Some Kinda Mormon

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After college, I moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to attend graduate school. It was far from Mormon ground zero--Salt Lake City--and it took me a while to realize that my world was different because it lacked Mormons. I missed their crucifix-less churches, their silver CTR (Choose the Right) rings with the Superman stylings, which Mormon kids wore as a testament to their wholesomeness. When I went to the library to check out some books on Mormon history, the girl working the circulation desk asked, 'You some kinda Mormon or something?'

'No, I'm just researching them,' I answered.

'Mormons is some weird shit.'

'Really?'

'You know what my friend said about Mormons?' she asked. I waited, expecting a clich? about bicycles or multiple wives or holy underwear.

'She said they go out into the desert and have sex.'

'I never heard that before,' I said, genuinely surprised.

'Mormons is some weird shit,' she said again, checking out my books.

I went outside, blinking in the Alabama sun, smiling as I thought about a Mormon orgy in the desert: a tangle of woolen undergarments, awkward limbs groping for breasts or cocks, guilt hovering over the sand. God, who wouldn't want to be one?

Then a strange thing happened. I couldn't get enough of Mormons. I started thinking about my friends from high school, my Jack-Mormon friends in college, my family and its weird, militant anti-Mormonism. I started dreaming about old Mormons I used to know. Books on Mormon history started outnumbering the magazines and novels on my nightstand. I wanted to know what it was that drew people to this religion. I couldn't get enough of Joseph Smith and those golden tablets. How did he pull it off? How did an illiterate man in upstate New York cook up this mythic wonder? I found myself wanting to believe. If I could spend the first 18 years of my life worrying about whether or not Adam and Eve had belly buttons--my Christian concerns--why not?

Then, when I was home for the holidays, I learned Aunt Ruth was dying. Incredibly, she wanted to see my grandmother before she passed away, and my grandmother was convinced an act of God had made Ruth call for her in the night. Both of their husbands--brothers whom Mormonism had pulled apart--were dead. Finally, she felt, Ruth was renouncing this silly religion of hers. I offered to accompany my grandmother to the Central Washington farm community of Sunnyside.

When we arrived, Aunt Ruth was on morphine and oxygen in the back bedroom of the farmhouse. My grandmother was escorted back while I waited in the living room. I had spent the past two years researching the history of Mormons. Driving over, I thought I would share all the obscure Mormon history I knew--instead, I talked to my 19-year-old cousin Philip about climbing volcanoes. We compared notes about Utah's national parks. We gabbed like two kids about river rafting and camping and hiking. I felt like I belonged.

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