I Can't Date Jesus Read online

  My mom tried to be encouraging.

  “I don’t think you have hepatitis C, but even if you do, while it’s not curable, you can have a full life. We can figure it out. And look at Pamela Anderson. She has it. She’s okay.”

  My response was me choking on my crying and barely audibly quipping, “BUT SHE LOOKS TERRIBLE.” That was more down to styling and makeup than anything, but it made sense to me in that moment (Pamela Anderson has since said she’s been cured, so my bad, sis). For more than a week, I worried about what my life would be like if that doctor’s warning rang true. I called constantly trying to get answers.

  When I finally got called back in, it was a Black dude who handled the blood who told me that I didn’t have hepatitis C. He looked puzzled when I asked him about it. As if that should have never been on my mind. That same doctor from before came into the room and then gave me that similar look. I reminded him that it was something he’d led with.

  “It was only a possibility. I didn’t think that was likely.”

  Bitch, why in the fuck didn’t you say that at the time, ho?!

  He said that while my liver levels were off, there was nothing that gave him great concern. He then suggested that much of my problems could be related to anxiety and stress, so he prescribed Xanax. I took one of those at night and couldn’t open my mouth fully without being in pain for a month and change. I was experiencing teeth grinding during all of this, but Xanax only exacerbated the problem. For the record, only Celexa and Klonopin treat me right.

  I will hate that motherfucker forever. A few weeks after all of this, I saw his old ass working out at the gym. I wanted to trip him on the treadmill, but the universe stopped me. I hated him for seemingly reacting to what he saw as a gay mannerism by throwing out the possibility that I had something incurable that would lessen the chances of me living past my fifties. I hated him because that fear made me turn to my mom and worry her. My mom had had to endure far more pain than any person should ever have experienced, especially a person as beautiful, generous, and loving as she was. I felt like I was piling on.

  I didn’t want to disappoint her. I didn’t want her to feel guilty and make her feel as if keeping us in the home with our father was responsible for behavior that she didn’t approve of.

  I don’t know why she stayed with my dad. It’s not for me to know. However, I know part of it is the family she made with him and needing to take care of us as best she could. She’s sacrificed a lot of her life for us; the least I can do is make her proud. To succeed. To be healthy. To not give her more reason to worry about me in a world that already provides ample reasons for a mother to worry about her Black children. In the end, all of this guilt I’ve carried with me is centered on not wanting to fail my mother.

  I can escape fault over a misdiagnosis and someone else’s biases. I am guiltless in that sense. But to choose writing for a living and to be unabashedly gay and write about being unabashedly gay and learning to reject the interpretations of Christian doctrines she lives by: that’s all on me. I have to be who I am, but how does one reconcile that with who she is?

  What happens when I fall in love and enter not a situationship but something that is purely mine? Will she not want to meet him? Will she shun me again? How will I react if she does?

  When Hurricane Harvey hit, I frantically stalked my family to make sure everyone was safe. On the night when the rain consumed the entire city of Houston, a little after midnight, I called both my mom and sister. You could hear the terror in their voices. They did have reason to worry. My aunt had to be rescued by Coast Guard helicopter. Other relatives had to be rescued. I noticed days later, a friend from high school had lost her brother and sister-in-law in the flooding. My sister had a two-story home, so she was safer than my mom. She wanted my parents to come to her house, but my mom didn’t want to go.

  Still, she was scared. “I’ve been through many hurricanes and storms before, but nothing like this, Michael.”

  There was a specific way she pronounced my name. Her Lafayette, Louisiana, accent had remained pure in spite of decades of distance. I didn’t allow myself to think this would be the last time I would hear her say my name, but in the days after, when I knew everyone was safe, I reminded myself of the fragility of life. My mom could be a bit morbid. She was always talking about death. Part of that was waiting for heaven. Her reward for doing what she felt was right and living by what she felt was God’s will. I hated thinking about my mom not being here anymore. But the older she got, the harder it was to push such inevitability aside.

  I want my mom to be here forever, but if that’s too much to ask, I want her to stick around for as long as possible. I only wish that we could reach some sort of accord about that part of my life. I want her to embrace that part of me and engage with me about it. I want that wound to close. I have to accept that it may never close. But while I don’t want to feel like I am failing her, I have to acknowledge that she’s right: I care too much about what she thinks. She may be my hero, but we have very different ideas about how we get to heaven. I hope she reaches hers, and I hope I have mine. If she never changes the way she feels, it’s her mistake—one I can’t keep trying to fix.

  If nothing else, I want her to know that I wouldn’t be who I am if not for her. My dreams would have died long ago if not for her support. And I hope she knows that I know that no matter what has been said, it came from a place of love and concern. Neither one of us has ever wanted to let the other down. That’s always been a testament to how much we love each other.

  Sweet Potato Saddam

  “It’s hard to wake up to a reality that so many people hate you.” It was days after the 2016 presidential election, and this white gay man couldn’t believe that bigotry was so rampant in the United States of America. The fact that an apricot-hued asshole ran a vile campaign engulfed in racism, sexism, xenophobia, and audacious idiocy and was handed the presidency was unfathomable to him. I smiled when he said this and proceeded to raise my Black hand and rub my skin.

  Trust me, I know the feeling.

  This was exactly why, as much as I wanted to see my new gay white friend and allow tequila the chance to temporarily pull me out from under post-election stresses at his happy-hour mixer, I was wary about going. When it came to my closer friends—you know, “the Blacks,” as he referred to us—many of them didn’t want to talk about it at all after a while. After the initial shock, most of them needed a pause. Not many were ready to deal with what the election results signified.

  What frustrated me then and what has frustrated me every single day since is that we’re supposed to believe that what happened was that anomalous. Yes, a self-righteous FBI director made an impact. As did a hostile foreign power adept at catfishing on a budget by way of social media. The same goes for a superficial, profit-driven media more invested in the spectacle of a bigoted reality star huckster managing to get this far.

  However, as surprising as the result was, in the end, all Russia did was exploit the racial biases America has never truly addressed. Voter suppression had just as much to do with Hillary Clinton’s defeat as James Comey did, if not more. Overall, fragile white people in desperate need of an ego boost are why he won. It’s a reminder that after eight years of a scandal-free Black president and his gorgeous, dignified family, white folks voted for a malignant-narcissistic sociopath with no political experience as his successor. A man whose political legitimacy was only achieved after he jumped on and further publicized a conspiracy theory that questioned President Obama’s legitimacy as an American citizen. A man with the intellectual curiosity of a dead gnat whose purported fortune was secured not by his self-professed business acumen but by the licensing of his name, which only managed to mean anything again thanks to an NBC game show. A serial liar and an admitted sexual assaulter. References in various rap songs from Black folks who just wanted to denote wealth and went with the known blabbermouth with lingering mythology notwithstanding, we never liked that asshole.
We’ve long known he was racist. We knew what “law and order” meant. We never forgot what he said about the Central Park Five. A lot of us were aware of his sordid history with housing discrimination. Birtherism was still fresh on all of our minds.

  He won all the same. He sold a white electorate the dream of returning the country to the state in which Black people, Latinos, and Muslims all knew their places, where immigration was out of sight and out of mind, in which queer and trans people were relegated to dark corners and closets rather than standing tall on television or using the bathrooms of their choice. And, overall, he made white people feel less fragile about their standing in America (no matter how deluded such questions about it were). The revisionist history about the campaign that promptly began after the election results would be hysterical if not for the dangers it imposed on the rest of us.

  All the election did was give anyone who can be deemed “other” a reminder that we are all hated that much. Yet we were collectively encouraged to give the president-elect a chance. I admire the graciousness of “Crooked Hillary’s” concession speech. She declared that man “is going to be our president” and that “we owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.” I liked the purple suit she wore that morning, but not enough to believe that bullshit. I don’t even like saying that jackass’s name. Since he won, I’ve intentionally tried to avoid using his name, and whenever an editor has allowed me the chance to not use it, I’ve put something else in its place.

  A list of every name I have used instead of the one on his birth certificate:

  Tangerine Mussolini

  Habanero Hitler

  Minute Maid Mao

  Honeysuckle Lenin

  Sunkist Stalin

  Sweet Potato Saddam

  Bankruptcy Batista

  Carrot Cake Chávez

  Real Estate Hitler

  Sweet Potato Pie Satan

  Orange Moon

  Peachy Pol Pot

  Sunny D Zedong

  Tropicana Jong-il

  Colby-Jack Führer

  Mandarin Orange Mugabe

  Papaya Batista

  Parmesan Putin

  Hoghead Cheese Hussein

  Garlic Bread Gorbachev

  Because fuck him. I owe him as much respect as he gave anyone not white, male, straight, and rich during the campaign: none. The same goes for his supporters. So many people in media—all of them white—have asked us to give his supporters the benefit of the doubt. As if they deserved that. As if the choice of supporting a monster didn’t warrant an equally vitriolic reaction.

  We were supposed to understand their “economic anxiety” and not further brand them as deplorables, despite their vote securing such tagging. Of course, they each loved to highlight that some of those people voted for Obama, the political equivalent of “I can’t be racist because I have a Black friend.” For some, perhaps it makes a charming bedtime story, but the reality is, to vote for Barack Obama does not mean you cannot be racist. Racists have lain down with those they hate, and the second they pull their pants up, they’re right back to putting those they view as less-than back in their place. A vote is nothing. The man they voted for is a bigot. If you vote for a racist candidate, you are either an unabashed racist or you are complicit in racism. The other immediate talking point relates to caution. That the republic would survive because our institutions are stronger than any one man. Of course America will survive in the wake of a win for bigotry; bigotry is what birthed and has long nurtured her.

  For the few Black celebrities who lent their support to him before or after the election—Omarosa, Kanye West, Tina Campbell of Mary Mary, Jim Brown, and Steve Harvey, to name a few—I’m as disgusted with them as I am embarrassed. Steve Harvey has at least acknowledged that he should have listened to his wife, Marjorie, and not gone to meet with him. In theory, I understand why Harvey went to talk with him, but, as I imagine his wife made clear, that devil can’t deliver anything to Black folks but grief and pain. Yes, leave it to a Black woman to know better—eh, minus the reality-TV villain and Mean Mary of Mary Mary, anyway.

  It is remarkable how inept the administration has been. In the nascent period of this crock of an administration, very little has been done to remedy the circumstances that helped him ascend to power. No one wants to own up to their roles. Only a minuscule number of folks in the mainstream media want to have an honest discussion about how pervasive prejudices are in America. And then there is the man himself, who is relentlessly rancorous and has plenty of energy to stay that way despite eating nothing but fast food and well-done steaks with a gallon of ketchup on the side. Evidently, evil makes for a far more potent stimulant than caffeine.

  I do worry about us. Us, the marginalized and the oppressed. The people who don’t deserve to suffer even more because far too many white people will put their whiteness ahead of everyone’s benefit—including their own. I fear what will happen with all those judges he appoints who will outlast him and chip away at rights we barely enjoy now. I think about the white supremacists with extra pep in their steps in the wake of his political ascension, no matter how disastrously it ends. And I worry about all of us who have to remember with every single tweet from him, every sensationalistic and callous comment made, every poor decision from his administration, and every terribly choreographed cable-news segment in response to them that we are hated that much, and not enough people want to call a thing a thing. I, too, worry about those tasked with covering it all. Like me! Do y’all know how tiring it is to find new ways to say how terrible everything is? How dumb he is? How vile he is? How much of a liar he is? He and his band of nitwits are exhausting on every fundamental level. And it doesn’t help that there’s a band of political reporters and pundits suddenly realizing that American politics is tribal, angry, and polarized. Where in the fuck have y’all been? A white cloud? Oh, look, I answered my own question. Who will survive Sweet Potato Saddam’s America? Hopefully my hair follicles and hairline.

  Epilogue: Yeah, Everything Good . . . We Good

  In all of the years I have been in New York as an intern, a frequent visitor, or as someone actually paying rent to live in the city, I’ve been to the Bronx a whopping four times. And, yes, I do feel like I owe Jennifer Lopez a sincere apology. Each time I’ve gone, though, I’ve been reminded about some aspect of my past that used to haunt me.

  The first time I went was by accident. I might’ve been paying rent in New York for all of about a month when I hung out with some new friends that I met via Twitter. While drinking sugary drinks that gave me more of a headache than a buzz, I met some boy, quickly exchanged numbers, and, after a few texts, ended up ditching those friends to be with him—which led me to the Bronx. That was me trying to be less rigid about sex and more open to meeting men and enjoying myself.

  The second time was impromptu also. A year and change had gone by, and I was out with friends I’d met the old-fashioned way. One of those said friends brought his boyfriend along whom I found out had a brother who owned a club in the Bronx. He wanted to know if we wanted to keep the party going. I’m not turning down free alcohol on a Saturday night when I don’t have any other plans besides obsessing over deadlines or watching Netflix and then mentally punishing myself for not tending to said deadlines first. I could have sworn I had seen that club on an episode of Love & Hip Hop: New York, but I’ll just say if it was good enough for Trey Songz to show up for an appearance, it was good enough for me. In any event, at the end of the night, I got treated to a bit of nostalgia.

  As we exited the club and walked to our Uber, a fight broke out in the middle of the street. One of the men, shirtless, angry, and incredibly attractive, tried to throw something through the car window of the person he was fighting. The car was in the middle of the street. They just . . . decided to fight then and there. The image instantly took me back to Houston, where I saw Teddy, a classmate from middle school who had since transitioned, outside of a gay club fighting her ex-boyfriend. That car was
in the middle of the street too, and much like that fine-ass man fighting in the uppermost borough of New York, Teddy somehow found a brick and threw it through her ex’s car window. In my mind, I was thinking, “Aww! It’s just like home!” On the ride back to my apartment, I thought about how brave Teddy always used to be. Always certain of herself. Never cowered to anyone talking slick. She was always brave that way. It took me a while to be even half as brave.

  The next time, I went to the Bronx Museum of the Arts to cover Art AIDS America, a traveling exhibition originally cocurated by Rock Hushka and Jonathan David Katz for the Village Voice.

  The exhibit included some 125 works—paintings, photographs, sculptures, mixed-media pieces, videos, and prints—loosely divided into four categories: Body, Spirit, Activism, and Camouflage. Much of what stuck out to me was one section in particular—Camouflage—focusing on the challenges many artists faced in creating personally relevant work after legislation passed in 1989 that restricted federal funding for art dealing with homosexuality and AIDS. The same goes for the rampant homophobia gay men faced at the time. Facing criticism about the lack of Black artists featured, the exhibit had ended up adding three by the time it reached the Bronx—amounting to a whopping eight. Still, the first thing you noticed in the exhibit was Marlon Riggs’s 1989 documentary Tongues Untied, which focused specifically on the uniqueness of Black gay identity. I thought about my uncle. I thought of all the gay Black men of my own generation living with HIV. I thought about some of those I knew who had lost their lives in recent years to AIDS. I thought about my paranoia about becoming one of those people. I thought about how I learned to stop allowing that paranoia, that fear of dying, to prevent me from living.

  That feeling was with me the next time I went back to that museum to speak at an event organized for gay Black men who had launched their group with the intent to instill a greater sense of community among queer, gay, and bisexual men. I was asked to talk about “creative expression.” I assumed they wanted me to talk about writing for a living, but to be blunt, as an essay-hustler whose work is largely made up of responding to awful people and their horrible antics in pop culture and politics, I increasingly find myself exhausted from both the news and humanity. Still, I agreed, because I felt it was important to be a part of something with that sort of mission—even if I was a bit grouchy.