My Road to Damascus
I used to want sex all the time. Now, I’m horny to bless people—for realz!
Y’all know I’m an addict. I used to wake up and check my Grindr profile to see how many “woofs.” It wasn’t unusual that I’d have some stranger in my bed by 7:00 AM. Life was about getting the next fix. My sense of myself was all wrapped up in who I was having sex with, who I wanted to have sex with and who I hoped wanted to have sex with me. As an incomplete person I needed a lot of validation. Bringing out the animal in someone was a pretty powerful fix.
My road to Damascus moment was a gradual awakening. First it led me into recovery and writing about recovery. I recently completed a book on the process and the dirt that came with my several addictions—including sexual compulsivity. But, then I started having these out of body experiences that I knew were “God” talking to me. As an atheist, I think of it as experiencing myself as part of a unified force of life in the universe: Source
Like Saul became Paul and wrote like half the New Testament, I’ve had a similar mid-life turnaround. I’m ain’t going for sainthood. I do have a non-stop jones to lay hands on people, to do conjure work and read tarot. It’s the weirdest frigging thing. That’s my new addiction. I wake up in the morning and I can’t wait to either watch something on YouTube about Hoodoo, learn more about my ancestors, write about radical love or do magick!
I’ve also been reading the Bible, which still blows my mind. I think I’m supposed to know it. Mostly ‘cause the Bible, which has been used to justify slavery, was used by those enslaved as a tool for their own spiritual and ultimate liberation. I’m reading from the perspective of my ancestors who saw it as a way out of an unbelievably cruel and violent life, inflicted on them in the service of capitalism.
Anyway, I share this to say, if I can be blessed with the gift of divination as crazy queer black radical atheist, there has to be hope for this planet. My change may as well have been overnight. It was fueled by self-forgiveness and radical love. I intend to touch a lot of lives today. It may seem like a small thing. But every time one of y’all reads my shit, you’re taking part in a miracle—dead ass.
