Michael Arceneaux, author of I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé, may be my spirit animal. I can’t even tell you how many times I emphatically nodded and shouted “Hell, yeah!” as I read his candid and moving memoir. It’s rare that I stumble across a writer whose wry sense of humor so closely matches my own — or, at least, my own if I had the chutzpah to speak or write about things as brilliantly as Arceneaux does.
I was laughing from page one of I Can’t Date Jesus, and Arceneaux kept me laughing throughout with his rapier wit, incredible sass, and en pointe honesty about many things in life that, let’s face it, you have to laugh about because the only alternative is to cry.
Plus, he swears like a sailor, which is comfortably familiar to this Jersey Girl’s ears. (The number of f-bombs I drop into colloquial conversations astounds those who only know me in a professional setting.) To his further credit, despite the impressive number of profanities he can work into one paragraph, Arceneaux is able to flawlessly execute an elegant turn of phrase. Be still my heart.
This collection of essays covers many things — race, love, sex, music, food, writing, culture, and so much else. I mean, the comprehensive subtitle pretty much says it all. Joking aside, though, this memoir delivers a poignant and vulnerable message throughout each and every chapter: it’s not easy going through life when the world doesn’t make it easy to simply be you.
“You” in this case being a Black, gay man in America.
I Can’t Date Jesus highlights Arceneaux’s struggle to be accepted by society, his family, his religion, and, ultimately, himself. Peppered in between his musings on these topics are detailed and varied stories about his love life.
While many people have difficulty whispering about their sex lives to their best friends in the comfort of their own living rooms, Arceneaux boldly discusses his in this book with impressive openness and refreshing honesty. He does address looking for longer-lasting love, but he admits that he has problems finding it due to all he’s encountered in his life.
A primary stumbling block for Arceneaux is his religion, and this is what kicks off I can’t Date Jesus. Arceneaux was raised Catholic, but he’s gay, and we all know that strict Catholic rules and homosexuality don’t mix very well. (Oh, the irony…). Although he was raised to worship God and practice Catholicism, he grapples with wholeheartedly embracing a religion that refuses to wholeheartedly embrace him.
This crisis of faith hit home for me. While I’m more of “lapsed” Catholic than a “recovering Catholic,” as Arceneaux calls himself, I’ve struggled to come to terms with questioning, then ultimately losing faith in a belief that was a foundational part of my life. A lot of what Arceneaux talks about resonated with me, as I think it would for anyone who’s asked questions of their faith and found the answers to be wanting.
Arceneaux’s religious foundations were instilled in him by his devout Catholic mother, which brings us to another main subject of this memoir: family. In what is perhaps the most poignant set of essays, Arceneaux divulges what growing up with an alcoholic and abusive father, and an enabling mother, was really like. He talks about how it impacted his childhood, and how it later affected — and still affects — his friendships, romantic relationships, and, ultimately, how he views himself.
While it’s difficult to talk about your sex life, it’s way harder to talk about how your parents failed you. Arceneaux vulnerably discloses how he wrestles with balancing his love for the people who raised him with his resentment toward the same people who abused him, terrified him, and still judge him because of his sexuality. Most people have parental issues they don’t dare voice to themselves, and I applaud Arceneaux for so bravely exploring them in I Can’t Date Jesus.
Just a lil’ warning to the more delicate-sensibilitied readers: Arceneaux talks about sex A LOT, and he swears A LOT. Neither of these things bothers me, so I was totes okay with what he had to say. But, if you tend to cringe when “dick” and “fuck” are thrown around with reckless abandon — for example, if just reading this particular sentence made you frown — then you’re gonna wanna skip I Can’t Date Jesus. Which is a shame, because you’re missing out on one hilarious and insightful piece of literature.
In case it’s not clear, I loved I Can’t Date Jesus. I loved what Arceneaux has to say and how he says it; his book makes you laugh and it makes you think. In between all the scathingly humorous barbs, recountings of gay sexcapades, and declarations of love for Beyoncé, Arceneaux’s resounding message comes across loud and clear: there will always be people or events that try to keep you down, but don’t let them. Keep being you, whoever that happens to be.
Although I’d never heard of Michael Arceneaux before I stumbled across I Can’t Date Jesus, I’m now on the lookout for anything and everything he writes. (Pssst: his new book, I Don’t Want To Die Poor, just published a few months ago.)
What books have you read recently that you felt a connection to? Please share in the comments below!
Oh. My. Word. HOW have I not come across this one before now? It sounds brilliant! Thank you so much for introducing me to it, I’ll be keeping an eye out. Fellow sailor-mouth here (of the Australian variety), and I. fucking love a good dose of profanity 😉