Love, Demons, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

This article was written for www.blackpower.com

Love----Buffy the Vampire Slayer Style

There are days when I feel like Buffy the Vampire Slayer except less blonde, with better legs, and no breasts. Nevertheless, there are days when I wake up and feel as if I spend my entire existence fighting demons, attempting to drive stakes through my internal craziness, and doing everything I can to keep the Seal of Darkness from opening and letting all hell break loose.

I am a black, Latino, Native, white, HIV positive, queer man coming off eight years of Bush and living in the worst recessions since the Great Depression. I grew up with a single mother. I watched her be physically abused, I survived mental and physical abuse and somehow I have made it into my early 30s. Did I mention that I am also a recovering meth addict, and my boyfriend lives in New York while I live in Oakland? When I say there are days I feel like Buffy. I am not exaggerating.

Moving and living in a world that has plenty of undead, ghouls, goblins, ghosts, skeletons in closets, skeletons buried in the back yard, and skeletons propped the hell up at the dinner table, is like living in an episode of that late much lauded icon of late 90s/early millennium pop culture. Buffy was a metaphor for modern society. And there are days when I run the gamut of characters. Sometimes I am sassy Willow with a spell or three for bitches that get in my way. Some days I am dumb ass Zander who wanders around wondering exactly what he is supposed to be doing and why he has no super powers. Other days I am Anya, a reformed addict trying to do right and not quite getting it right, and other times I am lame, annoying, whining Dawn----a supposed source of ultimate power that sits in the corner and bitches and moans until she inevitably gets kidnapped by some Hell Beast and has to be rescued by friends.

But most days I am Buffy, feeling as if I have been killed and resurrected on multiple occasions, wielding inner strength with a touch of Paradise lost, and trying my hardest to fight the good fight while really thinking about doing high kicks at the Homecoming game and going home to my husband, Freddie Prinze Junior, and doing some Cirque du Soleil gutterbutt Hugh Heifner shit that I can upload to Xtube when I’m finished.

Lately, I have been fighting the biggest, worst, nastiest stank ass of Satan’s Lieutenants…that succubus called Jealousy. That green eyed monster, so seductive, so cruel, spends so much time running in and around my mind that if I ever catch her, I am going to skin her alive with a rusty butter knife dipped in Ajax and then dribble hot bacon grease in the wounds.

I have a wonderful man. He is a little like Zander, but way sexier, much more brilliant, and with a much better boogina. Actually, he is nothing like Zander at all.

This man has spun my world upside down and inside out. With him, I feel like Tara and Willow during the Musical Episode of Buffy when they are flitting around, casting butterfly spells and serenading one another. He has opened up my eyes to myself, and cast a spell on me that has let me see my true reflection instead of looking through the eyes of the wounds that I have inflicted on myself and that were legacies of growing up where and when and how I did. He is my number one fan, and my number one critic. He is my Watcher that helps me keep the demons at bay.

Except for the ones that he stirs up.

He and I have an open relationship. Open as in, open right up and let that Jealousy bitch come right on in. Now, I know myself. Like Buffy, I am a ho. I would happily fuck a sexy vampire or two or have a threesome with a hung Hell Beast and Spike. I could do all that and know without a doubt that the Bacchanalia would have no impact on my thoughts, feelings, or love for my partner. Theoretically, I know that the same goes for him. Practically, when I know he has gone out and had sex with someone else, I want to find them both and drive a stake through their conjoined bodies. Unfortunately, human beings don’t burn up into piles of ash when you stick a sharpened Louisville slugger through their necks.

The disconnect between my brain and my heart (or wherever Jealousy happens to reside) is the greatest impact on our relationship right now. In general, we love and support each other like Anya and Zander before Zander left her high and dry at the altar in a room full of demons that had just fireballed in from Hell. I struggle each day to remember that his love for me is not diminished by the trick that may or may not have just left his house or job or theater or wherever he happens to be.

Living in this society as a gay Black man who truly believes in the multiplicity of loves and ways of loving but has survived so many psychic wounds is a mental juxtaposition that at times is paralyzing at best and at other times is whiny ass woe as me and let me be a crazy psycho jealous biznatch at worst. Self-examination and awareness is the first step in any sort of recovery. But, if I become any more self aware, I may be forced to stake myself.

Learning to love through the demons, love past the skeletons, love around the ghouls, and love in spite of the goblins is one of the hardest adventures that this Buffy has ever had to undertake. But the alternative, laying down in a cold grave, alone, wandering the nights looking for a quick juicy fix, is not the road which I want to walk anymore. This Slayer is out to win the Final Battle. Oh my Goddess.