I just found out that except for my city + Florence EVERYWHERE ELSE IN ITALY the fascist party got more votes. EVERYWHERE ELSE. WHAT THE FUCK

9.

A day later and I feel like everything that happened was just a dream, like the Diamond Ball didn’t happen, but it did and it went well but that is to my face of course, but now the question on everyone’s lips is who is the father. I don’t have my mobile on me, I gave it Dennis and told him to keep it to him because I don’t want to see what is being said about me, I am not stupid. I know they all are being nice to me because they are at my event, speaking to Cardi she was happy for me but then it kind of slid out on who is the dad and I felt so defensive about it so I need to just step back and not be so uptight about something any person would ask, I would ask. I am nosey like that but no, I was there like dog with a bone when someone insinuated about who the dad is, I need to just calm down with how I react but it’s done now and I know Jen is out there waiting for me to get out, she has been coming to my bedroom door asking constantly when I am coming out, I know they will have a lot of things to tell me which I have been ignoring, I just feel a little weird that people know and are now judging me but who cares. I think I am a little too overprotective and I felt myself slip and I didn’t like people touching my stomach too, when I say people I know these people, but they aren’t family, the excitement got the better of them. I had photographers near falling over each other to get a picture, they shouted many things, they didn’t want my family on the carpet, they were in the way. Let’s just say I made the right decision to release the information myself before I went on the carpet, I still find it slightly funny that the video does look like I am releasing skin care so I can only imagine how my fans felt.

I have left my slumber, I told everyone to leave me alone for a full day after the ball, so this is kind of like the first day seeing my family since. I just needed peace, but I can only imagine the messages I am getting, I told Dennis to answer them unless it’s important then leave them and I will answer them but I have been given space so now it is time to face the music “if it isn’t the lazy bitch herself, she shouted at me twice. Shouting ever so loudly saying don’t come and wake up, I am ok. Leave me alone, you lucky Monica is here, and she said let you rest, cause chile. We been working” they all look busy “well I am here for the talk; I am guessing everyone is being dramatic?” pulling the chair out “you want some food baby?” my mom asked, I huffed out as I sat down “not right now no, I am ok. You got Noella working too? Look at her” I am impressed “do you know how many messages you are getting; Dennis couldn’t deal. Your fans are using your email address for your business ventures to either complain or say how happy they are, so I am helping out, it’s fun to read and delete. But I am glad you are all rested up, after a long night and a lot of controversy it was a needed rest for you” smiling at my cousin “thank you, someone agrees. I know y’all was bugging” I chuckled “well we needed to ask for help on some shit” Jen said side eyeing me.

I can tell they are working hard, they are incredibly quiet “so tell me, what is being said? Give me the negatives, some positives also. Thank you” I am prepared for the negatives, I mean the main one is the father of the child, I know that will be o. people’ mind rent free, it’s annoying but of course it will be the main subject “interesting night, you are still trending on twitter. Rihanna pregnant is trending still. Along with Drake, Hassan Jameel and Chris Brown. Any takers on who they think the baby father is? There is an actual poll on this, I just voted for it to see if I was right” Jen is not shit, shaking my head at her “oh let me vote!” Ja shouted across “I think Hassan won, hear me out. It is because you was quiet and mysterious with him and they will all think it is him, I think he won anyways” look at these assholes predicting shit “I say Drake” Noella put her hand up “one hundred percent Drake” shaking my head at the people I call friends “I expected better from you Melissa, Dennis you might as well add your fucking opinion too” poor guy wants to say it but he is stopping himself “I uh, no it’s ok” Jen hit his arm “she won’t fire you, Ja is still living and breathing” Dennis looked at me and I am just done with them, they can do what they like “I think it is between Hassan and Drake” nodding my head “what about you Jen?” Jen giggled, she is not shit “well I voted Drake also and the winner in this poll is” Jen smirked at me “your favourite go to man and it is Drake” I laughed shaking my head “this is what is fuelling the rumours, listen to this. Drake has been seen partying with Rihanna in London and as yet, hear this. He had yet to confirm if the rumours are true. He has not posted anything since the announcement” shaking my head sighing out “wow ok, so I am ok to be a step mom with Drake but if it were Chris it’s hell, so nobody voted for Chris?” I am curious to know “he is actually last on the list, crazy” that is interesting to know, they really think it’s Drake’ baby and he is just not posting just to fuel that.

Chewing on my bottom lip thinking, it’s jus mind blowing to me to think people would want me to be with Drake or even Hassan then Chris, when Chris out of them both is the sweetest, he is very misjudged in so many ways. Drake is actually a dickhead and Hassan wanted things I couldn’t give him, he did make me happy but I am not willing to change me in any way where I had to leave my religion and he wasn’t either, but he was manipulative in some ways too, I just never win with men. With Chris he likes to be real, not everyone can handle real “Jay wants to speak to you” Dennis said “tell him I don’t want to speak to him, he didn’t want to come to my event but wants to tell me about myself? I know that nigga want to come at me because I lied, I didn’t tell him. Text him back right now, you tell him. When I am ready to speak to you I will, this is my journey without your chains. Bye” I spat, I knew he was coming out of the woodwork “I have a lot of messages about who the father is, what should I say?” Jen asked “I don’t want no interviews, magazine or whatever I don’t care. The father is” I dragged out, what do I say. I need to think “I am not saying it is Chris, just put that the father does not want to be disclosed and that I need time of privacy, something along those lines. Next?” I mean they obviously been waiting for me to come out of my slumber “nothing really, we just wanted to see you. But the dress you wore, it sold out already.  You have been praised with how elegant you looked; how beautiful you look. I mean look at this picture” Ja turned the laptop to me, my smile grew “I look good you know” I am taken aback by how happy I look, I was stressing so much in the SUV and then look at that, my happiness “lots of compliments, the compliments is more then the hate anyways. But we just wanted to see you and baby Fenty, see you are both ok” I cooed out “how cute of you all, I feel a weight has been lifted. Just have another to go” I am going to have to tell Chris, I think it is time “I need to speak to you Robyn” Mel said “shall we go somewhere” nodding my head ad I got up.

Mel touched my stomach “it’s so nice to see you pregnant, I can’t wait to meet baby Fenty. It’s going to be so exciting” smiling down at my stomach “same” I said in a whisper “how are you feeling? Truthfully, with everything that had come you now. Do you feel like a weight has been lifted?” I shrugged “I think the weight will be lifted once I see Chris, once I tell him and explain to him. At the end of the day I have kept a child he don’t know about and as a father to this child he has every right to know, so I feel like I have done bad and makes me no different from any other girl, he may not have wanted that. But I will be truthful to him and say if you don’t want to know then it’s fine, I won’t be upset about it because then I will just have to work harder with loving my child, but I know Chris. I mean I am just, yeah. I think I need this talk, I am ready for him to get me angry” Mel laughed “you seem so relieved to know Chris is the dad then Drake or Hassan” I breathed out “oh my god, they are unbearable and it makes it worse when you don’t love the person, you don’t care them. This baby, it’s just my mom is right. It was meant to come; I mean I know we used a condom. I would have been a young mother really if we let what happened in the past happen, but I am ok with it being Chris, but his reaction will be interesting” Mel laughed nervously “same, well I have to admit something to you. Don’t bark at me, let me just say it” letting out an oh, I should have known she done something dumb “so I text Chris because I really wanted him to come to the Ball, I feel like he needs to be told sooner rather then later. That is just me. I messaged him that himself and Mijo can come, I will be there. I just think you know it would be good, he is family now but he replied back that he loves me and that Rihanna is foul, she knows what she did and that you need to take your drunken sex with talks somewhere else, and I was like oh shit he mad, mad and now I am like you got issues, but I did that” staring at my Mel with my mouth hung open.

I am shocked he is angry at me telling him to go “now he is being petty, fuck that” I said laughing “what did you do to him?” Mel asked, but I didn’t do anything and that’s the funny part “we had sex, we literally got drunk, we made out and had sex. I woke up like fuck, he is here still and told him to go unless he was expecting me to hug him after that? You are kidding me?” I didn’t do anything to him, he can’t be real “but you don’t know what he was feeling, in his mind he was probably wanting all that lovey dovey shit, I mean when I was looking at you both. You looked so happy; he was smiling. Maybe he did want that? He does love you; I mean plenty of men do but the love between you both is different, he was probably on a different page, you was on a I need sex page and he was probably on a I just want to love this woman. But he is hurt, so I am guessing he is going to be butt hurt about the fact I invited him and then found out you pregnant?” I groaned out “it’s kind of worse now, but either way I need to get this done before I leave California so since you want to be so fucking confident in messaging him behind my back, I said no because I wasn’t going to tell him before. You can now get him to come here, find a way” getting up from the couch.

That makes me laugh so much, he is such an asshole. He was the same nigga having me and Kae at the same time and I lowered myself to that fucking level and he wants to be butt hurt over telling him to go, I swear to god. I feel angry at it, how can he be angry when he had me and didn’t treat me right then, I am pissed. Mel told me that now I am just irritated, I feel anger towards him, and I feel like now I want to argue with him, but I won’t, because this has to be a grown talk. I can’t even comprehend the foolish man being hurt by what I did, what about me. We didn’t end on mutual fucking terms, I walked away from him and had the fucking nerve to be upset when he had Kae on the low, he went back to that and how the fuck did he think I felt and then he still had the fucking nerve to turn up to New York acting brand new, I tried of his ass and now I am angry at him “are you arguing with yourself?” Jen said, shaking my head in annoyance, I am annoyed “nothing” I just said “are you all going out tonight? I need the place to myself and don’t come back till late” Jen raised an eyebrow “Chris should be here, it’s about time we have that conversation, you know” Jen let out an oh “oh I see, ok I get it. I will make sure to clear the home then, wish I could be here. It’s always drama with you both” I sniggered; she is right.

Mel waved me over “I don’t want to move though” I whined out “please” she eye balled me, she has been missing for a while now so let me see what is up “I will be back mom” getting up from the couch, making my way to Mel “I am just tired” Mel announced, she is tired but yet she caused her own mess because I said for her to not invite him “I guess it’s not working out huh” we went into the spare living room “well” Mel dragged out, sitting down on the couch and watching Mel. She looks so sad right now, I think Chris may have annoyed her “so, I messaged him. I said to come to the home we are in currently. Robyn needs to speak to you. He messaged back pretty quick and he said we are playing a games, we wanted to shame him in front of every one, this was all a ploy to make him look a fool. He said he can’t believe that you are having a baby by a bitch ass nigga, he doesn’t want to see you. That you used him, you are foul, I am foul. We are bad people for him. I then said, it’s not how you think it was, she can explain but you need to come here, he said no. Robyn is playing a game and he is done, he doesn’t want to see you, and at this point I am annoyed so I said, you don’t want to see her pregnant and happy? You want her to be bitter or something. He messaged back saying don’t get involved Mel, Robyn is a bitch. So yeah, that happened” he is so fucking lost, he is so fucked in the mind that he likes to hear himself “the only bitch ass nigga is him, I am not going to chase him about this. If he don’t want to care and play ball with the fact I want to see him then I am done, I will message him myself, but if he doesn’t then so be it” unlocking my phone “he may change his attitude if you do it, he think we played a game and now he’s hurt you’re pregnant by what I assume Drake” I will try this with him but I hate that I am having to do this through Instagram, tapping on his name to message him ‘I really need to speak to you, I think you will regret this moment if you don’t. Leave your ego at the door and listen to me when I say this, you either come tonight or you don’t’ pressing send on the message.

Chris and I have been going back and forth on messages, like I am doing this with him through Instagram. Reading his last message ‘You are just jealous that I am not sprung on you so STOP acting like I am! Now you want me to come there to fuck with me’ he is still stuck on the tiresome conversation “I am losing the will to live” I said to myself as I typed back to him ‘Nigga, you are so fucking sprung on me that is why you are fucking crying in my messages about one night! I am not answering any messages to you any more, you either come or don’t!!!!!’ pressing send, I am fucking annoyed. He is being so butt hurt and also vile that I left him hung, I am just not going to continue this over messages “you think you can handle him if he does come?” Mel asked, good question “there will be an argument before we even speak properly. I will be ok, he is the biggest stress I got right now” it will be interesting to see if he does arrive but knowing him he will come, I believe he will anyways.

I Had Some Thoughts About the Tony Awards

Here’s a thing you might not know about me: I can’t honestly remember the last time I haven’t watched the Tony Awards. I know it’s not for everyone, but I love it and it’s my very favorite awards ceremony. The social media era usually makes watching the Tony’s tough, because almost every single year the Tony’s are scheduled the same night as a crucial NBA Finals game, and both are equally important to me (I’m a very specific kind of person). I usually TiVo one while watching the other and avoiding social media entirely. This year, thankfully, Kevin Durant, J.R. Smith and the Warriors wrapped up their series in four and I didn’t have this problem.

You might not have watched the Tony’s, which is fine, but you most likely know about the thing that happened that made and continues to make headlines: Robert De Niro said “Fuck Trump,” twice. Do we have a clip?

[We DO]

Lots of people are saying lots of things about this. There’s the typical, disingenuous articles from the right, where they holler and clutch their pearls at such profanity (while hypocritically either justifying or wholesale ignoring similar bouts of profanity from the president/members of his administration). You’ve also got a lot of people on the left complaining too. This comes from an OpEd from Frank Bruni:

“When you answer name-calling with name-calling and tantrums with tantrums, you’re not resisting him. You’re mirroring him. You’re not diminishing him. You’re demeaning yourselves.”

It’s a variation of the “when they go low, we go high” refrain that the left wants to claim as its identity in an ideal world where things are equal and people behave normally. (And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.)

There are still different people on the left who look at OpEds like that and retweet them with comments similar or identical to “If you think it was inappropriate for De Niro to say ‘Fuck Trump,’ well then guess what? FUCK YOU.”

These are people who are as frustrated as they are passionate, and maybe they’re jaded by the lack of success they’ve experienced in the Higher Ground strategy. Maybe they think the “they go low, we go high” thing would only work under normal circumstances, and the circumstances aren’t normal so we need to adjust. Or maybe they don’t think any of that, and they just enjoy the catharsis of saying, hearing or watching a famous movie badass say “Fuck Trump” to the sound of near-unanimous applause. (And I suppose I’m pretty fine with those people too?)

But, I guess, here’s my thing. The Tony’s was already a “Fuck Trump.” It was tough and loud and somehow still elegant and understated but most definitely a “Fuck Trump.” Let’s talk about a lot of things (but really only just one thing).

Back in January, President Trump was quoted asking “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” It was a rhetorical question, obviously, because Roy Cohn is quite dead, but what the president likely meant was “Where’s the guy who is going to make my problems disappear while making me look good and clean in the process?” The president was in trouble, and in the past, Roy Cohn was the guy who made the trouble go away. He also saw Roy as a mentor, and you can see how much Donald Trump appreciates Cohn by the way he handles himself, in that brash, throwback-tough-guy, New Yorker sort of way.

A bit about Roy.

Roy Cohn was an attorney who among other things was the personal attorney/fixer for Donald Trump during his early business days. Here are some of those “other things” he did:

-Worked closely with McCarthy during the Red Scare, a bizarre quest to find and remove people they believed to be secret communists in Hollywood and Washington DC (a smokescreen to advance their own agenda through threats and intimidation, capitalizing on the nationalist, anti-communist spirit in America at the time). -Worked as hard as he could to get the death penalty for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (it is largely the consensus of historians and legal experts that Julius and Ethel were “guilty AND framed,” and certainly did not deserve the death penalty). -The Lavender Scare. It’s very similar to the Red Scare, it just didn’t get nearly the same amount of coverage (even though it harmed way more people). It involved Cohn and McCarthy successfully pushing for the mass firings of government officials suspected of being gay. Smear campaigns, intimidation, threats, etc. Fire the gay people, and threaten to “out” and ruin anyone who got in your way.

That’s Roy Cohn. That’s Donald Trump’s mentor. And so, in January, during whatever scandal the president happened to be going through at the time, President Trump asked “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”

This year, the Tony’s had an answer. The proudly out Nathan Lane who plays Roy Cohn in Angels in America, welcomed his Tony win by kissing his husband and closed his acceptance speech by tearfully thanking him as his “greatest blessing.”

A bit about Nathan.

It’s been a strange road for Nathan Lane. At 21 when he told his mother he was gay, she said “I’d rather you were dead.” He wasn’t necessarily in the closet, but he dodged questions about his sexuality for years and didn’t publicly come out until 1998 following the murder of Matthew Shepherd (a young, gay man who was tortured and beaten to death in Laramie). A mother says “I’d rather you were dead.” Then you spend years hiding yourself from the world. Then a 21-year-old gets murdered for being gay. Then you come out. Fast forward, you kiss your husband before accepting the Tony Award for Best Actor for your portrayal of Roy Fucking Cohn. Strange road.

Do you know what a “Fuck you” to Donald Trump looks like? It’s out-and-proud Nathan Fucking Lane winning a fucking Tony Award for playing Roy Fucking Cohn in Tony Fucking Kushner’s Angels in A-Fucking-Merica.

When you’ve got a Vice President who thinks you can electrocute gay people into straightness, a gay man playing Roy Cohn (Roy Fucking Cohn!) and getting a fucking award for it is a massive and eloquent “Fuck you.”

(Also, student survivors of the Parkland shooting came out to sing “Seasons of [Fucking] Love” from fucking Rent [super gay] in the middle of the show. De Niro’s “Fuck Trump” was not just the ugliest condemnation of the administration, i t was also the tamest.)

I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this. I don’t actually think it matters that Robert De Niro said “Fuck Trump” at the Tony’s, by which I mean, I don’t think any Trump voters who were watching the Tony’s (lol) watched De Niro say “Fuck Trump” and realized “Hey, he’s got a point! I’m gonna vote for the Democrat next time!” in the same way that I don’t think any Democrats or lefties who watched De Niro say “Fuck Trump” would then decide “Oh, that’s so vile and vulgar; that’s it, I’m voting for Trump next time.”

I guess I think of the existence of the Tony’s at all in a time like this as a political statement. We’re living in a pretty scary time right now, and instead of retreating or hiding, a bunch of insanely talented and bizarrely underpaid people put on Once on This Island, The Band’s Visit, Angels in America and Children of a Lesser God and Three Tall Women and many others, eight fucking times a week and last Sunday they got to celebrate and perform for each other. It’s all a statement, and the statement was already “Fuck Trump.” I don’t think Robert De Niro took away from that, but I absolutely can’t fathom what he thought he was adding.

Anyways. Watch the Tony’s, support theater, be kinder to everyone around you and have a good day.