Baptizing My Back

Baptizing My Back1

I told my sister I didn’t want to go to this ‘church’ camp . . . but I ended being shuttled there anyhow. ‘Your brother in-law is going.” She said, handing me a KJV Bible to stuff in my baggage. “So you won’t be alone.” Hah, I thought as I sat in my cabin two days later. Hah, like he is any help at all.2

First off, there were my cabin mates. Or should I say . . . the people I was forced to share my damp quarters with, yes that’s more appropriate.3

“Look at me tra~lala.” Laughed one of the boys as he squirted shaving cream on his nipples. “Ooh I like to twist them.” He laughed. The other boys laughed as well. “Fuckin queer.” One of them said in laughing. To that the boy pranced around and spanked his butt. Mocking, hamming it up, that’s what he was doing.4

No one cared if what they said or mocked hurt someone. I mean, it was like  if they’d called him a commie, as I sat in my backyard making ‘Long Live Castro’ signs or ‘I <3 Mussolini’ buttons. I was a fairy, I was a queer, I knew it, and it hurt that it was something so ‘stupid, degrading’ and fun to mock.5

Then of course there was the speaker who graced us with his godly words. An average built man, locally renown for being an ‘enjoying, charismatic’ missionary/evangelical. I don’t mean charismatic as speaking in tongues, I mean people liked him . . . insane people I suppose. Or really bored people.6

“Did I ever tell y’all about the time I went to San Francisco?” He said as if he was our old grandfather regaling stories of his youth for the fifteenth time and not some stranger in a tweed jacket trying to preach to us in anecdotes. “I was around fourteen, And I was  f– . . . ” He paused, glancing over at the large boy in the front row and then choosing a different choice of words. “I was . . . rather husky.” He continued. “And my parents took me for a ride in the trolley.”7

Of course, there was a but.8

“But, I fell off the side of the trolley and tumbled down!” He said, hoping to get some gasps.  He didn’t. “And because I was so fa–husky, ahem, I rolled down that steep Cisco hill like a sack of poÌtaters!” As if a bag of lumpy, eyed, dirty, heavy potatoes would roll down a hill that easily, I thought.9

And yet, he continued.10

“I was cry’n, but I tried to run back up.” The man said, getting up to the pulpit. “I ran and ran, but my fa–husky body found it hard to keep up with the trolley.”  Then he stopped, and tried to turn his untrue story into a ploy to save our filthy hides. “But then I spoke up to Jesus, I asked him, what would you do dear lord? I then allowed him inta my heart.”11

I imagined the speaker as a ‘husky’ fourteen year old, rolling down the hill screaming. “Oh no! I better stop rolling and ask myself . . . What would Jesus do!?” Jesus wouldn’t be a tubby kid rolling down the streets of Cisco in the first place, now would he? 12

After the day of strange peer harassment and male ‘bonding’, as well as Rev. Lard’s speech, we had a field & track day. Hurrah! Games! ...Out door games . . . 13

I was not an athletic child, no, not at all. Perhaps it was because my father never played sports with me as a child, or perhaps it was because I myself was a tad husky, either way . . . I was about to be schooled at games of football and relay races.14

It was after I was smacked into by a large African-American–he was actually Jamaican . . . but it seems like every black person nowadays has got to be called ‘African-American’–and I fell to the muddy grass with a thud. I couldn’t get up. I didn’t understand it. I tried to get up, and my legs gave out with a severe pain in my hips and back. I was scared of course, and in pain, but I managed to crawl to my feet and bear the pain. I walked over to my brother in-law and asked him to please help me to the nurse’s room.15

Turned out that the nurse was a man from my sister’s godly church. I hobbled into the room, and I am not ashamed to admit that I was crying, and I tried to sit down on the small bed. Because of my existing bipolar disorder, the nurse didn’t believe I was hurt . . . instead he game me an extra dose of my nerve medicine and essentially told me to be man.16

But I wasn’t a man. I was a boy. I was a confused boy in some weird church camp that he didn’t belong in. I had people making fun of me, I was tired because of lack of sleep, and I could hardly walk. Obviously, the nurse’s diagnosis of my insanity wasn’t apt because it was only a few hours later until I came in with the help of two men, I couldn’t walk without falling to my knees in pain.17

The nurse gave in and laid me on the bed with a heating pad. I fell asleep, but awoke to the picture of the nurse standing over me, along with my sister’s wonderful preacher. 18

I was drowsy. “I’d like to talk to with you.” Said the nurse, sitting down. The preacher nodded, like yes yes tell it to him! I had thought perhaps he was going to send me home, to a hospital, give me medicine . . . something!19

“When I was a boy.” He began. “I was young, thought I knew everything, and did whatever I felt like. And then, one day, just like you, I feel into a disgusting trap.” Trap, I thought? Did the opposing cabin’s team rig the field with back-spraining mines!?20

“I fell into the devil’s trap. It started when I’d heard these voices screaming in my head all the time. I’d smack my head off desks like I was a doll, trying to get rid of the voices, the screaming, shouting, evil chilling voices.” He said, getting a narrowed look from my sleepy eyes, tearing with pain.21

“And then . . . one night I was walking the catwalk for my military-school’s night exercise, when out of the dark night I saw something. Bright green eyes, alive with maliciousness, it was so chilling, and so disgustingly evil. Then I heard the voice.” What voice, I thought, was it the men come to take you to the padded rooms in a straight jacket!? 22

“Jump, Jason.” The voice said, it was so disgusting and yet mesmerizing. “Jump off, end it. You know you want to. End it all.” And I was tempted. It was the strongest voice I had ever heard, and the eyes, oh the eyes glowed so. But then, I thought back, in the back of my mind . . . ” Jesus I thought, sighing. “Jesus.” He said in a revering whisper as if he had just seen Elvis.23

“I took Jesus as my savior right then and there . . . and that’s the only reason I’m standing in front of you. Otherwise I’d have ended up like . . . ” He paused. Like you he wanted to say. Like me. 24

There I was, laying in extreme pain, in a place I didn’t like, surrounded by people I didn’t know, and this guy, this guy was telling me that I was demonically possessed!?25

I bit my lip. “I want to talk with my mother.” I said, trying not to cry, I was mad and also scared, but mostly in pain. “Now.” 26

I went home, but that experience was so unnerving to me. My sister doesn’t believe it happened, because of course, I’m no longer even a faux Christian . . . I learned first hand how insanely arcane and dangerous beliefs like that could become.27

I wasn’t possessed, and no amount of Christian Science or Accepting Jesus would have made me better. I found out much later on that my spine was curved in so many places that it was lucky the fall didn’t break one of my spinal columns. I also discovered that I had osteoarthritis in every joint in my body–and had spinal disks about as thick as a pancake.28

Regardless of why, regardless of my obvious pain, the people at that camp did everything in their power to make me believe their bull-pocky. Childish minds, are in fact the easiest to sway, but luckily for me I wasn’t quite as childish as they believed, even in my weakness. Otherwise, I might not be here today.  I’d be off celebrating the second coming of Christ and thanking brother Jason for helping with the blessed baptism of my back.29