A meditation on the seven deadly sins | Marlon James x Chris Ofili

One

The morning of my exorcism I thought I was going to murder my lust for men. A burnt yellow Tuesday, sauced by my own hunger, they told me not to eat before. They, the exorcists who preferred to call themselves deliverers. Years of being a Christian taking thoughts captive in service to Jesus, only made the thoughts captivate me more. And if by Sunday morning I was moving by faith and not sight, by night I was seeing Powertool 4, Megadicks 2, Muscle Hunter 5 and videos with a surplus of massive cocks set to spurt from men named Stryker. Quiet as it’s kept, lust was a midnight secret you shared with insomniacs you didn’t know. This was the late ’90s and no amount of dark could hide the shriek and squall of a dial-up internet. Bodies lying awake on the other side of the wall must have known. That kind of noise so deep in the night, must mean somebody was getting it on, lone self-service. Meanwhile, I exploded under my covers and let shame lull me to sleep. So yeah, lust. The morning of my exorcism, I thought of how the online support group for men who grope only made each grope more.

Nineteen men who never figured out what to do with their hands, but you gotta sin to get saved. Demons then, it had to be demons. In the Tuesday room where we would banish the devil was one chair, two preachers and three black bags for me to fill with vomit. Like a good homosexual bowed down by daddy issues, I started to lay into my father. One of the preachers said, tell me about your mother. I opened my mouth, and a scream came out.

Two

By the time 16 came around I’ve wanted to be a white for half my life. White like Bobby Ewing, white like Bo Duke, white like that one in The A-Team whom the others called Face. I would eat while thinking white, picturing my pale hands grabbing a teacup. Sit thinking white and imagine black kids stealing glances at the long blond hair sifting through my fingers. Walk thinking white, my white ears cocooned in headphones, my skin making my school uniform irrelevant and my legs taking one step then another through the downtown Kingston market on the way to school. Whiteness made me speak Faustian lingo like I was dropping science: I was glutted with the conceit of it. I would have sold crack to nuns and told them it was icing sugar, just walk with the entitled ease of a white boy shuffle. Black people would say, look at him walking like he could drive if he…