By Cocomo Rock
My Biographical Data
I have been diagnosed with a ton of “chronic,” “disabling,” and “degenerative” diseases. The most challenging diagnosis was HIV/AIDS. When I call my HIV diagnosis merely challenging, that has to be the granddaddy of all understatements; by the time I reached the point that I was able to accept the news, I was reduced to a blurbering mess.
HIV came to live with me 22 years ago, when I was in what I considered the prime of my life. I received the news like a death blow. I immediately pulled the grave dirt over my own face, and hunkered down into a crypt of shame and hopelessness. My fear that my mark of shame would be discovered was more awful to me than my fear of the dreaded death that AIDS promised. That fear and shame had torn me out of the world of the living world as surely as if I had already died and my ashes carried away on a wind of forgetfulness. No more would I be a firebrand of ambition and determination amongst my peers. I was tainted goods now, and anyone could clearly see the red mark of condemnation upon me. No more would the sheer strength of my convictions draw supporters to stand with me as class president, tenant's association chair, civic club spokesman. No longer would I be acceptable as devoted husband, father, son, brother, or lover. And never more would I be desired as the one to meet and greet company guests, to lead its prime investigative team, or be considered the foremost candidate for the executive training program. It was the end of ambition, and it was the end of promise.
I abandoned myself fully to heroin and cocaine addiction along with every other vice and device the dark of night offered. The setting sun was my call to the streets. I began to understand the curse of vampires because the rising sun had now become anathema to me. The light of day held no joy for me, and I was always waiting for the bitter end that I knew was just twenty-four hours away. One night, after long, careful thought, I finally decided that there was no God.
Many years followed. They were years in which I was trapped on a hellish roller coaster ride. I soared up into sky-high nights, then sank into puking, death-valley mornings. One day, I basked under the lavish attentions of a high-rolling sugar daddy, only to be savaged by the debauchery of a knife-wielding rapist the next; I dozed lazily through the afternoon on cool, silken sheets and fragranced pillows, only to spend the night in a hot, pissy jail cell. All of the persistence and determination I had once brought to bear on carving out success in my life, I now brought to destroying myself in hell. Besides, I thought, for most of my pre-adult years, had it not always been just me against the world, or the world against me, anyway? Would anybody be sorry to see me give up? Through the rain of spit, hatred, lies, beatings, and kickings, had I not clawed my way onto some small rock of respectability---some small place on the planet that I could claim that I was deserving of? Not much of a place, but some small place that was inviolate to "them." Now, however, they had AIDS on their sides, the gay plague. It had walked right in, invisibly, past all known defenses, and now it had fortified itself--a deadly enemy-- within my own walls! Nobody could win against odds like that!
Everyday, I longed for an end to my pain. I promise you that at any moment I would have gladly welcomed a gentle death, but I had no courage to face a hard one. Even sweet sleep refused to come around for days on end, sometimes. I looked forward to only three bright moments: one of them was the deep nod I found in a good bag of heroin; the second was the whistling rush of a high-flying crack cocaine hit, and the third was to achieve the all-consuming paroxysms of sexual climax--as many times as possible. I went without food, and I would have walked my feet to bloody stumps in pursuit of either of these. They were always my main objectives.
One day, in November 2002, I discovered, very suddenly, that I had finally used myself up. I had used up all of my friends and so-called friends. I had no family left--- none that cared to claim the title, anyway. And, I could barely tremble to my own two feet without help of some kind. My bowels were always either fully open or completely shut, and the stink of the gases inside me were backing up in such a way that whenever I opened my mouth, it smelled like raw sewage. Moreover, I was now in jail. I was on my way to prison with a sentence that was surely longer than I would live to finish. Still, at every opportunity, I was taking whatever narcotics I could get from patients in the jail’s infirmary, sneaking to smoke cigarettes, and making every secret sexual tryst I could manage. "It will only be over," I said, "when the fat lady sings." And she had not sung yet! Nonetheless, I was very tired—and I was also very sick. I had seen many emaciated and abandoned queens die of AIDS in prison before, and beneath my daily exterior of bravado, I was terrified.
Bridgeport County Jail
December 2, 2002
Alone in the dark one night, I quietly and fervently called on God. I did not bother to call on the God of my childhood church. Neither did I cry out to any of the other gods of my previous understandings. Instead, I spoke in earnest to the God that I had never known and had never been able to understand. I spoke softly, but I spoke urgently, and I offered up the dregs of my broken body and spirit to him/her/it, if only it would save me. This was my one final and desperate plea for relief from the misery that had, now, almost fully consumed me. There were no tears in my eyes, and no flashes of light surrounded me. I finished my supplication, and I walked away. It was business as usual for me, except for one very small difference: In my mind, I had determined, that night, that if this God would answer me, I would be true to my promise: I would surrender everything in return, if he/she/it would rescue me from the horrible pit I was in.
This is not my autobiography, so I will cut to the chase and say this: By March of 2003, it had become very clear to me that my life was changing. I knew that God was active in the change because the transformations that were taking place were by no design of my own--I was experiencing change from within, rather than from without. Only I knew the extent of the miracle that was happening right before everybody's eyes. There were times that even I was in awe and amazement that this was me thinking, that this was me feeling, that this was me saying no where I would have once said yes and yes where I would have once said no. I was amazed that me, the one who had given up many years before on the idea of anything so ludicrous as changing myself, was changing and loving it. Pretty soon, I began to seek out opportunities to walk and talk with this God who had begun to make Himself known to me. Everyday, He revealed more and more of my own inner truths to me. He then went on to open my eyes to many of the simple mysteries around me as well. I have not smoked a cigarette, nor used a drug since that time. I have not desired it. Further, I have enjoyed the tranquilities of a celibate life for nearly five years now. I am at rest.
God led me to study the Bible more. As I drank in the word, my spirit received this scripture, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD my strength and my redeemer.” This promptly became part of all my prayers as well as a “signature” at the end of all the journal entries I had started to keep daily. It was too much to write the entire scripture out every time I made an entry in my journal, so I shortened it into a numeric form that I could manage: It became "191914" (the 19th book of the Bible, Psalms, the 19th chapter, and the 14th verse). Later, I added the form of the cross to it and placed my initials, CR, beneath the cross. Throughout my time in prison, the spirit of this simple and well known verse remained the standard that I kept before me. It was and is a reminder to me of where my strength springs from and a reminder to me of who it is that has redeemed me out of a forsaken place.
It was during my time in prison that I wrote most of the poetry and memoir that I bound into my first limited edition collection called "Predators, Healers, Nurturers & Prey." The book is available in custom bound copies by special order.
Today, 191914 is the banner that goes before this ministry that God has led me into. by His Grace and tender Mercy, hope is alive in me again. And out of that hope flows songs, poetry, and a passion to do something meaningful to shut down that road to destruction that I stayed on for too long. I like to meet other people at their cross roads, before its too late for them, and present them with a compelling argument, born of experience, that points them in a different direction.
I am strong, fit, and happy, being in Christ. I am looking forward to my fifty-fourth birthday on March 6, 2009, with hope, confidence, and gratitude, for I am indeed a man who has been born again. I was blind, but now I see.
Go to RENAISSANCE of the CREATIVE SPIRIT