I feed him the same innocuous details: I was born in Palo Alto. My father is a cardiac surgeon. My mother is a programmer. She feels guilty that she’s not around more, but mostly I’m intensely proud of her. My favorite band is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, but I’m in no way musical.
We don’t rehash the question of my sexuality, but I feel its presence like a third person in the room, sitting in the dark corner, eavesdropping on our conversation.
Silence ticks between us as we watch the icy gray sidewalk just below the window slowly become blanketed in white. Steam rises off the surface of a vent at the curb, and with this weird, frantic lurch of my heart, I want to know more about him. Who he’s loved, what he hates, whether it’s even possible he’s into guys.
“You haven’t asked me about the book,” he says finally.
He means his book.
“Oh—crap—I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“It’s not rude.” He faces me and grins like we’re in on this same, exasperating secret. “It’s just that everyone does.”
“I think it’s pretty cool.” I shove my hands in my pockets and stretch back in my chair. “I mean, obviously, it’s amazing. Imagine, your book will be here, in this library.”
He seems surprised by this. “Maybe.”
“I bet you’re tired of talking about it.”
“A little.” He shrugs, smiling over at me. That smile tells me he likes that I haven’t asked him about it, that I’m not here for secondhand, small-town fame. “It’s added some complication, but it’s hard to complain because I realize how blessed I am.”
“Sure, of course.”
“I’ve always wondered what it’s like to live here when you aren’t raised in the church,” he says, changing the subject. “You were fifteen when you moved?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it hard?”
I take a second to figure out how to answer this. Sebastian knows something about me that no one else knows, and it makes me unsure of my steps. He seems nice, but no matter how nice you are, information is power. “Provo can be suffocating.”
Sebastian nods and then leans forward to get a better view out the window. “I know the church feels like it’s everywhere. It does for me, too. It seems like it seeps into every detail of my life.”
“I bet.”
“I can see how it might feel suffocating from the outside, but it does a lot of good, too.” He looks over at me, and with dawning horror I see this study session for what it is. I understand why he agreed to come. He’s recruiting me. He knows about me now, and it’s giving him even more reason to reach out, to save me. He’s not recruiting me to the oiled-up Gay Bliss Club of Northern Utah, but to the LDS Church.
“I know it does good,” I say carefully. “My parents are . . . familiar with the church. It’s hard to live here and not see both the good and the bad of what it does.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian says vaguely, not looking at me. “I can see that.”
“Sebastian?”
“Yeah?”
“Just . . . wanted you to know, in case . . .” I stop, wincing as I blink away. “I didn’t ask you to help me so that I could join the church.”
When I look back at him, his eyes are wide in alarm. “What?”
I look to the side again. “I realize maybe I gave you the impression that I wanted to hang out because I questioned something about myself, or wanted to join. I don’t have any questions about who I am. I really like you, but I’m not here to convert.”
Wind whistles past the window outside—it’s chilly this close to the glass—and inside, he studies me, expressionless. “I don’t think you want to join.” His face is pink. From the cold. From the cold. It’s not because of you, Tanner. “I didn’t think that’s why you . . .” He shakes his head. “Don’t worry. I won’t try to sell you on the church. Not after what you shared with me.”
My voice is uncharacteristically timid: “You won’t tell anyone?”
“Of course not,” he answers instantly. He stares down at the floor, jaw working over something unreadable to me. Finally, he digs into his pocket. “I . . . here.”
Almost impulsively, he hands me a small scrap of paper. It’s warm, like it’s been cupped in his hand.
I unroll it, staring down at the ten digits there. His phone number.
He must have written it earlier, maybe even before he left home, tucking it into his pocket to bring to me.
Does he realize this is like handing me a grenade? I could blow everything up with this, most specifically his phone. I’ve never been much of a texter, but my God—the way I feel like I want to track his moves when he’s in the classroom is like having a demon possession. Knowing I could reach out to him anytime is torture.
“I don’t—” he starts, and then looks past me. “You can text me, or call. Whatever. Whenever. To hang out and talk about your outline if you need it.”
My chest is painfully tight.
“Yeah, totally.” I squeeze my eyes closed. It feels like he’s about to bolt, and the need to get the words out makes my insides feel pressurized. “Thanks.”
He stands. “You’re welcome. Anytime.”
“Sebastian?”
“Yeah?”
Our eyes meet, and I can’t believe what I’m about to say. “I definitely want to hang out again.”
His cheeks pop with color. Does he translate this correctly in his head? And what am I even saying? He knows I’m into guys, so he has to know I’m not just talking about the book. Sebastian scans my face, flicking from my forehead, to my mouth, to my chin, to my eyes, and back down to my mouth, before he looks away entirely. “I should probably go.”
I am a tangle of wires; a cacophony of voices shouts out instructions in my head.
Clarify you meant only studying!
Bring up the book!
Apologize!
Double down and tell him you have feelings!
But I only nod, watching him smile stiffly, jog toward the stairs, and disappear around a bend of brilliantly polished oak.
I return to my laptop, open a blank document, and spill it all onto the page.
CHAPTER SIX
Here’s my number
Btw it’s Tanenr
Um, that should be Tanner.
I can’t believe I just typo’d my own name.
Haha! This is how I’m typing in your contact info.
From, Sebatsian
(See what I did there)
I grin down at my phone for the next twenty minutes, reading the text exchange again and again. The phone is stuck to my palm; I’m sure my parents are wondering what I’m doing—I can tell by their concerned looks over the dinner table.
“Put your phone down, Tann,” Dad says.
I slide it facedown onto the table. “Sorry.”
“Who are you texting?” Mom asks.
I know they’re not going to like it, but I don’t want to lie. “Sebastian.”
They exchange a look across the table. “The TA?” Mom confirms.
“You can read it.” I hand her the phone. “You could do that anyway, right?”
Reluctantly, she takes it, looking like she expects to see much more than she will. Her face relaxes when she sees the harmless words there.
“This is cute, but, Tanner . . .” She lets the rest of it fall away and looks to my dad for backup. Maybe she isn’t sure how much credibility she’ll have while she’s still wearing her rainbow PRIDE apron.
Dad reaches for the phone, and his face softens when he reads it, but then a cloud crosses through his eyes. “Are you seeing each other?”
Hailey snorts.
“No,” I say, ignoring her. “Jesus, you guys. We’re working together on the project.”
The table falls into a cloying, skeptical silence.
Mom can’t help herself. “Does he know about you?”
“About how I turn into a troll at sunset?” I shake my head. “I don’t think so.
”
“Tanner,” she says gently. “You know what I mean.”
I do. Unfortunately. “Please calm down. It’s not like I have a tail.”
“Honey,” Mom starts, horrified. “You’re deliberately misunderstanding—”
My phone buzzes in front of Dad. He picks it up. “Sebastian again.”
I hold my hand out. “Please?”
He returns it to me, frowning.
I won’t be in class this week.
Just wanted to let you know.
My chest seems to splinter, a fault line splitting straight down the middle, and it battles with the brilliant sun blooming there because Sebastian thought to text me with a heads-up.
Everything okay?
Yeah. I just have a trip to New York.
Are we doing this? Are we casually texting now?
Ooh, fancy.
Haha! I’m sure I’ll look lost the entire time.
When do you leave?
Mom sighs loudly. “Tanner, for the love of God, please stop texting at the table.”
I apologize under my breath and stand, sliding my phone faceup onto the kitchen counter before returning to my chair. Both of my parents have that surly, aggressively quiet thing going on, and a glance at my sister tells me that she’s living her best life watching me get in trouble for once.
Amid the scraping of silverware on plates and the sound of ice clinking in glasses of water, a thick awareness swirls around the table, and the resulting self-consciousness makes my stomach tighten. My parents know I’ve had crushes on guys before, but it’s never been a reality like this. Now there’s a guy, with a name and a phone. We’ve all been so cool about it, but I realize, sitting here at this silent dinner table, that there are layers to their acceptance. Maybe it’s easy for them to be so cool about it when they’ve all but told me I’m not allowed to date any guys in Provo. Am I allowed to have crushes on guys only once I’ve graduated and who my parents select from an acceptable pool of intelligent, progressive, non-LDS males?
Dad clears his throat, a sign that he’s searching for words, and we look at him, hoping he’ll pull this plane up in time. I expect him to say something about the elephant in the room, but instead he lands squarely in the safe zone: “Tell us about your classes.”
Hailey launches into a retelling of the injustice of being a sophomore, how she’s a midget with a top-row locker, how disgusting the girls’ locker room smells, and how globally annoying guys are. Our parents listen with patient smiles before focusing in on the things they actually care about: Mom makes sure she’s being a good friend. Dad mostly cares that she’s busting her ass in academics. I check out halfway through her braggy answer about chemistry. Having my phone ten feet away means that 90 percent of my brain is focused on wondering whether Sebastian has replied and whether I can see him before he goes.
I feel jittery.
To be fair, meals are a peculiar affair anyway. Dad comes from an enormous family of women whose primary satisfaction in life is the care of their husbands and children. Although the same was true in Mom’s LDS household, in Dad’s family it centered on food. The women don’t just prepare meals; they cook. When Bubbe visits, she fills our freezer with months’ worth of brisket and kugel and makes quiet, mostly well-intended observations about how her grandchildren largely survive on sandwiches. Over time she has outgrown her disappointment that Dad didn’t marry a Jewish woman, but she still struggles with Mom’s work hours and our resulting reliance on takeout and packaged food.
And despite her antireligion worldview, Mom was raised in a culture where women are traditionally in the homemaker role too. To her, not packing our lunches every day or joining the PTA is a feminist rallying cry.
Even Aunt Emily struggles sometimes with guilt over not focusing a bit more on the making and keeping of her home. So Mom’s compromise was to let Bubbe teach her how to prepare certain dishes, and she tries to make a huge batch of them every Sunday for us to have throughout the week. It’s a questionable endeavor, but we kids are, if nothing else, sporting about it. Dad is another story: He’s picky about food. Even if he considers himself as liberal as they come, he still has some traditional holdouts. A wife who cooks is one of them.
Mom watches Dad eat, gauging from how fast he shovels it in how good it is. That is to say, the faster he eats, the less he likes it. Tonight Dad barely seems to chew before he’s swallowed. Mom’s normally smiling mouth is turning down at the corners.
Focusing on this dynamic is helping distract me, but only barely.
I look over at my phone. Having left it screen-side up, I can tell a call or text has just come through: The screen is lit. I shovel matzo ball soup in, scalding my mouth, until my bowl is clean, and excuse myself, standing before either of them can protest.
“Tanner,” Dad chides quietly.
“Homework.” I rinse my dish, slotting it into the dishwasher.
He watches me go, giving me a knowing glare for throwing the only excuse at him that he won’t debate.
“It’s your night for dishes,” Hailey calls after me.
“Nope. You owe me because I did bathroom duty last weekend.”
Her eyes communicate the mental bird flip.
“Love you too, hellcat.”
Running up the stairs, I dive into my texts.
My heart spasms, tight and wild. He’s sent me five.
Five.
I leave Wednesday afternoon.
I have meetings with my editor and the publisher on Thursday.
I haven’t met the publisher yet. I’ll admit I’m nervous.
It just occurred to me that you’re probably eating dinner with your family.
Sorry, Tanner.
With frantic fingers, I reply.
No, sry, my parents made me put my phone away.
I’m so happy for u.
I type my next thought and then—with my breath held high and tight in my lungs—I quickly hit send:
I hope u have an amazing trip
but I’m going to miss seeing u in class.
I wait a minute for a reply.
Five.
Ten.
He’s not stupid. He knows I’m bi. He has to know I’m into him.
I distract myself by scrolling through Autumn’s Snapchat: Her slippered feet. A sink full of dishes. A close-up of her grumpy face with the words “current mood” scrawled beneath it. Finally, I close my social media and open my laptop.
I need to know what I’m dealing with here. Growing up in California, I knew Mom’s family was Mormon, but the way she used to talk about it—in the rare moments she even did—made me think they were some weird cult religion. Only once I moved here and lived among them did I register that I knew nothing except the stereotypes. It surprised me to learn that, although other Christian faiths might not agree, Mormons consider themselves to be Christians. Also, a huge portion of their free time is spent performing service—helping others. But other than their no caffeine, no booze, no cursing, and no humping rules, it all still seems like a vague cloud of secret churchiness to me.
As usual, Google helps.
For all my jokes about Jesus jammies, it turns out garments aren’t just a modesty thing; they’re a physical reminder of the covenants they made to God. Also, the word “covenant” is everywhere. In fact, the church seems to have its own language.
Within the LDS Church, the hierarchy is exclusively male. This is one of the things Mom is spot-on about: Women get screwed. Sure, they’re the ones who make babies—according to the church, an integral part of God’s plan—and can serve missions if they choose, but women don’t have a lot of power in the traditional sense. Meaning they can’t hold positions or make decisions that influence official church policy.
The biggest piece on my mind lately—other than the Sebastian/garment question—is the one thing in the world that will make my mom’s blood boil: the LDS Church’s terrible history concerning gays.
The church has since condemned
the practice of conversion therapy, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, or ruin many, many lives. From the bits I’ve gathered from Mom, here’s the basic situation: An LDS individual would come out to their family, who would quickly ship them off somewhere to be “fixed.” This type of therapy involved institutionalization and electroconvulsive shock therapy. Sometimes medication or aversion conditioning, which sounded okay until I realized it meant they would use drugs to make the person nauseated while viewing same-sex erotica. The Internet tells me that more “benign” versions included shame conditioning, or retraining in stereotypical masculine and feminine behaviors, dating therapy, hypnosis, and something called orgasmic reconditioning, which—just no.
When Aunt Emily came out twenty-eight years ago, her parents offered her a choice: conversion therapy or excommunication. Now the Mormon Church’s stance on queer stuff is clear as mud.
According to any church statement you can find on the matter, the only sex that should be happening is between a husband and a wife. Yawn. But surprisingly, the church does recognize a difference between same-sex attraction and what they call homosexual behavior. In essence: guys feeling attracted to other guys = we’ll look the other way. Guys kissing guys = bad.
The funny part is that, after these lines in the sand that basically insist a gay Mormon put their nose down and be unhappy and unfulfilled their entire life in the name of God, most church statements also say that all people are equally beloved children and deserve to be treated with love and respect. They say that families should never, ever exclude or be disrespectful to those who choose a different lifestyle . . . but to always remind those who choose differently of the eternal consequences of their choice.
And, of course, everyone who lives here knows the big hoopla that made the rounds on the news a couple years ago: a change in a handbook that said members in same-sex marriages would be considered apostates (or defectors from the church—thank you, Google), and that children living in those households should be excluded from church activities until they’re old enough to renounce the practice of homosexuality and join.
In summary: love and respect, but only if you’re willing to live by their rules . . . and if not, then exclusion is the only answer.