Itemize That Sin List, Baby!

My friends, I know this will shock you to your very marrow, but I’ve never been very good at expressing anger.

Yes, people used to tell me that I was great at expressing disdain, but I’ve always hoped that was just my RHF (Resting Haughty Face) and not because I literally thought I was better than anybody else. Of course, I’m also the person who heard God say she was fabulous in a mystical vision, so maybe they’re on to something.

Anyway, I’ve always admired people who could be direct and unapologetic and well-spoken when they were angry.

Like the time my sister was dating a new guy and brought him with her from out of state to meet us. John seemed enthusiastic and perhaps a mite obsequious, but it was easy to chalk that up to wanting to impress the family of the girl he hoped to marry. After dating for six weeks.

Uh huh. Cue Keith Morrison.

After surviving the initial family meeting, the relieved couple went out to unwind with a few or six drinks and got into an argument at the bar. Words were exchanged and he pushed her. Yep, put his hands on her and then expected to come back to stay at our home in her bed.

Uh huh. Cue my Italian mother.

I listened from another room as John pretzeled himself with anguish apologizing to Rose for laying a finger on her spawn. He wept, beat his breast, and would have donned a hair shirt if he’d been allowed to lean over and construct one from our various cat and dog leavings. It was so convincing I actually started to feel sorry for him and wondered what my sister had said to provoke this upstanding young man with the remorseful heart and silver tongue.

Mom had a slightly different reaction.

“John, thanks for your apology. I’m sure you think you mean it. But I want you to know that I don’t believe you for a second, you little shit, and if you ever so much as touch my daughter again, I will have you killed. And I’m Italian, so I know the people who can do it. Is that clear?”

I swear I could hear his testicles retract all the way from the other room. Dude packed up, cleared out, and, I can only assume, entered the witness protection program, because none of us ever heard from him again.

Sigh. This is a level of badassery I could have used in my dealings with Elfin Dervish and the Pushy Prayer Posse.

As our Bible studies went along, some of the things they were saying just felt so incredibly wrong and made me very angry, but I couldn’t express my fury in any way other than tears. The words would catch in my throat and I would dissolve into sobs. And since they were trained to break people “for Jesus”, Elfin would then push even harder, seeing my collapse as proof that the scriptures were working on my hard heart.

Things got especially rough when we got to the “Sin” study. Who knew that practically every single thing I did was abhorrent to God and put Jesus on the cross?

Listen, I was honestly quite happy to give up some of this stuff. I wanted to repent of lying, as it was a terrible habit I’d developed to present better and cover all my ADHD gaffes, and since I’d been in a couple of funky relationships prior to meeting the Bible Babes, I was honestly thrilled to have an excuse to give up sex for the immediate future, and possibly forever (although since masturbation was also a heinous sin, I knew I might have to rethink that eventually).

I had zero interest in debauchery, drunkenness, theft, or lewdness, orgies were singularly unappealing due to the germ factor, and I hadn’t practiced witchcraft since I was twelve and convinced my cousins that I could talk to our dead aunt in my makeshift preteen seances. Sure, I was thoroughly bummed out that I could no longer curse, as we recall that it’s considered an art form in my family, but I could live with a “holy cannoli” here and there, and the occasional “sugar honey iced tea”. This was all doable, and I’d do it all to show my love for God.

And then… we got to idolatry and selfish ambition.

Elfin’s whole demeanor changed. She got in my face and told me that I needed to hand my career over to God because it was obviously my idol. That my new purpose was not to get acting roles but to go to auditions to meet and “save” others in my business. And that I could no longer accept any roles that had any cursing or kissing or sexual innuendo in them.

I was shocked into utter silence. I couldn’t even begin to address the assumptions she was making about my character or remind her that I was a raging introvert who could barely handle the stress of auditions alone, much less the insanity of handing out religious tracts to my fellow performers. When I found my voice, though, all that came out was, “But… that’s ninety percent of the roles that are available.”

Elfin shrugged and said breezily, “Oh, please. If God wants you to succeed, he can make you successful in the other ten percent.”

Yes, friends, this is when I needed to channel my Italian mama and speak what I was actually thinking (minus the profanity, since we’d already established that this was verboten). What I wanted to say was that she was making me feel like a gross sinner for wanting to do well in my career. That I was stating a cold hard fact about my business and she dismissed it as an example of my unfaithfulness. That these demands were invasive and presumptuous and controlling and tying my love for God to them was an egregious overstep.

But I didn’t say any of this, of course. I just started crying. I’d never felt so overwhelmed in my entire life.

That is, until what happened next.

Because what happened next would be the wound I would carry for the following 32 years, a gaping hole in my spiritual walk that I was never able to really reconcile or recover from. It deserves a full article, so I hope you’ll return for the next installment, called:

“This Part Will Always Break My Heart.”