I was saved, I was chosen before I could get sick and die, to share the Gospel. Purely Magical Thinking. Wishful thinking. Desperate thinking.

May 26, 1985

Today was our last Sunday here at the MTC and our (all) district was asked to stand and bear our testimonies. The SainT Paul District went first, then ours the Thibadauex District. (If that name was chosen by our district, it was surely suggested by me. The year before I joined the Mormon Church, I was modeling for an agency in the Castro District of San Francisco, like I said, it was lurking) It was a very spiritual meeting. All the elders gave such strong and personal testimonies. Elder Barnson said just a few words, but they really touched my heart. I could totally feel the spirit when he bore his testimony. He’s from Bountiful, Utah. His parents are totally in-active, but he is here because he can’t deny the Lord. What an example of faith he is. (This kid was so cute!!! I had a crush, sure I felt a burning in my bosom.  What a waste, so much time wasted chasing a delusion) 

President Bishop gave his final farewell talk. Well only two more days, then Wednesday, we leave.

I was called to the Ohio Akron Mission.  I had received a letter from the Prophet of God.  The living breathing Moses on Earth.  I had been studying the gospel for weeks at the Mission Training Center.  Those were some fun times.  We’d sneak pizzas over the fence.  We’d tell stories of our lives at home.  I held back the real stories.  I held back the real me.  He was disappearing.  I was a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I was following His plan. 

May 27, 1985

Today was a very spiritual day! I was able to block out most of the worldly aspects of life. (Just what was I trying to block out, what was I writing but not saying, what secret was I cowardly keeping?) I even tried to have a prayer in my heart all day. I wasn’t always successful but I watched myself.

Our in-active member did not show-up for our TSR, (Teaching Standards Rating). But Elder Carter and I were still able to teach one of the zone coordinators here at the MTC. First though my companion and I (Elder Carter) had prayer in the room.  We went to class and sang “Oh how lovely was the morning”, the spirit filled the classroom. Sister Palatis told us that her inactive friend could not show up. She also felt and identified the spirit. She went and made a few phone calls and got the zone leader to come. 

While we were teaching I could totally Identify the spirit. It was with us every time we needed it. I even felt inspired to challenge him for baptism. Well after all this, you would think I was filled with enough spiritual experiences for one day. Well it was just beginning. After Class Elder Turnbow said goodbye to us and bore his testimony and blessed us in prayer. My companion and I went up to our room and being full of joy I knelt in prayer to my Heavenly Father.

We all came up to the room after dinner, to rest for a while. Our next class was not until 7:00 pm. It was our ambassadorship class. Elder Newman taught us about charity and love. We watched a film compiled of Church TV commercials, again the spirit touched my heart. After leaving class I was so warm and comfortable inside. I was really happy. Went to our last class, which is Practice and Review. We were going to read the Book of Mormon, but before I felt inspired to go into a room and pray. I was a very satisfying prayer. I could feel the love my Father in Heaven has for me.Well I am alright, I am even better, I like myself.

May 28, 1985

Well tomorrow we fly out. I can say I have never been happier in my entire life. I’m sad to leave all my friends I have made her, but eager to serve the Lord. Basically today has been a blow-it day, we went to Sizzler for lunch and to the Mall Shopping. There is no spirit at the mall.

John Thurow left a package for me at the front desk. I haven’t heard from him in eight months. Sister Susan Hardisty gave me a letter. I really think she is special. I’m glad she is going out to serve the Lord. That’s what I want in a wife. I’ve locked my heart, now no more girls. 

Well I need to go to bed. I am sick as a dog. Hopefully I will feel better in the morning.

PS I love life.

The Mission Training Center was the first time in my life I had to live within a set of strict rules.  From the time we rise until we sleep we are studying the seven or eight discussions that we would be presenting to families as we go door to door sharing the gospel for two years.

The culture of the Mormon faith, as my writings demonstrate, are filled with identifying spiritual experiences and recording them in your journal for your posterity.  So that our posterity will know how dedicated to the Lord their forebears were.  We were admonished to not write of our transgressions, only that we were tempted.   All members of the Mormon church are taught that their journals should be a testament to their family of their great faith.  We were not to dwell on our sins, only how the Lord saved us from our sins.  That is the basic underpinning of journal writing in the Mormon church.

The culture of the Mission Training Center is one of great reverence for the work that is about to be embarked upon.  Add into it a healthy dose of Mormon folklore, stories of Modern Mormon Prophets, blessing the grounds of the Mission Training Center to protect the Lord’s Army from the evil Angels of Darkness and the Host of Hell, who were seen in a vision lining the great granite walls of the Wasatch Front.

We were set apart and sanctified by the Holy Ghost to represent God’s restored Gospel on the Earth, and the Host of Hell were lining the mountains all around us, ready to pounce on us, tempt us with our sins, and steal us from the Lord’s errand.  This was the culture of our days and nights; always being told that if there were any sins we had not repented, please go to your Branch President and confess.  It was like they were passing, ‘get out of jail free cards’ to everyone who repented.  Several of the Elders and Sisters I had met had confided in me they had transgressed morally and had privately repented, but had not confessed and the Lord had blessed them with forgiveness and wiped their sins away in honor of their service.

It was so important to confess your sins as a missionary.  The spirit could only be identified by those called and found worthy to serve.  I had confessed all my sexual sins and desires for men, all my masturbation to the Zone Leaders who interviewed me for Baptism, to the California Oakland Mission President before I was Baptized, to three Bishops as I prepared to serve a mission, and to my mission branch president.

I had been told the Lord had forgiven me.  I had felt His spirit, time after time, fill me with warmth and peace, but it still haunted me.

In fact, reading these words today, I see the beginnings of madness.  I was driving myself mad, looking for signs of the spirit, desperately wanting each feeling of love, each feeling of acceptance, each feeling of forgiveness, looking for a cure to the monster I was.

The demons on the hills surrounding the Mission Training Center, they knew me.  They knew my weakness.  They threw it in my face and danced with joy as my secret got buried deeper and deeper.  Leaving for the Mission Field I was leaving behind the gay guy.  I had finally and fully confessed my homosexuality to my priesthood leaders.

I had adopted a way of life, a straight way of life.  I had found the tools to enter adulthood as a straight white male.  Two years down and two years to go, two years of faithful service to God.

What was I thinking?  I sit here reading what I wrote all those years ago and I see a completely paranoid and delusional kid.  Surely this is not me, this writing, my writing?  How was I ever so crazy?  I mean, not just crazy, but loony.  Someone please hand that kid some Haldol with a side of Ativan.  It has to be that culture that fosters this type of delusional thinking.  I have not even gotten to the real crazy yet, and I am only a few days ahead of the reader.  There is some psychotic and delusional stuff in tomorrow’s post.

In reality, I was a victim of magical thinking and an uber desire to please and fit in.  What I am about to say may sound harsh to those who believe in God, any God, especially those who believe in Jesus Christ and his power of redemption.  His blood spilled for our sins.  We can simply kneel, confess, pray, ask the blood of Christ who died for our sins to heal us and forgive us of our sins.  I know exactly how special that belief is, it was my belief for a long time.

I was a magical thinker, looking for signs and symbols of faith in my life.  Recording them, almost as if I was trying to convince myself.

You see, it is magical thinking to believe that Jesus can die for your sins.  Yeah, I believed in magic and superstition.  It embarrasses me today.  It utterly and completely embarrasses me today.  It is humiliating to be so hoodwinked by magical thinking.

It is not often you get to sit down and read in your own handwriting just how delusional your past in faith can be, face to face with your real demons, your fear of being found out and the great lengths people who are hated will go through simply to fit in to feel love.

All self deprecation aside, I can hate on myself better than anyone who has ever hated on me could ever wish.  I forgive that young kid for taking me there.  It was for my own good.  It allowed me to learn a value system and morals my family had been devoid of.

I know each and every day, that my life as a Mormon was a blessing, that I am likely alive because I was not having gay sex during the height of AIDS.  I have four beautiful children and a life as colorful and rich as a storyteller could hope.  All of that is because I was lucky enough to join the Mormon Church and not run away to some big city where my peers were dying.

Yeah, in my fantasy, the thing that kept me from running away was my fear of dying a horrible death by HIV.  It was all around us, in the news, in the papers.  The pulpit ministers nationwide were warning about AIDS being God’s punishment for Gays.  Not for me.  I was saved, I was chosen before I could get sick and die, to share the Gospel.  Purely Magical Thinking.  Wishful thinking.  Desperate thinking.

I still did not know if I was AIDS free, I hoped desperately that I was.  It would be years before I really had an HIV test.  I was sure I was negative.  I never showed any symptoms.  But I did not want to know and now I was on a mission.  I would have had to get funds from my Bishop at home to go to a doctor to find out.  If I went to a clinic, my companion would know why and I was never going to talk about homosexuality again.  I was never going to tell anyone.

I was free.  I had my new life.  No one knew, but what if I was a carrier and passed it on to my wife someday? This is the story that is also lurking in the background.

I had proposed to Shelley at the Oakland Temple one day kind of on a whim.  It had snowballed into a relationship and she had decided to wait for me.  I don’t know if you caught that Sister Hardisty and Sister Karg, were also under that same impression.  I have no excuse for my behavior.  If my ex-wife, whom I adore is reading this journal, she is seeing how really confused I was about having her wait for me and that I was entertaining thoughts of other women.

I was in no place to be with a woman.  I was just enjoying the attention. Who doesn’t like it when women pay attention to them?  I had a lot of Mormon women paying attention to me, surely I was straight.  Shelley was different than the rest, she loved me the way I was.  She made me feel more important than anyone had ever shown me.  I loved her, like a best friend.  I gazed into her eyes lovingly for years.

Yet as soon as I was at the Mission Training Center, I wanted to Dear Jane her.  I wanted to be free of her, not just her, but of women really.  But I was a coward.

I had run from my family to the Mormons all the way to Ohio.

 

Part Three: I Am A Coward, A Total Fucking Coward

For seven long years I had fought against this moment.  Sitting in that car next to that young hot surfer, staring into his eyes at his bronzed body, watching him fervently stroking his cock, him looking at me with the hunger I had felt my entire life was as close to a spiritual experience as one can imagine.  For I saw more in his eyes than desire; I saw he accepted that he was gay and he did not care who knew about it.  That acceptance fed my excitement and I came with the release of pure peace.  I knew what I was and I accepted it.  Right there in that moment I knew, and all of my life decisions came crashing down on me.

There was no God angry at me, I never felt His anger, but I felt the enormity of my decisions.  I felt Jayne and Michael’s betrayal.  I felt extreme guilt over betraying Michelle, knowing I had been her salvation from a life that was looking to her at the age of 22 as an old maid.  I rescued her from that and we had children.  I was fucked.  I was doomed and there was no one I felt I could tell.

My parents, my family, and my childhood friends had gotten past thinking of me as gay, or at least I believed they had.  I had constructed a pretty tightly closed society around my gayness.  I had a fortress to hide my gayness behind, and that fortress now had a wife and two kids.

God was demanding a deal from me.  He was there as I wept and screamed and pleaded in one last desperate attempt to beg him to take away my gayness, if not for me, for the sake of my family.  The universe was crying out that it demanded something from me:  courage.   But an entire life spent running from what you are leaves you without courage.

Especially when you are alone.  I mean really alone.  Can you imagine being married, having two beautiful children, a wife who literally adores you despite your occasional wounded pride or irrational outburst?   Shelley loved me.  I felt her love and I loved her, not in a sexual way, and not in a way that lovers really love each other.  I loved Michelle like a really close girlfriend.  I really enjoyed being with her.  She made me feel safe and secure.

But even with that love there was a firm knowledge that that would go if I ever told her the truth.  And with that would go my job, so heavily connected was the company to Mormons, and a deep seeded racism was flowing through this company.  My direct supervisor, who was a woman, had told me that the company had hired a black man in the south who had stolen money from the company.  A lot of money.  She said she would never hire a black person, even though she was not racist, because she did not want that decision to be reflected upon her as a woman.

I knew if they knew I was gay I would be fired.  I knew that if my wife’s family and the church knew I was gay, I would be excommunicated.  I knew my own family was highly hateful of gay people.  I knew the community I grew up in hated gay people.

If I faced the truth, everything I was and everything I wanted to be, and everyone I loved would be taken from me.  I would be truly alone.

The problem:  I was already alone.

No one in my life really knew me.  Do you know how alone that type of isolation is?

Once I had joined the Church, had several years free of masturbation and seven years free of sexual contact, the Bishops had stopped asking questions and I stopped sharing the attractions to men when I was not masturbating.  So it was never discussed after the first few years.  I had successfully blocked those thoughts for years through obsessive scripture reading, journal writing, and church going.  I was winning the battle, but it was there building up inside of me, simmering under everything.

My wife’s sister had a smoking hot firefighting, helicopter-jumping boyfriend who sent me over the edge with ecstasy every time I saw him.

That hunger for a man, that desire to be held by a man, to look into a man’s eyes and feel real love, someone like me to love me.  In that moment our eyes met, I knew as surely as I knew Jesus was the Christ, that I was gay and it was OK.  In my tears and pleading to God on that day in that car, I felt His peace.

God had accepted me, He demanded courage, I gave him a coward.  It was all I had ever known, it was all I could ever give.  I promised God on that day I would live my life for my family, that I knew I was gay, I accepted it, and I made God a promise right then and there.

I promised God I would bury my gay sexual cravings for my family’s sake.  That is not what He wanted but that was what I gave Him.

I gave Him what I had mastered:  cowardice.

The universe was sitting out there waiting, keeping track of all my sins.  The hunger built and built, but I buried it.  I refused to acknowledge it.  I did not want to be alone.

I was alone, really alone, no one really knew me.  I was afraid, really afraid.  I was becoming a monster and I did not know it.

You see, the spirit or whatever it is that lives inside us and directs us, is powerful, it sees the truth.  It tells you when you’re right and you know it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I knew what the Universe wanted that day.  I felt the decision flood through my entire body as clearly as when I had prayed for guidance about anything in my life.

God wanted me to be honest and leave my wife and kids and accept who I was.  That is what God wanted.  That is what the Universe in its wisdom communicated to me on that day.

This was not my choice.  I was a coward.  I still am a coward.  I fear being alone and being abandoned more than anything in my life.  I knew that I was strong enough to do it, but I stayed with Shelley and the kids.

I was a coward.  The Universe confirmed it.  I was a coward and there was a price to pay.

The Universe wanted to exact it full on me and it did.  My hell was only just beginning, and I was going to become a monster.  I should have listened to the Universe then.  I should have stopped playing God with Shelley and the kids’ lives.  I should have had the courage to face the truth.

I should have run away, like my fantasies and daydreams had compelled me to.  I told myself I should have run away along time ago , but now I can’t.  I just can’t.  I just can’t leave this family, this job, these people.  Even though they love me for who they think I am, it is love.  It is a life shared.  It is the only life I know.

Oh God please guide me, I begged.  I pleaded.  I knew it was time to go.  It was a hopeless situation.

The shock of my actions, my sexual actions and how close I came to losing it completely roared in my head.  I was able to recommit myself to at least putting on the appearance of a good Mormon.  I started reading the Book of Mormon and the Bible again, and was able to gain control of my sexual urges.  I could feel myself slipping back into the good Mormon.  I was rewarded with additional callings in the church.

I was made Elder’s Quorum Secretary, and in one summer we moved at least a dozen families.  Then we moved to Livermore, CA.  My territory had expanded I got a huge commission check.  Michelle, the kids and I had won a sales contest and took a Mormon history tour.  We were living the life of successful middle-class Mormons.  We constantly had financial problems, but things were looking up and we were getting it together.

Then I got fired.  Yep!  Fired.

No high school diploma and a great job for almost three years.  I was fired.

We were spinning out of control.  I realized that I needed real skills to care for this growing family, and at the time we had no idea that Shelley was pregnant with Hillary.

We cashed in our 401K, moved to Waterford, CA and I began going to school.  I needed skills.  All the Mormon men in my life who were successful had careers that demanded education.  I was smart, a quick learner, but I was a high school drop-out.

We had two kids and a third on the way.  So I threw myself into school.  You would be amazed at how completely easy it is to bury yourself in education.  There was a new purpose in my life.  A purpose.  I could deal with that.

I even took Mormon Institute of Religion Classes while attending Modesto Junior College.  I still believed in God and the Church; I had simply accepted who I was and that God had accepted who I was.  I really began to focus on the life of Christ in those years; His sacrifice for us, His lack of judgement and total use of love in all He approached and in all He did.

The hunger was easily distracted during that first year at school as I was filling my head with knowledge, getting an education, and learning about myself and others.

It would rear its ugly head and I would sneak off to watch gay porn or to visit a gay cruising area, but I never engaged in physical sex with another man.  I was very aware of HIV and very paranoid about bringing that home to my wife and family.

That first year at Modesto Junior College was the year I began challenging all the things I had swallowed whole and with unquestionable faith as a Christian and as a Mormon.

The truth is, my faith was challenged by the story of Christopher Columbus.  Imagine that!

It was Christopher Columbus that woke me up to see the truth of everything I had ever believed as wrong.  Not just wrong based on opinion, but factually, and there was no way for Mormons to walk themselves out of this one.  There was no amount of faith that would allow me to look past Christopher Columbus and his revered and divine status in the Mormon Church.  I had to swallow and recognize that the Mormon Church, like all churches, is a human-run group hanging on to its followers by a thread of lies.

It would be so easy to dismiss me as a nut job, someone who simply lacks faith.  But if you truly have faith, then my story is not a threat.  This is my story as I lived it.  This is my dealing with the Universe.

I built a life around one truth, that Jesus would forgive me and take my gay away if I prayed hard enough.  Well hell, how the hell much praying does one fucking have to do before this God Damned Therapy Works?  I use God Damned Therapy, because if there is a God, He would damn this therapy, He would damn those who pray away the gay.  It ruins people’s lives with false hopes.

 

Satan is just waiting to trap me!

These following excerpts from my journal were written 22 months after I joined the Church.  There were three journals prior to this one.  Shelly, the girl who was waiting for me, gave me my missionary journals.  For so many years I refused to read my journals, decided that I had been lied to and I was pretty angry.  I can’t read these excerpts and now feel compassion for who I was and how deeply I internalized these feelings.  I truly believed in God, I have to admit, not just to the world, but to myself.  I was a believer in everything of the church.  I literally believed that since I was a missionary, Satan was actively working to destroy me.

The church puts a huge emphasis on missionary work and members literally believe Satan’s angels are ready and willing to attack missionaries.  I can’t remember if it was a speaker or a teacher at the Mormon Mission Training Center in Provo, UT, who regaled us with stories of looking up at the Wasatch from above, and seeing a vision of the host of hell perched above the sacred Mission Training Center, ready to work against us.  Satan for me at this time was as real as Santa Claus is to your three year-old.

I ask that the reader have as much compassion for me as I finally do for myself.  Where I was in this journey at this point was a single-minded devotion to God and Jesus Christ.  I was still in a bubble of love and acceptance.

That does not mean that I am going to not be witty and poke fun at the Mormons.  I was one, and if we can’t laugh at our own shit, what good are we?

May 7, 1985

Well I arrived at Salt Lake City at 1:18 PM. Curtist Hall picked me (up), and I am staying with him at his apartment until I report to the MTC on Thursday. I am excited.

I went to the Salt Lake Temple after I got off the plane it was beautiful. I met a man who 101 years old. He was leaning against a wheel chair, outside the cafeteria. I offered to push him if he would sit down. His name is Brother Petersen. We ended up going through a Temple Session together. I helped him all the way through our session. It was a joy to serve such a nice and friendly brother. He has lived a long life, he truly is a man of God. He spoke softly and was very polite, yet he had the weathered look of an old man. I would to love to live my life after his example. He was such a pillar of strength. I enjoyed helping him.

I am staying at Curt’s apartment and he’s at a dinner appointment. I sent out for a pizza because I didn’t want to go outside alone. That would put me in a very vulnerable spot. Being, ‘set apart’, is dangerous when you are alone. That is why I won’t go outside by myself. Satan is just waiting to trap me. I almost had to ride the bus from the Temple to here, but a visitor center worker gave me a ride. I was very grateful. I was scared about being by myself.

May 8, 1985

How do you account for a day that is a waste. I didn’t do anything. I repacked my suit case, it is falling apart already. I need a new garment bag. I lounged around Curt’s apartment all day long. For my last night, Ryan Burke, Curtis Hall, and I went to the movies. We saw Amadeus. It was about Mozart. I am sleeping tonight at Ryan’s house before I report in the morning.

May 9, 1985

I met my companion this morning. His name is Elder Carter. He’s from Spokane, Washington. I sorta like him. Tonight we studied the Baptismal Challenge and I got most of it memorized. 

During the meetings today on orientation. I felt the spirit quite prevalent. I am so grateful for the people I met. Today has been great. 

May 10, 1985

It seems like the day just begun, yet it is already. I’m tired, but I am eager to learn still. The reason I am so eager is that at every meeting I was able to pay attention. The spirit bore witness to me many times of the different points of the Gospel.  The food was actually edible at dinner time tonight. I porked out. my companion is GREAT. I just love him (I love his guts). He is quite humble, but I feel his testimony.

Tonight we had a district meeting scripture discussion, followed by a testimony meeting. The spirit that blessed meeting was overpowering. It throbbed  my body. All the elders in my district were (are) great. They each have a strong testimony of the Gospel. I really appreciated their testimonies. each of theirs was so sincere. The spirit bore witness.

My district at the Mission Training Center, 6.5 days a week we dressed like this for two years.

May 11, 1985

I was so worried about ‘being the dumbest in the class’, well today I learned all the scriptures in the first discussion, but I felt bad because no one else had learned them yet. The spirit truly taught me, because I learned over 30 scriptures in about 45 minutes. We had a break for dinner then came back to class. One of the guys in my district who was progressing almost at the same speed and I knelt and prayed that the spirit would teach the others in our district. My companion Elder Carter was learning one every 10 minutes or so, well within an hour they all had them all memorized. I thank God for the spirit that taught us today.  All but one elder learned them, he’s almost got it.

I set some goals. The long term goals one (are) love, knowledge, spirituality, and obedience.

Goals

1) Love- Do one unselfish act of service for my companion every day. Introduce myself to new people each day.

2) Knowledge- Read the BOM (Book of Mormon), memorize one scripture each day and learn the discussions.

3) Spirituality – Pray 3 times a day, prayer in my heart, bear my testimony once a day.

4) Get to classes on time and be in bed by 10:30.

I know our father in Heaven helps us with our goals if we really seek his inspiration.

Messing around, after playing basketball more than likely!

May 11, 1985

I had my branch president meeting today. It went great. He told me that my family would be blessed for my being here. He knew what to say. I also met a nice sister who will serving where my grandmother (lives). I referred her to my grandfather. I feel she could be a means to to my grandmother’s conversion.

My companion and I also met a couple who were Jews when they joined the church two years ago. Their family disowned them, yet their faith and obedience to God’s laws was a pure example of dedication. I sort of slacked off today. I didn’t try hard to study or keep the spirit. I got really distracted. I am not sure why though. But I know this is no vacation. My ward is supporting me because I want to come out here. (I had saved about $4000 when I finally got my mission call and the list they sent us of items we would need ate up most of it, plus the plane ticket and the bike, my ward stepped in to send me because at the rate I was saving I would have been on a mission in my 30’s. My grandmother contributed $50 a month). What can I do to keep me from leaning towards Satan’s claws? I can ignore the conversations of the world and put all my effort into learning.

As I read these entries I am amazed at my utter paranoia about Satan trying to get me.  I see the gay kid clearly in these writings.  I so wanted all of this to be true, it was going to cleanse me and make me straight.

How utterly desperate I must have seemed to members at the time, but they showed me love no one had ever showed me.  They welcomed me in.  I belonged and I was special, I was one the Heavenly Father found.  Surely, I must have been one of the valiant spirits in the preexistence that fought for Jesus.  I was committed and I believed.  That sense of love and belonging was my salvation and I would do anything to be accepted.

I mean, look what the Gospel did for my life.  It took a lost, confused, hated gay boy from the hate of his previous life.  It was almost like a drug, the way love and belonging set in, and I thrived for years.

 

I Literally Believed I Had the Power of God: I was ordained and you could trace my priesthood power back to Jesus, talk about feeling special!

Sunday May 5, 1985

I was set apart at the Pleasanton Stake Center by President Anderson. Greg Githens and Bishop Davies came with me for the ordinance. It is hard for me to remember all that he blessed me with. I wrote down two in the fron part of this journal. I fill in the others as I remember them. 

Tomorrow Bishop Davies and I are going to give my mother a blessing, before her operation. I visited her today after I was set apart. I pray she will be happy with her new husband. It must be hard on him with her going to the hospital so soon after wedding. He really loves her, I hope she loves him that much.

Greg was my companion and he went everywhere with me today. I am grateful to him for his sacrifice on my behalf. During fast and testimony meeting Lynda, Greg and Michelle bore their testimonies after I bore mine. Sister Davies said something during her testimony, I can’t remember what it was I just remember how strongly the spirit testified the truth to me of what she said.

I ate dinner with at the Wardleigh’s house. Joy made me a green cake. I also told Michelle I was coming home to her, I don’t know whether or not I will marry her though.

Today I grew, but surely tomorrow I will have to grow again.

May 6, 1985

Today My Companion was Sister Davies. We woke up to the banging on the door by her father at 7 AM, I helped them unload wood from a trailer that Sister Davies dad had brought over. Afterwards she made us a fine breakfast. French Toast and fresh strawberries. We worked around the yard for a few hours then ran me around town to do my last minute errands. One of which was picking up my plane ticket at the post office. It was nice that it came today being that I leave tomorrow morning.

When Bishop Davies came home from work we went to the hospital. My mother is there, she goes into surgery on Wednesday for her back. Bishop Davies and I gave her a blessing. In the blessing I was not inspired to to cease her pain, yet blessed her that she would recover and have a full life. It’s funny how the spirit inspires when you are using the Priesthood.

I also went with Greg to my dad’s house and he and I had cake (Deidre‘s birthday), It was a small party for her 17th birthday We left there and we went to Merrill’s place for a small get together with Scott Sessions, Robin Hunt, Kirsten Zollinger, Merril Prusse, Geoff Hill, Greg Githens, and Michelle. These were (are) the closest friends I have ever had. I love them all.

Today was quite busy.

If I could heal, why did I not heal my Mom?

Looking back at these two entries is rather odd.  You have read the blessing I gave my mom.  Let me just say, there is nothing in that blessing that ever, ever came true.  My mom has had a life of suffering related to her back.  While my mother is a great example of how to love unconditionally any stray dog or broken person she encounters, it was not an example to anyone in my family but me.  My family generally lacks the ability to have insight into their own actions.  It is a family trait, and one that requires a little introspection and acknowledgement that we all make mistakes and we all are learning.

I so wanted this to be true, I lived it every day as if it were true.  I gave it my whole heart and my life.  Like the blessing I gave my mother, there was never any real power there, it was a haven for a lost boy, something to believe in when there was nothing else.

When I read it I find it hard not to chuckle and laugh at my devotion.  Who was that kid, so full of his own shit?

If I had the priesthood power back then, I should have healed my mom.  Really!  What the fuck was I thinking?  Here under my hands was my mother.  She was in pain.  She had recently married Gary Mariani and her back pain was real.  Yet the spirit led me.  It is hard not to look at this and how hopeful I was.  I desperately wanted this to be true.

Tracing My Priesthood to Jesus Christ

When I was set apart as a Missionary, I had already been ordained as an Elder and I held the Melchizedek Priesthood.  I had the power of God and my Priesthood authority could be traced back to Jesus Christ in the following manner:

I, William Dale Sawyer, was ordained by Donald L. Vickers, who was ordained a High Priest in 1969 by Richard L. Warner, who was ordained a high Priest and Bishop by Richard L. Evans in 1959, who was ordained by the Apostle David O. McKay in 1953, who was ordained by Joseph F. Smith (Prophet of God) in 1906, who was ordained by Brigham Young (Mormon Prophet), who was ordained in 1835 under the hands of the Three Witnesses: Oliver Cowdry, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris.

The three witnesses were called by God to choose the Twelve apostles and on February 14, 1835 those men were blessed by the laying on of the hands of the Presidency (Joesph Smith, Jr., Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams.

Joseph Smith, Jr., and Olver Cowdry received the Melchizedek Priesthood in 1829 under the hands of Peter James and John, from the Bible, who appeared to Joseph Smith and the other two witnesses.

Peter, James, and John, the apostles from the Bible were ordained were ordained by The Lord Jesus Christ, see John 15:16.

I literally believed that I held the Priesthood of God.  Can you imagine how heady that was to a guy who spent his entire life without any personal power?  I had God on my side.   God was going to take the gay away, He was going to make me straight.  I even had the Priesthood of God.  No other church on Earth had that Priesthood, and that is what I had been taught.

You know, going from being ostracized to holding the power of God and a room full of friends who had supported me, I was feeling like my life was exploding in front of me.

I had friends.  I belonged, finally I belonged.  You will never know how intoxicating that was.

Some cultural notes:

1. All Mormons are organized into wards of 250 to 500 members, depending on the level of activity in the ward. You would call a ward a congregation.  Collectively, several wards in an area make up a Stake.  Each Stake has a Stake Center, a larger chapel than a ward chapel, with room for 1 to four congregations and offices for Stake leaders.

2. Mormon Missionaries are set apart prior to leaving.  Once you are set apart as a Missionary of the Lord, Mormons believe that Satan will conspire against you and tempt you during this time, so you are not allowed to be alone because he can’t tempt you if you are being protected by another faithful member.

 

How do you publish your journal, tell your story and protect the guilty? Was anyone really guilty?

Writing a story about your life in a world that is so connected is challenging.  Everyone is going to be able to figure out who everyone else is, once the family structure is in place, especially if you are publishing a journal covering five years of your life.  The journal, 25 years old, is my account of my life at the time.  They are my views and my witness to the events that I was living through.  There is no way to publish this without people figuring out who is who, even though I have changed the names of extended family members.

I have also changed some of the places and relationships in the narrative that follows each entry.  The only names I am using are my parents, those who have died, my children, and my brothers and sisters.  I guess I could change theirs also, but this is a journal and my thoughts as I publish my journal.  So it will be obvious who they are.

There is no way to write this story without humiliating not only myself, but everyone else.  Everyone in life encounters challenges.  Our family encountered some pretty severe challenges, not just me but every female who was sexually molested or beaten and the boys who were tormented.  For the most part, many of us have survived and thrived.  We each survived, for the most part separate from our family in new lives that have very little connection to each other.  Some of the women have been independent and fostered careers, some have married well and raised good families.  Some of the men have spent time in jail, some run their own businesses, and had some great careers in the oil industry.

For the most part my extended family will see that I write about them as mystery relatives.  In some cases their names are not as important as what occurred or the situation I will describe.  I am leaving the last names off in the journal, unless you were my companion when I was serving a mission.  Since I never had sex with any of my companions in the mission field, the worst thing we did was jump a mission car.  There is likely nothing in those stories that is detrimental to anyone’s life.

This is a story about a family that struggled and loved each other, one where hurt was as common as joy.  My family, the one that surrounded my life, was heavily influenced by my mother and her three sisters.  We called them the ‘Houston Girls’.   They were all beautiful women.  They were sisters who were close and competitive.  They each had married some pretty remarkable men.  All of them had homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, good union jobs, great benefits, and a strong family connection with one another.

There was Gladys, Dana, my mother, and Robin.  My favorite Aunt was Gladys, she was the one who first introduced me to horses.  It was after her that my middle name, Dale, also her middle name, that I was named.  My Aunt Gladys, she reigns supreme in my life.  She was my personal Dolly Parton, she is the one who would rescue me from my dad for weeks at a time when I was a kid.  She would take me and Nora to the beach and to the zoo.  Nora was my cousin, her daughter.  She was the second prettiest girl in the family, the first was my sister.  Gladys had four children and four or five husbands.  In my family we go through men.  I was taught well!

My Aunt Dana was the rich aunt.  She was glamorous and owned a pet store with her husband Robert.  She lived in the fanciest house I had ever seen, and she was the envy of her sisters.  Aunt Dana jetted off to extravagant vacations with her husband Robert.  It was my Uncle Robert who taught me how to tie my shoes.  My Uncle Robert and Aunt Dana were the first to divorce, and when their Camelot ended I cried for days.  My Aunt Dana also had four children, two husbands that I know of and untold life in lovers.  She always had the best taste in men, and she looked fantastic with each of them.

My mother was the prettiest of the ‘Houston Girls’.  She was stunning when she was young, you can see it in her to this day.  She has retained so much of her beauty.  My mom’s beauty was casual and natural when she was young.  Men were always flirting with her.  My mother has always been trusted by others, always accepted people just as they were.  When she was young, she was the life of the party, and she hosted so many.  My mother has a string of marriages to men who were mostly a letdown, until she met Walter.  He is a man of faith and a good life companion for her.  My mother had four marriages and four children.

My Aunt Robin, she was the quite aunt with the Catholic husband.  My Uncle Donald had a dry humor and was always telling a story or making us his famous burritos.  Aunt Robin was perhaps the most modern woman and cool to me because she was still the baby in the family.  Even when I was young, she was the baby. She was pretty with blonde hair and blue eyes and I remember her apartment  and then her home being more modern 1970’s decor.  I never really knew her as well as I knew the rest of my aunts.  She was married one time to Donald and they had three children.  The youngest two I barely know, and the oldest was princess.

All the girls in our family, my sister and all of my female cousins, inherited the beauty of their moms.  When I look back at those years, they were the Camelot years for the Houston Girls, life was pretty stable.  These girls girls had achieved the American Dream, and all of us as their children were doted on and adored.  I know that I am going to write some pretty dark stuff, but it was not dark every day.  Sometimes I think I can trace the destruction of my family to Reaganomics.  I think my family is afraid that I’ll spill the beans on every single issue.  That will not happen.  I want people to see that there was something magical about these people.  My parents and my mom’s sisters’ families were really fun.

We spent every long weekend, every holiday outing, every vacation, together with my mother’s sisters, their husbands, and my cousins during those Camelot years.  There were nights my dad would wake us from a dead sleep to sneak us out to toilet paper our aunts’ and uncles’ tents.  They would retaliate by removing the stakes in our tent.  Practical jokes were as common as milk on the dinner table in our family.

I think for the most part, those who have found peace and happiness in new families they created and new lives are just to scarred to be a part of a connected family.  I know that I will never see my cousins or aunts or uncles again.  The only relative I am in contact with is my mom, weekly, and my brother.  I decided a long time ago that there is nothing for me in my past.  Those people who I spent so many years with are no longer part of my life and I am not a part of their life.  I am OK with that and they are OK with the separation, or we would all be in each other’s lives.

I am changing all the names of the extended family members and the names of people of people that I write about whose lives may be ruined.  I also changed some of the places and relationships.  My cousins have all figured out how to live their lives.

There are some names I am fully OK with using, the guys who punched me in the face, the guys who bullied me and my close family members. I can change their names, but what would be the point. It does not take a brain surgeon to figure this out.

Unfortunately my sister and I don’t speak, that was her decision and I am more than happy to abide by it.  But I cannot take her out of the story of my life.  She is my sister, after all, and her name is written in my journal like all of my family members’ names are.  There are no laws broken by publishing a journal or a life story.  Of course my perceptions, my memories, and my words may be different from accounts that others tell.  We all lived this independently.

Frankly, I am surprised that members of my family are so ‘freaked’ out about this.  My mother, her sisters, and their mother all appeared on the Jerry Springer Show and aired the incest that occurred in our family in front of five million people.

There is no easy way to write a story of your life without people figuring out who they are.  We are all frail and we all falter in life.  I hold no judgement or hatred towards those I write about, and I know that they were likely as scarred as I was.  We should never be embarrassed about our less than stellar moments in life.  We all have moments that are pretty primitive and primal when dealing with emotions of love, anger, and betrayal.  We have all hurt people in our lives, it is just part of being human.

I have always thought that I should write this story.  There was a boy in 1983, named Bobby Griffith, a contemporary peer of mine who lived in Walnut Creek.  We did not no each other.  He was gay and threw himself from a bridge the same year I joined the Mormon Church.  His mother wrote a story that saved my life!

COMING OUT…..

The year I came out, my brother had died many months prior.  I was married and having an affair with a 19 year-old race car driver.  I was laying in bed one night, living a double life as a Mormon husband and gay man.  My brother’s death was sudden and unexpected.  I laid there in torment night after night, looking at my life and the shambles it was in.  I was miserable and unhappy.  I had figured out that there was no God a long time ago, but I was willing to sacrifice my own life for my family’s life.  That is what I told myself, but the constant sneaking to be with Lars (name change) was taking its toll.  It was July of 1999.  I laid in bed night after night thinking about how quickly my brother’s life ended and there was no way I wanted to end my life in a church I stopped believing in a long time prior.

Leaving meant losing everything and everyone I had built in my new Mormon life.  It meant losing my children.  I had tried to stay, but I had stopped believing in the Mormon faith six years earlier.  I had been a Mormon for 17 years of my adult life.  I had friendships and family, and I belonged.  They never hit me or hurt me, and everything I achieved I achieved with the help of the Mormon Church.

The Mormons taught me boundaries that exist within family relationships; boundaries that our family with its history of incest and domestic violence had failed to adequately communicate.  They showed me a better way to live, one that not only included church, but a strong focus on getting an education.  I did the work.  I showed up and was willing to belong, and they welcomed me.

Laying there I began to wish there was a door that I could walk through to end this double life.  It dawned me then that I was depressed and suicidal.  If a client started talking to me about a door to walk through to make all their problems go away, I would start assessing them for suicide thoughts.

The next day I was at my doctor’s and I told him where I was and how depressed I was.  He got me on an anti-depressant and I started to put my life in order so that I could leave.

That decision to leave had taken five years.  That summer it all came to a head and I asked my wife, Shelly, to get a job.  We had always struggled financially and we were both bad at managing money, mostly because we had so little.  It was difficult to take four children and a stay at home housewife through two undergraduate degrees and a masters degree, but we had done it and we were at the best place we had ever been in a lot of ways.  But if I were to leave, she needed to be working.

Mormon women, like Shelly, had been raised that it is a man’s job to earn a living and the Lord will provide.  She had simply refused to work.  She worked when we first got married, she was the main bread winner.  As soon I was earning enough she quit, stayed home and never went back.  It had been a constant source of struggle between us.

The church has softened its stand from those years, but I needed Shelly to understand that she had to get a job.  So I told her in July that if she was not employed by August, I would be divorcing her.  With 33% of my income she would need to find a job to keep a roof over their heads.  I know it sounds cold and calculating, but I was working a plan.  I figured with her working full time plus my 33%, she would have an income a little larger than I had by myself.  It would not be ideal, but she could manage.  It was either walk through one door or the other.  I could no longer live as a gay man in a Mormon household.

Shelly found a medical equipment job that month.  Felicity, our youngest, was was not going to enter school until the following year, so my plan was to leave in one year.  I did not make it.  What happened after that for the most part was kept from me; we were in a bitter custody case and Shelly was not sharing the extent to which she and the kids were suffering.

The battle for our children is a very heroic story; we both compromised our morals in that fight and all of us were extremely damaged. Shelly is still a Mormon, the kids have found their own path away from the Mormon Church.

Looking back at the battle for our kids, I am glad that Michelle and I figured it out together without judges and that we just live by what we agreed to.  It is hard to put into words the way I feel towards Michelle for raising our kids.  She worked her ass for those kids and I simply wrote checks and showed the kids the world.  I got off easy.

In the big battles, it looks like I won.  They all left the church and are not active members, but in the battle for their hearts, Shelly won as she should.  Our kids are all fiercely loyal to their mother and they are very protective of her.  She spent hours taking kids to sports, dance, music lessons, tutors, and of course, to church.

She was with them when they were sick, when their hearts were broken, when they came home from school and when they left.  She made thousands of dinners, wrapped presents, baked birthday cakes, sewed dresses and costumes and got them through school.

I got a get out of jail free card and I was in no place to be a dad during those years.  It would have been so much easier for both of us had my gayness not been an issue for the courts or the Mormon Church, or had we simply gotten divorced in Reno, NV where the judges are blind to the gay issue.  However, Carson City, Nevada and Judge Douglass were quite homophobic!

 

January 8, 1984 to January 11, 1984: Praying the Gay Away……If anyone can pray the gay away, I can, stand back I armed and Mormon!

January 8, 1984

I am not sure if I am going to fully enjoy living here because I really don’t have a friendly relationship with my grandparents. I love them but I don’t know them. I will strive to be an example to them and live the gospel to its fullest.

My Goals are

1. to write in my journal daily

2. pray two times a day

3. read the scriptures

4. stay worthy

5. pay tithing ($4.50 tithing owed)

January 9, 1984

Today I registered at Mount Sac (Mount San Antonio Junior College) I think things are going to work out down here. I am nervous but I can manage because I have the Gospel to help keep things in order. I need to get my car registered and pay my warrant in Livermore. I need to get these things in order. I WILL.  I also went job hunting today and will go again tomorrow the Lord will help me if I keep my faith. I like listening to Anne Murray, she has a good voice.

January 19, 1984

The Lord promises us he will provide if we search diligently. Well I got a job. I will be working at the Good earth. It’s a restaurant in Brea. I will making $3.75 an hour. It is less than what I was used to making but it’s a job. They want me to work Sundays. I know it is wrong but it’s money. Did you see what I just wrote? I am breaking one of the Lords commandments over greed. I have to work to survive. So I will continue to look for another job while I work there. I love the Lord Jesus and Heavenly Father. I hope he can understand me.

I called Elder Green on the phone.

January 11, 1984

11:05 AM I just prayed to Heavenly Father. I know that through prayer I will be able to gain a better communication with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. The spirit of warmth takes over my body and relaxes me. I will start praying more often.

Later: The Sister Missionaries came over today. They met my grandparents. I really think my grandparents enjoyed talking to them. They are coming over next Wed. at 2:00 PM. They might teach a discussion.

I got a call from my dad. I have not put it in my journal about their divorce. My mom is living with her boyfriend. It is sort of funny them getting a divorce. I know that they don’t get along, but I also know they let materialistic desires get in the way of their marriage. I will just try to learn from their mistakes. Divorce is wrong the Lord wants us married to enter into his kingdom. I know the values of the Melchizedect Priesthood and the powers it has on the earth in the family unit. I can see my parents mistakes. The Lord will help me avoid them. The Church is true.

January 11, 1984 Later that day….

To My sons and grandsons,

If there is one thing that the advesary works on (it’s) me. It is sex. Girls are beautiful. They allure men usually just for a good time. Stay away from non-member girls they have different backgrounds and looser morals. I am a convert and do know how troublesome woman are, hold to your testimony and let the Lord guide you in your decisions.

My Thoughts:

When I read this, I think about those Southern California days and the fun and excitement.  I remember living so close to the ocean and having new friends who accepted me, who did not ever address my gay problem.  I had no history of being the town faggot with my new friends, and I am barely mentioning them and the fun we had.  I was taking classes at the Institute of Religion and several general education courses at Mount San Antonio Junior College.  It seems like I am leaving off so many details of the richness of that time.

It was a fresh and new time for me.  I had escaped everything that Northern California had meant to me, for good and bad, to the smog-filled air of the Los Angeles Metro.  I was attending a new church, had new friends, and was enrolled in the local general college while I was preparing to go on a mission.  I had a job and I moved in with my grandparents.

We knew our grandparents from afar and life with them was magical.  It was always short in time and fabulous in entertainment.  We would spend two weeks every summer with them.  First Darryl and I would go, and when we got home Duane and Deidre would fly down.  My grandparents would spend the next two weeks taking us to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Magic Mountain.  My grandmother Sawyer was a grand woman with a flair for fashion and design.  She would speed us down the Coast Highway to San Diego Zoo in her Alpha Romeo with the top down and a scarf holding her head.

My grandfather Garland Sawyer married his bride Vida Vann when they were both older than the times dictated.  They had moved to Southern California shortly after I was born.  They were fancy compared to my mother’s family.  They were educated and my grandfather was employed in the oil industry prior to retiring.  He worked and helped build the oil industry in the Middle East.  He was a frequent flyer, had a secretary and was always traveling around the world.  My grandmother went to school and became a teacher. They did not marry until she was in her early 30’s.

When I say in my journal that I did not know them, I really did not know them.  We spent holidays and summer vacations with them. They had lived all over the country for my grandfather’s work and they had settled in Southern California.  They had been to London, Hawaii, Israel, Egypt, and on and on.  My grandparents were grand.  They were larger than life and they lived lives of travel and excitement.  Whenever they were on a trip we waited for them to bring us trinkets from the places they went.

Most of what I learned about them I learned while I lived there and went to school.

Boy, was I a little focused on the church in my journal.  It’s like it is mostly about how I fit the gospel in my life or struggled with it.  The tribute to my sons and grandsons and my goal to stay worthy indicate how often I was struggling with my sexuality.  The summer before I joined the Mormon Church I was quite sexually active.  A close girlfriend and I had a bet to see who could sleep with the most people.  She won with over 30 guys bedded, and I came in with a whopping 19 girls in one summer.  Of course I did not include the guys I had been fooling around with.

One of these guys and I had actually fallen in love with each other despite the girls on our arms.  We were on a sledding family trip my junior year of high school, and he and I were bunking alone together.  We were alone in the same room, in the same bed, in our underwear.  It wasn’t long before we were naked and touching each other and trading blow jobs.  That had mostly been my sexual experience with guys up to that point, but this was different.  We reached out to each other and we kissed and hugged. Our touch was tender and sensitive.  We made love and we both knew it.

Our families were close, not the type of closeness that develops from actually knowing each other, but our families had so many families in common that we ended up at the same family events and employer parties.  Though they lived in a different city, they were also active in 4-H and Future Farmers of America.  Our families’ paths crossed often.

As soon as we were alone, we would go off and spend hours alone hiking, smoking, drinking, talking and making love.  It was love, an unspoken love.  We saw each other in San Ramon several years after we were both married.  His parents had a graduation party for a younger son.  While our wives were talking in the kitchen, we went out to the garage and he cried as he told me how much he missed me.  He was living in Washington state.  There was a party going on in the backyard and we were alone.  I was so wrapped up in my religion and wanting to be good, as he told me of his life.  He had robbed a liquor store and had several warrants out for his arrest in California.  He was living  in a mobile home park with his wife and two kids.  Their lives were pretty desperate.  My heart reached out to him and I held him.  He held me back.  He was just an inch shorter than me, but in that moment I towered over him.

Not because I was tall, but to him I had rid myself of that evil we both shared.  I was married in the Mormon Temple, working as a pharmaceutical sales representative, driving a company car with a two kids and a third on the way.  He was broken, sad, and lost.  I was holding him as I had so many years ago, I brushed his deep black hair to the side and behind his ears and then it happened.  Our eyes met in that way that we both knew was beyond our control.  He was in my arms, I lowered my head to his and kissed him.  It filled me with sheer excitement and terror.  That kiss lasted just long enough.  I stammered, “I’m sorry”.  I stepped back and looked at him.  What had I done?  I thought.  Then I heard his words, “Dale, I love you”.  I told him I had to go, and left the garage.  I gathered my wife and kids and we left.

There was a longing in that kiss and there was the shocking truth.  This constant craving from men was never going to go away.  I stood there soiled in the eyes of God, not just in my thoughts but in my actions.  How could I face my next Temple interview, how could I face my wife and kids, what had I done.  I was trembling and shaking.

I never saw him again.  He died addicted to meth and HIV positive at home with his wife and kids.  His youngest sister had married a guy in our class and at our 20 year reunion she shared his story with me .  I used to fantasize about him often.  Instead of running that day from him, we would run away together.  It was a theme that developed the longer I was Mormon.

The nights you pray in vain to God to remove the most beautiful part of who you are, are nights spent in vain.  I spent 17 years of my adult life praying for the best part of me to go.  Prayers that went unanswered, no matter how hard I prayed.  I was still gay.  What made me this evil?  Why me?  Why do I have to be this way?  I would read the scriptures, write in my journal, bare my testimony, go to church with my wife and kids.  I was doing everything.  Look at what my life could have been, it could have been.

I was on a path to wild nights and dangerous drug filled parties, group sex, and guns.  One night, a guy I met in Hayward through a girl I was dating did a three-way.  After we finished, we walked out into the party and a gun was pulled and pointed directly at the guy I had just traded fucks with, and his girlfriend.  He had just gotten out of prison and there was a skirmish.  No one was shot, but I had pushed the limits in the bedroom with him just moments before.  You know, asking the dude to stroke my balls while I drilled her, to pulling his cock out of her mouth and into mine.  There was no other sex play between us, but the sight of the gun pointing at him after I had just sucked his cock left me freaked out.

My life was heading to where his life ended and that kiss, that embrace, brought all that to my doorstep.  All the secret masturbatory sessions and business trips spent jacking off to gay porn in hotel rooms, all of it came flooding back to me.  I ran.  My wife, my kids, my middle class life, all shiny and clean were waiting for me.  It was only a kiss.  No one ever needs to know about a kiss.  I kiss my kids all the time.  He was an old friend in a bad place, we simply shared a moment of tenderness.  The years of fighting were taking a toll and I was slipping.  I knew I was.  I was never going to win this fight.