I Am the New Black Part 2

Each night when I go to bed

It just isn't fair.... Obsession

Whenever I get sad I listen to the songs because I need to hear my daddy's voice. These two songs are all I have left of the physical memory of him.

I watched my hero go from a strong, strapping man to a withered bag of bones in less than half a year. He got so weak and thin that he couldn't eat solid food, and then soon he couldn't even speak. He'd try to whisper, and all he could eat was pieces of ice. We'd sit there in the hospital and feed him ice while he looked up at us, just helpless, as if he wanted to say something that he couldn't get out. It was heartbreaking.

Once my dad was sick it was hard for me to keep going like nothing was wrong. I tried to keep up a front in school and around most of my friends because how could I share the truth? I was too scared to let it be known that he was dying of AIDS. Ignorance and fear of the disease abounded. If I was honest about it with the kids in school, no one would have talked to me again. I probably would have been expelled by the teachers as a danger to the student body-that's how limited the understanding of the disease was back then. So I kept all of it to myself and let everything that I'd worked so hard to achieve in school slowly slip away from me.

My father died before the end of my senior year. My grades had never been good, but once my dad got sick, they got even worse. The same thing happened with sports-my coaches were great, but my dad was the one who really knew how to motivate me. Once he was gone, there was n.o.body there to hold me down, n.o.body to demand to see my report card, n.o.body to take me down to Yankee Stadium when there was still a track across the street and make me run two miles every night. There was n.o.body there to watch my football games and n.o.body to come to my track meets. n.o.body to tell me what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. So I thought, "f.u.c.k it." The world was f.u.c.king me. I was on my own.

I started skipping practices and track meets and cutting cla.s.s. I had been on the track team in 1987 and I had won the Bronx championship in the fifty-yard dash. I was actually going somewhere with that, if I'd only been able to keep my life from ruining my focus. But I couldn't, and I didn't tell any of my coaches why. As my grades started to slip, I began to forge my report cards. I'd carefully change a grade here, make a minus into a plus there, and then I'd turn in that falsified report to my coaches. They'd put that information onto my transcript, and that's how I kept my grades high enough to keep playing sports. I didn't care at all about school-sports was all I wanted to do. And my coaches turned a blind eye to it. It wasn't a situation that was going to end well, and it didn't. One of the a.s.sistant track coaches confronted me just before the team was heading to an important meet. I'd been one of the runners who'd been carrying the team, but that wasn't going to save me.

He told me that I'd been slipping and acting out and that he wasn't standing for it. He said he knew I was forging my grades, and he threatened to go to the school authorities about it. That was it for me; I couldn't take any more. It was hard enough just getting through a school day knowing my dad was one day closer to death. This track coach getting on my case was the end for me: I quit school and never looked back.

Years later I got an honorary diploma from DeWitt Clinton High, which was a surprise to me. I was on Sat.u.r.day Night Live at the time and agreed to appear on a local cable show called After School, which showcased a different New York City public high school each week. I was reunited with my track coach, Mr. Brad, my football coach, Mr. Johnson, and my favorite teacher, Mr. Blanco. We shot some footage at the school, and I saw the a.s.sistant coach who'd confronted me. He took me down the hall, where there were years of photos of all the sports teams. He stopped at every track team photo for the years I ran track. In all of them, someone, I don't know who, had blacked out my face with a Magic Marker. He was laughing about that; he thought it was really funny, and he made a point of showing me. I don't know what he was expecting, but I turned to him and said, "Don't worry about it, Coach," and walked out of there. Maybe he felt like I let him or the team down back in the day, but I didn't know what to do: I'd been caught forging grades, my dad was dying, and the only thing that made sense to me was to quit school before I got kicked out.

That day I also got to speak to a group of kids in the drama program, which didn't exist when I was in school. It was inspiring to see kids from my neighborhood have that kind of creative outlet. The princ.i.p.al took that moment to inform me that all I'd done in entertainment counted toward four credits in the school's drama program and that I was eligible to graduate. He presented me with a diploma, and I was overwhelmed. Just having that piece of paper and getting to wear that robe for a minute meant the world to me. Right then I knew my dad was looking down on me and was very proud.

After I dropped out of school, I learned a few lessons right away. The most important one was that in high school, p.u.s.s.y is free. That's why they call lunch hour at public school a box lunch. High school was four years of box lunch! I had no idea how good I'd had it in school. It was only after high school, once I found out that just being me, just being funny and flirting with girls I ran into every day, wasn't enough to get me laid anymore, that I realized I had a problem. I hadn't counted on that. I thought that being an athlete made you just as popular on the streets. I was wrong; out in the real world other rules applied. There was one thing that spelled P-U-S-S-Y, and that was M-O-N-E-Y.

I had to find a way to get cash because if I wasn't fly, if I didn't have new sneakers and gear, there wasn't any p.u.s.s.y coming my way. I wanted all that s.h.i.t because I wanted the girls. Overnight I became a single black male addicted to retail. I needed money, clothes, and hos. There was only one way to get all that: I had to get a real neighborhood job, if you know what I mean. There were plenty of fast-food joints and small businesses, but that's not what I was looking for. I applied where I thought I'd get the most for my time; I started dealing weed. All the kids in the neighborhood thought it was funny.

"You're no drug dealer, Tray, you an athlete! What the f.u.c.k you doin'?"

"Naw, man, you want some of this s.h.i.t?" I'd say. "It's dope, man, best s.h.i.t on the block!"

I'll be honest: I wasn't the best drug dealer I've ever seen-or you've ever seen either, suburb people! I was the kind of drug dealer who had to keep a day job to support his night job as a drug dealer. You don't hear that s.h.i.t in rap songs. Where's the rapper bragging about slinging McNuggets all day so he can sling weed all night? That was me. I worked everywhere and hung out on the block. I needed that nine-to-five. I had jobs at Wendy's, Popeyes, a few pizza shops, and a few sneaker stores, and I was terrible at every single one of them. That's why I had so many! When I worked in restaurants, I dropped all the food. I dropped so many fries on the floor it looked like the Hamburglar ran through there every five minutes. The sneaker place wasn't much better. All I had to do was get shoes from the stockroom in the back, but it's amazing how distracted you can get in a room full of shoes when the stock girl that you like is back there too, telling you about how she just broke up with her man.

The funny thing was, I liked the job I was the worst at-selling drugs. I had my personality going for me; I could talk to people all day, because I love people-I love anyone who wants to give me love back. So as a drug dealer, I was good in only one way-I could talk to any motherf.u.c.ker that came up to me. But in every other way? Nah. Drug dealers need to be quick, efficient, ruthless, paranoid in a healthy way, and always on guard. I was like half a drug dealer, but that didn't keep me from ending up with all the bad s.h.i.t that comes with the job, that's for sure.

While I was out there dealing, the drug scene changed right out from under me. Selling weed on the street was nothing once crack came along. Crack. Doesn't it even sound like trouble? Crack isn't a natural drug; it's not even a more intense form of a natural drug. It's a concentrated form of a manmade narcotic that dealers cook to save money and increase addiction. Crack was created because a bunch of drug lords in the Bahamas and Miami realized that they had too much cocaine on their hands. They had so much c.o.ke that the value of it went down, so they were making less money with every sale. They weren't having that. Since they couldn't increase the demand, they decided to change the drug. They put all that c.o.ke into an oven and cooked it up with some other chemicals until it was a pile of high-powered rocks that people smoked. Then they started to market that s.h.i.t on the streets as the newest high anyone could ever want, at half the price. If there's one thing about Americans, they like the newest s.h.i.t that does the most. Just turn on late-night TV if you don't believe me. Slap Chop, ShamWow-all that, it's nothing but an eagerness to get there faster.

Once crack became the new black, the South Bronx became New York City's drive-thru restaurant. It was already Easy Street for whatever else you might want, from heroin to c.o.ke to weed and hookers. You name it, you could get it in the South Bronx. But crack changed everything. The dude I sold for told all of us soldiers that we had a new game, and I saw the difference right away. This wasn't a party anymore. The people buying crack were serious users. I was selling crack to every kind of person you can imagine: rich people, poor people, young people, old people, desperate people, already high people, and way too many in-withdrawal people. But I didn't care about them too much; I was making money, I was buying myself s.h.i.t and beginning what I thought was going to be a better life. At the same time I knew it was wrong; it wasn't my character. My grandmother and my uncles and my father hadn't raised a family of jailbirds. We might have had a few drug addicts, but we never had jailbirds, and none of our tribe ever died violently.

I can't lie. There were parts of selling crack that I really liked. Selling drugs to all kinds of people on the street was great for developing my comedy skills. I'd always used humor to get me through tough situations. I took to selling crack like it was an open-mic night, and I was pretty good at it. I had people laughing even when they were jonesing for a fix. Maybe it was just because I had what they were looking for that they were a good audience, but I didn't care. I loved shooting the s.h.i.t, making jokes with all those crackheads. It was like comedy-they were paying me for a good time.

After maybe a year of standing on the corner making a decent living, I woke up and realized that I was following the herd-and if you follow the herd, you're bound to step in s.h.i.t. I wasn't stupid; I knew that my new job didn't come with a retirement program. Drug dealers don't need 401(k)s-because they die. I figured that out because my friends started to die. I could name them all here, but out of respect for the dead all I'm going to say is this: A lot of good cats got washed. And it was like that all over the country, in every major metropolitan area. I'm sure a lot of you who are about my age understand what I'm about to say: It's one thing to hear about what went down, and it's another thing to have been there, seen it, lived it, and, if you were lucky, to have survived it. I'm talking to those of you like me who might have known what you were doing was dangerous but who were more worried about getting by day to day. It only takes one loss close to your heart to snap your neck around. What you do after that is up to you.

For me, that loss was the death of my friend Spoon. I still miss him each and every day. We played football together in school. He was one of the funniest motherf.u.c.kers I've ever met. If you want to know what Spoon was like, get on YouTube and search for my character Spoonie Luv on Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla's show Crank Yankers. I've got to give it up to those guys for selling a TV show where puppets act out real live prank phone calls that comedians like me made. That is real right there! You had be white to make that happen. You think anyone would have bought that from two black guys? Can you see Redman and Method Man hosting a show like that? I didn't think so. But who cares? I'm glad all those executives at Comedy Central are as ridiculous as they are because that show is a cla.s.sic, and because it gave me a place to honor one of my best friends in the whole world.

At his best, my man Spoon was an insane, dirty, 247 prankster. The guy was, hands down, the most on-point wisea.s.s I've ever met. Spoon always took things that one step further. When the team used to shower after football practice, we always used to throw our wet drawers at each other, just f.u.c.king around. One day our coach walked in to talk to us, and Spoonie couldn't help himself: He threw his drawers at the coach, and they hit him right in the chest with a loud bop! Coach ran us right out of the showers, he was so p.i.s.sed, and the next day he made Spoon run two extra miles in full equipment. Of course, it was those qualities that also caused his death-that's the way it goes in the ghetto. If you shine too bright, someone will put your light out. One day Spoon was out there on the street, doing what he did best-joking and talking s.h.i.t to everyone who walked by his piece of pavement. He started snapping on this one dude and took him down. The guy had nothing to say. Spoon was too good; you had no business getting into it with him unless you knew him and had some ammunition. This guy had none, and he couldn't handle being stripped of his pride.

From what I heard, Spoon wasn't even really breaking his boot off in this guy's a.s.s, he was just being playful, which was actually him at his funniest. But the guy got p.i.s.sed. He had his girl with him, and she was laughing at what Spoon was saying. He was a teenager still caught up in that emotional tornado, a young kid who knew nothing about self-control. Without a word or a warning, he left his girl there on the street, went up into his mama's house right there on the block, got his gun, and put a cap in Spoon's head.

Statistically, Spoon's murder wasn't remarkable-just look at the murder rates in any ghetto in America, whether we're talking about back then or today. There have probably been ten deaths like Spoon's in the time it took you to read the last two pages of this book. Every single day the same type of mindless violence happens in cities across the country. You won't see articles about it regularly in Newsweek, but ask anyone in law enforcement. They know because they do the paperwork. There are too many unsolved murders to report on the news. It's too d.a.m.n common. Spoon was just another one of those.

They say it takes something local to make someone think global, and Spoon's death did that to me. His death was a huge smack in my face. It woke me up and it cut me to my core, because I should have been there with him. I would have been, but I'd gotten lucky that night. I was with a girl who I'd been working on for some time, but if I hadn't been, I'd probably be dead right now. I know this much: If I had been there and that kid came out like that, I'd have taken a bullet because I'd have been trying to snap on him even harder than Spoon was. I probably would have failed, but that's what Spoon was for me-inspiration to be funnier because he was so d.a.m.n quick. It still makes me pause all these years later when I think about it: If I'd been there, I'd be dust.

It was like G.o.d was looking me in the eye and telling me I was driving the wrong way down a one-way street. The night I got the call that Spoon had been killed, I took it as a sign. But there would be more. My friend Allen got shot too because he followed a guy named Panama, who was reckless. They were trying to become big-time drug dealers, and I wasn't willing to take it that far. Remember Enter the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee? Remember the guy he fights at the end, the guy with the claw? He says something to Bruce that I've never forgotten. He says, "There is a boundary." My boundary was never shaming my family.

I don't know what you believe in, reader, but I believe in spirits. I've done some dumb-a.s.s s.h.i.t, but something has always gotten me through. If you ask me, it's got to be the spirits of my homeys; they're up there, looking out. They got me, because we all came from the same beginning. They just got up there first, so they're watching me now. I feel sorry for the people who don't have that.

Redd Foxx was the first real dude. He had party alb.u.ms before Lenny Bruce, and they were so dirty you could not play them around kids. He was a pioneer, straight from vaudeville. He did stand-up for years and then took that spirit and brought it into the sitcom world. Sanford and Son was what he did as his third act! And he brought it all mainstream-big-time, mainstream success.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like to say it a few times a day lately, since my girlfriend, Taneisha, and I moved in together: Nothing makes a man feel better than a woman. It's nice to have a daily reminder of this in my life once again. I thought those feelings were gone forever after my wife and I split up. We'd been together for twenty years. I thought she was going to be the only true love I'd ever have.

I met Sabina when we were just kids. I was at the age where the last thing you want to do is settle down. At nineteen, every man feels like Christopher Columbus, ready to explore that great ocean of females he sees stretching out to the horizon before him. Nineteen-year-old men are like farmers staring down a field of corn at harvest time, and their d.i.c.k is the tractor. That tractor is gonna cut into the sc.r.a.ppy, half-bald corn just the way it cuts into those perfect stalks. But that don't matter to a young farmer riding along on his d.i.c.k tractor. To him, it's all about how many stalks and how quick he mows them down. When you're nineteen and in that frame of mind, corn is corn.

I was no different. In fact, it was just that mentality that led me to Sabina in the first place, but once I met her, everything changed. She made me feel like anything was possible. No woman had made me feel that way before. Meeting her, I felt like a kid being introduced to Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and a real live unicorn all in the same day. That would be some intense s.h.i.t!

Sabina was something I didn't think existed-a best friend, a good woman, and my rock all in one. All it took was the love of a good woman to make a man out of me. Within two weeks of meeting her, I was through with other girls and I started to think about building a family of my own.

I'll never forget the day I met Sabina. I was selling souvenirs outside of gate 4 at Yankee Stadium. I had a good business going; I also had my regular c.o.ke customers down there too. When it was game time, they knew where to find me-right at my souvenir booth. I'd scalp tickets out there too sometimes. I'd take care of 'em, whatever their needs.

I was standing out there at the stadium on a game night selling s.h.i.t with my boy Elgis. He is still out there and he is my dog! So when you go to a game at Yankee Stadium and you want to buy some souvenirs, go to the booth right outside of gate 4. You'll see Elgis, doing it like we used to. Tell him Tracy sent you. What up, Elgis! I saw him the other day, the first time I was at the new stadium. That place is nice; it's a palace. Every time I go to a game, it's a trip back in time for me. I see the stairs I used to run, the track I used to jog around, even though they're not there anymore.

So the day I met Sabina I was out there with Elgis, doing our thing. The Yankees were playing the Minnesota Twins, and the Yankees kicked their a.s.s. I remember seeing this bomb-a.s.s chick on a pay phone nearby. She was short with a big f.u.c.king booty, wearing these tight cutoff jean shorts. She was looking good.

"Elgis, you see Shorty over there?" I asked him. "I could pull her like a hamstring."

"Over there?" he said. "Nah, you can't get her."

"Yes I can."

"Bet."

I went over and stepped to her, and she put up a good fight, but she didn't stand a chance. You've got to understand, I've got the gift of gab-it's the same way I got Taneisha. I made her laugh and I made her smile. No woman can resist me! Give me enough time, and it's a done deal, so long as she's got ears, eyes, and a p.u.s.s.y.

Within a few hours Sabina was on the other side of my booth, helping me sell souvenirs. Next home game, she brought her two kids to the job. Two, maybe three weeks later she finally gave it up and I got some. I took her to this little hotel near the stadium. She was four years older than me and already had two children, but it didn't matter to her at all that I had nothing to my name. I'm glad she saw that I had heart and I wasn't afraid of hard work of any kind. It also helped that I like to be clean. She told me years later that the first night we did it, in that hotel, she was impressed that I'd worn a brand-new outfit and that I washed my drawers out in the sink and laid them out to dry on the radiator so they'd be fresh the next day.

Once the right woman was in my life, that was it. I was happy. I felt a shift in me right away-I was inspired to change. Sabina and I were so right for each other it was like she was my pot and I was her lid, and until you have that, you won't ever understand.

Like I said, when we got together Sabina already had two kids-Malcolm, who was two, and Benji, who was four or five, so there wasn't just the two of us to think about. Her sons were from different fathers, both guys I knew from around the way. That would be a nightmare for most men, but I didn't even care; none of that mattered to my pride. And looking back on it all, I see that the fact that I was cool with the situation says the most about the kind of love Sabina and I shared. Only a real bond with a woman would make a nineteen-year-old male happy to raise two kids who aren't his. Young men in the ghetto are proud and angry; they do not have the ideal temperament to handle raising a neighbor's punk-a.s.s kids. But I saw no shame in it at all; I was proud and happy to raise Sabina's children as my own. To me her children were extensions of her, not of those other men. I loved all of her, so how could I not love them? That's how it's been with them from day one. I am their father and they are my kids and that's it. I consider them my flesh and blood. I legally adopted them after we'd been together a few years.

It wasn't long before we added my own flesh and blood to the family. I think my desire began during those three weeks Sabina made me wait before she gave me some of that good stuff. From the first day we met we were together every day, so those three weeks were an eternity. All I could think about was getting some. I wanted it so bad I couldn't even m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e! I had three weeks of sperm backed up. For the next three years my son Tracy junior was swimming around in my big-a.s.s nuts. When I look at my teenage son now, I like to remind him that once he was just a single sperm cell swimming around in my nuts. Now he's all grown up, got teeth and everything.

Sabina and the kids and I had been together, living in one apartment, for about seven years before she and I even thought to get married! Looking back, I think that's so funny. And at the same time, I like it. We were too busy just living, being a family, and enjoying each other. We were already married in our minds. That's how I thought about it, anyway. For Sabina, who knows? She's older, and maybe she was waiting to make sure I was good enough and I was going to stick around. It was a great situation for me. I got a family and free room and board. But then she made me earn it. One day I came home from working an afternoon at the stadium and found her ironing the good clothes.

"Baby, what are you doing? Why you ironing the good clothes? Did somebody die?"

"No," she said. "n.o.body died. We're getting married tomorrow."

"Oh," I said. I thought about it for a minute. "Okay."

She'd already applied for our license, so we went the next morning to the courthouse in the Bronx and that was it, we were married. We went down there, and she had her little bouquet. Our son Tracy junior gave his mother away. Her friend and my cousin, Lisa, was her bridesmaid. Benji was our ring boy. We didn't tell n.o.body; we just went and got married. That's the way to do it. Marriage ain't about no one else but a man and his wife.

Before I tell you more about my family, I need to take a minute and tell you about the family member I almost had. This is the kind of f.u.c.ked-up s.h.i.t that happens in the ghetto. The day that my dad died, I came back from the funeral and had to be alone before I joined my relatives at my grandmother's house. I was so upset, I just needed some time. As I was sitting there, still in my suit, looking out the window, I saw this girl walking by. I called her to come upstairs, and I f.u.c.ked the s.h.i.t out of her. Little did I know that she was f.u.c.king everybody else in the neighborhood. I mean everybody-she was a real chickenhead, project ho. A few months later she came to me and said she was pregnant. All my friends, a lot of them who had been f.u.c.king her too, tried to give me hints that this wasn't my kid, but I didn't want to hear that. Maybe it was because I had just lost my dad, but all I could think of was that this was my father's first grandchild and I was going to raise it right. This little kid might even be my dad reincarnated.

I had the best intentions as far as the kid went, but that didn't help her and me to get along. I tried anyway. Her family never liked me, which made everything worse. I don't know who they thought they were, but when I came around they acted like a bunch of n.a.z.is and I was the Jew. Even the day the kid was born, they refused to say h.e.l.lo to me at the hospital, acting like I was some stranger in the waiting room. I had the last laugh though, because when the kid was delivered, that baby was pitch black. There was no way it was my son; that motherf.u.c.ker looked nothing like me. I nearly doubled over laughing right there in front of her parents. I think I started humming "Billie Jean"-the kid is not my son, no, no, no. Kid was darker than the '77 blackout.

She insisted that he was mine, and even though I didn't really believe her, I used to drop off Pampers and bring her milk and food sometimes. This was before I met Sabina; at the time I had a real thug girlfriend who was not having that s.h.i.t at all. She would go after that b.i.t.c.h when she'd see her on the street, telling her that kid wasn't mine and to stay away from me. I appreciated that. What I did not appreciate was the reaction of my mother and her family-they insisted that the kid was mine! I couldn't understand it at all! They'd seen my face since I was a baby. How could they not tell that this kid was some other guy's? That hurt me, man, my own mother not believing me and deciding to treat this girl's son as if he was her grandson.

That was another thing that put a real big wall up between me and my mother. She never really explained why she believed he was my kid-she just did. And once I got involved with my own family and came around less, she'd give me updates on the child, like she was doing me a favor. She had him over all the time for visits. Things got worse when I met Sabina. I thought that would bring my mother and me closer together, because she'd see the good influence Sabina had on me. Sabina got me off the streets, got me away from selling drugs and focused on raising kids and earning money.

But it didn't. She treated Sabina's kids like second-cla.s.s citizens-even after I legally adopted them. It made no sense to me that she was treating a child who wasn't mine better than the kids I was raising as my own. It got worse when my son Tracy junior came along, because then her preference could not be ignored. She'd make a real big deal over Tracy and never really acknowledged the other two in the same way. And it's not like they couldn't tell-they were definitely old enough to feel that. Any child at any age can feel that. That kind of treatment was something I couldn't agree with, and since she didn't acknowledge the truth in it when I'd bring it up to her, we drifted further apart.

Let me wrap up this story real quick. Fast- forward about eighteen years to 2001, when I appeared in the movie Little Man with the Wayans brothers. When I got back from filming in Canada, there was a final notification from the courts about a paternity suit that this girl had brought against me seeking child support. I'd missed the other notifications to reply, so this one said that if I didn't appear at court they were going to give her a de facto judgment in my absence. Good thing shooting wasn't delayed. I went down there with my lawyer and saw that this girl was really bad off. I don't know for sure, but it looked to me like she'd spent the last eighteen years living pretty hard and really needed some money. She had brought this lawsuit, but she couldn't afford a lawyer to represent her, so she was there by herself.

The boy was nice enough. "Hi, Dad! What's going on?" he said. "How's my little brother doing? I want to talk to him. Can we get him on the phone?"

"Let's just wait and see what happens with all of this first, okay?" I said.

It didn't take long to put an end to the charade. My lawyer insisted that we take a paternity test, right then, by order of the court. The judge agreed, and all of us went across the street to where they give the tests. They took blood, did a swab of our cheeks, and the three of us took a picture together. Ten days later we returned to court and got the results. I've kept that piece of paper in my wallet ever since. It said with 99.9 percent accuracy that this kid was not mine. His mother still tried to insist that he was. It was sad. The judge tried to be as kind as he could, but there's no gentle way to tell someone that kind of news. I felt the worst for the kid, though. He was heartbroken. She'd raised him with this illusion for eighteen years, and just like that, you saw it in his face: Everything he'd thought was true about his life was a lie.

Sabina and I weren't afraid to work, and we made ends meet raising our three kids with the help of welfare. But I wanted to make more of myself and felt that I could. I had something inside driving me. Once Tracy junior was born I got myself out of the drug trade because I didn't want to risk leaving my boy without a father. I thought about trying to get a job with UPS or going back to working shifts at a fast-food restaurant or both, but neither idea seemed like the answer. There was always something else nagging at my brain, and I knew I needed to do something about it. For years I'd been snapping on people and entertaining. Right across the street from our apartment there was a chicken shop-it's still there, in fact. Actually nothing much is different in the hood where I grew up because I haven't been out of it that long. I remind people of that all the time. I'm only about fifteen years removed from living in poverty, so I don't know what anybody expects from me. Anyway, the chicken spot was open late, and it had this big open area in the front where I would get upward of thirty people standing around listening to me making fun of s.h.i.t and talking about everybody that pa.s.sed by. It seemed to me that doing comedy on a stage couldn't be much different. I started to think about it day and night.

If it worked, it would be my ticket to taking care of the whole family and satisfying this creative urge of mine. This was not the kind of plan most women with three kids living on welfare in a small apartment in the Bronx would want to hear from their husbands.

"Baby," I said to Sabina one night when we were lying in bed. "I can't keep doing what I'm doing forever." "I know, baby. We'll figure something out." "I figured it out. I know what I want to do." "Yeah? You do? What is it?" "I want to do stand-up comedy."

She was quiet. Real quiet. I turned toward her in the dark, trying to figure out what she was thinking. I was ready for her to yell or smack me in the face, but she didn't do either. She just stayed quiet, looking at the ceiling for a long time-which was worse.

"Listen to me, baby," she finally said. "You are funny. You're real funny."

"Yeah?"

"You're funnier than anyone I know. And you're a natural performer, even if there's only one other person in the room. I guess what I'm saying is ... I think you could do it."

"You do?"

"I do," she said. "For real. But if you're going to do it, Tray, you've got to do it all the way." She turned over and looked me straight in the eye, dead serious. "You've got to be focused. You've got to go for it. You've got to go all the way."

"I will, baby."

"I mean it, Tray. Because this won't just be for you, it will be for all of us, so you better mean everything you say." "I do. I promise."

"I've got you, but you've got to keep at this no matter how hard it gets. You've got to keep at it until you make something of yourself."

Her honesty threw me. I thought about what she said for a long while because I knew how serious she was.

"Sabina, I mean what I'm saying to you. I want this," I said. "And I'll stay at it until I get it."

Thank G.o.d it turned out the way it did, because when I told everyone else I was going to be a comedian, they acted like I'd just told the best joke they'd ever heard. Everyone-my relatives, my friends-they all thought it was a crazy idea. And it was, if you think about how few comedians ever see half the career I've had so far.

I had comedy on the mind, but when you have three kids and bills to pay, that don't mean very much. When Tracy junior was born on August 25, 1991, I had already made family my first priority, and I'd stopped selling drugs, because I knew I'd be no good to Sabina or anyone else if I got killed. We were living on welfare up in the Bronx at 1901 Lauren Place. I had my seasonal job at Yankee Stadium and I was trying to bring in money doing stand-up, but I still relied on Section 8 government a.s.sistance to get by. Even without a lot of money, living in a room that was smaller than my walk-in closet today, we were happy.

Sabina could have easily turned over one night and said, "Motherf.u.c.ker, UPS is hiring!" That would have been the last the world heard of Tracy Morgan. But she never said that, and I will always love her for it. She let me live, and that's the greatest gift anyone can give to anyone else. If you love someone, set them free.

The other person who really drove me to do stand-up was my man Allen. He had always told me that I was way too funny to be wasting my skills on the corner selling drugs or Yankees jerseys. He was the only other person close to me who believed I could make it, and he knew better than I did at that point-he used to hit all the comedy clubs around the Bronx, probably selling drugs to people up there because drugs is something you can count on finding in a comedy club. Allen told me straight up that I was better than anyone he saw in those clubs, even the ones he'd seen at the Apollo, and as soon as he knew I was seriously thinking about trying it, he d.a.m.n near dragged me to a club to give it a shot.

Allen was a great friend; he was the first one who came to see my son at the hospital. He's my son's G.o.dfather. I was there when Tracy junior was born, right in the room with his mother. I saw him come out of her v.a.g.i.n.a, I saw them st.i.tch her up, all of that. It was about seven or eight in the morning; then, while they were resting, I went and met my man Al, and he was so happy for me that he cried. He came with me back to the hospital and we saw my son together. "Tray, that is one ugly motherf.u.c.ker," he said. Then he laughed and hit me off with a thousand dollars.

A month later, to the day, Allen was dead, and if it weren't for my son and my family, I would have been dead too. When I was running wild and selling drugs, he and I used to hustle along with this guy Panama and this guy Sweets. That was my crew, but the difference between me and them is that I was selling drugs just to get a little extra roller-rink money and some new sneakers; the other dudes wanted to be big-time dealers. Panama was one of those dudes you just knew was dangerous. He wanted to make an empire for himself, even if it was just a few corners. And he was a hothead too.

It's a typical story. Allen and Panama were having a territory issue with another drug dealer up in the projects who had workers dealing right across the street from them. I guess there was too much crack and not enough crackheads, so Panama kept beating up the guy's workers to drive them away from their corner. We knew the guy too-all of us went to junior high school together. It just goes to show you, 99 percent of murder victims are murdered by people they know. Anyway, Panama used to beat the guy's workers up, and Allen used to go over there with him. I told Al that he had to stop following Panama because he was trouble, I could just tell. Panama had the big jewelry and the nice car, all of which impressed Allen. Anyway, when the guy put his kids on the corner again, Allen and Panama went over to talk to him about it. The guy saw them coming, must have gotten scared, and came out of the building with a .357 and started blasting both of them. Allen died that day. Panama held on for about two weeks in the ICU and then died. We were all around twenty at the time.

Allen's death was that last push I needed to step into a comedy club and go for it. I thought that even if I did terribly, I had to at least try, to honor his memory. Part of my problem was that even though Allen and Sabina, the two people closest to me, believed that I could make it, I'd learned never to believe anything people told me about myself. My dad had impressed that on me early in life, back when I was an athlete and coaches and everyone were forcing their expectations on me.

"Tracy," he said to me at that very crucial time, "don't believe the hype. Do not listen to anyone but yourself. Everyone is going to tell you you're great until you're not great. Until the day you let them down. And on that day they'll hate you. If you listen to what other people think of you, you'll need them. How you do and how you think you do will matter less to you than what other people think."

"So what, Dad?" I said. "So what if people say things about me and I care about it?"

"So what? What do you mean so what?" he said. "Listen to me, son, and don't you forget this: A man can't need anyone but himself in this world. If a man needs anybody else, he's a dead man."

I just stared at him.

"It's the truth, son. And don't you ever forget it."

He had been talking about my athletic career at the time, but I've never forgotten his advice. Nothing that's happened to me in my life since then has ever proved him wrong. It's one of the lessons I carry with me every day. I think it's kept me in check, except for those few years when my train went off the tracks.

Doing stand-up, I learned right away that you've got to be willing to dig a hole for yourself, then build your way out of it right there onstage, each and every time you perform. People think digging a hole is trapping yourself. It doesn't have to be-it can also be how you let yourself grow. It can be how you win over the audience too. Look at it this way: If you want a tree, you start by digging a hole. Then you plant your seeds, you water them, and you wait for rain and sunshine to do their thing. After a while, if you take good care of it, you've got a tree. That's how I let a lot of my stand-up sets develop. And in the bigger picture, that's how I see myself today-I am still that tree. I started from a seed in a hole and now I'm out of the ground, still growing strong out into the world and up toward the sky. I look back on the days when I decided to pursue comedy as the moment I dug my hole. I dug a lot of them, in every hole-in-the-wall club I could find, and I planted seeds in every single one of them too.

Once I got over my fear, it didn't matter to me if I bombed onstage because no matter what happened, when I came home, I was good. I was a daddy, I was a husband, and I was never pressured to do anything but try my hardest to pursue my dream. My lady was never behind me because she knew I didn't like to be pushed. She was never in front of me because she knew I didn't like to be pulled. She was where she belonged-right by my side. I was never gonna lose as long as I had that support. When I had a bad set, she'd just say, "Go get 'em next time."

It's amazing to me how much Sabina and I shared with each other, even though we were so young. I loved to lie in bed with her after the kids were asleep and talk about life. In those moments of pillow talk, Sabina taught me all about women's minds and how to relate to the opposite s.e.x just by telling me what she was thinking and how she was feeling. She didn't even know how much she was helping my career by solving those mysteries for me, but all of her insight definitely contributed to my success. The guys with degrees in marketing from expensive private colleges tell me that the group that reacts to me the strongest on 30 Rock is women. That's when you know you've made it-when the women are your biggest audience. If you've got the women in your corner, you're Will Smith, Denzel, or LL Cool J. If you've just got the dudes, you're Wesley Snipes or Iron Mike Tyson.

I think I owe my female fan base to my ex-wife. Nights when I could have been hanging out with the boys, she gave me a reason to want to be home, expanding my view of the world by opening myself up to her. Baring my soul like that didn't come easy. Growing up the way I did, I was more inclined to keep my true self locked up inside and well protected. But Sabina changed all that; she showed me that keeping your sensitive side alive and well is important. It's what sets you apart, especially if your focus is comedy. When I started to perform and to act, she reminded me to show that part of myself. That's why I'm glad I got to cry in my movie First Sunday-women love to see a grown man cry because that s.h.i.t is moving. Am I right? You ladies on The View hear me? The only way you can top crying in a major feature film is by crying on Oprah. That is the be-all and end-all. That's the Oscars of crying! In terms of sensitivity, you've arrived if you cry on Oprah. When you're on that couch crying, it's like having your soul do a striptease for the world. That is allowing yourself to be truly vulnerable, and being vulnerable is nothing but a sign of real strength.

Sabina knew that back then because she's a very wise woman. I missed her for a long time when we split up in 2007. As you're going to see in the next few chapters, we really had a ride together, with lots of ups and downs. It was strange for me to learn to live without her. It was like losing an arm: I survived but I had to learn to drive different. It looked like we were going to get back together for a while, and it looked like we were cool, but divorces are never easy. We're not cool anymore, but I still have to thank her for having cla.s.s about our breakup. When reporters came to her house after the news of our divorce broke, she didn't go off on me. She pretended she was the housekeeper and said, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Morgan's not home."

I can still say this from the bottom of my heart: I'd do anything for Sabina. She was never possessive with me, she was always my best friend and my first true love, and she'll always have a piece of my heart. But people change, and that's what happened to us. You'll see what I mean shortly.

Comedy in the late seventies and eighties was just becoming the big business it is today. Places like Caroline's in New York, the Comedy Connection in Boston, and the Comedy Store in L.A. were places where comics could make a name for themselves. They had nice stage lights and carpeting and mixed drinks that weren't watered down. I wasn't playing gigs anywhere like that when I started. I did stand-up at every open-mic night in the Bronx and any comedy club that would give me five minutes of time.

There was a comedy scene up in the Bronx, in a bunch of clubs that usually smelled like old beer or stank a.s.s. There were a lot of talented comedians, but many of them didn't make it. There were people like Faceman, who was hilarious but became a serious drug addict; there was Uncle Jimmy Mack, Brooklyn Mike, A. G. White, and Doo Doo Brown, who was great; Jim Breuer and Ronda Fowler, who've done things here and there. No matter who was on the bill, you could be sure that the club was going to be packed with rowdy motherf.u.c.kers from around the neighborhood who wouldn't keep their mouths shut. Being onstage in a black club is like trying to do comedy in the street-there's no division between the show and the audience, and if the comedian isn't good, you'll at least be entertained by the crowd. When you do comedy in front of a white audience and you're not good, they just sit there. They don't always boo; usually they just don't say anything. Black audiences ain't like that. They let you know right away. They boo real loud and usually they throw stuff. Doing comedy in those small clubs was a test of survival. You have to bring it, because black people like to see people fail like a motherf.u.c.ker up there. They get into booing you off all together, like fans doing the wave at a football game.