gonna fucking blow your mind.

Because you’re about to see exactly the kind of man I was dealing with—The balls, the audacity this motherfucker had. The man I thought I was in love with.

That distraction I was feeling…That distance.. That was him, leaning the other way. Toward Connie. Working her brain. Manipulation in full effect. 

Making a hoe along with getting inside someone’s head enough to control their every move. To be able to convince them that red is fucking blue—that shit takes time.

It takes effort. That’s where the saying comes from—”Pimping ain’t easy.”

That’s what Q was doing the whole time—inside his head, with both of us. Putting in the work. Alternating back and forth.

Even though it wasn’t hoeing, it was the same process. Manipulation. To get what he wanted. And that shit takes time.

He had just bought me a pair of tits—so he figured I’d be good for a minute. Sit pretty.

That shit—still irks him to this day. Hell, it might even haunt him.

I’d never say it to his face—well, not until the end—but the truth is:

He bought me those tits! He made the 10 Gs. I got new tits. Any which way he tried to spin it.

A price for not seeing me.

One day—out of the blue—Q showed me a picture of this chick. She was hot, I won’t lie. At first, it felt like he was hinting at a threesome. Testing the waters.

But the next day? He pushed it further. Said he wanted me to meet her.

Then he hit me with it: He’d been fucking her. And he wanted the three of us to come together. It was Connie.

Ain’t that some shit?! That motherfucker wanted us to be a throuple!

I remember being at the gym after I read that text message—feeling fucking sick. Q had my heart. I had immersed myself in him.

I had spent three years before I met Q being a mom, a student, and trying to claw my way into a better life. 

I landed at Airmiles and outside of a person or two I met there—I didn’t have any friends. Q was my friend.

When I had spare time? I spent it with him. He had me. And that’s exactly the fucking way he wanted it.

Outside of my meanness and grit, I had no safety net.

We hooked up. The three of us. We all came together. And it was the most fucked-up scenario you could ever fucking imagine.

Probably the deepest injury ever done to my soul—was this. All of this.

Not the lying. Not the scheming. Not even the way he tried to sell a fantasy and manipulate me like I was a pawn in some twisted game he thought he had under control…

It was the feeling. The sickness inside. The way I had to detach—to survive it.

I could feel something in me—crack. Not snap. Not break. Crack. Because in that moment, I chose to be numb. I chose to be hard. I chose to bury the softest parts of me just to make it through.

And you know what’s fucked? I did it like a pro.  

Like I had been training my whole life to put on a straight face and perform through pain. Like I was made for it.

That was the beginning of something irreversible. I played it cool. Hardness on display. I was down. She was hot. “Let’s go,” I said.

Q knows now—that this where he completely fucked up. With me anyway. He couldn’t see past the monstrosity of his ego, which by that time was bigger than anything else in the room. 

Oh, he’d been lying to her hard. Running stories, selling her fantasies. But the second she met me? It hit her—like a ton of fucking bricks.

She saw it—us, how shit really was.

It was all fucking lies.

Even though she didn’t know what to do with that—she rolled with it...

And there we were—mid-scene, and this man started showing off. “Look what she can do, watch this, watch this.” he said.

I glanced over at her—and that was it. I stopped what I was doing. Because I could feel her heart sinking to the floor. She was hurt.

I saw the hurt in her face. Felt the pain underneath her skin. She wasn’t built for this life, for his lies. And she sure as hell wasn’t built for me.

You know that moment when something’s happening in real time, and it’s like you’re watching yourself from outside your body? That. That’s where I was.

In bed with both of them watching her pain—and the wildest part was, it was me who was hurting for her. She was sweet. She was nice. She didn’t deserve that.

Once she had a face—she was a person, not just the dumb bitch on the other end of the phone—it hit different.

She wasn’t the enemy. She was collateral damage, just like me.

But I wasn’t gonna show that shit!

Couldn’t crack. Not in front of her. Couldn’t let her see the soft. Not after everything.

So I carried on all big and bad. Like it didn’t phase me. Like I wasn’t sitting there swallowing glass just to keep my pride from bleeding out all over the place.

I acted like I didn’t even have a soul. I just carried it—all of it—while the soul I did have was screaming inside.

Q was happy as a fucking pig in shit. They dropped me off the next day, and he and her actually came into my fucking house—and she met my kids.

He was on cloud nine. He really thought this whole three-way throuple bullshit was gonna work out.

I could feel her energy in the car thinking to herself what the fuck is actually going on? 

Trent knew Q. So did Kayla—Well.

She saw that. Ya see, that’s how men be telling on themselves.

I was nothing to him?

When she saw Trent run and hug Q, and the way he was with Trent, she knew different.

You know what? I don’t think he gave two shits about what he told her.

It was like he expected her to ignore it—just go with it, accept it all.

I think I introduced her as my friend—I can’t even remember—but it was quick. Nothing deep.

Q was the only man in my life since Trent was born that my kids had ever met as my man.

And still to this day, he’s the only man in 20 years my kids have known me to be with. He definitely left his mark.

They left, and we hooked up a couple nights later for dinner. It was Caribana weekend. I had the tits done. I was in shape, had on this sexy-ass white dress. I was looking good and feeling even better.

Q’s cousins were in town from Hamilton, so we all went to this spot we used to hit up all the time—The Red Tomato, underneath Fred’s Not Dead on King Street West.

We had half the damn restaurant—big-ass table set up.

It was all him and his people, and me and Connie. I’d never seen Q’s face glow like that in my life. He really thought he had it in the bag. Q was happier than a motherfucker.

I was sitting beside him. I was being myself—by that I mean exactly how I always was with Q, I was actually in good spirits.

I looked over at her, and I could see she was sick. Her face reeked of sadness. After absorbing what was really what over the past few days.

The chemistry between us was visibly insane—she saw that first and foremost. Just like everyone else who had eyeballs.

She started asking me subtle questions about my son. And you know guys are stupid—they be telling on themselves all fucking day long, dropping hints here and there, especially this motherfucker. Hard to keep it all together when you lie for a living.

She put two and two together and saw how close we really were, right there at dinner.

He had downplayed our entire relationship to her. I could see her sinking in her chair, feeling so stupid—played.  Meanwhile, I was also being fucking played, sitting there acting like I wasn’t.

I can still remember looking over at him—seeing how damn comfortable and happy he was. Just mowing down the food, not a care in the world.

He wasn’t cold toward me at all. I wasn’t sure what to expect. He was the same way with me as he always was—bringing up things we’d done together, like some shit from just last week.

Things that were hitting her like darts.

She tried to get me though, when I was eating bread. Sitting there all prissy.

“Oh, you eat bread?” she asked, face all screwed up. Lookin’ like she ate bread all day long just not in public.

I was like, yup sure do! As I stuffed that piece in my mouth and grabbed another.

He was like, “Yeah, boo—have some bread.” Hahaha!

We were hanging with his boys—I mean can be classy, but I’ve also got that I know how to get down vibe around the guys.

I’ve sat in enough locker rooms in my day. I knew how to hang with the fellas.

That’s what they called each other—Boo. I was grown. That Boo shit was for 20-year-olds. She even brought up the “Babe” thing—probably because he let it slip one day.

Shit, she brought up everything. Everything she knew was a lie, but she hoped it wasn’t.

I’d look at her like, c’mon, girl—wakey wakey!

He just kept shoveling it—kept feeding her the bullshit—and she just kept eating it.

She was intimidated by my demeanor—she saw me, the pretty and the rough.

And I was fucking intimidated by her, 100%! Beautiful, educated, delicate. But I wasn’t fucking letting her see that though. Unh-uh!

She was no match for me when it came to the streets—or Q. He was the fucking streets!

That night we were together again, and it was a shit show. She started crying and screaming—like a fucking actress in a horror movie

He coddled her, I felt sick. I just got up and fucking left. Fucking damsel in distress. 

She had that vulnerability thing going on over me—whatever little vulnerability I had in the beginning with Q was long fucking gone.

They had been together all of that time since the first time she called me up.

She knew who I was and that I was with him all along. He told her I was his money maker. I never made that motherfucker a dime!

He had her believing he was grooming me—or that I already was groomed. We were gonna be big porn stars—Q’s lifelong fantasy.

That’s all I was to him, and that’s why she stayed on board.

She tried hard to adapt to the hustle life, his lifestyle, and up until the day she met me, she convinced herself that’s what was really going on.

It was a good story for her, I guess.

She was trying to compare what he did with me to what he did with her—right down to the sexy details—hoping the answer she feared wasn't the one she'd hear.

I was truthful with her—he wasn’t.

He wasn’t letting me go. And he wasn’t letting her go either.

Turned out—neither of us was going anywhere. 

We were in a situationship.

She told me she lived in one of his houses somewhere out in the burbs.

I was like, “Ya, you do, ya? And I bet you pay his fucking mortgage too, don’t ya, you fucking dumb dumb!”

He’d been trying to get me into a house or a condo—not fucking me! I wasn’t paying anybody’s fucking mortgage, especially not my pimp-mentality man’s!

If I ever had a boundary back in the day, that was it—giving a motherfucker my money. I was always more of a pimp than I ever was a hoe.

Q wanted to set me up in one of his places for the longest time—a condo, and not in the burbs—downtown. Right across the fucking street from him.

That was never gonna happen. I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—ever live under somebody’s thumb.

No matter how deep I was into him, I knew better. The reasons he wanted that—control was just one of them. I wasn’t new.

I wasn’t giving up my security—my freedom—like that. Never.

I wanted her to go away if I’m being honest. I wanted her to recognize she was out of her league and just walk away.

We had plans to go to Jamaica in November. We were only doing more things. Making plans.

I laid down with him and her—twice. I saw how he was with me, and how he was with her.

There was a difference.

I was the get-down-and-dirty girl—risqué, down to try anything at least once. And show off, especially between the sheets.

I was that person. Just like him. Just the way he molded me.

She was a demure damsel—always needing to be saved. She had boundaries. She was raised right. It was her I told—there are no boundaries when you’re with someone like Q.

There were parts of her he couldn’t let go of. And the same for me.

I guess the qualities the two of us had combined...made the perfect woman for him.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t caught up with him—I was!

But after that first call from Connie—when the first piece of my soul got singed, and the grit I had buried for three years came back—there was no stuffing it back down.

I went into survival mode. I reverted to being hypervigilant. I didn’t always have a smile on my face anymore. And after all of that shit went down—I was no longer quiet as kept.

Reflection:

This story was a tough one—tough to acknowledge, lots of thoughts and feels—sadness.

I treated her and talked to her like she was a piece of shit. I realize now that the way I treated her was exactly how I felt about myself.

No self-respect. That confetti that couldn’t go back in the tube—was pieces of me that were broken, angry, mad and sad.

My own ugliness. Spilling out onto her.

I wasn’t jealous of her, or her life, and definitely not the way he treated her.

That wasn’t it—what I felt. It was a lot deeper than that.