------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: While this story is fictional, it draws on my actual experience as a former LDS missionary. (There's a story there, of course, but it's not the story you're about to read.)
For conscience's sake, I should say that my decision to submit this story to the Nifty Archive does not necessarily mean that I approve of the content of other stories in the archive. However, I applaud the archive's goal of collecting "the diverse hopes, dreams, aspirations, fantasies, and experiences of the Queer Community." Gay Mormon experience--and fantasy-- is one piece of that diversity. ------------------------------------------------------
SIGNS AND TOKENS
At first I thought that Elder Langford and I were the only Americans in Barrio Nuevo. I discovered there was a third about a week after we had arrived to open the area to missionary work.
The front tire of Elder Langford's bicycle had gone flat, so we had stopped at a gomero stand next to the main street to get the tire fixed. Elder Langford and the gomero were hunkered down, looking for the puncture. I stood nearby, bored, leaning against my own bicycle and looking idly around.
That was when I happened to see the American. He was standing by the side of the road about a block away, haggling with a motoconcho, one of the many motorcyclists who provided a kind of taxi service to and from the capital. The American looked to be in his late twenties. He was wearing a polo shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers without socks. He had a full black beard, and even from this distance I could see the dark fur that covered his arms and legs. A lust I'd managed to keep dormant for months rolled over inside me. I kept watching as the American climbed onto the motorcycle, behind the driver, leaning expertly as the motorcycle pulled away from the curb.
I wondered who he could be. I wondered what he was doing in Barrio Nuevo. I hoped I would get to see him again.
Barrio Nuevo was, as the name indicated, a new development on the outskirts of the capital. Only its main street was paved; all the smaller streets were mud. There were no phones or running water. People who could afford to built cisterns next to their houses, hired trucks to fill them, and sold the water to their neighbors. Officially, there was no electricity in Barrio Nuevo, but the residents had put up their own precarious poles and wires. One of the first things Elder Langford and I had to do when we set up house in Barrio Nuevo was pay someone to shimmy up the nearest pole and splice us into the power line. The power was off more often than it was on, but at least we were able to keep our tiny refrigerator reasonably cool.
I didn't mind the primitive conditions. I considered it a tremendous honor to have been chosen to be part of the first missionary companionship to work in this barrio.
I questioned the mission president's wisdom in assigning Elder Langford to serve with me. Elder Langford was "trunky," to use the missionary slang. With two months left in his mission, he already had his suitcases mentally packed. He saw Barrio Nuevo as an ideal place to spend his last weeks as a missionary. The district leader was a bus ride away. There were no branch presidents, bishops, or high councilors to snitch to the mission president if we weren't working hard enough or broke mission rules. We were isolated from the rest of the mission, and he was senior companion, and that gave him the freedom to run things however he liked.
Not that he was lazy. On the contrary. Elder Langford subscribed to the "work hard, play hard" approach to missionary work. He was the kind of missionary who would stay out for hours after the curfew prescribed by the Missionary Handbook so he could teach people who couldn't be found home during the day. Then he would use the next morning's allotted study time to catch up on his sleep. He would use proselyting hours to shop for souvenirs, and then persuade the shopkeeper to receive a visit from the missionaries. He didn't work by the book, but we did teach a lot of people. Before he went home, we'd baptized three families, plus a handful of singles--an admirable beginning to the new local congregation.
Still, I found it hard to be Elder Langford's companion. He talked about home a lot: the girls he was planning to ask out, the movies he was going to see (two years worth to catch up on), the car his father had promised to buy him if he finished his mission honorably. I was barely six months into my own mission; the last thing I needed to be thinking about was home. I fumed whenever Elder Langford would point to a jet passing overhead and crow, "Do you know how far away that plane is, Elder Seeley? Twenty-two days!"
Mission rules required us to perform four hours of community service a week, in addition to our quota of proselyting hours. Elder Langford convinced the superintendent of the local elementary school to let us teach a free English class there a couple evenings a week. But Elder Langford had no intention of teaching English himself. "That's your specialty," he told me. "You teach the class. I'll use that time to find new investigators."
Leaving your companion alone was a deathly serious violation of mission rules; the only time missionary companions were to be out of sight of one another was when one of the two was in the bathroom. Had I complained to the mission president, I could have gotten Elder Langford into deep trouble. But I didn't complain. By then I was so fed up with Elder Langford's trunkiness and maverick proselyting that I enjoyed having a few hours away from him. He, I imagined, had similar feelings about me.
On Elder Langford's last evening in the mission field, I left him packing his suitcases at the small house we rented, while I walked alone to the school to teach my English class. After the class, a girl maybe eighteen years old approached me and asked if I knew where "Langford" was. I'd never seen the girl before. She introduced herself as Francia. I told her that Elder Langford was back at the house, packing. She didn't know where we lived. It became clear that she also didn't know this was Elder Langford's last night in the mission field. She was visibly distressed by the news, though she tried to keep her poise.
Francia walked with me back to the house. I felt very uncomfortable. As if it wasn't bad enough I was separated from my companion, I was committing an even more dire infraction of mission rules by being alone with a member of the opposite sex. And what was the story with this girl and Elder Langford?
When we got to the house, Elder Langford wasn't there. I thought he might have walked down to the corner store. I brought two chairs out from the house so that Francia and I could sit outside to wait for him to return. Inviting her in was out of the question. There were limits to how far I would go in transgressing the rules.
I asked Francia how she knew Elder Langford. She was evasive, but I gathered that they had met during one of my English classes, while he was wandering the barrio alone. He had apparently been to her home on multiple occasions.
It was getting dark now, and there was still no sign of Elder Langford. Francia asked for a piece of paper. She penned a note to Elder Langford, being careful not to let me see what she was writing. Then she asked for an envelope to seal it in. She asked me to give the sealed envelope to Elder Langford (whom she continued to call simply "Langford"). Finally she asked if it might be possible to have a photo of Langford.
As it happened, Elder Langford had just developed photos of a trip to the campo we'd taken with some other missionaries on one of our days off. The photos were still lying on Elder Langford's desk; he hadn't gotten much packing done. I found a photo that pictured Elder Langford alone and gave it to Francia.
"Tell Langford good-bye for me," she said. And then she was gone.
I sat up in bed when I heard Elder Langford come home. My watch showed it was after 2:00 in the morning. "Where have you been?" I asked.
He was nonchalant. "I caught a ride into the capital to say good-bye to some of the people I knew there."
Travelling outside our proselyting area without permission was another serious infraction of mission rules. Travelling outside the proselyting area alone, without his companion, was a double infraction, probably serious enough to get him sent home dishonorably. Of course, since he was on his way home anyway, Elder Langford wasn't worried.
"Francia came looking for you," I said.
He froze, eyeing me warily. "What did she say?"
"She said to tell you good-bye. There's a letter from her on your desk." I was settling back down to sleep as I spoke. "Also, she asked for a picture of you. I gave her one."
I should have been scandalized. No doubt Elder Langford expected me to be. But I wasn't, which surprised even me. If anything, I felt envious of Elder Langford, of the fact that he had found a way to get something he wanted precisely without creating scandal. He'd found...maybe not a girlfriend; that might be saying too much. But someone to unwind with, maybe even to fool around with. I had no idea how far things had gone between Francia and Elder Langford. But presumably he hadn't done anything with her that would come back to haunt him later; he had been discreet; none of the local church members or anyone in the mission knew, except me. There was nothing to be scandalized about. Whatever had gone on was between Francia, Elder Langford, and Elder Langford's conscience.
Besides, I was beyond caring. Within a few hours, Elder Langford would be out of my life for good.
My new companion, Elder Crogan, also had just two months left in his mission. He was every bit as "trunky" as Elder Langford and considerably more lazy.
I was furious. Every week, each missionary was supposed to write a letter to the mission president describing our feelings about the work. The week after Elder Crogan arrived in Barrio Nuevo, trunky and cocky and determined to have a good time, I wrote in my letter to the mission president that I thought it was unfair to be given two companions in a row who were so close to going home. I never received a reply. This made me suspect that the mission president didn't actually read our letters, so I stopped writing them altogether. He didn't seem to notice.
I began to ask myself why I was out here.
Elder Crogan was a self-proclaimed hick ("And proud of it!") from some tiny town in southern Utah I'd never heard of. It became obvious within minutes of our first meeting that he disdained me. He saw me as an uppity egghead who didn't have a clue about missionary work or anything else. He loved trying to bait me into arguments about gun control, or environmentalism, or the United Nations. I was determined not to give him the satisfaction. At the same time, for the sake of the missionary work, I tried not to develop a bitter attitude. I spent a lot of my personal study hours reflecting on scriptures about charity and patience. I tried to keep my thoughts focused on the work we were doing with new church members and investigators.
We weren't teaching as many people as I had been with Elder Langford. Elder Crogan tended to leave the house late and come back early. We spent a lot of our proselyting hours "checking out" unexplored sectors of the barrio, taking long soda breaks in corner stores, or hanging out at the homes of the members we'd already baptized. Early on in our companionship, I tried to take the initiative to find new people to teach. When my efforts didn't prove immediately successful, Elder Crogan told me to lay off, since I obviously didn't know what I was doing. "You have to wait for the Spirit to tell you who to talk to, Seeley. You can't force the gospel down people's throats." So we went back to wandering the streets, waiting for the Spirit to tell Elder Crogan to approach someone.
I felt depressed and lonely. It was hard to get out of bed in the morning--though since Elder Crogan routinely slept in, there was no rush to get the day started anyway. One morning I stood in the bathroom, looking wearily at myself in the mirror, and felt an intense wish to have someone's arms around me.
I started masturbating late at night, something I had sworn off when I started my mission. Up until now, I had lapsed only rarely. Now I was jacking off every three or four days, though I made a point of resisting the urge as long as I could.
That was when the mysterious American appeared again.
Actually, I had seen him a handful of times in the intervening weeks, usually on a motoconcho headed to or from the capital. According to someone Elder Langford and I had run into during our proselyting, the American was a Peace Corps volunteer who had moved into Barrio Nuevo not long before we had. Elder Langford had been interested in hooking up with a fellow American. But the person we were speaking to didn't know the American's name or where exactly he lived. We could probably have gotten more information by asking around, but then we forgot.
One Saturday morning, Elder Crogan and I were at the small house the mission had rented for use as a church. Elder Crogan and Tijo, one of our recently baptized singles, were at the back of the house, trying to fix a problem with the wiring. Elder Crogan fancied himself a handyman, but I expected it would be Tijo who actually identified and solved the problem. Electrical wiring held no interest for me whatsoever. So while they tinkered around in back, I scrounged up a broom and set out to sweep the front porch, which had become extremely dusty thanks to the unpaved road running directly in front of the house.
Across the street was a tiny shop set up like an open- air bar, with stools on the sidewalk. It was a place where people could buy sandwiches and drinks. The American was sitting at the bar. The proprietor had just handed him a beer. He was dressed, like the first time I'd seen him, in khaki shorts and sneakers without socks, but today he was wearing a bright Hawaiian-type shirt.
As he drank his beer, he turned around on his stool to look out onto the street. Immediately I set to work sweeping. After a few moments, I looked up. He was looking at me. I looked down again; in the split second before he passed out of my sight, I saw that he, too, was turning his head away. I stole a couple more glances while I finished sweeping. He was looking up the street now, affording me a profile view of his face. He had both his elbows resting on the bar behind him. His feet were tucked behind one of the rungs of the stool, his legs spread open casually. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, allowing me a glimpse of the hairiest chest I could remember seeing since coming to this country.
When I didn't feel I could dawdle anymore over the sweeping without becoming obvious, I went back into the house to find a dustpan. I couldn't find one, so I tried to sweep the dust up into a sheet of old newspaper. The newspaper kept crumpling up, instead of lying flat against the floor. But I finally managed to get most of the dust swept up onto the newspaper and leaned onto the broomstick to take a break. I looked back across the street. The American was now eating a sandwich. While I watched, he turned around, for no apparent reason, to look in my direction. Our eyes met. He smiled and raised his beer bottle in greeting. I nodded. He turned back around to continue eating.
I no longer had any excuse to stay on the porch, so I picked up the broom and the dust-filled sheet of newspaper and started back into the house. In the doorway, I had an idea. I put down the newspaper, walked out through the porch to the curb, and began sweeping out the gutter. I continued to steal glances at the American as I did so. Most times, all I saw was his back. Once I looked up to find him watching me. Our eyes met again, but this time neither of us smiled or nodded. We just looked at each other for a second, and then I resumed sweeping. For me, that second of just looking had been tense.
I had finished sweeping the gutter and was wondering whether I ought to leave the dust, leaves, and litter in a heap or try to sweep them up into the newspaper, when I saw the American crossing the street towards me. My heart skipped a beat. Stay calm, I told myself. Look him in the eyes, so you don't seem nervous, but don't stare.
He stood in front of me with his hands tucked into his back pockets. "Hey. How you doin'?"
"Good," I answered.
"Paul Zoltowski."
"Elder Seeley."
I automatically extended my hand. We shook--he had a warm, firm grip--and then he returned his hand to his back pocket. The posture forced his shoulders back, which in turn opened his shirt a little wider at the throat. I didn't dare look directly, but through my peripheral vision I could see the hair bursting up towards his neck. He was solidly built and so tall that the top of my head came up only to his shoulder. This was a guy who could move around the city alone without fear of being mugged; few men in this country could match him in size.
"How come you guys are always named Elder?" he asked.
His expression and tone were serious, and indeed I'd had people ask me that question in all seriousness before. But somehow I could tell that Paul was joking. I smiled.
"Elder's a title," I said. "My first name's Tim."
"So should I call you Tim or Elder Seeley?"
Missionary protocol dictated that I insist people call me by my title. Dealing with people as a missionary, I felt perfectly natural introducing myself as "Elder Seeley." Speaking to Paul, I didn't feel like a missionary. But I hadn't been "Tim" to anyone, not even my companions, since entering the Missionary Training Center. "You should probably call me Elder Seeley," I said apologetically.
"Then Elder Seeley it shall be." He spoke with a jovial mock formality. "It's good to finally meet you. I'd heard there was a pair of American missionaries in town. I even passed you guys on the street a couple times. But I've never had the chance to stop and talk."
"Yeah, I've seen you around too," I said. The words felt inane as soon as they left my mouth. "I understand you're with the Peace Corps."
He nodded. "About a year now. I mean, not here in Barrio Nuevo for a year; I've only been here for three or four months. But I've been in the country a year."
"How long do you serve for?" I knew nothing about the Peace Corps except that they dug wells in Africa, an image I'd seen on a poster somewhere.
"Two years."
I was struck by the similarity. "Hey, same here."
"Interesting," he said, though he didn't seem to find the coincidence quite as interesting as I had. "Now, what is it you guys do exactly?"
I started to answer, but he cut me off. "Actually, the heat's starting to bother me. Do you mind if...?" He gestured towards a shady spot on the curb.
"No, sure." We sat on the curb, in the shade. He sat with his knees raised high, so he could rest his arms on them. As a result, I could look partially down (or rather, up) the legs of his shorts. Don't go there, I warned myself.
"You were saying?" he said.
"Well...we do just...missionary work." Had a local asked me what I was doing in Barrio Nuevo, I would have launched into a practiced speech explaining that I was here to share a message about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. But I couldn't imagine myself saying that to Paul--partly because I'd never said it in English before (only in Spanish), and partly because this didn't feel like that kind of conversation. "We talk to people about the Church, and we prepare them to get baptized, if that's what they're interested in."
"So you do evangelization. You're not here building clinics or schools or that kind of thing."
I had no reason to think he was passing judgment, but the statement made me feel defensive nevertheless. "Well, we do some community service. I teach an English class up at the elementary school a couple evenings a week. But yeah, I guess mostly we do-- proselyting." I couldn't remember the word he had used, though I'd understood what he meant by it at the time. "What do you do?" I asked.
"I do work related to HIV/AIDS education and prevention, mostly."
"Really?" He'd rattled it off in a way that left me feeling intimidated.
"Have you seen those stickers shaped like a stop sign that say 'Alto al SIDA'?"
"Yeah." I'd seen them pasted to light poles and walls.
"I was part of the team that created those."
"Wow. Hmm." Say something articulate, you idiot, I chastised myself. But I couldn't think of anything to say. I just looked at Paul, nodding a little. He kept looking back. There was something about his face that suggested he was amused. Or perhaps more precisely, intrigued.
I felt I needed to break the silence. "So--" I started to say, and at the very same time Paul started to speak. We laughed a little. "What were you going to say?" I asked.
"No, you go ahead," he insisted.
"Well, I was going to ask how long you've been living in Barrio Nuevo. But actually, I remember now that you already said you'd been living here for...three months was it?"
"Something like that. I moved out here..." He thought back. "Near the end of March."
"We arrived in the middle of April," I said. It occurred to me that I ought to explain the "we." "At first I worked here with a missionary named Elder Langford. Then he finished his mission and went home. Now I work with a missionary named Elder Crogan."
"Ah." What I'd just said seemed to have suddenly reminded Paul of something. "I have to ask you. Whenever I see you guys around the capital--other missionaries, I mean--you're always in twos. And you're always with, like, a same-sex partner." He seemed to place a slight emphasis on the words "same- sex partner"; and as soon as he'd said the words, he laughed a little, as if he were nervous, perhaps. "What's the story with that?"
I didn't see what was so strange. "Missionaries always go out two by two...like in the Bible. And you work with someone of the same sex because you have be with your companion 24 hours a day."
I regretted mentioning the Bible. I was afraid it might give Paul the impression I was trying to proselytize him. But Paul zoomed in on what I'd said about being with my companion 24 hours a day. "So you and your...companion have to do everything together? Live together, work together, eat together, everything?"
"Right." At least we're supposed to, I thought, remembering Elder Langford. Since Paul seemed to find it peculiar that companions would spend so much time together, I added, "Missionaries often say that learning to live with your companion is good practice for marriage."
"I...would imagine so," Paul said. He sat in silence, giving me a slightly quizzical look. The silence lasted only a few seconds, but I became uncomfortable under his gaze and had to break eye contact.
"So where is this companion who's with you 24 hours a day?" Paul asked.
I started guiltily. "Oh. He's, um, in back, trying to fix an electrical problem." I gestured towards the house.
"Can I meet him?"
"Sure." We stood up, dusted ourselves off.
"Is this where you guys live?"
"No. We just use this place for church meetings. We live up at the other end of town." I pointed in the general direction. I thought he might reciprocate by indicating where he lived, but he didn't.
When we came around to the back of the house, we found what I'd expected: Tijo was working up on the roof, while Elder Crogan stood on the ground giving the impression that he was supervising. I did introductions, though Paul had to give his own last name, because I couldn't remember it. Elder Crogan was excited to meet a compatriot.
The three of us stood in a kind of circle while Elder Crogan and Paul exchanged basic get-to-know-you information. Elder Crogan was better at small talk than I was. He learned that Paul hailed from a suburb of Chicago, was a loyal fan of both the Bulls and the Bears, and in fact had played on his high school football team. That explains the body build, I thought--though I wouldn't have pegged Paul as a jock.
If Elder Crogan had been excited to meet a fellow American, he was thrilled to meet a fellow athlete. Elder Crogan had run cross-country in high school and had aspirations of doing it in college as well. He'd tried to get me to run with him in the mornings so he could start to get back in shape. I'd refused, partly out of spite. Since Elder Crogan, unlike Elder Langford, wasn't willing to break the rule about leaving your companion, my refusing to run meant that Elder Crogan couldn't run, which had become one more source of resentment between us.
Once the conversation turned to athletics, I had nothing to contribute. I feigned interest in watching what Tijo was doing up on the roof while Elder Crogan and Paul continued to shoot the bull. A couple times I saw Paul glance over at me, as if he were concerned I might be feeling left out.
"Listen," Paul said, and as he said it he made a point of turning his body so that he was no longer exclusively facing Elder Crogan. "I've got some things I have to do. But why don't the two of you come over to my place later tonight? If you've got the time, I mean."
"Sure, we can do that," Elder Crogan said. "That'd be great."
"Actually," I said, feeling intensely annoyed at Elder Crogan all of a sudden, "we're scheduled to meet those friends of the Acostas tonight."
If he was irritated, Elder Crogan refused to show it. "That'll be over by nine, easily. Would that be too late?" he asked Paul.
I noticed that as he said this, Elder Crogan shifted position so that he and Paul were facing each other directly again, putting me outside the conversation. I also noticed that before Paul answered, he turned his shoulders around so that he was mostly facing me rather than Elder Crogan. "Nine would be OK. American time or local time?"
He was alluding to the fact that the local culture didn't place much value on punctuality; missionaries told variations of the same joke. "American time, absolutely," Elder Crogan said. He spoke in a fervent tone, as if this were a serious question of national pride.
Paul was still looking at me, not at Elder Crogan. "Great. I'll see you at nine, then." He flashed me a warm smile that made me feel as if something were melting inside me. Then he turned to Elder Crogan to give him the address.
Paul lived on a street not too far from our house. We'd passed his place many times on our bicycles, in fact, without knowing it. He rented a single room tacked onto the side of a house belonging to a widow and her grown son. The house was made of wood, not cement, which surprised me, though presumably Paul paid less for the room as a result. I was also surprised that there were no bars over the door or windows. For security reasons, missionaries always lived in cement houses with bars.
"Aren't you afraid of getting robbed?" I asked Paul.
"Not really." He was wearing the same khaki shorts, but he'd put on a less casual shirt, presumably for company. "Either the landlady or her son are almost always at home." His casual air struck me as adventuresome.
Paul's living quarters were even more Spartan than ours. He had a bed, a table, two chairs (he'd had to borrow a third from the landlady to entertain us), and a makeshift bookshelf put together from planks and cinderblocks. His clothes hung from a line strung taut in the back corner of the room. There was nowhere to cook; he ate with the landlady or wherever his work happened to take him.
The entire barrio had lost power earlier that day--a frequent occurrence--so we talked by the light of a gas lantern hanging overhead.
My question about whether Paul was afraid of getting robbed prompted Elder Crogan to tell anecdotes about missionaries who'd been robbed in ingenious ways. Paul reciprocated with similar anecdotes told by Peace Corps volunteers he knew in the city. That in turn led us to talk about Paul's work with the Peace Corps. He explained that he helped local institutions create AIDS awareness campaigns, like the "Alto al SIDA" stickers he'd mentioned to me earlier. He also helped train local people to do presentations on AIDS awareness and prevention in schools, neighborhood groups, and sometimes even churches. With what struck me as practiced diplomacy, he offered to arrange for someone to give a presentation to our local congregation sometime if we'd like.
Elder Crogan was evasive. All this talk of AIDS seemed to make him uncomfortable. "That might be good," he said, with an unconvincing show of enthusiasm. "We'll let you know." He changed the subject. "Now, the Peace Corps pays you, right?"
Paul was surprised to learn that the Church didn't give us a stipend--that missionaries (or their families) had to cover their own expenses. He told us he was impressed that we would be willing to make that kind of sacrifice. The conversation turned to the subject of missionary work: how we spent our days, how strictly our behavior was governed by mission rules, how quickly the LDS Church was growing in this country. Elder Crogan and I talked enthusiastically about our work. Our meeting with the Acostas' friends had gone well: we'd taught them the first missionary discussion and they'd agreed to hear the second. So for the moment at least, we were both feeling very good about missionary work.
In the midst of this conversation, Elder Crogan asked Paul about his religious background. Instantly, our interaction turned awkward. We had slipped from a friendly conversation among fellow Americans into what felt like an attempt at proselyting. Paul replied, quietly, as if embarrassed, that he was a lapsed Catholic. Elder Crogan sensed the awkwardness he'd created and immediately backed off. I wondered if he'd asked the question out of a sense of obligation--a twinge of guilt that we were taking time out from what should have been proselyting hours.
I redirected the conversation by asking Paul why he'd chosen to live in Barrio Nuevo. He replied that at first he'd shared an apartment in the city with another Peace Corps volunteer, but after a while he began to feel like he wanted a place of his own. "I need my privacy," he explained.
Elder Crogan cast a bemused glance around the tiny room. "Well you certainly got that here."
Paul smiled. "It's probably overkill. But actually, I like living simply. Americans are too obsessed with things. Our lifestyle's crazy. We think we need a lot more than we actually do."
"I agree," I said.
As soon as I said it, I felt stupid. But Paul looked at me and nodded pensively, as if I'd just uttered some gem of wisdom. He kept looking at me for a couple seconds (I was getting used to him doing that) and then returned to distributing his eye contact between both me and Elder Crogan. "That's what I really like about Barrio Nuevo. It's still such a new development that people have to live simply. You don't have the noise and the crowding and the traffic and the fumes and all the craziness that you have in the city. All that stuff will be here, too, in ten years. But for now, it's almost like being in the campo. I like that. So this is where I live now. It's a hell of a commute into the city to work, of course. But I think it's worth it."
"I'd go crazy if I had to live by myself," Elder Crogan said, incredulous.
"It does get lonely sometimes," Paul said. As he said this, he glanced over at me and then looked quickly away again, as if he'd realized at the last minute that looking at me wasn't a good idea.
There was a lull in the conversation. Elder Crogan broke the silence by pointing to something on the table and asking, "Is that a sports page from back home?"
"Yeah, my parents mail it down to me. Wanna to take a look?"
Elder Crogan practically shot of his seat. Soon he was loudly lamenting the fact that So-and-so had lost to Such-and-such... I tuned out immediately. While Elder Crogan and Paul talked sports, I checked out Paul's bookshelf.
He had a lot of reference books related to his work-- AIDS and community health and medical anthropology. Many of these books had "used" stickers on the spines, suggesting that they were textbooks he'd bought in college. He also had some health-related books in Spanish. Then came a row of novels in English, some paperback, some hardback. I recognized a couple of the titles as bestsellers from back around the time I started my mission. Most of the titles were unfamiliar. They weren't genre novels. They were more literary, the kinds of books you'd expect to find on the syllabus of a college course on contemporary fiction.
Then I saw a title I recognized. Maurice, by E. M. Forster. Immediately next to that was another title I recognized. Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin. After that came a book by an author whose name I recognized, though the title was unfamiliar: Jean Genet. After that came two paperback novels by a completely unfamiliar author named David Feinberg. These were followed by two hardback books by another unfamiliar author whose name was printed on the spines as Monette. At the end of the row, almost hidden up against the cinderblock, was a book with the peculiar title His3.
I glanced over at Elder Crogan and Paul. They were engrossed in conversation about their experiences as high school athletes. I quietly eased His3 off the shelf. The cover was a black-and-white photo of what was obviously male flesh, but I couldn't tell what part of the body I was looking at. A close-up of an arm, perhaps, bent at the elbow? Suddenly I realized that what I'd taken for an elbow was actually the profile of a tightly muscled buttock, and that I was looking at not one but two bodies engaged in an act I had never actually seen, not even in pictures, only imagined...
The blood rushed to my face. I hurried to replace the book before I was caught looking at it. I made quite a bit of noise doing this, so I quickly grabbed another book in case Paul or Elder Crogan looked over at me.
"Find something that interests you?" Paul asked.
He was leaning against the edge of the table, watching me. Elder Crogan had his nose in the sports page. I looked at the book in my hand. Maurice.
Paul came closer. "Have you read that?" he asked.
I moistened my lips before answering. "Yes," I said.
"What did you think of it?" His voice had dropped just slightly in volume.
I checked to see what Elder Crogan was doing. Still reading the sports page. "I found it very moving," I answered, cautiously. "A lot of books I've read with...that particular theme tend to have tragic endings. It was refreshing to read a story of this kind that ended happily."
Paul nodded. He was sitting now on a chair he'd pulled up next to the bookshelf. I was down on one knee, leaning back on my haunches for comfort. Paul leaned forward with his hands clasped between his thighs so that our heads were closer together. My eyes wanted to travel to his open collar, but I looked down at the cover of Maurice instead. "It's a shame Forster wouldn't let them publish it until after his death," Paul said. "I think the book could have done a lot of good. It might have helped change society's thinking about...the issue. Did you see the movie?"
I hadn't known there was a movie. "Merchant and Ivory made it," Paul told me (whatever that meant). "It's very faithful to the book." He pointed with his lips towards the bookshelf, a gesture he'd picked up from the locals. "Have you read Giovanni's Room?"
I shook my head. Before my mission, I'd completed a year at BYU. Walking through the campus library one day, my eye had been caught by a yellow book on the reference shelf with the title, The Male Homosexual in Literature. I'd kept walking, but a couple days later I returned. When I was sure no one was watching, I took the book from the shelf and retreated to a carrel in a far corner of the library. I leafed through the book, taking mental note (I was afraid to take written notes) of the titles of works that seemed prominent enough even BYU might have them in its library. That was how I found Maurice. Giovanni's Room was on my list as well but had been checked out every time I'd gone to look for it. I hadn't dared to fill out a recall form for fear someone in the know might wonder why I was so eager to have that particular title. I'd read a few other books from my mental list, always in an isolated corner, afraid to check the books out of the library. Then it came time for me to start thinking about putting in my mission papers, and I decided that if I was going to get through my mission (there was never any question I was going to serve), I would have to put off exploring this particular side of my life until later. That was how I'd felt about it back then, anyway.
"No," I told Paul. "I haven't read that one. I did read Another Country, though."
"I don't know that title," he said. "Also by Baldwin?" I nodded. "Any good?"
"It was weird. I didn't...connect with it the way I connected with Maurice."
"Hunh." He looked thoughtful. "If you connected with Maurice, I think you'd probably connect with Giovanni's Room. It does have one of those tragic endings, though. It's about a...relationship that goes really bad. But there are some very moving passages."
"You read that stuff?" Elder Crogan interjected. He sounded as if he wasn't sure whether to laugh or sneer.
My heart skipped a beat, but then I realized that when Elder Crogan said "that stuff," he meant literature in general.
"Being an athlete doesn't mean I have to be uncultured," Paul said. His tone was friendly, but from the look on Elder Crogan's face, I could tell the words stung. "English was my undergraduate minor."
Paul turned his attention back to me. Elder Crogan hid his face behind the sports page again, but he didn't look like he was actually reading anymore.
Paul reached out towards the bookshelf with one hand. At the same time, he put his other hand on my knee as if to steady himself. He kept his hand there while he showed me the book he'd retrieved. It was one of the books by Monette--Paul Monette, I could see, now that I was looking at the cover instead of just the spine. The book's title was Last Watch of the Night. "Have you read this?" Paul asked.
"I've heard of him." This was a lie, but I didn't want to look quite so ignorant. "I haven't read anything by him, though."
"He's very good. I strongly recommend him. He's not easy to read. A lot of his stuff is really harsh or gut-wrenching. But he puts his finger on some very important issues. He even mentions Mormons in this one, if I remember right." Paul took his hand off my knee so he could flip through the pages. "Here." He handed me the book, his finger indicating a passage.
I read silently for almost a page, a story about the author's being invited to speak on a talk radio show hosted by a politically conservative Mormon. Monette thought the show might be a set-up, that this Mormon host might be planning to lay into him on the air. But immediately before the show began, the host said to Monette, "I just found out--I mean he told me--my son is a homosexual. Good kid. I guess I've had it all wrong."
When I finished reading, there was a crawling sensation at the base of my scalp. I had the feeling that a threshold had been crossed. Up until now, Paul and I had been like wrestlers circling one another, checking each other out, feigning a lunge, retreating, waiting to see who would make the first move. Now it felt as if Paul had made that move. We weren't just flirting with danger anymore. Things were serious now.
Elder Crogan had returned the sports page to the table and was watching us. "What does it say?" he asked me.
I panicked. Paul came to the rescue. "He talks about this time he went on a talk show, and he thought the host would be politically opposed to him, because he was a Mormon. The host, I mean. But then he turned out to be sympathetic, which really surprised him."
Elder Crogan made a sound that was supposed to indicate he understood. He wants to seem cultured, I thought vindictively. "So...who is this guy again?" Elder Crogan asked.
"Paul Monette. He was a prominent AIDS activist. He died of AIDS-related complications not too long ago."
"Oh." The mention of AIDS had made Elder Crogan uncomfortable again. He didn't know what else to say.
Paul turned his attention back to me. "Would you like to borrow the book, or any of the others?"
I hesitated. According to mission rules, we weren't supposed to read anything besides the scriptures or other Church publications. More importantly, I was worried about what would happen if Elder Crogan should look through any of these books. It wasn't likely, but still... "I probably shouldn't," I said reluctantly.
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Seeley," Elder Crogan chimed in. "You can read it on p-days. That's 'preparation day,'" he added, for Paul's benefit. "It's the day we have time off from missionary work for whatever we want to do to relax. Elder Seeley loves to read."
He was trying to work his way back into the conversation. But what was unfolding now existed strictly between Paul and myself. "What do you want to do?" Paul asked me. Something about the tone of his voice suggested that he might be inquiring about more than just borrowing books.
"I'd like to borrow Giovanni's Room, if I could," I said.
"No problem." He took it from the shelf and handed it to me. He seemed pleased. "Enjoy."
"I will," I said. I made a point of looking him directly in the eyes. "Thank you."
Paul smiled. And then, with Elder Crogan safely behind him, he winked at me.
I became flustered and dropped my head as if studying the cover of Giovanni's Room.
"It's getting late," Elder Crogan said with an apologetic air. "We should be heading in for the night."
"My apologies," Paul said. "I forgot--I usually sleep in on Sundays, but it's probably one of your busiest days."
"Yeah." Elder Crogan chuckled a little, as if to say, You don't know the half of it. "Hey, if you're not doing anything in the afternoon, maybe you'd like to come by and check us out. We start meetings at three."
He seemed to be saying it out of a sense of obligation again. Never let pass an opportunity to invite people to accept gospel commitments, the Missionary Guide taught us. Paul blew it off gently. "Maybe I will. Depends on what I end up doing tomorrow."
We walked to the door. Elder Crogan stepped outside to unlock our bikes, which we'd left leaning against a nearby tree. Behind him, Paul and I lingered together in the open doorway. Paul leaned against the doorjamb, his hands tucked in his back pockets, looking at me. I looked back; I was getting much better at returning his gaze.
"Do you ever get lonely?" Paul asked me. His voice was quiet, serious, a little intense.
Elder Crogan still had his back to us, so he thought the question had been directed to him as well. "Sure, everyone gets homesick at times."
Paul gave no indication of having heard Elder Crogan. He was still looking at me. "Yeah, I do," I said. I was trying to speak in the same tone Paul had used, but my voice just came out sounding hoarse.
Paul nodded understandingly. "Come by again later," he said to me. Then, as if continuing the same thought, he turned his head towards Elder Crogan, who had unlocked the bikes and was now facing us. "It'd be great to visit with the two of you again. We Americans have to stick together, right?"
An asinine grin broke out across Elder Crogan's face. "God bless the USA," he twanged.
I felt I had not fully appreciated until that moment what an idiot Elder Crogan was.
I set Giovanni's Room on my desk, on top of my scriptures. As we were getting ready for bed, Elder Crogan picked the book up, cast a cursory glance at the dust jacket, ran his thumb idly across the pages, and set the book back on my desk. That was the closest he would ever come to reading it.
It was so late that, by unspoken agreement, we dispensed with companionship prayers and went straight to bed. I lay awake, listening to Elder Crogan settle down to sleep on the other side of the room. I thought about the book sitting on my desk. I thought about Elder Langford and Francia. I thought about Paul. I began to get hard.
When I could tell from his breathing that Elder Crogan was asleep, I climbed stealthily out of bed. My clothes were hanging on the back of my chair. I put them back on. As silently as I could, I left the house.
I rode my bicycle down quiet, unpaved streets. The power was still out. Most of the barrio appeared to have gone to the bed. Occasionally I would pass a house lit by a kerosene lamp or hear a battery-powered radio playing. The moon was bright enough that I had no trouble finding my way.
There were no lights on at Paul's house, no sign that anyone was up. I tapped softly, three times, on Paul's door. For a moment I waited, hearing nothing. Then someone stirred inside. I heard bare feet making their way across the cement floor. A latch clicked, and then Paul was standing in the open doorway. He was clad only in boxer shorts. The hair blanketing his chest and stomach stood out sharply against the white of his flesh. Even by moonlight, it was a breathtaking view.
Neither of us spoke. Paul reached out, took me by the hand, and pulled me gently inside.