The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir

Table of Contents

 

 

 

DUTTON
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First printing, October 2009

Copyright © 2009 by Elna Baker

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Illustrations by Elna Baker
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Baker, Elna.
The New York regional Mormon singles Halloween dance / Elna Baker.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-14877-8

 

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Author’s Note

Aside from my immediate family, the names and other identifying characteristics of the persons included in this memoir have been changed. And while all of these events are true, certain characters and events have been composited for the sake of clarity and brevity.

 

 

This book . . . aside from the nine
F-
words, thirteen
Sh-
words, four A-holes, page 257, and the entire Warren Beatty chapter . . . is dedicated to you.

 

 

 

 

A Mormon in New York

I am at the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. That’s right—it’s a Halloween dance not
just
for all the single Mormons between the ages of eighteen and thirty who live in Manhattan, it’s for all the single Mormons in the tristate area. That’s a lot of virgins in one room. And I’m one of them.

Tonight I’m dressed like a Queen Bee. The best part of my costume is my stinger. I bought a black funnel from the hardware store and stuck it on my butt. When I walk, it wiggles back and forth. Genius. I was certain that some Mormon guy was going to see me and fall head over heels in love. I joked to my friends that the Queen Bee was going to find a drone. Instead, I’m by myself at the punch bowl stocking up on generic-brand Oreo cookies. When I’m wrong, I’m wrong and strong.

The worst part is, I should’ve known better. This is my fourth New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance in a row. Every year, I come hoping to meet “The One.” And every year, I leave by myself, vowing never to come again. But by the time 365 days have passed, I’ve completely forgotten this commitment. In the end, I am here for one reason and one reason only: I want very much to fall in love, and it would be nice if I could fall for another Mormon.

Cue: this place. And by
this place
I mean a lame dance held in a church gym. Although, to her credit, the church activities’ committee director has made a halfhearted attempt to disguise the gym. Black and orange streamers are taped to the basketball hoop and silly monster feet cover the lines on the linoleum floor. Since we’re all over the age of five, no one is fooled; clearly this is still the gym.

Let’s not forget tonight’s DJ, Brother Mo, who’s wearing a polyester suit and tie with no trace of irony. He occupies the stage at the far end of the gym. To his left there’s a long plastic table for refreshments: lemonade and cookies, as if we’re a little league soccer team.

Then there are the dance rules. The most important one, announced over the pulpit on Sunday, is that there is to be no cross-dressing or wearing of masks. I understand the logic behind no cross-dressing, though I doubt that if a man were to dress like a woman at this function he would suddenly realize his true identity. But masks? I personally have never put on a mask and suddenly felt the urge to hold up a convenience store or reenact the orgy scene from
Eyes Wide Shut
. But that’s just me.

The other rules are unspoken. There is to be no inappropriate dancing or lascivious behavior at the church dance. No grinding. No Levi-loving. And the only “humpty” allowed is a costume of an egg. That’s why there are too many lights overhead and only “safe” songs like “Cotton-eyed Joe” on the sound system. When slow songs do play, people joke that you should be able to fit “the standard works” between you and your partner.
The standard works
is a Mormon term referring to all of the religious books we study. So when you’re slow dancing, the
Old Testament
,
New Testament
,
The Book of Mormon
,
Doctrine and Covenants
, and
Pearl of Great Price
should be able to fit in the space between you and your dance partner—or you’re dancing too close.

If it weren’t already painfully obvious, these events are organized to facilitate marriage. How else would we Manhattan Mormons meet, marry, then make more Mormons? (Take
that
, Sally and your seashells on the seashore.) No one acknowledges this, though; that’s another unspoken rule of the Mormon dance. We’re all just here to “have fun.” The effect is pretty horrifying. It’s like watching a bunch of assembly-line workers at a factory pretending they’re there because they love screwing nuts on bolts. I want to shout, “Can’t we just acknowledge that we are here to eventually screw a nut on a bolt?” But no one would get the joke, and the ones who do would be terribly offended.

Contrary to popular belief, there are Mormons who live in New York City. I don’t know how many of us there are all together, but there are probably eight hundred single Mormons and at least twenty thousand former Mormons. I’ve been in the city for four years now. I moved to New York to go to NYU for acting, I graduated in May, and I started work as a toy demonstrator at FAO Schwarz.

While I am Mormon, I’m not from Utah. I was born in Seattle, but I grew up in Madrid and London because my father’s job moved my family overseas. My dad works for Boeing; it’s not that exciting. But it meant we moved around a lot. When I was nine we moved to Madrid. When I was thirteen we moved to London; when I was fifteen we moved to Seattle; and when I was seventeen we moved back to London.

When I finished high school at the American School in London, my parents wanted me to go to BYU, Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. It’s where they went to school, and it’s where my older sister went. They were worried that if I didn’t go to BYU I’d stop being Mormon, and I wouldn’t meet anyone to marry—well, they were right about the second part.

I remember when I got my acceptance letter from BYU via the British Royal Mail. I opened the thick envelope, looked at the emblem of the busy honeybees all working together, and then read the word
Congratulations
. It felt good. Any letter of acceptance makes you feel good. But when I got my letter of acceptance to NYU, something was different. I opened the package on my way up to my room, read the word
Congratulations
, and started to sob, right there on the stairs. I sat down and I cried. I didn’t realize how much getting into NYU meant to me until I had those huge tears pouring down my cheeks. And that’s when I knew I had to go to New York City.

My mother was terrified. She’s the more conservative of my parents, and when she’s not busy being a mom, she spends her time forwarding cheesy e-mails about Christian miracles, or signing petitions against Abercrombie & Fitch’s pornographic ads. To her, New York was the city from the movies made in the seventies, where you heard gunshots out your window and pimps screaming at hos. Not that there were many scenes like that in the PG-rated movies my mother was inclined to watch. But still, New York was a scary, dangerous place. A month before I went off to college, she sat me down for a mother-daughter talk.