The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir (4 page)

It happened on career day. You see, every fall, NYU sponsors a career fair where companies set up booths and recruit graduating students. I was a drama major, so they didn’t even bother with us—they sort of saw what was coming long before we did: a life of unemployment punctuated by odd jobs. But if you were a Stern business student, there were all these booths set up with tons of recruiters and the most amazing free trinkets.

One day I was passing through the career fair on my way to class when a man behind one of the tables caught my eye and asked me, “Are you a Stern business student?”

I paused and thought the answer over. If I said no, the conversation would end. If I said yes, any number of things would happen.

“Yes,” I answered hesitantly.

“Are you interested in a job at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter?” he continued.

“Yes,” I said with more confidence.

For the next five minutes I answered yes to every question he asked, and before I knew it, I got a free triangle highlighter with a different color on each end.
Amazing.
I had inadvertently discovered the secret to life: When in doubt, just say yes. I proceeded to stop by every single booth and answer yes to all questions. By the end, I had a bag full of free stuff.

Technically this could be perceived as lying, and Mormons aren’t supposed to lie. But I don’t look at it that way. I love the adventure of seeing what I can get away with. And as long as no one gets hurt, I think it’s okay.

I didn’t intend to become a serial convention crasher. But a few months later, I was walking by the Javits Center (a convention center in New York where they hold expositions and car shows) when a security guard stopped me and asked, “Are you looking for the paper convention?”

I sensed opportunity. “Yes,” I answered.

He escorted me through a set of double doors, and there it was, laid out before me in all its glory: the paper convention. There were hundreds of booths, and hundreds of paper demonstrations. But the best part was that on each table there was at least one free thing. I went from table to table saying yes, and by the time I left I had a year’s supply of stationery.

A few months later, I was at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square meeting some friends for breakfast. Halfway through our meal I glanced under my chair and noticed a laminated piece of paper with a safety pin glued to the back of it. When I turned it around I saw it said, “Bob Barnett—7-Eleven Convention.” Immediately I thought:
YES!

I pinned the badge to my male friend’s shirt and we left breakfast in search of the 7-Eleven convention. A sign in the lobby directed us to the banquet hall and a huge banner reading 75 YEARS OF 7-ELEVEN.

We walked into the banquet hall. Inside, we met Suzie and her husband from Rhode Island. We met Phil from Connecticut. And while my friends collected as many trinkets as they could, I met Carol, the woman who had organized the whole event. We got to talking, and Carol, who had obviously worked very hard, asked me for my feedback on that week’s events. “I go to conventions all the time,” I answered, “and this is the best convention I’ve ever been to.”

Carol’s face lit up. “Did you need tickets for today’s events?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered, careful not to sound too eager.

Carol reached inside a manila envelope, fished through a few papers, and pulled out four tickets to Radio City Music Hall, four tickets for a bus tour of Manhattan, and four tickets to Madame Tussauds. She handed them to me and then asked, “Will I be seeing you on tonight’s cruise?”

“YES,” I said, louder than I’d expected to.

And then I waited, eyes wide, for Carol to offer me tickets. When she didn’t, I added, “You know, Carol, I sent all my paperwork in for the cruise, and I never got anything back.”

“What?!” Carol answered, visibly shocked. Then she held her hand to her chest and said, apologetically, “Just wait here one moment.”

I watched as she scurried across the room. Left alone, I started to have second thoughts. I looked down at the embroidered carpet. There were so many things that could go wrong. Carol could ask me for my name, or she could ask who my boss was. What if the real Bob Barnett turned the corner, demanding his badge?

When I looked back up Carol was walking briskly toward me.

“I am so sorry about that!” She stuck her hand out, and handed me four tickets. I read the ticket stub:
The
Spirit of New York
Harbor Cruise and Dinner
. I looked at the price; each ticket was worth $150. “YES!” I said.

That night my three friends and I got all dressed up, took a cab to Pier 26, and walked across a long wooden platform to the
Spirit of New York
ship. I handed someone our tickets and we were escorted into a room filled with chatter. There were at least five hundred 7-Eleven employees, my friends, and me. We started mingling. I didn’t make up a pseudonym or job. When people asked me what I did for 7-Eleven, I’d casually answer, “Come on, man, leave work at work. We’re here to have fun!”

After about an hour of mingling, a man in a tuxedo rang a bell, and everyone sat down at three long tables. Waiters entered with silver trays. My waiter asked me in a polite voice if I wanted fish or steak. I felt like I was a dignitary, and this amused me. I wanted to whisper to him, “I’m just an actor, same as you.”

Dish by dish the waiters served us a four-course meal. At the end of the dinner, one of my friends turned to me and said, “Elna, I dare you to make a toast.”

I couldn’t help it. “YES,” I said, nodding my head with approval. I held on to the stem of my wineglass and lifted it into the air. But I don’t drink and I’d never made a toast before so I had no idea how to go about it. With my glass in one hand, and my knife in the other, I made the sound
tink, tink, tink.

Everyone shut up. I was surprised. Who knew the glass and knife combo had such power? I looked out at the crowd. I hadn’t exactly thought through my toast, but I was driven by a force far greater than my hesitation—the desire to pull off the impossible.

“I’d like to make a toast,” I began. “To 7-Eleven, for redefining convenience.”

I raised my glass in the air. For a moment there was silence. I looked at the sea of faces, the bosses, the secretaries, the CEO. They looked right back at me and all at once they burst into applause. “YES!!!!” they replied, raising their glasses high into the air. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.

And it’s why I love saying yes. When you say yes you can start and end the day in two totally different places. Yes takes that space between unlimited possibilities and reality, and stretches it out so that anything can happen.

My life is a constant balance between saying no to substances, sex, porn, and Starbucks, and saying yes to adventure. I am a Mormon in New York.

A Mormon in New York seeking another Mormon in New York.

Which brings me back to the beginning: The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. Me, in the corner by myself, with too many cookies and a notebook. To make matters worse, I just witnessed a thirty-five-year-old man—definitely a virgin—dressed in a duck costume doing the electric slide.

God, there has to be another way.

Kissing, Take One: School Bus

We were waiting for the bus to leave the school parking lot, when a boy in my fourth grade class shouted, “Look! They’re tongue kissing!” I pressed my face against the window along with the rest of the kids. Two eighth graders were standing in between the school buses, frenching. I’d never seen anything like it before. His hand was in her hair and both their faces were moving from side to side, slowly. Someone on the bus started counting out loud, “One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand,” calculating how long it took before the couple came up for air.
They made it all the way to ten, one thousand.

When I got home I ran directly upstairs and into my older sister’s room. I knew she’d be home in an hour, so I had to work fast. I pulled her yearbook off the shelf. My sister’s yearbook was my holy grail. I loved looking at it. Not only did it give an inside account of the lives of the upperclassmen, but popular boys would write things to Tina
,
things that I memorized word for word, replacing her name with mine.

But today was about a different game. I scanned the faces of the upperclassmen until at last, I found them—the French-kissers— Gabriella and Michael. Michael was cute, but it was Gabriella who I wanted to be. She had tan skin, long brown hair, and a pouty face. I circled her with a highlighter, like she was something I needed to study and decided some day I’d be just like her, some day I’d be the
pretty girl
, French-kissing.

I’m Not from Utah

During one particularly boring church young women’s class I made a list of predictions for all the girls in the room and myself.

 

Young Women’s Class Predictions:

I wrote this on loose-leaf notebook paper, added hearts and a drawing of a Mormon temple, and sealed it in an envelope.
To be opened in the year 2000,
I wrote on the outside. It was the quintessential date, 2000: the future.

Several years behind schedule, in the year 2008, I flew home to attend a family renunion and came across this letter while I was hiding in the attic from my relatives. I read it over and considered what I knew about each person. The funny thing is, I was right about everyone, except me.

 

I was born in Tacoma, Washington, and I lived in Bonney Lake and then Sumner, two fairly rural suburbs of Seattle, for my first nine years. My grandparents, cousins, and church friends all lived close by. I knew every dog on my block, one neighbor had horses, another had llamas—that was as big as my world got.

In case you haven’t heard, Mormons are big on families. It’s supposed to be God’s unit on earth. Home is considered mini-heaven, which is probably why all Mormon commercials are shot in an ethereal soft-focus. We spent a lot of time together as a family. We’d say morning and evening prayers together and have daily family scripture study.

But not all of it was religious. My parents were young, twenty-two and twenty-one, when they met. They dated for three and a half weeks before they got engaged, and they were married after three months. It takes me four months to decide on a new haircut, so I can’t imagine being engaged after three and half weeks. Although I’ve always wanted to go on a first date and say: “If I were my mom, and you were my dad, we could be married by the time I have my next cycle.” Only that might be weird. Um, it is. But my parents are happy and still very much in love, so I guess it worked for them.

After they got married, they immediately started having kids: first Tina and, eighteen months later, me. By the time my parents had Julia, Britain, and Jill, they sort of knew what they were doing. But with Tina and me, parenting was an experiment. My dad’s favorite story to tell us about our childhood is the story of the Dilly Bars.

My dad loved Dairy Queen. In particular he loved Dilly Bars, chocolate-covered circular ice cream bars on a popsicle stick. One day he came downstairs when Tina and I were playing with our toys and interrupted us. In a scary voice he said, “The Dilly Bars are coming.” Then he screamed and ran out the front door.

My sister and I were five and three, and we had no idea what my dad was talking about. We ran to the window and watched as he drove away. When he didn’t immediately return, we got scared. We positioned ourselves on top of the couch, rested our feet on the ledge, and leaned against the front window, waiting. My mother came over to see what we were doing. We asked her where our father was.