Ahke'e Anthony @ Edit Red Writing Community

Ahke'e Anthony

United States, California, West Hollywood
Username: ExposingAhkee

"Lord, why is this happening to me? I promise, if you get me back on track, I will never screw up again." These were the words I cried, while lifting the steak knife from my wrist. I OFFICALLY LOST IT after moving back to Philly. All the emotional baggage I thought I left on Vista Street in West Hollywood , mysteriously popped up on my doorstep. It's ironic, as well as, almost amusing, how I practically came from nothing and went straight to the top only to land back at the bottom again.
Not only was I hiding scars from my past, but also keeping new skeletons hidden. Before I forget, allow me to introduce my three new best friends- DEPRESSION, GUILT and SUBSTANCE ABUSE. They have stuck closer to me than any other friend I have had in my life and they have seemed to follow me everywhere I go. The small amount of dignity I had left, after purchasing my plane ticket to the east coast, was left up in the air somewhere between leaving LAX and arriving at Philadelphia International Airport . Mentally, I was a done with little to no chances of bouncing back.
Initially I left LA and the fellowship to return back to a simpler place in time. Life experiences up to date proved I couldn't be trusted in Hollywood with money or men. I transformed into an ugly and manipulative person because of greed. Throughout all the mistakes and downfalls I encountered over and over again, there was one person that loved me unconditionally. “I can’t believe I had the nerve to leave him standing in the middle of LAX.” These haunting words played over and over in my head for some time. Many lonely nights I would lie in the bed and be hit with the epiphany that Wes was the best part of Hollywood .
During our finally goodbye, I wrapped my arms around his neck and whispered in his ear "I'll call you after I get myself together." Two months had passed and I kept my end of my promise. I called Wes numerous times but only to speak to his voicemail. I don't think it's possible to illustrate the hurt or rejection I felt when he didn't answer. I heard from a reliable source that shortly after I left LA, his long-time girlfriend, unexpectedly left her long-running successful television series, after her contract wasn't re-negotiated. Wes, the most considerate and thoughtful person I know, was there to offer her a shoulder to lean on, which made their relationship stronger than before.
During the seven months, that Wes and I were lovers, I never considered myself to be the “jump- off”. Hell if anything, she was. She's a beautiful and talented woman that any guy would kill to have, except for Wes. To me their love is nothing more than a sham to cover up his secret life. In addition, neither one of them took time to make the relationship work. As a matter of fact, on our last date, Wes took me up the coast for some alone time. We freely spent nearly eight hours together as a loving couple, and NOT once, in those eight hours, did she call or even text him to say hello. I think that's just ridiculous to have a guy as perfect as Wes and not be on his heels. Hell, he and I weren't even living together and I knew his every move. However, my thoughts did not stop us from doing some light shopping before taking in a movie and eating at one of the fancy restaurants in Newport Beach .
She and I ran into each other a few times on a couple of sets during his movie projects. She's as sweet and friendly as she is beautiful, I will give her that. I took her friendship and used it as a way to watch her closely. I needed to know what she was doing that kept Wes under her spell, because whatever she was doing- I needed to do better and excel at it. It didn't take long to figure out where the problem lied. She was too damn stuck on herself to even notice the way her man stared at me through the mirror while in the hair and make-up chair or the way his lips slightly curled up when he said my name. Moreover, there were no sparks when they stood next to each other. It was almost boring watching them interact. The lack-luster chemistry and boredom gave me leverage, because just like a brilliant thief in the night, I patiently waited for the perfect chance to make my move while using her weak points to my advantage. The first night he laid his head against my Egyptian cotton pillowcases, he opened up his heart to me. Thank God that I listened because after that night, I became his best friend, biggest fan, lover, father, mother, life teacher, and student. And I planned to stay that way as long as he was beautifully perfect.
The evening, Wes showed up at my doorstep, to tell me he broke up with his girlfriend for me, had to be the saddest day of my life. I never asked him to choose; the decision was all his. I waited a long time to hear that, but I had done and seen too much by this time and I wasn't in the right state of mind to love him the way he needed and I wanted. Don't get me wrong I loved him the best way I knew how, but I was too damaged to stay in LA any longer. Besides, I knew being with him exclusively was out the question because the truth of the matter was that I didn't trust him as far as I can throw him. I'm a firm believer, that if you cheat once, you'll cheat again. Therefore, a relationship with Wes was nothing but a set-up waiting to happen.
After settling into my new life in Philly, depression kicked down the doors with SWAT team force. Luckily, I moved back at the right time. While hiding out in Newport News , my attorney called with some good news. My money in escrow that had been tied up for months was finally being released. So for nine months, money wasn't an issue, as long as I spent it correctly. I moved into charming apartment with hardwood floors and exposed firewalls, in a less than perfect neighborhood, only minutes from Center City . For the first few weeks, I confined myself inside and cried long and hard until I no more tears to produce. I stayed bundled up inside a thick white comforter, while reality began to unfold in leaps and bounds before me, while bouncing off of my emotions and fears, my three friends were happy. With a million numbers in my phone, I was still alone and feeling pathetic. Praying was out of the question, since my faith vanished when my friends showed up. You see I have learned from experience that it is always a three-some for them and believe me, no one moves out for FAITH.
I discovered praying only made me cry and crying led to depression. I figured the only way to feel normal again was to numb the pain. I befriended Ski, a local weed-bull and knew every worker at the neighborhood Wine and Spirits by first name. At first, I numbed the pain, in an alluring way by sipping vodka from a fancy wineglass, while smoking a cigarette in a steaming hot bubble bath. Some nights, I was too drunk to even stand up and get out the tub. I used my toes to lift drain before nodding off, so I wouldn't drown in the water of my self-pity. However, my addictions got heavier. I skipped the bubble baths and cigarettes to lie in the bed and drank straight from the bottle while smoking marijuana. Before long, I was your typical depressed pothead.
Weed brought out the best in me. I had caught a severe case of what comedian Kat Williams calls “FUCK IT”. Nothing mattered while I was high, because I wasn't Ahke'e anymore. His problems didn't affect me in anyway. If I wasn't sleep, then I was imagining that I was this Hollywood A-lister that was well-respected and loved because of his talent, charm, good-looks and confidence. If something was bothering me, I smoked it away.
During my “fuck it” moments, I would have dashing thoughts of one important thing my mother always spoke about- PRIDE. Pride is a distant cousin of my three friends, but it can be all consuming, more so than its counterparts. I'm the last person on the face of this earth to admit I need help or have a problem, and my fixation with marijuana and vodka was no exception. Not often, but more than a few times, a close family member or a friend would stop by my place unannounced, which was fine, if they didn't mind seeing me in bleached stained t-shirts and faded boxers with a five o'clock shadow. They would have never known I spent most of the day drinking and smoking pot because if I wasn't using, I kept it hidden behind the sofa or under my bed just like my grandmother did. Looking back, the only person I hid my demons from was myself. What’s the expression we always say – seeing is believing. WELL, I changed it in my mind to – Believing is seeing. I can honestly say that this modification fit me more closely because if I didn't see my problem, then I didn't have to accept my problem.
As time passed I learned to be content with being alone. I figured what was the use in bringing shame to family or myself, when I had the option, to just fade away. With more free time than I needed, I sat and thought about where I went wrong in life and what if I were never born or even if my life ended that day. For the most part, I never quite figured out the answers to those questions. Instead, I focused on all the little things that bothered me the most and before I knew it, I was drowning in a phantom pool of so many saved mistakes until I was a big empty space of nothing.
The more I smoked everything around me started to make sense. I saw myself through new eyes. I quickly took advantage of the opportunities and dug out a journal and poured my heart and soul onto every page. I recorded life as far back as my earliest memory. For the very first time, I let my heart do all the talking and not my mind. I was completely honest with myself and the things from my past. I cried, while writing about my father and other relationships, which ended in tears. The disadvantage to having your life on paper is that you can see EVERYTHING in black and white and you can’t change a thing. I was forced to either accept my flaws and change for a brighter future or continue living the rest of my life in this emotional abyss. At 23, I faced numerous life changing decisions, but this was by far the hardest. I knew this challenge wasn't a one- day-at-a-time thing; it's a life style change. Willing and able, I began to start this self-changing process almost immediately.
I flipped to the last page of my journal and made two columns. Column ONE was all the things I planned to change, and in the second column, was a list of how to make the changes happen. Number 1: NO MORE ALCOHOL. I flushed all the spirits down the drain. I wanted to quit drinking, because I did downright stupid shit while I was drunk, like play on Rah's phone late at night and then turned the music up real loud and sing old love songs until I was lying on the floor crying myself to sleep.
Within a few days I saw change. I caught myself laughing, while watching television or talking to friends on the phone. I also wanted to get out and enjoy life again. The road to recovery was up ahead and I wanted to travel it. Four days have passed since my last drink, and I lay in bed tossing and turning for the taste of devil water on my tongue. In a cold sweat, I jumped up to walk off the craving. The outline of the city was absolutely amazing as I walked across the Spring Garden Bridge at 1:13am. I took a seat on the tall cliff overlooking the Schuylkill River behind the Art Museum and stared out at the moving cars traveling eastbound on 676. I watched everything around move forward, as my life stood still. I closed my eyes and searched deep within myself for any signs of resentment. If I knew what I know now, I would have been trusted in the power of forgiveness a long time ago.
At that moment, I decided to forgive everyone who ever hurt me. I could hear in my head some sound advice that one of my friends gave me. “You have to forgive because if you don’t you will never live peaceful and the people you are mad at don’t really care. You carry that anger around thinking you are hurting your enemy when all the while, you are just hurting yourself and wasting time.” Finally, my heart was whole again. I wanted to share my good news with the one person whom I promised to love forever. As I walked back home, I scrolled through my phone book until I saw Wes's name. Before the first ring was even completed, his girlfriend answered.
"I'm sorry Ahke'e, but Wes is out country," she said in a pleasant voice.
"You know when he'll be back?" I asked while trying to swallow the knot in my throat.
"Nooo," She dragged out. "He's touring Japan , and then he'll be teaching dance there for a few months. Is it something I can help you with? You know, I know all that boys business?" She laughed.
"No, I just called to catch up. Do me a favor and have him call me when you talk to him again."
"No problem sweetie and you better bring me a REAL Philly cheese steak when you bring ya black ass back to LA." She laughed.
I hung up.
She still doesn't know how badly it killed me to hold that brief conversation with her. Don't get me wrong, we never had a problem, it's just that she's automatically the opponent.
While waiting for Wes to call, I got out and explored life again. On the tenth day of waiting, anxiety kicked in. I felt myself slipping back into my old state of mind. Talk about disappointment I can write hundreds novels based on my life and still never get the full extent of my love for him across. But he knows how I feel without even writing a single word down. I questioned numerous times why he turned his back on us.
For days, the only thing I could do was lie in the bed and smoke weed while Gladys Knight and the Pips 'You Were the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me' and 'Midnight Train to Georgia' played in the background. On the seventeenth day, I was through, not only because of Wes, but what happened next.
In the mist of relapsing, I heard a hard knock at the door. I looked over at the cable box for the time, while wondering who's stopping by so late at night. I spent the entire day in bed, without washing or even brushing my hair. I darted to the front door and almost passed out after opening it.
"Damn I've missed you." Chris said while extending his arms.
I didn't budge; instead I stood there with the look of shock written across my face. Nearly six years passed since we last saw each other. I was flabbergasted and not the least bit thrilled that he was standing at my doorstep. If anything, I wanted answers.
"How did you find me?" I asked with puzzled amazement.
"Are you going to at least invite me in before beating me up with questions?"
Actually, I was afraid. At quick glance, using my Hollywood critiquing eyes, I saw that Chris was good. He had matured and you could see it in his the face. He definitely grown up since his mother caught us in bed. All over the years, my feelings for him never died, instead it stayed stagnate. I would have been fine, if our paths never crossed. What we had back then was young love, so he knew better then to pop up and try to rekindle something from years ago.
As he walked in, I became extremely insecure and antsy, because of my appearance.
"Have a seat. I'll be back in a minute” I said, while walking out of the living room. " Oh, by the way, the remotes for the television are on the table." As I approached my bedroom at the end of the hall, I began to panic. I paced back and forth nervously, while trying to figure out why he stopped by. "Ahke'e breathe," I said to myself. "Get yourself together and go out there and get the answers to your questions”. I took a quick shower and slipped into something a little more appealing and stepped out to face my past. As I drew near the living room, I got the urge to slap myself for letting him in. When I entered the living room, Chris was stretched out on the couch.
"Damn, you took long enough," he said while sitting up.
"Yeah well I needed to shower, but never mind all that. How do you find out where I live?"
"The other day, I'm standin' in the corner store around my way and hear this boy shoutin' Q's name. I turned and looked, and was like oh shit, that's little Q."
"My nephew," I stated to give myself a reference on how the story was unfolding.
"Yeah he got big as hell since I last seen him. I was surprised he even remembered me. I asked him about you and he gave me ya address."
"I'ma kill him for that,"
"Why you acting like you don't wanna see me?"
"Because I don't," I said with a little angst.
"Why not ?"
"Because you played me,"
"Aww man, here you go. How I play you?"
"You know how I felt about you, and you didn't even call me after your mother caught us in bed" I replied.
"I couldn't call you or anybody for that matter. The night my mother caught us in bed, after she fucked me up, she sent me to live with my Uncle Larry in Charleston , South Carolina . He ain't let me do shit! I had no life what so ever. I didn't even have a bed in my room. He had me sleeping on a hard-ass wooden floor like some dog. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t even keep my name” Chris said with such distain. “ I was Faggot this, Faggot that. You should have heard him introduce me to friends – ‘Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So, this is my nephew Faggot from Philly. He likes to fuck boys, so we just call him Faggot; you're more then welcome to do the same’. My life was a living hell. I wrote you several times, beggin' you'll let me come and stay with you, but you never responded back." I could see Chris take a deep breath to counter act that lump that developed in his throat.
"Like a week or so after you left, my apartment burned down. You know I cried for a long time because of us."
"Trust me, I never meant to make you cry. I was hurtin' too. I had to deal him and us…at once” he expressed.
"So how did you become a Porn Star?" I asked, trying to lighten an obviously heavy subject.
"I'm not a Porn Star; I just needed the money,"
"You know what's funny, that is what they all say in the beginning"
"No really, one day my uncle made me stay home from school to clean the attic, which just happened to be on the hottest day of the year. Do you believe that shit? I'm up there movin' heavy ass boxes while he sat on his ass in front of the small ass window, blocking all the air. All he kept saying was ‘Faggot hand me that box right there’. Yo, I don't know what happened, I just snapped. I took a small chest and threw it at him. The next thing I know, he's lying in the garden. When the police and EMT arrived, he tells them, I tried to kill him. What type of shit is that?"
"Damn," I whispered.
”Thank God, I befriend the lady next door. She stood up for me and told them how he was treating me. To make a long story short, I ended up spending two years in a detention center. When I got released, I didn't have anywhere to go, and I damn sure knew I wasn't welcomed back in his house or my mother's. I didn't have any friends because he kept me on lockdown. I was homeless, and living in a mission with a bunch of country ass nigga's. Every morning, I woke up and went to the free library to search the internet for a job. No one was trying to hire me straight from a detention center. Shit, if anything them motha-fucka's were afraid of me. Anyway, I ran across this ad that said make $5000 in a day, I jumped on it. The guy asked me to send him two photos of myself. The next thing I knew I'm on a flight to LA. When I got to the guy's office, he sat the money on his desk and told me it was all mine after we finished filming. Shit at that point I was desperate. I was like ‘What the hell, I fucked nigga's before for free’, so I did the flick and took a few nude pictures and that's it. I got the money and moved back to Philly. I got a place and been working every since to keep it."
"Damn I didn't know you had it so bad."
"I still think about you all the time" he said, while sliding over next to me.
I never knew just how much I loved Chris until that day. Although my love was strong, he's the last person I would consider taking back. I don't care what anyone says, but a porn star is no different than a stripper or a prostitute. Yes, each one performs differently, but they all have one thing in common - They'll do whatever for a dollar. Not to mention, how humiliating it will be to have a porn star as a boyfriend.
"Yeah, I think about you from time to time as well," I said while looking down at my fingers.
"So what it do, baby" Chris replied with his Ray Charles impression.
"Nothing," I said, looking up.
"Why not,?”
"Because I'm not ready for all that,"
"For all what?'
"Your past," I simply stated.
"Keyword, past. I'm sure you done did some shit since we were young that you're not proud of, right?"
"No, no I haven't," I lied. Call me a liar if you like, but there was no need to bring my past into this.
"Nigga you bullshitin’ me. If everything's so good then why I smell vodka and you've been in the house all day?" he inquired with a sarcastic tone.
"No I haven't, I just got in,"
"How long ago?" chris asked with his lips turned up.
"Like twenty minutes before you showed," I lied again, but I felt trapped and caught up.
"You lying, I've been sittin' in front for like an hour and a half."
"How about you go back out front and sit? Not only that, get away from my house." I demanded.
"I ain't goin' no where." He said with a sexy smirk, and then we both started laughing.
Chris is still as childish and animated as he was back in the day, and I loved it. After everything he's been through he still manages to crack a smile, and stay upbeat.
"Damn I've missed you," I said with my arms open.
"I've missed you more," he said with a warm embrace.
As we hugged, I rested my head against his shoulder and let my imagination wander. I played with the idea of us getting back together. I took in a deep breath with my nose pressed into his chest. He smelled clean, almost pure. For hours, we laid on my sofa, with our bodies pressed tightly against one another. Unfortunately, I couldn't live the rest of my life trapped in this moment.
"You have to go," I jumped up and said.
"Why?"
"I'm about to go to bed," I quickly stated.
"I wanna spend the night with you," Chris said while reaching for my hand.
"That's not possible. Uh, my boyfriend is on his way home." I lied, but God knows I didn’t want to at that point. The chance to lose myself in a passionate night and forget my problems would have suited me just fine, but I knew I was not the same person, and I couldn’t continue on the road to emotional recovery, if I made the same mistakes as I use to make in life.
"Why you didn't tell me you had a man when I first got here?"he demanded.
"I got caught in the moment. Do me a favor and don't stop by unannounced like that again. I finally think I've found the one and I don't wanna mess it up."
"Alright cool, it was good seeing you," as he stood up and smoothed out his shirt.
"Nice seeing you too,"
After we hugged and said goodbye, that was it. Of course I wanted to run out after him, but it was time I put Ahke'e first. I felt good about the decision I made. I made progress and that event proved it. I had the power to gain control over, who entered my life.
Eventually, I stopped stressing over Wes. If he wants to talk; he knew how to find me. As I prepared myself for the long journey ahead, I promised myself not to look back.

ExposingAhkee's Genres: Non-fiction/Memoirs

Stories / Poems / Blogs	Type	Status	Comments	Words
Random snippets from my autobi ...	Creative Non-Fiction	Public	0	6602
View all ExposingAhkee's uploads

ExposingAhkee has 2 readers

sean merrigan

Support

Meet all ExposingAhkee's readers

Sponsored Links

Featured Writers

Jimmy Muraco

Michelle Nittolo

How do I become a Featured Writer?