The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir (6 page)

We’re old maids. Not to most people, but within the context of the Mormon culture, single and over twenty-one means we’re way past our prime. We are “career-driven women,” and so we are abnormal, especially because we were trained to want marriage. I grew up singing songs in church with lyrics like: “I have a family here on earth / They are so good to me / I want to marry in God’s temple for all eternity.”

For the most part my failure to live up to my personal destiny is only apparent when I call home and talk to my mother.

“I’m writing a story about—”

“That’s neat,” she’ll cut me off. “Did you meet any new guys at church last Sunday?”

My mother desperately wants all of her children to be wed, but because Tina and I are the oldest, we get the brunt of it. At the dinner table she’ll pray out loud, “Bless Tina and Elna that they will be able to find their eternal companions.”

Eternal
is the key word. Mormons don’t believe in hell. We believe there are three different levels to heaven, like how they divide A-list, B-list, and C-list celebrities. In the highest level of heaven you can become a God and create your own world. But here’s the catch: In order to do this, you need to be married for time and all
eternity
to another Mormon in a Mormon temple. As if aging, social pressure, potential weight gain, dried-up ovaries, and a mother’s constant prodding isn’t enough to motivate marriage, I have to find a partner
for eternity
, and I can’t even sleep with him first. A choice that could result in bad sex for eternity.

There’s another catch: If I choose not to get married in a Mormon temple, I forfeit the ability to be with my family in the afterlife. I’m convinced that this is why my mother puts so much pressure on marriage: She’s afraid of losing me after I’m dead.

And yet, in spite of all her meddling, my mom was the only member of her extended family with five unmarried kids at her family reunion.
What’s wrong with the Baker children?
our relatives whispered.
I mean, they’re attractive.

One of my great-aunts actually pulled me aside and said, “When are you going to give up your big dreams and settle down?”

I pointed out that the words
give up
and
settle
weren’t exactly inspiring to me. Then I found Tina and related the story to her. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, she finds it even worse. Apparently someone had just tried setting her up with a twenty-one-year-old returned missionary who we may or may not be related to, and I quote, “But if you are, it’s distant.”

“Why do our lives only matter if we’re married?” Tina complained.

“Because we’re women,” I answered. Only this didn’t help cheer her up, so I tried another route. “Has dad ever pressured you to get married?”

“No.”

“You see? We’re fine. Once he starts interfering, then we know we’re in trouble. Until then, we’re in the clear—”

“He did say something once that really bothered me,” she interrupted.

“What?”

“He said, ‘Did we do you kids a disservice by showing you the world?’”

“Why would he think that?” I said defensively.

“Because he said that now, when mom and him want us to make simple choices, choices they know will make us happy, we can’t seem to do it.”

Kissing, Take Two: Wade

By the time I was sixteen, everyone I knew had been kissed except for me. In hopes that the day would come, I tried to prepare myself mentally for my first kiss. I memorized an article in
Cosmo
entitled “The Art of Kissing
.
” “Gently press your lips to his, flick your tongue lightly.” I practiced in the air, on my hand, and on a pillow. But the suggestions were too advanced for me. They were based on the premise that the reader had already been kissed. What I wanted to know more than anything was: What does another person’s tongue feel like when it’s in your mouth? Is it like a slug, or something more romantic—a rose petal maybe?

Then it happened, in the most uneventful way possible. I was jumping on the trampoline when my twelve-year-old neighbor Wade decided to join me. Wade was small for his age, and he was known for being super horny. “I’ve had like eight blow jobs!” he once told me, a fact that I seriously doubted because I’d just barely learned what a blow job was and I was sixteen.

Anyway, Wade and I were jumping on the trampoline when Wade made an unexpected move: He put his foot underneath mine and tripped me. I flopped backward onto the trampoline and, before I could catch my breath, he jumped on top of me, and stuck his tongue down my throat.

I screamed and tried to push him off, but at the same time, I was curious. There was a tongue (the very thing I’d been reading and wondering about), and it was in my mouth. So I stopped screaming and pressed my tongue against Wade’s. It felt weirder than I thought it would—fat and slimy.

In the midst of this kiss, it dawned on me that anyone could turn the corner and see us lying there. I screamed and pushed Wade away for a second time. But just as I did this, I got curious and pulled him back. Pressing his little body into mine, I kissed him hard, not because it felt good, but because it didn’t. Everything I’d read described kissing as pleasurable. This wasn’t pleasurable; it was disgusting. My worst fears were confirmed:
I’m a terrible kisser!

It was clear that the kiss was going nowhere. I pushed Wade off me, deflated. We lay there on the trampoline, side-by-side. I can only imagine what we must’ve looked like from above, me an extra-large, him an extra-small, like a mother bear and her cub.

Wade broke the silence. “Can you at least give me a blow job?”

Kissing, Take Three: Paul

In high school I was the queen of crushes. I think
crush
is the perfect word to describe it, too, because it simultaneously means “to have a brief infatuation with someone unattainable” and “to be violently squashed.” That’s usually how my crushes would end.

Case in point, my biggest crush of all time, Paul Stowe. Paul and I met when I was in high school in Seattle. He was a senior while I was a sophomore, which made him automatically cooler than me. Plus he was the drama club president, which meant he did funny skits in the high school assembly. Everyone in the whole school knew him by name, and I aspired to be one of the lucky few whose name Paul Stowe knew.

Our friendship began because I was Mormon. Paul had never met a Mormon and he was curious about my beliefs. One day after drama club he asked me some questions. I answered them as open-mindedly as possible. And so began our routine: Every Tuesday after school we would sit in his car and have long conversations about religious dogma. Paul was a nondenominational Christian, and he loved to ask things like, “Why are we here on earth, Elna?”

I’d launch into an explanation, his eyes would light up, and I’d watch him shift back and forth in his seat with excitement. When he got this way he looked like he was trying not to wet himself; I guess God had that effect on him. We spent hours in Paul’s car. While I talked, Paul would listen intently; but when Paul talked, my eyes would glaze over and, instead of listening, I’d think about kissing. I still don’t know exactly what nondenominational Christians believe, because the whole time Paul was explaining his faith, I was making up scenarios in my head that ended with our making out.

This went on for several months. We would go to drama club meetings and find ourselves in Paul’s car talking about existence. The best part was that we really believed we were only one or two questions away from figuring it all out.

One day in the midst of one of these discussions, Paul started talking about snow, and how looking at fresh snow really helped him “get it.” He described the perfect whiteness of snow. He described how the little crystals sparkled, and then he explained that one could not look at snow and not believe there was a God.

The words came out before I could stop them. “I’ve never seen snow,” I said. Paul was shocked. I was shocked, too—it wasn’t true. I’d seen snow dozens of times. I’d been skiing; I’d been to the Alps. But it was too late. I’d just lied for no reason at all and the only way to take back the lie was to admit to it. And I wasn’t about to do that.

“How is that even possible?” Paul asked.

I made up a story about how in Spain there was no snow, and how every time I’d been to Seattle it was summer. I went back and forth, giving far too many examples. In the winters of ’91 through ’94 I was in Madrid, in the winter of ’98 we were living in Seattle, and while it did snow there we’d taken a family trip to the Bahamas. And so on.

To Paul this wasn’t just a list of poorly planned vacations—it was a real tragedy. He explained that snow had guided him, that snow had helped him understand his inner light. That’s when it occurred to him: “Elna, the mountains are only three hours away. We should just drive to the mountains and see snow right now!”

I made a mental pro/con list. On the one hand, I really liked Paul, and if we spent six hours in the car together the mathematical odds of our making out would increase dramatically. On the other hand, I would have to act like I was seeing snow for the first time. And how do you do that? How do you have an experience you’ve already had, for the first time? I looked at Paul. He had his usual
I am so excited I’m going to pee my pants
look. Then I thought about all the times we’d just sat in the school parking lot. The keys would be in the ignition, the tank would be full of gas, but Paul and I never went anywhere.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it! Let’s go see snow!”

Three hours later, at the base of Mount Rainier, clumps of partially melted snow started to appear alongside the road. I pressed my face against the window and tried to react genuinely. “Is that what I think it is?” I began. Paul grabbed a sweater from the backseat of his car and threw it over my head.

“Not yet,” he said. “No peeking till we get to the top.”

For the next twenty minutes, I sat in my seat with his sweater over my head. I inhaled the cologne in its fibers, and tried as hard as I could to memorize his scent. I started to feel a little bit bad. Paul was so proud of himself for being the first person to ever show me snow. But it was all a lie. I realize that at any moment I could have compensated for this guilt by telling the truth, but that would have been too obvious. Instead, I decided to go deeper. I decided that when Paul took that sweater off my head, I was going to give him the performance of a lifetime.

I felt the car slow down and veer off to the side of the road.

“Stay right there,” Paul said and opened his door. I was like a musician running through her set. I thought of all the possible reactions I could have: surprise, joy, gratitude, confusion. I practiced saying the word
snow
in my head. I could say it lightly like a damsel in distress, I could shout it like the word
surprise
at a surprise party. Or I could say it softly, reverently, like an
amen
at the end of a prayer.

Paul opened my door. I felt his soft hand on my hand. I grabbed hold of him and he helped me out of the car. My feet made a crunching sound below me as I stood up. I could feel the cold air on my bare arms.

“Ready?” Paul asked.

“Ready,” I said. He pulled his sweater off my head. We stood facing a large clearing covered in snow surrounded by a semicircle of tall pines. Everything sparkled. I thought about what Paul had said about God. I didn’t need to act surprised; I was surprised. Three hours previously I had been in the school parking lot, and now I was in the middle of the forest. It was as if we’d gone through one of those
Star Trek
transport machines. (I don’t watch
Star Trek
. It’s just an analogy.)

Paul searched my face for a reaction. I took a deep breath—it was time for me to deliver. I went with possible reaction number seventeen: I threw my hands up to my face like Macaulay Culkin in
Home Alone
. “Snow!” I hollered, the word echoing from the mountains above. “Snow, snow, snow, snow.” I twirled in a full circle, and then I bent down and picked up a handful of the new white powder. I gazed at it. “It’s so beautiful,” I said. “Yikes,” I added, shaking the snow from my hands and to the ground. “It’s freezing!” As if I’d never touched frozen water before. It was a terrible performance, overdone, reeking of melodrama—but Paul loved every minute of it.

“Race you to the trees,” he said. I took off running. I’m really slow, so any head start helps. Paul didn’t run after me. Instead, he bent down, scooped up a pile of snow, packed it between his hands, aimed, and threw it across the clearing. It hit me in the middle of my back. “Rude,” I yelled. I could feel the wet spot through my T-shirt, but I ignored it and ran faster.

When I made it to the trees, I glanced back at Paul. I could hardly process it. I was living out a daydream. I, Elna Baker, the chubby uncool girl, was in the woods with Paul Stowe, the guy who ran the school assemblies, and he was holding a snowball and he was chasing me! I threw back my head and felt the cold air on my cheeks as I ran. I imagined Paul catching up to me. I imagined him grabbing my right arm and spinning me into him. I imagined him dipping me, and I imagined him kissing me. It would be perfect. He would kiss me like I always thought lovers would kiss, softly, confidently, like a declaration.

I was so engrossed in my fantasy that I didn’t see the log. My right foot caught it at a perfect angle. Despite my weight and size I was catapulted into the air. I floated for a total of three seconds. As I flew toward the ground I thought about staying up there, but years of being a klutz have proven that landing is inevitable. I hit the ground with a
thud
, my body rolled over itself three times, and my head smacked into a rock.

I sat up, embarrassed and hurt. My hands immediately went to my throbbing head. But before I could assess the damage, Paul was there, bending over me and holding back a laugh.