The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir (27 page)

“Is everything you want in life available to you within this church?”

I hesitated—there it was the mother of all questions.

Yes
, I answered.

The minute I said this, I knew that it was true. Maybe not for the rest of the world, but for me, my church is true for me.
Then why do I keep fighting it? God, I want to give in.
As I said these words I felt the sensation of letting something go, a physical release, a surrender
.
This was followed by a tremendously good feeling. I tried to place it: It was like being in love, only bigger, more secure. It was this feeling that’d lead me to have faith in the first place. And I realized I hadn’t just felt this way when I was on speed or during pivotal spiritual moments. It was something I’d been experiencing all along—as long as I had faith and acted on it, God was with me.

And I guess it isn’t something you notice, until it’s gone and it comes back—but I felt at peace with God and myself once more. And this feeling, it trumps all the other feelings—nothing I’ve ever tried has been able to replace it: not a trip to the spa, not cynicism, not becoming pretty, not celebrities, not attention from men, not even love.

It wasn’t a big answer. God didn’t appear to me in a vision but it was enough to keep me going, at least for another year.

I Like Your Orange Notebook

A week after my prayer, I was sitting in church when I noticed an attractive guy sitting across from me in the center pew.
He’s hot
, I thought,
for a Mormon
, and by this I mean he wasn’t wearing pleated chinos, and his hair was longer than the standard Mormon missionary cut. He was nondenominationally cute. He looked like the guy from the film
Never Been Kissed
, only shorter.

I spent the rest of the service figuring out how to introduce myself to him without being too obvious. Only my subtle approach was thrown off kilter when the service ended and he stood up and walked out of the chapel.

Oh, no.
This had happened once before.
The attractive guy in church incident of 2004.
I’d noticed an equally cute guy in sacrament meeting two years earlier. I’d spent the entire hour planning out our future together. The speaker gave the closing prayer, I opened my eyes and he was gone, never to be seen again, possibly a figment of my imagination.

I couldn’t let this happen again—I jumped out of my seat and bolted for the door.

Hot guy . . . hot guy . . . hot guy?
I scanned the lobby for any sign of him. It was too late, he was gone.

No! Why, God? Why?
I was about to break into a desperate fit of single virgin rage, when the attractive guy stepped out of the bathroom. He looked at me. I looked at him. We really had no reason to talk to each other. But since when does that stop me? I took a step forward, and gestured to the notebook in his hand. “I like your orange notebook,” I said, the semiretarded schoolgirl all over again.

And that was it, the start of Hayes and Elna. It was literally the beginning I’d joked about not wanting.
I want to meet the love of my life in a magical way,
I told a crowd of people at a comedy club.
I’m walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, he’s coming from the other direction, we run into each other in the middle. “Oh, it’s you!” we’ll both say.
I don’t want to meet him at church!
To tell my kids a love story that begins, “We met in the lobby. I was drinking from the tall water fountain, he bent down to use the shorter one, and when he turned the knob, my water decreased!”

Regardless of how we met, Hayes was the first Mormon I ever dated, a fact that surprised him, since he’d only dated within the church.

“You’ve honestly never dated another Mormon?” he asked me.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“There aren’t that many Mormons in New York,” I said. “Plus, my mom says every time I meet a guy at church I subconsciously sabotage it. I’ll probably try and do that with you.” I added, “Don’t let me.”

Hayes told me later that this was how he knew that I liked him. By our fifth date we were already “going together.” We saw each other almost every day. It was my first real relationship. And by “real” I mean consistent, mutual. Within a week we had a routine. I’d call him at midnight as I was leaving work. He’d talk to me during my cab ride home, I’d talk to him as I was getting ready for bed, we’d tuck each other in.

We’d been dating for a month when Hayes was asked to give a talk in church for Mother’s Day. He stood in front of the entire congregation and said that he loved his mother, and that the role of the men in the church was to find women to honor as much as they honored their mothers. His goodness charmed me.
Who knew someone talking Mormon could turn me on?

Perhaps it was the fact that every woman in church was watching, but when Hayes finished speaking and sat down next to me, I rested my head on his shoulder—the church equivalent of peeing on your territory. Sitting there, our fingers interlaced, I felt different than I’d ever felt before. The only word to describe it is docile. For the first time in my life I felt legitimately docile. The kind of happy where you can’t tell if a woman is actually happy or on prescription drugs. Either way, I was high.

My first round of sabotage started the very next night at work. Hayes stopped by Nobu to surprise me. My boss thought it was so sweet that he let me take a break. Instead of going outside, I paraded Hayes around the restaurant.
I have a boyfriend!
I introduced him to all the waiters and hostesses and then walked him outside and kissed him good-bye.

When I got back inside everyone was waiting at the podium for me. “What do you think of him?” I asked excitedly.

No one answered. Instead, they all looked at me like I had something in my teeth but no one wanted to tell me about it.

“He’s sweet,” one girl finally said.

“He’s cute, too,” another hostess interjected.

“What did you think?” I asked Neil, a waiter.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I should go check on my table. . . .”

“What’s wrong?” I persisted.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“No, what is it?”

“I hate to be the one to say this . . . ,” he began, “but I think your boyfriend is gay.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t know, I have really good gaydar. . . . Plus, he’s a total fag.”

“He can’t be gay.” I looked at the group earnestly. “He’s Mormon.”

All five people standing at the podium avoided eye contact by looking up or to the side.

“Max.”
I stopped a waiter passing by. “You didn’t think my boyfriend was gay did you?”

“I already made a joke to the entire kitchen about it.” He shrugged.

The thing with restaurant talk is you’re not supposed to take it to heart. Put thirty overly qualified people in a room and make them do work that’s beneath their real talents, and they’ll find ways to cope with it. The way we coped with it was by “taking the piss.” It was our routine. A customer would walk in wearing a pair of Tommy Hilfiger khaki shorts with lobsters embroidered all over them. While this customer checked in, the hostesses would give one another disapproving looks.
Wait for it, wait for it
, I could practically count it out in my head. Once the customer was five steps out of earshot a hostess would begin, “Were those crabs? What should I wear to Nobu tonight? Oh, yeah, my STD shorts.”

I tried not to take part, but sometimes you’d see something too good to resist. I called this bad habit “Did you see . . .” because that’s usually how the sentence began. “
Did you see
the she-man?” or “
Did you see
the hair plugs on table five?” “
Did you see
Elna’s homo boyfriend?” was most likely spread around the restaurant before I even began our tour. Karma’s a bitch.

If I were smart, I would’ve dropped it. Only, I’m not smart. Plus the observation wasn’t unfounded.
Hayes does have a certain way of walking,
I thought.
His voice is a little higher than most guys’. He takes care in how he dresses, and his best friend is a guy named Marcus and they like to surf and afterward they massage each other.
My face went pale.
Oh, my gosh, I’m dating a homosexual.
I downward spiraled from there.
Of course, the only Mormon guy I’ve ever clicked with, of course he has to be gay.

Even though we had a routine, I didn’t call Hayes during my cab ride home. “Too tired to talk,” I texted him. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“K. Want 2 meet 4 lunch tmrw?!?” he texted back.

Even his texts seemed gay.

I couldn’t sleep that night.
So what if he’s gay?
I overanalyzed.
I have nothing against that. But if he’s gay he should just accept it and be who he is. I don’t want to be the wife and eventually produce the kids that make him straight out of duty and obligation. I deserve to be with someone who is genuinely attracted to me.
Around three in the morning I stopped overthinking, got down on my knees, and said a prayer.

“Heavenly Father,” I began, “is Hayes gay? It’s okay if he is, but I can’t be with him. Please, just tell me if he’s gay?”

A calmness came over me and I felt an answer to my prayer. “Just drop it.”

You see,
I thought as I crawled back into bed.
Everything is perfectly fine. You’re finally dating a Mormon, he likes you, quit trying to ruin it.

 

I tried to preserve this sense of calm, but the next morning, I was a mess all over again. Late for lunch, I pulled a shirt over my head and accidentally hit my hand against the closet door. It left a small scratch.
Damnit.
I ran out the door.

It was the first thing Hayes noticed. We were waiting in line for our to-go food when he took my hand in his and said, “That wasn’t there yesterday.”

“I just did it.”

“I’m sorry.” He kissed it better. As he did this, I leaned my head against his back.
Why?
I made a pained expression.
Why can’t I just be happy with someone this good, why do I have to doubt everything? Surrender.

We found an open table overlooking the park. It was sunny outside, the fountain was on, and happy couples were lounging in the grass. I wanted to be like them, happy, merry,
gay
, but it was like everything had been turned on its head. I looked at Hayes; he was sitting forward in his seat, his legs were crossed, and his wrists looked loose, dangly.

“How’s your finger?” he began. The way he emphasized the
s
on “How’s” immediately caught my ear.
Does Hayes have a lisp?

“
It’s fine.”

“How’d you hurt it?”

“In the closet . . .” I stopped midway, my face frozen with terror. “
I mean, on the closet.”

“Are you okay?” Hayes asked me.

Don’t do it, don’t do it.
I tried to stop myself.

“Are you gay?”

“What?” he looked hurt, startled, like I’d thrown water in his face while simultaneously punching him.

I wanted to backtrack, to undo what I’d just said, but also, I wanted to know.

“It’s okay if you are.” I cleared my throat. “I just can’t be the woman you use to avoid it.”

He was silent for a full minute.

“First off,” he began, speaking slowly and clearly. “I don’t mean to sound cocky, but I’m used to the women I date being really into me, and not, well, not thinking I’m gay. And second, in case you actually need to know this, no, I’m not gay. I’ve never been attracted to a man, I’ve never had a dream about a man.” He shuddered as he said this, like it was hard for him to even entertain the idea.
“I’m not gay.”

“Okay,” I said. “I didn’t think you were.”

“Then why did you ask me?”

He had a point. “One of the waiters at the restaurant said maybe you were,” I said. Hayes looked hurt by this, too. “But I said you weren’t, and no one
else
thought you were gay,” I lied unnecessarily. “Just him.”

“Elna,” he interrupted me, “I want you to know that this is a choice that you’re making. No one is making you do this—you’re choosing to be with me. And if at any point you decide that you don’t want to be in this relationship, just tell me. No matter how far along we are, even if we’re walking down the hall of the temple on our way to get married, spare my feelings and tell me the truth.”

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was just about being afraid. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I want to be with you. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Forgive me.”

That night we saw a movie. Afterward we went to my apartment and had the best make-out of our relationship. It was passionate, tender, and a little angry, like I can only image make-up sex might be. Out of breath, I lay in Hayes’s arms and held him as close to me as I could. We were still for a minute or two before he broke the spell: “
Now
do you think I’m gay?”