by B. G. Thomas
I looked at him again. Seriously? I waited for him to burst into laughter, but he didn’t. “You believe in this stuff.”
“Of course I do.”
“Where do you get these things?” I held it up.
“I make them, silly.”
Really? “Really?”
“You sound surprised.”
What’s in it? I wondered. “What’s in it?”
“Mostly sand,” he explained. “But herbs too. Sacred herbs. I grind them into the sand, then bag them up.”
“And the gay Lwa like the rainbow flag?”
“That’s mostly for you. If you feel the gris-gris is gay, the power is gay, then it is. It attracts a gay man to you.”
“Hmmmm….” I looked at it. “Why rum?”
“The Lwa love rum,” Myles said. “Maybe because Haitians love rum, and the Lwa are Haitian spirits.”
“I see.” I looked at the gris-gris, then stuffed it back in my pants pocket.
“Sex, then?”
I looked at him startled. Had he just asked me for sex?
“For your gris-gris. The man you want? You put it in your pants pocket. Next to your dick.”
My eyes went wide, and now his eyes were flashing. “I—I….” Once more I was stuttering, and he burst into laughter.
Music.
“No, ah, no shirt pocket,” I managed and pointed to my T-shirt.
“Ah!” A beatific smile spread across his face. “Then you are looking for love….” He drew that last word out a seeming lifetime, and I felt my dick stir. And my heart.
“Actually, I’d like both,” I replied. “Love and sex.”
“Very good.” Sparks in his eyes. “Then trade off. Next to your heart one day, underwear the next. And sleep with it under your pillow.”
“What if I don’t wear underwear?” I asked before my filter switched on.
He gave me that double blink, laughed again, and now there was a shifting in my underwearless jeans. “Me either,” he said in a whisper. As if anyone were listening!
We’d turned onto the street for The Shepherd’s Bean, and fifty or so feet later, we were there. There was a little courtyard of sorts out front, paved in old red brick, and lots of lights inside. Quite the crowd as well. Someone was singing—the entertainer with his back to the big plate-glass window, the audience in a set of chairs before him. We went in.
The man sitting on the barstool had a blond Mohawk of sorts, although nothing emo or punk. It was just fairly long on top and very short on the sides. He was really cute. I realized I was standing in front of someone, and I motioned for Myles to follow me to the counter. There was a Finca La Nube from La Perla, Ecuador, on the menu. “Cherry, lime, and subtle almond character,” it explained. “Browned-butter thing going on too.” It was a little pricey, four fifty a cup, but I’d pay at least that much for a cocktail, twice that for a martini at the Bistro, and the coffee would last longer. I ordered two from the barista wearing the big black plastic glasses. She was even shorter than me.
“I can pay,” Myles said.
“Not this time,” I told him. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I watched I Walked With a Zombie. And for calling you a vodouisant.”
Myles grinned. “It’s a terrible movie.”
I gaped at him. “You’ve seen it?”
“Of course I have,” he said and laughed that lovely laugh, like wind chimes.
Wind chimes, I thought. Damn, I’ve got it bad. This is stupid!
“My favorite part is when the woman in the white robe shows up. Scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. I laughed my ass off when I saw it all grown up. The things that scare us when we’re little.”
“Like the doll in that Karen Black movie.”
Myles’s dark eyes went wide. “Trilogy of Terror? No! That really was a scary movie!”
We got our coffee and went outside to sit at one of the tables under the shade trees. The entertainer was good, but we wanted to talk. Besides, the door was propped open, so we could hear him in the background.
It was a lovely October afternoon. Still warm enough that we didn’t need jackets. I wasn’t ready for winter. Of course, I never was.
We tasted our coffee. Excellent, as always. The Shepherd’s Bean had turned me into a coffee snob. I went in there once to feast my eyes on the guy who owned the place, and upon finding out he was partnered, stayed for the coffee. At least he was gay. I liked spending my gay dollars on the community.
“So what did you want to ask me?” Myles leaned forward on the little round table. “I mean, besides, ‘Did you do it?’”
“I don’t think you did,” I replied and took a sip of joe.
He tilted his head and gave me a shy look. “I’m glad. That could make things awkward. Later.”
My heart bounced. Was he flirting with me? Hot damn! “Awkward?”
“Going on a date with a man who might be a vodou killer could be a mood-messer-upper.”
“Date?” I squeaked.
“I thought we established that already,” Myles said, and it was all I could do to keep from falling off my stool.
“I-I thought that was just a figure of speech.”
He rested his chin in his upturned palm. “Why don’t you ask me one of your questions?”
I gulped. Questions? Besides, Are you a bottom or a top?
I tried to make my mind work again. Stupid. Ask him a question! “Look. Why don’t you tell me what vodou is, if it’s not all that Hollywood stuff. If there aren’t zombies.”
“Oh,” he said. “There are zombies—”
I felt a little shiver. I couldn’t help it.
“—they’re just not like what you see in The Walking Dead or anything like that. They’re…. No. Let me back up. You want to know what vodou is.”
“Yeah.” I looked around me to see if anyone was listening. No. They were talking. If they were listening to anyone but each other, it was the singer inside the café. “Backing up sounds like a good idea.”
Myles smiled that lovely smile. “There is nothing that isn’t vodou. Vodou is the rhythm of life itself. It flows through and in and around every single act in the Universe.”
“Like the Force?” I asked, and tried not to laugh.
He laughed for me. “Yes. A lot like that. Vodou informs all of life. It is the Divine nature within us all.”
“I… I see,” I said, not seeing at all.
“In vodou, we believe that there is only one God—Bondje, the Good God. But he is distant from his creation. So it is the Lwa that we turn to.”
“The, low-ah?” I’d heard of them. Even before my online crash course. Wasn’t that word used in every “voodoo” movie ever made?
“Yes. They’re like saints, in a way. We call them the Mystères, or the Invisibles, and like saints, they are the intermediaries between Bondje and us. Like Catholics pray to the saints, we go to the Lwa for help, as well as to our ancestors. We worship God, and not the devil like Hollywood would like you to believe. There are no orgies, sorry, blood-soaked or otherwise. We serve the spirits—the mistè—and treat them with honor and respect, just as we would any elder in any home. Any family. And they help us. They want to help us.”
I nodded. Okay. “Ah…. How does one become a vooo—a practitioner of vodou?”
He looked off into space, got quiet. Took a drink of his coffee. “Well, in my case, the spirits called to me.”
Called to him?
“First in my dreams.”
“Your dreams?”
He looked at me, those black eyes now thoughtful. “Yes. It was Papa Legba who came calling—although I didn’t know it at the time.”
“Papa…. Leg-ba?”
That faraway look came back to Myles’s face again. “In my dream I was walking along a road. It was night. There was this full moon, and up ahead, I saw that there was this man wearing this large wide-brimmed straw hat, smoking a pipe, and le
aning on a crutch.”
My heart sped up, and not in a sexy way. “Was it scary?”
“No. Not at all. I suppose it would have been normal if I was—scared, that is. But I wasn’t. Even when I got closer, could see him better. He was black, and there was this little cloud of smoke around his face, sort of hanging under the brim of that hat, like it was caught there before floating away….”
A slight tremble went through me. “So detailed….”
“It was very real. I woke when I felt this wet something hit my hand, and I looked down to see this mangy old dog nudging me to be petted, and when I opened my eyes, it was my old dog, Boo.” Myles laughed. “I thought it was just a dog from my dream.”
“Sure,” I said. I’d had lots of weird dreams. Who hasn’t? “When was this?”
“I was about twenty or so. I was in college. I’d been dating this hot little bear cub, and I found out he was cheating on me, and it was all very tragique, very theatrical. God, that was ten years ago now. Losing our first love is so dramatic, isn’t it?”
I nodded, remembering a beautiful, tanned boy at summer camp when I was in high school. The way he looked standing naked in the sun when he took me to the far side of the lake, away from everyone else. “Yeah. It was.” God, I thought I would love him forever.
“Anyway, I drank a lot of rum the night I first had the dream. Didn’t think much about it at first, but that image…. It kept coming back to my mind—that little cloud of smoke stuck under the rim of that hat, around that man’s face… the dog….” Myles took a drink of his coffee. “This is very good.”
“I love their coffee,” I agreed, happy for a respite so I could absorb all I’d heard. “I used to use sugar in my coffee, but you would have thought I’d asked them for rat poison the first time I asked for it here. The girl with the big glasses? She told me they didn’t have any sugar. I couldn’t believe it. She told me to trust her. I’m glad I did.”
“Have you ever had New Orleans coffee?” Myles smiled. “With chicory?”
I shook my head.
“Now that’s coffee where you use sugar. Lots of it, and tons of cream—real cream and not that powered nondairy stuff either. I’ll have to fix you some next time.”
Next time? My heart danced a little. I forced myself back to Myles’s story. “So I take it there was more to your dream?”
“Yes!” Myles leaned back. It pushed his chest out against his shirt. It was a big chest. “Papa Legba came to me again. The next time I saw him, he was standing at this four-way corner and the street signs said weird things. Like ‘awake’ and ‘living’ and ‘death.’”
“Death?” My voice cracked.
“But I wasn’t freaked at all. I felt very safe. I told a couple friends, and they reacted so badly I stopped talking about it. Then one night I broke down and told a cousin—we’d been drinking, rum of course—and just as calm and collected as can be, he said, ‘Well, it sounds like Papa Legba is trying to talk to you.’ And I was like, ‘Who is Papa Legba?’”
“Yeah?” Exactly. Who is Papa Legba, I wondered.
“Papa Legba is the guardian of the crossroads,” Myles told me. “In Vodou, Papa Legba is always the first spirit invoked in any ceremony, because he is the go-between, the liaison, between the Lwa and us. He is the one who gives or denies permission to speak with the spirits of Ghede. He opens and closes the doorway between this world and the world of the dead.”
I froze. Dead. Dead?
He reached out and touched my hand. I felt a little chill. “It’s not crazy,” he said. “You just don’t understand.”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”
He shook his head. “When we die, we don’t end.”
“We don’t?” Did he really believe that? “Because I kind of think we do. That when we die, it’s all over.”
“No, it’s not.”
I shrugged. “I used to believe that. But not anymore. My mom thinks there’s going to be this big bad Judgment Day, and we’re all going to go single file before God and he’s going to check in this big book, like Santa Claus checking his list, to see who’s naughty and who’s nice. And if we’re naughty, we’re going to hell. Mom thinks I’m going to hell. And those people who are nice get to go to heaven and walk in the garden and talk to Jesus and finally find out what this—” I waved to the everything around us. “—what this was all about.”
“She believes that because she’s afraid.”
“Afraid?” I couldn’t think of a time where my mother had ever seemed afraid.
“Of dying,” Myles said. “Because isn’t that what most people are afraid of? That we all just end when we die?”
“Yes,” I said. That was exactly what I thought. “And people like my mother are so afraid of dying that they find a religion that assures them that there is some kind of life after death.”
“I take it your mother thinks you’re going to hell because you’re gay?”
I nodded.
“Vodou welcomes homosexuals. We make the prettiest altars.” He laughed.
My eyes went wide.
“In fact, some say the Lwa Ezili Danto is a lesbian.”
“So in your case, you just found a religion that says it’s okay to be gay,” I said, my filter once more failing to activate. “It’s all the same thing.”
“Maybe. But I’ve experienced things, Taylor. Things I can’t explain. I’ve seen things. I’ve seen people ridden by the Lwa.”
“Ridden?”
“Possessed. I’ve seen them do things that people can’t do. I saw a man take hot peppers and rub them in his eyes and they didn’t even water. He yanked his pants down and rubbed them all over his cock and balls. And when he came out of it an hour later, he was perfectly fine. Had no idea anything had happened.”
I looked away. Crazy. It sounded crazy. It opened up too many possibilities. The least being that the peace I had made with myself by throwing out the possibilities of a “God” might have been hasty.
“And what about my cousin?” Myles held up a finger. “A guy I thought was Catholic, pointing me to Papa Legba? Here my cousin had been practicing vodou all these years, and I had no idea.”
“Well, it isn’t exactly a religion people have bumper stickers for,” I said.
“W.W.P.L.D?” he asked.
I looked at him, confused.
“What Would Papa Legba Do?”
I laughed despite myself. “Yes.”
Myles leaned on the table again and stared into my eyes.
I felt my dick stir. I forced myself to look away.
“It could just be coincidence, you know,” I said. “Your cousin being into voodoo.”
“And my dreams?”
“You just read about this Papa dude once and forgot about it. Then you broke up with your first love and got drunk and had a weird dream.”
“And the guy with the hot peppers?”
I turned back to him. “You know they were hot peppers? They could have been any kind of pepper. Did you touch them? Did you try one?”
“I smelled them,” he said. “No way was I going to try one. I don’t have the taste for hot and spicy like my grandmother. Her étouffée set my tongue on fire even when I was a kid.”
“The guy could have switched them. Used sleight of hand.”
Myles sighed. “Yes. I suppose.”
“And the human mind is capable of some pretty weird stuff. There have been religious fanatics doing all kinds of wild things since religion was invented. Walking on hot coals, lying down on beds made of nails. And those Catholics who manifested the stigmata. Hands and feet bleeding. Hysteria. It doesn’t mean that there is a God or that there is anything after we die.”
I wound to a stop. Shit. Why did I do that? I wondered. Mr. Hottie was looking at me with sex in his eyes, and I had gone and acted like a fool. Talk about a mood-messer-upper.
“Well, Taylor. I do believe there is life after death. I know what I know. I know that through vodou. The ot
her religions? They never interested me. My mom sent me to Sunday school when I was little, but she never went to church. She didn’t care when I stopped going. And then… well then, Papa Legba. Less than a week later, I found a teacher—right out of the blue. I never looked back. It was like I had no real life before vodou. It was like before then, I was only waiting for my life to begin….”
Myles drew in a long, deep breath, smiled, and took a drink of his coffee. After what seemed like an hour, he turned back to me. “Above all, Taylor, vodou is about the spirits of your ancestors. Not only the Lwa, but our personal family dead. They’re there. They see us and want to help us. The vodou religion is about keeping family with you, in your thoughts and in your heart. It’s about preserving the love of family. Public ceremonies are for the Lwa, but for me, for practitioners, the most important spirits are always those of our family.”
I bit the insides of my mouth. Closed my eyes. Forced them back open and looked at the sexy man sitting across the table from me. There was such passion in his eyes, in his expression. But a peace as well.
Had I ever seen my mother look peaceful?
Boy! What would she think if she saw me sitting here today? Ha! Not only with a man, but a practitioner of vodou! She would roll in her grave. Or in the grass of paradise, or wherever she was.
I sighed. Religious crap. “Have you ever been ridden?”
“Not by the Lwa,” he said, and wagged his eyebrows.
I grinned.
“So the evil stuff. That’s all Hollywood?”
He sighed. “Well….”
“Well, what?”
“Well, I’d be lying if I said that. It’s like that thing about the news only covering NAMBLA—the man/boy love group. It does exist. And there are Lwa who run hot.”
“Hot?”
“There are Lwa that are more forceful and ready to do violence. I don’t have anything to do with them. Only the most trained should approach them. There is just no reason to call upon Bawon Kriminel, or Bakalou Baka, or especially Linglessou Basin-Sang. His name means Bucket-of-Blood.”
