Blueface and Chrisean Rock are the car crash I won’t look away from
Blueface and Chrisean Rock are the car crash I won’t look away from
My own volatile relationships keep making me hope Chrisean walks away
“If you’re ever stupid enough to put your hands on me, one of us is going to prison,” I said to him. “I can’t tell you which one of us it’ll be.”
He looked at me for a long time. I kept steady eye contact on him.
“You are crazy as a bat,” he said and laughed.
I didn’t laugh. I was in my twenties and wanted to let him know in no uncertain terms would he ever think it was OK to inflict any kind of physical violence on me. I have no sisters and grew up surrounded by boys on my block, including my older brother and his friends. Although I saw them playing entirely too rough with each other, what I did not see was them smacking girls around. And this boyfriend was a little too flippant with telling stories of past exes and fight nights.
Aesthetically, I understood why his flaws were harder to spot. Although I am not a big fan of gapped teeth, when his mouth was closed, he could walk runways. Women constantly checked him out when we walked by. I’m not the jealous type, so that didn’t phase me. Still, being handsome can only get you so far, and he’d gotten away with far too much with prior exes. The more he got on my nerves, the more I started thinking, “Hey, you over there looking at him. You want me to hook you two up?”
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He’d told me early on that his father was an alcoholic and his mother was in a mental facility because of his father’s constant mental and physical abuse. With a beer in his hand, and after his father moved into his place, he seemed to be turning into the man who raised him. Although I found his father to be pleasant in our brief conversations, the boyfriend went from being funny and flirty to condescending and mean.
In one of a few examples, I remember making a joke about sitting on his lap.
He responded, “Nope. Look at me and look at you.” A weight joke? Yeah, those always go over well with women. (I was about a buck 30 at the time, so the weight joke made even less sense but was cruel either way.)
Karma’s timing couldn’t have been better that day. A random guy walked by, stopping long enough to do a double take at me. My then-boyfriend gritted his teeth and glared at the onlooker.
“Why is it everywhere we go, a n**ga is looking at you?” he griped.
I made eye contact. “I guess they look at you and look at me too.”
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He scowled. I winked. We broke up within a week after that. I blocked his email, changed my phone number, and never spoke to him again. He realized he’d never break me, although he certainly tried. Still, I was sad for whoever the next woman would be because I’m 99.9% certain he didn’t change.
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Childhood crushes don’t always end up healthy for adults
He wouldn’t be the only one. There were two others — one of which was a childhood sweetheart whose mother ended up on drugs. She was also a domestic violence survivor. I never knew this as a kid, but my parents did.
When my childhood friend, his younger brother, and their mother moved out of the apartment complex that we lived in, apparently the abuse got worse. His mother was amazing to me when I was a kid — funny, charismatic, pretty, and spicy. Seeing her decades later via social media, all that spunky spirit seemed to have disappeared. Still, she was alive.
Unfortunately, that funny, charming, upbeat kid I used to have a crush on had become darker, more intense, and mean-spirited. Still finer than fennel leaves but rigid. It didn’t take me long to stop romanticizing the idea of chasing after him like Sally Brown did with Linus Van Pelt. Like the ex-boyfriend mentioned above, he also tested my patience.
I’m not quite sure what led to this incident, but he tried to playfully push me one day. I didn’t move.
“You’re diesel as hell,” he said and laughed. “Didn’t move at all. How much do you bench press?”
He thought that was hilarious. I didn’t quite laugh. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of a man pushing me, but it seemed innocent enough. The problem is he kept bringing this incident up — as though he was sorta insulted that I didn’t crash to the floor. I raised an eyebrow and wondered how much of what happened to his mother was affecting him — similar to the last guy.
It made me revisit a childhood memory with him. He caught me writing in a book. He told me the only way he would not tell the kindergarten teacher is if I let him bend my fingers all the way back. I thought that was such an odd exchange. Why was inflicting pain the only way to get him to not snitch? I obliged. He didn’t bend them back much. I still said “Ouch!”
But I always remembered that exchange, and now I could add the push to it. Except for this time, apparently, he held onto the latter memory too. I don’t remember why or what caused it, but for some odd reason, he decided to twist my arm. He claimed he “thought” since I was so “strong” that I wouldn’t budge when he did it. This time I was caught off guard. I dropped to the carpet, staring up at him in shock. He apologized. I just looked at his face.
That turned into a huge argument that became so irate that I started punching my own steering wheel to avoid punching him.
On the ride home, I decided we were done. He told me I was overreacting. That turned into a huge argument that became so irate that I started punching my own steering wheel to avoid punching him. No one in my entire life has ever made me that mad. This relationship was more volatile than the last guy. I liked him a thousand more times than the other guy, but I had zero interest in being “crazy” in love.
Both exes had one thing in common though; they were brought up in violent households. But here’s the thing. That doesn’t mean I have to be the victim of their victimhood. No matter how much I like any man, I really really REALLY love me. And between the two, the man will always lose.
“Crazy In Love”: Why do I keep watching Blueface and Chrisean?
I wish I could say those were the only two problematic relationships I’d been in. There was a short-lived third guy who nonchalantly said he slapped his ex-girlfriend for throwing a book at his head. While I admitted that a book to someone’s dome damn sure hurts, his unapologetic attitude about slapping her didn’t sit well with me either. After a disagreement via phone that I felt was disrespectful, I packed up his things around my condo rental, sat them in front of his apartment door and we never spoke again either. Phone number change. I moved on. Between my sanity and companionship, I’ll always choose my sanity.
So why on Earth would somebody like me who walks away from people at the first sign of violence be keeping tabs on reality TV stars Blueface and Chrisean? A part of me just doesn’t understand it. I fully understand women who are nonconfrontational, fear men, worry about being single moms, and/or have nowhere to run staying in domestic violence relationships. But I always scratch my head at women who can give you a run for your money in a fight, who are headstrong, can talk shit, and who the average person wouldn’t cross — but who also stay in these types of relationships. They have an easier exit sign. Ignoring this is the biggest puzzle to me.
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Zeus’ Crazy In Love is bizarre. Chrisean is kicking in a therapist’s doors, fighting with Blueface’s mother, using one girl as the equivalent of a dish rag (“Baddies South” reality show), holding her own against two girls outside and always proving not to try her. She’s a light-skinned, shorter version of Laila Ali, just flinging women around. And she even clocked Blueface over the head with a bottle and gave herself a pep talk in the mirror afterward — Issa Rae style. Although she’s clearly a very pretty girl, I can only guess that she’s a little “insecure,” judging from her giggling response during Blueface’s rebuttal to the Chris Brown debate.
That’s about the only reason I can come up with for why she will not leave. I was hoping she was kidding on social media when she said she was pregnant — until I saw the baby bump. I definitely cannot wrap my mind around the six tattoos and the embroidered tooth of Blueface. I see tweets and reviews saying all the time that if people stopped paying attention to these two they’d stop getting the attention they want and then disappear. On the surface, I understand. But those two don’t seem to be looking for 15 minutes; they are clearly in a very chaotic relationship.
I want this fighter to fight as I fight, meaning LEAVE to fight another day. But she stays put, and I don’t understand why. I’m probably the viewer least likely to watch their show or be a social media follower of hers, but my reasons for watching this unfold are different. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the day she fights her own way to sanity — as I do with all (wo)men in domestic violence situations. Nobody is worth all that trouble. Ever.
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