Bad Mormon, page 13
“Where do you think you’ll go next?” I asked him.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Probably Costa Rica, but HB has the best waves in the world, so I’m in no rush to leave.”
He smiled. I blushed. The vibe was palpable. It’s all happening.
He didn’t hesitate. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
Tomorrow night? I wasn’t ready! We made plans to go to a church singles event in nearby Irvine. It was all so seamless and smooth and grown-up that I began to question it once I got back home with my roommate.
“Do you think he thinks it’s a date date or just a hangout?” I asked her.
“A date date,” she replied flatly. “There’s no question.”
Guys in Huntington Beach were not known for asking girls out on actual dates. Everyone just hung out and hooked up and avoided showing too much interest in any one person. I was turned on by Billy’s savoir faire and chivalry. This was a man who went after what he wanted, and if he wanted me, then I wanted to make sure I didn’t mess it up.
Our first date was fun and flirty, but we kept it friendly and made plans to meet up with our friends the following week when we were both in Salt Lake City. We had our first kiss on November first in Gretchen’s driveway. It was a quick peck on the lips, because his friends were in the car waiting and watching, but it still felt significant. I was into him. He was older, smarter, funnier, and taller than any of the guys I had dated previously. And the chemistry between us was undeniable. He left for Minnesota the next day to promote his latest snowmobiling film, but we talked on the phone every night, and when we were both back in Huntington Beach, we didn’t even bother with the premise of dinner or a date. He came straight over to my apartment, and we made out for hours on the couch in my living room, oblivious to my roommates walking in and out of the adjoining kitchen.
We were falling in love fast. The next morning, I found a little folded note under my windshield wiper asking me out to dinner. We went to the Surf and Sand in Laguna Beach and ate Chilean sea bass while we watched the sunset over the water. On the way home, he called his mom just to check in and say hi. His affection for her was endearing. I had always heard you could tell how a man will treat his wife by the way he treats his mother. He was wooing me, and it was working.
Meanwhile, I was actually working as a tech writer and business analyst for a software company in Tustin, and it was a nine-to-five job with a thirty-minute commute each way. I became an efficient sleeper, thriving on less than four hours a night. I never even noticed a deficit; when I was with Billy, time seemed to stand still. He’d stay at my house until two or three in the morning, then slink home and sleep in.
While I was at work, he would plot and plan cute little dates and excursions. He would buy me flowers and write love notes. He would wait anxiously for me to return home from work so that our adventures together could begin as soon as possible. He was currently self-employed, so he made courting me his nine-to-five, and I loved it.
About six weeks after we started hanging out daily, he surprised me with a trip to Hawaii. His cousins lived in Laie, and he had spent summers living with them and working at the Polynesian Cultural Center adjacent to the BYU Hawaii campus. I had never been to Hawaii, and I couldn’t wait. He greeted me at the airport with a plumeria lei and a red Jeep for our rental car.
We drove straight to Waikiki Beach, where he had booked me my first surf lesson. He held up a towel for me to change into my suit in the parking lot and walked me over to my surf instructor.
“Take good care of her,” he said tenderly, as he sauntered off to catch his own bigger waves.
I paddled out into the Pacific on a surfboard for my private lesson and marveled at the moment. The water looked like liquid silver and felt silky on my skin. My instructor pushed me into a slow-cresting wave and coached me first onto my knees and then into a standing position. I was catching waves and catching feelings.
The next few days were filled with lush hikes, magical waterfalls, and secret coves. Billy knew all the hidden hideaways and tucked-away treasures usually exclusive to locals. We drove the Jeep around the island until we reached the end of the road. We got out and sat down in the sand and started making out.
“I think I’m falling for you,” he said quietly between kisses.
“I think I’ve already fallen,” I replied.
And we both felt it. It was tangible. I want to know what love is. I want you to show me.
I was having the time of my life with who I hoped would be the love of my life. When we got back home to Huntington Beach, we met up with one of his old work friends. During dinner, I heard his friend mention something about the stock price of Billy’s dad’s company. My mind started racing.
“Your family has a public company?” I asked. “Traded on the NASDAQ?” Ticker symbol say what?
This here was a jumbo popcorn with extra butter, Jujubes, Skittles, Milk Duds, and Red Vines kinda movie date. He’s rich, honey. He’s rich.
Billy’s family business was called Nutraceutical, a vitamin and mineral brand worth more than $400 million. It had offices around the globe and employed thousands of people, especially in the state of Utah where it was headquartered. The Gay name was one that had found favor among the Salt Lake City saints and Silicon Valley and had historical weight as well. Mormon Royalty. If you are wealthy, famous, or related to a general authority, you earn the crown, and Billy had all three.
Bill Gay, Billy’s grandfather, was famous for forming the Mormon Mafia that ran Las Vegas and worked for Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire, in the 1970s. He was a diligent servant, waking up early to drive Hughes to the airport or to the Cottontail Ranch. All the while, never once did he expose Hughes. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And the benefits of Bill Gay’s network and net worth were passed down through the generations. When it rains, everyone gets wet.
The tales of Howard Hughes and his Mormon Mafia are many, and they have been recorded in scores of Hughes biographies. Everyone has their own theories about the Hughes–Gay connection, but one fact remains undisputed: Howard Hughes loved Mormons, and he loved Mormons because he loved Bill Gay. Bill Gay was not only an excellent Mormon, but he was also an excellent employee and friend. Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work.
Mormons are comfortable living with secrets. Church members go into temples all over the world and conduct complicated and elaborate rituals that they keep secret from their friends, their children, their employers, even their own spouses. When you get married in the temple, the woman reveals her new temple name to her husband when he takes her through the veil, but he does not ever reveal his name to her.
Mormons are as devout as the men and women in Borough Park or on Bedford Avenue with their yarmulkes, their payos, their wigs to cover their hair. We just hide it from the world. We are zealots on the inside, masquerading as good old-fashioned, “God bless America,” go-with-the-flow soccer moms and dads.
When I started dating Billy, I was in such a love fog that I almost forgot how desperate I was to get married. For the first time in my life, I was falling in love with a man who was an actual candidate. A man who could take me to the temple and be sealed for time and all eternity. He was the goose that would lay gold eggs for Easter. At least one hundred a day. And I happened to cross his path. There was no moral dilemma to wrestle with. No real decision to be made.
When an opportunity like this comes along, you grab it with both hands, kid. You grab it with both hands.
CHAPTER 14 SECURE YOURSELF TO HEAVEN
Billy didn’t seem to have a dark side. He wasn’t a man about his own appetites. He had money but lived frugally, he had status but was humble, he was entitled but he was kind.
The sexual tension surrounding our relationship was so thick it was like walking through sheets of cobwebs. I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t focus, I just wanted to be with Billy. To scratch the itch, to clear our heads. One night, I begged him just to run away and have sex with me. We could travel the world and never look back. But he was unflinching: “If we are going to do this, we’re going to do it the right way.”
When I pushed back, he replied, “Trust me, do it the right way. Once we are married, you’ll be having more sex than all your single friends combined.”
Billy was the answer key to the test. His devotion to the faith was admirable, and I hoped it would elevate my game. I could already envision our life as a married couple. We would vacation in Hawaii and South Florida, own a mountain home in Midway, sit courtside at the Jazz, spend summers in Newport Beach and Lake Powell. We were going to have the brass rings that every successful family in Utah so proudly displayed.
Take all the money away, all I wanted was a home where the man presided and provided and where the woman cared and prepared. I didn’t want the entire setup, I didn’t want to be in charge of the food or drinks. I just wanted my corner of heaven here on earth.
Billy proposed on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17. We had been officially dating since December. Three and a half months. And we were getting married.
The night of our engagement, Billy took me camping in Malibu at Sycamore Cove. There was a full moon, and we were walking along the beach when he dropped to one knee and said, “The only way to make this night more perfect is if you say you’ll marry me.” And he opened up a little black box with a not-so-little round ring. I dropped to my knees in the sand across from him and kissed him. “Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.”
I felt happy, I felt heady, I felt horny. The motivation to get married was slowly changing from eternal salvation to eternal satisfaction. I needed to be with this man, and if it required my oath to obey him for time and all eternity, so be it.
I knew that I would never say no, but I also knew that the muffled white noise screaming from deep within was desperately trying to say something I was unwilling to hear. I pushed that feeling down into the same place I pushed the thrill of running a business or the dream of Drambuie. Sayonara, Sweetheart!
For the first few weeks following the engagement, I didn’t wear the ring—in part because I didn’t believe this was it. It didn’t seem monumental enough to be real.
But my sacred little secret didn’t last long, because my roommate found my ring and forced it onto my finger. “You’ve got him. Now, don’t lose him.”
My roommate had converted when she was eighteen years old. She had a full life before coming to the church, giving her a perspective that was different from anyone else I had ever been friends with. She’d been out in the world and had slept with the tattooed Huntington Beach surfers we ogled daily. But in the end, she turned her back on all of it to be with the Dick Van Pattens. She wanted Dick because she had been out among the dregs of society, and it wasn’t good. She came home and clung to the safety of the 99. And if she endorsed the soft dad bod, the generous, affectionate guys—who was I to long for the latter?
In the faith, I knew there were only enough lifeboats to take half the women and children after all the men were rescued. Billy was my shot, he was my life preserver. And no matter how I felt, no matter the little, tiny voice and the muffled white noise, I wasn’t going to say no. I wasn’t going to drown.
Looking around, I tried desperately to find someone, anyone, to check me. No one said, “You really shouldn’t marry anyone without seeing how they act in all four seasons. How do they spend Christmas? How do they spend Mother’s Day? A pack of cigarettes and a walk around the block or breakfast in bed with croissants and orange juice? How do they react when it’s snowing outside and the car battery’s dead? How are they hungry? How are they tired? Maybe you should know that before you commit to time and all eternity.”
No one asked these questions because we already knew the answers. We had both been following the same exact script from the day we were born. There was no line straddling. No Mormon 2.0. No deviation from the Plan. Instead, they stood there with a death stare, a poker face. Nobody said anything different from what had always been affirmed to me: now that you have a man, your life can actually begin. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
I started preparing for the wedding, with the intention to make it as spiritual and significant as possible. I wanted small and sacred. There were no bridesmaids or flower girls. Billy’s grandmother took the photos. My mom prepared poignant quotes and scriptures for the guests to read. I asked my friends Regina and Amy to sing.
On July 7, in the two-thousandth year of our Lord, Billy and I were dressed in all our priesthood robes and aprons in a tiny room inside the Laie Temple on the North Shore of Hawaii. No vows were made, no rings exchanged. We knelt across an altar, he held my hand in the Patriarchal Grip, and when the temple officiant asked if I was willing to submit to my husband for time and all eternity, I bowed my head and said, “Yes.”
Our wedding reception, following the temple ceremony, was at Turtle Bay Resort. We filled the glass gazebo overlooking the crashing waves of the Pacific with our closest friends and family. We ate mahi-mahi and fed each other cake with smooth coconut fondant. We draped ourselves in traditional Hawaiian wedding leis and slow-danced to Andrea Bocelli. It was tender, it was trite, it was true.
CHAPTER 15 GOD GAVE ME YOU
I sold Billy on the tip of the iceberg and hoped the depth and neediness under the surface would be a wonderful surprise.
Little by little, as I exposed more and more of myself, I wanted him to be amazed by the magnitude of the woman he had married. I was going to fill his home with music and laughter and fun facts about art and literature. I was going to raise his children with love and faith and matching pajamas. I was going to build a shelter with a toothpick and some duct tape. I’m gonna treat you so nice you’re never gonna let me go.
At our wedding, Billy’s uncle Ron gave a toast: “You know, Billy, they say to keep your eyes wide open before you get married and then your eyes half closed after. But Heather is such a beauty, I say keep your eyes wide open.”
It was funny and sweet and I appreciated it. But I took the original adage and committed it to memory, dedicating myself to being in my marriage with one eye closed.
My life was beginning! I did it! Now what? And now when the people had heard these words, they clapped their hands for joy, and exclaimed: This is the desire of our hearts.
I had to make it work.
Billy and I stayed in Hawaii for our honeymoon. As a wedding gift, his aunt gave me a used book, dog-eared and annotated. The book was called Man and Wife, and it gave newlywed women tangible, prescriptive steps to making their husbands happy.
My value in the community was tied to my purity. It was based in keeping something that I was about to give away. Overnight, I went from safeguarding my virginity as my most sacred treasure to highlighting passages out of a book about faking an orgasm so that my husband never felt inadequate.
This gift was commonplace and normal. It was as if Billy received fist bumps and back pats while I received advice from the church’s clucking hens: Just take a breath. It’ll all be over before you know it.
Our wedding night was everything I needed it to be. Under the blanket of stars, we swam for hours, floating and wading through the deep indigo waters of the lagoon outside the Ihilani Hotel. Accompanied only by the warm summer wind, we made out in our swimsuits and lay together in the sand. We traipsed upstairs to our suite, and flung ourselves onto the bed scattered with rose petals. The soft strumming of a ukulele filled the air, balancing the natural buzz of anticipation, anxiety, and excitement that emanated from both of us.
I loved being with Billy. It felt natural, it felt right. As lovers, we were compatible enough. It was just in every other department we’d discover edges. I was in love, and he was my husband, so whatever happened, I was going to work with it. I was going to turn it into a fairy tale. I had heard horror stories from friends who thought they were marrying a vanilla sex guy but discovered on their wedding night that they had actually married rum raisin. I had gotten past the gatekeepers, the sentinels, the morality checks, the background questions, the barcoded temple recommend, the mission, the engagement, and the wedding. All my dreams were coming true, and I wasn’t going to mess it up by having an opinion.
I had already made oaths in the temple and had sworn never to reveal any of the secrets I had learned. Billy could’ve asked me to do just about anything sexually and I would’ve done it without ever shaming him for asking. In the temple, men make covenants that bestow them with “dominion over all the earth and the inhabitants therein,” and women make covenants to obey them. I was taught to say “no” to a lot of things outside of our faith. But inside the faith, I was taught only to bow my head and say “yes.”
For most of my life I found that concept to be unbelievably romantic and noble and safe. I thought being cherished and protected was better than being respected and heard. But when I actually had to live this way, the reality of being just a helpmeet was much different in practice than it was in theory.
Billy was raised in the same systems of power that I was. He’d always pushed up against expectation—rebelled against the demand—by moving to Huntington Beach to surf, by quitting his family’s company to start his own. But with a healthy mix of his bad luck and my desperation, he came into my orbit and I snared him, pulling him back into the magnet he’d been so tirelessly working to repel.
