Alone and Unobserved

Growing up, I thought coffee was the devil. Booze was the devil squared. People who drank coffee or beer were evil, filthy, satanic. They were destroying their souls. And besides, caffeine and alcohol were poisons, right? Those people were poisoning themselves.

Even worse, Mormon propaganda films so conflate alcohol and drugs that there was almost no distinction in my mind between a) drinking vodka, b) smoking pot and c) shooting up heroin, and there was certainly no way to do any of these things responsibly. Any and all of them would inevitably lead to you overdosing and dying… presumably while your pure Mormon family stood around your bed, weeping at your lost potential and blaming themselves for your terrible life choices.

While I was growing up, I heard all the time about Mormon girls who slept around, who got abortions, who lived with their boyfriends without getting married—pretty much the worst things you can do in Mormonism besides murdering someone—but who wouldn’t touch caffeine, alcohol or tobacco. When you heard these stories, you were supposed to laugh at how screwed up the worldviews of these women were, because keeping dietary restrictions is way less important than staying chaste and morally pure.

“Hahaha! They have sex at the drop of a hat, but they won’t smoke a cigarette! What idiots.”

(It’s also interesting that the subjects of these stories were all female—men were expected to remain pure and chaste as well, but somehow it felt worse when a woman crossed that line.)

And yet, what was my experience of giving up Mormon teachings like? I drank my first cup of coffee furtively at ten o’clock at night in a Salt-Lake-area Village Inn, feeling guilty and sinful. But before I allowed myself that first sip, I had already

• Made out with any number of boys, including strangers
• Had two boyfriends
• Given my first handjob
• Received my first handjob
• Given my first blowjob
• Received my first blowjob
• Stopped wearing my temple garments

My first mouthful of liquor was from a friend’s Cosmopolitan at a party. It looked delicious, but to my virgin tongue it tasted like turpentine. Poison! I thought. I didn’t really have my first drink until two years later, by which time I had

• Resigned from the Mormon church and had my priesthood authority and temple covenants revoked
• Had SEX-sex—like, all the way—with any number of people, including hook-ups and one-night stands
• Railed openly against the Mormon church and its history of corruption and deception

I stopped even paying lip service to “divinely inspired” Mormon dietary restrictions quite early on in my deconversion, but still they were almost the last part of my upbringing that I let go. And I can’t explain why.

Just about two years ago, I enrolled in a ten-week fitness/weight-loss program with the goal of losing sixteen pounds of fat and gaining six pounds of muscle. I never made it, although I did make significant progress, and for about six months to a year after the program I was thinner and in better shape than I’d been in years.

Unfortunately, over the past year or so, I’ve gained it all back, and a little more. Worse, because I’ve been so lackadaisical with my eating and exercising, I’m probably in the worst shape I’ve been, ever. I knew I wasn’t doing well, but I managed to reassure myself that I wasn’t doing that badly until two days ago, when I shaved off the gnarly beard I had grown… and discovered a chinless hobbit face looking back at me. It was a shock. I didn’t even recognize myself. I still don’t.

About three days ago (when I still had my beard and still recognized myself in the mirror) I read Greta Christina’s post on “The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet” and liked what I saw. I downloaded the LoseIt app for my iPhone, which Greta Christina said she had used and loved, intending to put it to use eventually.

Well, “eventually” has come. Here are my goals. I will:

• Eat something immediately after I get up in the morning. First thing.
• Log everything I eat in the LoseIt app, to the best of my ability, no matter what.
• Try to eat a calorie allotment each day that will allow me to lose about a pound a week.
• Exercise every day, even if that just means going for a walk.
• Take the stairs at work, unless that is impossible (for instance, if I’m pushing a book cart).
• Weigh myself once a week.
• Stock up on healthy, filling snacks so I never have to let myself get hungry.
• Stay clean-shaven until I’m comfortable with my appearance. I’m done hiding behind a beard. Even if I stay at my current physical condition—or even get heavier and less fit—I want to be able to accept myself for who I am.

Wish me luck! The LoseIt app automatically posts frequent updates on my exercise habits and weight loss—or gain! horrors—to Facebook, and I’ll be posting infrequent updates here. Hopefully that’ll motivate me to keep going.

Here’s to a svelter and fitter me come summer!

Despite having been me for the past 29+ years, and having lived with my short attention span and cyclical interests for that whole time, I’m still surprised when my interest wheel clicks over and I suddenly go from reading four novels at a time to reading none at all. The art supplies I couldn’t get enough of in January and February are scattered around the house, forgotten for the moment. My Flickr photostream—where I was posting drawings, comics, photos—is stagnant. My Twittering has suffered. Even this website is sitting idle.

For the past several days, I’ve done almost nothing but play Final Fantasy I on my iPhone and watch Torchwood and Doctor Who on Netflix. I’m trying out doing some off-the-cuff blogging on Tumblr; I like the community feel of the site, and I far prefer the Tumblr iPhone app to the WordPress one for blogging on the go. I’ve gone to a few music performances, something I really don’t do often enough.

I can already feel the nigglings of change, though. My piano beckoned to me today, for the first time in a couple weeks. I have a hurt index finger, so I didn’t get very far, but my piano is a determined flirt and won’t give up until I’m playing it again. I have a couple books on hold at the library that I’m excited-ish to read. I’ve really wanted to start dancing again, and of course I need to take a drawing class or several. And I’m still slowing making my way through the Star Trek: The Next Generation catalog (I’m on Season Three—welcome back, Dr. Crusher!). There’s so much to do, and I have to do it now, before I lose interest in it!

Sometimes I really wish I had a more stable, consistent set of interests. If I were always interested in writing, or drawing, or dancing, or blogging or what-have-you, I might be able to do something with them. As it is, it looks like I’ll be a permanent dilettante at whatever I—ooh, shiny!

In our lovely Deseret,
Where the Saints of God have met,
There’s a multitude of children all around.
They are generous and brave;
They have precious souls to save;
They must listen and obey the gospel’s sound.

Hark! Hark! Hark! ’tis children’s music—
Children’s voices, oh, how sweet,
When in innocence and love,
Like the angels up above,
They with happy hearts and cheerful faces meet.
(“In Our Lovely Deseret,” Eliza R. Snow)

I’m sure all ex-Mormons (and lots of other people too) have a most-hated hymn. I have several! But at the top of the list is “In Our Lovely Deseret,” a cheery abomination written for Mormon children by Eliza “Zion’s Poetess” Snow, whose poetry career just proves that “prolific” and “talented” are not even remotely related attributes. The music her hymns are set to is, if anything, worse: do not, under any circumstances, go searching for an online recording of “In Our Lovely Deseret,” because it will colonize your brain and drive you mad.

In second place we have a sixty-way tie between all of the solemn hymns about Jesus bleeding and dying for my sins. They make my mouth taste like the white bread Mormons eat for communion, and the paper cup they drink the communion water from. (Yes, you heard that right: Mormons drink water for communion, and no, I’m not going to try and explain it. I don’t have to explain Mormonism to people now that I’m not Mormon.)

In third place—

Never mind. When I hear a Mormon hymn, I’m transported back to a time in my life when I hated myself. Worse, I believed in an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good being called “Heavenly Father” who hated me, too. Is it any wonder that my list of hated Mormon hymns encompasses the whole Mormon hymnbook?

When we see a man kissing another man, the preconceived associations in the hidden brain tell most Americans that this is not what men do. Of course, we can quickly shush our hidden brain and act blasé. But when we are juggling many things, when we are under pressure, or when we are simply busy doing something else, it becomes difficult to suppress the automatic associations of the hidden brain. At such times, the hidden brain’s rapid conclusions about the world become especially powerful. If we are asked to make a judgment about these men in some other context—their job performance, for example—we may get the feeling they are not quite right for the job without knowing how we leaped to that conclusion.

When I say “we” have automatic biases about gay people, I really do mean everyone—straight people and gay people. Just as black children tend to have positive associations with white faces rather than black faces, gay people can unconsciously harbor the same associations as straight people. This should not be cause for surprise: Gays usually see many more straight families than gay families in real life, on TV, and in books. If the hidden brain learns through repetition, why would the unconscious associations of gay people be much different from the unconscious associations of straight people?
(Shankar Vedantam, The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives, p. 74)

We have a long, long way to go.

Martin Millar announced on his blog a couple weeks ago that the sequel to Lonely Werewolf Girl will be titled Curse of the Wolf Girl (not Queen Vex, as I had previously reported) and will be released later this year. I’m not sure when it’ll be coming out in the U.S., but Amazon.com already has a listing for it, so I’m hopeful it won’t be too long after the UK edition.

I’m sure you have no idea how excited you should be, but believe me: a new Martin Millar book is a BIG FUCKING DEAL. And there’s still plenty of time before the sequel comes out to read his entire backlist, which is quickly coming back into print, thanks to the nice folks over at Soft Skull Press.

Here’s a review I just posted on Goodreads of a Soft Skull reprint of one of his older books:

Ruby and the Stone Age Diet by Martin Millar

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is perhaps the characteristic Martin Millar tale: it stars (and is narrated by) a young man with a tenuous grasp on reality and chronology who has just lost his girlfriend, and whose friend—and squatting buddy—Ruby occasionally likes to slip LSD in his tea, regale him with stories of a lonely werewolf girl, and swear off food for weeks at a time. In Ruby and the Stone-age Diet, Millar has assembled a fractured mosaic of fact, near-fact, fancy and myth that confuses and delights in equal measure. Definitely a trip.

My other Martin Millar reviews:

• Little-Known Facts That You Should Know (blog post on The Good Fairies of New York and Lonely Werewolf Girl)
• Lonely Werewolf Girl
• The Good Fairies of New York
• Lux the Poet

I have this conversation with patrons at my library far, far too often.

Patron: I need item X.

Me (reading catalog record): Looks like it’s all checked out, but there’s a copy due in a couple days. I can’t promise it’ll be brought back in time, but I can place a hold on it for you. That way you’d get the next copy that checks in.

Patron: Sounds good.

Me: All right. Where do you want to pick it up?

Patron: Library Branch Y.

[I place the hold.]

Me: Okay, you’re first in line for that item.

Patron: Uhhhhh…. maybe I should pick it up at Branch Z instead?

Me: It’s up to you. I can change the hold.

Patron: I need it as soon as possible. Which will be faster, Branch Y or Z?

Me: It probably won’t make a difference.

Patron: Well, where will it be turned in?

Me: It could be returned to any of our locations. There’s no way to know in advance.

Patron: Okay, how long would it take to get to Branch Y once it’s turned in?

Me: [Pounds head on desk]

Patron: How long would it take to get to Branch Z?

Me: [Catatonia; writhing]

Patron: I need it by Tuesday. What day did you say it would be brought back?

Me: [DEATH]

Me: S— Public Library, this is Sean.

Patron: Do you have federal tax form blanks?

Me: I’m sorry, do we have federal tax form what?

Patron: Do you have blank federal tax forms?

Me: I don’t know what you mean by “blank” forms, but we have forms that haven’t been filled out.

Patron: “Sold out”?

Me: Filled out.

Patron: (pauses, then laughs; speaks slowly) Do you have forms there for me to pick up?

Me: (internal sigh) Yes, we do.

Patron: And are they federal and state, or just federal?

Me: We have both.

Patron: Thank you. Good-bye. *click*

As you may or may not know, I use Goodreads to keep track of the books I read, and to rate and review them when I have the inclination. I recently read a book of poetry that completely blew me away, and my reaction to it turned out more like a blog entry than a review. So I thought I would cross-post it here.

The First Risk by Charles Jensen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t remember finding out about Matthew Shepard’s slaying. I was seventeen when it happened, a self-hating closeted gay Mormon, halfway through my first semester at Brigham Young University. Did I think he deserved it, the way I thought gays deserved to die of AIDS for their sins? I hope not, but I’m afraid to remember too well.

I am the failure of the body to remain a boy,
I am the remains of a boy, the body of his failure. (“I Am the Boy Who Is Tied Down”, p. 7)

The first section—”Safe”—interweaves various viewpoints on Matthew Shepard’s last moments with three poems describing Venus’s grief at the death of Adonis. The language is brutal, visceral, and the tone moves from cold and dissociated to immediate and passionate. Reading this section, it was like I was hearing about the killing for the first time. And this time, at least, I know I didn’t think he deserved it.

When I finally came out to myself as a gay man, and began to accept myself and to stop blaming myself for who and what I was, I took an entire summer to watch what I saw as the “gay canon,” films I had been too afraid to watch until that point. One of the first of these was Almodóvar’s masterpiece, All About My Mother.

I tell you, chica,

If you want something done,
Do it with a knife. (“La Agrado Explains Plastic Surgery”, p. 25)

The second section—”City of the Sad Divas”—is a collection of poems associated with All About My Mother and its characters: Manuela, who has lost her son; La Agrado and the other transsexual hookers; Huma Rojo and her heroin-addicted lover, Nina; and the city of Barcelona itself, where much of the action takes place. In these poems, the reader does not relive the film; rather, the violence and passion and filth of the film are held at arms length, looked over with a dark and dubious eye, considered, and then let go.

I’ve always hated Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, although it is often gorgeous to watch, because I never believed for a minute that any of it was happening. All of the characters annoy me, the plot annoys me, and Scottie’s obsession and eventual unraveling annoy me.

To be golden-haired means
you are destined to be idolized;

brunettes have less fun
but keep better secrets. (“Hair and Make-Up Notes, Scene 92″, p. 50)

The fourth section—”The Double Bind: A Critical Text”—presents a critical analysis of Vertigo, and includes all kind of tantalizing details about the cast, director and the narrative and directorial choices in the film. I have no idea if any of these details are true; that is not the point: they are simply too delicious to resist. Each snippet, naturally, is accompanied by an associated poem. One thing that must be said in Vertigo’s favor is that it is beautifully shot, composed and scored. Unlike the previous collection, these silky little poems do much more to evoke the actual feel of parts of the film.One result of reading this section is that I have the sudden desire to see Vera Miles play the Kim Novak role (and, really, anyone else play the Jimmy Stewart role).

I’ve already reviewed the fourth section, “The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon,” on Goodreads. I have nothing to add to that review except this:

This is good poetry.

View all my reviews on Goodreads >>

This is a phone call I received this morning at the library.

Little Old Lady: I’m computer illiterate, and I’m at a library where the people aren’t too smart. What I want to know is, the picture on the desktop, how do you make it larger or smaller?

Me: I’m sorry, ma’am, but that’s not something I can really explain over the phone [especially not to someone who is computer illiterate].

LOL: You can’t just tell me how to do it?

Me: I’m sorry, not over the phone. That’s something you’re going to need to get someone to show you in person.

LOL: No hints or anything?

Me: I’m sorry. Is there something else I can help you with?

*click*