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The first thing I did when I got to Jerrod Carmichael’s apartment, a luxury loft in Chelsea with commanding views of the Hudson, was take my shoes off. He didn’t have to ask; I already knew, from the show. The show is called “Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show,” an eight-episode documentary series that recently aired on HBO and is not quite like anything else I’ve seen on TV. Carmichael gets himself into plenty of situations, but it’s not exactly an unscripted sitcom. He is a comedian, and the episodes are often funny, but the humor seems almost incidental. The show is more concerned with truth, or at least with the performance of truth—but then it will undermine this concern with a meta punch line, or with a self-conscious gesture hurled like a projectile through the fourth wall. It’s more artsy than most reality shows—less E! than A24, less Kris Jenner than Caveh Zahedi—and yet it shares a lot of the hallmarks of the reality genre, including forced confrontations, ever-shifting power dynamics, and an abiding fascination with interpersonal mess. On most reality shows, there are several main characters who are gradually revealed, under the unforgiving glare of the lens, to be less likable, or at least more complicated, than they first appeared. Carmichael is one of the few people who has knowingly cast himself in that role.
In 2022, in an HBO special called “Rothaniel,” Carmichael came out as gay, and, while he was at it, divulged several other family secrets. This both elevated his career and shattered his personal life, and the premise of “Reality Show” was that he would let a camera crew follow him around as he tried to pick up the pieces. The cameras would also give him the courage (or excuse) to stage conversations (or confrontations) that he still found difficult to initiate, especially with his parents. (“I’m trying to self-‘Truman Show’ myself,” he says, early on in the series.) In each episode, he sets out to resolve a personal dilemma, big or small: Will he and his boyfriend survive an open relationship? Will he and his mother ever truly communicate? Will his overbearing roommate take the hint and move out? He brings his boyfriend home to Winston-Salem, North Carolina; he hosts his mother in New York, and they attend a queer-friendly church. The first episode is full of headline-grabbing revelations, not least Carmichael’s confession that he has long harbored romantic feelings for one of his best friends, who just happens to be Tyler, the Creator. It also features Carmichael taking mushrooms in the back of a limousine, sucking a Grindr date’s toes, and debating with an anonymous friend, who may or may not be Bo Burnham, about the nature of art and artifice. Before we see any of this, though, we see the HBO camera crew entering the apartment and asking, “Do you need us to take our shoes off?” and Carmichael responding, without any self-effacement, “Yeah, I do.” Film me while I’m half naked, puking, stoned and grandiose, disconsolate—all good. But don’t track dirt into my house.
In fairness to him, it’s an immaculate apartment. When I visited in June, it was full of sunlight and tasteful rich-person details: fresh orchids, hand-screened toile wallpaper. At one point during our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, he offered me a peach. I demurred, trying to be polite. “You sure?” he said. “We have them sent from Georgia.” (Well, in that case . . .) We sat at a marble table in a room with sea-green walls, overlooking the High Line. The table was strewn with yellow legal pads and well-loved books (Baudrillard, Thomas Merton, “What Is Art?” by Tolstoy); on the floor were a guitar, a keyboard, some houseplants, and a kite decorated with Michael Jackson’s mug shot. To make room for my laptop, I had to move a Bible—not the three-volume W. W. Norton edition or the five-volume Bibliotheca edition, both of which were on a shelf in the next room, but a plain old King James version.
This feels like some kind of allegory, the fact that I literally have to move the Bible out of the way so we can have this conversation.
[Laughs.] I’ve been thinking about the Bible a lot. I’d gone away from it—because I was gay, I felt rejected by religion—but I’ve started reading it again, almost rereading it as a novel. It’s amazing what that feels like.
What else are you reading?
There’s certain books that I’m constantly thumbing through. Bertrand Russell, Marcus Aurelius, some Carl Jung, some Tolstoy. I’ll tell you who I’m on real hard right now: Walter Ong. He is incredible. He’s a philosopher, and he was a Jesuit priest—Marshall McLuhanesque, like, that school. This book [“Orality and Literacy”] is all about writing as a technology, about oral cultures before the invention of writing and how writing transforms consciousness. Also, because of my boyfriend, I’ve been reading more fiction. [His boyfriend, who appears throughout “Reality Show,” is a novelist who just got his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.]
[During this answer, he was taking notes on one of the legal pads.]
Can you say anything about what you’re writing right now?
Just perspectives and thoughts, and a lot of them become jokes. I just write out of habit.
I’ve been in situations where I’ll be taking notes on something—a movie I’m seeing, or a conversation I’m having—in a way that makes people suspicious, like, “Wait, are you going to use this for something?” In fact, watching your show, I thought about that as a parallel between comedians and journalists, comedians and writers—that feeling that everything might become material. That you might think you’re having a private moment with your friends, and then the next minute they’re going, “Wait, you’re not going to put me on blast in your next book if I say something weird right now, are you?”
Yeah. And maybe. Maybe I will. It’s funny, the people who ask usually don’t stand a chance. I was in North Carolina, and someone was, like, “You’re not gonna put me in your next comedy show, right?” I was, like, “Have you seen my work? You wouldn’t make the cut. You could kill a man in front of me.”
[Laughs.] I want to cover some of the basics first, and then we can move in whatever direction we want. The big-bang explosion that led to this moment was “Rothaniel,” right? But, even before “Rothaniel,” you already had a successful career. You had a multi-camera sitcom, “The Carmichael Show,” on NBC, from 2015 to 2017. Your first special was directed by Spike Lee.
My ego gets mad sometimes when I see certain things online. There’s this comedian who called me an industry plant: “He’s gay—that’s why he got all this attention.” And I’m, like, I get no credit for all the work I did before coming out?
I made a couple of documentaries—after the sitcom, before my last special—just me being a reporter for my own life. [In “Home Videos” and “Sermon on the Mount,” both released in 2019, Carmichael went home to North Carolina to film interviews with his family and friends.] Looking back, that was kind of my soft launch. It’s where I began to explore things that weren’t being talked about at home. I was still afraid to come out, but it was a fearful attempt.
At one point you described it to me as “Evel Knievel lands on the school bus.”
That’s right. Crash, rehab, get back on the bike.
But at some point you decide: I have this big secret. I’m afraid to say it, so I should say it. What was the process that led to that?
It came together pretty quickly. I was crashing on Bo [Burnham]’s couch for Christmas. It was my first time not going home for Christmas. I didn’t even know you could do that. That was one of the more radical things I’ve ever done in my life. Like, I’m not gonna go home, back to my religious mother’s home, for Jesus’ birthday? I just couldn’t handle it that year.
Did they know why?
They knew, but it wasn’t talked about. They could maybe justify it as work, or something.
I was feeling kind of low. I didn’t think I was gonna do standup after “8” [a previous special that was directed by Burnham], because I felt like I was circling. I was still writing, but it felt lateral. And then around that Christmas I decided to say it all. I hadn’t talked about being gay onstage. So I went to [the L.A. club] the [Comedy] Store, which is a tough environment. That room could be really crazy—people got chairs thrown at them. Eddie Murphy referred to it as comedy’s last boxing gym.
A boxing gym being a famously fun place to come out.
Exactly.
You didn’t think of going to Largo, going to a softer room?
No, it was impulsive. And it was horrible. Bo and I had dinner, and he was, like, “This is gonna take at least a year to develop.”
Because it was unfocussed?
It was unfocussed. It was rushed and raw. It was—it wasn’t even clay yet. It was just, like, water and sand. I talked about being gay, but I was still trying to do it through a hypermasculine filter. The Store breeds that. A lot of the clubs can breed that. Comedy is a very masculine art form—I won’t say that, because I actually think the art form requires vulnerability. I noticed this after coming out, just how often comedians talk about gay people. It’s not about, like, punching up versus punching down—I don’t really care about that. How I view it is that comedy is tension and release, and you need vulnerability for the audience to have access, to have license to laugh. And, for a lot of men who can’t access their own vulnerability, they offer the hypothetical of homosexuality as a punch line—so it’s, like, “Well, some guys get fucked in the ass!”
[After the set at the Store, Burnham drove him to Flappers, a club in Burbank, to perform again.] We were in the car on the way there, and he was, like, “You know, don’t even worry about the coming-out part. Just say something memorable.” So mostly I talked about not going home for Christmas. And that was the set where I connected with an audience in a way that I never had up until that point. I remember hearing Paul Reiser talking about getting laughs, and then getting laughs because an audience related to him. After that night, Bo was, like, “Oh, we could film this in a couple weeks.” It was that much of a one-eighty.
At that point, I called my agent and went, “I need to do shows—now.”
You performed in Atlanta, Austin, and a few other places. And you started sitting down during those shows.
I was telling stories, and I felt like I needed to be closer to the audience. You’re right there. You can read faces really well. And women became so important to me. Women are far more emotionally compelling to me because they’re actually in tune with things. I think the women in the crowd really saw me.
So I started saying things that were hard for me to say. And basically, between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, I worked on what became “Rothaniel.” I remember getting to New York, doing some sets at the City Winery, and [the HBO executive] Nina [Rosenstein] came to the show and said, “We need to tape this ASAP.” This is why the only industry news I care about—I don’t care about any other mergers, who buys whatever. All I care about is, leave HBO alone.
One thing I’ve never understood: you did all these shows where you were revealing this secret before the special. How did you not have people tweeting it out and spoiling it?
I would Yondr the shows so no one could use their phone. It was a very vulnerable thing, obviously, and for the most part people respected it. I would search my name after every show, on Twitter, and there was maybe a time or two where I saw someone saying it, and then it just kind of faded. Thank God. That was my big reveal!
The special came out in April, and you hosted “S.N.L.” that weekend.
It was a kind of a wild weekend.
In your “S.N.L.” monologue, you kind of look like you’ve just been shot out of a cannon.
Yeah. It was a lot. I wanted to do well on “S.N.L.,” and it needed to be its own distinct thing. Live TV is exciting. Part of the reason I hosted the [2023] Golden Globes was because it’s so exciting to be on live TV, with no delay. With the Globes, they kept wanting me to send the monologue ahead of time, but I didn’t send it. I didn’t have it.
Another part of that “S.N.L.” monologue, a little tangent that didn’t get as much attention, was when you threw in a quick critique of Barack Obama. And it was actually kind of a scathing critique. [“You’re just chillin’ right now? Like, you’re just writing books?”]
[Laughs.] I just wanted to directly address Barack—because it’s live, so maybe he’s watching.
I’m sure it got back to him.
It’s funny—I met him after that, but we didn’t talk about that.
What did you talk about?
Oh, it was through his company—they were just meeting with creatives. I had a lot of ideas. Not to over-reveal—I don’t think I signed an N.D.A. or anything—but I think that he is the Captain Planet to the Andrew Tate–Captain Pollution way of thinking. How much vulnerability can a man allow and still be a man? It’s a struggle. I get that. I have to address it within myself. There are times where I go from therapy to wanting to buy a gun. I don’t think vulnerability makes a man weaker, but that’s something that’s easy to say in New York City, easy to say in L.A. But when I go to North Carolina they may not have the same view. And I think Obama represented the man of the new millennium, someone thoughtful and someone who listened and could still be firm in his beliefs and strong. So I think he’s needed for that more than anything. But it was hard watching him having fun.
Yeah. Too soon.
Yeah. He deserves to have fun, but it was hard to watch.
A$AP Rocky interviewed you for Interview magazine, and you told him that there are three people who you couldn’t imagine having a mustard stain on their shirt: him, Jay-Z, and Obama. So now you’ve met all three of those people.
Yep. The three coolest guys in the world. I love Bojangles, but I stopped eating pork because of Jay-Z. I sent him an episode of “Reality Show,” because he means the most to me, and he said some nice things about the episode, but then at the end of his message he said, “You’re going hard on the Bojangles. Chill, champ.” And I promised him, “I’ll stop eating pork.” And I haven’t since then, because a promise to Jay-Z is a promise to God.
A promise to Jay-Hova.
A promise to Jay-Hova! I’m a very all-or-nothing type of person. I’m not really good at moderation.
“I’m Not Good at Moderation” would have been a decent alternate title for “Reality Show.”
Before all this, I was the most private person I knew. Friends would call me “mysterious” or “elusive.” And then I go and make a reality show. Like, I don’t even have an Instagram.
Back to “Rothaniel”: you referred to the period right after that as a professional high point and a personal low point.
I remember, one day in particular, calling Bo and just being, like, “Man, I’ve never been without God.” It was scary and lonely. I was without a guiding force, without a North Star, just out on my own. A lot of who I thought I was was built around my family’s idea of me, and I felt like I had let them down. I was alone in New York. It was during COVID. It was shut down, masked, faceless—what a wild time. I started analysis and started excavating everything from my past.
When you were deciding what to make after “Rothaniel,” did you worry about having what I think of as the Lauryn Hill syndrome? Or you could call it the D’Angelo syndrome, or the Ralph Ellison syndrome, or the J. D. Salinger syndrome. Basically, you’ve made something that is universally recognized as successful, both critically and commercially—how do you follow that up? How do you top it, or how do you avoid getting too in your head about trying to top it?
If I model my career after anyone, it’s Jay. On each record, he’s bottling something—something truthful about how he’s feeling at the time. When he made “Reasonable Doubt,” it was an immediate classic. Masterpiece. And then he made another album—he’s described it as a Rubik’s Cube, like, every album’s a color, but then it fucks up the other color. He’s always just trying to get it right. There’s “[In My Lifetime,] Vol. 1” which I love, but people would say there’s a couple songs that keep it from being what “Reasonable Doubt” was. Then “Vol. 2 [. . . Hard Knock Life],”—it’s like his peak, and he just keeps doing it. . . . And then “[The] Blueprint” is, like, better than Vol. 2. And then “Magna Carta [Holy Grail]”—he’s good at rapping, but it didn’t really have an anchoring principle. There are different peaks, but he just stayed true to himself, and he was able to bring his work to where he was. You know, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” is a difficult thing to follow up, but she’s still Lauryn Hill. And I actually like her “[MTV] Unplugged [No. 2.0]” album better than “Miseducation.”
You would.
I remember when I moved to L.A. in 2008—I didn’t have the Internet on my phone. I didn’t have a computer. I’m sleeping on a couch, sleeping on an air mattress. I remember meeting someone who had an iPhone, and I asked them, “Can I borrow your iPhone?,” and I used headphones that I got for free off the Delta flight to L.A., plugged those in, went to YouTube, and I played Lauryn Hill, “Just Want You Around.” It’s such a perfect song to me. So vulnerable, almost to the point of pleading. I love that album. It’s proof that there’s all types of ways to twist the Rubik’s Cube.
She can barely even sing on that album, because she has a cold, and she finds a way to make it work.
Right. My boyfriend is the kind of fan that every artist would want. Björk is his Jay-Z. And he loves every Björk album more than the last. That’s an artist who grows. She’s in her fifties now, I believe. We just went to a show in Italy last year, and she’s making her best work.
I feel that way about Paul Simon.
That’s what you hope an artist can do: tell me something you couldn’t have told me when you were twenty, or thirty, or forty. I hope to do that. I hope that by making things that are true, by making things that I mean, that it will connect in some way. Kanye [West], to me, is like that, an artist who is willing to throw everything away.
My colleague Ian Parker just wrote an amazing piece about Kanye buying an Ando house—
I love it. Who would dare gut an Ando? “Get the kitchen out. Get the bathroom out.” Incredible.
Incredible. And one person in that piece refers to a scene in a Robert Altman film where there’s a fashion designer who’s so interested in stripping everything away—reducing, reducing, reducing—that by the end the models are just naked on the runway. This isn’t a perfect analogy, but there’s something in your work where you’re reducing, reducing, taking away all the artifice, taking away all the pretense. You’re doing standup comedy where you’re not standing up, and for long stretches it’s not really comedy. Do you ever worry about reducing so much that you’re just naked on the runway?
No, because the rule is truth, right? Meaning what I’m feeling, what I want. Contending with myself, dealing with personal problems through art. Sending messages to my family. Analyzing myself, understanding myself better. My next special might be prop comedy, for all I know. I might fall in love with that guitar and use that. I don’t know. I’m open to it.
Another thing about Kanye: you could interpret both “Rothaniel” and “Reality Show,” all of your recent stuff, as you just desperately trying to make your mother understand you, make her see you for who you are. I was trying to think of other artists who are equally obsessed with their mothers seeing them, and the only two I could come up with were [Pedro] Almodóvar and Kanye.
Maybe Eminem.
Maybe. But that’s all anger.
Sure, but even anger is trying.
The only upside of my mother’s lack of acceptance is that it’s given me the freedom to do all these things that most people would only really do in character. Talking about sex on TV, for example. I’m, like, Well, if she’s not looking at me anyway, if I’ve done all this and we still can’t acknowledge it, then what else do I have to lose? There’s a freedom in that.
I was a good boy before. I was trying so hard to win their approval the right way, the good Christian way, the way that I was taught, the way I was raised. I felt like we were one. And so the rift really hurt me. I felt like I was growing, and I wanted to bring them along, because I am them. But now I have to accept that I am someone else.
It’s painful to watch. It’s really poignant, but in a way it also made me sort of hopeful, as a parent, because you clearly feel a deep sense of connection to your parents, even though it’s so ruptured and so painful. Some people never have that.
I’m thankful that I tried. I really tried. I tried to say, This is where I am—can you meet me here? And you get a no, and you get a no, and I can accept the no. I mean, I put billboards in Times Square. I asked HBO to put a billboard in my home town, too, and they did.
Do you find it harder to bring it up with your parents when the cameras aren’t around?
Yeah. I bring the cameras and make this thing in order for my mother and my father to see themselves, and then they see themselves, and still there’s no conversation. It does hurt my feelings. I’m in a fetal position on HBO Friday nights at eleven, every week, for a couple months. You’d think that that’s worthy of a “Hey, how are you?” or even a “Hey, I don’t like this.” But no.
The anonymous friend in “Reality Show”—I know you can’t say who it is. I can say that, to me, it sure looks and sounds like Bo Burnham. But whoever that friend is, he comes in at the beginning of the first episode and the end of the last episode and voices a critique of the show, the harshest possible critique of the show that the audience might be thinking. And he says, “You’re gonna put this show out, and it’s gonna be divisive, and you’re gonna open up a world of pain for yourself.” Why have that so prominently in the show?
I thought those critiques were very smart, and those critiques didn’t scare me. The things I was doing scared me.
With “Rothaniel,” I was coming out because it was scary to me. I know I’ve used this analogy before, but it was, like, “Man who’s afraid of heights jumps out of an airplane on national television.” With this show, it was about problems in my life that I was trying to solve and confrontations that I was afraid to have, conversations that I was afraid to have.
What’s the difference between working these things out in analysis and doing that on a stage?
Onstage, there are moments that resemble analysis. Comedians talk about this all the time. People will say, “We want comedy, not therapy.” But therapy is interesting. Have you seen “Couples Therapy”?
It’s my favorite show.
Yeah, it’s great, because it’s people being honest, and people being honest is really interesting.
I write a lot down, but I won’t say those words onstage. It’s not for verbatim recital, because there’s a certain oral flow that people can receive better. It kind of explains Trump, right? Because Trump is—when he’s on book, reading from the clear teleprompter thing, that’s something we’ve seen before. But then he goes off book, and that’s the part that gets replayed over and over again. We’re in this world where people have heard so much. The audience is aware of where you’re going, aware of the structure. But when you hear something free and true? Katt Williams on “Club Shay Shay”? Then your ears perk up.
[In 2022, in an article in GQ, Carmichael criticized Dave Chappelle, saying, “Your legacy is a bunch of opinions on trans shit? It’s an odd hill to die on.” He later said that he regretted it.] In other words, [Chappelle]’s been harping on the trans stuff for so long, for so many specials, that it started to feel predictable.
We brought up Evel Knievel earlier. If Evel Knievel goes up the ramp, jumps thirteen buses, and he lands? It’s a miracle. It’s amazing. We can’t believe you pulled this off. If he circles around and he does it again—oh, so it’s easy?
You have a really notable group of friends. I think there’s a picture I saw on the Internet of you at Disneyland, and next to you are Bo Burnham and Ramy Youssef.
Oh, that’s funny. I didn’t know that was out in the world.
I feel like if you and your friends rent an Airbnb for the weekend in Palm Springs or wherever, you should have a designated survivor stay home, just in case, so [the media company] Annapurna can keep making their next few movies.
That’s funny.
When you wanted to make the episode where you confront Tyler about your feelings, did you know if he would agree to do it? And, if he didn’t, did you not have an episode?
It would have been something else. But I’m thankful that he did. I mean, because we’re artists, he’s aware of my sometimes chaotic or what a civilian would call my self-destructive nature, and was just down for something insane. I think part of why he did it was just out of artist-to-artist respect. It both complicates things and was the reason it was able to happen.
The show is filmed in the style of a reality show, but there are moments, in that scene especially, that seem like they must have been scripted. [At one point, Carmichael offers Tyler, the Creator some food from his plate, and Tyler says, “I know I don’t want any of that. I’m big straight.”]
One of the reasons I made the show is because my life already felt like a performance. I would do outfit changes at home, alone. These shorts are not for the evening. I don’t think I’ve had a one-outfit day in years. For who? Who’s watching? God’s watching. The way I would talk to people in my life—hyperaware, always. So it’s a chicken-and-egg scenario: Am I an artist because I was performing already, in my life?
I wrote a piece for The New Yorker, years ago, about this psychological phenomenon called the “Truman Show” delusion. In the fifties, people would have been paranoid that the Soviets were spying on them with satellites. Now it’s the paranoia that anyone could be watching me at any time.
All you have to do is walk outside—not even just in New York City. It’s happened to me in North Carolina. Wherever you go, you’re always in someone else’s shot. To walk outside is to agree to be on camera, to be in someone’s shot. Everyone’s recording everything all the time. I’m actually curious how many random TikToks I’m in the background of, how many wedding photos.
Do you think all artists have to be self-obsessed?
Well, that’s the work. That’s the work. A group of artists is a group of selfish people who come together. There’s no artistic community—there are artists who are sometimes in a room with other artists. Even as I’m learning to compromise, like in my relationship, even that becomes part of the work. I compromise and then I go run to the Comedy Cellar: “So I compromised today.”
I just read “All Fours,” by Miranda July, which is in part about being a self-destructive artist, and there’s a line about her doing her work all day, out in the garage, and then coming back into her house and trying to act normal, trying not to act like an astronaut just back from the moon. [“I have to consciously dial myself down before reentering the house, like astronaut Buzz Aldrin preparing to unload the dishwasher immediately after returning from the moon. Don’t talk about the moon, I remind myself. Ask everyone how their day was.”]
Oh, yes, astronaut syndrome is real.
Did you just name that, or is that a thing?
No, it’s a thing. Astronaut syndrome. I remember seeing a meme after Kobe retired of Kobe at dinner with his family: “So, what do y’all like to do?”
I don’t know if there’s a way to word this and be likable, but I think my show is a statement for artists’ lib. I really do. I think it’s time that the artists separate themselves from the audience. The Internet can create an illusion that we are one, or that the audience is involved in making the art, but that is not the case. One of the things I’ve read about myself is “Jerrod did this, but I would have never done that.” To which I go, “Uh, yeah. That’s why HBO didn’t make a deal with you.” Part of what’s exciting about the show is that it’s easy for people to hate the show.
Or to hate you as a character.
Yes. Another criticism I’ve seen is that I’m not a good person—which is being said, apparently, by all the good people of the Internet. Well, O.K. Then I guess I’m a bad person.
You could see “Reality Show” as being in conversation with “Inside,” the Bo Burnham special. That’s also a piece of work about the contemporary moment and how the Internet is driving us crazy, but it’s approached in a totally different way. “Inside” is insulated, hermetically sealed, and “Reality Show” is all about transparency and porousness.
Bo’s my best friend, and our differences are what’s exciting. We have different approaches to art, we have different approaches to life, and we talk about our different approaches. It’s like comparing, I don’t know, “Jurassic Park” to “A Woman Under the Influence.” The root of “bravo,” or “bravura,” is something like “where craft meets daring.” We both have a bit of both. I mean, my work would be nothing without craft, and part of what makes his work so exciting is that it’s daring.
You were raised in the church. Was your family always that religious your whole life?
[He stands up to show me a greeting card that was just mailed to him.] From a woman from my church. Nobody in the church really brings up the fact that I’m gay. It’s just them saying to my mom, “Tell Jerrod I said hey.” I don’t know if they watch my work. I would assume so—you’re from a small town, a boy from here is pouring his heart out on HBO. If you can have a password, you’re probably gonna check it out. But I don’t know. So I get this card, which I receive as vague support for being gay, but I don’t know. It’s just the most generic Hallmark card.
[The card reads “You give your best / And help others to be their best.” The only added words, at the bottom, are “Continued blessings upon you.”]
I haven’t seen this woman in fifteen years. Isn’t this wild? She chose this card. Did she have this at home? Did she go to a store and buy it specifically for me? Did she read it and go, “Yes, this expresses my feelings exactly”?
As a teen-ager, I remember we would go to prayer meeting, Bible study, every Wednesday night. I didn’t want to go at first, because it was disrupting play, riding bikes or running around. But then I started enjoying the argument, because I was trying to reconcile the Christ that I read about with the man they were talking about. The ideas of Christ are so powerful and radical and beautiful, and I heard this head-in-the-sand, subservient interpretation of Christ, and those two things didn’t add up to me. They were trying to be pragmatic about something that’s so revolutionary.
My mother, the one time we did talk about the show—she had seen all the hookups and the things I was doing—she said, condescendingly, “I just want to remind you that your body is a temple.” Well, my mom’s logged into my Instacart, so I see all the groceries she orders. And I said, “You just ordered Beanie Weenies this morning.” You know what Beanie Weenies are? Like, beans and hot dogs chopped up in a can. I said, “You’re inviting Beanie Weenies into your temple, and you’re criticizing me?”
I left my mother’s version of religion a long time ago, but I still have room for God in my life. I started out, years ago, saying, “Everything’s O.K.” That was a lie. Then I went off into the world, exploring. Went back home to North Carolina to try to change people in my life, realized I couldn’t, accepted that I couldn’t, made peace with that. Now the most revolutionary turn, to me, is that I find things funny again. Isn’t that crazy? I’m, like, You know what I wanna do next? I think I’m gonna be funny. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
