I Can't Date Jesus Page 12

  Now I go in there longing to shake off the sluggish feeling of my untamed mane and go back out into the world with the image I prefer to project. I do not go in there to be affirmed. I do not go in there seeking camaraderie. I do not need that place to be my sanctuary, because I’ve found mine elsewhere. Ideally, I hope those barbershops become more welcoming to men who are not straight, but it is not a need that I personally have. I enter the space only with the determination to leave feeling beautiful. I know how this world views me as a Black person, as a Black man, as a gay man, as a Black gay man. I’m more than familiar with the hatred fuming on the outside. I am keenly aware of how some of those who look like me view me as beneath them. I wake up every morning having to face them all.

  I just want to look my best each week when I do.

  Several months later, I ran into D on the street, right after Kalid gave me a cut. D was on the phone, but told whoever he was talking to, “Let me call you right back.” He asked where I’d been, as if I’d ditched him. I explained that I lost his number. Yes, that sounds like a lie, but I actually did, and, word to the wise, never forget the password to your Apple ID and break your phone in the same week. While he complimented my fade, he trashed the lineup and said I needed to come back and see him at the shop a few feet away from us. I didn’t really plan to until I went home and looked more deeply into my hair. He was right. I went back to him the following week.

  Pray for my hair.

  Itchy and Scratchy

  “Your dick is dry,” Chris declared in an exquisitely executed matter-of-fact fashion. He was not wrong. It had been at least two years since I had had sex. Still, the bitch could have been more sensitive. (Counterpoint: sensitivity is for Ralph Tresvant and people who can’t always handle the truth.) I was in obvious need of at least three tablespoons of truth serum, and Chris proved willing and able to serve me some.

  And so he did, over discounted well brown liquor at an East Village dive bar. I had moved and settled into life in New York, but true to form, my focus was much more on getting settled, making money (freelancers are always worried about making money, because you never know when a contract will be cut or some editor who just a week ago said you were everything mentions the words “budget slashed”), and working toward a future that didn’t include me essay-hustling so much as getting laid. I had squandered my twenties by not having enough sex. If I were to rate my sex life in that decade through emojis now, I behaved like the yellow one with his eyes closed and a straight line where a smile should be. I should have acted more like a cross between the eggplant and the one nobody I know uses to signify actual raindrops. I had had plenty of ho moments, to be sure, but inconsistency over ten years riddled with the guilt that came with religious indoctrination and lingering insecurities had been the norm. Insert here that emoji that looks like someone gasping for air in utter agony.

  I told myself that my thirties would be different. In fact, I wrote a whole essay about it. Rest in peace to xoJane and its series of “It Happened to Me” essays. I never got to write one of those, but when the remarkable Rebecca Carroll was editing the site, I did pen a piece about my struggles with intimacy, the source of that anxiety, and my resolution to letting go of past trauma and inhibitions and starting to have sex without all the emotional baggage I had been carrying. After my piece was published, strangers online were encouraging in a “You go, boy—don’t press eject on your erections anymore!” sort of way. I also ended up talking about the piece on NPR with the Michel Martin. Michel Martin is so brilliant and so classy, which meant I spoke about the matter—in a Tell Me More segment entitled “Black, Gay, and Scared of Sex”—in as similar a manner as possible. I didn’t master the talk-radio voice, but I did manage to avoid being crass and saying something like “Sis, I gotta quit bullshitting and get to the nuts.” Gold star for me.

  But I could talk about my sex life with Chris like that. My bluntness gave way to an even more direct reaction from him. He was pointed in his critique—telling me that I should learn to carve out a little more personal time to bust a nut because it was healthy to have sex. It was also becoming a bit obvious that I needed something to lower my rising stress levels, which were sooner or later going to lead me to spontaneously combusting. He advised me to “be a better gay” and have sex without having to engage in the getting-to-know-you process.

  He had a suggestion on how to accomplish such a feat: going on “the apps.” I admittedly rolled my eyes when he said it. Hookup apps like Jack’d and Grindr were an acquired taste, and for the longest time, I had no interest in acquiring that taste. Some people loathe these sorts of apps for “ruining romance” and contributing to the decline of the art of conversation.

  So, about this: I too like the idea of two people meeting, connecting on some emotional-spiritual-whatever-phrasing-constitutes deeper-connection level, and going on to have amazing sex. To me, that gives way to the sort of fucking that leads to “Good lovin’, body rockin’, knockin’ boots all night long, yeah / Makin’ love until we tire to the break of dawn.” But as I was learning with my sandy penis, there are also times that call for sex more along the lines of “Only ring your celly when I’m feeling lonely / When it’s all over, please get up and leave.” I made peace with that, but I wasn’t sure if attaining the latter through an app was my kind of thing. I didn’t think of myself as pure, but partaking in the apps, which screamed Seamless for Sex, felt degrading.

  Then I had to check myself. Would using an app to have sex be all that different from the years I had spent on instant messenger and the direct-message sections of various message boards? What had I been doing on instant messenger and the direct-message sections of various message boards? Being a junior-varsity cyber-slut-ass ho, that’s what! Back when I had peak fear of intimacy and dying from complications related to some incurable sexually transmitted disease, I did some questionable things, depending on what God you serve and dogma you adhere to. Those would include doing virtual peep shows for people on camera as michael02808 with a Logitech camera purchased from Best Buy. Nothing was ever recorded—or at least I don’t think it was. (I guess I’ll find out when I launch my senatorial campaign sometime in my sixth decade of life.) As much shame as I felt each and every time I engaged in virtual ho shit, overall, I can’t say that I regret any of it. In a lot of ways, it helped me. It gave me validation as a sexually desirable being. If I could see the benefit of engaging in sexual voyeurism with a gleeful half-Black boy living in Amsterdam and bonding over our similar taste in nineties and early-aughts R & B acts, why not see the benefits of apps? If AOL and Yahoo Messenger had functioned as my virtual whoring, weren’t the apps just thotting in 3-D?

  The more I thought about it, the more my hesitation waned, and I eventually had a change of heart. It took a minute for me to truly engage with these apps, however. Initially, I would log on and promptly punk out with the underlying concern that motherfuckers were crazy out there. Ultimately, I fully gave in and signed up for Jack’d, which was described as a “gay men’s social network.” (Okay, sure.)

  It was a rocky experience for me from the jump. The first person that came over just performed fine work with his mouth and was promptly sent on his way. Once he finished and exited, I couldn’t find my keys. I sprinted to my paranoia and was certain that he had stolen my keys and was planning to return to my apartment to slit my throat. Hours went by, and I cursed the state of New York for not having loose gun laws like Texas did. Naturally, this was happening the day before New Year’s Eve—meaning my super was off for the next couple of days. As for calling a locksmith, well, there were two doors you had to go through in order to get into my building so me changing, the locks on both was not an option.

  At the time, I didn’t know many of my neighbors. The dude who kept saying, “Well, when you and the white people moved in,” to my immediate objection (“My nigga, I would be living in Harlem regardless, so don’t lump me in with folks who discovered Harlem four minutes ago after readi
ng about just how lovely it is “now” in the New York Times). The Black woman who looked like the older second cousin of Maxine Shaw from Living Single. The unfriendly white gay dude who lived in the unit between us. And that louder woman downstairs who remembered my name, though I could never remember hers (I just called her “Drunk Millie Jackson” in my mind). She was particularly unreliable. She was always banging on my window to let her in all the time. She constantly woke me up arguing with her man, whom she swore she was over but who never left. Whenever he put her out or she lost her keys in between her eighth glass of E&J and third Marlboro of the evening, she would bug me to let her in. “I’m so sorry, Michael.” A lie.

  None of these people seemed to be home. So, for hours I contemplated my new life as that fool who had trapped himself in his apartment for days because he was horny and allowed some man to show him exactly “what dat mouf do.” Some writers can be hermits who lock themselves in their places of residence for days at a time. I’m not that person, but even if I were, that should only be an option rather than a scenario forced upon you.

  After all of this drama, I ended up finding my keys in one of my kitchen cabinets while I was trying to locate a pan to bake the chicken nuggets I planned to have for emotional eating purposes.

  What actually made me feel the fool about all of this was that this guy turned out to be best friends with a man I would spot several months later and immediately fall for. This man was gorgeous, smart, incredibly talented, creative, kind, and, of course, from Louisiana—a southern experience I could easily relate to. God rest my stunning grandma’s soul, but he was the sort of man that even if she had a problem with her grandson’s being gay, she would have looked at this man and said, “Well, if you’re gonna be a homo, this is the way to do it.” It was too all-perfect, which is exactly why I screwed it up from the very beginning. Of course, when we eventually hung out, he didn’t mention that his bestie had told him much more than, “We went on a date once.” In fact, he had told him everything, because as that guy had already proven, it was hard for him to close his mouth. Fuck him forever for being a hater and not allowing me the chance to scare his friend away on my own terms!

  There were other problems too. Although I was using the screen name “Slim Shady” on Jack’d, the anonymity often afforded to users wasn’t going so well for me. I was getting messages like: “Hey, Michael. I love your blog, The Cynical Ones! You’ve been such an inspiration to me.” Then I started being asked if was “@youngsinick from Twitter,” and again came conversations about my work as a writer. It hadn’t dawned on me that to some—namely, those younger than me or around the same age I was, who largely populated this app—I was one of the few working gay Black male writers they might know of. When I shared this with my friend Alex, he said, “I don’t get how you feel like you wouldn’t get recognized. You’re an openly gay journalist who writes everything, everywhere. All these Negroes aren’t illiterate, ignorant bottoms.” Fair. On the one hand, it was flattering to be recognized and to be complimented on my work. Having said that, this wasn’t really the point of my being on the app. To this day, I’ve yet to get hard over someone complimenting me on one of my essays.

  Not to mention, while I had gotten over my own stigma against “the apps,” the same could not be said of others. I worried that being clocked would lead to people drawing certain conclusions about me, that they would judge me. Soon, someone I was interested in said that someone else had screencapped a conversation of mine from Jack’d and posted it in some Facebook group. I didn’t know what the group was for; it was probably for bitches that couldn’t mind their own business. I never asked what people were saying about my conversation. I just immediately deleted the app.

  A month later I reinstalled it, then days later deleted it again. I repeated that cycle for a while—as so many of us do. In between deleting after masturbating or reinstalling when that wasn’t enough, there did end up being one person who was more than just a one-off. I didn’t know his name. I never cared to learn it. He never knew mine, which was what I had intended. He came over for one reason, and when we finished, I sent him on his way. For the sake of following along, I’ll call him “Itchy.”

  In the summer of 2015, I had a bedbug scare. Before moving to New York City, I didn’t know a solitary thing about bedbugs. Upon moving here, I learned that bedbugs were some sort of real-life monsters under your bed only far worse, because these demonic beasts could attack every inch of your mattress and various parts of your body. Guess who woke up one damn day in July with huge red bumps on his left leg and the top areas of his back? The bumps on my knees and lower leg were as big as the head of that star of the cartoon series Bobby’s World. As in big as fuck. There were also bites from my knee down to my ankle. I immediately took pictures and sent them to my mama, whom I consult for every medical emergency. She didn’t know what the hell was on my leg and back. She thought maybe it was some sort of spider. Then it hit her and me at the same damn time: Are these the damn bites of those disgusting-ass bugs?!

  I saw no signs of them anywhere, so it was difficult to prove. I did drop an email to my landlord about it. He sent the super, who checked out my apartment—specifically the bed—and saw no signs of the pests. He came back with one of those bug bombs. I had read about those sorts of contraptions and how they didn’t work on bedbugs at all. So he dropped that lil’ bomb on me and had me out of my place for hours to fix a problem with the wrong equipment. What could go wrong?

  Two weeks went by, and I ended up not having any more bite marks. Not long after, I saw more bites in a similar pattern on my left leg, as well as on the top of my right arm. Frantic, I threw out a ton of things in my apartment—the bedspread, the sheets, the pillowcases—and a ton of clothes. The clothes I did keep, I went down the street and tossed them in the dryer to kill whatever bugs may have gotten on them, and then I stuffed them into multiple garbage bags. I also enclosed my mattress in one of those weird plastic things that’s supposed to keep bedbugs out. Most of this was semireasonable, but I have a habit of behaving like a full-fledged fool when frantic. I couldn’t get over the sight of the hideous bumps on my skin, so I put toothpaste on them. Why would I be so dumb? Well, my logic was that toothpaste could get rid of pimples, so maybe they could get rid of these too. Yeah, I have three marks on my leg that are basically burning stains from that. As successful as the cocoa butter had been in returning my skin to its usual presentation after sitting on a fire-ant bed in Houston, I didn’t have as much luck with it when it came to my decision to deal with this latest setback.

  When I finally met with a dermatologist, she charged me way too much money to say that she couldn’t confirm that the bites had come from bedbugs because in New York City, it could have been anything. She prescribed me a cream, but she could have saved me a co-pay and travel had she just filled my prescription when I called her.

  A month and change went by, and there were no bites. I couldn’t figure out the source of the problem. Was it the train? Was it the Magic Johnson Theater? Was it my gym? I had no idea until I let Itchy come through again. Sexual eruptions were not happening in the midst of this, so when Itchy came over, it was intended to be a much-needed release. The next morning, the bumps were back. That’s when I realized: IT WAS THIS MAN.

  I confided to my friend La, a person I loved but who was also someone who lived to troll me no matter the circumstance. I told her that I had been getting these bumps that could be from bedbugs, but since I had never found any, I could not know for certain. She went in. “Nigga! Are you fucking somebody with fleas?” It was via text, but I could feel her laughter through my iPhone. I didn’t know where she had gotten fleabites from, but after quickly Googling to find out what fleabites looked like, I decided that may have been the case. I was beyond embarrassed. All I ever wanted was a release, and I ended up with a prescription, a torn-up apartment, and the loss of a lot of clothes that I couldn’t even get a tax write-off for because I didn’t want to be resp
onsible for spreading the evil.

  For the record, the dude didn’t look dirty. I mean, he seemed like he smoked weed as much as I drank water, but there were plenty of squeaky-clean weedheads. Needless to say, I laid off the apps for a significant time. Once I did go back on—about a year later—guess who clocked me on Grindr? He wanted to come over, and what did I say? Have you bathed at least four times today? Have you burned every article of clothing you’ve owned within the past twelve years? Have you burned your place of residence down in the name of the antibug movement?

  No, I didn’t say any of that. I thought to simply block him and delete the app all over again and go catch up on the dozens of articles in my Pocket app that deservingly felt abandoned.

  But in the end, I let him come over, but only to give me head. I tried to rationalize it all. I would pull my sheets away. I would spray the mattress down as soon as he left. I would turn on gospel music and pray for an hour that I didn’t wake up once again being the Scratchy to his Itchy. Right before he came by, I knew how pathetic I was being. I was disgusted with myself. Still, I let him blow me anyway. It was not worth it. I put my balls at risk. What if whatever he had crawling on him had planned to finish me off by way of attacking one of my testicles and killed me? I looked in the mirror, stared deep into myself, and wondered aloud, “What in the fuck is wrong with you, Michael?” I was not protecting my sac or my spirit. I knew better, and it was time to act like it.