I Can't Date Jesus Page 5

  He had different plans, however. The last time we hung out in New York, he informed me that he was not out on campus and had no intention of being so. He would not be dating men because he had other plans. Those other plans included pledging a fraternity and running for student government. He successfully did both, so I guess his plans worked out. As a consolation prize, he gave me head and threw that big, country booty in the air. I let him blow me, but I did not go all the way with him. That was for a few reasons. First, I was a virgin, so in that moment, he was the first person to suck my dick. (For that, I am forever grateful.) Having said that, I operated under the belief that the first time I had sex would be with someone I cared about. Someone who would make an awkward experience on which I had no insight more comfortable to engage in. So, while I liked this dude, I liked Jordan far more.

  I kept in touch with Jordan when I went back to Howard. By early fall, I was back on his campus, albeit to stay with Lawrence and hang out some more with the people I had met through him. When I went down to their cafeteria for breakfast, I saw Jordan. He spoke to me but was noticeably distant. I saw why: He had some kind of girlfriend. Claudia was introduced to me briefly by way of Lawrence. She was pretty, seemed really nice, and was Latina—which I would later learn was kind of a thing for Jordan. Jordan was a fake-ass Latino in that he was very much some country Black boy from Long Beach but had curly hair that kind of made him look ambiguous to people who didn’t know the various ways in which Black people can present. Even I wasn’t all that familiar with these subtleties, so I recall asking, “Ain’t your ass just Black?” He was, but evidently he had a preference.

  I should have immediately written Jordan off after this, but I listened to his rationale. It was the kind that a no-good man in a Black nineties romantic comedy gave. Yeah, she likes me, and we’ve hung out, but that’s not a thing. She thought differently, of course. To the point that a few weeks later, I got a phone call from her asking if Jordan and I had some kind of thing. Who had said something to her? I assumed it had been one of Lawrence’s gossipy friends. I never did get a definitive answer, but I covered for Jordan all the same. For someone who felt scarred by all the stereotypical images of gay Black men that I saw in media, it was rather ironic and ridiculous for me to be willing participant in a collegiate version of that god-awful “down-low brother” hysteria. But I wanted Jordan to like me. I wanted him to like me too much—till it came at the expense of my own integrity.

  Still operating from the house of idiocy, I invited Jordan to come down to DC for Howard’s homecoming. I had a plan in mind: I would rent a car and a hotel, we would hang out, party, get drunk, and then have sex. I knew he was far more experienced sexually than I was, so I was willing to let him, uh, lead, and formally introduce me to homosexuality. I had a sneaking suspicion based on my porn searches which side of sex felt more natural, but I thought, I am falling in love with this person, and with love, I will probably like it from him. This was what happened when you listened to too many Mariah Carey ballads.

  By the time he got to DC, I was under so much stress. I had experienced bad luck in landing in some of the classes I needed to finish my major, so I was taking twenty-one credits in order to graduate on time. I was also the president of the student chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, a position I had never wanted but had been pressured into taking because I was the most experienced person left in the organization. On top of that, I was a staff writer for the student newspaper, the Hilltop. As a result of doing too much, I rarely slept, had constant headaches, and was setting myself up for a fight with my body that I would undoubtedly lose. On the first night of our hotel stay, Jordan found me passed out in the bathroom. I had absolutely no idea what had happened. I ended up blacking out again two months later at home, where I knocked my head on something (A cabinet? A sink? I don’t know, I blacked out) and had to be taken to the emergency room because I was dizzy, couldn’t see anything, and could barely talk. A CAT scan found nothing wrong, but I was told that my stress levels were extremely high and that I needed to cut back. The end result was me failing a math class and staying an extra semester that eventually became an extra year. The additional debt was far from appreciated (though at least I wasn’t dead).

  On the next night of homecoming, we went to a club called Love. We had the best time—until it ended with us both being robbed at gunpoint. You see, before DC became gentrified beyond recognition, Love was located in an area—Northeast DC—that wasn’t especially nice. I had wanted to go ahead and pay to park in a lot, but Jordan said no, we could just park on the street. As someone from “the hood,” I was wary of this, but didn’t want to argue about it. However, when he told me where to park, I did note that it didn’t look like the safest place.

  “It’s fine.”

  So fine that after leaving the club and going to our cars, I turned around to see a gun in Jordan’s face; another man put one in mine. My initial thought was “Fuck, I am a terrible date.” I had gone from blacking out one night to a jacking the next. None of this was that sexy shit. Jordan was used to being robbed, though, as I later found out. I suppose they thought he looked like a member of B2K and was easy to rob. Okay, but don’t drag me down with you. I gave them my wallet but kept my phone and the rental car keys. But they got everything Jordan had.

  When we got back to the hotel, I called my mom to tell her to cancel my credit cards. Hours later, she called me to say she was surprised at how calm I had sounded. I told her, “That’s ’cause I won all these scholarships and took out all these loans to go here, and I coulda got robbed at home for free.” As for the police officer, a Black woman with a hairstyle that felt a decade too old but woulda been cute for Halle Berry in Boomerang, she spent much of the time bemoaning how much she couldn’t stand Howard and a lot of Howard students. I just got jacked at gunpoint, and you want to bitch to me about my Bison brethren? Girl, give me this lil’ piece of paper just in case I need to send it to my bank or credit card companies and fuck off forever.

  The next morning, Jordan and I woke up around the same time, and I had an idea: teach me how to suck dick. He laughed at my phrasing, but while the act doesn’t necessarily require instructions, he coached me anyway. I wanted to do more, but he said no. I wanted to have sex, but he declined. I was both offended and embarrassed. We went to the homecoming game after that. My friend Sarah, whom I will love forever, slid me $50 to get me through the rest of the weekend, and after the game let out, I took Jordan to the bus station and he went back to New York.

  Literally days after that, he fessed up: that he was seeing someone else—not a woman this time—and that they were now official. I wanted to scream, Why in the fuck did you come here, then? You dumb-ass bitch! but instead I just sighed a whole lot and tried to get myself off the phone. That should have been the end of him, but it wasn’t. We still talked every so often. I still flirted with him, and sometimes he would flirt back. I still wanted to have sex with him.

  Several months went by, and I was back in New York for another summer of interning: Chris Rock had a comedy-writing program with Comedy Central, and I was one of the lucky eight participants. I saw Jordan the morning I moved into the NYU dorm the network put us up in. He wasn’t with that boy anymore, but as I later learned, he’d carried on with the same bullshit. With him, it was a lot of interest expressed whenever I wasn’t in his physical presence. When I was, he would hold back or be completely disengaged. One of the few times we hung out around that time, he introduced me to one of his closest friends. I had met some of his friends before, but not any from back home. We went to karaoke, and they were surprised I had never done karaoke before. I hadn’t because I hated the idea of karaoke, and after doing a rendition of the Isley Brothers’ “Between the Sheets” and Slim Thug’s verse on Beyoncé’s “Check on It,” I confirmed my disdain for it. Jordan took my karaoke virginity, and all I got in the end was another instance of gross disrespect.

  After a while, some Lat
ino boy showed up, and you had to have been a blind moron not to notice that this boy was into Jordan.

  “You wouldn’t bring someone else you’re talking to around me, would you?” I asked. Jordan said no, but then I saw them holding hands at one point. I wanted to grab my glass of cheap well brown liquor, gulp it down, and then crack that glass over his head. Instead of catching a case, I left abruptly. Before all this happened, I lent him a shirt to wear on his job interview. When he invited me to come get it back, I could make out the boy in the background, in Jordan’s bed. I told him he was a dishonest piece of shit, grabbed my shirt, and left.

  We didn’t speak much after that. I went back to school. Although the extra year made me feel like I had failed a bit, at least I was able to graduate in a year that Oprah Winfrey was the commencement speaker. No, I didn’t like her down-low-themed conspiracy peddling, but it was Oprah. I loved Oprah. I could feel my credit score rising as she inspired us to go off into the world and let our purposes guide us. She told us not to worry; that we were in good hands because God had our back. That “Howard teaches you to define yourself by your own terms and not by somebody else’s definition.” That there was no such thing as failure because failure was merely “God’s way of pointing you in a new direction.”

  I applied this advice toward the future that awaited me in my professional life, but it was also something I wished to apply to my personal life. Jordan had left me feeling like a failure. I had accepted myself for my sexuality, but I wanted someone I found attractive to find me desirable in turn. I wanted an ideal setting to let go of my inhibitions and experience my sexuality in totality. I wanted to connect with someone emotionally before I connected with them physically. I wanted it my way. None of this was wrong, per se, but my mistake was that I had been pursuing a man who had never been the person I had pretended he was. We had enjoyed moments in which we opened up with each other. When I told him about my chaotic childhood, he told me about his own issues with his father. When I told him that I wanted to be a successful writer who would go on to do all of these amazing things, he let me in on his dream of being a singer. I encouraged his dreams the way he encouraged mine. But I also worked harder on achieving mine. I had plenty of insecurities, but I didn’t have as many as he did—particularly about being a gay man. If I was on the road to acceptance of self, I should not have been so eager to race after a man who was traveling in a completely different direction than I was. I was the only one trying to make something really happen, and I did this despite sign after sign telling me to let it go. I didn’t feel like a failure for trying, but I did regret my reaction to what I perceived to be a failure.

  —

  When I finally lost my virginity, it was to one of his friends. It was not the sort of gotcha that some people do in order to get back at a person they feel wronged them. What happened was, I was back in New York job hunting, and while out with Maiya, with whom I was staying, we went to a gay club. Given that Maiya was one of the first people I told that I was gay, she wanted me to be in a space made for me. We drank, we danced, we drank even more as we continued to dance. Then I ran into Adam, one of Jordan’s friends, and he joined us until Mai decided to dip. “Keep partying” is what she said.

  I asked about Jordan and how he was doing. Adam told me he was fine, but then, nearly out of the blue, Adam told me that he had sex with Jordan and was very descriptive about everything they had done together. It infuriated me. I kept drinking. I didn’t need to be drinking anymore, as I was already drunk enough, but I had been given information that I wished I had never known.

  I don’t remember everything that happened next, but I do remember the key points. I recall knocking out a bit on the couch at the club and Adam helping me get up while letting his hands linger in places they shouldn’t have. Before we left, I asked for water. I don’t remember drinking the water. All I remember is we were walking in some residential area nowhere near where I needed to be and Adam was moving in to kiss me. I didn’t push him off, but he had more in mind than just making out. A lot of the homes in New York have basements, so they also have steps that lead to that downstairs area. He took me into one such place, pulled down my pants, and repeated some of the very acts he had described doing to Jordan. I didn’t want this, but I didn’t stop him. He pulled my pants down farther, lowered me down, and quite quickly put himself in me. And with that, he took my virginity.

  I don’t remember how I got home, but I remember feeling disgusted with myself. I hadn’t enjoyed myself physically or in any other way imaginable. This was not how I wanted to lose my virginity. This was not the person to whom I wanted to lose my virginity. Hell, that wasn’t even the position I wanted to be in sexually to lose my virginity. I wanted to be the one in control, and this was thriller! None of this was what I wanted. And yet, I had let it happen. I had let it happen because I got drunk and drunker in reaction to information that, when it boiled down, had hurt my feelings. I am not excusing him for taking advantage of me. I am just disappointed in myself for never wanting to engage in that type of risky behavior only to do just that while inebriated and emotionally wounded.

  I told Jordan about it much, much later. He was bothered that Adam had told me their business and was apologetic because he knew that I wanted sex to be special. It may not have been his fault, but I resented him for everything else. He knew as much, and whenever we did speak, it would always go back to how I had been wronged. I said I had forgiven him, but I hadn’t. He was still upset with me over some things I had told him in the heat of the moment. It didn’t matter, though. We were not near each other, and it felt right to just go about our lives. I had no expectations of ever seeing him again. And that was fine.

  Unfortunately, because God loves to troll, I ended up being in the same metropolitan area as Jordan a couple of years later. For me, I was dream-chasing in Los Angeles, and for him, he was back home in Long Beach doing . . . the hell if I know. I learned this because of Facebook, where I should have had him blocked. But I can be so hardheaded sometimes. I reached out to him, and while texting back and forth, we decided that maybe we should hang out under the pretense that what had happened was in the past and we could just move forward. He did seem different in the ways in which he talked about himself and where he felt he was going. He was different in how he talked to me as well. Even when annoyed out of my mind with him, I had a habit of still being flirtatious.

  He proposed a plan: that we do what we hadn’t done years ago in that hotel room. I professed a bit of shock that he would say this, but I let him know that it was fine with me. So we kept talking about it, which caused me to believe that while we may never be a couple, we could act like one. In the past, I had always called him my fake boyfriend because he gave me the kind of grief you have with a trifling partner but none of the perks. But now, the perks appeared to finally be on the horizon.

  It never happened. The day we were supposed to link, something came up. Something kept coming up. Then he fizzled away. He hadn’t changed. Jordan was the same person with seemingly good intentions who turned out to be a self-centered jackass. The sort of person who would lead people on because they enjoyed the way someone made them feel. I conflated his ego with his having real feelings for me. I hated how he made me feel. I hated that he played me. I hated that in allowing him to play me, I played the hell out of myself. I hated that he only bolstered so many lingering insecurities in me. My talking to him, albeit infrequently, was my way of keeping the lines of communication open with the underlying hope that one day, we could have that moment. But I was seeking validation from the wrong source. I kept trying to repress my anger at him by forcing civility with the hopes that he would give me something I wanted. Something I felt would help an awkward, humiliating situation make more sense. The mistake was to see it all for what it was: I had tried, and it hadn’t worked out. I had tried way too hard and for too long when I should have let it go.

  All the same, I may have failed in losing my virginity in
the way I envisioned, and I may not have gotten Jordan to want me as much as I wanted him, but I did learn from the experience. I couldn’t make someone love me. I couldn’t make myself desirable to someone who didn’t want me. I couldn’t compel someone to see me in the way in which I wanted to be seen. All I could do was be myself, and if someone didn’t fool with it, find someone else. I didn’t quite master that with dudes that came after Jordan, but with him, I reached a place where I could let him go.

  —

  By dumb luck, I saw him again years after the exchange that had led to nothing. I had finally moved to New York as an adult, rather than merely spending time there for a summer to intern or as some frequent visitor. I was standing in line for a concert when I saw him walk toward the end of it. Our eyes met around the same time, and we both spoke. By then, I no longer carried that same degree of hostility. He apologized many times for things that he’d done and said, but mostly for how he had made me feel. I had heard some of these same apologies in the past, but I hadn’t thought he truly meant them. By then, though, I decided to stop giving so much energy to him and what did and did not happen with us.

  I let him wait in line with me and the friend with whom I had come to the show. He let me know that his boyfriend would eventually be joining him. He wanted to let me know that he had someone. Maybe he had a flashback to past acts of foolishness that woulda got him popped. Whatever the reason, gold star for him having a man, but that didn’t matter anymore to me. His appearance had changed, but he remained cute enough for at least a (hate) fuck.