one
On the morning of the exorcism, I decided to kill my lust for men. Burnt Yellow Tuesday, plagued by my own hunger pangs, they told me not to eat until then. They are exorcists who like to call themselves saviors. After years of thinking about serving Jesus as a Christian, the thought fascinated me even more.And even though by Sunday morning I was moving by faith and not by sight, by night I was seeing power tools 4, mega dix 2, muscle hunter 5 And a video set to erupt with tons of big cocks from guys named Stryker. Kept quiet, lust was a midnight secret to share with insomniacs you don’t know. When he was in the late 90’s, no amount of darkness could hide the screeching and squall of the dial-up internet. He must have known the bodies lying awake on the other side of the wall. If there is such a noise in the middle of the night, someone must be ringing it alone by self-service. Meanwhile, I exploded in my futon and fell asleep in embarrassment. Yes, desire. On the morning of the exorcism, I thought an online support group for men who grope would do more groping.
Nineteen men who had no idea what to do with their hands, but must sin to be saved. The devil then, it had to be the devil. Banishing the Devil Tuesday’s room had one chair, the preacher was his two, and three black bags for me to put my vomit in. Like any good gay who prostrates with his father’s issues, I started lying to my father. One of the preachers said, “Tell me about your mother.” I opened my mouth and screamed.
two
By the time I turned 16, I wanted to be white for half my life.White like Bobby Ewing, white like Bo Duke, white like that movie team Others called him Faith. He imagined a pale hand holding a teacup and his head turned white as he ate. Imagine black kids sitting thinking he’s white and spying on his long blonde hair grazing between my fingers. My white ears are covered in headphones, my skin prevents me from wearing my school uniform, and my feet are walking through the downtown Kingston market on my way to school, step by step, thinking about white things. Being white made me speak Faustian jargon as if I had forgotten science. I was obsessed with scientific vanity. I would have sold crack to the nuns and told them it was powdered sugar and a white boy would have taken for granted and limped around. Black people would say watch him walk as if he could drive if he wanted to. It was the morning I stepped into the path of a moving bus, concentrating on rethinking my skin.
The Swing, 2020-2023 © Chris Ofili. Courtesy of artist Victoria Miro
three
Sometimes I think sin is too good to be true. If black people relax like white people, sloths relax. My pastor used to say that on the left side of virtue is sin and that one should never bow down to sin, but on the right side is perversion and nothing is worse than the bad that comes from the good. If the pure is in the center and the impure on the left, the Puritans are on the right. I wake up at 6am and sleep until 9am and I don’t feel like a sinner. I feel like he’s a pervert.
four
When a starving person and a glutton are both attacking a bag of potato chips, I can’t tell the difference. Except this. Even starving people know when their stomachs are full.
Fountain, 2017-2023 © Chris Ofili. Courtesy of artist Victoria Miro
five
Aunt Grace passed away in January 2016, and we kept her body on ice for three months to help her family in England pay for her funeral. No one said she broke her parents’ curse when she was 92, and neither of them is over 79. You are the writer in the family, said her mother at the wake. Let her write a thank you letter to the pastor and church. She never cried for her mother or her husband, nor at her funeral, nor was she going to cry at this time. I never cry at funerals because I don’t know where to put my grief, and I wondered if she did too. When I gave her the note, she asked for her envelope, and before I asked her why, thank God at least this part was legible, she said. I called the airline by her grave and paid her $320 to change her flight plus another $200 penalty to get away from her the next day.
six
greedy. I’d like to think I’ve never been plagued by this sin, because it was gluttony in disguise, and when I was 19 I was so skinny that doctors told me to try it. I’m not skinny anymore. It always seemed to me that greed was the only sin that others would define us with, and hearing how others defined me was what led everything that happened in One .
Pink Falls, 2019-2023 © Chris Ofili. Courtesy of artist Victoria Miro
Seven
When I rode in with a rock star seven years ago, he told me that he had met all the greats in his life, and they all had one thing in common. When asked where they thought their genius came from, each took the weighty question and cast it on an outside force stronger than themselves. God, the universe, the ghost of a good grandfather, or karma. But only Prince, that fucking prince, said it was all me. I remember him thinking at the time that this god didn’t choose me, or even you, because I was the fucking arrogant asshole that this genius sells as humility. And false modesty was proud to wear a fucking outfit with makeup already off, corsets loose, and a nut or two already popping out of her tights. Prince said what our wise people already know is simply “bragging isn’t bragging if it’s true.” In it he became Little Richard. He was an angel that none of us deserved, he once said, “I’m not conceited, I’m sure.”
Chris Ofili The Seven Deadly Sins Victoria Milo, London, from 2 June to 29 July. Accompanying book of the same name includes text by Marlon James. Hilton Ars, Inua Elamus, Anthony JosephAyanna Lloyd Banwo, Atira Springer, Lynette Yadom Boaky
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