Since I Laid My Burden Down Page 4

When the woman examined Gary’s dick for lymph nodes, he got the biggest boner ever, but casually assured the girl, “It’s natural.”

  Even through all this, DeShawn at some point found a way to get bored. He dozed off and started snoring. Gary, midway through getting fingered by yet another premed student, had to stop his exam and wake DeShawn up. He then asked DeShawn to leave the room. He was fired on his first day—a new record for DeShawn.

  On the way back to Oakland, DeShawn yelled at Tomas, “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that I was going to get fingered at this job?!”

  Tomas replied coolly, “Well, the job description was in the email I sent. Did you read the email?”

  DeShawn shut the fuck up because he totally hadn’t.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Now, back in Alabama for the funeral, DeShawn noticed a distinct shift in power at his old church. DeShawn’s mother had become the preacher.

  It happened just like this: his mother started to say she was having visions at night. The sweet Lord was calling on her to speak for him.

  This all had been brewing for a bit. His mother left the church for a while and joined a Primitive Baptist church on the other side of town. She soon left that church because she thought it was unfair that they didn’t allow women to preach. She soon switched back to the Missionary Baptist church she grew up in. “Us Missionary Baptists are very liberal,” remarked DeShawn’s aunt. He took this explanation with a grain of salt.

  There wasn’t much in the way of competition for his mother. What had once been a congregation of roughly 120 people some twenty-five years ago, now had dwindled to about thirty. “People are losing hope,” his mother said.

  For generations the church functioned as theater, concert venue, meeting place, and real-time soap opera. It helped the field people deal with the boredom and futility of their lives. But years of drama had taken its toll on the congregation’s faith in the infrastructure. Before her there had been three generations of corrupt preachers. They courted women in the church, bought nice cars with the congregation’s money, and were generally annoying fucking people.

  Burned forever in his childhood memory was one particular pastor who had the really fucking annoying habit of starting every statement in his fireside-revival-style sermons with, “AND MY BIBLE TELLS ME . . .” He would say, “AND MY BIBLE TELLS ME . . . SEEK AND YOU SHALL FIND”; or, “AND MY BIBLE TELLS ME . . . WE WILL BE FREE OF ETERNAL DAMNATION”; or even creepier shit like, “AND MY BIBLE TELLS ME . . . I’VE BEEN WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB.”

  One particular time the preacher got so gnarly with his pronunciation that he hacked up a huge green loogie that then sat on the corner of his mouth. In his holy fever he tried to wipe it off quickly with a kerchief and ended up smearing it into his beard, where it stayed, faintly iridescent, for the rest of the sermon.

  Later that same sermon, some bitch got so drunk on the Holy Spirit that she started screaming, “YAAAAAAAS JESUS,” and nearly tossed her baby into the back pew. Luckily, a man caught the toddler. As a child, DeShawn would see this hullabaloo and stick his nose back in the X-Men comic hidden inside his Bible. He later figured he learned more about morality in a year of reading X-Men comics than he would reading the Bible ten times in a row. This was truth.

  He dreamed a lot, and was a slacker. “Why do you move so slow?! You got your head in them books all the time!” was his mother’s favorite saying growing up. She threatened to take away all his comic books and the Greek myths he hoarded. She trembled for her son’s soul. DeShawn’s mother feared his impending homosexuality as if it were a fast-approaching meteor about to hit Earth any second. For a while everyone, even DeShawn’s mother, told him that he would be a preacher. The clues were in the way he engaged with people, his high emotional receptivity, and his way with words. All faggots carry these traits early on, and all the adults basically knew DeShawn was a faggot.

  Even his appearance was a telltale sign; “Men are going to try to molest you because of your fat ass,” his mother often told him. The summer he turned eight, a since long-gone deacon slyly slapped him on the ass while he was ushering. In terms of Christian rhetoric, anything that read as “invitingly feminine” was a danger to be dealt with. It was the same shutdown they gave to Jezebel and to Eve, and now DeShawn’s fat ass would have to endure the same tired fuckery. Adults put the idea in his head that he would be a preacher in hopes of killing the mounting rebellion they saw growing in him.

  In the years after, when his life was no longer circumscribed by church and the rebellion fully-developed, DeShawn escaped as far as he could: to California. He had sex with Satanists, was wooed by Reiki healers, and even danced naked in the woods on Pagan holidays.

  During those same years, his mom would morph, too. There was Sister Pearl, the choir mistress who had given some thirty years of service to the church, but was not allowed to become a mother of the church on a technicality. It was a rule (made by the corrupt former clergy) that in order for a woman to become a mother of the church her husband had to be a deacon. Sister Pearl’s husband was the town drunk and a notable whore, leaving her out of the running. Upon DeShawn’s mother answering the Lord’s call, she lifted the ban and made Sister Pearl a mother of the church. DeShawn cried at her induction ceremony, Sister Pearl dressed all in white, singing in her signature lovely voice.

  His mom had eased up on him too. DeShawn’s short trip home for his uncle’s funeral turned into one month, then two, then three, then more. His mother asked him if he would be the paid church assistant, help with the books, act as secretary at church meetings, and hand out the wine during sacrament.

  She offered the position on one condition: that he keep all his pentagram tattoos completely covered and not mention his own “religious proclivities” to anyone in the church. “Most of the congregation is too old to go on the Internet, they don’t know anything about you unless you tell them.” She side-eyed him.

  “I won’t, Mama. I promise,” said DeShawn, and that was that.

  There had been a lot of fags and dykes in their church growing up; DeShawn recalled a great many of them. His older second cousin once removed always wore white with his hair flat and finger waved in the front and in a beehive in the back. He would politely sit cross-legged in the third pew, extreme left-hand side, with his three children all next to him. He stopped coming after the preacher talked to him about his “lifestyle.”

  There was Sister Nancy, who was a fuckhead of a Bible school teacher. DeShawn remembered once asking her if a child dies before hearing about Jesus, did that child go to hell? Sister Nancy thought really, really long and hard before she concluded, “Every lamb should have heard of Jesus by now.” Even as a young boy, DeShawn knew ol’ Sister Nancy wasn’t hitting on shit with that response. She was later “talked to” by the preacher for having a baby out of wedlock. Later still, she moved to Kentucky and married some white woman.

  Deacon Miles was the youth deacon-intraining who ran off to New Orleans in the late nineties and was dancing for men in strip clubs. Not much more was heard of him until he returned to the church years later. DeShawn could never figure out if Deacon Miles was a fag for real or trade. He always seemed more like trade.

  In full Southern Baptist stereotype mode was DeShawn’s younger cousin, the choir leader. Sister Pearl had tried to rope DeShawn into being the youth choir leader, but he knew that would be settling for middle management, and—in the eyes of God no less—that had to be some sort of sin. DeShawn briefly considered being the next youth minister prodigy; that’s where the real power lay.

  DeShawn would prod and poke his beautiful, young choir leader cousin, “Dear, do you ever feel oppressed here?”

  The boy looked back at DeShawn strangely, “What does oppressed mean?” It was worse than DeShawn had thought.

  Or was it?

  The younger cousin had an office job, an apartment with a boyfriend as upwardly mobile as he was, and no general angst. DeShawn thought, Wait, he’s act
ually happy . . . perhaps. It had to be a generation gap or something. The thought of only fucking one man was its own unique form of hell; DeShawn understood that he left his mother’s home mostly to score dick and try drugs. Reasonable curiosities, but they escaped some people, like DeShawn’s cousin. Conversely, this curiosity hit some men in the face. DeShawn thought this might be happening with the new youth minister.

  His name was Andre Bosant and DeShawn’s mother elected him the new youth minister because she knew his mother. He was not quite sixteen years old, grew up in Louisiana, and had been in and out of juvenile detention centers since he was nine. He cut a fool down in Louisiana so badly that his mom packed up their lives and came to Alabama when he was thirteen. When he was fourteen God started talking to him and wanted Andre to speak for him. The boys’ mothers met some two years ago and were quick friends, and that’s when DeShawn’s mother nominated Andre for youth minister.

  Andre was very engaging. He had high emotional receptivity and a way with words. To DeShawn, he seemed like the type of boy that had curiosities; he was perhaps one of the most curious youngsters DeShawn had ever met. Andre had a slight frame and was of average height, a very light-skinned black boy, freckles on his face with reddish brown hair, and hazel eyes like big marbles. In other words, Andre looked like exactly what you would expect from a light-skinned Creole boy named “Andre Bosant.”

  One day, DeShawn was refilling Bibles in the back pew after Wednesday Bible study when he felt a soft breath on the back of his neck. DeShawn turned around, startled, and saw Andre there, smiling like a pervert with a stack of Bibles in his hand.

  “You had a fly on your neck, I blew it off,” said Andre.

  DeShawn caught on to his game: “Well that’s funny Andre, I didn’t feel a fly land on me.”

  Andre licked his lips in this certain kind of way. He handed DeShawn the Bibles and their hands touched a moment more than they should have. Their eyes locked for longer than was socially acceptable. Back in the day fags had to look for each other in handshakes and eye contact, so as not to be detected by the general populace. DeShawn knew that it must be something encoded in their DNA, because how else would a young boy have these talents?

  The next week DeShawn was weak and decided to meet Andre down at the river at midnight. Andre pulled out a little bottle of whiskey and started crying about how his mom had pushed him into the preacher thing after she found him in bed with a boy in New Orleans. The night got later and DeShawn was pressed against a car, half fighting off Andre’s attack kiss, half savoring it. Andre had seen some of DeShawn’s nasty movies online. They had turned him on something crazy. The boy pushed up on DeShawn, a hard-on in his pants. DeShawn collected himself. The taboos of the young boy—his judgment was telling him not to cross this line.

  He began to think that old Andre Bosant was going to get him in trouble one day.

  DeShawn decided he would allow it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dead lovers never go away. This was a theme that kept slapping DeShawn in the face like a five-pound dick, over and over and over again.

  He thought about that time he made love to Jatius McClansy, nearly one year before Jatius shot himself in the head.

  He had snuck through the cotton field and climbed in Jatius’s window. The older boy made DeShawn undress, and, being the younger of the two, he felt a sort of shame for his body. He used his little hands to cover his penis. Jatius got annoyed.

  “Well, what gon’ happen nigga when you gotta change in PE class in high school? You gon’ hide then too?”

  DeShawn was visibly humiliated and Jatius backed off a little. He stood up from his bed and pulled down his pants, revealing his erect penis.

  “Don’t trip, DeShawn. One day yours’ll be this big,” he said, grabbing DeShawn’s hand and putting it on his penis.

  He lied to me, thought DeShawn, whose mind switched back to the present as he rested on his back in his mother’s front yard.

  The heat wasn’t oppressive today. DeShawn was babysitting his nephew, who was chasing butterflies in the sunflower garden. DeShawn only allowed himself to daydream a second or two: he was not in a gutter looking at the stars; he was in a pillowy field of grass staring at the swift moving clouds. As it was for all daydreamers, a second or two of indulgence could fuel a whole chapter in a book. He looked at the eastern sky and saw a cloud that reminded him of a penis and thought about his new lover, Andre. Andre was going to be sixteen years old next week. A feeling of annoyance came over him. Andre fucked like a teenager who watched way too much fucking porn. DeShawn remembered looking at the boy’s face during sex last night; Andre was giving him a blow job and making these distorted, silly faces, as if performing for a camera that wasn’t there. Andre grew up in a world where porn could be accessed by a few keystrokes on a computer. DeShawn came from a world where porn had to be discreetly stolen from his parents’ closet at some undetectable hour of the night. He remembered pressing the play button on the VCR with just enough pressure to deaden the inevitable loud click that set the machine into motion, careful not to wake up his mother. This new generation had it way too fucking easy, and they were clearly paying the price for it.

  Sex with the teenager was all he had here. He missed California and the bathhouse, the place he called home.

  He sighed and stretched as he thought of the catalog of memories he collected there. His body grew warm with a familiar tingle. DeShawn forgave Andre for being a sorta bad lay; he felt sorry for the boy, all tucked away like a prisoner in this Bible Belt hell. DeShawn was only slightly older than Andre when he ran away to California and got his first experience of what several men at a time tasted like.

  He remembered that first night he got high and drunk and went to the bathhouse and stayed all night; he couldn’t have been more than nineteen. All the men had worked him over real good. He was scared at the time, but now remembered it fondly. Then his troubles came.

  It was one night some thirteen years after his introduction to the baths, to be exact. He looked in the mirror and his hair was prematurely graying. He surmised it was a mix of genetics and too much experience that bred a certain weariness in him. He noticed that all the tops he fucked in his youth were becoming older themselves. He watched his part-time lovers age and not get erections anymore. He didn’t want to throw these men away—they had taught him how to fuck well. Maybe one day his dick also wouldn’t work the same, which on one level was fine with him—he had certainly put some mileage on that fucker. Either way, some nights at the baths now were spent cuddling with old lovers. This was a different kind of pleasure. These changes were his current-day dilemmas, but then there was the immediate past.

  DeShawn walked the halls of the baths so much that he knew his ghost would haunt it one day. His friends would say things like, “Well, you’re getting older, you should stop this behavior,” or, “Your lifestyle is unhealthy, why not find a man and settle down?”

  “Let’s say any boy who didn’t know what love was walked in a bathhouse high and drunk and got fucked by ten different guys in one night. Could anyone ever settle down and be happy with one man after that much stimulation, that young?” he once heard another slut ask. DeShawn knew that anything was possible, but of course he had his doubts—big ones. On occasion he would still go and see men (some two and a half times his age) walking the halls of the bathhouse endlessly, flashing flaccid cocks, and smiling, no less.

  DeShawn once briefly worked at the baths. One night he was cleaning the bathrooms when he heard a meek cry for help from one of the stalls. He saw beneath the stall door a pair of feet moving precariously on the wet, tiled floor. DeShawn cracked the door open and saw a man, he looked to be in his seventies or maybe even eighties, barefoot in a towel. He was so stiff he couldn’t gain control of his feet, and DeShawn had to lend a hand to ground him and lead him out of the stall, as a fall at his age could prove fatal. DeShawn looked at the man and all he saw was his future.

  Why not find
a man and settle down? The thought played on repeat until he heard his nephew cry. DeShawn ran over to the toddler, and the young boy cried, “Bee!” He had been stung.

  DeShawn grabbed the baby and went into the house, looking for something to bring comfort. He attended to his brother’s child on a sort of autopilot as his mind returned to its previous bullshit.

  But what is love? he thought. It has to be . . . He couldn’t think of anything.

  He applied ointment to the child’s red and swollen arm, held him close to his chest, and bounced him lightly.

  It seemed hard for DeShawn, this idea of structuring his life around some hypothetical Prince Charming that may or may not come; he felt like some dubious Christian waiting for Jesus to return.

  Maybe he was too far gone; maybe he didn’t really give a shit or maybe he was too brainwashed by feminism. Regardless, the acute boredom of the variables of whatever fictional monogamy he placed himself in washed over him and wrapped around his psyche like a goddamn straitjacket.

  He could say he hated the bathhouse—this was true enough—but the opposite seemed like a prison sentence. The thought of his hypothetical monogamous boyfriend slugging into the apartment after work night after night, year after year, both him and this hypothetical man wearing their domestic pajamas, watching movies or reading books to avoid the fact that there was nothing to say—DeShawn felt it was a different kind of loneliness, and one he didn’t need. He was already in love with his own kind.

  DeShawn’s nephew had finally quieted down and was hugging him. He squeezed him back.

  Maybe I’m not actually lonely at all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  If DeShawn’s life were a movie, the opening shot would be of seven little black bodies (him and his cousins) running through a lush green yard, past bushels of marigolds and sunflowers, playing freeze tag or hide-and-go-seek among the beanstalks in his grandmother’s yard.