The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir (3 page)

To my mind, it wasn’t fair. Billy Goodman had felt something, and he wasn’t even that good a Mormon—he had tried a sip of beer once. I was a saint compared to Billy Goodman, and I got nothing? For the next two years I tried over and over again. Eventually it became so routine that I forgot what I was even asking for. In my nightly prayers I’d say, “Thank you for the beautiful weather, bless so and so, oh, and by the way, is the church true?” Each time I’d wait, hoping God would feel like giving me an answer. But it was always the same: I felt nothing. I was about to give up, when one Sunday, while I was sitting in church, a speaker at the podium said: “I can feel just by the spirit in this room how true this church is.”

That caught my attention. I tried to identify the feeling in the room. It felt very peaceful. Every time I had asked God if the church was true, I hadn’t felt lightning, but I had felt peace. Perhaps I had been getting an answer all along. It was not a dramatic moment—no angels appeared to me—but I decided then that my church was true. Of course, someone could easily argue that when the speaker said, “I can feel just by the spirit in this room how true this church is,” I listened and felt nothing, the same nothing I had felt every time I had prayed, and somehow the two nothings combined added up to something. I try not to go there.

Crap, I’m apologizing for my Mormonism again. Sorry. I should stand up for my beliefs. Instead I find that I downplay my faith in mixed company because I know most New Yorkers think of religious people as whack jobs. But I should tell the truth: Spiritual feelings have a way of confounding me. Even though I’m the one experiencing them, they feel like they’re coming from an outside source. And in addition to my questioning, I’ve had several spiritual experiences that caused me to have faith. There was the time I went on a church hiking trip. We were all told to go off into the woods and pray. I found a quiet spot and prayed, and I asked to know if God was there. I looked up at the moon and felt the presence of something bigger than me. I felt someone wrap their arms around me, as if they were hugging me, and I started to cry. As I cried, my body rocked back and forth and I knew it wasn’t me who was doing it. Ever since then, when I look at the moon, I can’t help it: “Hi, God,
”
I’ll say.

I’ve also studied the teachings of my religion. When I was nineteen I read
The Book of Mormon
cover-to-cover for the first time. And while I was reading it I felt like I was leading a better life, and making better choices. I don’t know how to explain experiences like this to people, because I cannot explain them to myself. So instead I usually hide them and voice only my doubt—which doesn’t make me look like the most faithful of God’s servants. But I’m being honest. I think most religious people experience just as much doubt as they do faith; they just don’t admit it. And I don’t think doubting makes you bad. I think it makes you smart.

My main problem with my faith is that any inconsistency makes me question everything. For example, a few Sundays ago, some idiot stood up in church and started talking about how we were having such a mild autumn. He went on and on about how pleasant the weather was and then jumped to, “So really if you think about it, it’s a sign that Jesus Christ will be coming soon.” And so began my usual downward spiral:
The weather is warm because of climate change—not because Jesus is on his way. How can I belong to a church where people believe such crazy things? I mean, nowhere in
The Book of Mormon
does it say mild autumn equals Jesus, but technically I’m supposed to believe in the second coming. Do I? I don’t know. How can I possibly sign my name to something I don’t entirely agree with?

My dad says I think too much and that if I’m not careful my thoughts will undermine my faith. When he was nineteen, he was driving across the desert in Arizona on his way to serve a two-year Mormon mission, when it occurred to him: What if none of this is true? The thought paralyzed him. He pulled over and sat on the hood of his car for several hours, just staring at the horizon. And then, all of a sudden, he got an overwhelming feeling that God knew who he was and that God was proud of his choices. My dad says that he has doubts all the time, but he doesn’t allow them to make him question that moment when he was nineteen. I guess I’m still waiting for my big moment—the point of no return.

 

Well, that was miserable. I’ll repeat the scenario so you understand just how good I am at creating awkwardness. Dave walked up to me and said, “Amanda, right?”

“No, I’m Elna.”

“Elena?”

“Elna,” I repeated.

“Elma.”

“No, Elna with an
n
.”

“Oh, okay, Elma.” I nodded my head, as if he’d gotten it right.

“How’s it going?” Dave asked.

“Fine,” I said.

“Cool,” he nodded. I waited for him to continue; when he didn’t I volunteered, “Where’s Babe?”

“Who?”

“The blue cow.”

“What blue cow?”

“Sorry. Ox, the blue ox.”

Dave looked incredibly confused.

“Paul Bunyan traveled with a blue ox,” I explained.

“I’m not Paul Bunyan,” he said, annoyed. “I’m Brigham Young.”

I almost choked on a cookie. “Sorry,” I said, “the fake beard threw me off.”

I should’ve stopped there, but instead I added, “So the women who’ve been congregating around you all night, they weren’t your multiple wives?” I thought this was pretty funny. Dave didn’t even laugh. Mormons don’t know how to laugh at themselves.

“Is your sister here?” he said. There it was, the real reason he’d come over to talk to me.

“She’s around somewhere,” I answered, trying my best not to sound disappointed. Dave waited for more information. When I didn’t give him any, he said, “Oh, okay. Well if you see her, tell her I’m looking for her.”

“Will do,” I answered. Then I turned to the side so my stinger was visible and open for admiration. But Dave was too busy walking back to his multiple wives to even notice. Lame. I should’ve known he was just going to ask about Tina.
Tina, Tina, Tina.

My older sister, Tina, also lives in New York. She moved here to go to law school right after I graduated from NYU in May 2003, and now we live together. It’s hard being Tina’s sister. She’s like the patron saint of Mormonism. For her, going to church is actually enjoyable. Tina is obsessed with being good. She’s never done anything wrong. For example, my curfew growing up was 1 A.M. Tina’s was 11 P.M. One time she asked my parents why I got to stay out so much later than her. They answered, “We never set your curfew for eleven. You just kept coming home at that hour, so we decided not to stop you.” That’s Tina. Guys at church love Tina; she goes on dates all the time. It’s not fair. Whatever.

It’s not like I want to get married like most Mormon girls do. Most Mormon women get married between eighteen and twenty-one. I just think it would be nice to have a boyfriend. I’m twenty-one years old, and I’ve never had a boyfriend. That’s not normal. And it’s not for lack of desire—I’ve been on a quest to fall in love since I was six years old. It’s just, well, I don’t normally get attention from men.

I failed to mention this earlier: I’m big. I am a larger girl. I wear size 18/20. I didn’t want to bring it up because I didn’t want that to define me, just like I don’t want Mormonism to define me. People think your weight should define you; they think all fat people go crazy for the smell of bacon. I don’t even like bacon.

When I’m in a bad mood and I want to make myself feel worse, I blame my weight for my lack of a love life. But it can’t be the only reason. I like to give the world the benefit of the doubt. I think that no matter how you look, if you’re a good person, people will see that. And it’s not that men hate me or ignore me. I have a lot of guy friends, but I’d like to have a boyfriend. I’d like to learn how to kiss and how to flirt. But because I haven’t ever had any romantic experiences, I haven’t figured out how to seduce men or how to excite them, though that’s probably for the best, since I’m Mormon. But I feel like there’s this whole other side of life—romance—that I’m missing out on.

It’s not just romance. I’m clueless when it comes to sex. I took Sex Ed when I was living in Spain, only it was in Spanish and I couldn’t understand the teacher’s accent. I spent most of the class staring at the diagrams and making up stuff. My understanding hasn’t improved much since then. Aside from my lesbian roommate’s strap-on, I don’t even know what a penis looks like. I tried drawing one once. I showed it to my best friend, Kevin; he thought it was a tugboat.

I did, however, almost have a giant penis encounter once. In high school I was cast as a chorus girl in a musical on London’s West End. There was a one-man show playing opposite us called
The Man with the Absurdly Large Penis—
the true story of a man with a three-and-a-half-foot penis. The show’s title was so amusing that I considered sneaking in, but exercised self-control and took a handful of
The Man with the Absurdly Large Penis
postcards instead. Naturally my mother found them in my room, accused me of being a pervert, and added parental controls to my computer.

I’ve always had bad luck with this type of thing. Anytime I think about doing anything even remotely immoral, I get caught. Because of this bad rap, I could tell that my parents were secretly worried I’d stop being Mormon when I got to college. I think that’s why they badly wanted me to go to BYU, and why they were terrified by the prospect of their daughter living in “Babylon.” (My mom called New York “Babylon” once, and I’ve never let her live it down.) But New York had the opposite effect on me. Instead of making me want to let loose, it made me want to be true to myself. NYU was a school of lost children, full of kids who were “different” in high school. Then the different kids decided to come to the same place, and all of a sudden being different wasn’t all that special. It was a fad. Kids were struggling to think of new ways to wear ties. It was a
belt.
It was an
armband—
as long as it wasn’t just a tie, it was a declaration of identity. The more different you were on the outside, the more different you were saying you were on the inside. But because everyone was doing it, everyone was exactly the same. Being Mormon made me different for real.

But it wasn’t just that. My first Sunday in the city, I went to church. There was such a peaceful openness to the space, and everyone was so inviting and familiar, that it became a refuge for me. At school I was constantly defending my choices. At church I could just be Mormon. It was like going to a big family reunion. Sure, I didn’t know any of my relatives, and none of them looked cool, but at least I felt at home.

So I decided to stick with it, and after four years of being a Mormon in New York, I’ve become a reluctant spokesperson for my faith. I’m constantly answering questions or explaining my religion. After having at least a hundred conversations, one thing has become very clear: People just don’t get Mormons. They think I’m Mormon because I haven’t read enough books yet.

I wait to tell people about my faith after I’ve known them for at least a month, because, once they know, that’s it for me. I’m ruined by preconceived notions. It’s like the moment I want to invent a word for the state of being between unlimited possibility and reality. If I’m at a bar and the person I’m talking to asks me, “Why aren’t you drinking?” I enter that place. I know that when I answer them, “It’s because I’m a Mormon,” I will go from being anything they can imagine to being defined. Immediately we stop talking about books or films. Instead, every question is about whether I’m a polygamist, whether I’ve had sex, whether I wear magic underwear, and whether I believe in dinosaurs.

For the record: I’m not a polygamist, I have not had sex, I don’t wear magic underwear, and I do believe in dinosaurs. I don’t mind explaining my faith, because at least I can dispel any Mormon myths, but it’s hard to be classified as a “Mormon girl” when I don’t even totally relate to other Mormons. And there are Mormon stereotypes: Mormons have big families; they’re from Utah; they wear modest clothes; they’re friendly, naïve people; they have white teeth; and they’re Republican. But that list only scratches the surface. Aside from these basics, there’s a general perception of Mormons that does not apply to me: Mormons are known for saying no. No sex, no drugs, no alcohol, and no caffeine. NO.

And this whole “saying no” philosophy makes me seem like a very boring person. But I’m not boring because, while I say no to
certain
things (sex, drugs, alcohol), I try to say yes to everything else. I honestly believe there’s a certain power behind the word
YES
. It wasn’t until my sophomore year at NYU that I realized exactly how effective saying yes could be.