I followed him like a duckling.

Matt here.

Rick was my EQP when I lived in Wyview, my first semester at BYU. He’s a business analyst in California now. I got an email from him the other day, just checking in and seeing what I was up to. It was nice. 

He’s awful at keeping in touch. I think the last time I heard from him was in 2010? Or 2011? Maybe? At first that really bugged me (because I’m the time to write pages and pages of letter and not be satisfied with a paragraph of response) but I’ve adjusted to it. In Rick’s case it’s particularly frustrating because of how that first semester went and how large an impact he made in my life.

See, I started at BYU as a junior and a seventeen-year-old, thanks to an unusual K-12 career, and I’d just admitted to myself and my parents that I wasn’t attracted to girls. I was a complete mess that semester. Rick didn’t know I was ‘struggling,’ but he knew I didn’t have much of a testimony.

If you’re a cynic, you might say he made me one of his projects. He hand-picked my home teachers, who were excellent guys. He talked to me at activities and things or when we just ran into each other around the complex. He spent a good handful of time sitting with me in my living room talking about serving a mission and using Preach My Gospel and studying the Book of Mormon (he was an MTC teacher). All this even though I was awkward and surely.

I followed him like a duckling. I pounded down those lessons! I marked up those scriptures! I went to the firesides and the church meetings and everything, and the thing is, it felt good. He paid more attention to me over those four months than anyone else (including my older brother, who lived in the same complex but was mooning over a girl). I depended on him and focused on the PmG and scripture exercises he gave me with a desperate sort of faith that I was only able to muster because he was so solid and so certain and invested.

In my subconscious, I think, he embodied the church. I didn't feel so lost and adrift. I felt slightly less isolated and weird. I felt like, uncomfortable and anti-intellectual as it seemed, the church was somehow still solid, like Rick.

And that’s how I got through my first semester without having a no-going-back meltdown!

The second semester, I moved to the campus Spanish immersion housing and I didn’t see Rick at BYU again. Looking back, I think my whole life would be different if I’d stayed there, under his influence, and I don’t know whether it would have been better or worse, more or less painful. I wonder if the church is true and I would have developed a real testimony of it there. I wonder if the church isn’t true and I would have developed a ‘real testimony’ of it there.

Before he disappeared from this latest email exchange, we decided we’d have lunch next month, after I’m back in the states. (He lives not too far from where I’ll be staying.) I wonder how that’s going to go. As important as he was to me, I have no idea why he’s barely-but-of-his-own-volition kept in touch, no idea what he gets out of it, because he writes so darn little. Part of me wonders if he’s going to try to get me to give the church another chance. Another part of me wonders if he’s gay. (Thirty-ish, handsome, successful, faithful, single . . .  ) I’m not sure I want either of those suppositions to be right. If anyone could get me to try Mormonism again, it would be him, and if anyone would make a tragic ‘struggler,’ it would be him.

I guess the point is just that he is-was really important to me, and I’m apprehensively looking forward to seeing him again.

***

Related: I first heard Andrea Bocelli while sitting in Rick's car.
Unrelated: An illustrated guide to kissing.

The Fire In You

Mostly I remember how cold it was. There was no moon, just stars and snow everywhere. We drove into the mountains in his car, which was not as junky as mine, and he told me about his family and cancer and crashes. I told him about my study abroad and books and family and felt young.

We talked until the cocoa was cold. We talked until the cab was cold. We talked until my fingers were cold. Driver side, passenger side. My chest was burning from how close he was, how long we’d been there alone far away from everything. I stepped outside for a minute to see my breath in the air and stretch and look around, and then we drove back into Provo. We didn’t touch.

When You Were Young came on the radio and we sang along. For a couple of years I thought about him every time I heard that song. I tried to keep in touch, but he didn’t so much. I don’t think about him when I hear it anymore, except tonight.

***

I don’t want to say to myself, “You’ll never touch someone with that fire in you.”

If I believed in Mormonism then maybe I could say it, but I still wouldn’t want to. So tonight, writing this, I want to say I’m thankful I don’t believe in Mormonism. Life would be so much more difficult if I did. Maybe disbelief is a mercy from God.

***

My mom and dad have visited me here in Japan a few times. My dad is retired Air Force, so we can go on any of the several military bases around Kanagawa. One day we went on a Navy base so I could eat Taco Bell again (so bad, so good . . . ) and exactly as we walked through the gate and down the street I felt like I belonged there. It occurred to me that with DADT out of the picture, I actually could join the military. (If you’ve read my last few posts you understand why I had never considered it with DADT in force.)

Now I’ve been researching it for more than a year. I’ve been working with an officer recruiter for the past few months, with slow progress because he’s in Guam. Several times I’ve had attacks of “Are you sure you want to do this thing? Those contracts are awfully long.” and every time I’ve been able to meditate and decide that yes, I do. Briefly: After significant research, I still believe military service is meaningful and worthwhile. I want the military to be the community that replaces Mormonism. The regimented, frequently shaken up lifestyle doesn’t suit everyone, but it suits me, especially the Navy's variety. Through OutServe, I’ve talked with several gay servicemembers who say that the military’s homophobic reputation is 70 percent outdated.

The test, which was like a small SAT, was the first step. If I passed (I’d be surprised if I didn’t), there are about three months to do a small mountain of paperwork before the next hiring board.

***

This week, I’m going to turn twenty-four.

***

Ryan beat me to the video that’s made me laugh the most recently, but this is also good.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I saw this movie for the second time this week.

I've only read the book once, and that was earlier this year. I really identified with it. People interpret parts of it as pretentious, maybe because it tries to take every terrible thing that could happen to a person in high school and pack it into one book, and maybe because it's become such a cult classic among alternative sad high schoolers. But, again, since I identified with it so much, I can see that critique, and choose to reject it. Basically, I love it.

The book has been banned for several reasons, principally for referencing drug use, sexual abuse, teenage sex, depression, suicide, and for having an openly gay character. Of course, all of these are reasons why the book shouldn't be banned--because people experiencing any of these things need something to connect to, and for kids like me, that was always literature. Having characters I could identify with proved the world was not an entirely lonely, dead place.

Not everything about viewing this movie was positive. I'm not referring to the movie itself, but rather to the audience. For instance, Ezra Miller, on the left of the poster over there, plays a gay character named Patrick, a quirky, sassy kid with a closeted football-playing boyfriend. Near the end of the film, the boyfriend's dad catches them together and starts beating his son, who subsequently breaks up with Patrick and, mainly out of a legitimate fear for his life and out of an imposed desire to maintain social/cultural/familial norms, stays in the closet. Patrick is devastated and starts going on long drives with Charlie, the solidly straight protagonist, who he ends up kissing during a moment of bleak, utter loneliness. It turns into a really sweet, friendship-affirming moment, and simultaneously tragic moment, since all of us, including Charlie, just want Patrick to be happy.

Up until this point, the audience had been laughing at Patrick's hijinks, lulled into accepting his "alternative lifestyle" by his humor and personality. But now, they had solid evidence of his overt homosexuality--and I'm sure you can guess that the typical high school girl reaction in our Provo theater was a resounding, "Eeeeeeeeewww!!!"

Needless to say, it was disheartening, and reminder that our society is willing to accept homosexuals in their entertainment as long as they're couched in comedy--Modern Family is, of course, the prime example of this. It was also a reminder that people will allow themselves to experience movies that try to challenge their social norms--things that assert that gay people should (go figure) be allowed to have relationships/experience emotions/be anything besides funny side characters without depth or feeing--but will contain it themselves by refusing to accept the character's depth and regulating him to the gross gay guy. Decidedly not cool.

Still, if you can catch it at a time when the theater isn't crammed with teenage girls wanting to watch a quirky indie film to prove their hipster-ness, giggling at the gayness of a really great character, the film is worth seeing. And the book is worth reading, with the added bonus of no idiotic audience enforcing social norms! They're both lovely, and a great reminder that there are people out there having your same problems, feeling alone and sad and worthless, and being reminded that there are people out there who care about them, just like there are people who care about you (and me).

As a side note, Emma Watson is ridiculously gorgeous in this movie. She'll knock your socks off. Good grief. And also, Ezra Miller is generally a fabulous human being. Here's something he said in an interview that will hopefully cheer you up after the super depressing story I just told:

“I think at this point in our world, we’ve got a really confused idea of the way gender and sexuality works. I think we’ve created this really superfluous sort of like binary in the way we think about gender. And I guess I identify as queer because I don’t identify with that. I think that makes us less whole as people. I don’t need to be assigned to what it is I can do or who I can love. And it seems like we keep drawing these battle lines which are completely unnecessary. So that’s what I basically mean. When I say I’m queer, I’m saying that I think human beings are amazing. And love is an honor and an opportunity. And a fragile thing. A fragile process in which there’s no room for doubt, or shame, or hatred.”

Did I mention that I thought he was a fabulous human being?

I will conclude, as usual, with the poem of the week. This isn't the most elegant poem I've ever read, but it is one of my favorites, and applies so wonderfully to so much of the shit going on here where I live. Have a good week, everyone, and don't let the haters get you down! 

What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn't a Pillar Of Salt)

Kathy Finneyfrock

Do you remember when we met
in Gomorrah? When you were still beardless,
and I would oil my hair in the lamp light before seeing
you, when we were young, and blushed with youth
like bruised fruit. Did we care then
what our neighbors did
in the dark?

When our first daughter was born
on the River Jordan, when our second
cracked her pink head from my body
like a promise, did we worry
what our friends might be
doing with their tongues?

What new crevices they found
to lick love into or strange flesh
to push pleasure from, when we
called them Sodomites then,
all we meant by it
was neighbor.

When the angels told us to run
from the city, I went with you,
but even the angels knew
that women always look back.
Let me describe for you, Lot,
what your city looked like burning
since you never turned around to see it.

Sulfur ran its sticky fingers over the skin
of our countrymen. It smelled like burning hair
and rancid eggs. I watched as our friends pulled
chunks of brimstone from their faces. Is any form
of loving this indecent?

Cover your eyes tight,
husband, until you see stars, convince
yourself you are looking at Heaven.

Because any man weak enough to hide his eyes while his neighbors
are punished for the way they love deserves a vengeful god.

I would say these things to you now, Lot,
but an ocean has dried itself on my tongue.
So instead I will stand here, while my body blows itself
grain by grain back over the Land of Canaan.
I will stand here
and I will watch you
run.

Love always,
Kylie.