The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir (20 page)

“Ah, yes, the arbitrary eleventh-date-boob-touching rule.” He laughed.

After that, I decided to play it safe, taking a cue from my time as a freelance babysitter. When parents in Manhattan want their kids to get together with other kids, they organize elaborate playdates. That’s basically what I did. I took Matt to the Bronx Zoo, brought a box of animal crackers, and played a game where we had to identify each one and match it to the animal. Matt seemed to enjoyed it, but then again he could’ve just been on his best behavior because he was trying to get laid. Either way, we had fun. We watched baby gorillas wrestle, and then we fake wrestled, too. And at the end of each adventure, he would walk me to my door and we’d kiss like crazy. Sexy kissing, full of mixed messages. I’d dangle the carrot, so to speak, and then run inside.

And while this plan worked in theory, by our sixth date, I started to feel guilty. While I wasn’t lying, I was purposefully misleading Matt. And aside from the sex, I felt like there was this huge part of me, my faith, that I was keeping from him. When Matt asked what I did on any given day, I’d omit the part where I studied my scriptures for an hour, wrote my thoughts in a journal like I was writing them to God, and then prayed. Or if it were Sunday I’d say, “I went to brunch with some old friends,” instead of the truth: “I taught a Gospel Essentials class on repentance in church.”

He can’t love me,
I thought,
until he knows the real me.
And so I decided to bring it up,
as casually as possible
. We were eating dinner at a restaurant near Union Square when I did it: “Oh by the way,” I said, like it had just occurred to me, “I’m Mormon.”

By the look on Matt’s face, it was the last thing he’d expected to hear.

“I haven’t been keeping it from you,” I lied. “I was just hoping it’d come up naturally and it didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He stopped me. “I already know.”

“Don’t think this is weird,” he continued, “but after our first date I Googled you.”

“You what?”

“I Googled you. And your show
Mexican Mormon
came up as well as an LDS petition you signed to keep
Touched by an Angel
on the air.”

“Didn’t you do a show about . . .”

“Being a Mexican Mormon? Yes. But I would never sign a petition for
Touched by an Angel
. . . unless . . . oh, no . . .” My face turned red. “I’m going to kill my mother.”

Matt looked confused.

“She probably signed it for me,” I said. “She does stuff like that all the time. When I was in high school she campaigned in front of my school.
Mothers Against Abercrombie and Fitch.
It was so embarrassing.” The only time she’s ever come close to being obscene was when she bought my brother an ironic T-shirt that said SAVE A TREE EAT A BEAVER. And that’s only because she didn’t get the irony.

Matt laughed. Just then it dawned on me. “
Wait a second.
You’ve known that I was Mormon the entire time we’ve been dating?”

“Sort of,” he said. “I mean, you never talked about it, so I figured you were just raised Mormon. You’re not still practicing, are you?”

I bit my lower lip, “Yes.”

“Really?” He looked genuinely perplexed by this. “Elna . . . ,” he said. “I’m an atheist. Can you be with an atheist?”

I’d been so worried about his response to my religion that I’d never considered the flip side. Dating an atheist meant going against everything I was raised to value:
No temple marriage. No family for eternity
.
No religion at all on his part.
It didn’t seem like the kind of decision a person could make in an instant, but then I looked at him. “Yes,” I answered. “Can you be with a Mormon?”

He was quiet for what seemed like forever, but what was probably more like thirty seconds.

“Yes,” he said.

“Really? Are you sure?”

“
Yeah, I’m sure. . . .” He looked into my eyes. “It’s just . . . I like the shit out of you.”

“That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!” I almost started crying.

Then he kissed me. In the middle of the crowded restaurant, Matt pulled my chair into him and he kissed me. In that moment, I remember holding him the way you hold something you’ve almost dropped seconds after nearly dropping it.

I opened my eyes and smiled. “You’re great,” I said, like a sticker you get for doing your homework in second grade.

Matt put his hand on my face and lightly pushed my head backward. “Nerd,” he said. We both started laughing.

“What should we do now?” he asked me.

“Take me on an adventure,” I said.

That night we snuck onto a beach on the Long Island shore and almost got arrested for trespassing. It was exactly what I had in mind. Only, when Matt dropped me off at my door and we kissed in our usual fashion, he called “bullshit.”

“So when you said I could touch your boobs on the eleventh date, you meant, eleven times infinity?”

“Smile,” I said, like we were on
Candid Camera
, “you’ve been
Mormoned
.”

We managed to go out two more times without mentioning the words
Mormon
or
atheist
. But as much as we tried to ignore them, it was like there were these grander things looming above us and they would not leave us alone. “Did you know there are studies that prove red wine is good for your health?” Matt said one night at dinner.

“Yes, I heard that,” I answered. “Did you know there are studies that show the power of prayer?”

“Seems like a hard thing to prove.”

“Have you ever tried praying?” I asked him.

“No. Who would I pray to? I don’t believe in a higher power.”

“Oh, yeah . . .”

We went from making jokes and discussing books, movies, and ideas, to having conversations based only around religion, without being too specific.
Just ignore it and it will go away.
We did our best.

That weekend, we went to a birthday party for one of Matt’s close friends. By the time we got there, the birthday boy was already drunk. Matt introduced us.

“Are you his Mormon girlfriend?” his friend asked.

Both Matt and I paused uncomfortably. We hadn’t addressed either issue, my religious status or the status of our relationship.

“We’ve been hanging out,” I answered.

“What do Mormons even believe?” he continued. “I mix them up with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Do you use zippers?”

“That’s the Amish,” I answered. “You’re stereotyping the wrong religion.”

Matt laughed.

“But Mormons are the ones who wear weird underwear, right?” He winked at Matt. “I guess I should be asking you that?”

“Don’t be a douche bag,” Matt said.

“Mormons wear a thing called the garment,” I tried to answer politely. “So is today your actual birthday—”

“I have one more question,” he interrupted. “And then, I swear I’ll stop. Do Mormons worship golden cutlery?”

“Are you insane?” Matt made a face at him.

I wish for my sake that Matt’s friend was insane; only I knew exactly what he was talking about. He was referring to the golden plates Joseph Smith had translated, the ones that produced
The Book of Mormon.
Only he’d mixed up the word
plate
with
cutlery.

I should’ve just let it go. Or made a joke like I usually do. Instead, I felt this strange need to explain myself. Not even for the sake of my faith; I just didn’t want Matt’s friend to think that Matt was dating a lunatic.

“Mormonism is a
Christian
religion,” I began. It came out way more defensively than I’d intended it to.

Both boys looked at me with surprise.

“We don’t believe we are a new religion or a new church,” I continued. “We believe we’re the restoration of Jesus’s original church.” For the next ten minutes I explained my religion to them. It was a difficult task; I was trying to teach them about miracles and still sound like a liberal intellectual. The other problem with Mormonism is that, while the core principles are simple, it’s easy to go off on tangents that when taken out of context (or in context for that matter) don’t make any sense.

“By patterning our lives after the life of Jesus,” I continued my pitch, “we learn to become like God. So that eventually we can create our own worlds and be Gods, too,” I finished.

I thought I’d done a good job explaining everything (I covered the basics, and I didn’t say anything about Pocahontas being a Jew), until I looked up. Matt and his friend were staring at me blankly. It was the same look you’d give a stranger if they stopped you on the street and screamed,
I just killed an alien with a giant green knife whoobly wooobly wooooo, religion!!!!

It wasn’t their expressions that unnerved me; it was the sudden awareness of everything I’d said. There it was, laid out on the table for Matt to see: I’m an actual Mormon. It isn’t something I just arbitrarily happen to be; I understand it and still believe.

Matt’s friend was the first to break the silence. “
Golden plates,
not cutlery,” he said. “I knew I got that from somewhere.”

I took his comment in. “Exactly,” I said. “Are you religious?” I tried changing the subject, but Matt stopped me by asking, “Do you believe
The Book of Mormon
and Bible literally?”

“Huh?” While I knew that he was there for the entire explanation, I’d kind of hoped he wasn’t listening.

“In the Bible it says the earth was created in seven days. Do you believe that over scientific evidence that proves the earth is billions of years old?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“You should know,” he told me. “It’s a simple question. Either you believe it, or you don’t.”

“I guess it’s one of those things I try not to think about,” I answered.

“But you’re part of a religion that takes a firm stance on it.”

“There are a lot of things my faith takes a firm stance on that I’m not sure about.”

“You disagree with your religion?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I could never be part of something I didn’t entirely agree with.”

“It’s impossible to
entirely agree
with religion,” I countered. “If everyone based their faith on common sense no one would be religious—faith is totally illogical.”

“That’s why I’m an atheist.”

I didn’t say anything for a full minute. I didn’t know what to say. The air around us felt thick, and the light that was usually there was gone.

“Since when did we get so serious?”

“I don’t know,” Matt sighed.

“What’s your favorite flavor?” I perked up in my chair.

“Flavor of what?”

“Candy.”

“Banana, I guess.”

“Let’s get out of here and buy as many banana flavored things as we can find, and have a banana flavor party.”

It was a temporary fix. We went back to his place and ate banana pudding, banana Laffy Taffy, and banana sorbet—playdate number seven. Only it wasn’t just a playdate; it was a potential sleepover. By the time we finished our pudding, it was one in the morning.

“Matt?” I said, like I was about to ask a leading question. “I hate taking the subway this late at night.”

“Do you want to sleep over?” he asked.

“That’d be great,” I said, like it was all his idea.

“You can sleep in my bed,” he offered. “I’ll take the couch.”

“That’s okay.” I sat on his bed nonchalantly. “We can sleep together.”

“Oh.” He looked surprised. I’d never spent the night before, but he went along with it. He got me an extra pair of pajamas, we brushed our teeth together, and then we climbed into bed.

“Good night.” Matt leaned over me to turn off the lamp.

I immediately started trying to make out with him. He didn’t know how to respond. And so instead of doing anything hot or heavy, he patted me on the back like I was his autistic cousin and moved to the far side of the bed.

I could feel my shoulder tingling.
Did he really just pat me?
It was infuriating. What happened to the way we used to kiss? It’s as if now that he knows I’m a Mormon, he’s teaching himself not to be attracted to me.

I turned onto my side so that I was facing him. “You know I can do some stuff sexually,” I said. By “some stuff” I meant he could grope my boob barely and I could pretend not to notice, or maybe we could start to dry hump, but the minute either of us got aroused, I’d have to stop it. “I’m not an asexual being.”

“I know.” He reached across the bed and placed his arm around me.

“We could do more,” I repeated.

“Elna,” he said, “if we’re not going to sleep together, I sort of find the foreplay thing to be frustrating.”

Ouch.
Matt moved a little closer to me, shifted his pillow, then closed his eyes. I tried to go to sleep, too. But whatever, I couldn’t just let it go.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” I asked.

He didn’t respond. But I could tell that he’d heard me because his body got all tense.

“Not now,”
I quickly corrected, “but in general, is it something you’d want?”

“It’s tricky,” he finally said.

“Why is it tricky?”

“Well, for a girl her first time is very meaningful, and I wouldn’t want you to do something you regretted. So, no, it’s not a good idea.”

“I see,” I said. His answer disappointed me. I wasn’t even sure why. I mean, it was a respectable answer, one my parents would applaud. And besides, we were on the same page, I didn’t want to have sex, he didn’t want to have sex with me.
Great.
But at the same time, I felt like we were entering a relationship catch-22.

“We’ve been dating for what, six weeks?” I offered. “So even if I wasn’t Mormon it’s not like we would’ve had sex already.”

Matt laughed.