The Last Black Unicorn - Tiffany Haddish Page 0,16

your titties grow.”

Tiffany: “You can?”

Foster Grandpa: “Yeah, just let me suck on them every day. If you let me suck on them, they’ll grow.”

So, I started letting this old-ass man suck on my titties every day when I was thirteen.

He never tried to touch my cootchie or nothing. He just would suck on my titties for fifteen minutes before I left for school. Then I’d go to school.

When I was nineteen, I was hanging out with one of my girlfriends, and she was like:

Friend: “Yeah, I’m going to get a boob job.”

Tiffany: “I don’t know. I probably should get a boob job too, maybe.”

Friend: “Or maybe we get somebody to suck on our titties every day until they grow.”

Tiffany: “Oh that don’t work.”

Friend: “How do you know it don’t work?”

Tiffany: “ ’Cause I did that shit when I was thirteen years old.”

Friend: “What do you mean, you did that when you was thirteen? I thought you didn’t lose your virginity until you was like sixteen, seventeen?”

Tiffany: “I didn’t, but this was different. This old man that was in my foster home, he would suck on my titties every day before I’d go to school, and it didn’t do nothing. They didn’t grow or nothing. They still the same size.”

Friend: “Bitch, you was molested?”

Tiffany: “Wait, what?”

I had no idea I was molested. In my mind, “molested” meant somebody hurt you in some kind of way. Like, they took something from you that you didn’t want to give. And what that old man did never hurt. It didn’t necessarily feel good, either, it was just whatever. And he never tried nothing else with me, not even once. It was just like—in my mind—he was helping me out.

Look, obviously I can see now that this was messed up and absolutely was molestation. But at the time, I had no clue I was being molested. Even at nineteen, I had to have this pointed out to me.

I used to talk about it onstage all the time, ’cause parents say, “If somebody touch your private parts, or if somebody hurt your pee-pee, or if somebody pushed their private parts on you, you tell somebody.”

But that man never did any of that. I never saw his penis. I never touched his penis. He never tried to make me touch him, and he never tried to touch my privates. He just sucked on my titties every day. And he wasn’t even like, telling me not to tell anyone. I just never said anything, because I thought he was hooking me up. I thought he was helping me out.

I guess maybe we gotta update what we tell kids—that old men sucking your titties is also molestation.

Belonging

As a young kid, it didn’t feel like nobody cared about me or protected me (except for my grandma). It didn’t feel like anybody gave two fucks about me, unless it was benefiting them. Unless they was getting paid. Unless it was making them look good in some kind of way. Me just being myself was never good enough for anyone to love me.

My auntie Gina, she taught me how to dance. We would dance together, but that was so I could dance with her at weddings and make her look good. Having a little girl copying her moves. But I don’t think it was because she loved me or liked to spend time with me or dance with me. That was just to make her shine.

My auntie Mary, she would do my hair. She would sing songs with me and stuff, but that was because she was rehearsing for her own thing. She’d be like, “Now, you do backups.”

Now that I think about it, she was teaching me about music and performing, but really that was her getting ready for her own shit. It wasn’t about me. It was about her looking good.

I didn’t get much from my family, so I tried to be a gangbanger. But they wouldn’t let me gangbang.

When I was a foster kid, I would have to walk through the gang hoods to get to the bus stop. I used to try to holla at all of them. I wanted to be in the gang, because I felt like then I’d be a part of something.

And I’d have me a man. Every gangbanger girl got a gangbanger boyfriend. You had somebody, that’s what I wanted.

But it didn’t work out like that. I couldn’t get into the gang.

Gangbanger: “You too cute. You gonna be something one day. You can come