The Meaning Of All Things

Sometimes I feel like my life is an endless string of coming out experiences. Except today it wasn't coming out as a mutant. Today I confessed to my writing group that I'm not sure whether I believe in the church anymore. In a lot of ways this was more nerve-wracking than the last time. It's one thing to tell my Mormon friends that I have this challenge I have to deal with but at my core I'm still one of them; it's quite another to say, "You know, I'm not sure I even belong here anymore."

Tara responded the way she responds to everything: She gave me a big hug. "Just do what you feel is right, Ben. Heavenly Father will guide you, and we'll be here for you."

Galadriel responded in typical Galadriel fashion--with a joke. "So you're going apostate, huh? Maybe I'll join you one day. But not today. If I apostatize now, I can't go to Priesthood Session on Saturday and ask to be let in."

"I'm pretty sure that is apostatizing," I joked back.

Chenry didn't say much at first. I tried not to read too much into his silence, because I know from previous experience that he typically takes time to think before deciding how he feels about something. Sure enough, after writing group was done, he caught up to me on my way to class. "How long have you been doubting?" he asked.

"I dunno. I can't put my finger on any specific moment when I began to doubt. It just happened kind of gradually. Or rather, it's happening gradually. I'm not done--I haven't made any decisions yet."

"Good." He tugged on his backpack straps. "Listen, there's a lot I don't know. I don't know why God created mutants, or what he intends for you to do with your powers. I don't know why he ever thought polygamy was a good idea. I don't know why Pluto isn't a planet anymore, or for that matter why Pluto can't talk but Goofy can."

I grinned.

Chenry stopped walking and looked up at the sky. "But I know there is a God, and he loves his children. And I know this is his church. It's not perfect, because he uses imperfect people to run it, but it's his nonetheless. So I'm glad to hear you haven't made any decisions yet. Will you do something for me?"

"Sure."

"Watch conference this weekend. Pray, fast, all that stuff. But more than anything, listen with an open heart. It's not every day you get to hear a prophet speak. You'll hear what you need to hear."

"Will do, my friend," I said with a smile. This was an easy promise to make, since I'd been planning on it anyway.

Chenry gave me a quick, awkward hug, then ran off to a literature class on the other side of campus. And thus I came out to FOX for a second time.

Workshop

Remember when I was thinking of bringing my essay about being a Mormon mutant to my creative writing class at BYU? That plan was put on hold as I worked through anxiety about airing my dirty laundry in public, and then my life exploded and I completely forgot about the essay. Until this morning, that is.

At our weekly meeting of FOX, Tara asked whether I'd ever had the essay workshopped in a creative writing class. I said no, and Galadriel called me a wimp. Even Chenry, who had once expressed reservations about the whole thing, was encouraging me to do it. "You might as well," Tara said, "now that you're using your real name on your blog." It's a valid point, but I doubt any of my classmates read the blog.

As it happens, my turn to be workshopped is this Thursday. I already had a short story up on Google Drive, ready to share with the class, but I can always use that next time. So just now I made a few revisions to my essay, uploaded it, and shared it with everyone in my class.

*Deep breath.*

I'll let you know how the workshop goes on Thursday.

Foxing Back Up

As part of my resolution to Go On With Life, I met with FOX again this morning after taking a break for a few weeks. It was fun to meet with my friends and talk about writing. Tara is all settled into her interim office in the JKB while the Wilk is being rebuilt, Galadriel and I shared a few knowing smiles about our little secret, and Chenry is treating me like a normal person again. He just freaked out a little when I used my power on him, but he's had plenty of time to get over it since. I wouldn't say FOX is the same as it was pre-Explosion, but we're at a good place again.

I also think I'm ready to start attending UUPP again. I've been avoiding it since the group is so closely linked with She Who Shall Not Be Named, but I'm going to give it a try tonight. Here's hoping it goes well!

Wombat Woman Lives!

Galadriel appeared by my bedside last night. Which sounds like something that belongs in Lord of the Rings, but this was no elf queen; it was my friend and writing group mate, who I thought had been killed in yesterday's explosion at the Wilk. Except she was very much alive, albeit scratched up and dirty. Nonetheless, the sight of my good friend, smiling down at me in my hospital bed, was more beautiful to me than Cate Blanchett could ever be.

"You're alive!" I said, because I'm really good at stating the obvious. "How'd you get out?"

She grinned mischievously. "Can you keep a secret?"

I nodded. "You've kept mine."

"The ceiling was about to fall on me, so I went the only way I could--down. I burrowed into the earth below the Wilkinson Center."

This is when I began to question whether I was actually awake.

Sensing my disbelief, Galadriel playfully backhanded me in the arm. "What, you live in a world with a man who climbs walls, a woman who can make herself invisible, and a thawed-out super-soldier from World War II, not to mention one where you can fly, and you can't believe that one of your friends has abilities beyond those of the average human?"

My jaw dropped. "You're a mutant too?"

Galadriel laughed. "No. Being a mutant isn't the only way to have superpowers. It's a long, boring story, involving my dad's lab at BYU, an experiment gone awry, and a radioactive wombat. But don't go telling everyone. People get weird about this kind of thing." (I figure it's okay for me to mention it here, since I'm not using her real name.)

She gave me a hug, then headed home to clean up. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't stop thinking about Galadriel's revelation. I'd always known that there were people like Spider-Man, Captain America, and the Fantastic Four, who have powers but aren't mutants, but I hadn't really thought about it before. Are their powers just as offensive to God as mutant powers are? I suppose so, since it's just another form of counterfeit, distracting us from the true power of the priesthood. But I can't imagine God faults Galadriel for using her power to save herself, anymore than he faults me for using mine to save me, Chenry, and Tara. Or Jan for using hers.

Just as soon as the doctor gives me a clean bill of health, I'm out of here. I'll head over to Marsha's for Christmas day festivities, as planned, but not before I stop by Jan's place. If I can track her down, my Christmas will be complete.

Explosion

I'm writing this post from a hospital bed. I'm not injured, though--at least not physically. The doctors are insisting I spend the night here, just to be safe. I'm going along with their request only because I don't know what else to do. My life has gone to hell.

This morning, Jan came with me to campus when I went to meet with my writing group. She loves to be on campus when it's empty, and just wander around in the silence. So I went to Tara's office in the Wilk, and Jan wandered.

Tara had four chairs set up in a circle in front of her desk, as usual. I sat next to her, Chenry sat next to me, and Galadriel sat across from me when she arrived fifteen minutes late. We started out discussing the latest chapter of Chenry's novel about quirky BYU students with odd names (I have pseudonymed him Chenry in honor of his propensity to come up with eccentric character names), and then we moved on to Galadriel's feminist poem about menstruation.

Tara was laughing at some provocative joke Galadriel had made when an enormous boom shook the building, and the glass separating Tara's office from the hallway shattered. I have a hard time reconstructing exactly what happened next, but I remember Tara screaming for us to get out of there, and I remember running, and I remember suddenly realizing that there was no floor beneath my feet. I honestly don't know whether the floor caved in beneath us or I just started flying for no good reason, but I do know that I instinctively grabbed the two people nearest me, who happened to be Tara and Chenry, and I took them with me as I flew out of the crumbling building. As we soared free of the destruction, I realized my clothes were on fire and my skin was burning, and the thought that came to mind, of all things, was that I must look like the Human Torch.

We crash-landed in the snow, which felt soothing as it melted against my red and blistered skin. I tried to get up, but my shoulder screamed with pain and I couldn't feel my legs. Then I started to panic. Had I lost my legs in the explosion? Had I injured my spine when I crashed? The freezing wetness of the melted snow overwhelmed me and my body started shaking uncontrollably. I heard sirens, then I saw Jan's face, crying, and then I blacked out.

And then I woke up here at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, without a scratch. My shoulder is fine, my legs are still attached and they work perfectly, and my skin is smooth and pasty white as the day I was born. Even my appendectomy scar seems to have disappeared. I'd be tempted to say that what happened this morning was all a nightmare, except that the nurses assure me that I was in fact found unconscious, dressed in tattered clothes in a puddle on the grass after an explosion demolished half of the Wilkinson Center. The police are still trying to figure out what caused the explosion--it could have been something as innocent as a ruptured gas line, but they suspect arson.

Chenry and Tara are recovering from the trauma in rooms nearby. Just like me, they're both in perfect physical condition, although traumatized. Tara hugged me and cried for a good five minutes. Chenry jumped when I came into his room, then asked me to leave. He says he needs some time to process what happened before he can handle being around me. Whatever that means. Firefighters are still searching through the rubble but haven't found Galadriel. I'm praying for her but not feeling very hopeful. Marsha was here when I came to, but I insisted that she go home to be with her kids on Christmas Eve.

I've tried calling Jan several times now; her phone goes straight to voice mail. I'd try texting, but my cell phone was destroyed in the fire. I still don't know exactly what happened this morning, but I know I saw her before blacking out. The words I heard her saying as tears came streaming down her cheeks repeat over and over in my head: "Please, X. Please don't make me do it. Don't make me use my power."

Christmas

I was feeling bummed about not having money to fly home for Christmas, but it's turning out to be a blessing in disguise.

First, I got to be in Utah for this historic weekend with all the mutant marriage celebrations going on--Jan and I drove up to Salt Lake again tonight for a big rally at the City & County Building, which was a lot of fun. A mutant couple got married at the rally and others were using their powers openly. Some made fireworks with their hands, others danced in the air, and shape-shifters did impersonations of public figures. I'm not going apostate or anything--all that stuff's not for me--but I was happy to see mutants so comfortable just being themselves in public.

Second, I get to hang out with FOX tomorrow. Chenry, Tara, and Galadriel are all local, so we're going to have our usual Tuesday morning meeting. I doubt anyone else will be on campus, but we can still meet in Tara's office. My writing group is among my favorite people in the world, and it's really great to be around non-mutants who know all about me but love me anyway. When we were talking about whether or not to meet tomorrow, Galadriel joked, "Aren't you going to be busy getting mutant-married?" I told her maybe she should go marry one of her many mutant friends.

Third, I get to spend Christmas with Marsha and her family. I love playing around with her kids, and the truth is I'm closer to Marsha now than I am to my mom. I'm headed over to their place tomorrow night so that the kids can wake me up bright and early on Christmas morning.

Finally, being in Utah means I get to spend Christmas with Jan. She had a falling out with her father over the mutant thing a few years back, and she isn't exactly welcome at home anymore. I think it's sad, but she says she's over it by now. Still, I'm glad she doesn't have to spend the holidays alone. And I'm even gladder that I'm the lucky guy she's going to grace with her company. Marsha has invited Jan to Christmas with us, so Jan will sleep in my niece's room while I bunk with the boys.

All in all, I'm thinking this just may end up being the best Christmas ever.

Dirty Laundry

Got an email from Chenry today. He apologized for missing our writing group meeting the other day, especially since he knows I could easily read more into his absence than he intended. He says he just had to work late at his overnight warehouse stocking job (this is what I have to look forward to as an English major). He admits he was surprised to read my essay about being a Mormon mutant, and says his first reaction was to think of General Conference talks about not airing one's dirty laundry in public. After reading my essay and thinking about it for a couple of days, though, he says he understands why I want to go public, and he recognizes that talking about being a mutant--which isn't a sin in and of itself--isn't the same as talking about past transgressions.

I'm relieved that he doesn't seem weirded out by the whole thing and that he's obviously trying to understand things from my perspective and to help. I'm also worried that his initial reaction might have been right. Between this blog and the essay and UUPP, am I being a little too careless about the private details of my life I share with anyone who wants to listen? No, being a mutant isn't a sin, but I have talked here about a couple of times I slipped up and did things I shouldn't have. Will people judge all mutants by my imperfections? Am I getting as close to the edge as I can without jumping, rather than keeping a safe distance? I mean, if I were a porn addict, would it be wise of me to run around telling everyone about how much I want to look at porn, and talk about the websites I'm not going to?

Why can't anything be simple?

What Does The Fox Say?

You may not guess it from the crap I spew forth on this blog, but I'm actually an aspiring author. I've taken just about every creative writing course in the English department, I'm applying to BYU's creative writing MFA program, and I'm part of a writing critique group. It's a small group--just me, a married guy who graduated last year (let's call him Chenry), a girl I worked with at the CougarEat my freshman year (Galadriel), and a woman I met at a writers' conference who works in the Wilk (Tara). For the sake of preserving my anonymity (which I'm starting to question, as you'll see below), I'll call this group FOX: Friends Of X. We meet on Tuesday mornings at Tara's office in the Wilk.

Photo credit: http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/speciesinfo_fox.htm

I've been toying with the idea of expanding my first blog post into a personal essay that I could publish. If you're a Mormon then you've probably seen the anonymous "I struggle with unnatural power proclivity" articles in the Ensign. You know, the ones where the accompanying image is a man hidden in the shadows, angsting over his Very Big Problem. Yeah, that's not what I want to do. I want to publish an essay that is faithful and uplifting, but at the same time direct and honest about what it's like to be a Latter-day Mutant.

And I want to publish it under my real name.

The thought is terrifying, of course, so Jan suggested I test it first with my writing group. So this weekend I threw something together (it was easy because the essay was mostly composed in my head already), shared it with my Foxes on Google Docs, and this morning we discussed it. Chenry didn't show up today, which is a little unnerving (have I lost another friend?), but it went well with the other two. At first there was a bit of nervous laughter as everyone tried to gauge whether this was for real or I was just messing with them. Once we established that the essay was indeed non-fiction, Tara crossed the room to give me a hug. Galadriel joked about how she must be some kind of mutant magnet because I'm like the tenth of her friends to come out to her. And then we proceeded to critique each other's writing, as usual. No big deal.

So I passed the first test. Next I'm thinking of bringing the essay to my creative writing class. It's technically not against BYU policy to be a mutant, so long as I don't use my power, so I don't think I'd get in trouble with the Honor Code Office. And these are English majors we're talking about, who tend to be a little more open-minded than other BYU students. But still. I'm not sure I'm ready to open myself up that much. What do you think? Should I do it?

(...aaaand I'm going to be late to the UUPP meeting.)