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[Prompt: Write about something you've always wanted, but that you hope you never get.]
I got baptized when I was 11. I'd been wanting to since I was 8, but I always chickened out when the call went out at the end of service and I'd think about standing in front of everyone and having to say something. It wasn't until I was 11 that I realized I could talk to Brother Bob beforehand, and he could say something for me, and all I had to do was stand and stare at the floor.
The baptism was the next week, and in between we happened to have a revival, so by the time Sunday came, there were three of us. Brother Bob explained what would happen, everything from "The water will be a little cold but not too cold" to reassurances that when he dunked me, it would be quick enough that I would absolutely not breathe in any water through the folded handkerchief he would hold over my nose and mouth. And he was right. The actual baptism wasn't a big deal: I went under, I didn't feel any different when I came up, but because I'd declared my faith in public I wouldn't go to hell if I died.
Herb Broughton was one of the other two baptized. He was probably close to 40 years old, and he'd been baptized before, but a lot of people rededicated themselves to God this way. After we'd all been dunked, the three of us and Brother Bob were going to hold hands and bow our heads while Brother Bob prayed. I was disappointed that I ended up between Herb and the other guy I didn't know, so I was holding hands not with my much-loved pastor but with two near-strangers. Herb started to reach for my hand, but then he shifted. He cupped my shivering right shoulder in his big hand. It was a firm touch, but not pushing, not demanding. And as we stood with bowed heads and closed eyes, I could feel the warmth from beneath my skin meet the warmth of his quilt-heavy hand. What I felt was sacred. Safety. Acceptance. Connection. Peace. At that moment, I adored, not God and Jesus, but this comforting man and his palm that brought me the comfort I didn't know I'd been aching for.
I sought him out every Sunday after that. Before church started, then between Sunday School and preaching, then after the sermon was over. We mainly talked, mainly the sarcastic teasing that was the only way I knew to show affection. Not every week, but often enough, he'd put a hand on my shoulder, or sometimes his arm around me to hold the far shoulder, buddy-like, father-and-son-like, and he'd smile with a slight squint that seemed a little self-conscious, and he'd keep me from floating away into the nothingness where I mostly lived.
There was never anything dark in it. I was primed to expect something sexual in any touch, and to suspect even where there was nothing, and it was never there with him.
He was, I know now, the first parent-I-wanted. Less than a year later, my mother switched from that church, where we'd gone all my life, because of a feud with another member. I was adrift again, unmoored, floating.
In 7th grade, there were three physical education teachers supervising a gym full of us. At the beginning of the year, the court was set up with about 10 different "stations," and we were divided up into small groups and rotated through half of the stations each day doing each of the activities. One station was juggling, which was Mr. Huffman's forte. He wasn't there the whole ten minutes or so each group spent, because there were more groups than teachers. But one day, when my group was ending the period there, he came over. Ora Decker excitedly told him that I'd actually been juggling the scarves. Not just two, but all three at once, in the right pattern and everything. He wanted to see, of course, and I wanted to show him, but I knew before I even tried that there was no way my hands could do what I wanted with a teacher watching. I made the attempt, though, three or four times, until I finally gave up and stood still, begging the tears not to fall in front of the rest of the group. I glanced for a second across his face, risking that moment of eye contact in hopes of telegraphing into his mind that I needed an escape. And I saw such sympathy in the curve of his eyebrows that I felt in a way sorry for him. But he was also smiling softly, and he reached out, touched my shoulder for a second, father-and-son-like, and said, "That's fine, I'll see it at some point."
For two years or more, I daydreamed of him somehow becoming my guardian.
He wasn't the last: Mr. Jacobs in 9th grade, Mr. Huffman's wife that year, too. Mr. Berryman in 10th and 11th grades, Reverend Parrish at the same time, Mr. Tyler in the summer program before 12th grade, Mr. and Ms. Lee that last year of high school. Countless others in between, including the foster father from the three weeks I lived away from my parents. Then after I "grew up," there were professors, fellow college students, coworkers, my shrink to some extent, men I thought I wanted to be my boyfriends because that's what intimacy and intensity is supposed to be about. I at least know now that it isn't sex I'm sublimating. It isn't even a parent I want, a different mother or a different father, a replacement. I don't understand what a parent feels like, so that isn't the cavity I'm trying to fill, or if it is, I have no idea what the hole is shaped like or even where it resides within me. I want. I want. It is relentless and insistent and the shame of it makes me back away always from the person I want, makes me shove, bite, run.
I got baptized when I was 11. I'd been wanting to since I was 8, but I always chickened out when the call went out at the end of service and I'd think about standing in front of everyone and having to say something. It wasn't until I was 11 that I realized I could talk to Brother Bob beforehand, and he could say something for me, and all I had to do was stand and stare at the floor.
The baptism was the next week, and in between we happened to have a revival, so by the time Sunday came, there were three of us. Brother Bob explained what would happen, everything from "The water will be a little cold but not too cold" to reassurances that when he dunked me, it would be quick enough that I would absolutely not breathe in any water through the folded handkerchief he would hold over my nose and mouth. And he was right. The actual baptism wasn't a big deal: I went under, I didn't feel any different when I came up, but because I'd declared my faith in public I wouldn't go to hell if I died.
Herb Broughton was one of the other two baptized. He was probably close to 40 years old, and he'd been baptized before, but a lot of people rededicated themselves to God this way. After we'd all been dunked, the three of us and Brother Bob were going to hold hands and bow our heads while Brother Bob prayed. I was disappointed that I ended up between Herb and the other guy I didn't know, so I was holding hands not with my much-loved pastor but with two near-strangers. Herb started to reach for my hand, but then he shifted. He cupped my shivering right shoulder in his big hand. It was a firm touch, but not pushing, not demanding. And as we stood with bowed heads and closed eyes, I could feel the warmth from beneath my skin meet the warmth of his quilt-heavy hand. What I felt was sacred. Safety. Acceptance. Connection. Peace. At that moment, I adored, not God and Jesus, but this comforting man and his palm that brought me the comfort I didn't know I'd been aching for.
I sought him out every Sunday after that. Before church started, then between Sunday School and preaching, then after the sermon was over. We mainly talked, mainly the sarcastic teasing that was the only way I knew to show affection. Not every week, but often enough, he'd put a hand on my shoulder, or sometimes his arm around me to hold the far shoulder, buddy-like, father-and-son-like, and he'd smile with a slight squint that seemed a little self-conscious, and he'd keep me from floating away into the nothingness where I mostly lived.
There was never anything dark in it. I was primed to expect something sexual in any touch, and to suspect even where there was nothing, and it was never there with him.
He was, I know now, the first parent-I-wanted. Less than a year later, my mother switched from that church, where we'd gone all my life, because of a feud with another member. I was adrift again, unmoored, floating.
In 7th grade, there were three physical education teachers supervising a gym full of us. At the beginning of the year, the court was set up with about 10 different "stations," and we were divided up into small groups and rotated through half of the stations each day doing each of the activities. One station was juggling, which was Mr. Huffman's forte. He wasn't there the whole ten minutes or so each group spent, because there were more groups than teachers. But one day, when my group was ending the period there, he came over. Ora Decker excitedly told him that I'd actually been juggling the scarves. Not just two, but all three at once, in the right pattern and everything. He wanted to see, of course, and I wanted to show him, but I knew before I even tried that there was no way my hands could do what I wanted with a teacher watching. I made the attempt, though, three or four times, until I finally gave up and stood still, begging the tears not to fall in front of the rest of the group. I glanced for a second across his face, risking that moment of eye contact in hopes of telegraphing into his mind that I needed an escape. And I saw such sympathy in the curve of his eyebrows that I felt in a way sorry for him. But he was also smiling softly, and he reached out, touched my shoulder for a second, father-and-son-like, and said, "That's fine, I'll see it at some point."
For two years or more, I daydreamed of him somehow becoming my guardian.
He wasn't the last: Mr. Jacobs in 9th grade, Mr. Huffman's wife that year, too. Mr. Berryman in 10th and 11th grades, Reverend Parrish at the same time, Mr. Tyler in the summer program before 12th grade, Mr. and Ms. Lee that last year of high school. Countless others in between, including the foster father from the three weeks I lived away from my parents. Then after I "grew up," there were professors, fellow college students, coworkers, my shrink to some extent, men I thought I wanted to be my boyfriends because that's what intimacy and intensity is supposed to be about. I at least know now that it isn't sex I'm sublimating. It isn't even a parent I want, a different mother or a different father, a replacement. I don't understand what a parent feels like, so that isn't the cavity I'm trying to fill, or if it is, I have no idea what the hole is shaped like or even where it resides within me. I want. I want. It is relentless and insistent and the shame of it makes me back away always from the person I want, makes me shove, bite, run.
