Baptism

Saturday in the belly of a Richard Serra I became a Christian again. This evening in the bottom of my bathtub I contemplated the logistics of what the hell that actually means. Do I make that phone call? Do I sponsor a child? Should I be baptized? Again? This would be my third baptism. Once with the Catholics, again with the Evangelicals, and now?

“Baptism is a religious sacrament which is marked by the symbolic use of water and results in admission to the community of believers.”

Admission:
“confession of a charge, an error, or a crime; acknowledgment: His admission of the theft solved the mystery.”

“an acknowledgment of the truth of something”

I’ll take the second one in an effort to avoid more guilt. So my third baptism would be an “an acknowledgment of the truth of…” God to the believers through aquatic symbolism. There was a knock at the door, my roommate wanting to use the bathroom. I pulled the shower curtain taut and summoned her. And with her came the cat, some high pitch inflections, and a very gracious invitation to go hot-tubing with her and some friends. This was my opportunity. To be doused in perfect pitch chemical water and those girls went to Christian college with me, they struggle like the rest, they’ll do. They’ll do. I looked over at my cat. She was looking at me, horrified. Has my cat ever seen me naked before? I wondered out load what a mess her little mind must be in right now, seeing a face see knew attached to such an odd, blobby, white-yellow- pink –brown mess. My roommate didn’t respond. She didn’t even laugh. I know that both my roommates, (infact everyone I know) look at themselves naked in front of a mirror but at this moment she and I were 5,000 miles away from each other. I declined her invite, but was genuinely grateful she asked.

I lifted my hands above my face and let the droplets of water smack kisses all over me as my roommate scooped up the cat and shut the door. Alone again and thinking of this, “community of believers.” I slouched into the tub and pictured different pair of a hands out in front of me. Though they were not mine, the hands were short and worked the way my used to be. I noticed that on the middle finger on the right hand just shy the nail was a flat dry spot. The nails were kind of nasty. Thicker than mine, not green or folding up or anything but sort of dirty the sort of nails plagued with gray and brown histories. These picking fingers brushed some of my hair away from my face, but my instincts didn’t go crazy the way they do when a guy does this. The hands placed some of my hair behind my ear. This act, in all reality, if done by the fingers of a man, boy, guy (whatever) would typically send me into a 40-ounce pheromone stupor. But there was no man, boy, or guy attached to those hands but rather Flannery O’Connor and standing next to her, Madeleine L’Engle.

Saying nothing, they were both holding me along with what now seemed like hundreds of hands. Infact, there were hundreds, well perhaps twenty hands all holding my head and shoulders. Some with their palms on my chest. This was a little awkward because some of the proprietors of these hands were men. But as I looked around I saw all these hands and all their owners. I knew that they weren’t feeling awkward or sexual because they knew me and I them. People I knew but only through their work. Minds I have entered through text and metaphor. Through writing so much better then all of this. Berry, July, Blake, Cisneros, Lamott, Plath even Clowes (I was really surprised he wasn’t acting weird about the whole thing). All holding me ready to baptize me in my tub, the waters of my own humanness. The community of believers.

Then I imagined them slowly pushing my face under water. I becoming lighter with my descent and they becoming a bit hazy through the cloudy bathwater. Submerged, I thought of Jesus. His descent to hell. By now I was even thinking of his resurrection but the Baptists’ palms kept crushing my chest. I started to panic. My eyes were burning, all I could think about was all the soap and hair floating around in that tub. I looked up at Flannery, steam had fogged her glasses but the V’s on her forehead initiated the first round of punches. These people were trying to kill me. When one catches a fish one must first unhook it, then let it flop around on the deck of the boat for a while before one beats it over the head with a wood mallet. I stopped struggling. I looked up at Anne Lamott , say something wise, crack a joke, tell me what to believe.

Then, a worm. A dirty little face with rigged white smirk. Her fingernail. Then her finger, her hand. Puncturing the water and floating above my face again. She placed her finger on the crown of my skull then moved it down toward my nose. She lifted it and repositioned it above my left eyebrow. She then brushed a horizontal line across my forehead. Then she crossed my lips, then my heart.

One of them had let the water out, I had guessed it was Wendell Berry, he would never over water anything. They had all gone, my community of believers vanished. I let the bathwater drain making me heavier as it left. Until the last bit of it was sucked out and the weight of me was unbearable. Then, I rose.