WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 540 - Ms. Pat

Episode Date: October 8, 2014

Before Ms. Pat became the comedian she is today, she was Rabbit, a drug dealing single mom in the ghetto who was shot twice and beaten within an inch of her life many more times than that. Marc gets the full portrait of Patricia Williams, a woman who survived unthinkably tough times and is not afraid to share her truth with audiences around the country. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look at CalgaryEconomicDevelopment.com. Lock the gates! All right, folks, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuck sticks? What the fuckadelics?

What the fuckstables? How are you? What's happeningon here this is my show wtf thank you for listening thank you for always listening i appreciate it i appreciate the input i appreciate your ears i'm glad that you enjoy the show if you're if you're on a run right now you can do it. Go, go, go, go. If you're in your cubicle right now, you can get through it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. If you're just at home, maybe cooking something, watch your measurements. Don't screw it up. Don't add too much. Check the oven. Check it. if you're driving hey chill out relax there's nothing you can do about this it's out of your control all right just wait it out uh there's no reason for it and uh don't it's it's not your fault i mean you left early enough right am i right i mean how

early can you leave i mean you didn't know it would be like this this is bullshit god damn it what could be causing this oh this guy maybe you're driving a truck and you're out there in the open road trying not to fall asleep wake up wake up wake up i was just in a spike lee movie so uh what's happening my guest today is patricia williams known as ms pat on the road as a comedian amazing stories of perseverance survival transcendence oh god it's uh yeah buckle up it's gonna be good let me tell you where i'm at right now and then we'll ease into uh into the conversation with Ms. Pat. I took Monkey to the vet because Monkey's still going at his junk, still licking his own dick, and he was on antibiotics for two weeks.

And it is so traumatic for me to get that goddamn cat to the vet. I mean, I can get him in the cage cage but i'm starting to think that i didn't socialize my cats properly maybe i should have handled them more maybe i should have uh made them more comfortable with me and people as opposed to just let them continue to be wild and dictate their own goddamn behavior like you have no choice with cats but i just got a call from the doc says uh yeah we got to put him under just to give him a bath and get a urine sample because he's fighting the fuck man yeah i take him to the vet he's howling howling it's like no other cat is doing that there why has it got to be my kid why's it got to be my cat

why does my cat got to be the drama addict but why is my cat such a pussy huh why and then i feel bad i didn't want to bring him in but i'm going out of town for a couple days i got someone watching the house but it's like he's gonna be all fucking loopy because that that vet he always gives me the cat half cocked just wasted shit-faced it's not as endearing as maybe a a kid who who might have had uh a little gas at the dentist like that youtube video that's funny a fucked up cat's not funny because it doesn't know what's going on neither does a kid but a cat's a cat so it's gonna freak out on top of that and try and run and hide. Whatever, man.

You know what? I'm not complaining. I exercised. I had an overly thick smoothie. My cat is at the vet being taken care of. I'm doing responsible shit. All right? Okay.

Here's the deal. Ms. Pat has been making the podcast rounds a bit. I didn't know anything about her. Joe had her on, and I know Ari had her on. But, you know, I did a little investigating because her fans were telling me, like, you know, I got to have her on, I got to have her on. And I watched some of her stand-up, and know i got it it was good it seemed to be coming from a place of of genuine storytelling and and and and very dark uh dark stories in the sense that they were harrowing but the one thing that i don't experience and what i don't talk about a lot and i don't have

the opportunity to i guess i could make more opportunity to, is what it's like to grow up poor and black in America. I can't even begin to understand what the black experience is like. Even being told it through fiction or through music or through some biographies I have read in my life, I am completely outside of that experience and i got to be honest with you you're talking to miss pat to me is mind-blowing because the black struggle is something i'm familiar with in the pop culture that i consume but the the truth of the matter is is i don't know the truth of the matter is, customs, survival modes that I'm not necessarily privy to in terms of people I talk to.

So for me, talking to Ms. Patton and having her be able to frame it with a certain amount of, an amazing amount of humility and an amazing amount of humor was just fucking mind-blowing to me. And maybe I'm shut off. Maybe, you know, i don't think i'm closed-minded in any way but i do not know the experience and uh and it was it was it was powerful there's there's no way there's no way to uh other way to frame it other than powerful and powerfully funny but it it is sort of upsetting to me that that I don't I don't know. I don't have a real sense of that experience. And and all I can look at it is is as as a as a social phenomenon or or a political phenomenon or just a very sad and tragic phenomenon that this that that ghetto life still exists and persists. phenomenon that this that that ghetto life still exists and persists and uh when even when i talk to miss pat it's like you don't get the feeling that it's ever going to end it's almost like it's relentless very devastating but nonetheless this is uh miss pat is certainly the best person

available for me to talk to about her story and for me to learn something. And here's somebody whose experience is completely different than mine. So let's go. Let's talk to Miss Pat. And, you know, and like I said, get. It's winter and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So, no, you can anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats.

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Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Calgary is a city built by innovators. Innovation is in the city's DNA. And it's with this pedigree that bright minds and future thinking problem solvers are tackling some of the world's greatest challenges from right here in Calgary. From cleaner energy, safe and secure food,

efficient movement of goods and people, and better health solutions, Calgary's visionaries are turning heads around the globe, across all sectors, each and every day. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. so miss pat i i guess i'm the last podcaster to get you how many have you done now you've done everybody's just about everybody i've done all the good ones how about that oh that's good that's good i don't know how i missed you. How did I miss you? Oh, don't nobody know who the fuck I am, Mark.

That's going to change, Pat. I see. I see. That's what Joe Rogan said when I did his. Oh, really? Yeah. He said, you're about to happen? That's what he said.

He said, I'm about to pop like a chicken. But I was like, you must haven't seen my stomach. I'm wearing a spank. But you've been around for how long? I've been doing comedy 12 years. 12 years? Yeah. And where'd you start out at?

Atlanta. Is that where you grew up? I'm born and raised, but I live in Indianapolis now. How'd you end up in Indianapolis? My fucking husband worked at General Motors. That's a good job, right? Yeah, he didn't want to take the buyout, so he didn't want to go to Dallas. Yeah.

So we moved to Indy. But was that a big change? It must be a big change. Hell, yes. That was a big and slower. Nobody can fix hair there. We live in a neighborhood with all white people, and they all know each other, and they all go to church every week.

But is it weird? Do you go to church with them? No, I don't go to fucking church with them. They were so homey. And so when I first started in Atlanta, you know, when you're a comic, you go to church with them no i don't go to fucking church with them they were so homie and so when i first started in atlanta you know when you're a comic you gotta get out and grind your ass off yeah and that's something my husband didn't understand so he moved me to this small city say well you know hopefully this shit is just you know a little phase she going through oh the comedy yeah the comedy yeah you get past that and then you know i started in like an urban

setting so it was no urban setting there in Indy. So I had to kind of figure out, well, shit, how do I write something for everybody? Yeah. And we were just talking about that before we were coming out here, that we're both doing this show today. And you're concerned about it. Yeah, I'm always concerned about it. I mean, it's Comedy Central, you know, and I'm kind of intimidated. And then I look and I'm taping with you and fucking Joe Rogan.

Oh, my God, why they got me taping with him? I'd rather tape with a bunch of nobodies. And my manager was like, Pat, come on, just get over it, okay? You just as good as anybody else. You've been doing it 12 years and your life story is compelling and you're a natural storyteller, but you're still a little hard on yourself. I'm always hard on myself. But white audiences make you nervous? White people used to make me nervous i'm black mark

i committed a bunch of crimes before this shit well so that nervousness goes both ways i'm sure well it has a lot to do with my childhood because you know i grew up i grew up in the inner city of atlanta i grew up with an alcoholic mom you you know, who taught me, you know, like and literally she told me that she say white people are better than you. So don't ever look them in the eye. So when you raise a kid like that, I grew up really thinking that y'all was so much different from me. So when I became a comedian and I started talking about my life, you know, people are like, oh, my God, you funny. And I'm like, oh, who the fuck are you? And get away away from me i'm talking about shit from the hood you can't relate right and so they just took a like white people took people took a liking to me and i wasn't used to white people taking a liking to me and i realized fuck we all the same yeah talk my mama that stupid shit well i think that stupid

shit had been being taught for generations yeah i mean i how long had she had her family been in atlanta oh they was born and raised there for yourself yeah so the south is the south you know that shit gets ingrained in your head yeah and that's what you know that's what she taught me and then you know it's the cycle that went through our family teenage pregnancy right my mama had her first kid at 15 i had my first kid at 14 really yeah i had two kids by the time I was 16. So my, you know, she, she used to tell me stuff like if a man don't beat you, he don't love you. So honestly, I, when my baby daddy was punching me in the same aisle on Friday, I was like,

Oh, this Negro love me. But one time he hit me with a skate and I was like, fuck it. This love I can do without it. How many sisters and brothers do you have? I have one sister and three brothers. And they're all around. They without it. Yeah. How many sisters and brothers do you have? I have one sister and three brothers. And they're all around? They all right? Yeah.

Well, they're all on drugs. Except one brother. I fucked up, you know, upbringing. But, you know, my sister's on drugs. She just got out of jail. My brother, he's in jail. My other brother in and out of jail. But that's how we grew up.

That's the cycle of the ghetto. It's like you just keep recycling shit. is it that stops people from like you got out you gotta want to get out and you know that's the question i get answered a lot they was like you know because i was 16 years old with two kids by a married man that beat on me all the fucking time married man he was married and you were just across town kind of thing well his wife lived in decatur i lived in atlanta i didn't know he was married when I first met him. I was 12 when I met him. He was 22.

Oh, my God. How'd you meet him? Coming from a fucking YMCA party for kids. And he was like a counselor or something? No. He was a kid, too? He's 22. That's not a kid.

No, he thought he was a kid. My sister was dating one of his friends. So we was coming from a party. He had a car. So he gave us all a kid. My sister was day one of his friends. So we was coming from a party. He had a car. So he gave us all a ride. Right. And I was the only one that didn't have a boyfriend that night because my sister and my cousin had a boyfriend. Right.

But, you know, he thought I had a really nice figure. You were 12. Fuck yeah. You know, all 12s are like they're ready to fuck, but they're really not. Right. You know, like picking the fucking tomato too soon. Yeah. So he thought, you know, i guess he thought i looked good he was the first person

that ever really paid me some attention yeah so you know i didn't get any attention i didn't have a fucking daddy so i didn't get any attention from my mom and i ain't getting attention from my brother so he act like i was the shit and i didn't know in return you had to get his grown ass dude pussy yeah so you know i went along with it i thought he loved me so you had two years before you give him pussy no i mean i think i was 12 and um my turn 13 they a couple of months out then i got pregnant oh my god yeah well so can we this guy's a child molester is what he was you know what he now he's a child molester right but then you ask him that he's your age he'll tell you that he's not yeah he'll tell he'll and i asked him one time and i say you know i don't i don't

want to say i kind of fought you for fucking up my life i said but what do you have to say he said well uh i said i was 12 years old who fucked 12 years yeah he said your mind and body wasn't 12 that shit hit me in my chest like a brick. Yeah. Well, that's a rationalization. Yeah. That's how child molesters think. Yeah.

If it got a little hair on it, it ready. Is there others, though? I mean, was he a guy that you... Yeah, I think it was. But he always messed with younger girls. Yes. He had like 20-something kids. You know, I got pregnant...

20 kids. Yeah, he had a like 20 some kids. You know, I got pregnant. 20 kids. Yeah. He had a bunch of fucking kids. So your kids got a bunch of like 20 step half brothers. Yeah. No. In the hood, we don't count that what's outside the family. We don't do that half shit.

Unless it's by the mama and you live in that household. That it's just another kid. Yeah. That you might be related to. Yes. Yes. But the good thing about this dude, he signed the kids birth certificate so they know you know on facebook they all connect but not in person because they see that name like hey is your daddy there and

it was oh that's my daddy oh really another one of y'all just popping up out of nowhere oh my god you know so there's a whole fan group or a whole like it's a bunch of them you know now did he have a relationship with with uh with your kids i mean throughout you know what mark i tell you he took me through a lot like he beat me he shot me he shot you yes he shot me in the back of the head in the back of the head yes on purpose he said it was a mistake but you know he said a gun went off but you know because he was hitting me with the gun so he said it wasn't a mistake i think he was trying to fucking kill me i was fit i was 15 at the time so um but how does it get to that point i mean so he's 15 he's married you're 15 yeah i was 15 at the time he shot me right sir but you

got his kid at 13 and he's in yet but by this time you got to remember you gotta to control something you gotta manipulate it so by this time whatever he said went you know i was just fucking naive because i i think i was a young girl looking for now i realize i was a young girl looking for a father figure so now you got you got me and i'm thinking that you you know you'd answer to all you you finally i found somebody that loved me just stepped in and took over he stepped in and took over. He stepped in and took over. He showed me what I didn't get at home. Love.

Right. You know, in the beginning, compassion. He to me, he was taking care of me. Yeah. So he was my hugging answer. He was my white knight. Right. But then that's when the abuse come, you know, the talking down to me.

I'm bitches. I'm whole beating on me. I'm fucking 14. What do I know about having a man? What do I know about living? what do I know about having a man what do I know about living what do I know about anything I mean you I get pregnant and I don't even know you married till your wife knock on my door and what happened that day I was I was 13 she knocks on my door and she asked for me because my my street name was rabbit was she a grown woman yeah she was like 19 so she

knocks on my door and she said, I want to see Rabbit. And I said, I'm Rabbit. I'm thinking she's some bitch that want to play with me in the neighborhood. You know, because I'm pregnant, but I'm really a kid. Yeah. So she told me who she was and that she was having she was there. She was his wife. And I was so fucking confused.

And I'm like a wife. And I was like, well, how's you his wife? You got to be his girlfriend. First, I'm his girlfriend. Yeah. And she's like, how old are you? I said, I'm 13. So she pulled me aside.

This is a true story. And we talked about, she bought me ice cream from the truck. And she wanted to discuss me having an abortion. And I was like, no. And I'm like, you know, all you're going to give me is a fucking bum pop to kill my baby. But in my mind, if if i had this baby it'll be somebody that loved me yeah and that was the main reason that i kept that baby because at that time he wasn't beating on me it wasn't till after i had that first baby then he got me right you know i'm saying everything it was like crack it was like crack or hair run any strong drug out there that's how i had to have him

right whatever he said that went and you know plus i had a mama that taught me early on if a man don't beat you he don't love you so i'm thinking every punch is a fucking valentine gift yeah yeah and but you felt the pain yes but i had to grow up i had to start saying i started saying you know well what what the fuck i had a daughter what was so crazy and she see him stomping me and beating me and putting his, you know, talking to me any kind of way. I said, well, fuck, how is she going to grow up and get a man to treat her if he's treating me like that?

When did you have that realization? How old were you? After, probably about 15, 16. Yeah? Yeah. And your mother was just, was she drunk all the time? She was drunk pretty much all the time. And my mama died when I was 16.

So I'm out there with two kids. And no mama. No mama, no daddy. Oh, my God. Raising two kids. And I started selling crack. So when I started selling crack, that was the way for me to take care of my kids. Because who really going to give a 16-year-old a job?

I tried to get a job. Where? I tried to waitress at the waffle house not the wife i was called the other house back then yeah and so you know i was trying to go to school and do the right thing because i had two fucking kids but it wasn't working and i tried to get better jobs and they was like where's your work permit like i got fucking two kids who need a work permit when they got two kids so you're still going to school with the kids i was trying yeah because i was in the what eighth grade yeah i can't believe it just seems overwhelming to me everybody you know people my

main question i get is how you survive i don't fucking know all i all i kept thinking of i gotta figure out a way to get my so my kids don't be recycled into this bullshit that i was born into right so when you're so when you're a kid you got what you say you got one sister and two brothers three brothers three brothers and you're all in the same house what's the age difference uh we all about two years apart same father supposedly i can't tell when i got a brother who looked like he biracial so and my daddy is fucking extra black like he played on the django and i'm sitting up here and I'm brown-skinned and my mama does come like some of this shit ain't adding up somebody was creeping somewhere so supposedly

we supposed to have the same father and you never met him or you did oh yeah I took him the last three four years of his life after I got to know him really and when how old were you when you got to know him I met him for the first time he stopped by my house when I was like 11 to whoop us. And so he fucked around and hit us. Never seen this dude a day in my life. He just came by to hit you? He came by to whoop my sister's ass, but he couldn't tell us apart. Why was he whooping your sister's ass?

Because she's supposed to have been disrespecting my mama. And so I walk in the door and he don't know me from my sister. And he hit me. And at the time, I'm really into wrestling. So I beat the shit out of him. Me and my brother, we tagged each other in. We was DDTing him and everything. He was kicking his ass.

Yeah. So that was the first time I met him. Then he disappeared. Then later on in life, when I became a kind of a big drug dealer, I was seeing from time to time. To sell him drugs? No, no, no. He wasn't on drugs. He was an alcoholic.

Oh, just old school. Old school alcoholic. Yeah. I don't think I want to sell my parents drugs. Bought my mama a lot of weed. Yeah? Yeah. Did your mom, like, how did she handle all the kids?

I guess it sounds like everybody just raised themselves anyways. Yeah, because. Then you figured out the neighborhood raised you in a way. Because everybody was around. Well, my brothers was in and out of jail. Yeah. And my mama just i moved out when i was 16 like 16 after see what it was is i got pregnant again i had a baby at 14 had a

baby at 15 i got pregnant at 16 yeah so i we had a caseworker this back when the caseworkers used to come to your house right so i told the caseworker i said i don't want to have another baby because i cannot afford it but this dude has got my mind. I got to figure out something. So she said, well, let me show you how to become emancipated minor and you can get your own abortion. So I got my first abortion when I was 16 after I divorced my mom. So once I did that, I divorced your mama. Yeah, you have to be emancipated from the slavery of motherhood.

Yes, pretty fucking much yeah so once i became emancipated minor i got my own welfare check and i got my own food stamp so i moved out and you'd already had two kids i already had two kids that same dude the same dude and the third one was his too the third one was his too oh my god well this is well see this is like this is why it's so astounding, I think, and why with all these white dudes here on the podcast, it's like we never get to hear stories like this from somebody who's telling them directly to us

with a certain amount of transcendence, with a certain amount of confidence in somebody who's come through something. Yeah. I don't know why it works like that, because I wonder about, like, I have a hard time

getting black comics on my show because I don't, I don't know why we don't talk more but then we just don't. Because society wants us to stay divided.

Is it society? I can blame society? I mean, it's just, I mean, they tell you, the mainstream media will make us look one way.

Then they tell you what they perceive what the ghetto is about and, you know, they come up with all these ideas of what really goes on in the ghetto when they don't know shit. Yeah. They don't know shit.

Well, I think that's what's amazing about the stuff that I've seen of yours. And the reason why, you know, I think that you're not going to have any problem translating and that your fear is though you have them. The thing is, is that I think that in my mind, there is a stereotype that is hit over the head. You know, that this is the way it is and a lot of times it the story of transcending that and saying like i lived it this is my truth and and this is this is why it's fucked up is is different than like you know just playing along with the stereotype well my thing is mark is that sometime i get like i talk to my manager a lot and i get I get a little worried about is people thinking that I'm the same person that I was back then because I mean I remember telling the story about

how when I used to when I used to sell crack I used to make a lot of fucking money and a lot of my hiding spots was in my kids underwear so this guy was like how who want to talk to somebody who had drugs in their kids underwear so I'm like do you understand that I was 16 at the time with two fucking kids i was a fucking kid myself i didn't know right from wrong really yeah you know i'm saying i'm doing what i see everybody else is doing and one of the things that kind of bothers me do people think that patricia today is that same person who rabbit was which was my street name yeah in 1988 i'm not the same fucking person i wouldn't dare do the

things that i did and either with you i mean you 50 look at the shit you probably did we don't even know would you would you make the same mistakes that you made i i would not hide crack in my daughter's underwear again me either you know you know my son don't remember a lot of this shit but my daughter do oh yeah and i had to go tell my daughter i did a lot of this shit, but my daughter do. Oh, yeah. And I had to go tell my daughter, I did a lot of this stuff to survive. I was not the best mom. I was a kid like you. But my whole thing was keeping us together. And my daughter, she don't look down on me like that.

And she said, you know, I give you props because you could have dropped me off anywhere. You could have lost me. You always taking care of me. How old is she now? My daughter is 28. That's amazing. And I kept her from going through half of the shit like i was molested went through a whole bunch of shit i talked to my even after i got married i told my daughter every day i said if my husband ever touch you i will fuck him up nobody means more to me than you do you got

molested too on top of everything else well that's way before arguably you were you were molested too on top of everything else well that's way before arguably you were you were molested when that guy got you pregnant i mean yeah i went through a lot of shit before that two people coming in and out of the house well i was raised in a bootleg house yeah you know we was raised in my grandfather bootleg house where you had drunk people there around the clock what was it rural where's a bootleg house it was bootleg house in the land you know what a bootleg sure well it's what illegal liquor right illegal liquor yeah they were making it there my grandfather Rural? Where's a bootleg house? It was a bootleg house in Atlanta. You know what a bootleg house is? Well, it's illegal liquor, right? Illegal liquor, yes.

And they were making it there. My grandfather was. But I picture that to be more of a country situation. I guess it was like country back in the 70s and 80s. Shit, they done cut down a few trees and made it for roads now. Yeah, where was the still of? Where did they make it? Well, he bought it.

He went out and bought it and brought it back in gallon jugs. I see. And he had customers all day. So he went to the hills. He went somewhere and got it on the bus. On the bus? Yes. Not a truck. No.

He bring the jug. He bring my five or six gallons back on a model bus. So this is your mother's father. We live with him. Yeah. In a house? In a house. Big house in the cater.

So you never know who's going to come through a bootleg house. No, it was always drunks and prostitutes and construction workers. And I'm a man before the lottery came out. So, you know, it was shit like that. And somebody got to you. Well, what you think? I guess a party's a party. Well, you know, when you're not watching your kids, anybody will fucking get to them.

But I said what I went through, my my daughter my kids would never go through so even after i was married and my daughter was in high school i still questioned her till one day we had a conversation she was like can you please stop asking me this you've been asking me this for 10 years which ones which questions i said if my husband ever touched you i'll kill him and she's like mom by now don't you think i would have told you? This is the husband you're with now? Yes. You trust him now, though? I'm from a background where you can only trust people so much.

Of course, I trust him. But, you know, people pop up all the time and you not really know their character, right? Right. It's like you probably thought you had a friend and turned out that fucker wasn't a friend. Yeah, people will surprise you. People will surprise you in this fucking world. So, you know, I trust him. Honestly, I do.

But, you know, I mean, I've been let down so much in my life. You only get so much. Right. So, okay. So, you sort of temper your trust. You know, it's there, but, you know, it's always ready to be shattered somehow. Well, yeah, pretty much. But your grandfather sounds like a character.

Was he a nice guy? Yeah. I mean, he was a nice guy. He ran a bootleg house. And, you know, we did a lot of shit in that house. I saw a lot of shit in that house. Like, I saw him shoot a lady, like, with two pistols at one time. You did?

Yeah, I was like seven years old. Dead? No, she wasn't dead. Because I guess he wasn't that good. He shot her with a.38. That's a big gun. Big enough. Not a.22.

He shot her. He hit her in the stomach and the legs and shit. And I remember him shooting her fingers off. What? Yeah. He shot her fingers off. He shot like one finger because she would call him a black faggot. So he shot her and her finger went off.

How old are you? I was probably about seven. Oh, my God. Yeah. Quite a life there. Yeah. I mean, we saw everything. So she was just drunk and fucked up?

She called him a black faggot. And that was it? And, you know, you don't call old black men faggots. So you get your finger shot off. Yeah, you get your fucking finger shot off. So he shot her. But it sounds like, well, what happened after that? Were there cops?

Well, he told my aunt that day, and he said, go pull out the moonshine. And I'm thinking, pull out the moonshine? This bitch out here on the ground, dad. And he was like, then call the police. Oh, hide the shit. Yeah, she had to go pull it out, and then she called 911. And I think they gave him like 15 years in prison for shooting that lady. Because we thought she was going to die, but she didn't die.

She didn't die. But he did jail time. So that was the end of the bootleg house. Yeah. And so we moved. And that's when a lot of shit started to, you know, that's when the foundation started to crumble. Because granddaddy always had a foundation. At least she was going to eat and have a place to stay.

And so after that, after he went to jail, your mom had to go out on her own. And she was what? 20? She was what, 20? She was in her 20s. Yes. Which was an alcoholic. Came out of an abusive relationship with my real daddy. I was a baby when she left him. And she was just, my mama had an old spirit.

She just, whatever my daddy did to her, she never fucking bounced back. Because I had a stepfather that she just took all that anger out on this little nice dude was a mechanic. And so when he left, we was just fucked. She just to me, she gave up. I guess it's hard not to when you grow up and that you don't know any better. And I mean, it's amazing that you found the fortitude to at least know better. Well, you know, I wanted better. Those kids made me strive even.

Well, I say this. It started back when I was in elementary school. I had a teacher named Miss True. She died this year and she used to tell me I used to go to school. I was dirty because my mom didn't really give a fuck. And she was like my second or third grade teacher. She said, Pat, you can be anything in the world you want to be. All you got to do is believe and dream. And I'm 42, Mark. And I still when I'm getting low i always quote

miss troop when i did time in prison i always quoted miss troop this this is how i started but this is not how i'm gonna end up well it seems like you're doing all right now i'm doing pretty good all right let's go back to like all right so now you're 12 years old you started this relationship with this dude he's 22 you have his have his baby. Then he starts beating on you. And then you have another one of his babies. Yep. And because all the beatings, that means love to you. Yep.

At that point, yeah. So you got two babies. And now when was the first time you got shot? I was over my house with dating another dude. And he come over there acting like he's jealous. So, you know, in the hood, ain't nothing like seeing your man fight over your old. That means something. And he was a a pussy he didn't hit the dude he let the dude go and hit me and the gun went off and supposedly fucking blew a nice little piece of my head off in the back yeah i guess it just cracked my skull i don't really know but you you got lucky i got lucky but he carried a gun yeah he always carried a gun because he was a pussy

so after that you know um i immediately after i got out of the hospital i went back with him because oh he loved me he shot me fucking stupid as all get out then i get shot again this all in the same year uh arguing with a dude in the trap you know what that is where they sell the drugs at and just jealous and he shot me in my fucking titty and blew my nip off from the side i guess he went up under my arm yeah with a 45 and blew my fucking nip off yeah so you're one nipple shy well it's it's there it might be scattered smothering his cover... It's just a unique nipple now. It's a special nipple. There's some damaged areola going on. It's still suckable. Didn't lose your sensitivity, did you?

For a while, but... It's back? Yeah, it's back now. It's like having a C-section. You be numb for a while, and after you look at one, they're like, damn, I feel something down there. Finally, good. Yes.

Well, that's a... So when you started selling drugs it was at a just out of desperation to keep the kids fed um it was something that was going on in my community everybody was selling either you were smoking it or you were selling it and i've never been into drugs and alcohol and shit like that so i was like and everybody you know was looking nice started to look like they call them cracky they were just looking horrible i was like no i'm not doing this shit so wait but so that was the first wave of it yeah so i started selling drugs and i got but then how you getting drugs you got another dude you got to deal with that's watching you know that's like on top of you with his drugs no no no actually i started

with my welfare check i went out and i bought 250250 worth and $250 worth should bring you $500. Then I partnered up with a friend in my old neighborhood and we just put our money together and we just kept flipping it and kept flipping it. So that's when you took the nickname Rabbit? No, I was always called Rabbit as a kid. Who did that? Your grandfather? My stepfather called me Rabbit. So when I mean, I couldn't go out there and say say patricia that shit don't sound tough at all no so i can't everybody you know you in the hood everybody got a nickname slim black you know big daddy little daddy fat man so you gotta have a nickname

so that's what's interesting to me about like the community because it seems that despite the fact that shit was horrible that the community sort of stays intact and everybody watches everybody go through their shit and everyone comes around. Some people don't make it. And but y'all know each other. Well, you know, you get after a while you get immune to that shit. You know, it just shit that goes. It's a cycle. It just keep going.

You know, I tell a bit. I say, you know, it's like being on welfare. Welfare is like diabetes. If the mama get it, there's a good chance the daughters might get it. So it's just a cycle. And it's up to you to say, hey, I don't want to be in this cycle anymore. You know, my mama was a teenage mom. I was a teenage mom.

My sister was a teenage mom. Her girls are teenage. I got a niece 20 years old with five fucking kids. God damn it. Who are these guys fucking these little kids? Well, she's 20. The guys her age is fucking her. But it's okay.

It's a cycle. But if she's got five, she must have started when she was 15. No, she probably started when she started in elementary school.

I mean, like 12. Oh my God. I don't know how that goes. It's the real fucking world that people don't really know that exists. I mean,

it's a cycle. It just keeps going. It keeps going. But it's interesting. It's a real world in that community. But, you know, like in the world that that i live in you know child molesting is like way up there on the like that's fucked up but it seems like that's just something that happens and there's drugs

or shooting people that gets people put in jail but i mean child molesting seems just par for the course yeah i mean you're pretty much right there they just let it keep happening no one's calling anybody on that one and i i think that because of that that's why the the same patterns repeat themselves yeah teenage pregnancy drugs child molester all of that stuff and you know and i just i have a niece that have four kids that live with me right now mark that dropped i had cussed at my sister kids for 10 years she came back and got them so i'm like okay bitch these are your kids do what you want to do with them but i tried to stop that fucking cycle of dropout teenage pregnant because you know it didn't happen to my daughter she came back and got her daughter her daughter who lives with me now

has four kids and 23 so i'm telling my niece when you get out of the hood don't fucking go back it's like fucking getting out of jail. Don't go commit another crime to do to go back to jail. My niece fought me like a dog in the beginning. Oh, you live in this big old house in this white neighborhood. You want to act like you booze. You want to act like you been. I say, bitch, I'm trying to survive.

I'm trying to show my kids something better. I'm trying to make sure my kids graduate and don't have kids. I'm trying to make sure my kids graduate and don't have kids. And it took me about three to four months to dig in her brain to realize her getting turned up. Don't pay no fucking bills, boo boo. Getting turned up. Don't don't provide for your kids. Getting turned up.

Don't help your kids get a better, better education living in the hood. She finally realized she called me yesterday. She said, I'm so glad that you got us out the hood. And I said, well, what went on? My niece, my niece who got the five kids, her kid's father had some kids. The little boy shot himself in the face yesterday in Atlanta. Oh, my God. Three years old. And she said, that could have been my son.

You know why? Because y'all too busy getting turnt up, getting high, putting guns and drugs around these kids. Because it's okay. It's okay if your pants is hanging and you being tough. I mean, that's the image that you want to show your young black your young black uh kid it's amazing that took four months for her to realize any sort of truth i'm still fighting her i'm still fighting but she's beginning to realize she's she's like oh you think you you know at first she was saying i think i'm better than everybody i say no bitch i work hard to get well i mean i work hard to keep my daughter

before becoming a teenage mom. My daughter's the first one, Mark, in three generations to graduate high school. She's the first one to ever go to college in three generations, as I can remember. So to get my daughter to that point, not her be pregnant, you know, not her being on drugs,

not her dropping out, not giving me problems, that was a milestone. When that girl walked down that aisle and got that high school diploma i i cried so hard but my daughter said i'm like what are you crying for i said to myself if you knew what i went through in life to get you to this point the cycle is finally broken the cycle is finally broken in my family because nobody graduated my sister got my sister i had my sister oldest daughter. She did graduate. Yeah.

But the rest of her girls pregnant on drugs, babies, babies, the low, the bitches have babies like babies don't even cost money. And I had to explain to my niece, do you know when you have these kids and you go on welfare and you sell your kids social security number and people get tax money for it? Do you know where that money comes from?

That's not your fucking money. Those are people who pay their taxes, taking out of their money, giving it to you. Like your Uncle Gary, who makes good money, but got to put back into the system to help your lazy ass. It's inherited. Being lazy is inherited. Yeah, but also this weird fear of betraying the shit. Like, I don't want to betray the shit that I live in. That's amazing to me that it took you four months just to convince her.

It's like, you're not betraying anybody by getting out of that shit. But that's how you think. Oh, I got to stay real to what I am. Fuck them. Do you know I only go see my family when they die at a funeral? I'm not taking my kids around that shit they fight at funerals they they don't mind cutting the shit out of each other they don't mind acting a fool i after i got out of there with my husband i never looked back my kids wasn't

around that shit my kids went to good school system i work with my kids i don't hide my background from my kids my kid i dropped out of school in the fucking eighth grade i mean i have a son that's 28 and a daughter that's 27. Both of them graduated and I have two teenagers now. You know, I don't have problems out of it, but it's not easy. You have two younger kids? Yeah, by my husband. I have a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old.

Oh, and that's going well? That's going well. But I mean, I don't fucking sugarcoat nothing. You know, my daughter, they know my, all my kids know my background. They know I had kids on. They know I dropped out. I'm always telling them society don't owe you shit.

What you put into life is what you're going to get out of life. Right. So don't waste your time putting nothing into life and thinking society owe you shit. I grew up thinking society owe me something because I had two babies by a married man. I fucking dropped out of school. I had actually convinced myself that I never had a beginning. So why should I be out here working and doing what I'm supposed to do right, trying to get my life back together when I never had a chance?

So at my lowest point, I was like, fuck it. Nobody gave me a chance. I got pregnant at 13. I dropped out of school. What the fuck am I supposed to do with an eighth grade education? then my husband was like society don't owe you shit stop crying about the shit that you get that you went through and do something with your life what you gonna do now you still alive i could see if you was dead and you was complaining but you're still alive where's he from he's from atlanta too oh yeah yeah and not from the same neighborhood? No, he grew up with a mom and daddy.

16 of them and you know. Oh yeah. Yeah. A little more stability. With the church every day. Yeah. Church, family. Yeah, family.

Family comes first. Not chaos. Not chaos. Because when I tell these stories to him he's like, oh fuck. Sometimes he can't believe

in it. He black. Well that's it. Well that's also an interesting thing the difference between I mean Chris Rock talked about it too but there's what is the tension between middle-class blacks and where you come from is there judgment is there weirdness yeah it's

judgment because you know he's like it's like like i consider myself a middle-class black but when i go around my family they'd be like oh you so bougie you think you this no mother fuck i go to work i pay my taxes it's called go to work and work hard and if that job ain't working out for you go get another goddamn job and what do they respond to that oh fuck you you bougie you this you that uh you could do the same shit i did when when did you have this the the moment of clarity do you can you is was there a moment where you're like fuck i mean outside of in retrospect because you said you were on the streets you're selling you didn't have you didn't you didn't end up hooking which is good right no i don't sell no pussy that's too much work and man you know crackhead brought the price of pussy

down so he was only getting five dollars for blowjob and i'm not in today anyway and i'm not selling no pussy too hard to clean out one for five dollars yeah um i think i just started you know i had a- You did jail time, though? Yeah, I went to jail for trafficking drugs. How long? A year. Was that a fucking wake-up call?

Well, you know what? That set me down, Mark, and it made me- I missed my daughter kindergarten year, and that shit hurted me. And it also ruined the relationship with my daughter. For years, we could not bond. Because to her, I was a bad person. Let me back up and let me tell you why. Because my daughter, I sold drugs in front of her elementary school.

To elementary school students? No, no, no, no, no, no. In front of her school was where my trout was. And everybody knew that my daughter's mom was on that corner selling drugs every day. I think the principal did this shit on purpose. He always put our classroom on the side where I sold drugs. So she would see me out there. So one day she told me, she said, you know, mom, I really want to transfer. And I think she's like second grade. And I was like, why? She's like, because I get tired of looking out of my school when seeing you sell drugs in front of my school.

And that shit hit me in the chest like a brick. But of course, I'm in the hood and I got to be tough. I was like, I don't want to hear that shit. I was here first. I'm grandfathered in. We're going to find you another school. So, you know, that's how I'm thinking, you know, not being just as a fucking dumbass. So when I missed her kindergarten year, it kind of started me saying, I got to get my shit together.

Yeah. And she didn't like me for years we still getting back together now because 28 year old well we're a lot closer now plus my let me say that my 20 year 28 year old is gay so that's another thing i've been to prison i didn't like gay women and all i thought about i hate gay people i hate i hate gay bitches i hate gay bitches and then when my daughter came out to be gay, and I was like, well, why do I hate gay bitches? They didn't rape me. Well, you know, who am I to judge somebody

for their fucking sexuality? And realize I fucking love my daughter-in-law. I got a new daughter-in-law who's white that look like fucking Justin Bieber. So you're okay with that? Robin Thicke. Well, I had to learn. You know, I had to learn.

Well, that's something else that comes from growing up. Yeah, in the black community. Because we don't, oh my God, you gay, you outcast. But, you know, you take away that person's sexuality, judging for their character. Who are they? Are they nice? Are they respectful to you?

Do they treat you like a human being? Right. That's what it all come down to. But you had to learn that, too. I had to learn that, too. I learned everything. The streets taught me shit. I learned shit along the way.

And people, I started to surround myself around. Like I told myself when I started to get my life together, I said, you didn't have a college degree. I didn't want you to be my fucking friend. I needed somebody I could learn from. Right. But in retrospect, you know, you have all these stories. And it seems that most of the wisdom that you got from those stories was actually saying, fuck that. That the wisdom was hard-earned because you had to learn how to unlearn that shit.

Yes, yes. So outside of doing what you had to do to get by and rising above it, it seems like a lot of the wisdom of the street doesn't necessarily serve you in life. It doesn't. I mean, it teaches you fucking bad habits. I mean, you think you're going to. It's some good stories, though. It's some good stories, though. I mean, they're made for good stories.

I'm over this shit. But I mean, come on now. 16 year old with two kids selling crack. I mean, think about that. I even think about how the fuck did I get by? You know, I remember being in a car one time with my daughter and this dude was shooting at me with my fucking baby in the car so i'm like lay down but you know after a while you you started training those kids to the ghetto you hear shooting you hit the fucking ground just like the firefighter used to come to the school and say hey you ever on fire drop roll and right shit

like that you're trying to teach them survivor skills. Yeah, yeah. Well, my daughter hated that shit. She was like, she told me one day, she was like, you're going to get me killed on Ashby Grove. She was so fucking scared of Ashby Grove. I remember being in the house gambling one night and my daughter in the living room playing with her dog. And I used to shoot crap like a motherfucker. And these guys started arguing. I'm like, man, y'all, come on. So they started arguing. It was like $50 to get in.

One guy just shot the other guy in the chest. And my daughter jumped up like a fucking jackrabbit and ran out that door. And they just shooting in the house. And I'm crawling out the house, you know, trying to get away from hoping I don't get shot. My fucking daughter. I'm not lying. I think she ran almost a mile. We had to get in the car to go get her.

We couldn't stop her. And when I got her, she was like, you got to get me killed. You got to get me killed car to go get her we couldn't stop her and when i got her she was like you're gonna get me killed you're gonna get me killed how old was she oh probably about five or six oh my god and you know and she remembered that kind of shit but my son was a baby he was a toddler but she were you know a smaller kid but well you remembered your grandfather shooting off some lady's fingers how's she not gonna remember that shit of course guns make an impression yeah i mean because and i started to realize like i'm exposing my kids to the shit i was exposed to i tell you this quick story my my grandfather we stole some food stamps when we were little my

aunt because pat man was out and we used to fucking love pat man to me pat man was escaped away from the from the bootleg house so you know, we didn't have no money. I used to have a lot of money. But my mama taught me how to go and drunk people pocket when they fell asleep at the lookout. And for every wallet I got, I got $5 per wallet. From your mother? Yes. As long as I put the wallet back, take the money out, and she give me $5 per person.

So this weekend, I didn't get any money then enough people fall asleep i guess so i get my brother going there and steal my food stamp so back in the day you could buy a 10 piece of candy and they give you 90 cents back so you just stayed in there and play pac-man all right so we get back to the house it's about 10 of us we all promise we won't tell who stole the food stamp we get back in my granddad and un is awake and he was like where's the fucking get back and my granddad and auntie's awake. And he was like, where's the fucking foodstuff? Now, my granddad is a big old black man. It kind of look like a big old ape dart with long plaits and scary as fuck. So we standing there and I think I might be the youngest of the group.

And we standing there looking at him and he was like, who stole the fucking foodstuff? So he just grabbed a chair, threw a rope up in a beam that was in the ceiling, grabbed my cousin Fat Man, put the rope around his knee he said now i'm gonna hang every one of you niggas if y'all don't tell me who stole the food stamp he pulled that chair away from the bottom of my cousin and i almost shit it i don't know if you ever seen a black man hanging but that is the most scarified shit as a kid you've never seen oh that. Oh, Mark. I was like, Granddaddy, aunt stole the food stamp. I don't want to die before Miss Pac-Man come out. What happened to your cousin,

Pac-Man? I think it was like a quick hang, but to me, he was up there for 10 minutes, Mark. I almost shitted my pants. And all I'm thinking about,

hold on, because he was like, I'm going to start from the youngest to the oldest. I was like, hold on, goddammit. I'm the youngest, and I'm next. Oh, hell no. You you got to be told on me those are some hard life

lessons yeah jesus christ yeah now you so did you know it was a religion part of your life yes uh i thought it was we grew up christians and I'm like, we went to church, but my mama went to church with a hustle in mind. So like we went, we went to different churches on Sunday and we would get baptized because back then the church cared about you. If you join the church and get baptized, they will pay you, you know, help you with your bills. So I ended up getting baptized like 25 times because this was my mama fucking hustle. And I didn't even know you only supposed to get baptized once. You know, my mama opened the phone booth

and said, yeah, we're going to join this church right here today. You know, they're going to help with the utility. Well, the thing was, for them to help us, we had to be baptized. So she was scared to be baptized. I'm tired of this baptizing shit. Shut the hell up.

You want to eat. So when they get through baptizing, the church was giving my mom, you know, a check for utilities and a box of food. And that was our hustle. Every week. Almost every week, Mark. When we when we discover white churches. Oh, my God. They want to baptize you, kiss you, give you clothes, give you extra boxes of food.

And my mom was going to give them sad stories and shit. And she would say, don't you need to smile one time while you're at the church. Like, who want to smile when you get baptized two, three times a fucking day? That's a hell of a racket. Yeah. So I didn't even realize it until I'm talking to my girlfriend one day. That's a hell of a racket. Yeah, so I didn't even realize it until I'm talking to my girlfriend one day. We were talking about baptism.

I was like, how many times have you been baptized? She was like, once. I was like, why? I got baptized 25 times. And she thought that was the funniest shit ever. She was like, who in the hell baptized you 25 times? I said, well, who in the hell only baptized you once? Your mom didn't have the angle.

Yeah. She didn't realize what she could get. I asked my brother, I said, do you hell only baptized you once? Your mom didn't have the angle. Yeah. She didn't realize what she could get. I asked my brother, I said, do you remember getting baptized a lot? He said, hell yeah. One thing I know I should get into heaven. I'm one nipple less, and I've been shot twice, and hit by a dump truck, and I've been baptized 45 times. Oh, yeah.

The dump truck story is the same as the nipple story? No, i jumped off an overpass i saw my baby daddy cheating so the overpass wasn't that high i was fucking crazy when i was young and i jumped onto his fucking truck from the overpass yeah he's like he didn't see me i was like you fucking saw me in the air holland what the fuck is this bitch doing in your car when i was young i didn't think i could die i really i was fucking did you break anything no i fucked up my leg with oh yeah i fucked up my leg i jumped my young guy and i was a lot smaller over path ain't really that high yeah

uh so what was this jimmy carter story oh god i was uh when I was getting my life back together when uh Bill Clinton was no was it Bill Clinton yeah Bill Clinton was in office the first time uh he created the welfare the work program so that's when you had to go to work you couldn't sit on your ass anymore so I get this job at McDonald's and I'm working at McDonald's and I'm you know I'm doing like most people at McDonald's and my neighborhood I'm stealing a couple dollars out the register every day so i just stole some money and this black van started circling the um just circling around the building and i'm like holy fuck they don't call me stealing you know i'm going back to jail because it was black with 10 and 1 everybody know that's fucking police yeah so uh this white dude get out with a nice suit and a plug in it was secret service yeah and i'm sitting

out thinking like who the fuck is he and he he hit an earpiece and a plug in it. It was Secret Service. And I'm sitting there thinking, like, who the fuck is he? And he hit an earpiece, and he was like, it's clear, send him in. And you're at the counter? You're at the register? Yeah, I'm at the register. In walked Jimmy Carter. I couldn't remember his name for shit, because Jimmy Carter fucking a 70s person. And I was born in the 70s.

And he get to my register, and I talk to him like somebody on the street. So I look at Jimmy Carter. I was like, nigga, where the fuck I know you from? And Secret Service fucking lost it and i got a straight face because you know everybody's an n-word in the hood that's how we talk to each other and jimmy carl's a young lady young lady i was like you look familiar he turned pink mark he turned pink and um the boy on the grill's like patricia that's the president. And I turned around and said, I told you I know you nigger.

Your cheeseburger free. Jimmy Carter did not smile. I always wondered what he would remember me. I would hope so. If anything, for the free cheeseburger. It was a cheeseburger, a side salad, and a water. And he was the only person in that McDonald's. Because it was just bullshit.

You know, I just stole a few dollars out the register and we just standing there, you know, I'm smiling. Can't wait to clock out. And in walk him, in walk Jimmy Carter. And I called my husband, you know,

my husband is a very intelligent guy. Reese all the time, you know, been in the military and shit. I was like, Oh, that nigga, Jimmy Carter just left out of here.

He was like, Pat, please don't tell me you didn't say that. I said, yeah, I told that nigga I know him. He's like, Oh my God. I asked my husband, why why did you marry me was you trying to save somebody

so you got you were already married when you went into jail i was i got married after i got out of jail and uh i was eight 19 so you're 19 you got two kids and where do you meet the man that's gonna marry you i meet him at a bruce bruce show it was a lip singing comedy show uh-huh so you either lip sing or you did comedy so bruce bruce yes so his brother is that your first comedy show that was the first comedy show i had ever been to uh-huh and we went there for a night out and i was like hey fat boy you kind of cute and in my head i already had a now hiring baby daddy sign out i needed a baby daddy quick because i had a young black man that

was growing up in the ghetto and i needed somebody to show to be a father and when he and the other guy though the other guy that shot you and is he out of the picture completely did you know no no no i'm still in love with this this negro now at the time but when i met my husband and i was like ching ching baby daddy right material he had all his back teeth. Yeah. He was intelligent. His tennis shoes was clean. Yeah. And he had a job. Yeah.

And later on, I found out he had good credit. Now, I know you don't date black men, but it's hard to find them with good credit and a job and back teeth. So to me, I hit a fucking jackpot. And he liked you. I think he liked me. You just walked up to him at a Bruce Bruce show? No, we was all hanging out together.

He came with his brother and I came with my sister-in-law. We was all just talking. I was like, he was kind of about ice cube size. He's bigger now. But I was like, hey, fat boy, you want to split some wings? That was your line? That was my line. He was like, who the hell you calling fat?

You know, he just got out of the military. He think he all fit and shit. And so I just started talking to him. And at the time, I was into forging chicks. So I would tell him, I done did a lot of shit, Mark. So I was like, hey, we traded numbers. So I said, hey, come over to my house and give me a ride, you know, to Macy's or whatever. And I give and I get you a couple of polo shirts and shit like that.

You're going to buy him some shit. Yeah, I'm going to buy him some shit. He's like, I don't want that stolen shit. You know what he said? He saw you right through you, huh? Yeah, because he made me stop doing all this shit. So he would come over to the house and shit. And I was like, well, let me borrow your car so I can go out here and hustle.

And he would watch my kids. And so I remember one time he told me, because he got tired of me just breaking the law. He's like if you leave I'm gonna because I told him all these fucked up story he's like if you leave these kids here with me I'm gonna touch them I said oh hell no y'all get in the car this nigga tell my touch y'all but he did that so like he told me he's like I'm gonna smoke drugs if you don't start selling drugs so I just gave it all up he must have been in love with you he I think he was I would say why would he go why would he put himself through that week

exactly and people ask him all the time because after we got married immediately i got custody of my sister for a kid so here we are i'm 19 he's 21 and we got six kids and they now one of them he is and his mom was like why would you stay with her who wants somebody with six kids right out the back you 21 you just got out of the military military why are you with this you know this crazy ass girl and what'd he say he didn't he just say i like her so how the hell did you get rid of the other guy well you know what i when i went into the relationship well he started dating a crackhead named tinkerbell and i was like that's it but i was still in love with him so when i needed a place to live right because i was getting evicted

from my apartment. So my husband at the time, just somebody who was giving me a ride, which my husband now, he said, I will go and get you an apartment. He fucking went and got me an apartment. And I said, well, I really can't pay the rent. Can you move in with me? So we moved in together. And I told him up front, I said, look, I've been through a lot. I really still love Darryl.

I said, I love him a lot. I say, but I think I can grow to love you i said i like you you i'm attracted to you i can kiss you but i don't love you and he accepted it and i grew to love him and he's my fucking soulmate that's heavy man yeah that's heavy because i asked him all the time why did you stay why did you stay But that kind of honesty in that moment, I mean, you didn't have to do that. I mean, that's like rolling the dice. How do you know he's going to stay with you? He could have just said, fuck this. Yeah, when I went and got my sister kids, he packed it.

She's like, oh, fuck, you got six kids. What am I going to do? And I said, what I've been through in life, all I'm asking you is to help me give these kids the opportunity that they're never going to get at my sister's house with my sister smoking crack. I don't want these kids to be molested. I don't want these kids to drop out. Just help me. And he stayed.

And we raised those kids like you didn't even know that those were my nieces until we was out in public. And they called me auntie because here we are, 19 and 21, I think, with six kids. And I didn't even have any kids i had to go because i had an abortion earlier that damaged my cervix so i had to go and damn near get fixed to have another baby though you two didn't have any kids but you had the two i had the four of hers yeah four hers and they and and did and that's the one that you had to give the lecture to recently one of her kids yes one of her because we had them for 10 years so my sister come back and she take a mark which told me to and everybody was like oh she should have

her own kids i said y'all don't realize what i'm telling y'all this is this person is my mama all over again yeah these kids are gonna end up like we did and they all got on drugs and well my oldest one there her oldest one there were three of them got on drugs had kids and all kind of shit they went right back after 10 years after 10 years like i didn't teach him shit oh my god how about how's your brother the one you talked to about being baptized are they i mean do you have he did a lot of time in prison he used to be like a cat burglar uh-huh and so who he so i call i have to call him sometime because what i'm doing now just i'm writing a proposal for a book about my life yeah and so um i had to call him the other day and say did uncle peanut teach you how to steal and he was like yes so a lot of time i have to

i have to do some research because a lot of this shit i'll be like is this real did this really happen you just needed to be validated by your other siblings yes like did this really go on? Am I remembering this properly? He shot her fingers off, right? Yeah. And so when I called my, well, he was like, well, he shot in the foot too. And I was like, well, I don't need all that information.

I just remember him shooting the shit out of her. What other questions did you have that you were unclear on? Like, I have to ask my sister, when we lived in one house, my mama cooked in the fireplace. Yeah. I said, am I remembering this right? Because she would make us we never had light and gas at the same time. You either had one or the other. You never

had fucking electricity and gas. We took so many cold baths. By the time I got older and got a real fucking bath, I think I lost 20 pounds. So she did cook in the fireplace. Yeah, she cooked in the fireplace and she cooked outside on the barbecue grill. We live near the school. So she would go out there and fry chicken on a barbecue grill with wood.

And the kids would walk by me like, oh, Patricia, I'm out there cooking chicken on a barbecue grill, which was fucking embarrassing. I was already the dirty pokey. And your mama out there cooking food on a barbecue grill why they do that i mean not even with charcoal mark it was fucking wood and she's like shut the fuck up and go get more wood so i can cook this cornbread so so okay so you got that what else did you have to fact check um just shit like um you know the type of drugs mama was on was it really weed or was it something else and no one got strung out on heroin black people don't do that shit mom okay who the

fuck black gonna focus on heroin shooting shit at all we didn't got no health care we don't even want no fucking technic shot we don't even want a fucking three month old shot how many black people you see on heroin those are the ones with the money yeah that grew up around white people black people do cracking weed and fucking uh embalming fluid now all that other shit they into right right like their weed wet weed and shit yeah i don't too much know that many black people on heroin do you no i i tell you one store heroin hit the black community in the 90s in the early yeah in the early 80s heroin is sort of old school i mean i guess it was probably the 50s and 60s and

you know that it was around before crack there was heroin yeah so we in my neighborhood when we lived in vine city you either bought uh heroin or you bought crack but crack was more popular but i had a neighbor who shot heroin yeah and i i i my mama shot up every day because she was a diabetic so i saw my neighbor shoot up what i thought was diabetic medication but when he shoot this shit i don't know what it did to him he had to get naked and the kids be out there playing you got this grown-ass man with this big old black dick just swinging it holland get the rat out of my ass but he always wanted me to get the rat out of his ass. And so I'm sitting there looking up his ass like, J-Bell, ain't no rat in your ass.

He thought he had a rat in his ass? He thought he had a rat in his ass. Every time he shot up. Every time he shot up. And he's like, get the rat out of my ass. And I remember one time looking at his ass like, J-Bell, the rat hanging in the front. Ain't no rat back here. Your diabetes messing up. But nobody tried to make him put his clothes on it was every weekend

we saw jay bell naked as a fucking bird and high as fuck high as fucking he'd be all on top of the car all on top of the fucking sign we people like oh that's jay bell he high when he come now he gonna put his clothes on and we'll be like oh look at jay bell sitting up there naked just naked as he could be i mean dick slaying everywhere in front of the key he thought it was just the diabetes that's my only encounter with harold when he shot that shit he got naked oh wow it was kind of funny you know more energy than most junkies that i know well i stopped going to watching wrestling after i moved in that neighborhood because you saw everything like you saw the fucking bootleg man at that time

i saw a bootleg man stab a dude in the eye for trying to run out on some shots what do you need wrestling for yeah i was like this shit is on my back foot and it's real and it's going down and then the police show up and beat everybody ass and then you just wait on the next fight to break out so when when did the so okay so you get with the new man you got your your sister's kids he's 21 you're 19 you're raising six kids and he's working hell yeah he was working at simmons mattress and and then when does the comedy thing start to happen for you um i oh my comedy started happening i take a trip to the welfare office right yeah

and uh you know all i had to do was tell white women these horrible stories that was my game the more horrible these stories are the more oh you need more food stamps and you need more welfare and i hope you just heal from all your pain it was a fucking gimmick i had if the case was right white that was more horrible the story was gonna be to be. And I get in there crying. I didn't have a chair. So one time I go to recertify for my food stamps and stuff. And it's a black case worker. I'm like, oh,

he was on this shit. I got to work hard to convince this bitch. This shit is horrible. And I started telling her these stories. And this lady busts out laughing. Just busts out laughing after I tell her the hanging story with my granddad.

She was like, this stuff is hilarious. You should be a comedian and i'm like bitch i didn't come in for no job and she was like this stuff is funny and more i never thought this stuff was funny and she was like i'm telling you you could be like richard pryor i'm like who the fuck is richard pryor and she's like you could be a comedian. So I leave out. You didn't know who Richard Pryor was? I didn't know shit about comedy. Wasn't no comedy where I come from. I was all fucking surviving in pain.

He was just a big movie guy. Well, his name didn't ring a bell in the West. Once I went home and I Googled him, I was like, oh. And then I realized, and I started Googling his salary. I was like, you make all this money from telling your business. All these years I've been telling this shit for free.

And so I told my husband, I was like, my caseworker say I'm funny. But people have always told me I was funny. He's like, here we go with this shit again. And so I convinced the girl who actually had a baby by my baby daddy. She was the one. She was the one he showed up at the hospital with when i was 14 and gave birth uh he she and we ended up moving around the corner from her so we both had a baby by daryl yeah so i convinced her one night to come to go to open mic with me and in atlanta in atlanta well what

club it was a fucking little pub it was called a pub it was like a little open mic at a bar and i went in now and i can i can just come out the white black it was white a pub it was like a little open mic at a bar and i went in now and i can i can just come out the top of my head it was white and black people and i just told a story about my brother being a cat burglar and they laugh i was like oh i'm a comedian i got this shit figured out shit i didn't realize this shit was work but that's how that's when it first sparked that i was i was funny and when did when did you start working um when I moved to Indianapolis I started to um get my set together I started to be more honest with who I was to talk about my life because I was like you know I was like most black female can be oh I suck dick I do this and

I was like well I really don't suck dick I got vertigo why I'm sitting up here telling all these lies and people was like won't you just be honest tell people you sold drugs tell people what you did tell people you had two kids who told you to do that just other comics was like won't you be honest with just tell people you had two kids white comics or black comics black comics tom simmons was one of you know tom simmons well he was one of them so um and i was like i don't want to tell about that horrible shit because i was still embarrassed by it i mean i'm still kind of embarrassed by my past and i just started to kind of when i got to indianapolis i would tell like the guy who worked at the club these stories like talk about him on stage i was like nobody had no baby at 16 but me i thought that she don't exist in the ghetto when i tell you when i tell people me and my daughter

is 12 years apart people from all walks of life i was just in chicago and a white lady whispering my ill life she was rich she said i had my first baby at 14 too i was like what the fuck well it's interesting because it it you know a lot of white people have stereotypes in their head about what black people are like and that you know that kind of stuff happens but they use it as a negative so when you get up there and tell the truth of your experience in an emotional way and you frame it in your life, then it humanizes the whole thing. And it just sort of disrupts all that. You know what I get constantly every day? I get emails saying I am an inspiration.

How the fuck am I my inspiration? And people are like, oh, I just wish I could be so honest with my past like you are and talk about it. Just talk about it. To me, it was a healing process I mean I'm learning not to be ashamed of what I went to it's not my fault that you know I was born into that situation and you know that I guess it's kind of my fault I had two kids by the time I was 16 you were a kid I was a kid so I I just try to take it and say I'm gonna take what was supposed to be horrible and turn it into something good.

So when I started to talk about, you know, what I've been through in life, the shooting, the beating on the mistreatment of, you know, my baby dad and everybody else. It healed me. I'm beginning to heal. Yeah. You know, I no longer have that cloud over my head. A shame. A shame. And, you know, the hurt of, you know, having two kids by, you know, by a married man and all that bullshit. I'm healing now. Yeah. So every time I'm on stage and I'm telling you this, it's a way for me to heal. Yeah. And it heals everybody.

I mean, honesty is powerful shit. It's powerful shit. And people love it. Oh, yeah. It's the only way to go. And a lot of people just aren't cut out for it i have no problem with people that write jokes and stuff but if you if you come from the heart and you and you you you're straight up i mean you know a lot of people are like whoa shit

but but then they're like it means something yeah and i get that all the time you know i do and i get a lot of uhs and uhs at my shows I said, you know, what you want me to do? You want? I can't sugarcoat it. I mean, I don't know who the fuck you came to see. I'm going to tell you what I've been through. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. You know, come on, soccer moms.

You've been through some shit, too. Maybe, you know, I've been through some shit. I mean, you'd be surprised. I mean, I got more more white fans than anything. But they're feeling ashamed about little shit. And if you're owning big shit, they're like, oh, am i hiding from you know i get that a lot people's like fuck i thought my life was fucked up i'm never gonna complain again miss pat i get that all the time i said so oh you think your mama taking your ipod was bad huh try trying to fucking breastfeed

a baby at 14 and you don't know the nipples supposed to go in the mouth and you trying to make the baby just suck the top of the titty your mother didn't even teach you that no i was at the hospital it was in the 90s when i mean the 80s when young when teenage pregnant was so big yeah so big in the ghetto that people was like you know the nurses was so fucking mean oh and you're having a baby at 14 well yeah i had an. Well, yeah, I had an African nurse and she went to draw my blood. I was like, oh, that hurts. She was like, did that dick hurt? Oh, my God.

I said, a dick don't have a point on it like that. That point is rounded off and it's soft, bitch. You know it's soft, right? Yeah, right. And it feel good once it get through the walls. You know, you in here pulling something out of me. What the fuck is wrong with you? They were so mean to me because here I am, 14, and then they, you know.

Like you haven't learned your fucking lesson. Yeah, then I return the next year giving birth. Oh, you back again, bitch? But you know what's crazy? Because he signed my kid's birth certificate, and I was 14, and he was 22 or 23, and nobody says shit. See, that's the thing that's getting me through the whole thing. These fuckers are child molesters.

Yes. And they're blaming you. You do that shit that shit you do it today you'll go to fucking jail you go down there you take your grown ass down there and sign a 14 year old birth certificate you're going to jail he signed both of my kids how the hell is that possible nobody was there to protect me nobody stood up say hey this is fucking child molestation why and this dude is in fucking jail why why isn't he in jail oh man nobody that's the one the one part of this story that's like because like you hear about all the other shit but it really is just it's overlooked no one's there to protect that's the problem with where you come from is that there is no one there to protect nobody gives a fuck exactly nobody gave a fuck well i'm glad that you do. I do now. Nobody's, no, I mean, I'm thankful nobody got a chance to do to my daughter what was done to me or my son. And your relationship with your kids is good for the most part.

Yeah, I got great kids. I mean, you know, me and my daughter was going at it when she was in college. She was hiding the fact that she was gay, so she ran away. And, you know, she was in college for three years, and she just couldn't take it. And I kind of figured she was gay a long time ago. We kind of figured she was gay. And she ran away, and I hadn't seen her in like two, three years. So I finally got in touch with her when she was in Virginia.

I said, what is your problem? I said, are you gay? She was like, yes. I said, okay, it's out. Bring your ass home. I miss you. I mean, because she was my firstborn. I mean, I went through a lot to get her to that point.

So, you know, nobody, I mean, as a parent, you're going to go through shit. Whether your child is gay, whether they're on drugs, whether they've been rebellious, you know, situations are situations. Everybody's is different. And you're going to want to be with them at some point. Yeah. And I love my fucking daughter. And I told my daughter, I said, you know what? My daughter have had girlfriends way better than her daddy ever treated me.

I've never known a bitch to pop my daughter in the eye every Friday. Like her daddy did me. Shoot her. Or beat her down. I mean, she had many relationships because she stayed with him a couple of years. But they have treated her the way she's supposed to be treated. That's sweet. And that's what I'm happy.

I don't give a fuck what you eat or suck on or whatever. Your preference, as long as they respect you and love you and treat you like a human being. That's what it's all about. And how's your son? My son is great.

I'm a grandmother. He's working. He don't beat bitches. He graduated. You know, he wasn't college material. Oh, God. It was rough

getting him out of high school. Not because he was a bad kid. He's got a comprehension problem. But he graduated. He's doing great. And the young ones are? Let me tell you, I call my oldest one my Medicaid baby. And I call my youngest one my Blue Cross Blue Shield baby.

So they don't know the struggle. So they some bougie ass little black kids living in a fucking nice neighborhood. They don't know the struggle. Do they get along with their half brothers and sister? Well, no, I mean, do they get along

with the older ones? Yes, they all really close. I don't do that half shit because they daddy raised y'all. Y'all always one. Right, right, okay. At least all y'all last names start with an L.

Well, Pat, it was great talking to you and I'm excited to be on the show with you tonight. I'm excited too and thank you so much talking to you. And I'm excited to be on the show with you tonight. I'm excited, too. And thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, my God.

That's our show. The amazing Ms. Pat. God, she should write a book. She should definitely write a book. It gets, you know, when you hear stories like that, you're like, there's more? How can there be more? It's unbelievable. Go see her if you can.

And I hope you dug that. I hope you were engaged as I was in just a world I don't know. And it's heavy, man. It's definitely heavy. Hey, look, before we go, I want to remind you to check out Untuckit.com. Shirts made exclusively for men who wear their shirts untucked. Untuckit shirts are designed to fall at the perfect length no matter what your size. Visit Untuckit.com and improve your wardrobe today.

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Get the free app. Upgrade to premium. You can stream every episode. The most recent 50 are always free. Leave a comment. Do what you got to do. Oh, my God. This running thing is knocking me out.

The smoothie didn't save me. I can't. I hope Monkey's okay. God damn it. Yeah, I had that moment where I'm like, you know, these cats are going to die at some point. And it's sad. But the same day that Monkey was, he was sketchy. You know, for days, Monkey was just acting weird

and disjointed. But every time I talk about symptoms on this show or whatever, I get very, you know, very sort of alarmist feedback, which is fine, but they're not always the worst thing. But out of nowhere, Scaredy Cat, the striped feral, showed up yesterday, right when Monkey was feeling better. And then I had to take him to vet because he's still licking his dick. But it was good to see Scaredy Cat, the striped feral.

I haven't seen him in months. Months. Looking healthy. This has happened before with him. Looks fat even. Someone's feeding that cat. Always gives me hope that Boomer's just somewhere. Living large.

Eating the wet food. In a sweet old Mexican lady's house. Boomer lives! living large, eating the wet food in a sweet old Mexican lady's house. Boomer lives! Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talked to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis

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