The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir (30 page)

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Authors: Elna Baker

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs, #Humor, #General

BOOK: The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir
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I asked my parents. My mother simply said: “That’s a very good question, but there are some things we just don’t have the answer to.”
I started to accuse her of having blind faith, but my father interrupted me. “Elna,” he said gently, “I don’t know why I have to have a body or why you have to have a body. But I do know that when you were born I saw your pink slimy little body and I fell in love with it. And the minute you entered that hospital room I felt your presence. I knew who you were. And I knew that that body was the only way I could have you. And that’s not blind faith, that’s intuition.”
I thought a lot about my father’s advice during my recovery. And about the things my body has asked for over the years: “When are you going to realize, this is your only chance?” And for gratitude. I can finally say I am grateful for my body. Not because I got plastic surgery and look better, but because it’s pointless not to be: This is the only body I’ll ever have.
Heartbreak, Mormon Style
Deciding to get married is a really big deal. For the record, I never thought that Hayes and I were ready. We’d been dating for four months when he moved back to Utah to finish his senior year at BYU. I stayed in New York. The rest of our yearlong relationship was long distance. We’d visit each other every few weeks, and talk every night, but still, we never got to know the ins and outs of a daily relationship. It was more like treading water. He’d call to tell me what he did. I’d call to tell him what I did. But we never did anything together because we were so far apart.
In October, Hayes called to tell me that his friend was getting married to the heiress of the Marriott fortune. A nice catch, even if the sex was bad he’d have free continental breakfast for eternity.
In November, Hayes flew me to Washington, D.C., so that we could attend the wedding and spend a week together.
We met at the Marriot Hotel in downtown D.C. It was always a relief seeing him—the comfort of knowing you at least have a boyfriend. He kissed me on the cheek and picked up my luggage.
“We have an hour to kill before the reception,” he said.
“Let’s check out our room.” I smiled.
We took the elevator up to the top floor only to find that we’d been upgraded to a honeymoon suite, and gifted a basket of goodies—compliments of the bride. And so we did what any young couple is prone to do while staying in a hotel. . . . We built a giant igloo out of all the objects in the room and hid inside of it.
We were lying in the igloo, kissing, when Hayes looked at me and said, “I’m most likely going to ask you to marry me, and I’m most likely going to do it soon, how do you feel about that?”
“Most likely, if you ask me to marry you,” I cleared my throat, “I’ll most likely say yes, most likely?” When I finished he was grinning ear to ear.
Later that night, we danced together at the wedding reception. For the first time in my adult life, I imagined what it would be like to actually marry someone. I’d been cautious not to dream about marriage, in case it never happened. (But on the off-chance that it did, I was prepared. I’m the only girl I know who actually has a hope chest, compliments of my mother. Marry me and you get a handmade quilt, some china, and crystal from Poland—I’m just saying, I come with some perks.) Dancing in Hayes’s arms I let myself believe: Like the Marriott wedding, my wedding was huge, lavish, my family gave their blessing, it was the way love was supposed to be.
We stopped dancing for the bride to throw her bouquet. I tried to catch it. Naturally, it went to some fifteen-year-old Mormon girl. And if the bouquet is supposed to symbolize who gets married next, fine, I couldn’t argue that.
The next day Hayes left for Utah and I flew to New York, basking in the afterglow, until my feet touched the ground. MARRIAGE? I completely panicked.
It wasn’t abnormal. Every other time Hayes had mentioned marriage I’d gotten extremely nervous, ill.
My friend Jim was the first person I told. Jim had founded a popular storytelling series in New York. I performed at his show in 2006 and afterward he introduced himself to me. Since this fateful meeting, we rendezvous every few months for artist dates where we talk about spirituality and sex. Jim is a New York icon and a bit of an eccentric. He’s also one of the few intellectuals I know who has thoroughly researched Mormonism. In addition to our “church talks” I go to him for love advice because he’s dated
many
women in New York City, including Candace Bushnell, the writer of the original “Sex in the City” column, so Jim knows his stuff. Today’s topic: marriage.
“I think my boyfriend and I are going to get engaged.” I tried introducing it like it was totally normal. Except I’d been kind of embarrassed of the relationship so most people didn’t even know I was dating Hayes.
“You don’t sound too thrilled about it.” Jim picked up on it immediately.
“No, it’s
exciting.”
He smiled, waiting for more.
“Okay, fine,” I cracked. “To be completely honest, I want to get married, but every time I think about actually going through with it—I get sick to my stomach.”
Jim does this thing where he listens intensely, and when he likes what you’re saying, his eyes light up, which makes you not only want to tell him your story, but also perform it.
Next thing I knew I was delivering a monologue. “When I think about marriage,” I said, “I get a weird pounding in my head, and I feel like I’m experiencing a phobia. It feels familiar, only I can’t place it. Which drives me insane. Like when you have a recurring bad dream, where there’s something scary around the corner, and you know if you just turn the corner, you’ll understand what it is, but you always wake up too soon—”
“Does it remind you of anything in particular?” Jim interrupted.
I closed my eyes.
“Biology,” I said. “We dissected rats in biology, it reminds me of the smell.”
“Formaldehyde?”
“I guess so.”
“Death,” Jim said rather loudly.
“Come again?”
“The feeling you’re describing is death, it’s a memory of something you’re familiar with but you’ve never actually experienced. You associate marriage with death.”
“I do?”
“And marriage is death—the death of self.”
“It is?”
“It’s also rebirth into another you, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Still, artists think it’s the death of their individuality.”
I spent the next few days brooding over Jim’s analysis. Soon every red flag I’d ignored was back, front and center: There was the time Hayes said, “When I’m at work and you’re at home with the kids will you resent me?”

No,”
I answered him in a dumbfounded voice, “because I’ll be working, too.”
Then there was his special way of patronizing. I called it the “Oh, Elna.” I’d say something bold in Sunday school and he’d pat me on the knee.
“Oh, Elna.”
I’d knock over a glass. “Oh, Elna.” I’d try to and get him to break into an abandoned building. “
Oh, Elna
.” When I told Kevin about this he said, “How can you be with someone who loves you in spite of the very best things about you?”
And finally, there was his complete lack of spontaneity. One evening, while visiting Hayes in Utah, I spotted a giant haystack along the side of the road and I made him pull over. “Let’s climb to the top.” I opened the car door and took off running across a field. I remember watching him from atop the thirty-foot haystack ten minutes later. He was still yards away, maneuvering his way across the field like he way trying to avoid a land mine. It was only then that I realized that the field I’d raced through was covered in manure.
But my patriarchal blessing specifically said I would marry a Mormon man who loved me dearly. Hayes fit this criterion. In my mind he was the Good Choice that I needed to make. I knew what I had to do: I had to go to the Mormon temple and ask God if marrying Hayes was the right thing to do, and if God said yes then I would do it.
This wasn’t an original idea; it’s what Mormons do. There’s a big emphasis in my religion on receiving a spiritual confirmation of what you’re about to do. That way when the marriage gets rocky you don’t question it because: It was something God told you to do. And aside from that, it’s how my dad knew to marry my mother. My dad went to a Mormon temple and prayed,
Is this the right decision?
and he said he heard voices, and he recognized those voices to be the grown-up voices of his future kids and we told him,
Go, get married—do it now.
I fasted for two days, no water, no food, and I went to the Mormon temple, and I said, “God, I’ve decided to marry Hayes. Is this the right thing to do?”
At first it was silent, too silent. And then it happened. I heard something.
Yes, Yes
,
Yes,
all through me,
YES, do, do, do.
With Hayes by my side, I went home for Christmas and got plastic surgery. A month and a half later I moved to Utah. It was the equivalent of swallowing all my pride. Plus I lost the ability to say, “I’ve never lived in Utah.” But Hayes still had four months of college, and I figured if we were serious about a wedding in July, we needed to live in the same place. I rented an apartment down the street from Hayes, I bought a gym membership, I bought groceries—canned foods, and all kinds of things you can’t return.
My second night in Provo, the shit hit the fan. We were invited to a costume party for someone’s thirty-first birthday. Hayes wanted to go dressed as ghosts. So we bought two white sheets and cut holes in the eyes. But then we realized we looked like Klan members, so we stopped at the drugstore and I bought ribbon and made a blue bow tie for him, and a red bow for me. Girl ghost, boy ghost.
Hayes was holding my hand, leading me around the room and introducing me to all of his friends. I tried to enjoy myself, but I was having a costume malfunction: My bow was too heavy and it kept pulling the sheet down so that the ghost eyeholes were at my chin. No matter how many times I pushed it up, it fell right back down. Eventually I just gave up and let Hayes lead me. He started talking to an old friend. Standing there, with nothing to look at but a white sheet, I was struck by the irony of the situation.
All this time I’ve associated marriage with death, and here I am, being led around a party under a white sheet, like a corpse at a morgue.
I laughed. But at the same time, it wasn’t funny.
Am I only capable of being in this relationship if I’m a muted version of myself? Me underneath a sheet?
The danger of ascribing meaning to unrelated things is that you’re not necessarily right. I wasn’t in a morgue, I was at a costume party with my soon to be fiancé. But still, the thought was paralyzing. I let go of Hayes’s hand, hoping it’d make him notice me. More than anything, I wanted him to lift up the sheet and assure me it was all okay.
But he didn’t notice me. Instead, I stood there overthinking.
God knows what’s best for me
, I tried to tell myself.
He wouldn’t tell me to marry Hayes if it weren’t the right thing to do. Be humble. Trust Him. You don’t need to kick and scream and fight every good thing.
At the same time, I felt a pounding in my head, and the same queasy feeling, nerves. Only this time I was closer to turning the corner than I’d ever been.
Hayes found me twenty minutes later. He lifted up the white sheet and slid underneath. It felt like we were in the igloo again.
He has the most beautiful eyes,
I thought.
I’ve never met anyone with more beautiful eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
Don’t do it.
“Nothing.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Jim told me that I associate marriage with death. And I didn’t believe him at first, but here I am about to marry you—being dragged around like a body in a morgue. What if he’s right? If I marry you, will I stop being me?”
“When are you going to stop?” Hayes looked completely deflated. “When are you going to want me, too?”
 
The next morning, I woke with a start, that
oh, no what did I do, what did I say
feeling, and it’s funny, but after all we’d been through I did not think words were enough to separate us, but the right words were. I tried to make it up to Hayes the only way I knew how: by being a better Mormon. I had his roommate sneak me into his apartment and, while he was sleeping, I cleaned the entire thing top to bottom. Then I made him an omelet, and served breakfast in bed.
But it was too late, he was already retreating. Every night he came up with a new excuse for us not hanging out. “I’m watching a movie with Marcus,” he explained, “and afterward we’re going to start a band.”
I’d moved across the country for him and suddenly he was too busy for me. But the moment I knew things had really gone sour happened a few days later. We were at his second cousin’s wedding when Hayes’s aunt ran up to him to give him a hug.
“Who’s this young lady?” She smiled at us.
Hayes looked totally flustered, “This is . . . uhhh . . .
my friend
Elna.”
He broke up with me a week later. I begged him to rethink it. In retrospect I’d been pushing him to break up with me the entire relationship, but when he actually did, I felt like I’d messed up fate—I’d destroyed God’s plan for me.
“Go to the temple,” I cried. “Pray about it, please?”
“I’m not in the right state of mind for that,” Hayes said.
“Please,” I begged him. In my mind, if God had answered me yes, then he would answer Hayes the same way, so really it was all we needed.
The following morning Hayes went to the Provo temple to ask God if he should marry me.
It was the longest day of my life. I was lying in bed when Kather ine, my roommate of two weeks, knocked on my door. “I’m taking you somewhere,” she said.
“Why?” My face was puffy and the room was littered with used Kleenex.
“Because I’ve been where you are right now, and I wish someone could’ve done this for me.”

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