Sacred Baptism

Sacred is an anagram for scared. Many of the things I consider sacred now were once a cause for fear. I was not a cradle Episcopalian, swaddled in grace through infant baptism, but asked instead to toe-walk a narrow plank toward the aisle before my first decade: a young southern baptist.

My twin brother and I didn’t want to give our wicked older brother the satisfaction of salvation. After a visit from the pastor, our baptism was planned. For Baptists, immersion is the only option, dunked in the name of one-in-three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I still remember that big blue tub behind the altar, a place where I might want to host a cocktail party now. My palsied feet were clinging to the cinder block, so I didn’t baptize myself first by accident, short enough to sink. The pastor’s hands held my shoulders. The shower-curtain gown flared out in the water, exposing my swimsuit I only wore in the heated pool for physical therapy.

Baptism was a different kind of therapy, a cure for sin. The water was cold as if to remind me of the chill I woke up in weeks ago, imagining myself buried by my favorite cartoon character. The spit-talking mallard said I would be fine as he buried me alive. It was the only comfort I remember as my heart beat faster and faster. I cried aloud and woke up in a sweat. Baptism, they say, is a kind of death. I wouldn’t know what it truly meant to be reborn after many years. Fully accepting myself and sexuality for what it was — holy and god-given.

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