The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir (2 page)

“Elna,” she said nervously. “The first thing that will happen when you move to New York is, you might start to swear.”

I wanted to say, “Oh
shit
, really?” But I knew that only my dad would think that was funny. Instead I nodded my head and said, “Mmm hmm.”

“And Elna,” she continued, “swearing will lead to drinking.”

I had somehow missed the connection.

“And drinking will lead to doing drugs.”

The conversation was starting to get more amusing than even I had anticipated. “And Elna,” she said, pursing her lips and looking directly into my eyes, “what would you do if a lesbian tried to make out with you?”

I didn’t think double takes existed outside of
Three’s Company
until that moment. I was used to her saying words like
church calling
,
relief society
, and
bishopric meeting
. Not the word
lesbian
, let alone
lesbian
and
make out
in the same sentence. It was awesome. But I was also slightly offended. If you followed my mother’s logic, each step was a progression toward becoming more of a sinner. First I’d swear, then I’d drink, then I’d do drugs. By that point I was getting used to the narrative, so I assumed sex with men would be next. But no—my mother skipped that altogether and jumped to my becoming a lesbian. Did my mother honestly think that I had a better chance of getting action from a woman than a man?

These are all questions I didn’t ask her directly. But at this point I’d almost forgotten she’d asked me anything: What would I do if a lesbian tried to make out with me?

She was sitting there, arms folded, waiting for an answer.

“I’d say, ‘No, thank you . . . lesbian.’ ”

My mother rolled her eyes. “There’s one more thing,” she said, resuming our heart-to-heart.

“There are these clubs in New York where men pay larger women to dance with very little clothing on;
don’t do that.”

Our mother-daughter talk ended with that golden nugget of wisdom. I left thinking,
Great, my mom thinks I’m moving to the big city to become a lesbian stripper. Apparently, when she told me I was “special,” this is what she meant.

My father sat me down a few days later for another leaving-the-nest talk. His advice was a little different.

“Elna,” he began, “never forget these three things.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Number One: Never wear a dead man’s socks. Number Two: Never let ’em see you sweat. And Number Three: Never touch a fat man’s stomach.”

I waited for him to clarify, to add a line that would somehow make all the other words he’d said make sense. But he just patted me on the shoulder and left me in the living room to contemplate his wisdom.

That was all the advice I was given before moving to New York City.

I wanted more, or at the very least a tender good-bye. Only this was interrupted when the check-in clerk announced that my bag was too heavy. My father opened it in the middle of the terminal. I watched as he pulled out items of sentimental value, told me I didn’t need them, and threw them away.

That’s when my mother saw it, among my tightly folded clothes: a rainbow scarf. I wasn’t keeping it from her. I’d owned it for several years, and had purchased it because it reminded me of Punky Brewster in a retro eighties sort of way. She snatched it out of my suitcase.

“You can’t wear this in New York!” she exclaimed.

“Why not?” I asked.

My mother thought gay people had a monopoly on rainbows. In my opinion rainbows were for everyone, just like unicorns.

“Mom, I’m not gay,” I responded.

“I know, but you should avoid the appearance.”

“That’s why I bleach my mustache.”

I tried to get my scarf back. I told her how much I liked it. I explained how cold I would be without it. I even tried to usher her into this century by explaining that wearing rainbows didn’t automatically mean a person was gay. The Lucky Charms leprechaun was not necessarily a homosexual. The Care Bear with the rainbow on his tummy did not have a life partner. He didn’t even have genitals.

Eventually my mom gave me money to buy a new scarf. But she was not, under any circumstances, going to let me take the rainbow scarf to New York City.

Both of my parents walked me to the security gate. I hugged them good-bye, swung my backpack over my shoulder, and joined the line. Just as I was about to go through the metal detector, I turned around.
Good-bye,
I waved.

“Remember who you are,” my mother shouted.
Remember who you are, Remember who you are
echoed through the hall of Heath-row. I still laugh when I think about it. Not because of the message, but because my mother was quoting the slogan of an old church campaign. I even have one of the
Remember Who You Are
key chains. They gave them to all the Mormon youth. I’ve never used mine though; I was always worried someone would see it and think I had Alzheimer’s.

 

I arrived in New York in August 2000. I took a cab from JFK to the address listed on my housing contract, Tenth Street and Broadway. As we crossed the Williamsburg Bridge, I stuck my head out the window so I could see the city. Everything was new. I’d never had that experience before. My cab driver, Hassan, was a new person. The city sparkling on the horizon was new, and I was about to go to my home and it was all going to be completely new to me. I love the feeling of possibility. For another twenty minutes in Hassan’s cab, anything was possible: my dorm room and my roommate could be anyone and anything I imagined. But twenty minutes later they’d be whatever they were. I wanted to invent a word that described that place, the state between unlimited possibility and reality. But I couldn’t think of one, and the Germans probably already invented one anyway,
Weltinnerschnitzelrealititz
.

When I walked into my dorm room, the first thing I noticed was a big rainbow flag hanging on the wall. The only way it could have possibly gotten better would have been if my roommate walked in smoking a cigarette and offered to give me a lap dance.

I’d never actually met a lesbian until I met Lisa. It turned out Lisa had never met a Mormon until she met me. And despite all the things we were supposed to be, we hit it off right from the start. We complained about the size of our bathroom, and we played Ani DiFranco at full volume while we hung clothes in our tiny closet.

Over the course of the year, I never once felt uncomfortable. Well, that isn’t true. The only time I ever felt uncomfortable was when Lisa brought home a prosthetic male “piece.” It was a rather large strap-on and a disgusting salmon color. (I’d obviously never seen one before.) She wore it under her clothing—I guess to feel more in touch with her inner man. That didn’t bother me. But it was disturbing trying to do my homework when “The Thing,” as I referred to it, was lying on her dresser or, better yet, the kitchen counter. I’d glance up from reading my theater history textbook, and “The Thing” would somehow find its way into my view. It was always perched up, eager, watching me—one eye and all. I didn’t share this information in my phone calls home. If my mother couldn’t handle rainbows, she wasn’t going to like prosthetic schlongs.

 

I guess this probably isn’t the kind of stuff most Mormons would even acknowledge. But how can you ignore what’s going on around you? Whether you participate in it or not, your roommate is bound to wear a strap-on. But then again, I’ve always been different from most Mormons.

When I came to NYU, I was kind of on the fence about whether I wanted to be Mormon anymore. I obviously didn’t tell my parents this. It was just such a big thing to be, a Mormon. And it’s not the sort of religion you can just do because you don’t want to disappoint your mom and dad. It requires major commitments: It asks for your life. And while I understood that I was influenced by my Mormon upbringing, I knew that I was many other things. In addition to being Mormon, I was Elna.

I like that I think saying my name will describe exactly who I am; it’s so self-involved. But I like being named Elna. As far as I know, I’m the only one. I used to hate it, though. I thought it sounded like a Spanish man clearing snot from his nose
“El—Naaaaah.”
Then I learned what it meant: Elna comes from the Greek word
Helene
, which means “light.” When I found that out, I looked up the word
light
in the dictionary to see if there was anything in there that described me in particular. Here’s what I wrote down: “Light: The guiding spirit or divine presence in each person” and “Light: Illumination derived from a source.”

I liked the second definition best. I identified with it because I always felt like I wasn’t just light; I was illumination derived from a source. To me that source was God.

Still, having a strong connection with God did not stop me from questioning my faith every ten seconds. Mormonism can sound pretty far-fetched: Joseph Smith digs up golden plates and translates them into a book,
The Book of Mormon
. This book ends up being a history of the ancestors of the Native Americans, who originated in Jerusalem and believed in Jesus.

When you write it all out like that you can’t help but reconsider. Once I tried explaining it to a friend who had made the mistake of thinking the founder of the Mormon faith was John Smith. I told him that it was actually Joseph Smith, and then I went into all the things that I believed. I thought I was doing a good job explaining everything until he said, “So basically John Smith and Joseph Smith were two different people but, according to you, Pocahontas was actually a Jew?”

I guess the miracles one is expected to believe in the Mormon faith are no different from the miracles you are supposed to believe in any faith. My problem is I was always a skeptic.

When I was four and my mom first told me the story of Moses parting the Red Sea with his hands, I looked at her and said, “Yeah right, Mom.” My mother tried to convince me that Moses had indeed parted a sea just by lifting his arms. I rolled my eyes and patted her on the knee like she was a crazy person.

By the age of six, I was already asking my mother, “When do we graduate from church?” At this point I had entered school and understood that while school was “not fun,” it was necessary. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Some day, many years away, I would be done with school, and the word for that was
graduate
. To my dismay I was told that the word to describe being done with church was
death
.

And I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about getting baptized. Mormons are baptized at eight years old. When I turned eight, every kid I knew was getting baptized. They didn’t seem to put much thought into it. It was just how things went. I, on the other hand, had a lot of theories. According to my parents and teachers, when you were baptized you were washed clean. So why get baptized at eight? None of us had done anything. Why not wait until we were seventy? That way you could lead a fun life, do whatever you wanted to, and have a Get Out of Jail Free card at the end. I don’t know how I knew at such a young age that Mormonism would interfere with me having a “fun” life—but I did.

I ended up deciding to be baptized a month after I turned eight. I can’t pass the buck on this one; it was my decision and mine alone. My father even assured me, “Just because everyone your age is getting baptized, it doesn’t mean that you have to. Your mother and I want you to choose this on your own.” He said I should pay attention to my feelings. “Baptism is a leap of faith,” he said. “You can never know for sure if something is right, but if you listen to your heart and it tells you to go forward, then take a leap of faith.”

I didn’t like this. When I was forced to do things, it gave me something to fight against. Now that the ball was in my court, I felt an enormous sense of pressure. How was I supposed to decide what I was going to be for the rest of my life when I didn’t know what the rest of my life was going to be like? And so I prayed about it. After my prayer, I tried to be as still as possible so that I could hear my heart. I listened, my heart felt warm, and I felt good inside.
Good
—a word I usually used to describe water fights and pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse. So I decided to take the leap and get baptized. But unlike with most events in my life in which I demanded ridiculous amounts of attention, I insisted that my baptism be low-key. I didn’t invite many friends, and I didn’t want a big party—I was embarrassed to do something I was
supposed
to do, so I made sure that my baptism was a private affair.

After I was baptized, everyone my age at church wanted to know if I knew the church was true. That is to say, if I believed Joseph Smith had a vision, if I believed he had in fact translated golden plates, and if I believed in
The Book of Mormon
. There was only one way to find out if the church was true: I was supposed to pray and get a confirmation from God. It was a weird Christian fad, like WWJD bracelets. Kids in Sunday school said that they had prayed and asked God if the church was true and they got an answer. You weren’t cool unless you tried. It reminded me of the time Kelsey Mann, a girl in my first grade class, said “Bloody Mary” three times in the mirror of the school bathroom. She said a woman appeared in the glass, reached out, and scratched her forehead. After that, every girl had to try Bloody Mary and every girl reported a more outrageous encounter. Finally the principal announced over the loudspeaker that there would be “No more Bloody Mary,” and the popularity contest came to an end.

Praying to find out whether our church was true was a similar popularity contest. If you prayed, your answer had to be spectacular. Because whoever had the best revelation was the best Mormon. I prayed. I knelt next to my bed, and I said, “God, is the church true?” I listened. I wanted an angel to appear to me; I wanted something to happen that would make a great story. Instead, I felt nothing.