These Are Some New Tapes, Please Don't Throw Up On 'Em ~ Prince
I rolled my eyes at his little note, which he graciously sprayed with a hint lavender and popped a tape titled Strange Relationship.
Knowing Prince, this one is about us. I listened carefully, I smiled when I caught some Eastern Indian influence. The sound is very unlike Prince, but it's very like Prince to try something new.
"Is that a sitar?" I mumbled to myself, as I paced the floor of my bedroom. "That's a wooden flute. My God this man....he's a fuckin' genius." I squinted, analyzing the beat further. "How did he get that synth sound? That's so peculiar..."
I guess you know me well, I don't like winter, but I seem to get a kick out of doin' you cold
Oh, what the hell, you always surrender
What's this strange relationship that we hold on to?
"I DON'T KNOW NIGGA!!!" I threw my hands in the air.
Baby I just can't stand to see you happy
I dropped to my knees by the boom box, "I know!!!"
More than that I hate to see you sad
Honey if you left me I just might do something rash
What's this strange relationship?
"Ship, ship, ship." I sang along, nodding my head to the beat. It was funky but it was so different for Prince. I like it! I liked it a hell of a lot. It faded out, which meant it wasn't finished just yet. But I was excited if this is what it was going to sound like.
I took the tape out and sifted through the rest of the tapes. There were a lot I were excited to hear.
"Starfish and Coffee?" I picked up the tape, furrowing my brows. "Oor...Sexual Suicide that sounds funky....Maybe....Dream Factory?......or A Place in Heaven..." I tend to talk out loud a lot when I'm alone. It makes me feel less lonely. Plus who's around to call me crazy? Nobody.
As I'm looking at these tapes, and I can't help but notice how neat his hand writing is. It's better than mine. Perfect bastard.
I glanced over to the side at Prince's telecaster leaning against the wall. He let me borrow it but he never took it back. I had never realized it but I have yet to take the guitar pick from around my neck. It's been there so long I don't even think about it. I ran my thumb over the words Love God.
Speaking of guitars, after reading about Jerry Auerswald, a guitar-maker in Germany who used wood more than 100 years old, I had one made for Prince for his birthday, in peach. He seemed to like the cloud guitar look although, i'm sure the Telecaster is his favorite. Plus I thought it would be a cool color for him. He had the skin tone to suit peach. It was a more "feminine orange", in the words of Prince.
Anyway, I had it delivered to his house in a transparent case, so it looked like Snow White in a way. I had it delivered so that when he got back home it would be a major surprise. Again that was before the bullshit happened, and I don't know if his new wife would like him using a guitar that I bought him. I don't even know if he's been home yet to see it in the first place. I wanted to take it back at first but he would be so thrilled with the quality of the sound since it's a hand-crafted guitar and I couldn't do it. I'm heartless but not that heartless. Plus I got the guitar with him in mind in the first place, there was no need to take it back. It's for him.
"Hot thing?" It was written in red marker, and he drew a little flame next to it. He's the cutest thing on the planet I swear. I popped the tape in and sat down Indian style on the floor waiting for it to load.
"What's this Strange Relationship-ship-ship---." My voice trailed off when the beat kicked in.
Hot thing, barely twenty one
I gasped. "Nigga!!" A smile blazed across my face.
Hot thing, looking for big fun
Hot thing, what's your fantasy?
Hot thing, do you want to play with me?
Ooh hoo! Ooh hoo!
Hot thing, baby you dance so good
Hot thing, baby I knew you would
Hot thing, tell me what you see
Hot thing, when you smile, when you smile, when you smile
Are your smiles, are your smiles for me?
I started grooving to the music, the bass hit hard. Really hard. I wonder is that sexual innuendo, the bass-line. Hard because his dick is hard. That's some shit Prince would do. Maybe I've been around him so much that I think everything is sexual.
"I'm thinking about this song to hard." I clicked it off and started sifting through the tapes to find another one to listen to. The amount of Prince music in front of me is making me emotional. I am a fan before anything. He may piss me off but I'll dance my ass off to any purple jam when it comes on.
My bedroom door bursted opened, not ceasing to scare the fuck out of me and I saw none other than Eddie Murphy.
"Hey you." He took off his scarf and tossed it to the floor. My eyes darted between him and the scarf sitting on my floor.
"Knocking is essential my nigga." I was still filing through the tapes. Prince sent me a bunch of them. It's gonna take me a while to listen to them all.
"Sorry." He kissed me on the temple and bolted to the bathroom. "So baby, I was shopping right? And I was waiting on the line and out the corner of my eye I saw the Inquirer Magazine and it was Johnny Carson on the front page and it was a picture of him like this." He put both his hands out and made a dramatically sad face. "Then I said what's up with Johnny, so I turned to the Inside Story and his wife was on the other page like this." He put both his hands out and put a open, cheesy smile on.
"Really now?" I giggled, stacking the tapes in groups of threes on my nightstand.
"Yes!!! And over his head it said 'Johnny's Wife Wants Half Johnny's Money'." He said, in a cartoon newscaster voice.
I snickered. "That sounds like a fucked up and illiterate article title."
He peaked his head out the bathroom door. "Shutup Jasmyn."
I laughed and walked into the bathroom with him and hopped on the counter. "I'm sorry continue your story."
He kissed me and chuckled a little before turning back to the mirror. I wonder what the hell he's doing in the bathroom. "Anyway I turned that shit back to Johnny." He made the same constipated frowning face. "Then I started thinkin' 'bout it.....half."
He scooped me up off the counter and carried me into the bedroom. I'm still trying to figure out why this nigga is here. That's neither here nor there he's interesting so I let him keep going.
He placed me down onto the floor back where I was. "What's wrong with half?"
"If you had five dollars and had to
give up two-fifty. You'd be upset."
I rolled my eyes and watched him as he toe off his shoes and sat down in my big fluffy chair.
"You could've atleast put me in the bed."
His face dropped. "Are you serious?"
"I am. I am very serious."
He groaned and picked me up and placed me into the center of the bed. "Better."
"Yeah...now continue. Your entertaining me."
He rolled his eyes and made his way back to my seat. "Johnny had to have atleast 300 million dollars and have to give up 150 million. And they ain't been married but 10 years."
"And?" I scrunched my face up. "Ten years is a long ass time, that's a decades worth of dick she could've gotten."
"Baby that's not fair. 150 million?!? Gimme a fuckin' break."
"She earned it! She was married to him all that time she fuckin' earned it."
"Man." He kissed his teeth. "Get the fuck out my face with that bullshit."
"But she-"
"No!"
"Eddie she-"
"Stop it!"
I crossed my arms, trying to be mad but I couldn't. "Your heartless." I chuckled.
He stood up and started pacing the floor. "No don't get me wrong, if you marry somebody and neither one of you have anything and you BUILD 300 million together. You deserve half but Johnny was 300 million in when they met........And I'm quite sure she knew. She knew who that muthafucka was. They got married broke up, shit didn't work out and he had to give up 150 dollars of his money."
"And? You literally blaming her. You don't even know what happened to cause the divorced. He could've done 150 million dollars worth of bullshit. Rich don't mean moral my nigga. Plus you can't put a price on what a housewife does."
"But baby, you marry a man with 300 million dollars you ain't a regular housewife. You ain't cleanin' the house no more. You get a maid, you ain't cleanin' shit. You marry a man with 300 million dollars, you ain't cookin' no more you eatin' out. You marry a man with 300 million, you know how some housewives have to get jobs on the side to make ends meet? He got 300 million, the ends are meetin' like a muthafucka.
I howled. "Ha! Stop you ain't shit!"
"What she gon' do get a job at a boutique on the weekends and shit. Here Johnny I made seventy dollar, put that with the rest." He turned on his female voice, mocking her to my amusement. "Now we have 300 million and seventy dollars...cause I wanted to do my share."
I pointed to the door. "Get out my house Eddie."
"No! All you have to do, you marry a man with 300 million dollars, is fuck your husband. That's it! That's you job, just fuck your husband. You fill out a W2, they ask you what you do, you say fuck your husband."
I threw my head back onto my bed, howling. "Stop!" He had clicked into full on stand up mode and it was insanely funny. He's pacing my floor like it's the stage.
"And I've had my share of pussy and I have YET- even if the pussy was great and sparks shot out the woman's ass. And canon's blared, the mountains crumbled, and the seas roared. No pussy is worth 150 million dollars.....
"I'm done with you!!" I got up and walked downstairs to the kitchen, I was craving hummus.
"No pussy." he called after me. I looked behind me and he was walking after me. "I'd like to meet some pussy like that...put the shit on layaway."
"Shutup Murphy!" I opened the fridge and grabbed out my big bowl of hummus, which I have already put a hole in. "Pass me those pretzels out the cabinet." I pointed above his head.
He kicked my footstool out the way and grabbed my pretzels, I opened my hands and he tossed them at me.
"That shit scared the shit out of me....HALF. I was petrified." I offered him some hummus and he put his hands up turning me down. "You know what's scary American women in the 80s have become the most business conscious, y'all are the most resourceful and the most business smart women on the planet."
"Pussy control." I smiled, and took a bite of my pretzel.
"Now." he wagged his finger. "It would be an asset to American men, if you weren't so vindictive."
"Bullshit!"
"The two don't mix Jasmyn! Then what's really fucked up is y'all are the most loving, American women are all off into this romance and they are very romantic and the genuinely fall in love with you."
"We do! But the thing is.." I closed the lid on the hummus and stuffed it back into the fridge. "Love and money don't mix well."
He snapped his fingers in realization. "Exactly! The shit don't mix. Especially when you got a business smart woman that loves you. You go up to her and say, baby I never nobody like you in my life. She say, I never met nobody like you either." He was talking a million miles a minute, acting out a fake conversation. "Well why don't we be together, Why don't we be together. Baby will you marry me, I thought you would never ask, Well before we get married why don't you sigh this prenuptial agreement." He smiled, nodding his head then his face dropped and he put on a stereotypical black woman attitude. "What do you mean sign a prenuptial agreement?." He sucked his teeth.
"Oh my God.." I mumbled to myself. He's hilarious, great company to have around.
"Well that's a contract that stipulates that if we were to ever break up..you take what you have when you came into the relationship and I take what I have." He smiled and then dropped his face back to the angry woman look. I choked on my water, laughing. "First of all I don't give a fuck who you are or what you have. You have a whole lot of muthafuckin' nerve gon' ask me to sign a contract to show you that I love you. Second of all there nothing that a man can do for me that I can't do for myself. I got a job and I don't need shit from you. You got a whole lot of- I love you and you gon' tell me to sign a contract to show that I love you. If I need somethin' I can go to my family, my family takes care of me."
He took a deep breathe. "Men hear all that shit and we say ok...and you don't get a contract, you get married without one. Then the shit don't work out, you breakup a year later and she sittin' 'round in the kitchen by herself. Mad. Eatin' hummus and pretzel."
I paused mid-bite on my pretzel sticks. "Oh you talkin' shit?"
"All i'm saying is marriage is overrated." He walked over to my fridge and peeked his head in. "The best advice you can give anybody is to never get married."
That felt like a kick in the stomach, Prince's father told him the exact same thing. Never get married. I'm gonna die alone at this rate. I gotta fuck with some men, that wanna put a ring on a finger. I don't plan on being a girlfriend my entire life. My life plan was to be married by 25 and have my first child by 28. I don't wanna be 30 and pregnant. I'll probably change my mind as I get older but for now that's my plan.
"Jasmyn are you listening to me."
"I'm not." I rolled up the pretzel bag slid it to the side.
He tossed a water bottle to himself. "I'm gonna go." he exhaled. He walked over and kissed me.
I grinned at his kiss. "Can you stay? I'm lonely." All my girlfriends are busy today, and I had an rare blue moon off day. Plus the person I used to spend my off days with is on tour an terrible.
"When I get here, your a bitch. When I leave, your a baby."
"Pleaseee." I begged, kicking my feet frantically.
"Fine." he sighed, giving in.
I squealed and jumped into his arms. "Yay! Let's go do your makeup." I latched on to his wrist and pulled him up the stairs.