UPDATE: When I told Anni I was calling Edgar ‘Edwige,’ she told me on no uncertain terms that HE is a BOY and HIS name is EDGAR, and that my plant-fostership was ON NOTICE. So I’ve redacted the relevant post to make it clear that ‘Edwige’ (Hedwig in French) is a stage name and nothing more. Her beloved Edgar is, and always will be, Edgar.
Anni is having me foster two of her beloved houseplants while she’s on an 18-month religious mission in Russia. They are a boy and a girl plant, Edgar and Edwina. Only, after Anni named Edgar, he started producing startling purple/violet leaves, which means, she informs me, that he is gay. Aren’t they beautiful?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading the blogs of several gay Mormons (or, as they call themselves, ‘mohos’), some of whom I know personally and others whom I don’t. I’ve occasionally left comments on this or that entry, when I felt like I had something to say or something to add to the discussion, but recently I wrote two immensely long comments about my own experience—the first about my relationship with my mother, the second about coming out as a gay ex-Mormon. I ended up deleting both comments, since they didn’t seem appropriate for the blogs in question, but I’m going to post them here, since these are obviously things I need to say, and if I don’t get them out, I’ll end up ditching them at some poor, faithful, gay Mormon’s blog like a troll. So.
This first comment was written as a response to one of my friend’s blog posts, in reference to a conversation he had with his mother about being attracted to men. At the end of the post he asked for feedback from our own experiences, so I decided to participate. The main motive for my writing was jealousy, I suppose: jealousy that he’s still on good, open terms with his mother, while I’m living on my own in self-imposed exile.
What was frustrating for me in talking to my mother was her double standard. She always felt free to tell me who she was attracted to (even when the knowledge was extremely embarrassing), but told me point-blank that I wasn’t allowed to mention my own experience: not who I was attracted to, not dates I’d been on, not my boyfriend, not my break-up with my boyfriend—in short, I couldn’t talk about the very things I needed most to talk about.She also told me I wasn’t allowed to discuss my departure from Mormonism or my religious (non-)beliefs, or anything else that might make her uncomfortable. And yet, whenever we spoke, she told me all about her callings, and my dad’s callings, and my sister’s and brother-in-law’s callings, and her last temple trip, and the latest Ensign, and what the home teachers had said and done the last time they came over—and she has to realize that I have no desire to hear any of that.
Her reasoning for both prohibitions: “It would make conversations [with me] so much easier” on her. But why was her comfort the only issue? What about mine? I realize that her religion is an integral part of her life, and it would be hard for her not to talk about it. But hello! Being gay, dating, being in relationships, etc. are an integral part of MY life. My deep-held beliefs about existence and the meaning of life are also integral. And yet she thinks nothing about asking me not to mention them!
So in the end, I guess it’s better that we not speak at all. The only safe subject left was school, and it got to where we had the same pointless conversation every time we talked. Now that we’re not speaking, at least I’m spared that.
Be glad your parents are still willing to discuss these things with you at all. Don’t ever take it for granted.
The second comment was written in response to a post by a BYU student who is planning on coming out as gay (which, per the recent Honor Code changes, is technically allowed). His blog has been receiving a lot of traffic lately with people urging him one way and another, or asking for his reasons, or warning him about the consequences, etc. I was going to write a short, genteel comment about what coming out had been like for me, but it mushroomed out of control and turned into this:
I just wanted to share my experience with coming out as a non-Mormon (er, ex-Mormon) gay man.First, the positive: I came out publicly when I graduated from BYU and moved up to Salt Lake. So for me, the best part was being out, i.e., having the opportunity to meet and get to know people as an openly gay man, rather than as a closeted BYU student. People who knew me before the transition and still wanted to know me afterwards commented on how much happier and more relaxed I looked.
Now for the negative: Actually coming out to people is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I firmly believe I’m right to be true to myself and to refuse to lie anymore, but I know I’m probably disappointing and/or shocking them the (Mormon) people I tell, and that makes it very hard. I’ve only personally (i.e., in face-to-face or telephone conversations) come out to fewer than ten people, with the rest finding out via letter (my parents) or hearsay (which includes Facebook/MySpace friends). If I had my way, everyone would simply know, shrug their shoulders, and move on.
While most of my BYU/Mormon acquaintances have chosen to ignore the whole thing, there have been some frighteningly negative responses, specifically from my family and my ex-girlfriend. Anni and I are pals again, but I’m currently not in touch with the larger portion of my family because of the fallout of the various offensives and counteroffensives that have been mounted as a result of my announcement.
So there you go. It’s out. Are you happy now, subconscious? Stop badgering me about this stuff and start badgering me about short stories again.
“Will there be cuddling?” my ex-girlfriend Anni asked, when I invited her over today. “My roommate wants to know if you’ll be cuddling with me.”
“No. I flirt with girls, but I’m not cruel enough to cuddle with them.” I paused, remembering who I was talking to, and added, “Er, anymore.”
My ivory leather loveseat is barely wide enough for two, but we manfully refrained from cuddling, instead munching on Pizza Hut pan pizza (my slices with olives, hers without) to distract ourselves from the painfully unwatchable Night at the Museum. (What makes Hollywood executives think they can make a compelling 110-minute film out of a 32-page children’s picture book? Didn’t they learn anything from Polar Express?)
The highlight of the evening wasn’t the movie, the two hours of not touching, or even the pizza. No, the real reason I’m blogging about this at all is because I got to see one of my idols in the flesh tonight. I’m talking about Ruth Reichl (past food critic for both the L.A.- and the NY Times, current editor-in-chief of Gourmet, and best-selling author of Garlic and Sapphires: The Life of a Critic in Disguise), who was in town to give a lecture . . . no, don’t go! I’ll call it a “concert.” Is that better? She was in town to give a “concert” on the experience of having her book optioned as an HBO television series.
And it was good! Anyone who’s read one of her memoirs knows she’s a great writer: funny, down to earth, and not afraid to make fun of herself—but there’s always the question of whether those qualities will come through in person. Well, to our delight (and to your delight, if you should ever attend one of her “concerts” in the future), she was a great speaker. Apparently, a year and a half ago, her book was optioned as an HBO series featuring (you guessed it) turkey sex. Surprisingly, that deal fell through, but now it’s in development as a movie. She couldn’t say very much about that, but she did say that she likes the direction it seems to be going much better. And guess which four actresses have already expressed interest in the script? Let the following images stew in your head for a while: Garlic and Sapphires, the movie, with the role of Ruth Reichl played by Julia Roberts . . . or Nicole Kidman . . . or Cate Blanchette . . . or Reese Witherspoon.
Exciting, and a bit scary, n’est-ce pas?
The pre-tour revival of Carol Lynn Pearson’s new play, Facing East, opened yesterday at the Rose Wagner Center in Salt Lake City. I went to see it tonight with my ex-girlfriend Anni, and we both enjoyed it a great deal, from our different perspectives. I laughed and cried, and cried some more, and left the theater feeling drained, yet ebullient, as if I had just accomplished some monumental feat. To extend the feeling, I bought the playbook with Pearson’s original script, and when I got home, I got to experience the play again in my living room. If you can’t attend a showing, either in Salt Lake over the next few weeks, or in New York or San Francisco over the next few months, I highly recommend purchasing a copy of the playbook from Carol Lynn Pearson’s website.
The play is fairly minimalist. The only props and set decorations are a few flowers, a couple of handkerchiefs, a purse, two chairs, and a hole in the middle of the stage. The cast consists of three actors who together play four characters.
As the play opens, Alex McCormick is grieving at the graveside of his son, Andrew, after the other mourners have left. His wife, Ruth, arrives, and he tells her that the service they just sat through was a lie: neither he, nor she, nor any of the attendees knew their son. Over Ruth’s protests, Alex decides to hold another funeral service, this one a true one, there on the hillside with the trees as an audience.
The truth that no one at the funeral was willing to speak is that Andrew was gay and living with another man, and that a few days before, he had committed suicide on the grounds of the Salt Lake Mormon Temple. Alex and Ruth discuss their son, their relationship with him, and the devastating possibility that they were to blame for his homosexuality, his suicide, or both.
About two-thirds of the way into the 75-minute play (or on page 34 of the 53-page script), after Alex and Ruth have talked themselves to an impasse, their son’s gay partner Marcus comes to the gravesite. He has timed his arrival for when he thought the service would be over, the friends and family departed, and is embarrassed to run into Andrew’s parents, whom he has never met. He reluctantly joins their conversation, and tells them about a side of their son that they never knew: about the love Marcus and Andrew shared as a couple, and about Andrew’s desperate longing for the absolution and acceptance he felt he would never deserve.
Andrew, the fourth character, is present throughout the piece in the intersection between the other three characters, in the specter of the open grave, and in the beauty of the cello solos that occasionally intrude on the narrative. He participates in the dialogue, unseen, through a series of flashbacks: in his mother’s memories, he is voiced from the darkness by his father, and in his father’s, by his mother. At last he appears in the flesh in the guise of Marcus, in the memory of a camping trip the two men took together not long ago, when they were purely happy and in love.
The play ends with many questions posed, but unanswered. Who was to blame for Andrew’s death? What should religion and the religious do about the very real problems that face homosexual members? What can those on the outside of a religion do to help people who are struggling inside? But one message is completely clear: everyone needs and deserves love and intimacy. It is not right to love the tree and hate the blossom—celibacy may be possible, but “trees find springtime hard to resist.”
Yesterday, I entered enemy territory for the first time in over a year. I am referring, of course, to BYU Campus, home of the infamous Honor Code, Carri Jenkins the spokesdemon, and scads of closeted, conflicted homosexuals. Oh, and many, many uptight, self-righteous, straight BYU students as well. This journey was not a light undertaking, but the prize was enormous: a chance to attend my ex-girlfriend Anni’s Sometimes-Annual Flammen Kuchen Party.
With that goal in sight, I rode the light rail and bus for two whole hours to travel the 46.6 miles from my house to the BYU Foreign Language Student Residence, where I lived for three and a half years and where my ex currently resides. The Flammen Kuchen was exquisite and flavorful, as usual, and the company much more congenial than I had expected, given the fact that most of the attendees hadn’t ever met a soul-sucking demon from hell before and I wasn’t sure how they would react. But aside from a few uncomfortable conversations that really emphasized what an insulated environment BYU is, and how much I’ve changed since I was part of it, it was a fun time, and I was almost sad when it was time for the two-hour journey back to Salt Lake.
“Flammen Kuchen is its own reward,” as the saying goes, and I had lots of Flammen Kuchen. I also received Anni’s “The Faithful-est Friend of Them All” Award for traveling not only the farthest but also the longest for her party (besides the whole “agreeing against my better judgment to confront my personal demons and set foot on BYU campus” thing). Oh, and I had totally forgotten how many hot guys there were at BYU. Another plus. Am I saying that I had fun in the middle of enemy territory? I guess so! That’s . . . amazing.
I’ve been in full walking-zombie mode since the time change. Daylight Suckage Time has coincided with my renewed zeal for writing (and for Shirley Jackson!), so I’ve been up typing and revising until at least one in the morning most evenings. Yet somehow, in all the mad, body-clock-adjusting madness, I’ve started waking after only six hours of sleep, morning after morning. And not because I’ve suddenly turned into someone who thrives on six hours of sleep, or can even be said to “function” on six hours of sleep, but because (and this is conjecture) the sleep regulation center of my brain is having some cruel fun at my expense. Or the medication that has been keeping me on a blissfully even keel is exhibiting another side effect. OR BOTH.
Great. Tag-teamed by my brain and a third-generation anti-depressant. I can’t win.
On the up side, the weather this week has beautiful and warm, and even though I’ve been very busy being indoors, I’ve been able to enjoy it occasionally—on the way to school or work, mainly. When I’m not sneezing and sniffling, that is, because the trees all think it’s spring, silly brainless tarts, and have been busily engaged in invisible sexual congress all over the place. GET A ROOM. Jeez. And just because it’s warm doesn’t mean it’s spring yet—read an almanac.
Anyway, as usual, my friend Anni has completely upstaged me in all areas: she recently had her gallbladder out (bad, very bad), which meant that she was practically on a fasting diet for six weeks (very, very bad), but now that she is healing she suddenly has an abundance of extra energy (very, very good), which her doctors say is a common side effect of having the gallbladder removed. The thing must be like a little, blob-shaped parasite, feeding hungrily off of the body’s energy reserves, and giving back what? Bitter, bitter bile. And, occasionally, gallstones. What a rip-off.
Well, it’s time to replenish my caffeine levels before I pass out on the keyboard. Keep it real, as my close, personal friend Randy Jackson always says. And, as usual, watch this space for further developments.
P.S. I will stop posting every single episode of Dinosaur Comics to my Shared Items when it stops being so damned funny. So no complaining.
It seems this is the Season of the Baking, for me, at least. Last Sunday night I decided it was time to try my friend Anni’s traditional Southern German recipe, Flammen Kuchen, a crisp flatbread garnished with onions and bacon bits and two different kinds of cream. So I bundled up to run to the store for ingredients, but I was only halfway down the block when two unfamiliar dogs rushed up to me, snarling and snapping, and chased me back to my apartment, where I leaned against the door and quietly hyperventilated. So I did not make it to the store on Sunday.
Nor did I sleep very well that night. This is also the Season for Nightmares for me, and, as discussed before, the Season of Insomnia. Although, surprisingly, my nightmares that night had much more to do with being a burglar/superhero on the run than being attacked by dogs. (My nightmares are very strange. But also very disturbing! At least to me.)
So yesterday (as it is now early morning on Wednesday) I stopped by the store on the way home from work and picked up the things I would need. Do not be deceived by the recipe I have posted; the original recipe I got from Anni was a photocopy of a terse set of instructions from her German foster mother, in German, and in German handwriting, with cryptic annotations by Anni. It went something like this:
30 min
Flammen Kuchen1) Dough
1000 gr flour
2 tsp salt
2 splashes oil (makes at 3)1/2 liter(2 cups) lukewarm water
1 little package yeast (1 tbs)
2) ToppingCured meat chopped very small(Bacon bits)
Onions in fine rings
3) Sauce for 2 pans
2 cups sweet cream
2 cups sour cream
(for 1: 1/3 cup whipping cream
1/3 cup fat free sour cream
salt, pepper)
And that is all. Those are all the markings on the paper. Nowhere does it say how to mix the ingredients together, or at what temperature to bake it at, or how long to knead the dough, or how much a “splash” of oil is. No. But I persevered, and I decoded, and I occasionally called Anni and asked her what the heck I was supposed to do, and on my counter right now are the salty, onion-y, bacon-y (well, soy-bacon-y), creamy, crunchy fruits of my labors. All five pans of them. I guess my family of fifteen will make it through the winter after all.
My last shift as a shelving aide at the Sweet Branch Library was yesterday morning. To commemorate the occasion, I spent all day Thursday cooking and baking, and filled the Sweet Branch staff room with the products of my labors. My coworkers were appreciative but puzzled; the general response was, “Wow! Thanks! . . . but shouldn’t we be cooking for you?”
Here are some low-quality, camera-phone pics of the food I provided:
| Sticky buns, made from my favorite recipe. |  |
| One of my roommates had a delicious European-style lemon-cake recipe that I obtained from him and promptly lost. So this is a European-style lemon cake made from another, inferior recipe. [EDIT 10/09/06: A recipe which I have apparently now lost. Oops.] |  |
| My friend Anni introduced me to the recipe for these chocolate-chip cookies, and my friend Carrie introduced me to the recipe for these Pfeffernüsse cookies. So I owe them both big-time. |  |
| One of the few times I ever actually entered an Italian’s house while tracting during my Mormon mission, the lady of the house fed us a superb apple crostata with subtle hints of peach, lemon and butter. Of course I asked her for the recipe. |  |
| I learned the recipe for this cherry-tomato-and-garlic-garnished focaccia on location at the Ciavarella’s country home near Foggia, Italy. My attempts are always edible, but I’ve never even approached the level of Signora Ciavarella’s original. |  |
| In true European style, I transported the food by bus in about a hundred plastic bags. |  |
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