I Can't Date Jesus by Michael Arceneaux

Author:Michael Arceneaux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria / 37 Ink

Itchy and Scratchy

“Your dick is dry,” Chris declared in an exquisitely executed matter-of-fact fashion. He was not wrong. It had been at least two years since I had had sex. Still, the bitch could have been more sensitive. (Counterpoint: sensitivity is for Ralph Tresvant and people who can’t always handle the truth.) I was in obvious need of at least three tablespoons of truth serum, and Chris proved willing and able to serve me some.

And so he did, over discounted well brown liquor at an East Village dive bar. I had moved and settled into life in New York, but true to form, my focus was much more on getting settled, making money (freelancers are always worried about making money, because you never know when a contract will be cut or some editor who just a week ago said you were everything mentions the words “budget slashed”), and working toward a future that didn’t include me essay-hustling so much as getting laid. I had squandered my twenties by not having enough sex. If I were to rate my sex life in that decade through emojis now, I behaved like the yellow one with his eyes closed and a straight line where a smile should be. I should have acted more like a cross between the eggplant and the one nobody I know uses to signify actual raindrops. I had had plenty of ho moments, to be sure, but inconsistency over ten years riddled with the guilt that came with religious indoctrination and lingering insecurities had been the norm. Insert here that emoji that looks like someone gasping for air in utter agony.

I told myself that my thirties would be different. In fact, I wrote a whole essay about it. Rest in peace to xoJane and its series of “It Happened to Me” essays. I never got to write one of those, but when the remarkable Rebecca Carroll was editing the site, I did pen a piece about my struggles with intimacy, the source of that anxiety, and my resolution to letting go of past trauma and inhibitions and starting to have sex without all the emotional baggage I had been carrying. After my piece was published, strangers online were encouraging in a “You go, boy—don’t press eject on your erections anymore!” sort of way. I also ended up talking about the piece on NPR with the Michel Martin. Michel Martin is so brilliant and so classy, which meant I spoke about the matter—in a Tell Me More segment entitled “Black, Gay, and Scared of Sex”—in as similar a manner as possible. I didn’t master the talk-radio voice, but I did manage to avoid being crass and saying something like “Sis, I gotta quit bullshitting and get to the nuts.” Gold star for me.

But I could talk about my sex life with Chris like that. My bluntness gave way to an even more direct reaction from him. He was pointed in his critique—telling me that I should learn to carve out a little more personal time to bust a nut because it was healthy to have sex.

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