the hillbilly muslim

an exclusive interview

Nov 25, 2025

How did “Hakeem” Coleman Fox become perhaps the world’s only Hillbilly Muslim?

Many of you know that aside from fiction, I love larger-than-life characters and crazy true stories. I’ve produced podcasts and I’m developing movies and TV about some of them.

Today I’m excited to sit down with a dear friend who has truly lived. This is only one of his many amazing true stories.

Somebody should give this guy a podcast!

Until then, for the first time ever… an interview with “Hakeem” Coleman Fox. It’s hilarious. But ultimately it’s a Shakespearean tragic love story about faith and devotion… just with a lot of f-bombs and edibles mixed in. Enjoy!

Raised as a self-described hillbilly outside of Asheville, North Carolina, my good friend “Hakeem” Coleman Fox has lived many lives: juvenile delinquent, Atlantic City craps dealer, psilocybin chocolate trafficker, and bartender at Miami Beach’s most notorious dive.

Once upon a time, Coleman fell so madly in love with a wealthy Saudi woman that he converted to Islam. A master storyteller, I wanted to hear from the man himself. So, imagine we’re sitting at the bar at Happy’s Stork Lounge & Liquor Store in Miami.

MAX WINTER: We’re on, Hakeem. Tell me about your background, how you ended up at this bar, meeting the girl of your dreams and becoming the Hillbilly Muslim.

HAKEEM: The Hillbilly Muslim. Well, the “hillbilly” part started in the mountains of North Carolina with a single mom. We had family who lived on the Cherokee reservation and deeper into the mountains that didn’t have running water, or electricity. Literally, there was a well. We pumped the water in the mornings. I remember going out and milking cows and sheep and drinking that milk warm right from the cow. Still with lumps in it — forget about fuckin’ pasteurization.

I say jokingly, “Bein’ so poor in the mountains of North Carolina… if I wasn’t born a boy, I would’ve had nothin’ to play with.”

Down at Foxcoons Pool Hall with Papaw, I could rack a game of eight ball for ten cents a game before I knew the alphabet.

For most of my family, the 5th grade was their senior year.

But religion, for people around the world, faith is really the center of their being, because wealth isn’t even a consideration. So, the wealth of who you are comes from your faith. And I was raised Southern Baptist. Fire and brimstone and all of that. And my mother was a woman of faith, but she never went to church. I went to church. I always liked the feeling going into a Christian church or a Baptist church on Sundays. It seemed like everything was always a little bit better in my life when I was closer to the church. I always had a fascination with philosophy and theology.

When I left North Carolina, basically at 16, I ran away to Florida. Then Atlantic City. Ended up in Vegas. I was there four years. Fuckin’ Vegas. Chewed me up and spit me out. It was the four best years and the four worst years of my life. Dealing dice. I became the king of the dice table. When I came back to Florida, I was burnt out on the casino. I ended up working this little bar in North Bay Village, technically still Miami Beach.

MAX WINTER: Yeah, can you talk about that? One of the most notorious dive bars in all Miami history isn’t it?

HAKEEM: It was a shit hole. So, on the little island where I was living was Happy’s Stork Lounge. That was the sister bar for one birthed in New York City in 1929 and when it came to North Bay Village, I think the late 40s, it was the third liquor license ever issued in Dade County. The place was mobbed up from the fucking beginning. There were multiple bombings. Mafia guys trying to kill each other. Frank Sinatra and all these luminaries, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and once the mafia moved out, the Cocaine Cowboys came in and took over. The police chief was on the take and it was a safe house for the coke dealers, and, once again, multiple shootings in this place. So, I became friends with the owner and became a bartender. I was there for fucking eight years.

By that time, it was a real dive. There were 12 seats at the bar and the most disgusting two bathrooms you’ve ever seen in your life. You would swear every letter in the alphabet of hepatitis existed in that fuckin’ bathroom at one time or the other.

And it also had a little package store. They could sell bottles of liquor till 5am. So, after everyone gets out of work, it was like, “Oh, fuck. Now let’s go to Happy’s!” 5am. Let’s get a handle of Crown Royal and go out in the parking lot, do cocaine, and fuckin’ get drunk. And the cops on the island (they had their own police force) really didn’t fuck with anybody.

MAX WINTER: And so let’s cut to a beautiful Muslim woman walking into the bar. What happened here?

HAKEEM: I’m going to tell you, the amount of talent that came in and out of that fucking bar was mind blowing. It attracted the richest of the rich, the poorest of the poor, the most debaucherous human beings you’ve ever seen.

You know, I’ve always been into that brown sugar. I like caramel skin, the cocoa eyes. Because as men or boys growing up, you have in your mind’s eye, like, what your perfect dream girl is. Every man does, every woman has a man. And mine was, first of all, I wanted intellect — believe it or not. Because fucking a hot dumbass? There’s nothing to that. I want someone intelligent. I want someone funny. I love big titties. I love big, fat, round assess. I like a small little waist. The fuckin’ place was so disgusting — 70 fucking years of dirty cigarette smoke and every other kind of smoke you could think of — but when she walked in? Immediately it was the most beautiful place in the fuckin’ world.

And her and her sister, the Saudis, are drinkers, bro. They leave Saudi and they get fuckin’ crazy. They got two bottles. Johnny Walker Black, and Henny. Those are their two bottles. So, they came to party. You know what? What’s even crazier? For a beautiful young woman to walk in and order a fuckin’ Johnny Walker Black fuckin’ straight up. I’m like, “Oh, clearly, you must be an aristocrat!”

I just start chatting them up, just like anyone, and kind of feel them out and we hit it off. There was just an Instant Karma connection. She started coming in every night I was there. And — come to find out — she’d come down the next night and asked when I was going to be there next. So, I found that out, I started asking her out. She says “No!”

For a fuckin’ year.

I asked her out every fuckin’ week for a year, and she said “No!”

And so, my way of flirting with her in this den of iniquity? I would challenge her to a DJ battle. We both love music, and come to find out every single thing that we both loved? The other one loved. You know, there wasn’t really any kind of deviation — the things that brought joy to us.

It was always like: what’s she playing? I dig that. What was I playing? She dug it. And so finally, it’s 5am in the fuckin’ morning, 12 months and a day later, and I’m like: “Come back to my place.” And she’s like, “Okay.”

And I’m telling you, Max, dude, it was a moment in my life I will never, ever fuckin’ forget. You know, we’re men, but still, we’re emotional. We’re sensitive men. And rejection is not easy, but we deal with it. We move on. And she rejected me to where I’m almost to the point of begging. I’m thinking I’m gonna just go down on a knee and say: “Please just go out with me one night!”

I said, “You love me. You just don’t know it yet!”

I remember thinking: she’s gonna say ‘No,’ and I’m gonna have to get on my knee tomorrow.

When she said, “Yes,” immediately, I did a 180 and my shoulders kind of went back, and I was like, “What the fuck took so long? It’s about fucking time! Put me on fuckin’ pause for a year!”

Okay, now I got the cards. Now I’m back in the game.

We went back to my place, bro, and then the Ultimate Lady, she wanted to sit on the couch across from me. She didn’t want to be sitting next to me. And I was like, “Sure, no problem.” So, we’re just having a couple of drinks, and she loves smoking weed. And you know, that’s my thing.

All I want to do is save the world and smoke weed — that’s my motto.

And she was like: “Fuck yeah, man, let’s smoke out!”

And I was like, “Oh, my God, you just keep getting more and more hot.”

And so I was saying to her, you know, because she’s back at the crib, man, surely she wants, you know — virgins want to get busy.

MAX WINTER: Wait a minute! She was a virgin? Like, did you know that? When did you know she was a devout Muslim and all?

HAKEEM: Oh, I knew the first day, dude. Soon as they walked in, I’m like, “Y’all ain’t from around here!”

And that’s when I knew Saudi Arabia. Riyadh. And the whole thing.

So, she’s back at my place. A couple of years earlier, I spent four grand on this fuckin’ California King Sealy Posturepedic Pillow Top Cashmere, dude. It was the Bugatti. I wanted that motherfucker because I hated the hard rock and I said, I want the top of the line!

So, we’re at my place and I’m standing there. I was like: “You know, I happen to have the most comfortable bed in the world. On the planet. By far. It’s as close to heaven as you’ll ever get while you’re breathing!”

She wasn’t buying it.

This cloud from heaven that was in my bedroom!

So, we’re drinking. We’re drinking. Now it’s like the sun’s getting ready to come up and she says to me: “I want to go home.”

And I know this and I know you know this — as men — women are hanging out with us and we’re thinking we’re going to get some. But they have different ideas and the plan changes. And we just say: “Okay, no problem.”

We don’t force ourselves on women. Gentlemen?

No means no.

I knew when I dropped her off, she was kind of probably expecting — I think in other relationships, maybe — she was expecting me to kind of force myself. Like, you know, “What the fuck you doin’ at my place?”

And so I said, “Yeah, no problem. Let’s fuckin’ go, Boo.”

Walked out, arm in arm, you know, put my arm out like a gentleman. Opened the door. Walked her over to the car. I drove her to her place. She was standing at the Grandview, and I said, “Can I get a kiss?”

And she says: “No.”

And I kind of leaned over, “How about one on the cheek?”

And she kissed me on the cheek!

And at that moment, you know that scene in Scarface where he says “She’s a tiger. She belongs to me?”

That’s what happened in my head.

She kissed me on the fucking cheek! I knew that she knew she had a gentleman. That I wasn’t some fucking scumbag. And I said to myself: “She’s a tiger. She belongs to me.”

And then, quite literally, the fucking next day, we were together for the next fuckin’ eight years, dude.

She was 23 and I was 45 at the time. I had lied to every woman in my past about a myriad of things. I never lied to her about anything. I was completely upfront and honest about everything from day one. It was like she was some form of holistic truth serum.

Unbeknownst to me, she had already done a background check and knew the answers to every question she was asking. ‘Specially my criminal background. (Two felony convictions, three misdemeanor convictions all before the age of 18.)

She assumed I’d be angry that she actually paid someone to investigate me. I told her that I was overjoyed with this revelation because no woman either cared enough or was intelligent enough to do that. In my mind, I was happy to know that this Blessing from Allah was thinking longterm about our relationship in the first several weeks!

She was humble, intelligent, loving towards everyone, the funniest human being I ever met. She had no fear of anything. The first time we went out on my boat at 4am on a Monday morning. Her sister joined us and we got back home just before sunrise. She fell off the boat at my dock. I immediately dove in scooped her up into my arms and she was clearly terrified because she couldn’t swim. I got her safely onto the dock. That same week, she hired a swimming instructor and learned how to swim in my swimming pool. She said to me on her first day of swim lessons: “If we’re gonna be together and you love being on the water everyday, I’m gonna learn how to swim so I can share with you without any fear.”

She was also terrified of dogs when we met. Three months later, she’s walking my 100 pound pit bull — Batman — around Miami Beach. She loved Batman especially during walks because it was the only time in her life where men would cross to the other side of the street to avoid her. Batman couldn’t resist her charms and quite literally became her dog. He would not leave her side.

She graduated from Barry University, top of her class with her biology degree. And so now here’s the pivotal moment: we’ve been together now about two years, and she had to go back to Saudi. And the plan was, you graduate, like all of the family, she’s a baby of eight. Every single one of them has come to the US or another country, gotten a degree. Half of them had their masters, two of them had their PhDs. So they’re all highly educated children, which I respect the fuck out of — that’s a huge thing for the family. Our children are gonna be educated.

And so she went back. But before she went, it’s like: “Well, I want to be with you. I don’t want you to fuckin’ leave, but I understand you have to, but I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t want to have to be without you if you go to be with your family.”

And she said, “I feel the same way. So what are we going to do?”

So now, at this point, the women in her family know about me, but none of the men — the five brothers and her dad and her grandfather — none of them know nothin’. Her two sisters and her mom, her best friend, her best friend’s mom. All the women know about me, and they all fuckin’ love me. Took her best friend and her best friend’s mom down to Key West, you know, for a weekend, and took care of everybody. Everybody on my tab! No problem. They fuckin’ love me.

And so she says, “Well, I’ll go back to Saudi, and then I’ll come back.”

And so she gets there, and Dad was like, “No, you’re not fuckin’ going back.”

And she’s like, “I want to go back. I want to go back.” But she wasn’t saying about me. She said she wanted to come back and ‘work.’ “I want to go back. I got my degree. I love the States, I want to go back. I want to go back.” And she told her father there was a classmate — a female — she was gonna live with.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!” her father said.

She had 90 days. 90 days to be back before some problem with the visa.

It’s literally the 87th day. And he finally relents — but he doesn’t relent as she thought. He says, “Fine, you want to fuckin’ go back to the US?” I’m paraphrasing. “You go back without my money.”

And everybody over there’s got money. She’s got family that rides around with gold bars in the back of their car to pay for shit. They don’t negotiate, whatever the price is. They don’t do credit over there. All cash. And so on the 87th day, Dad’s like, “Fine, want to go? You go without my money.”

She called me, she said, “He just said ‘Yes!’”

I was like, “What?”

“Get me the ticket.”

Dude, I’m telling you, within 30 fuckin’ minutes she had a ticket in her hand. Cost me 1180 bucks. Whatever. One way ticket from Riyadh to Miami on fuckin’ Emirate Airlines. (Which is by far my favorite airline to fly. By far. Beats the shit out of everybody. Emirates: all day, every day.)

It’s a fucking joke, because I’m in this drama with her Dad. He doesn’t even know I’m in it, right? She goes to Dad and says: “Okay, you said I could go back. I got my ticket. I’m leaving it two days.”

Flips a fuckin’ wig!

Obviously. Because there the family is: Dad sets the rule, and there’s no conversation. It’s a statement. This is how it is. This is what it is. The whole fuckin’ family.

And they’re all from arranged marriages. When her dad met her mom? He was 30, living in Riyadh, and he went to Yemen. Met her mom. She was 15. They got married. He was 30. She was 15. Arranged marriage. No problem. All the brothers, both the sisters: arranged marriage.

So, she comes back here. Dude, we’re in it.

It’s amazing.

It was Christmas Eve 2015, I went down on a knee. I took her up to Le Zoo at Bal Harbour Shops. December 24. Christmas Eve. Beautiful restaurant. French place, Le Zoo man. We had seven course meals. Fuckin’ amazing. Veuve Clicquot. It was just everything.

Went down on the knee right there in the middle of everybody, bro. This big, fucking beautiful rock man, literally, from her knuckle to knuckle. It was covered and it was just a beautiful thing.

And I went down, I was like, “Boo,” I said, “I don’t ever, ever want to share my breath — a day of sunrise and sunset — with anyone else on this planet but you and I want you to be my wife.”

And she said: “Yes!”

Everybody in the restaurant who wasn’t buried in foie gras was like: “Yayyyy!!!”

Facing East…

MAX WINTER: Let’s go back for a second. When did you realize you had to convert? Or become Muslim?

HAKEEM: I did that while she was in Saudi. I did the conversion in 2015. Yeah, it was right after she decided she’s coming back. And, like, literally, I bought a brand new fuckin’ Hyundai Elantra, because she comes back, she gotta drive to work, you know? I got my Mustang 5.0. I got my Jeep Cherokee, but they’re not reliable. And so when she said, “I’m coming back for you, baby, because I feel exactly how you feel. I want to be with you.” And, I mean, it was these beautiful notes: “You’re my soul mate!”

And it was just like a hand in a glove, Max, you can relate to what I’m saying. Now you’re married. You know. You just fit together. And to look at it on paper: this rich Saudi queen who, when she graduated high school, she was the third highest GPA in the fucking nation of Saudi Arabia. The nation! And there’s me, who was arrested and expelled from high school. Three high schools in a year, bro. I failed from one, kicked out of another one on the first day for fighting, and then the third? Well, didn’t even finish. I just fucking left like halfway through the year and went to Florida. Me and my boys, like: “Fuck it man, I’m out of here!” We go to Florida. Fucking get a job: valeting cars and selling weed.

MAX WINTER: But you fit like a glove.

HAKEEM: I mean, chemistry. You can’t explain it. It’s just we’re all electrical impulses and positive energy attracts positive energy, I believe, with human beings that’s right.

MAX WINTER: So, at some point, when did you have to — like, was it her idea? Who said: “Okay, you gotta convert to Islam”?

HAKEEM: She said, if we’re going to get married, it’s illegal in Saudi Arabia for a Muslim or for a Saudi woman to marry a non-Muslim or a non-Saudi. That’s anywhere in the world — not just in Saudi. So, she said, “If you’re serious, then you need to read the Quran.”

(Which I have to admit, I haven’t read the whole Quran) but:

“You have to read the Quran. You have to convert to Islam. You have to go to the mosque.”

Which I did. There’s a mosque up in North Miami and it was crazy. The worst neighborhood in all of fucking Miami, which is so scary, but this big, beautiful mosque. And I went. I spoke with the Imam, and I told him what I wanted to do, what my plans were, and he basically said, “Okay, so this is what you need to do. These are the steps.”

And so I started praying. I started learning the prayer. And studying, you know, about Muhammad and Allah and so on. And I went to the mosque and basically — I chanted my prayers.

And the Imam basically said, “Okay, you are now, in the eyes of the Islamic faith, you are now Muslim.”

And it was a beautiful ceremony. It was just he and I.

It was beautiful.

It was really kind of intimidating walking in, because I’m like a hillbilly walking into this mosque in North Miami.

MAX WINTER: How long was the process? To learn everything?

HAKEEM: It took me just a little over a month of, you know, like reading the Quran, learning the prayer, and then going in and being able to pray with the Imam. And it was beautiful man. You know, I felt very at ease with him. Like most people of faith who speak about their faith, they can kind of put you at ease, make you feel comfortable about your religion and your beliefs and your faith — which he did. Because I was conflicted at first, but then we started talking about the Abrahamic connection, and it’s basically, it’s the same. We all share the same beliefs, you know: just be good to each other. Don’t fuckin’ kill. Don’t steal. Don’t fuck your neighbor’s wife. Don’t be a pig. Don’t be gluttonous, you know.

I mean, yeah, it’s all the same foundation.

And so it was an easy transition, and he asked me, “Your Muslim name?” And I told him, I said, “I really don’t want to go full Mahmoud Abdul Raouf!”

MAX WINTER: (laughs)

HAKEEM: You know?

But I did want to change my name because it represents my faith. But Coleman Fox to me, because it was just me and Mom, represents my Mom. And to wash away Coleman Fox, because it was Charles Edward Coleman Fox — and I didn’t want to do that. And he was like, “Well, what about a first name?”

I started thinking about Muslims that I respected and admired, and Muhammad Ali came to mind immediately.

And then I’m thinking, Well, okay, you could call yourself “Muhammad,” which is the most popular name on the planet. I think Muhammad is the number one name. It’s kind of like calling yourself… like Muhammad is kind of like Jesus, right? Yeah. So, I’m not gonna call myself ‘Jesus.’

So, Muhammad Ali, but I’m not gonna name myself Ali. Her father’s name is Ali!

MAX WINTER: Yeah. That’s not gonna work!

HAKEEM: Yeah. So, who else?

My Muslims that I looked up to, you know? And then I thought, my second favorite Muslim on the planet, bro:

Hakeem Olajuwon

The one from Africa. The man that I basically got my basketball game from. The outside is Michael Jordan, the inside is Hakeem Olajuwon. Those are my guys. And every move I have as a white man, I get in the hood and I put those moves down. And those dudes are like: “Damn!”

I’m like: “I know, man, thank Hakeem!”

MAX WINTER: And that was a good official Muslim name? The Imam was down with that?

HAKEEM: Yes. Went down to the courthouse. I paid the $425. Did the name change? Told them it was religious reasons.

We got married.

It was kept a secret.

She wanted to wait to tell her family, and so I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t tell my Mom. I said, “You know what? I don’t want you to have to carry this secret by yourself. So, I’m not gonna tell anyone in my family, and when you’re ready for us to announce it to the world, I’m with you.”

And that day — I want to say it was maybe around Thanksgiving. There were twenty people there, and we announced, you know: “We’re married!”

And everybody was like: “Oh my god, it’s fuckin’ crazy!”

She spoke to her Dad. He just went fuckin’ ape shit.

Bro, you want to talk about fucking seismic shift on the planet, right? She put me on the phone with him. You know, like: “Here, baby, just say hello to him.”

And it went sideways.

You know that real stereotypical Muslim thing where they do that thing with their tongues?

A Latin can roll that Double R really well.

Well, the fucking Arabs can roll that tongue really well. To do that? You gotta be around it your whole life — to do it right.

I can’t do it.

So, she put me on the phone.

He literally blew my fuckin’ eardrum out!

And he wasn’t even speaking English! He was just like, literally screaming, doing that thing with his tongue!

That sound.

AYAYAYAYAYYYYY!!!!

Jesus.

He was like, “If you continue with this, you’re no longer my daughter. When I die, I don’t want you at my funeral. Your children will never be Saudi. They will be American. You will be outcast.

I mean, it’s just all kinds of psychological warfare.

She’s like, “Okay, I’ll go back.” Try to fuckin’ work this out. Dad’s like, “I don’t give a fuck. No no, no, no!”

MAX WINTER: And what about your Mom? What did she think? Or the fellow hillbillies that you grew up with? What did they think about you being Muslim?

HAKEEM: Mind fuckin’ blown, bro.

First of all, it’s the Bible Belt. So, my mother having me out of wedlock? I’m already a bastard. She’s a whore.

You know, Scarlet Letter. All that bullshit. I was the Hell Spawn to my Mom’s family. To everybody.

Remember: 5th Grade was their senior year.

They didn’t get it, dude. They’re like: “What? He married a black woman from Africa?”

Yeah, that’s a huge sin, their… “Bible says.”

Red fuckin’ country. North Carolina? Dude. Being a Muslim? It fucks their heads up, bro.

They don’t know what the fuck to think of me, bro!

You know what they did? I’m gonna tell you. Here it is. In a synopsis: when my family and my friends in North Carolina hear what’s going on, they look at me like I’m the most complicated Chinese mathematical fuckin’ equation on the planet.

MAX WINTER: So, they’re confused!

HAKEEM: Yeah, that’s one way to say it.

MAX WINTER: So, after she goes back to Saudi to mend things with her Dad, what happens next?

HAKEEM: She says, “Let’s meet in Dubai.”

She says, “I have a convention in Dubai. Let’s meet there. And what we’ll do is we’ll go back to Riyadh together and meet my father and then what you guys will do is you’ll take the trip to Mecca.”

You know, take the Hajj to Mecca. Every Muslim is required at least once in your life. The pilgrimage.

“And you’ll go to Mecca. You’ll meet him. You’ll come back for the traditional Muslim wedding.”

Okay, perfect.

We’re in Dubai. She flies back to Riyadh the very next day. She’s there, right? She has, like I said, seven siblings. The number seven sibling? Abdul Rahman. I think it’s 36 hours later, her mom is like: “Go up tell Abdul Rahman to wake up. It’s breakfast.”

She goes up to get him.

He’s fucking dead.

He had asthma. They had changed his medication, and she found him, and of course, the whole family’s just completely devastated. Me now, coming to Riyadh is an absolute no go.

So, I come back to fucking Miami. She stayed there, obviously. It was horrible. It was just a disaster.

Now we’re into 2019.

She says, “Okay, I’m coming to Thousand Oaks. I’ve got this thing with a pharmaceutical company and Thousand Oaks is their headquarters.” And she says, “We’ll meet there, and we’ll celebrate our anniversary.”

So now this is February 2020, right before the pandemic showed up. If you remember this fuckin’ stupid Egghead President wouldn’t let that cruise ship that was off the coast of California — he wouldn’t let them dock. Kobe Bryant’s fuckin’ helicopter crash.

That’s when we were there. So, we were in LA for 11 days, and then we went to Vegas, and we stayed at the Palazzo. We were there for 10 days. Fucking, sucking, eating, drinking — weed’s legal, dude. In 21 days, I spent like two grand on fucking weed alone, bro, and she’s the same way.

So now, so here we are. It’s the end of February, right? She says, “Okay. Plan is, I’m flying back to Riyadh. You go to Miami, and in June you are gonna go to Mecca. You’re finally going to meet my Dad. We’re going to fuckin’ do this. Nail the shit down, and that’s going to fucking be it.

I’m like, “fuckin’ awesome.”

But prior to her leaving, flying out of LAX. We turned it into an international drug smuggling incident.

She says: “I want to take some weed back to Saudi.”

That’s a bad fuckin’ idea, because I know those motherfuckers over there. They took a dude, a guy from London came in — one seed in his fuckin’ flip flop — they threw his ass in jail for three fuckin’ years.

Yeah, so they don’t fuck around over there.

Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad idea.

But we both love weed. She loves the edibles. I love the flower. I smoke. She chews. Perfect.

She says, “I want to take some gummies back.”

I’m like, “Oh my God, you’re fuckin’ out of your mind. You are literally out of your fuckin’ mind. No, no, no, no.”

And she’s like, “You can figure this out!”

Now she’s playing on my drug dealing instinct.

“Fuckin’ come on. You’ve done this. I’ve seen you do this. You move fuckin’ weight!”

Oh my God, we got all these gummies that she loves. And I’m like, “Okay, let me look at these motherfuckers. How can we do this?”

So dude, all of a sudden, I’m like, “Oh my god! I got it! Let’s go to fuckin’ Ralph’s.”

I’m like, I got it. I fuckin’ got it:

Haribo fuckin’ gummy bears.

Yeah, bro, I’m telling you. Literally, you can’t tell them apart from the gummies she’s got.

Haribo. That’s the Cadillac. That’s the Bugatti. Yeah, dude, I grabbed like six fuckin’ big bags of fuckin’ Haribo. I laid them all out. There was like 120 fuckin’ pieces of her edibles, all different flavors. The cherries, the red, the lemon, the yellows, purple. I fucking took all the lemons out of one bag. I took all the cherries out of another bag. I replaced them, put each color in there, put them into her fuckin’ bag with some other food. (She was taking some other shit back, you know, some non-perishables.) Six fuckin’ bags of fuckin’ marijuana edibles. She flies right into fuckin’ Riyadh, right through customs, right home.

MAX WINTER: So, you got away with it! But then the relationship ended soon after, right? I’m on 11% in my iPad so…

HAKEEM: I can do it in 5%!

This is now March.

Everything closes in April. Oh, my fuckin’ God, this is insane! What the fuck now? She has a medical degree. She’s pursuing her PhD in healthcare management. And she said: “Baby, this is bad. It’s bad. Bad. Bad.”

Now it’s starting to look like: Fuck, man, when we tried the first time? God bless Abdul Mahmoud, but your brother passed. And now the fuckin’ pandemic which the planet hasn’t seen in fuckin’ 500 years.

It feels like it’s an insurmountable quest, you know, or mountain.

And so I’m here in South Beach at the fuckin’ Publix, and some fuckin’ dude, in a nice fuckin’ suit comes up — dressed up real fuckin’ nice.

“Coleman Fox?”

I turn around. “Yeah?”

He fuckin’ has me. “You’ve been served!”

Fuckin’ divorce papers.

And he says to me, the father has one message: “It’s either you or it’s her.”

Meaning, either you’re out of the family — or she’s out of the fuckin’ family.

I’m like, fucking, what? This is crazy. I go back home, fuckin’ Skype, “What’s up?”

She’s like, “What? What? What? Let me talk to my Dad!”

Goes back, talks to him. “Yeah, it’s fuckin’ real.”

So, it got to the point it was like she’s the one taking the beating from everyone in the fuckin’ family, and I’m just fuckin’ living in Miami, and if we keep going through with this, she’s gonna lose everything. And I told her, “Your father doesn’t understand! I don’t want to take you from his family. I want to become a part of his family, that’s it. He doesn’t get that, right?”

“I could never live with you not being able to communicate with your family. I can’t live like that. I would rather fuckin’ die than you have to sacrifice every single member of your family so we can be together.”

But we talked and talked, and finally, it was like, well, if we’re going to fuckin’ do it, it’s got to be done. It’s over with. What’s the fuckin’ point?

It has to be over. It’s literally — it’s like death.

And I told her: “This literally is going to be the death of me.” I said, “My heart will be broken into a million fuckin’ pieces, and I will never recover, and I’ll never find another woman like you, and I’ll never be this happy with any human being on the planet. Ever again.”

But you stand in front of a fuckin’ firing squad, you know you’re getting shot. You know you’re not stopping the fuckin’ bullet.

That was it, man.

And dude, I have not fuckin’ been with another woman in five fuckin’ years, and I’ve been approached — you know, dude, I get fuckin’ approached. I’m flirty. I fuckin’ love it. But I’ve been to the mountaintop, bro, and I don’t play for second place. And to me, every fuckin’ woman I’ve met is just second prize. No matter how amazing you are, how you fuck, it doesn’t matter. You’re second place. There’s nothing else.

To this day, I’m still a practicing Muslim, you know, I still am. I don’t eat swine. I have my prayer rug, man, I try and pray five times a day. (I don’t get them all in, sometimes more, sometimes less.) But, you know, as long as Allah is in my heart and I’m trying to do right, I think He’s gonna give me a little pass.

You know, it’s not like I’m out Jeffrey Epstein-ing it up, and then going to the mosque!

I believe the quote is: “To thine own self be true.”

And so for me, Max, I’m getting chills right now, but the way I find my happiness now, dude, is searching for joy for other people. Bro, I try and do things for other people, make other people happy, and that gives me joy.

Because if I don’t do that — literally, I’m on the verge of tears right now just thinking of her and never seeing her again. I don’t know if I’ll ever be with another woman the rest of my fuckin’ life.

And I told her that even if the hottest woman on the planet right now is like: “I want to fuck you.”

“Sorry, I’m taken!”

Which is fucked up. I feel like I’d be committing some sort of sin against our relationship.

But for me? I’m staying true to me.

I was born a man of faith. I have believed in God my whole life, and because God has chosen that she’s no longer in my life doesn’t take away from my faith and my belief that God has a plan and that, dude, I’m gonna tell you, Max, right now how I feel, bro. I have literally everything in my fucking life that I need. Everything. I’ve got great friends, great family. I got money in the bank. I got a great job. Great place to live. Every fucking thing, dude, but I only want one thing — and I’ll never have it.

I thank God every day. Every single day, I thank him for all the blessings. I pray for the people who have less than I do, and I pray for the people have more than I do. But I’ll never, ever get what I want.

I’m just true to Islam and Allah and the teachings of the Quran, and that’s who I am. Because she was in my life, doesn’t change my faith in God at all. Just strengthens it, really. So, yeah, just “To thine own self be true.”

What do you think? Shakespeare!

MAX WINTER: You’re gonna make me tear up, man. Thank you for sharing that. What a story. What can I say? As-salāmu ʿalaykum.

HAKEEM: Wa ʿalaykum as-salām.

Max Winter

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?