I Can't Date Jesus Page 2

  The First Taste

  “Shh, be quiet! If they hear us, we’ll get in trouble.”

  That’s what five-year-old me whispered to the boy in the cot next to mine. I don’t remember his name, but I’ll never forget the feeling he gave me. He was tickling me, which sounds innocent on the surface, but the spots on my body where he attempted to tickle me made it anything but. Typically, you tickle someone to make them squirm for the sake of laughter. Yet the touching felt tantalizing, its intentions different. So was my reaction. We may have snickered as we touched each other, but it wasn’t so much comical as it was two little boys letting their curiosity get the best of them and enjoying a new and perplexing but nonetheless exciting feeling.

  I’ve never been one to nap, which meant that I spent much of the designated nap time at daycare doing something else. And that something else usually centered on an inappropriate touchy-feely game with other boys. I can’t even recall how the game began. It just sort of did. And, obviously, I had a favorite boy with whom I’d play the game.

  Fun came at a price, however, if you were caught. Such was the case for two other boys who had once been spotted moving a wee bit too feverishly underneath the covers. I couldn’t see exactly what they were doing, since they were a few feet away, but I could make out the laughter that came as a result of it. Apparently, so could one of the daycare workers. After hovering over them for a minute or so, she quickly ordered them both to rise and follow her—no doubt to call their respective parents.

  I once faced a similar scenario after I was caught behind the playground near the air conditioner pulling my pants down in front of another boy, who soon followed suit. It was like show-and-tell: the remix. Mrs. Rhodes, who ran the daycare, was not impressed with our take on that familiar pastime, however.

  Once Mrs. Rhodes found us, it didn’t take long for the tears to flow from my eyes, so afraid was I of what was coming next. I knew that I had enjoyed what I was doing, but I also knew that others—namely my parents—wouldn’t share my enthusiasm. So, I opted to make myself look as pathetic as possible in hopes of being granted mercy: I cried every drop I could get out in order to prevent Mrs. Rhodes from telling my mother I had misbehaved. With such natural acting ability on display, it’s no wonder Mrs. Harris would later cast me in the lead role of the play Lil’ Red Goes to the Hood a few years later. As a child, I had the reputation of being sneaky in my family. I personally didn’t think of myself as sneaky, but everything I just described was some sneaky shit. Perhaps a little manipulative to boot. The goal was simply to not get a whupping or be put on punishment. That near chance of my mom finding out just what I was doing on her dime at daycare spooked me—but it still was not enough to suppress my burgeoning curiosity. Instead, I was just more careful and a lot less audible.

  Sometimes I debate whether I’m violating child pornography laws while recalling my own childhood, but none of my actions were really all that different from those of the other kids who played “doctor.” This was the same game, only with a same-sex spin. Besides, kids of opposite sexes got in trouble for getting frisky with each other too. We were all a little inquisitive, and hell, Barney & Friends was boring. I did try my nap-time shenanigans with a girl once. It was about as much fun as singing along to a dancing purple dinosaur.

  As a young adult, I read an interview that Janet Jackson gave to the now defunct Blender magazine in 2004. In it, she discussed having a sense of her sexuality very early. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that I had a very active sexual mind at a very young age,” she explained. “I hope that doesn’t sound bad.” She went on to add, “When you’re a kid, you have little fantasies, but I saw myself being with Barry Manilow as an adult, not as a kid.”

  So, while Janet is a better singer (shut up, she can sing), dancer, and recording artist (sadly my rap career remains a figment of my imagination) than me, I can confidently claim that my taste in men might be superior, ’cause, girl, Barry Manilow? Who fantasizes about Barry Manilow, besides middle-aged moms who can’t clock their fellow queens? And just picture an adult Janet Jackson having sex with Barry Manilow. Actually, don’t—especially if you wear contact lenses, as that would be a waste of a perfectly good pair. Diff’rent Strokes indeed, sis. Thanks to that interview, though, I realized that I wasn’t some loose kindergartner. I was just exploring my natural urges like Janet had. I’m like Janet but before the Super Bowl.

  I’ve never been able to find a space in which I could talk about these events that felt free of judgment or presumption. No, I was never molested. Yes, every boy back then was a willing participant. Why was I doing it? I’m not sure, but it happened. I don’t regret it.

  Still, back then I had no name to call these feelings that I had for other boys. At that time in my life, I had not yet heard labels like “gay,” “bisexual,” or “queer.” It took the death of a relative from a then controversial disease to both enlighten and terrify me. And the term that did awaken was a slur that has stayed with me for much of my life.

  —

  I don’t remember much about my uncle Daniel. I’ve never been particularly close to my dad’s side of the family, as he never has been either. I have no recollection of what my paternal grandfather looked like, and while I would see some of his brothers and sisters, depending on the year and the holiday, I remember nothing about Daniel. Not a single thing other than how he died.

  My sole memory of him is seeing him at peace during his funeral mass at Saint Francis Xavier in Houston, on Reed Road. It was not my home church, but it was one of the few that remained predominantly Black, and was near my paternal grandmother’s house. No side of my family started in Texas. They all came from Louisiana, and with them the Catholic faith most of them were raised in. Many would come here, then as adults go off and turn to a Christian denomination better suited for them. And there, inside that quaint Catholic Church, I accompanied my mother to the front of the altar and started to sob hysterically after looking into Daniel’s open casket. Yes, I had cried at the daycare to get myself out of trouble, but I typically hated crying, in general. To be fair, though, I was a child standing before a corpse. I seized the moment.

  My mother was the one who later explained his death to me. She told me that my uncle, her brother-in-law, had died of something called AIDS. With it being only 1990 and drugs having ravaged the Black community throughout much of the previous decade, his death signaled an opportunity to instill a valuable lesson in me: don’t be like Daniel, the heroin addict. See where drugs can lead you.

  My dad didn’t want me to be like Daniel either, though he said so in another way: “Fuck that faggot.”

  He was in the midst of a drunken stupor. The kind that went on and on into the night until he finally decided to shut up, go to his bed, and stay in it.

  My mom: “Don’t listen to him, Michael. Daniel wasn’t gay.”

  I always took my mother’s word over my father’s, but something seemed amiss about what she said in comparison to what he was screaming about. She didn’t sound like she really believed what she was saying. She seemed uncomfortable, as if she had something to hide. Say, the truth that my dead uncle probably contracted AIDS from gay sex, sharing needles, or some combination of the two.

  So the truth needed to be scaled back a bit. I was a child, after all. There was only so much my inquisitive but young mind could probably grapple with. So perhaps with my benefit in mind, she explained death in much tamer terms. It was easier for the both of us that way.

  Yet my father’s screams of “faggot” only intensified as that night went on. Those screams are what I’ll never forget. That slur is what will always hit me in the pit of my stomach.

  “Faggot!”

  “Faggot!”

  “Faggot!”

  And on and on he went about what a faggot his dead brother was. The reasons why my uncle had never come around became clearer.

  My father had a habit of disclosing information about a given person or situa
tion he otherwise opted to forgo discussing whenever he had too much beer and brown liquor. This is how I discovered what it meant to be different and how some people might react to it. More important, this is how I learned how being different could lead to your demise.

  “I told you about sex when you were three,” my mother once explained to me matter-of-factly. This made perfect sense, because, even as a very young child, I couldn’t recall a time when I didn’t understand the mechanics of sex—or, at the very least, the context of where babies came from. My mom may have been a devout Catholic, but she was also a registered nurse who took care of new mothers. Sex was a fact of life, so she made sure I knew about it. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until Daniel, and my dad’s tirade, that I learned that when two people of the same sex touched each other, it could lead to death. Moreover, no matter how you were, there was certain behavior that could ostracize you—even from those that were your own blood.

  Those lessons were ingrained in me traumatically, and they only got worse as I aged and began to hear other words like “sissy” and “punk.” They all meant the same thing. They all made me trace myself back to those cots and what I had done in them underneath the covers. They all made me petrified. The same went for religion, which became further indoctrinated in me over time.

  As a result of all this, the games I used to play had to stop.

  —

  The older I got, the more pressed I became about “beating it.” It was so much easier said than done. For starters, I couldn’t even masturbate to girls. Visions of Janet Jackson’s dancer Omar Lopez were far more stimulating than the thought of Miss Jackson herself. My young penis didn’t seem to care how nasty she was. Lil’ Kim’s infamous promotional poster for her debut album, Hardcore, where she squatted in a leopard bikini, did not have the same effect on me as the rapper Ma$e did. Or Silkk the Shocker. And definitely not Will Smith, any hour on any given day of the week.

  I fought and I fought. I would lie in bed so many times telling myself, “Think of a woman! Think of a woman!” It would work a few times, but mainly my dick would turn into Play-Doh in protest.

  This essentially set the tone for failure after failure with girls from K–12.

  Things started off with Jessica, who assaulted me with her jacket as a means of declining my advances en route to recess. She was lucky I didn’t bite her with my buckteeth. Mean lil’ heifer. With Lucy, I approached her in a way that nixed the chance of a zipper scratching my eye socket. I passed the classic note: “Do you like me: Yes or no? Circle one.” Lucy wrote back, “I like you a lot but only as a friend.”

  In truth, most of the girls only liked me as a friend. No one had the language to write back, “Nigga, you gay.” Or “Beloved, you’re a homosexual.” Or, “Sis, stop this.”

  In middle school, I was fat and growing tits as fast as the girls were. Nothing happened. Bless my heart.

  I didn’t manage to have my first date with a girl until I was seventeen. I met Camille through a mutual friend, Nicole. Even though I had my license, I was not the best driver. Camille noticed this very early into our date. Fearing for her life, she offered a suggestion that came across as more like a demand: let her drive. Being a gentleman without any money to settle the multimillion-dollar wrongful death suit her parents might have filed, I obliged. The date went okay for a boy who clearly liked other boys and was awkward as hell around women in romantic settings. That is, until we reached the part where I—the guy—was supposed to make a move. See, what had happened was . . . I thought to do something but couldn’t follow through. Not even because we had both just eaten at a Chinese buffet and neither of us was packing a mint. I was too intimidated and not interested enough to overcome my anxiety. Instead, I shook her hand.

  Smooth!

  I never heard from Camille again.

  There was also a girl who had the same last name as mine. My last name is semicommon in Houston and very common across Louisiana, so the chances of us being related were likely. I tried to convince myself otherwise. She didn’t like me in the end. It was for the best: I have no idea why I was trying to act out a Game of Thrones incest prequel.

  Another girl by the name of Reese didn’t want to be my girlfriend, but she randomly yet graciously offered to help in another way. We were sitting in pre–AP chemistry and she was explaining to me how some football player had had the audacity to fuck her with his socks still on. Since I was a virgin, I assumed maybe his feet were merely cold. Sensing my naïveté, she pressed to see whether or not I had had sex yet. After I blurted out no, she quipped, “Oh, but you’re so cute. I’ll fuck you, Michael.”

  As appreciative as I was for her offer of a mercy fuck, I declined. If I couldn’t even force myself to try and kiss a girl on a date, I definitely wasn’t ready to kiss another’s crotch. I was beginning to think my curiosity about women had peaked when I still had my baby teeth.

  That is, until I met Alicia. She was by far the most beautiful girl I ever tried to pursue. Years later she would go on to be a professional cheerleader for an NFL team. She was so gorgeous that I’m certain she could’ve landed one of the players as a husband had she put her mind and her walls to it. At one point I believed I loved her. I believed it because for once I didn’t have to force myself to be into her.

  With these feelings came the idea that maybe, just maybe, I finally had a real shot at overcoming my nagging attraction to guys—including her ex-boyfriend.

  I wanted to make this work, so I did everything I could to try and get Alicia to like me back. For all my efforts, I felt as if she was into me, though for one reason or another it felt like she was ashamed about it. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but that was always my sneaking suspicion about her. Whatever it was, my feelings for her soured after she stood me up the day of the TRL Tour.

  Not only was it disrespectful to me but it was also offensive to the star of the show: Beyoncé. Who stands up Beyoncé? A damn fool. Making matters worse, Alicia was my ride! My mother was using a rental while her car was in the shop. She didn’t feel comfortable letting me drive the rented car with my name not being on the insurance. That, and she presumably knew I was lying when I said someone had hit the car when, in actuality, my terrible-driving ass had hit something. In my defense, my friend Kim had reassured me that I could make that turn. She was wrong. So wrong.

  Without a date and minus a ride, I frantically called everyone I knew, hoping I could find someone willing to be my chauffeur and guest in exchange for gas money and the chance to bask in Beyoncé’s greatness with me.

  In hindsight, my known devotion to Beyoncé might have been why I wasn’t having much luck with girls. At a hood-as-all-hell high school in a neighborhood where most of the boys’ musical palettes dealt with subject matter involving “swangin’ and bangin’,” it probably wasn’t the smartest move to note that while you did have an affinity for Southern rap, you could easily shift gears and sing along with the girls who bashed about bugaboos and boasted about being too bootylicious for you, babe.

  Even after all of this, I continued my pursuit of Alicia. After the seventh or so blow off, though, I bought a clue, gave up, and placed myself on an indefinite break from dating girls. It just seemed fruitless: I couldn’t get myself to kiss a girl or have sex with one when she offered, and I failed at securing the heart of the one girl I had managed to care somewhat for without force.

  By the end of high school girls were as intriguing to me as they had been on that cot more than a decade earlier. On top of that, for all the girls I pursued, there were probably at least two boys whom I found far more interesting. As a result, like many a gay, I used the Internet to vaguely explore an unshakable feeling. And through AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and the private sections of far too many message boards, I did the virtual equivalent of what I used to do in those cots during nap time. I tried to look at women in porn too, but arousal always required far more effort in comparison to feelings that were always innate and urgent.

&nbs
p; But while I was ready to finally give up on my pursuit of girls, I was not ready to go beyond that and finally move beyond adolescent sexual explorations with boys into a tangible same-sex encounter. I was physically ready for it, but mentally I was still caught up in the trauma of my childhood and the religion that told me that such a thing was an aberration of God’s natural order.

  —

  The way I was introduced to what it meant to be gay never left me. The death that seemed certain to come with it. That immediate resentment you were sure to face over it. None of that had been shaken yet. It didn’t help that pop culture—the only point many of us have in which to see our true selves—offered no images that I could relate to growing up, and nothing that could lift me out of the dark side of the life that I experienced early.

  So all I knew was the death of Uncle Daniel, the death of Pedro Zamora from The Real World, and the death of Andrew Beckett from the film Philadelphia. The only living images I could think of were Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather, whose skits on In Living Color offered portrayals of gay Black men that were cartoonish and buffoonish in nature. The same can be said of the author J. L. King, who helped spread the myth of the “down-low brother” that gave all of the women the AIDS with his secret gay rendezvous on an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

  All the while, there wasn’t sex ed in schools explaining to me that so long as I protected myself, I would be fine. The same went for what to actually do with these feelings and the mechanics behind them. I only knew what I had seen. And what I had seen was frightening and alienating.