Burning my list

The alabaster paper contained the left-handwritten names of approximately fifty-five men and two women.

But to write “names” is to nearly adopt the role of one of those lying scribes that the depressed prophet Jeremiah chronicled.

For some of the enumerated entries on my laser printer paper scroll read like a victim trying to recount to police her thief’s personage, a vixen digging into the annals of her brain to recall those she has scorned.

“That guy I gave free Big Macs to,” said one entry in the cluster of folks during my teen-aged years.

The moniker of the first guy on the list — a 16-year-old who devirginized me at 12 — gave me pause.

Did it end in “an” or “us”?

I settled on the latter and moved on writing all the names or descriptions that were brought to my remembrance.

“Destination unknown as we pull in for some gas…”

…sang Pauly Fuemana of OMC on the “How Bizarre” song that grew so popular he spoke of the throat polyps that developed as a result of singing the same lyrics over and over all around the world away from his Polynesian homestead.

“A freshly pasted poster reveals a smile from the pack,” he continued, with a line that I and many others always misinterpreted as “a smile from the past.”

But my freshly pencil-leaded list evoked few smiles from my disjointed pack.

A couple warm-souled memories arose — more from the “Who’s gonna talk to me till the sun comes up?” conversations and wild adventures than the actual acts that I’ve suppressed.

The Egyptian pharaoh-sounding name of an ex-fiancé that almost became my last name resided with the others.

As did the initials of my ex-husband, which should’ve technically appeared sequentially last on my list of whoremongering partners — there because it was a marriage made in Hades, not the heaven-sent one I later experienced.

In those days, during the first year of the second reign of King Bush in 2005…

….folks tooled around the Northeast Ohio Valley with small square-shaped black stickers with a simple “W” in white in the foreground adorning their back windows.

Sleek and elegant decal statements to match their sleek and elegant oversized SUVs.

But my “W” rested somewhere close to my hopeful heart — along with the other black Ohioans who helped put him in office the year before, nearly double the percentage who’d voted for “dubya” in 2000.

It didn’t adorn the 10-year-old black Ford Explorer I towed babies and friends around within, like a new friend from church whom I told of my list-burning idea.

“I thought about writing down the names of the people I slept with and then burning it,” I said.

“I’ve done that,” she replied.

Grateful that she understood my methodology, and had performed the practice herself — a sort of outward semblance of breaking the “soul ties” and “bonds of iniquity” we’d learned about in Christian circles — I solidified in my mind that I’d perform the ritual that bespoke of my repentance soon afterward.

Deliverance is available…

“Deliverance is available…” sang Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell’s Windsor Village Choir on the CD I’d pumped in the truck oft times. “My God is most able…”

It had been 7 years at that point since the time I’d looked up during a “Sisters in Spirit” Bible study meeting at a friend’s apartment from the Scriptures about fornication that rested on my lap and said, “I gotta get married!” (A eureka moment after which some of the more spiritually mature women looked at me like, “No, duh!”)

I got it.

I realized I’d done a lot of wrong in my life — sexually and otherwise — and I’d accepted the sacrifice of the blood of the Lamb — my Rabboni! — to cover the evil that separated me from the Rock of Israel, as King David called God in his last words.

But something about these sins against my own body felt especially perverse.

“Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?” Paul wrote. “Never!”

It was time for any wrong bonds to burn.

Whoremonger no longer…

The day still contained a chill of winter in the atmosphere as I studied the long list of entries — squirreled away in my locked bathroom.

Let all these people come to know You, I prayed, as I thought of some on the list who professed God’s name already.

Break any bonds I have with them. Save them.

The “bonds of iniquity” wording always brought to life swirling images of a vertigo-like tornado tunnel running deep down below our feet.

A nether world slightly perceptible where I knew some of the people or activities I performed with them belonged.

“Am I therefore to take the parts of Christ and make [them] parts of a prostitute?” the tent-maker from Tarsus wrote a full 2,000 or so years before a black woman in America would quote him. “Never! Never!”

Not that any prostitutes as we know them appeared on my list — plenty of man whores, yes, hopefully reformed.

And one great big “whoremonger no longer” held onto both the burning list and Jesus’ words about being a new creature — and the New Testament promise about having no condemnation for anything I’ve done because I’ve given Him the steering wheel.

“Burn that mutha down…burn it!”

After setting a corner or two of the paper ablaze over the sink, I took the remnants to the window — the pane and shade pulled up several inches to allow the wind inside and the smoke out.

As the charred evidence of failure on top of failure turned to blackened, scorched and crumbling ashes, I felt some sort of release happen then and there in that inner room.

I watched the smoke waft up and out, carried heavenward like a fragrant burnt offering — like the plumes of white pushed out of those brass smoking things on chains that the altar boys at my St. Edmund’s Parochial School used to swing down the aisles.

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,” Father “Matthias” used to chant with solemn reverence as the golden bells rang, “who was, and is, and is to come”

“I feel better now, so much better now, since I laid my burden down…”

It’s okay now.

I beseeched our Creator for their salvation — felt contrition for my role in leading any astray, forgave any who led me down the Broadway of Destruction for a time.

And they’ve got nothing on me.

Nothing that I haven’t already been prompted to spill about myself — exponentially incomparable to the manner in which my Teacher took the brutal torture and embarrassment of near nakedness — all to pour His own crimson blood and water out like a drink offering on Golgotha to cleanse my “sexcapades” that are so not sexy or righteous beyond the veil.

Yet every time I read about “harmless hookups” noted sharply by funnymen like Tucker Max, scribe of the best-selling I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell — don’t risk it, Buddy — I think of a deeper plight.

Of how much higher His ways are above my baser and lust-filled imaginings that don’t leave so readily, till I give up like a guilty girl and take them captive.

Of “deep calleth unto deep” brilliant, breathing wording calling me out into distant, rollicking sea away from those letting the shallow currents take them blithely downstream with the crowd…

Of “deep calleth unto deep” brilliant, breathing wording calling me out into distant, rollicking sea away from those letting the shallow currents take them blithely downstream with the crowd…

I ask, Who among the unbelieving or backslidden intelligentsia will give up their mocking and pride to know the Truth before it’s too late — when they can only beg with worthless weeping or curse Your name in the cauldrons?

Many now, I pray.

This day.

Behold now is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation.

He answers my queries in the morning with scary Scriptures that I hope have removed the blood from my hands with the printing thereof:

“But if you on your part warn a wicked man to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, he will die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your life.”