I Can't Date Jesus Read online

  The piece went live. I called my mom. Her reaction was one I will never forget. One I wrestle with forgiving her for.

  “So what are you trying to say to me? That you’re gay.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that explains why you and your brother’s lives have gone the way they have.”

  Of all the hurtful things she’s said to me—that I was a “self-centered bastard” for wanting to go away for college knowing we didn’t have the money (she apologized after I confronted her about it later) or that I would end up alone—this was the most hurtful. I also didn’t know what in the hell she was talking about. Was I rich? No, but by twenty-five, after the Great Recession and media imploding as the shift to digital occurred, I was managing to support myself with my words. I had made an appearance on national TV for my work and was continuing to build my career. I was not without struggle, thanks to my oppressive private student loan debt, but those struggles did not mirror my brother’s. Not to mention, those struggles had absolutely nothing to do with sexuality. If anything, many of them were influenced by the man she had decided to keep lying with, not the other way around. She had her fucking nerve to say otherwise.

  My mama went on to express disappointment about likely not having grandchildren anymore. I noted that technology could fix this, but she promptly dismissed it. After that phone call ended, I didn’t speak to her for months. I imagine she worried about my health. I’m sure she felt that as a Black man in this world, I had enough problems. Why further complicate them? I wish she had said that while she didn’t agree with my “lifestyle choices,” she at least hoped that I would be safe. I wish she had said anything besides what she had actually said.

  She was cold, mean, and condescending. I wanted to curse her out, outline detail by detail how she was nowhere near the sort of Christian she thought she was, and tell her to never talk to me again. I’m glad I didn’t stoop to her level in that moment—as much as I wanted to. By the time we spoke again, neither of us brought up what had been previously discussed.

  A few years later, someone asked me if I could choose to be straight, would I? I thought about it for a second and started to lean toward one answer, but then looked up and saw a man walking down the street in basketball shorts and an undershirt that I still need to quit calling a “wife beater.” He had a Caesar, his sleeve was tatted, and he was just the right level of shortness I tend to go for. In full-fledged creep mode, I told my friend to hold for a second so I could watch him. As soon I looked down at his ass, I quickly turned around and said, “Nah, I’m good with gay.”

  But I never forgot the hurt I felt by my mother’s words. It further strained an already-strained familial dynamic and had an impact on me in ways I wouldn’t realize until much, much later in my adulthood. As a gay man, you already have so many people against you. Your family—especially your mother—is supposed to be in your corner as you battle these people, not throwing sucker punches along with them. As hurt as I was, it did not stop me from becoming more personal in my work. If anything, it lit a fire under me to advocate even more for those like me. Those who faced similar struggles. Those who worried that their mother, the most important person in their lives, would be disappointed by something that’s beyond our control.

  Folks can feign that the world is much more progressive than it is, but my story still mirrors that of far too many others. Thus, there is the need to continue sharing it and to push the same acceptance of others. Not everyone else has to do this, but for those of us who do, we know why we have to. We are worthy of acceptance, but far too many continue to not view us or treat us as such—notably those with power. We can’t shut up until they do.

  You Will Die Poor

  It was becoming painfully apparent to me that I needed to get out of Houston—the sooner, the better. It was fall 2008, and I was full of frustration and feeling like the biggest fucking failure. I graduated from Howard a year later than I was supposed to. (Pro tip: try not to overexert yourself by cramming twenty-one credits a semester into your senior year in addition to holding a staff-writer job on the school paper, being president of the student chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, taking algebra at the very last minute knowing damn well that mathematics is the archvillain of your life as a student, and having the nerve to start blacking out and having a bunch of weird health problems. It won’t end well for you.) I didn’t get a job immediately after college. Well, I did eventually get a job offer to work with one of my favorite people in media ever, Danyel Smith, as her assistant; only when she told me she might be leaving her position at Vibe two months after my start date, I punked out. I got a letter saying I would be owing about $800 a month in private student-loan payments, and after comparing that with the offered salary, I took the advice of my family members who don’t work in media and declined the offer after accepting it, annoyed Danyel (we’re better now, I love her), and ended up living at home for a year and a half trying to fight off their suggestions I go do something else like teach or anything else besides media. I was scrabbling freelance jobs together and constantly hounding people’s inboxes searching for an in—a job, a writing contract, a referral, whatever would help advance my goals—but after more than a year back home, I was feeling lost.

  I needed to be someplace where I could realistically pursue my dreams. If I waited too much longer, I was going to need to get fitted for a straitjacket. Such fears led to me reluctantly taking Lauren’s offer to rent a room in her four-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles.

  Shortly before leaving, my uncle Terry stopped by to give me some advice and to confirm that I was making the right decision to stop bullshitting and leave Houston again. I hadn’t seen that much of Uncle Terry as I grew older. Indeed, I didn’t see much of my dad’s family at all, sans a few relatives every few years. But Terry always made his presence felt somehow.

  I was in bed, recovering from the previous night of cathartic debauchery, when I heard him—his voice, loud as all hell—talking to my brother Marcus. At the time, my brother worked for the county, and that got Terry excited. He made the following declaration: “Man, the next time they take me downtown, I’m going to say, ‘My nephew works upstairs, let me out this motherfucker!’ ” He was always a man with a plan, but a loud plan that woke me up. He asked Marcus where I was, and Marcus told him that I was asleep. “Shit, I’m about to wake his ass up.” Too late for that, Uncle Terry.

  I wanted to fake being asleep or play dead, but I knew that he was usually fresh out of damns and was unlikely to spare one in this instance. The light was turned on as I heard Terry shout, “Nigga, wake yo’ ass up!”

  I didn’t recognize him (in this moment he looked a lot like Rick James). However, he remained very much the same Uncle Terry who, as legend has it, once introduced a former in-law to one of his girlfriends as “the bitch that broke up my brother’s marriage.” The same Uncle Terry, who, after finding out that I had graduated from Howard University and was trying to launch a career as a writer, asked, “When you gon’ work in a building?” Shortly thereafter, he asked me to burn him a couple of movies for him on DVD. He looked like he was about to sing “Mary Jane” at any moment, but it was the same hysterical, slick-mouthed Uncle Terry (still committed to looking like Rick James).

  “What you doing still asleep? You must have been partying all last night.”

  I answered “Maybe,” only to add, “I probably got that from you.” Uncle Terry laughed. He took my smart-ass response as a compliment to his own smart-ass comment—the family way. He told me my dad had mentioned something about LA and asked what had happened to my plans about moving to New York. I explained that I thought California might be the better option for me for the time being, and his face lit up as if I had pulled out a blunt. He then told me that LA was “fast” and that I should be careful.

  “Man, it’s so much damn pussy out there. They just throw it to you.”

  I planned to bob and weave from both the pussy and the
conversation he wanted to have relating to it. He promptly added, “But man, don’t get married. Just hit-and-run.” Uncle Terry asked if I was going to sleep, but he didn’t care to hear the answer because he already had a request: “Bring ya ass outside and meet my people.” I wasn’t sure what these people were going to look like, given that, before entering my room, Uncle Terry had boasted to Marcus about how he still got “young hoes” of around twenty-one years old.

  Outside, I saw a woman with a weave on top of a weave and gold teeth. (No judgment from me on that. I’m from Houston. Who doesn’t have gold teeth?) I did wonder about the other girl, who had nails as long as the ones Coko from SWV used to wear, though. I was curious to know if she could claw the shit out of me if I offered one foul look. I leaned toward an empathetic yes and that she had the edge because, even standing a few feet away from me, her thumb could reach my cornea. I also briefly wondered if she owned a bidet, but just as soon realized that it wasn’t any of my business.

  I don’t remember their names. I’m not convinced Uncle Terry does either. Lovely ladies, though. I hope everyone had a good time.

  Terry let me go and I crawled back into bed, where I texted Lauren and thanked her for lovingly giving me the push to leave home and truly pursue my dreams—a friend and a roof included.

  —

  Upon my arrival in LA, I realized that the four-bedroom apartment came with a bit of an asterisk. The place as a whole was indeed huge and cheap, but, as far as bedrooms go, my room was more like a teensy office where you could fit a mattress. But it was better than sleeping at my mama’s house!

  The place was in Koreatown. K-town wasn’t exactly one of LA’s finest attractions. It sure wasn’t the safest. One of my new roommates informed me that a couple months prior to my moving in, someone had died right around the corner from our building during a gang initiation. Apparently, the victim was set on fire on the sidewalk. I knew what being held at gunpoint was like. Someone who lived up the street from me dying at the hands of another was also not anomalous to my background. But, uh, someone being set on fire on the sidewalk? That actually did make me regret not learning how to keep a blade under my tongue that one time this girl led a demonstration in ninth grade during Algebra I.

  It was not lost on me how despite living in Koreatown, I rarely if ever spotted a Korean in our part of Koreatown. I would have described this area as “diet hood” or “hood zero.” My neighborhood in Houston was more overt in letting you know that were in the hood. Angelenos: forever dedicated to appearing too cool at all times.

  So, yes, a little perplexing at first, but I thought, “I ain’t new to this, I’m true to this.” Thus it didn’t take long for me to survey my surroundings and learn the basics: knowing which streets were safe to frequent and which ones probably weren’t the wisest choices to venture to after certain hours; clocking that the house across the street from us might be a good place to get drugs, but never forgetting how that was none of my business. Unfortunately, there was a jolly round fellow across the street who lived in that very building who routinely smiled and waved at me whenever he spotted me en route to the gym or the grocery store. I guessed maybe he wanted me to be his boo thang? He had Desi Arnaz’s smile and Nino Brown’s business sense. As he was the resident drug dealer of the block, I supposed both qualities were perceived as strengths.

  Outside of gawking at me as if I were scrumptious when topped with horseradish, he never actually bothered me. He just stared, albeit profusely, at times. He didn’t put fear into my heart. I felt more along the lines of, You make my dick as cold as the temps scientists wish would stabilize at the Arctic so half of coastal America won’t eventually wash away. Yeah.

  Besides, if the white hipsters in the next building over were allowed to huddle up and sing their soft-rock songs at all hours of the night without the threat of violence, I assumed the area was safe enough so long as I avoided certain sidewalks. Not to mention, again, that I’d lived in far worse settings than this. What really mattered the most to me was that the apartment itself had all of the qualities every twentysomething on an intense budget who didn’t want to sleep on the street looked out for: cheap and decent. The room may have been the size of a Happy Meal box, but at least the box was in California instead of Texas.

  After a few months, the friend who had graciously invited me into her home turned out to be land’s answer to Ursula the Sea Witch. She became cold and distant, and our once-beautiful friendship soured as time went on. We made up years later, and no matter what, I’ll always love and cherish her, but that was not what I felt at the time. At the time I was like, yo, you encouraged me to come out here only to treat me like you want to run me over with your Corolla—twice, if no one is present to stop you from putting your car in reverse.

  I assumed her frustrations were rooted in the fact that she had abandoned her well-paying job in banking to pursue her dream of being a singer. She now found herself with little money and struggling to make ends meet. We were both pursuing our passions, but regrettably, we were not the cheerleaders each other could have used in those darker moments.

  Still, me being a recent LA transient, she was the only good friend I had in the city. All the people I cared about had either remained in Houston or had already relocated to New York after college. My initial plan had been to join them there, but I had ended up on the left coast—lonely as hell.

  Fortunately, I forged a friendship with Shani. Shani was a girl whom I “met” through an Internet message board I had wasted far too much time on over the years. This would include debating whether or not Rihanna had stolen Fefe Dobson’s old clothes and clippers when she relaunched herself with the Good Girl Gone Bad album. Back then, I used to wonder whether or not Rihanna needed to be deported. (Fret not, for I have thoroughly repented for my sins since then.)

  I used to think the idea of meeting someone from the Internet was a foolproof way of having your mother awakened in the middle of the night by a call confirming your untimely slaughter. However, you just can’t ignore the kind of bond you strike with a person over your shared devotion to Beyoncé.

  Shani had wanted to meet me as soon as she found out we were now living in the same city. I kept making excuses for why we couldn’t get together. I was far too afraid. Not of her stabbing me to death with a plastic fork from Church’s Chicken (their forks were especially pointy) or anything like that. I didn’t want to meet any new people at this point in time. That would have likely resulted in most people’s first impressions of me being that I was the worst sort of LA transient cliché: broke and immobile.

  I arrived in Los Angeles with only one freelance job that paid $1,500 a month. I also had the nerve to show up in LA without a car. Going to Los Angeles without a car is like going into a steakhouse without any teeth and without a dentures connect—only even more nerve-racking. Fortunately, soon after my arrival, two additional writing gigs presented themselves, and I started saving for a car.

  In the meantime, I rode the bus. If you want to learn how to give up on humanity, ride the bus in LA. The only other entity that makes me want to immediately abandon hope in mankind is a public restroom where you quickly learn how few people wash their damn hands. On top of the bus being crammed full of people who needed to better familiarize themselves with manners and strong deodorant, it was also a wonderfully shitty way to get around the city.

  Whenever I recall the days of riding the bus in LA, folks quickly hit me back with, “What about Uber? Lyft?” I moved to Los Angeles on the day Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as president. (Literally every other Negro flying that day was heading to DC, while I was moving to Los Angeles to watch the inauguration on TV.) This was 2009. There was no such thing as Uber. You had your feet and you had the bus, or the subway that no LA native seemed to know existed.

  So, yeah, I was reluctant to tell someone I hadn’t met before As much as I’d love to hang out tonight, I don’t know how to get to the suggested location by bus, and by the time we�
��re done I’ll need a cab ride I can’t afford. These sorts of musings were appreciated only on the East Coast.

  Months later, around my birthday, I finally admitted to Shani that I had no car, and thus no big birthday plans. Actually, no birthday plans at all. Ever kind and sweetly relentless, she offered to pick me up on my birthday and take me to the Improv for a show. She was super cute—long hair that looked to be from the finest scalps found in New Delhi. Oh, and the boobs. She had really huge, round boobs. Close your eyes and take that all in if such a type is your thing.

  When she arrived, she had a six-pack of cupcakes from Crumbs in tow. Not many people were willing to spend twenty-four dollars on a person they were meeting face-to-face for the first time.

  Shani told me that night she had been reading my blog, The Cynical Ones, back when it was nothing more than random rants posted on Myspace. She said all the nice things a writer with a dream wanted to hear: that I was funny, special, and that she could see me going very far in my career. She couldn’t see a damn thing at night because she was halfway blind, but she saw me being successful in the future and eating red velvet in the moment. Cupcakes and compliments produced a friendship. It was one that teetered on being one-sided—at least when it came to the bill. I was grateful but really uneasy with Shani’s generosity.

  She would insist on paying, and I would feel guilty for allowing it. I wasn’t good with accepting generosity. I wasn’t proud of that, but I was not raised to expect anything from anyone outside of immediate family members, and I wasn’t even good asking them for anything. My guilt translated into declined invitations to continue hanging out. Several declines, actually; I just knew that if I didn’t have the money, or had it but needed to save it, it was best to keep myself in that small room. Shani was only being nice, of course, but I continued to feel as if I were an undeserving charity case. What also got to me was the realization that I needed to return the favor and treat her.