I Can't Date Jesus Page 3

  So I just did me: literally. I thought of members of the track team—or, rather, every track team I had ever seen on TV. I thought of multiple rappers, singers, and actors. I thought of people I basically cyber-hoed with on IM. Every once in a while, I’d push myself to make my penis rise at the thought of a woman. Eh.

  Masturbation was also considered a sin, but I rationalized my actions by telling myself that as long as I kept touching my own penis instead of someone else’s, God wouldn’t grab Moses’s staff and knock the shit out of me with it. And T-Boz of TLC once released a promasturbation single entitled “Touch Myself.” It flopped everywhere else but on my personal CD player, and as a result, I relied on my right hand to keep me from living what I thought was the wrong way. The decision to sin as a solo artist, to oppose exploring my sexuality in more tangible ways, spurred unneeded misery for years to come. It only stunted my development and made me more anxious—and, by extension, occasionally awkward around men.

  It’s often said that knowing who you are, or at the very least possessing a sneaking suspicion of such early in life, is a blessing. The people who share this sentiment need to write it on a piece of paper, ball it up, and then proceed to pour barbecue sauce all over it as they eat it. Early self-awareness is a blessing only if who you are comes with a support system and an education. If you don’t have those, it’s easy to find yourself feeling stuck and sullen. I learned a certain part of my identity very early, but it was met with a near-instant confirmation of how unwelcome that part of my identity was to those surrounding me.

  I liked everything much better before all of this happened. When the look of a cute boy wasn’t soiled by the sight of a man in a casket, condemnation for his actions afterward, warnings of fire and brimstone, and images all conveying abnormality.

  That’s why it was so easy for an innocent tickle to turn into something that taunted me far longer than it should have.

  That’s why it was so easy to end up afraid.

  I wish I had been more daring. I don’t like how long it took me to embrace who I was. I hate thinking that what happened to me at six stopped me from being the best ho I could be in my teens and twenties. I try not to live with regret, but it’s difficult not to reflect on what might’ve been every so often. But I have also learned that we deal with what we can how we can until we get better. It took longer than it should have to deal with my past because where I come from, we tend to let things linger and fester. We bottle things up until it eats us inside. Sometimes we rupture in rage. Other times we turn to vices to bury the pain from whatever images and events feel unshakable despite the irony of us never confronting them head-on.

  It was not the correct way, but it was the only way I knew until I was able to develop greater nerve and take greater control of my own destiny and challenge what all had been instilled in me. I longed for the moment when I could be with another guy in the dark, lie there, and play in peace. For all my fears about intimacy and death, what was really destroying me all that time was trying to live a lie. Something had to give.

  I See a Priest in You

  I learned to bow down to big baby Jesus early in life. My mother, a devout Catholic, had given my brother and me kid-themed Bibles to read, biblical cartoons on VHS to watch, and plenty of other religious-themed material to keep us abreast of all things Christ Our Lord. When I say “biblical cartoons,” I mean exactly what it sounds like: I used to watch animated depictions like one centered on, say, Adam and Eve from the book of Genesis. Yeah, that adorable story about the time God created humanity and let us frolic around Earth butt-naked with friendly wildebeests or whatever until his second human creation, Eve, couldn’t keep her hands to herself and ate the fruit God had directly instructed her not to touch, as if it were His labeled lunch in the office refrigerator. The creators of these cartoons managed to leave out the way in which stories like these were used to subjugate women and promote patriarchy throughout history. Sure, the cartoons were just fine if you were into age-appropriate forms of indoctrination, but the storytelling and graphics were much sharper on Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers, G.I. Joe, and DuckTales (Ah-woo-ooh!).

  As for the “religious-themed material,” I’m referring to various cards depicting noted saints such as Saint Michael the Archangel, Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, and Saint Martin de Porres (the Jackie Robinson of Saints, y’all), among many, many others. These were akin to baseball cards. On the front, you would see an image with the respective saint doing something he was best known for. For example, the card with Saint Michael featured him over the image of Lucifer, whose ass God commanded Mike-Mike to drop-kick out of heaven. Saint Martin de Porres appeared solemn and Black on his card. Imagine a box of Uncle Ben’s rice, only with Ben looking sad because he knows he’s about to consume so many carbs and summer is coming.

  Of all the prayers I read on those cards, it was Saint Michael’s prayer I remember best:

  Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle;

  be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

  May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;

  And do you, O prince of the heavenly host,

  by the power of God,

  thrust into hell Satan and all other evil spirits

  who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls.

  Amen.

  When I was a child, my mom used to say that I was named after Saint Michael and Saint Joseph. (Indeed, my middle name is Joseph.) Several years later, my sister told a different story: “You were named after Michael Jackson,” she said. Apparently, Mom had initially wanted me to be named after my dad, which would have made me Wilton Jr. But my dad hated his first name, and no one ever called him that. His middle name was Joseph, and to this day, I’ve still only ever heard him known as Joe, Joe-Joe, or Doc. My sister, nine years older than I, was eventually tasked with helping name me, and being a huge fan of the Jacksons, she took inspiration from them.

  “I almost told them to name you Randy Jackson.”

  I love my sister so much, but we would not be as tight as we are if my name were Randy Arceneaux and I learned she was responsible for that act of inhumanity. While it seems that Miss Janet authorizes only Randy Jackson to speak to the press on her behalf, I deserve better than being named after a spare Jackson. I also don’t want to share a name with the American Idol judge who abuses the colloquial usage of “dawg.” He’s a nice guy, but no. Besides, the only desirable Randy I’ve ever seen was Randy from Home Improvement, but he was white and probably grew up to be a Trump supporter. Regardless of where my name came from, my mom made sure religion had an overall dominance over us, and whatever access point she could find to talk more about religion, she would exploit. In addition to the religious cartoons and saint-focused cards, I was also given an idea of how players on the other team operated. Dr. Marlena Evans provided the most memorable example: my mom had my brother and me watch Days of Our Lives during the period in which the main character, Marlena, was possessed by a demon; my mom clearly felt that this would teach us about the bad spirits roaming the earth. So throughout this soap-opera saga, I got an idea of what happens when the devil gets a hold of you. (Similarly, I got an early preview of one of God’s most unfortunate creations: a bug-a-boo. Seriously, why was Stefano DiMera so damn pressed? Why couldn’t the bastard just accept that Marlena didn’t want him? He was rich and ready to trick. Were there no other attractive blonde women around who could give him what he so desperately wanted? If not for him and his pursuit of her, Marlena would’ve never had a demonic freak living in her body rent-free.)

  Apparently, there were demons and bug-a-boos all around, so we needed protection. One method of protection came in the form of a scapular. A scapular is essentially two small pieces of cloth connected by a string that’s worn like a necklace, only inside of your clothes. As it was explained to me, the Blessed Virgin Mary assured believers that “whoever dies clothed in this scapular shall not suffer eternal fire.” That’s righ
t—when it’s time to check into the gates of heaven, all scapular wearers have to do is flash that bad boy in front of Saint Peter as if it’s a VIP wristband, and bam, they’re in there. If a scapular helped boost my chances of strolling into heaven like George Jefferson moving on up to the East Side, do you think a demon was going to be able to shimmy into me on Earth? Mhmm.

  I never took my scapular off. A lifelong klutz, I even showered with it on, because I was convinced I was going to slip and fall in there. No way was I going to risk dying in the shower and end up waiting in the general-admission line for admittance into heaven or end up like Marlena Evans. Plus, from what I had gathered through other required viewing in my home—those various Nostradamus-centered doomsday specials that NBC used to air, for example—we were only one bad person away from Armageddon. All that was left between us and fire on Earth was the third Antichrist attaining maximum power. Additional protection included getting on my knees every night and reciting my Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, and Act of Contrition, not to mention my prayers to Saint Michael the Archangel and, of course, the Christian child’s bedtime prayer, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.” I regularly attended Catholicism’s answer to Sunday school—catechism—which paved the way to my first communion and ultimately my confirmation, which was me making the choice to enter the church of my own accord.

  Yeah, when you’re basically house-trained for well over a decade into a religion and a certain way of life, it’s totally free will by the time you decide to join the church at sixteen or seventeen.

  With my mother being so religious, you went to church every Sunday and every day that the Catholic Church had designated a holy day of obligation. There really was no other way to be. Well, there was my father, who stopped going to church years before I was born. His Sunday ritual consisted of going outside and popping open a couple of baker’s dozens of beers while playing James Brown, Johnnie Taylor, 2Pac, and other CDs he picked out of my sister’s car (he was partial to Master P’s Ghetto D album) as he screamed to random people about whatever he felt was going wrong in his life. He had a better song selection than the organist at church, but his version of spirituality didn’t seem all that rewarding.

  By the age of eighteen, I could recall missing mass only once—and even then, I, along with my brother and sister, had to get permission to do so. The reason we were given a pass was because it was a storm so significant, even by Houston standards, that it made no sense to go out with all that rain and all that thundering and lightning.

  Over time, my interest in my faith grew beyond “I don’t really have much of a choice, now, do I?” I wanted to be more engaged, albeit for my own selfish reasons. Jesus was almost sold to me like a bit of a superhero (those cartoon depictions might have had something to do with that), leading me to think that he could do anything for me so long as I was persistent. All it would take was a lot of prayer. This premise worked perfectly for me, because I had so many requests for my super-duper savior. First, I wanted Jesus to get my father to curtail his drinking, which only made his character more choleric and, in turn, more susceptible to rage sessions that could turn violent. My request was based on the working theory that if he would calm the hell down, my mother would be far less stressed and kinder to her kids. He loved us, but the trauma he carried tormented all of us. Mom, of course, loved us, but she carried her own difficult past too. She was loving, though not always nice.

  Another appeal to Jesus was for some more money to go around. My parents made sure we were clothed and fed, and definitely went above and beyond to get us many of the things I nagged them for (cable, so I could watch professional wrestling pay-per-view events; a Sega Genesis; a CD player, even if not the preferred brand—a very bratty thing of me to think back then), but by the time I got to middle school, I realized what others were provided, and this had me beginning to look at Jesus in terms of gimmie-gimmie-gimmie, please, son of God. I did go from wearing the same pairs of Wrangler jeans in middle school that got me mocked by some to Tommy Hilfiger and Polo by high school, so praise be to Jesus, a summer job, and my big sister swooping in to help me out.

  But one of the bigger, far less successful requests from me to Jesus was to cure me. As I got older and gays grew in visibility, the Catholic Church and much of their Protestant brethren were becoming increasingly critical of homosexuals, their homosexual ways, and how homosexuals and their homosexual ways were spurring God’s stress levels to bounce all across the universe.

  Such criticism was never lost on me—me, who couldn’t help but notice this incredibly cute boy to the right of me. And his younger brother too. Whew.

  I knew early in life that I was drawn to boys more than to girls, but I learned just as early how such ways were frowned upon. What I had seen, heard, and learned haunted me. I wanted to change, and the only person I knew who could help me do so was Jesus. I convinced myself that he was going change me. Make me better. And by “better,” I mean “straight.” I was confident that it was going to happen. All I had to do was keep praying and wait. I was practically a walking commercial for those gay-be-gone groups who sing about the virtues of conversion therapy.

  I didn’t know it then, but in hindsight I can see that I was more in love with the idea of Jesus than anything else. Plus, I wasn’t that good of a pal to Jesus. At first, Jesus was like that kid your mama forced you to play with. The kind you were initially indifferent to but then suddenly fawned over once you selfishly realized what they might be able to do for you. At the time, I thought I would do anything for Jesus because he was going to do everything for me eventually—at least so long as I kept pestering him about it while being a good Christian. The relationship was transactional yet substantive at the same time, because I needed to believe in someone better than everyone around me. I needed to believe things would get better. However, when met with the proposition of taking a more defined role in my religion and in church, I met it with equal parts befuddlement and resistance.

  That proposition came in the form of me being recruited for the priesthood.

  —

  Yes, a priest scouted me, and, when the opportunity presented itself, he hit me with a sales pitch on why I ought to consider making a white collar a permanent staple of my wardrobe. The priest in question was named Father Martin, or “Father Marty,” as he preferred to be called. He was an ex-Methodist music teacher turned Catholic priest. He was an older man, but there was something youthful to him if you looked beyond his not-so-believable curly wig. That wig! It wasn’t a Jheri curl, because there were never any stains on his priest robes, but there were aesthetic similarities. Call it a second cousin of a Jheri curl who didn’t want to look as juicy. It was the perfect wig to wear if you were heading to a Rick James–themed costume party.

  Questionable tonsorial decisions notwithstanding, Father Marty was quite likable. He also made church a lot more interesting. When most Black folks discovered that I was Catholic, their immediate reaction was, “Catholic mass is so boring.” That’s rude as fuck, but can I spot the lie? Not really. Catholic masses are very much about ritual, but many of those rituals and the performances of them are very Eurocentric. The pageantry is beautiful and traditional, but traditional for whom? This is why so many Black Catholics went for the Protestants, whose services had far more pop to them. Perhaps being an ex-Methodist helped inform Father Marty’s perspective, in that he could see swaths of Black people at Saint Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church who were present but not totally present in the current setup of mass there. That led Father Marty to help usher in a gospel choir, which livened up mass alongside his more engaging homilies. Around that time, he also let attendants of the Spanish-only mass that took place two hours earlier every Sunday to follow suit with their own much-needed spins.

  That sort of inclusion was vital to the communities of these churches. Father Marty was one of the few Black priests I had ever come across, and the only American-born Black priest I knew of back then. No wonder he was looking for som
eone like me to join him. He needed a friend. Someone who understood the Black American experience. Someone who knew the electric slide was not the descriptor for a specific kind of damage caused by the storm surges of a major hurricane. Someone who could play a game of pitty-pat. (The Blacks collectively played spades, but this was the game I was used to kinfolk and friends playing at get-togethers.)

  The “Come work for Jesus” moment took place during a routine confession. It was my first one since I had gone away for college, where, for the first time in my life, I stopped attending church regularly. A wave of guilt came over me because of this, so while on a holiday break I had hoped to share this fact with Father Marty, then say seven or twelve Hail Marys and feel better about myself.

  Confessions were always tricky. Ideally, you’d sit there, air out all of your sins to the priest operating as God’s customer-service rep, and then leave with a clean slate following those Hail Marys and Acts of Contrition. Unfortunately, the thing about Catholic guilt was that while it might have made you feel bad enough to want to go to confession, you might end up feeling too ashamed to actually confess all your sins. Typically, Catholics would confess their sins behind a wall, but at Saint Mark the Evangelist, you had to do a face-to-face—which made it even more difficult for me to open up. Normally, I would tell the priest a few things here and there, but never did I get blunt enough to blurt out something like, “Father Marty, I keep watching Cruel Intentions on tape and fast-forwarding to the part where Ryan Phillippe steps out of the pool butt-ass naked in order to masturbate.”

  Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

  What would often happen was that Father Marty would hear me air a few sins—like cursing—and then we’d segue into short conversations about our religion. Father Marty felt that, despite my age, I was pretty knowledgeable about Christianity. He was also well aware of my mother’s commitment to the church and how those values were being instilled in her children. Given that she wanted grandchildren, I imagine she never had any intention of pushing me that far into the faith. After all, I was an altar boy only once, and the request happened at the very last minute during a Saturday mass (for those who cannot attend on Sunday, for reasons spanning from work to NFL games). But to an aging priest constantly pestering parishioners to pray for vocations to the priesthood, I looked like a top seed in the priestly draft.