As a young boy growing up in Los Angeles, I am entered by The Exorcist late one night after all the adults in the house have fallen asleep. I watch the film kneeling on the thick, red carpet, my face inches from the screen: the screaming girl and dying priest, the spinning head and bloody mouth, the room so cold that everyoneโs breath shows. The volume is just loud enough that I can feel the distorted bass of the devilโs voice in the bones of my throat.
As a young boy growing up in Cairo, my father watches exorcisms. His uncle drives him through the deserted countryside to nameless churches lit by chandeliers covered in generations of sand. One by one, the possessed lie on stone floors in front of altars as chanting priests circle and then hold them down.
Years after, my father tells me that some of the possessed were dragged through the desert for miles by their families. I imagine what itโs like to thrash under crucifixes, the nightmare of becoming undone. My fatherโs devil stories curl around my neck. They are a form of strangulation. I ask him once why his uncle would take him to exorcisms, and he says, โBack then, all we had to do for fun was the radio.โ
During the course of such exorcisms, the priest tortures the devil, and the devil eventually leaves because he canโt take it anymore. My father explains that at an exorcismโs end, the devil wants to exit violently through the possessed personโs eyes, blinding them. The priest orders him (the devil, to me, is male) to leave through the possessed personโs toes instead, because the toes are no big deal. When the priest succeeds, red crosses bleed through the feet of the possessed and soak through their socks.
My father and his uncle would stay afterward and help wash the church floor. My grandmother stopped buying my young father white shoes because of all the pairs he brought home bloodied. My father is seventy-five now and only wears gleaming white shoes.
In The Exorcist, Linda Blair โ who plays the young, bedeviled Regan MacNeil โ lies in bed, wrestling with the demon inside her. She projectile vomits. Her head spins. She curses at her mom. All under a pale-yellow blanket. The blanket imprints on me, and its memory places me at the foot of her bed, breathing in her green breath as she thrashes, her hands tied to the bedpost. Whenever the power goes off and Iโm suddenly left in the dark, or whenever I think I see someone hidden behind the drapes, I see that pale-yellow blanket spread across her writhing body, her face blanked out and slashed open.
Pazuzu, the demon in The Exorcist, was voiced by Academy Award winner Mercedes McCambridge, who was then fifty-seven years old and whom Orson Welles had called โthe worldโs greatest living radio actress.โ To add dimension to the demonโs voice, sound mixers recorded all of McCambridgeโs dialogue in four different tones. In the final film, Pazuzuโs voice is a braid of those four tones, overlaid with both a Vatican recording of a young girl shrieking in Latin during her exorcism and the sound of screaming pigs being herded for slaughter.
For a sound to produce an echo, there must be at least fifty-five feet between its source and the listener. A normal house is too small to generate an echo. The house I grow up in is indeed normal in the way that many overcarpeted houses are: the faucet that drips, the darkened rooms lit by birthday candles, the father always taking photos. But our house is abnormal in that everything that happens inside it is explained as the work of either God or the devil, either a miracle or a curse. In the house I grow up in, Pazuzuโs voice echoes.
From a young age, I am taught that the devil is always chasing me and that my job is to keep running, to take communion because it offers protection, to confess my sins because it keeps me pure. One fumble and I am his. I dress in my best clothes for church and hold my hands up in the air when I pray, like antennae magnifying the transmission. My mother teaches me that if I ever stray from God, it is a sign that the devil is inside me. Whenever I question my belief in God, this inverted knot of an idea rolls my thoughts the way a storm can roll a ship until it overturns.
Because Iโm gay, I have to run the fastest. I pray from my marrow. Did the devil make me gay or did God? The agony of having to run for my life from someone I canโt see is that I never know when Iโm ahead, or if Iโm ever ahead at all.
Iโm scared to write about the devil because writing is a form of incantation, because naming a thing is the first step in manifesting. Iโm forty-five years old now and thought that time had diluted the fear, but writing about him exhumes it. Itโs taken me four months to get the first page down. I work on it a little bit, then work on something else, then pretend to work on something else. But I keep returning to this essay, or it returns to me. It haunts me, and I haunt it back.
My father was left-handed until his family noticed. The left hand is the devilโs, they said, for reasons that no one could reasonably explain. They made him learn to write with his right hand, and he did so quickly because he feared staying left-handed, as though at any moment the devil could take him over and put him to work. But my father never forgot to write with his left hand. He tells me that if heโs ever in a meeting that isnโt going his way, heโll start writing with both hands until it does.
There is no Exorcist without McCambridgeโs voice. I can hear its guttural rumbling and twisted reverb long after the sound it produces stops. I think impersonating the devil is the most reckless thing a mortal can do, so I start reading about her. Iโm trying to figure out whether she was brave or senseless, and I read the following from an article called โA Look Inside William Friedkinโs The Exorcistโ by Seth Hansen:
When Iโm eleven, the neighbor girls visit with their Ouija board and explain how it works. I think, This is a terrible idea. How could this be sold in toy stores? To children? They make me put my fingers on a corner of the planchette and ask a question. I wonder, Am I opening a portal to hell? But I also donโt want them to laugh at me. After a long stretch of seconds, I press hard on the planchette and ask, โAre we alone right now?โ The planchette slowly drags to the word: NO. Even though itโs my house, I stand up and flee. Iโm not shocked by the answer. Iโve known it this whole time. Years later, my father will tell me that he saw one of the neighbor girls drunk at the supermarket in the middle of the day. I tell him the Ouija board story. He says, โSee. The poor girl had no chance.โ
As a child, I believe that the pale-yellow blanket keeps the devil inside Regan MacNeil, that it keeps him pressed close against her body. I stop sleeping under the covers. On the night I watch The Exorcist, I do the math and decide to never sleep under my blanket until I die. It isnโt worth the risk. No matter how cold I get, I sleep on top of the bed, uncovered. Exposed to the light of the Lord.
As a young boy, I ask my father why the devil wants to blind someone when he leaves them. My father says, โHe is the devil. He is a very, very bad guy.โ
In graduate school, on a random night after I get into a fight with my secret boyfriend, an evil spirit enters my bedroom while Iโm trying to sleep. I feel a dark thing staring down at me from next to the bed. I canโt open my eyes, and my ears ring like slot machines dumping quarters. I can feel my heartbeat in my neck. I canโt move, no matter how loud I scream backward into my brain. And then he disappears. This happens for enough nights that I start sleeping on the couch, hoping that he is confined to the bedroom. But he follows. I start sleeping on the floor encircled by my Bible, some icons, and a crucifix, as though they will throw him off my scent. But night after night, he finds me. I invite the priest from my new church over to bless my apartment. I think about what cookies Iโll serve him.
The priest walks around every room in my apartment, praying from a small black leather book with gilded page edges. I shadow him, trying to scan what heโs softly mumbling for the words devil, demon, Satan, et cetera. But all I hear is the word blessing repeatedly, which seems too anemic to lift any curses. I ask him for a prayer of protection, and he says, โAs long as you believe in God and take communion, you donโt need it.โ I tell him about the dark visitations, and he says, โItโs nothing, just some bad dreams.โ Over a plate of Milanos at my small kitchen table, I tell him that Iโm gay, and since Iโm new to his congregation, I thought he should know. He says, โYouโre lost.โ I tell him that Iโm not and that itโs final, that Iโm done trying to change. He again says, โYouโre lost.โ As he leaves my apartment, he stops at my bedroom door and makes the sign of the cross.
On the Sunday after the apartment blessing, Iโm standing in line for communion. When itโs my turn at the altar, I kneel, tip my head back, and open my mouth for the priest to place it on my tongue. Holding the Eucharist, he leans down close to my ear and whispers loudly for me to wait in the back of the church after mass. He doesnโt give me communion, but I keep my mouth open. He shoos me off the altar with a flick of his head. Iโm confused but also not, because I know exactly why this is happening. I take my place at the back of the church. My blood warms and my spine empties. The yellow blanket flashes. I close my mouth.
In 1984, about a decade after The Exorcist, Mercedes McCambridge was cast as Thelma in the national tour of the play โnight, Mother. The play has only two characters: Thelma, an aging mother, and Jessie, her despairing, chronically ill daughter. The first scene opens with a routine domestic conversation about garbage bags and Hersheyโs bars, during which Jessie abruptly asks Thelma, โWhereโs Daddyโs gun?โ Confused and assuming itโs for her daughterโs protection, Thelma helps Jessie find it in the attic. As Jessie comes down the attic ladder, she says, โIโm going to kill myself, Mama.โ She explains that she is tired of always feeling pained and that she is done with hoping for different. Over the course of the play, Thelma tries her best to dissuade Jessie from killing herself. At one point she says, โHow can I get up every day knowing you had to kill yourself to make it stop hurting and I was here all the time and I never even saw it. And then you gave me this chance to make it better, convince you to stay alive, and I couldnโt do it. How can I live with myself after this, Jessie?โ The play ends with the sound of a gunshot offstage.
After everyone has filed out, the priest and I stand in the back of the church. Looking down at the well-worn red carpet under the half-glow of dimmed chandeliers, he says, โI canโt give you communion because youโre not trying to repent.โ I donโt argue or push back. I just nod a lot, tell him that I get it. He says, โIโm not sure if Iโm doing the right thing or not. But I just canโt give it to you.โ Whenever Iโd imagined this moment happening, this reckoning, there were always pitchforks and a pyre, crowds of people spitting. I didnโt think it would be this quiet, this soft. He says, โIt wouldnโt be right.โ The words are hard for him to get out. I try to comfort him by repeating that I understand, by seeming unfazed. I try to make it all go down easy. I think that heโs a good man trying his best to do what he feels is right, and then hate myself for having this thought. This is the last mass I ever attend. I am skinned of my religion. Now I am all flesh.
In November of 1987, John Markle, Mercedes McCambridgeโs only child, was fired from his prestigious accounting firm when it was discovered that heโd been committing fraud through his motherโs account. In an attempt to settle the matter and keep it private, Markle and the firm tried to set up a repayment plan with McCambridge, but she refused, saying that she had done nothing wrong and was, in fact, owed money. On November 6, 1987, Markle shot dead his wife, Christine (age forty-five), and his daughters, Amy (age thirteen) and Suzanne (age nine), before turning the gun on himself. I read all of his obituaries. One of them published the long, handwritten letter that he left behind for his mother: โInitially you said, โWell, we can work it out,โ but NO, you refused. . . . You called me a liar, a cheat, a criminal, a bum. You said I have ruined your life. . . . You were never around much when I needed you, so now I and my whole family are dead โ so you can have the money. . . . โNight, Mother.โ
My father tells me that on the way to the exorcisms, his uncle would stop at a butcher he knew. His uncle would have the butcher slaughter a calf and then cut out its liver. Theyโd slice it thickly, cover it in lemon juice and salt, and eat it off the cutting board. My father says that the brilliance of its taste wasnโt just about its freshness. He says that it was about tasting the organ at the animalโs body temperature. โMaybe your shoes got bloodied at the butcherโs?โ I ask him. He says, โYou still donโt believe me.โ
Mercedes McCambridge wouldnโt have kept priests by her side if she didnโt believe there was a risk. Did the devil reap what McCambridge sowed in that recording booth by slaughtering her family? This is the kind of question only I would ask, because in the Christianity I know, everyone eventually pays for what theyโve done. What price will I pay for writing about him? What unseen horror is barreling toward me? In her 1981 autobiography, The Quality of Mercy, McCambridge writes: โIf I have to climb into heaven on a ladder, I shall have to decline the invitation.โ Besides Pazuzuโs dialogue, these are her most memorable lines, interpreted as a chic kind of heresy. If you keep reading further down the page, though, you see that sheโs merely describing her difficulty with ladders. She writes: โGoing up is sheer agony, and going down is impossible.โ McCambridge uses heaven to measure a fault in her body. I use heaven to measure the ladder. My belief in God wavers. It goes in and out like a channel losing reception, but all I know to do is climb.
I am sitting next to my father in my parentsโ unnecessarily formal dining room at the end of dinner. Everyone has left the table except for him and me. Weโre surrounded by plates of half-eaten shish kebabs and empty bottles of Corona. I tell my father about the dark visitations. About how when the devil comes for me, I canโt move or speak. About the noise I hear and the terror I feel. Heโs a doctor and starts going through the differential. Itโs not MS or delirium, he says. Itโs not seizures or schizophrenia. He tells me that I have sleep paralysis and that itโs common, that it comes from stress. I say, โAre you sure, Dad? It feels like he or something or someone is right there.โ He puts his hands on my throat and gently feels for lymph nodes. I say, โItโs like heโs right next to me. Right next to the bed. Itโs more than stress, Dad. I know stress.โ He wraps his hand around my wrist and checks my pulse. I say, โThis is evil. Itโs something evil.โ He asks if anything is going on with me, if Iโm under a lot of stress right now. I tell him about how I wake up with blood in my mouth from grinding my teeth, about infected nail beds that I keep biting. I tell him that I just donโt feel right. My father says, โGod is always with you. Donโt ever worry. DONโT. This is nothing, habibi. He is always with you.โ I want to trust him, but I donโt. Itโs so easy for him to believe in all of it. In the pearly gates and the water into wine. In the kingdom to come. But I only believe the parts about fire and gore. Those are the parts for me. Theyโre mine.
I type this paragraph with my left hand. And itโs taking a long time to get the sentences out. This is the hand of the devil typing. And itโs taking too long. I type quickly to get this part over with. This is the adult version of sleeping on top of the blanket, a way of minimizing my exposure to risk. My left hand is a planchette dragged against the board. The poor girl had no chance. Iโm waiting for something to happen: a door to slam or the lights to flicker, a cold spot to form in the center of the room, any sign that heโs here. Iโm kneeling at the altar, my head pulled all the way back, my mouth broken open and left empty. Are we alone right now? The thing about being a Christian faggot is that, like a calf living behind a butcher shop on an unnamed road to a far-off church somewhere in Egypt, Iโm always waiting for the knife to come down, for the blood to spill.