Falling Into Life: A Gay Exmormon’s Journey

Chapter Seven (Rewrite – New) – Fighting Against the Knife

Oscar Wilde said, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick…

… with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.” This is absolutely true and absolutely anathema to the way I was raised. The harder I fought my homosexual thoughts and behaviors, the more monstrous it became.

I use this analogy to describe my own growing homosexuality experience, I call it the “Knife”. It was like all the prophets, all the speakers, my lifetime of every religious discussion, all the words, the scriptures, the counsel, and the doctrine became a terrible jagged knife that was being pushed right into my heart. And everyone I knew, my leaders, my family, all my close relationships, they were all pushing that knife into my heart, and I was the only one holding it back. All their hands on that knife handle pushing it in, and I could feel my hands on theirs trying to stop the pain.

The creation of the knife starts early. It is a curious thing that happens to a young innocent child, that moment when you realize that you are the enemy. For me it happened when I was quite young, probably twelve years of age. I saw myself as all the rest, in line for God’s Love, expecting great things, and feeling as loved and as impervious as the rest of my comrades. The moment was confusing to me, and I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me, but there it was, these scriptures in the bible that said that homosexuals were the enemy.

An abomination. A horror in God’s eyes. It was part of a Sunday School lesson and we were taught two scriptures in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; both of them have committed an abomination,” and “If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; there blood is upon them.” Then it was followed with a handful of Prophetic teaching mirroring the same concept: Homosexual sin is one step above murder. The knife slowly sharpening.

I had already become aware that Mormonism had clear rules and regulations for salvation, beginning as a young child in primary learning to give everything to God and to worship the prophet via cute songs. I was already collecting dimes and nickels for my tithing, and I knew that Satan was waiting in the wings for me, with his legions of demons tempting me to fall out of grace and into hell. I also knew that something was askew inside of me, although I was unable to put my finger on it.

By the time we learned those scriptures, I was more aware that I might be gay. The world was now calling it “gay”, or at least it had become the slur, the worst word to call your enemies. It was appearing on television now, and I was rapt with attention each time a schlocky series mishandled it. It was even on The Love Boat. It was becoming this new attention grabber. Disco was in full swing, Travolta was luring women to the theaters and I distinctly remember an announcement in church dissuading anyone from seeing such filth. There was suddenly all this talk about it. And I was quietly realizing my fate.

I didn’t start masturbating until I was sixteen years old, and it became glaringly clear that this would be my vice. I knew that it made me unworthy in God’s eyes, and I knew I couldn’t control it. I was a Priest then in the Mormon Priesthood, having already passed through the Deacon, and Teacher levels. I now had the authority to bless the Sacrament, instead of simply preparing it or passing it to the congregation. It was pounded into our heads, this tremendous responsibility we had. God *knew* our hearts, and it was our responsibility to ensure we were worthy to bless. My Bishop’s Worthiness Interviews were invasive, and he flat out asked if I masturbated. I didn’t lie, but realized that I would need to start lying soon. Their hands were on the knife and it was now pointed at my heart.

The guilt was tangible, and each time I masturbated I began to barter with God for help. It was futile, there was never an easement, never any quiet in my head, and the scariest part of all was that when I masturbated, I clearly thought about men, and not women. I was attracted to the male form, especially muscled men. It seemed that guy’s biceps were my straight man’s cleavage, and it frightened me. I noticed *any* guy who was built, who’s chest showed through their shirts. I noticed tight sleeves due to big arms. I began to bury this in my head; I shoved it down as far as it would go. This would not derail my exaltation, this would not be me. I would act like all the other guys, I would date girls, no one would know. I would hold the Keys of the Priesthood; I would make my parents proud.

As I got older and moved away to my Grandma’s house for a few semesters before my mission, the masturbation continued, and became something I desperately needed, and something I abhorred at the same time. Now any magazine on the store shelf became my pornography. I would search through the pages seeking attractive men. It wasn’t difficult to find, they were everywhere. I felt doomed and stranded. I had heard and now was being told by my leaders that masturbation made you gay. I was horrified. My own terrible weakness was creating the problem! Why couldn’t I just be like the rest, just normal. Cheap dime store novels fed my imagination for graphic sex.

I was nineteen years old and facing two years of living with male companions. I had already endured what seemed a lifetime of high school terror in the form of locker rooms filled with stripping guys. Certainly I would be found out, hiding myself between locker doors with impossible-to-avoid erections. School showers, wrestling matches, swimming meets. I was managing it, but it was tough going, almost torturous at times. One guy in particular was stunningly gorgeous on my diving team (he would later marry my first cousin). He was nice to me, my mind reeled as he held me in positions to teach me diving moves. I was only five foot two inches tall, with buck teeth and a raging libido. By the time I left for my mission I would reach six feet.

During the last semester before I left for Madrid, Spain, I was at my wits end. My room in my grandmother’s house was strewn with hand written promises to God that I would stop masturbating. I had been spotted and involved with a guy named Tim who was gay and knew that I was, too. And to top it off, I was now learning that anal stimulation was extremely appealing. I stumbled on it one day in the bath tub, wondering what it was like, hopping out of the tub dripping wet and searching for any phallus up for the christening. At one moment it was exhilarating and terrifying.

What had I done? It was all my fault, but I loved myself. I felt good when I self-stimmed, it was a reprieve from the outside world, from the angry words, the angry verses, the lessons about hell, the impending trial of a mission. It was in essence, the *only* time I felt good. I began to fixate on my problem, it was so encompassing, and so overwhelming. I filled my mind with idea that a mission would save me, perhaps it would stave off the knife.

If I tried hard enough, if I begged God for help enough, if I did what I was told, I would become straight, I just knew it. I left Thatcher, Arizona for my home in Denver, Colorado to embark on my life-saving venture. The harder I tried to stay clean and righteous, the more I felt compelled to feel better, leading to the same activities. I went through for my own endowment, and learned that lying would be the only way I’d get through this. By now my prayers pleading to “not be gay” had increased from a few a day when I was younger, to many more now. Why wasn’t God listening to me? I was pouring my heart out. Certainly this was something so easily removed or changed for Him. He was supposed to be my loving Heavenly Father.

I put myself on ice and quietly masturbated my way through twenty-one months of living with male companions 24/7. Once I had a companion who was a bodybuilder from BYU, I wasn’t so sure I’d make it through those 3 months. He was gorgeous with a sly smile and a stock pile of muscle mags. He flaunted his body in front of me, and we slept mere feet from each other and we prayed shoulder to shoulder for someone who would listen to us and “accept the gospel”. I bought some French male modeling magazines to help me release when I needed to, and I spent my Prep-days taking faux modeling photos in the castle-laden picturesque Spanish countryside a la GQ or Vogue Hommes with my companions and trying not to lose my mind. I made so many wonderful friends who would, in an instant, abandon me if I had uttered my dark secrets.

One time, as my comp and I were knocking on doors, we stumbled upon an apartment full of gay sailors during fleet week in Madrid. They invited us in, and as I tried to discuss God, I noticed men were fucking in several rooms around me. I was sweating, erect, and panicked as a few naked men wandered about the place. We fought our way out, and one handsome Spaniard followed us to the elevator, and as he held the door from closing, he looked in my eyes and said, “You *know* where we are.” That night was the hardest night for me to stay put, but I did. The knife edge was sharp as a razor and it was piercing me.

I made it home unscathed somehow. But my silent desires had worn a hole in my soul, and within a week I had rented my first gay porn video and was sitting in my parent’s basement fighting off the inevitable. It was crass, nasty, and so amazing that I couldn’t stop watching it. I fell deeper into my contradiction. I wanted to start dating women, but learned soon enough that men wrote their phone numbers on the stall walls of the bathroom at the mall, and within a week I had mustered enough courage to make my first call.

I locked my mom’s bedroom door, and I dialed. A man answered, and my heart began to pound so loudly that I could barely hear. I began to talk dirty, he listened without making a sound. I later found out that my mom had lifted the receiver and had heard the entire conversation. I called back and the man agreed to meet me at the mall the next Sunday, and that he would fuck me. The next day to my entire surprise, my mom announced to me that she had set up arrangements for me to move in with my cousins in Phoenix to attend Arizona State University. That Sunday, at age twenty-two, my dad and I drove past that mall at the exact time when I would have been meeting my first male love interest on my way to college. As we passed I look ed out the window and I knew he was waiting for me.

I settled in with my cousins and began a new chapter, leaving my sin behind me in Colorado. I threw myself back into church activity, and I made it about a year before I touched a man for the very first time. It seemed inevitable, men were everywhere and I was aware they were aware of me. I was dating women now, and had managed to create the image of a heartbreaker. I had extreme luck with women, and I seemed to be able to date anyone I asked. I liked this, it was the perfect screen, and I actually enjoyed dating and making out with them. But the same gay desires were never to be stopped.

I was always being offered “callings” or volunteer positions within the ward, and throughout my life that would never end, I never went one month without a calling. Supposedly you are chosen by God due to your worthiness to fulfill these positions, and God, working through his servant leaders extended his grace to those faithful servants. My confusion was deepening, couldn’t God tell I was not worthy for these positions?He wasn’t answering my endless prayers to be saved from a sin just above  murder, but he *was* making me work my ass off ayway. There was no respite.

One night I had to know. I had to know what a man felt like, if a man would let me feel him. I found where an adult bookstore was, and I drove there. Men were parked in their cars and as I walked around those cars, my heart again pounded so loudly that I could not hear a thing. I approached a man; I asked him if I could touch his chest. He looked at me, smiled, leaned his seat back, and I allowed myself to slip my hand down his shirt. It was like lightning. I closed my eyes and the feeling created sparks; I couldn’t believe how this felt! It was something that still arouses me thinking back on it. As I drove away I bartered with God again, please save me, He knew the way to save me.

A year later I would have first-time sex with a man one week before I eloped with my wife to Sedona, Arizona. After we consummated our marriage, I knew I was doomed. The spark was not there. I was lost. I had been counseled that marriage would make me straight, and in that one moment in my first thrust I knew it was a lie. I wanted my heart to pound, I wanted this so bad, and it was not happening. It was not going to save me, it was not going to happen. She was a virgin who was saving herself for marriage, only to marry a gay man. I knew it was a tragedy of epic proportions.

I didn’t give up. Maybe God could still save me somehow. It was a sin, I was hell-bound, and she was going to be my salvation. Sixteen years later, after confessing to my wife I was gay in year four, after twelve years in “reparative therapy”, years of heart ache, cheating, bargaining with God, three kids and absolute mental devastation, I felt suicidal. I had remained active through it all, and it had not saved me. I had done everything God asked me to do, and I was still gay. So many hands were on the knife handle now, and now her hands were on the knife handle with everyone else’s. I couldn’t imagine myself making one of my ow children suffer this way, and yet my Heavenly Father had stayed silent for twenty-six years through all of it, not once offering me any help. How could he be so terribly uncaring toward one of his own suffering children? I felt more isolated than at any time of my life, and I was doing *everything* right that I knew to do. I was being hung out to dry.

It felt as if I was fighting for my life. I was in such tremendous agony, and everyone had the words, “We love you…” falling from their lips as they pushed the knife harder and harder into my heart. I became so distraught that I was willing to let my spiritual life end to never feel that awful again. I became so emotionally detached and wounded, and something deep inside me snapped. I decided that I would stand up and face it! No matter how much push back I received, I would *not* back down. I owed myself a genuine life, and if the angels came to kill me, then so be it. I was *done* feeling shitty. No longer would I passively let my heart be threatened with violent ideas of destruction. I would turn that knife around and I would wield it at them. I would fight!

The visceral pain was so threatening to me that I began having severe panic attacks. I was already experiencing panic attacks due to my relationship with my parents, but when I decided to leave, the whole weight of the experience, the fear of all the years that had been programmed into my brain came rushing out. I dreamed angels came down from heaven and slashed my throat. I dreamed that I was lost forever, hell bound, never to be rescued. I felt valueless, adrift and alone even though I was surrounded by people. I began an eighteen month journey of feeling as if I was falling. I literally felt as if I were freefalling helplessly to my doom while doing anything, sitting, walking, working, and sleeping. Although I stayed on my new course, my domestication was so great that it took over my ability to reason.

My mental state put my physical state into *absolute alarm*.

I was able to fight this, but many men cannot fight this, and they commit suicide. And it is not their fault; they are sensitive men following the poisonous counsel of ignorant straight male leaders to their destruction. It is the fault of the Mormon Church and its *untrained leadership*. This happens often in the Mormon Church to gay Mormon men. See the play “Facing East” for a clear detailed learning experience. View the six hour version of Angels in America to understand the nuance of what I am describing. This is real, this is a *crime*. We must *end* this abuse.

All men in my situation are given a choice: You let the knife stop your own heart, or you take that knife and you force it out of the hands threatening you, and you begin your metamorphosis. You transcend.

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