Daniel Mallory Ortberg - Something That May Shock and Discredit You

Also by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror

Texts from Jane Eyre

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Copyright 2020 by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

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Interior design by Michelle Marchese

Jacket design by James Iacobelli

Jacket painting of George Gordon, Lord Byron by Imagno/Contributor/Hutton Fine Art Collection/Getty Images

Author photograph by Grace Lavery

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-9821-0521-1

ISBN 978-1-9821-0523-5 (ebook)

To Grace Elisabeth Lavery, who refuses to carry an umbrella

O ne generally grows up thinking about the Rapture a great deal or not at all. Most dont, I think, but among those who did, theres always the question of how, if at all, to bring up the subject in mixed company, whether in the hopes of eliciting either laughter or shock, followed by sexual intrigue mingled with pity. Its easy enough to sell out an evangelical Christian childhood, and plenty of other pens have been given over to the subject of whether its a good idea to raise children in the expectation of being swept up by the Raisin Bran scoop of heaven; I have no wish to dwell on the question of whether I ought to have been taught about the Rapture. No one consulted me beforehand, and I cant see why I should be asked to provide an opinion on the subject now. I was roughly as afraid of the Rapture as I was of being the last person in the house who left the basement at nighttime and had to turn the lights out before I went up the stairsit felt variously real and ridiculous depending on how close I was to being alone. Afternoons when I was the first person to come home after school and the neighborhood seemed slightly emptier than usual were ideal for Rapture practice, for seeing if I could gin up sufficient panic and remorse at the prospect of being unscooped; playing DC Talks cover of I Wish Wed All Been Ready sometimes helped, but more often than not just made me even more self-conscious of having to trick myself into getting in the mood.

I was aware, too, that my parents theology did not have much room for the kind of guessing-games- and crossword-puzzle-style approach to eschatology popular among many white evangelicals in the 1990s, that if I were to press them for details about the End Times trivia I had absorbed by virtue of growing up in the suburban Midwest they would at best dismiss it and at worst ask where on earth Id picked up such things. I had a sharp sense for when keeping a secret would result in a pleasanter outcome, and preferred to occasionally play out Rapture-like scenarios in private than have them either confirmed or debunked by outside opinion. I could have a Rapture a day if I likedas long as I never asked my parents permission to go Rapturingand dedicated a number of afternoons to making myself dizzy imagining the day when time would burst and unspool itself in every possible direction, and all those willing to be perfected would be milled down by the grindstone of heaven in a lovely, terrifying roar.

At least part of the reason I never asked anyone questions about the fears and desires that preoccupied me was a peculiar certainty that to invite details would destroy anything I hoped for; that the loveliness of being pressed directly against Gods heart and melted down into holiness would become ridiculous if a start date were ever announced. And I did fear it, often, for as much as I longed to be seized, swept up, and changed without or even against my will, I also dreaded it. I was possessed of a rootless homesickness that translated quite neatly, for a religious eleven-year-old, into heaven-longing; later it would translate quite neatly, for a nervous thirty-one-year-old, into transsexuality.

Of that dayRapture Day, hey-YouTube-this-is-my-voice-six-days-on-T day, according to the book of Matthew, chapter 24and the hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. Just as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

In the early days of my transition (when transition consisted mostly of refusing to wash my clothes, letting them pile up on the floor so I could weep in bed, getting significant haircuts, and responding incredibly tersely if any of my friends acknowledged that Id cut my hair in any way), I often described my sudden shift in self-awareness as feeling as if a demon had entered my room in the middle of the night, startled me awake by whispering, What if you were a man, sort of? into my ear, then slithered out the window before I could ask any follow-up questions. I had been eating and drinking, working and laying work aside, and then the floodwaters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. All flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died and were destroyed from the earth. And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days. Sometimes cis people will describe a sense of loss at the transition of a loved one and describe it as mourning a kind of death, but I think theyve got it the wrong way round. It was if everything on the earth was dead and dying except for me, and that none of the practice runs Id ever rehearsed in childhood had prepared me for it.

I revisited my own childhood constantly for anything that would be sufficient to make sense of my present situation and was frustrated once again by my own calculated, dreamy vagueness; how like me not to keep a written record of anything I might later like to read. No one knows the hour of the coming of the Son of Man (who might start asking questions), so its best to travel light. It was such a ridiculous and yet a persistent thought, which came on all at once and in a way that suggested it had always been with me: What if you were a man, sort of? To which the only response imaginable was