I Can't Date Jesus Page 16

  All too often, when it comes to tackling the relationships between gay Black men and gay white men, it is discussed widely within the context of sexual attraction. This places whiteness on a high pedestal and plays into the pathology of minorities. Aww, this Black boy just wants some of that pink print. Poor him. I realize that the topic will never disappear because racism is stubborn in that way, but I do find the emphasis on this conversation to be stifling. There are plenty of ways to discuss disparities between white men who don’t identify as straight and their nonwhite counterparts outside of whether or not the latter meets the standards of the former.

  For instance, in 2015, the Advocate published an essay entitled “Is Gay Dating Racism Creating a Black HIV Crisis?” To his credit, the author of the piece, Daniel Reynolds, did ultimately speak to someone from the CDC who explained that other factors played a larger role, but the problem with the piece (and there have been many more pieces since then published along that narrative line) was that it did not frame the topic within the right context. Indeed, two years before that was published, the New York Times published a report, “Poor Black and Hispanic Men Are the Face of H.I.V.,” which examined factors behind higher HIV rates among poorer Black and Latino men. In it, they detailed how Black and Latino gay men were less likely to take drugs before having sex and were no more likely to engage in risky behavior than their white gay counterparts but that our infection rates were higher all the same. The reason behind the problem at hand had nothing to do with sexual racism and everything to do with the failure of health organizations to reach both groups.

  Months after reading that essay in the Advocate, I got an email from the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) announcing the launch of a new online training platform to “help doctors, nurses, and medical professionals unlearn racial bias and elevate the quality of health care for Black gay men and Black men who have sex with men.” In the press release for this initiative, Omoro Omoighe, associate director of health equity and health care access at NASTAD, said, “There is a lot of discussion right now about implicit bias and police brutality in the US—but the truth is, this is a huge challenge for health care providers as well.”

  For the first few years I lived in Harlem, I walked up and down 125th Street nearly every day. There are a lot of reasons to hate walking up and down 125th. Despite New Yorkers’ reputation for being fast walkers, it’s a damn lie, along the same lines as “Winters here ain’t that bad.” There are also the constant cries of “BLACK MAN, LET ME HOLD A DOLLAR!” Sometimes I do give them a dollar if I have one on me, or I’ll at least buy someone standing homeless outside of that Dunkin’ Donuts on Lenox coffee and/or a breakfast sandwich, but when I don’t have it, damn, you ain’t gotta cuss at me! I can’t forget the men from the Nation of Islam trying to hand me the latest edition of the Final Call that blasts white folks while the religion itself maintains homophobic views. It literally takes everything in me not to hear one of them call me “brother” without yelling, “Y’ALL DON’T LIKE ME EITHER, NIGGA!” Sometimes I just want to rap along and bop to Nicki Minaj in peace, you know?

  What has grated on my nerves the most about 125th Street is that I have only once been asked if I wanted to take an HIV test. Harlem and Washington Heights have some of the highest HIV rates in the area. Where are the people regularly handing out condoms and encouraging tests? Why should I only be offered either during Harlem Pride? I can get a fish sandwich from a solar-powered truck on 125th. I can go to Whole Foods and get some organic chicken wings, turkey legs, and surprisingly well-made macaroni and cheese. Random folks will ask me if I have a kid who needs a checkup or teeth cleaning. If I can get all of that, why can’t I get some genuine health outreach?

  So when the CDC now claims one in two gay Black men will acquire HIV in their lifetimes, whatever is in someone’s Grindr box is inconsequential to a problem that is a crisis and can directly impact my life. We can talk about sexual racism, but do not center the fate of a minority health crisis on the sexual desires of white men. To wit, when I finally did start to see ads for PrEP in the Harlem area, they predominantly featured white gay men or white gay men with Black gay men. They couldn’t have at least one Black couple together? In Harlem, of all places!

  Interracial relationships are perfectly fine. I could never fault them, because they gave us Mariah Carey and Barack Obama. In the same way Will Smith and Omar Lopez helped me figure out that I liked boys more than girls, the same goes for Joey Lawrence, his brother Matthew Lawrence, and Jonathan Taylor Thomas. There are some white men whom I find attractive. I would still take Ryan Phillippe down, and Nick Jonas is more than welcome to join us. Having said that, the imagery isn’t lost on me. It does ultimately cause people to believe that is the standard, or at least a type of relationship worth aspiring to have. A white man not wanting me is not be-all and end-all, though. At this point, I find this topic boring, and I never want to be asked about it again. Why be so focused on the “preferences” of racists? Why help feed the ego of whiteness by centering it? I’d rather run my head into a wall several times with Ronald Reagan’s racist “welfare queen” speech loudly playing in the background than boo-hoo about not being Black enough for a white boy to want me.

  If someone’s “preference” is that I am not good enough, oh well. It’s their loss. It doesn’t require that much of my energy. Someone who values you less will not be convinced by your public crying about wanting to belong. I am less interested in wanting to belong and more passionate about being equal. Not being treated equally is why HIV is a greater reality in my lifetime than it is in the life of a white man. We have to stop giving other people’s preferences so much power. We need to value ourselves so much that no outside force, no prejudice—even one disguised as preference—can make us feel second place.

  I suppose I learned this early, because as a little Black boy growing up without wealth in the South, whiteness and white people were already far removed from me. I already knew what price they placed on me, and it was very little. But I didn’t need them to tell me of my worth. I want others to have this same feeling, because if you are a nonwhite person measuring any part of your value based on a system predicated on diminishing you and all those like you, you are on a fool’s errand. You can’t win by their metric. It’s not designed with you in mind.

  I treat every man—Black, white, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern, indigenous, or whatever the lovely melting pot of bae miscegenation created—who doesn’t want me the same way: fuck him, I’m cute.

  I’ll Dial That Number

  The nightmare has always been the same. My father has reached the maximum potency of his alcohol-induced rage fest, and the main target for his wrath is his wife and my mother. Words are exchanged between the two of them, his profanity-laced tirades shifting to threats on her life, and then it happens: he tries to make good on his threats. I’m present in the room as he attacks her, as he tries to fulfill his long-standing promise to murder her, but I am paralyzed. For the life of me, I can’t get to her. I can’t stop him from trying to kill her. I am immobile, stuck watching the unthinkable happen right before me and helpless to stop it. Seconds before she looks to be leaving this world, I am quickly awakened. The reaction to the dream is always the same too: I’m always shaken by what has just happened, and for a few moments, I lie there in my devastation, in my feelings of failure over not being able to stop the tragedy.

  These nightmares started when I was child and have followed me through my teenage years and my twenties. As for my thirties, they’ve happened only three times: on back-to-back nights during a trip home for Christmas, and another time when I was visiting a friend who had just suffered the loss of his mother.

  As much as I love my family, my hometown of Houston, and the friends I still have there, it can be hard for me to go home. Time and distance have helped, but it is difficult to revisit not only the scene of the crimes but also the visible damage the events that happened in our home
have had on the house itself.

  There was always a buildup to his acting out. My dad, who never exhibited an appreciation for standing still, usually hung around outside, where he could move around with the freedom that his penchant for constant mobility commanded. When he was out there, he’d be cutting the grass—maybe for the billionth time that week—or tending to the flower beds. Or he’d be working on his old truck. Or he’d be standing outside blasting music—anything from Johnnie Taylor to the Isley Brothers to Barry White to whatever CD he’d pulled out of my sister’s car to help him stay current. There was a period when he played Master P’s Ghetto D album constantly.

  He was never alone, though. He was always surrounded by people: friends and “friends” alike. They were playing dominoes, some of them smoking, and of course there was a lot of shit-talking happening. Some of those acquaintances presented as friends, but as time went on, all it might take was one miscommunication for an argument to occur—one that may or may not have led to blows. Much of that could be attributed to alcohol, of which there was no short supply. Vodka. Cognac. Beer. His “water,” as he’d call so many things. If it wasn’t someone else that triggered his anger, it was the baggage he carried inside of him. My father was a land mine, and the last thing a person like that needed was to self-medicate with alcohol. But when you didn’t have the tools to deal with all that had happened to you, you turned to whatever vice you needed in order to get through the seconds, minutes, and hours of a given day. You turned to it when you thought about moments of the previous days, months, years, and decades that continued to torment you. And then you repeated the cycle of your abusers by taking out what ailed you on those closest to you.

  My mom served that role; therefore, he would direct his venom at her. Trivial shit would be the jumping point: what she cooked and how it was not like his cooking, what she didn’t cook for him because he suddenly forgot how to cook his own meals, or that she didn’t want to engage his almost childlike need for attention and validation. Not feeding into whatever he felt he needed led to the slamming of cabinets and doors, and then to the snippy remarks. These were all the actions of someone fishing for a reason to be mad and lash out.

  My dad could be an intimidating presence, but I never witnessed my mom display fear of him. If anything, she mostly responded to his antics by ignoring them. As he screamed, she responded with silence. We all mirrored her response. It was better to pay him no mind rather than allow him the chance to spoil everyone else’s mood. But he was so vigilant in his attempts to get a rise out of her, to get her to say something back, to give himself a reason to make it more than it ever needed to be. That was why, after a certain point, he would often manage to get under her skin and get her to respond to his cruelty in kind. My mom was adept at knowing just what to say to fuck his head up, so when he ushered her to her breaking point, she would send him into an even greater tizzy. Once that happened, he would really get going.

  “Fuck you, Di.”

  “I’mma kill you, Di.”

  “Die, bitch.”

  “I swear in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost I’m going to kill you.”

  “Dial nine-one-one. I’ll shoot at them too.”

  “Fuck all y’all.”

  These were classic lines from the usual script. He would subject us to blasphemous rants intended to make light of my mom’s devout Catholic faith. This only made him appear all the more like the devil. He also often used to shout about resenting not just marriage but having a family too. I long suspected that neither of them had envisioned being married to each other, much less with a family that effectively kept them bundled together out of financial necessity, but if there had been any lingering doubt, he made sure to confirm it. I didn’t doubt that he loved us, but that didn’t excuse his behavior. The darkness inside of him and his commitment to cruelty were displayed even more when he would point out the abuse that my mother had endured as a teenager. How did a man do that to his wife and the mother of his children? How did any person do that to even a stranger?

  And then there were the times he struck her. We would often huddle around her in the living room in preparation for the moment he might dare to do so, because if he jumped on her, we would all jump on him. That was why he would holler about 911, daring us to dial that number. I vividly remember the one time one of us actually did. He snatched the phone and broke it. The police came anyway. Before answering the door, he hid the guns he had in our home. Once he made his way outside, he put on a show. He was actively resisting arrest. I peeked out through the blinds from the bedroom that my brother and I shared. He was in handcuffs, leaning on the car trying to kick his feet in the air to fight off being put inside the police car. He ultimately was placed in the back seat and spent the night in jail.

  The very next day, I had to get up and go to school. While waiting at the bus stop, a kid named Joe mentioned that he had heard what had happened. I’m sure everyone had. My dad was a very loud person who made sure he knew every single person surrounding us. Yes, that might make him a good neighbor, but that also meant what I had long suspected: most people knew how he was and could hear his tirades in the middle of the night almost as well as we could. It was embarrassing, and something I never talked about. On that morning, as Joe mentioned him to me, it was clear that even if I wasn’t talking about myself, others might be.

  My dad never let us forget the fact that 911 had been called on him. He used it as fodder for future fits and fights. He resented us for what he felt was our having turned on him. That took a lot of nerve, given that he was both parent and tyrant. He never owned what he did; he only gave excuses.

  Shortly after many of these arguments, he’d enter our rooms to talk about his past. He had been abused as a child. His father would beat him profusely—even holding up a loaded shotgun to his chest. They lived in a house out in the woods in a tiny town called Raywood, Texas. There were not a lot of people around. The homes were not even in close proximity to one another. Still, you could apparently hear my dad’s screams from the beatings given by his father. Those were calls for help—help he never got.

  “He fucked with me,” my dad once explained on his knees, full of tears, and red beyond belief.

  Sometimes he managed to get me to cry along with him. The sympathy would soon dissipate, because he would go back to bothering my mom and keeping us all up for the rest of the night until he decided to go to bed. It was selfish and vile, and those tears were emotionally manipulative. Yes, he provided context for why he was the way he was, but at some point, you had to make a choice to do better. After all, wasn’t he cognizant of the underlying issues?

  But again, he didn’t know any better. A lot of the beatings he had endured had occurred because he was trying to defend his mother. I don’t know exactly what happened because no one really speaks on any of this, but I’ve heard his mother ran off and left him there with his father, his abuser. I used to see his mom growing up, but that stopped after a while. It’s a shame not having a connection with members of a such a large family, but it’s a mess of other people’s making that I have no interest in righting. I don’t even remember what my dad’s father looks like. There are no pictures of him in my home. I know his name was Nelson, and my sister told me that he used to love me. I have no recollection of that, and I don’t care. He was a monster that brought havoc, and that trait was passed on like the shape of one’s nose.

  The frequency of these outbursts varied. Sometimes it would be every few weeks, but in other instances, every couple of months. They always happened during the holidays, though—notably Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas, but for as much eagerness as I had for those holidays, there was also trepidation over whether or not he would let his demons ruin our celebrations, as they had ruined so many other things.

  We used to have other kids over. That was, until this one time when my father argued with my mother in the kitchen, grabbe
d her by the shoulders, and viciously pushed her back and forth against the kitchen cabinets. I was around ten. I didn’t let anyone come over my house after that, minus one time a decade later—and even then I couldn’t enjoy myself because I was on pins and needles about my dad’s behavior.

  Other fears followed me into adulthood. I didn’t drink until I was twenty-one. Of course, that was the legal age, but I worried so much about becoming an alcoholic like my dad. I knew I was susceptible to addiction because of the number of blood relatives I had who were addicts. I’m thankful for my high tolerance, yet I have to make sure I don’t drink when in any sort of volatile state, because that paves the way to addiction.

  My dad’s rants about marriage stuck with me. I struggled with getting close to people. I worried that I could potentially bring that kind of pain to someone else, so I was always wary of getting close to someone—even when I was in pursuit of men. It wasn’t until my thirties that I had an epiphany: I was attracting unattainable people because I was no less unattainable. I didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t know how to let my guard all the way down. I knew how to volunteer the kind of information that gave folks the sense of connection; it was a tactic to throw them off the scent of who I really was and what ate away at me. I became even better at it, because the few times I felt I was trying to get close to people, they rejected me or used what I had divulged against me. That deepened my underlying cynicism that falling in love with someone opened the door for them to destroy parts—or all—of me.

  That was how I saw my parents. I imagined that whatever love they had for each other wasn’t enough to overcome their own respective issues. I knew I was not my parents, but I also knew how easy it would be to become like them. In life, people will disappoint you, but the key is to learn how to find within yourself a sense of peace and confidence that keeps you whole during the times when you are let down.