Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man

waste it on phone calls to anybody, so I would stash my cash and stay in the car and wait for my next gig. You try going even two days without talking to somebody. I’ll bet you can’t do it. But I did that for three weeks and started asking myself some questions and answering those questions too. I found out a lot about myself and recognized that I wasn’t being the kind of husband my wife needed me to be or the kind of provider I needed to be for her and the kids and even for myself. Simply put: I wasn’t doing what I said I was going to do. And until I did that, I couldn’t truly be a man.

I am not the only man who thinks this way. Over and over again while I was on tour with Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, men stood up and repeated the same ideals and sentiments. I’ll never forget one man who made his way to the microphone at one of my events; he was bald, had a stylish beard, a nice blazer, and a white shirt. The women in the room took notice of him; he spoke about how in his last relationship, he was ashamed because he hadn’t gotten himself together-hadn’t achieved the career and financial status that he wanted to achieve. But, he added, he’d been working on himself and understanding what he was capable of and he was in a good place. “I’m a good guy,” he said, “but I’m a helluva man. I don’t have all the money in the world, but I got all the traits that make for a good husband. If you need protecting, I got you. If you need money, I don’t have much but what I do have, I’ll bring it home. I’ll give you my last name. I can do most anything with my hands, so if you need something fixed around the house, I got you covered there, too. And I do what I say, and say what I mean.” And then he brought it on home: “What I’ve been missing is the right woman. If I had the right, stabilizing force in my home-the right support system-I would be even better.”

That man finally knows what we all eventually come to know: that we have to learn how to be men before we can be anything to anyone who wants to love us-and certainly before we can love them back. But once we get it right? We come to something close to completion, the thing that makes men want to be better, not only for ourselves, but for the people we love. I can’t count the many incredible things that have happened to me as a businessman, a provider, a husband, a father, and a man since the right woman came into my life; I’ve never in my life gotten the kinds of accolades and accomplishments I’ve achieved since Marjorie and I started our journey together. I’ve been on Oprah, Ellen, a correspondent on Good Morning America; I’ve been invited to speak at a church. A church. In my life nobody has asked me to be the keynote speaker in a house of the Lord. Ever. These things I’ve earned come not only from my deciding to do better, but from somebody seeing that there was better in me. People who’ve known me for years notice it. Hell, I have a picture of myself from 1995 in which I could see it- the physical toll that my lifestyle and choices were taking on my body, from not being the kind of man I needed to be and not having the right woman to complete the cycle of manhood. My face was sagging, I had put on a ton of weight, I just looked done; it was hard to believe I’d been that miserable.

Now I’ve put my house in order. I cleared my life of all its debris so that when the blessings did come, including first and foremost my relationship with God, my discovery of what makes me happy-success in my career and a strong, loving woman by my side-I could receive those blessings and start doing right.

And I’m passing that message on to my sons so that they know the secret too: learn how to be a man first. Then find the right woman who can bring out the best in you-make you better. Marriage is not a death sentence. It’s a completion.

My sons.

Steve and Jason passed those tests and earned the right to apply to college this past spring. With them, we’re going to build a tradition. I was the first one in my family to go to college, but I flunked out. But my sons got accepted into Morehouse. When they got their letters, I sat in the chair in my office and cried; my sons are going to a prestigious college with a rich and proud legacy, and I couldn’t be more pleased. When Jason saw me, he got a quizzical look on his face and asked me why I was upset, what they’d done to make me react in that way.

“You don’t even know what this means for me, son,” I said simply. “I’m not turning out convicts, there are no babies popping out of the woodwork, and the two of you are going to Morehouse. Give me a moment to celebrate getting it right. This isn’t about you.”

I recognize my job isn’t over-that Jason and Wynton and Steve have quite a ways to go before they are full-on men. But they’re on their way.

And I pray that they take the lessons I’m teaching them, and the lessons they’ll learn along the way, and make quick work of being the kind of men capable of making someone-themselves and their intendeds-happy. That said, will they make mistakes? Yes. But my job is to limit them.

2

Dating by the Decades

A Guide to How Men Feel About Relationships in Their Twenties, Thirties, Forties, Fifties, and Beyond

I took my daughter Lori to lunch recently-just me and her, one on one-and I’m not going to lie: I was a little bit more than concerned. It was, after all, the first occasion we’d spent any quality time with each other without her mother, Marjorie, there to quarterback the flow of conversation. I mean, when I take my sons to lunch, the fellowship is pretty low-key; I say, “Find yourself something to eat, man,” they order, and we eat. Everybody pushes back from the table happy and satisfied. But the idea of sitting in a restaurant alone with Lori made me come to terms with a couple of things, namely that I haven’t a clue what thirteen-year-old girls like, care about, or have on their minds.

But I got a lesson that day.

“So, Daddy, when can I start dating?”

In my head, I was screaming, “Who in the hell is this big-headed boy trying to take you out? You’re thirteen-a baby! I’ll kill him with my bare hands!” In real time, though, all I could manage was a slow count to ten, some swallows, and a couple of blinks. Finally, when I was sure I would neither shake nor stutter, I dove in.

“How old do you think you should be?” I asked innocently.

“Oh, maybe fourteen or something like that,” she said.

I swallowed hard. Again.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but nobody can come by the house for you when you’re fourteen to take you out. That’s way too young.”

“Well, my friend Cat dates older guys,” she said matter-of-factly.

Of course, in my mind, I had a vision of myself sharpening knives and loading guns and yelling from the front stoop in a housecoat and slippers that anybody named Cat should be forewarned not to so much as step on our block trying to corrupt my baby girl. Little fast butt. Out loud, though, I kept my remarks as calm and measured as I could muster.

“When you say ‘older guys,’ ” I asked politely, “what do you mean?”

“She likes guys who are, like, fifteen or sixteen years old,” she said.

I blinked a couple of times and did a few more hard swallows. “Well, baby,” I said between sips of ice water. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

By lunch’s end, I was real clear on this one thing: Lori is not a little girl anymore, and we are in the middle stages of that dance-the delicate tug-of-war between age-appropriate attraction to the opposite sex and all-out boy craziness. I now understand that our conversation didn’t mark the first time my daughter’s thought about boys and dating and even marriage; if she’s anything like every other little girl on the planet, she’s considered down to the most minute details what her husband-to-be would look like, what kind of wedding they’ll have, where the wedding will be, what kind of material her wedding dress will be made of, and whether she’ll smush the wedding cake in her new husband’s face. She’s probably considered, too, how many kids she wants to have with this dream husband of hers, what their names will be, and whether she’ll hyphenate her last name with his.

You know I’m right. This is what girls do; they dream about the Happily Ever After-the wedding, the kids, the married life. Everything they watch-from their Disney movies to their tween television shows to popular music, magazines, and other cultural bellwethers-tells them that while it’s okay to be independent, smart, and strong, it