I Can't Date Jesus Read online

  Kim then recommended I go see someone named Jaison. I loved Jaison because he had a sleeve of arm tattoos that went from his shoulder to his wrist and a quintessential Houston accent, and he read Esquire. In other words, he was the perfect mix of man. Moreover, as talkative as I could be, I could also sit in silence for long periods of time. Jaison never tried to force a conversation. If anything, I would push him for small talk, and, thankfully, he never made me regret it. Above all, Jaison cut hair like an artist, and I always left his chair feeling my most confident. For someone still dealing with weight issues and the occasional taunt about how slanted my eyes were or how big my two front teeth were, those moments of confidence proved vital.

  Up until college, despite only a few unwanted parts here and there, my experiences with barbershops were mostly fine. That didn’t mean I necessarily loved the waiting part before a cut, during which I had to be subjected to whatever conversation the men in the room were having. I was not a sports fanatic, but I was competent enough to tolerate those conversations. When it came to politics, even as a teenager, I found myself resisting the urge to correct the much older men who didn’t have the slightest clue as to what they were talking about. Then there was the chatter about women, which often had me burying my head in a magazine or aggressively staring into the TV and pretending my senses were strong enough to make out what was being said over the loudness of everyone else.

  And of course, every so often, I would hear homophobic comments made by men in the barbershop. For many gay Black men, the hypermasculine, ultrastraight spaces of the majority of Black barbershops were intimidating because they were so wildly unwelcoming. Even while fighting to admit the truth about myself, deep down, I knew much of their musings was intended to make people like me feel less-than. I had already been trained on how to ignore things I didn’t want to hear due to the chaos in my own home. That’s not to say I didn’t wince at some points, but I had never been especially bothered until one particular visit.

  It was my final year of college, so by then, I was already out and becoming more familiar with the art of brushing aside opinions about homosexuality that repulsed me. I went to see my regular barber at the shop located across the street from campus. One of the other barbers started a rant about gay clientele and how they behaved while in the chair. In his deluded mind, gay men wanted every single man around—including his bugawolf, few-clients-having ass.

  “You know how those faggots get in the chair. They stick their elbows out, hoping to brush across your dick and shit. Punk-ass niggas.”

  His vitriol was met with laughter from much of the room. Everyone—including my barber—joined in on the “jokes.” My barber in particular yukked it up, extending his elbows and doing what he felt were gay mannerisms to the delight of this other barber’s stupidity and delusions of grandeur. That barber wouldn’t stop his diatribe, going on to add that gay men needed to be rounded up and sent to a women’s prison to be raped. In his mind, that was his way of curing an egregious perversion. He was one of those types who felt homosexuality was a conspiracy concocted by the white man to emasculate the Black man. By then, I had already taken a course on gender roles and relations. It was in that class—taught by a professor who looked exactly like my late grandmother—that I learned how most of our ideas of gender and sexuality stemmed from Western mores and customs that we traditionally had never embraced until they were forced on us through enslavement. I learned a lot about non-European cultures that didn’t subscribe to gender binaries in the ways most of us have been conditioned into believing. Above all, I was informed that if not for the imperialistic, Bible-toting, and dogma-bastardizing white men who swooped in and forced their rigid nonsense on us through colonialism, maybe, just maybe, this man wouldn’t have sounded so damn foolish in the barbershop.

  Yet though I had knowledge of all of these things, I didn’t put up a fight upon hearing this. In that moment, my silence allowed his ignorance to win. It wasn’t that I didn’t think to say anything. I wanted to, but I didn’t want to bother anyone. It wasn’t as if I was going to change any of their minds. Anyone who thought that of gay folks would not suddenly alter their point of view simply due to my standing in front of them. Life was not an after-school special. If anything, words would have been exchanged, and that scene could have easily ended up as a story on the evening news.

  This just in: twenty-two-year-old Black Howard student stabs area barber to the white meat for talking out of turn about the gays with his bitch ass.

  Meanwhile, as all of this was happening, I only had half of my head cut. You could literally see half my head trimmed down, and the other side still in the shape I walked in with. Cursing out someone with trimmers in his hand whose job was to give me a haircut didn’t come across as the smartest move to make. So I let them win for the sake of my vanity and lack of faith in my anger-management skills.

  After finishing up, I walked up to the East Towers, the dorm I lived in, and called Jordan, to whom I talked every so often. As I was describing everything that had happened, I broke into tears. I knew that man was ignorant and wrong. I knew I wasn’t the person he was describing. I bawled anyway. I bawled because, while I was out, I hadn’t been out that long. While I wouldn’t describe Howard University as overwhelmingly welcoming to gay people at that time, I at least knew how to take care of myself in that environment. But just going across the street reminded me that there was an entire world out there, and a lot of it still didn’t support my kind—even if we shared the same skin color. Mostly, I bawled because I was so goddamn angry and felt powerless.

  While sobbing, I asked Jordan, “Is this going to be the rest of my life?” I’m not sure why I even asked him. He wasn’t out. He was still trying to sort himself out. I got off the phone not long after that. Once I got those tears out of my system, I had effectively shaken off what had bothered me. I never again allowed myself to be as bothered by anything in the barbershop as I was that day. Note “as bothered,” which doesn’t mean I was cured but rather that I made a conscious choice to never allow someone else’s prejudices to stun me to that extent again. It’s not like a magical old white woman came to me and told me “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” and made me miraculously immune to anyone’s ignorance. Homophobia remained horrific, but as far as my experiences in the barbershop went, I was able to prioritize my grievances. Part of my ability to disassociate myself so swiftly was partially rooted in my not being as easily clocked as other queer men. Not everyone could do that, and I did not pretend otherwise. For me, it remained a defining choice in my life, because while my barber was wrong for laughing at a homophobe claiming all gay men needed to be raped at a women’s prison, there was another problem: he wasn’t that damn good a barber to begin with.

  He would always cut against the grain, meaning instead of cutting my hair in the direction it was trained to grow—i.e., my wave pattern—he went the opposite way, leaving me waveless. Now, it was my own fault for sticking by him. For a while, I stopped going to him and ended up walking around campus with a big afro that made me look as though I were auditioning to play Huey Freeman in the nonanimated version of The Boondocks. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t long before I ended up back in his chair. And why? Because I was too lazy to go out and explore another barbershop. I would like to think living in a pre-Yelp, social media world excuses me partially, but that would be a lie.

  —

  As vain as I can be, I don’t always make the best decisions about my hair. In fact, there’s a ditzy quality to me. I sometimes decide to do things on a whim solely based on natural curiosity. Say, Oh, I wonder what happens if I put this in reverse? What happens is you nearly crash your car. Or, Hmm, she just said I can make that spot; can I? No, you fool, and now your mom has that scratch in her car. There are moments along the lines of, Ooh, I’m allergic to this, but maybe trying it now will be different. The end result is a bitch needing Benadryl.

  This recklessness and penchant for danger has had an impact on my
hair too, which is why for a month, I walked around Los Angeles as a Black Mickey Mouse.

  I had just moved to that Koreatown area of Los Angeles. I knew nothing. I had no car. I didn’t have a group of friends there yet. What I did know, though, was that it had been more than a week since I had gotten a haircut and I couldn’t bear the uneven line I saw in the mirror. While walking around the new neighborhood, I saw a barbershop. Mistake number one: I was not in a Black neighborhood, so why would I think they would know how to cut my hair? I did see a Hispanic man there, which made me wonder if he would at least know how to line me up. As I walked up to ask him, he immediately told me that he was getting off. Next to him was a Korean man who didn’t speak any English yet motioned for me to come to him anyway. Mistake number two: I sat down in his chair. Mistake number three: I did not immediately get up upon realizing that I was going to let a Korean man who didn’t speak English cut my Black-ass hair. He pointed to a poster of different haircut styles. Mistake number four to infinity: I didn’t take this as the Lord telling me to get the hell out of that barbershop and just ask someone to take me to Crenshaw or Inglewood later in the week.

  All this Korean barber kept saying to me was, “Cut, cut.” I was saying no, I want you to line it up. I literally took my fingers and showed him what I wanted. He didn’t get that right at all.

  Again, I knew better. My hairline is, was, and forever shall be weird. I have a cowlick, so on one side of the front of my head, my hair has always been oddly thinner, to the point that the hair in that area would sometimes just stick up. Over the years, I have had many a barber say to me in befuddlement or annoyance, “Man, it took me longer to line you up than anything else.” A barber who knows what he’s doing would spot this trouble and delicately cut around the area accordingly. Well, when you don’t know how to communicate with the person cutting your hair, you have no real means of making certain that they are careful. The result? On one side of my head, it looked as if someone had forgotten their ruler or any tool that could be used to measure something accurately and opted to use a gnawed-on Toblerone in its place. The line on that side seemed to be headed in two separate directions. On the other side it was straight, but what did it matter when both sides of my head appeared to be in an unholy war? As for the top of my head, not only did he just ram over my cowlick despite me requesting just a lineup but he also went over the other side of my hair, which up until that moment I hadn’t realized was beginning to thin in the front too. So, you had a crooked line on one side, a decent-enough line on the other, and in the front, a dedication to Mickey Mouse. On top of it all, he took the line so far back that I could reach back and grab my ancestors out of slavery. I had no idea how to say “I ought to beat your ass” in Korean, but I truly regret not knowing how to convey my rage.

  When I got home, I immediately took pictures to show people the horror film I had willfully participated in. My mom laughed like hell at me and my idiotic decision. Kim got her chuckles in too. I can’t say that I fault either of them. One of my roommates tried to stifle her laughter but gave in, only to follow her chuckles by quipping that I should have told the man that I was Barack Obama and then maybe I would have gotten a better lineup. Instead, I had walked out of there as a tribute to Sherman Hemsley.

  For once, I tried to tame my neurotic need for a weekly barbershop visit in order to try to grow my hair back. I ended up finding another barbershop—one that Black folks populated. Upon entering the shop, I spotted one dude in his chair eating a fish plate out of a big Styrofoam box. Obviously, I went with him. As I sat down, I immediately said, “Okay, so I let someone mess me up, right.” Instantaneously, he said, “I can tell, bro.” That meant it was as bad as I had thought it was, and that my friends had been lying to me to be kind. In this instance, kindness was for suckers; they should have demanded that I go buy a hat. I don’t remember anyone saying anything homophobic at that shop, but I do know that after a while I grew tired of the barber asking me if I could write a movie for him. I moved away from Los Angeles, and he sent a friend request on Facebook with a message I never opened.

  Once I moved to New York, I had to search once again for a competent barber I could depend on to not have me look the fool. Worse, by the time I arrived, I had to deal with the realities that stress, some medication, and bad barbers who didn’t take direction well had done to my hair. It was a lil’ thinner on both sides, but the hair continued to grow—only slower than everywhere else.

  Some people have listened to my complaints and suggested I go bald. Those people can fuck off for all eternity. I still have a lot of hair and a lot of fight left in me, and with God, Rogaine for Men, and Jamaican black castor oil, I am still in this. Besides, so long as you channel your Ralph Tresvant and exercise some sensitivity on cutting my hair in the front, we gon’ be alright.

  The first barber I found in Harlem was identical to No Malice from the Clipse. This shop was on Frederick Douglass, and they had a dog there the size of the Camry I had left back in Texas. He cut my hair all right, but he required too many AMBER Alerts to schedule an appointment, so I ditched him. There was a lesbian in the shop that I thought to try, but she left. I later found out that it was because the men in the shop were a bit hostile toward her clientele. As in, all those gay boys. I didn’t bother trying anyone else in that shop for that reason alone. I started trying out yet more barbers in the area, and each one was more terrible than the last.

  Finally, I found D, who looked at my hair, sized up my issues without me even telling him, and told me, “I got you.” It was the first time in years I had really been complimented about my cuts. The suggestion to switch to bald fades worked for me, but D kept pressing me to get a Bigen. A Bigen is a semipermanent hair dye activated by water with progressive product names such as “Oriental Black.” Every week, D would swear getting a Bigen would settle my insecurities and make me look better. Anytime I’d seen someone with a Bigen, they looked cartoonish. I wouldn’t let him do that to me. Had I not suffered enough from barbers over the years? Apparently not, because I went from “That’s a nice fade” to “Who did that to you? Should I call the police?” He had the lines on the side of my head damn near kissing my earlobes. The first time he did it, he apologized and said he’d be more careful. A few weeks later, he fell back on old habits. Of course, this was around the same time he started to complain all the time about being a barber and how much he hated his job. No wonder I started walking around with a forehead far larger than I had ever known it to be.

  At that point, the only thing that didn’t bother me about D was that he never asked me about my sexuality. I imagine he knew, but thankfully he avoided a topic I didn’t want to engage with him on. He did talk about his women problems to me. All 99,000 of them that essentially amounted to the fact that he had a bit of a wayward dick, and the women he dealt with had issues about it. His shop ended up closing because of the rent increases in New York. I had no idea where D went, but by that time I wanted another barber anyway. He had become too hard to locate on any given day, and while I knew he was a good barber, those few cuts that played with my hairline once again triggered all the self-consciousness I had about getting older and the possibility that my hair might be thinning out to the point that I could no longer present myself the way I wanted to. Again, I’m not shaving my head. Quit telling me to do this. My peanut head is not made for that.

  I found my most recent, and by far best, barber since leaving Houston on a whim and in a desperate search to look semidecent before an audition for an on-camera role on a TV show. It was an incredibly early Tuesday morning in January, and he was standing outside of Big Russ Barbershop looking cold. I asked if he could give me a lineup, and as I sat in the chair, I explained what every barber did wrong to my head and what not to do. After seeing how well he took direction, I went ahead and asked for him to give me a full cut. He introduced himself as Kalid and gave me his card, telling me I should come back since I liked the cut so much. So I did. After a while,
I noticed that the barbershop was inclusive in both its clientele and its barbers.

  Until this shop, I had never directly mentioned my sexuality, opting instead to hide in plain sight. Mostly because if I had once again been met with homophobia, I wasn’t sure of how I would react. The silence that happened a decade prior was no longer going to happen should I be met with that sort of antagonism. I had the sneaking suspicion that if I did confirm that part about me, I wouldn’t be made to feel uncomfortable. So much so that when the barber who cut directly in front of Kalid once engaged me in an ongoing conversation about having sex without condoms, I mentioned that I was gay and had long been paranoid about HIV/AIDS, so I’d never had condom-less sex. His mind wasn’t blown because I said I was gay; he was mystified that I had that level of discipline. Then he told me, “I really hope you get to fuck someone without a condom. It’s the best.”

  That’s probably the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me inside of a barbershop. For the first time ever, this shop allowed me a glimpse into how straight Black men in the shop felt. For them, this was a place of community, or even therapy. For them, the conversations that happened informed their point of view.

  There are plenty of straight Black men who have said to me that the barbershop is partially where they learned how to be a Black man in this world. I understand that, but as a Black man in this world who happens to be gay, my past experiences will never allow me to share their sentiments. I can never allow myself to feel completely comfortable in those spaces, because one, I’ve had way too many experiences with bad barbers, and two, I’ve never found those spaces to be welcoming to the sort of man that I am. While I do hope that the younger queer Black men who now go into those shops will never have to witness the sort of condemnations I did in years past, my expectations are extremely limited.