Disastrously Fabulous: A Novel of Loves, Betrayals and New Beginnings (5 page)

“Save a boyfriend for a rainy day — and another, in case it doesn't rain.”

~ Mae West ~

Tad and I fell in love, but it was different. I kept a lot of my heart to myself this time. I was cautious about my feelings, even though the love I felt for him was real. He was exciting in a green way—daring and reckless. We would drive at top speed in his BMW just to enjoy the danger of it all.

Nothing was certain in Tad’s life, and I liked that. With uncertainty comes a kind of freedom from the future, one where anything could happen. Maybe I would stay with Tad, maybe not. It didn't matter. We were young, and things were happening.

Then I was invited to participate in the Miss Jamaica American Beauty Pageant. As a model, I was used to the scene and I was always up for a new experience. Where modeling requires natural confidence, a pageant demands a ruthless attitude.

Those girls wanted to win, and they would step on your face to do it. I heard the craziest stories in the dressing rooms while preparing for the pageant stages. One girl broke the temperature control on another’s flat iron and her hair burnt, leaving the room with a pungent, lingering odor. Another purposefully spilled a soft drink onto a competitor’s evening gown. I stayed out of it. I had my beautiful, customized faux-Versace dress, some decent make-up, and a heartwarming speech prepared. Beyond that, I shut out the twittering and bickering of the other contestants.

Before the final stages of the competition that year, the girls expectantly banded together to complain about the 1 minute, 30 seconds speech time. “How are we supposed to show who we are in such a short amount of time?” they complained. I was relieved: without public speaking experience, a short speech suited me well.

The night of the competition was all about highs—high energy, high excitement, high heels and high platforms.

The backstage smelled of powders, foundations and antiperspirants. Nervous titters mingled with mumbled speech rehearsals and small squeals as girls panicked about a missing lipstick or loose stitches on the hem of their dress.

One of my sisters, Salome, arrived in the audience to give me support, holding a gigantic printed sign with my face on it! The evening was a blur of movement, queues and spotlights.

My modeling experience came in handy, and I struck the right poses at the right time. Then it was my turn for the speech. “I only want to make the world a better place, and I believe that is best achieved by changing one mind at a time.”

The crowd loved me, though I couldn’t fathom why. I left the stage to greet the horrified faces of the girls waiting off stage and to a thunderous applause that trailed behind me like smoke. All that remained was the judging now. If the girls belatedly saw me as a threat, they were too late to sabotage my eyelash tongs.

We all filed out on stage, a centipede of long, shining legs in clicking heels. “And now, for the crowning of your new Miss Jamaican American, please welcome…” Flashes of light littered the crowd as a tall, gorgeous woman glided onto the stage in a sparkly dress of blue sequins. She was holding a large gem-encrusted crown.

Two other women joined her on stage with lesser crowns—the runners up. I remember breathing it all in—the energy from the crowd, the nerves of the women around me, the lights, the bustling world behind the curtains on stage. I didn’t expect to win. I didn’t expect to place anywhere. I had joined the pageant on a whim.

“Second princess…. Crystal!” the announcer said, and my name blossomed from his lips. I heard my name, but it was only when the girls on either side of me started to usher me down that I realized what had happened. Winning as second princess was a great, unexpected honor. They put a crown on my head and gave me the biggest bunch of flowers I ever held. Later on, I discovered that they also gave me the Photogenic Trophy. I was very humbled and fortunate.

My looks took me places like that, without any effort. I believed I was something special because my great looks brought me success.

That same evening, I met a young lawyer named Mr. Brockston, who was one of the pageant sponsors. Good thing too, because he saved me more than once from the law and the stupidity of youthful impulses. Being a model was great, but it didn’t pay well unless you were a super model. After I won a crown at the pageant, the pressure got that much worse.

I needed to be stunningly gorgeous, all the time, and that included wearing the latest designer gear which I couldn’t afford on the earnings from my modeling and temp job.

Good thing I knew ways to get clothes by methods other than paying the full price. But before long, this landed me in trouble.

The shop’s security guards stopped my friend and searched our bag, revealing three designer tops and a pair of gold earrings—damning evidence. My good looks didn’t help, and my charm was wasted on those men.

Luckily my pageant attorney friend Mr. Brockston arrived at the police station to sort things out. He even represented us in court and got us off on a light sentence.

I got three years’ probation as a first offender, and a $300 fine. At the time I was thoroughly outraged, but things could have been a lot worse. I could have gone to jail. It would have ruined my entire life—for what? Three average tops and fake gold earrings.

That was a wake-up call for me.

I decided to kick the boosting habit. Aside from the embarrassment of being caught, I had risked my freedom and my future—two things I couldn't afford to lose.

Now I had to juggle my modeling and temp work with probation meetings, like a circus clown trying to keep many balls in the air at once.

For all of my posturing and good looks, my crown and my natural feistiness, it could all go away in the blink of an eye. For the second and final time, I had been on the wrong side of the law.

“Three strikes and you’re out!” my mom shouted at me the next time I saw her.

Those words were not lost on me. I had to grow up, and fast. The days of being a teenager were gone, and while I was still blooming into my looks—my childhood was already in the rear-view mirror. I let go of my old beliefs that I could walk the line between success and being ‘a little bit of a criminal.’

Tad was supportive, but his career was taking on new dimensions and we were seeing each other less. He was growing up too, which meant longer hours. Of course, I didn’t like it. I still wanted to party and be the center of attention at the club.

Fresh from a year of starring in famous brand advertisements and winning a crown in a big time beauty pageant, I was a minor celebrity in a city full of nobodies. It was an amazing feeling, and the attention that surrounded me was equally as amazing. At times, I thought my head was going to fly off from the rush of it all.

New York City was my play thing, and I was open once again to new experiences. “Don’t let it go to your head,” Tad warned me, but what did he know? He wasn’t in the middle of the storm. He wasn’t on the rise, like I was.

“Why do you always have to ruin my fun, man?” I complained whenever he refused to meet me at the club. “You are going to have to work harder to make me happy.”

What a head I had! Tad and I stayed together for three years. It was a fundamental three years that impacted my life in a lot of ways.

My modeling career was taking off, and I had more friends than I could count. At the same time, people seemed to gravitate towards me like I was a magnet. I was proud to be the most fun, the most attractive, and the most wild-spirited person they knew.

“Where do you think you are going to be in five years, Crystal?” friends sometimes asked me.

“Not sure. It depends what offers and opportunities come my way. I might go into acting, but I’m enjoying modeling right now, too.”

“You must have a plan though.”

“My plan is to keep having fun, for as long as I can,” I would joke.

Only, it was not a joke. I meant it. I wanted those days to last. As Tad settled into his regular job, working like a hamster on a spinning wheel—I saw great opportunities around me and didn't hesitate to go with it. Fun was something I should have had a master’s degree in.

I tasted fame now, directly from the cup. I never wanted to let it go. That was what caused me to distance myself from Tad. We were moving in different directions now for quite some time. He was ready to work hard and settle down.

I was ready to play hard and rise up, however I could, and Tad now felt like an anchor holding me back. He would always treat me like the struggling waitress he met at Club Tibet. I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I wanted more. I wanted it all.

With my ever-growing ego and a popularity that rivaled celebrity status—the next best thing to come along was another love. I didn’t know it yet, but that person would become a central part of my life for the rest of my life. Poor Tad, he never stood a chance.

“If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.”

~ Richard Bach ~

Max stepped into my life at the right time. I was on a return trip from Kingston, Jamaica—walking to my car at Kennedy Airport in New York City when I noticed him for the first time. A chance encounter, but one that would change my life forever.

I was traveling with the designers of Nearly Yardy. We exited the terminal in force, and I split from them to find my mom who was waiting for me outside the parking area. Airport traffic always confused my mom, so to make it easier for her I would walk the extra distance to a meeting place she could manage.

This time, it turned out that destiny had a hand in the experience. I felt his eyes on me the moment I stopped at my mother’s car. “Crystal, lovely to see you again—how was your trip?” my mother began, as my attention became split between her greeting and the feeling that I was being watched.

I looked behind me, and there he was. A well-dressed man in a black Lexus, wearing what I thought looked like a hat from the movie Crocodile Dundee! I was instantly intrigued by his gaze. Then he left. “Who was that?” Mom asked, but I didn’t know. I continued loading my bags into the boot of her blue sedan.

Suddenly, a car pulled up across the road—that same Lexus. He was back! What on earth was he doing? The car horn beeped as I bent over to push my bag deeper into the boot. Enough was enough.

I shut the boot and marched across the road to the car. “What are you hooting at me for?”

“I…I…um…” He took a breath. “Couldn’t help it girl, those jeans!”

I smiled at him. He seemed sweet, but Mom was growing impatient and he was not making a move. “If you like what you see, why don’t you ask for my number already and we can get to know each other?” I pushed.

It was that simple. He took my number and called me the same night. I should have listened to my mother when she said that he looked like a womanizer.

Young and reckless, I already resigned myself to the fact that Tad and I were fading. He didn't have what I wanted. With one relationship dying, another struck up quickly with Max, the man from the airport parking lot.

I had no idea that Tad was keeping an eye on me. He somehow discovered the code to my answering machine, and when I started messing around with Max—he knew about it.

One night, as we were watching a movie, Tad confronted me. “Who is this man you are always seeing, Crystal?” he demanded. “I know there is someone else. Come clean now. You can’t have both of us; you have to choose.”

He made a compelling case, and we had a lot of history together. I reassured him and that same evening we wondered out into the City and got matching tattoos of each other’s names.

Good thing Max had no idea what a ‘Tad’ was, so the name was easy enough to disguise as something else.

I didn’t know what I wanted and I thought I could have it all. Everyone wanted a piece of me, and I was determined not to let those experiences go to waste.

I clicked along with Tad for some time after the tattoos, but eventually he got the message that our relationship was finished.

Max was a juggernaut, a big shot, in ways I hardly understood at the time. An intellectual, down to earth kind of guy—he was everything I was looking for. It was a year in when everything fell apart for Tad. I had no real understanding of just how well known Max was, or the level of his importance at the bank where he worked.

Max not only had wealth, he acquired power—real power, the kind that sent people scurrying around to make him happy. I was hooked, and when the day came I needed to tell Tad we were over. Tad arrived at my house, wanting to speak to me again about Max.

In my driveway was a brand new Mercedes Benz that Max gifted to me the night before. I left the house and met him outside by the car. I could see on his face; he knew it was over.

“That man bought you this?” he asked me, crestfallen. He was defeated. Tad couldn't give me the kind of lifestyle I wanted, and he knew it.

I nodded and told him it was best if we broke it off. He took it graciously, although I realized later how much my betrayal must have hurt him, and how lightly I had played with his heart.

And so, my relationship with Tad fizzled out. He taught me that even though good intentions can fill you with joy, without money they don’t mean anything. Money made the world go around.

I had been invited into the world of high end luxury, and that kind of lifestyle blinds a girl. Wolford and Laperla, Manolos Blahniks, Chanel and Fendi furs—these were things Max gifted me. I added ‘rich’ to my list of must-haves in men.

All I needed in the world was an honest, wealthy man who loved me. Max was that man. He told me repeatedly that he would prove that to me forever, if that is what it took.

Once Tad was out of the picture, I fell deeper in love with Max. His wealth and power amplified everything he did. Even his small gestures were huge, and it was easy to get caught up in that lavish lifestyle all over again. Max was an honest man with a real career that gave him his wealth. He was Barry and Tad rolled into one.

Dating Max was an adventure for my young heart. He would pick me up in a limo with a gigantic bunch of exotic flowers whenever we went out, wearing his sexy salmon colored sports jacket. The same height as me, Max was a very attractive man with fine features.

It was not long after leaving Tad that things got serious for Max and me. It was a heady romance that boomed into our lives. We wanted to spend all of our free time together, having fun and living life. Was this my paradise? I believed it was.

Max regularly surprised me with gifts: a membership at an exclusive sports center at Chelsea Piers, jewelry I was sometimes afraid to wear because it was worth so much, and dinners that could have paid several middle class mortgages. Then, the gift that blew my mind. He led me down the hall of a prominent building in the City, and opened the door to a brand new apartment, just for me. My dreams were coming true, and it was all thanks to Max loving me and his generosity.

Still, a worry niggled at the back of my mind. So much wealth, surely if a man like this wanted to—he could have other women all over the City. Would I ever find out? Was Max as honest as he claimed to be? Doubts started trickling in, but I pushed them aside.

Max had organized to have the apartment customized and decorated to my tastes. We quickly became fierce lovers as well as best friends, and I felt closer to him than I ever had felt with any other man.

Beyond the generosity, and the fact that he helped pay for my degree in Applied Science with a Minor in Advertising and BS in Marketing Communications—he also sat with me each night helping me get through my math course, quantitative statistics. He put in the time, the love, his presence. I had it all.

For several months, Max courted me in extreme style. He took me on vacations that would have impressed Barry, and I soon realized that he was in a whole different league to the wealth I had believed my African prince held.

Max was an extremely ambitious man, and he worked constantly. With a golden tongue and a relaxed aura, he closed business deals like there was no tomorrow. But Max had his problems too—he loved to party and that came with a certain amount of drama, especially when alcohol and other substances were involved.

Still I couldn't have been happier. He plucked me from my boring, limited life as a somewhat successful model and beauty pageant winner and gave me something better. When I was with Max, I acquired power too.

The closer we became, the more it felt like his success was my success. I devoted myself to keeping him happy. I ditched work and started to shape my days around what he needed. I gave it all to him, because he deserved it.

Max swept me off my feet. I owned a luxury apartment, a brand new car, a closet-full of outrageously expensive clothing and jewelry, and the ability to do whatever I wanted. For me, this was the closest to heaven I had ever been.

I didn’t think about the cost but opened my arms and embraced the good fortune.

The two of us were jetsetters, and the world was our playground. Max loved my feisty attitude, and how I never let people get in my way. I commanded respect, even when I didn’t have any money. That was why he fell in love with me.

My new true love soon eclipsed the memory of Tad.