Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite Part Five

For the entire story, click the Alma the Lamanite topic at the end of this post, in the sidebar to your right, or just click here.

Warning: This episode contains very disturbing content.  Please don't read it if the ugliness of humanity is too much to bear.

What do you do when you're confronted with your prejudices?  Are our biases so ingrained that we'll tear apart people and friendships? 

With that one phrase, that open admission, Alma sank right into an ugly part of me, a deep visceral fear.  I was homophobic.  Maybe I still am.  My thoughts were a jumble of memories and questions.  The body to body contact on the basketball court, shirtless sweating, manly; did he want to have sex with me? Our drives in my car talking about everything from music to movies; was he coming onto me? Lying in my bedroom reading comic books and laughing over jokes made at one or another character's expense; did he think I was gay also?

Oh it might sound dumb today, but those were all fears and phobias then. I didn't know how someone became gay.  I just knew it was evil.  It was against God.  But I also knew that Alma was my friend and we were both outsiders in a Mormon community, uncomfortable and similar. I didn't want to believe that he'd do something, or wanted to do something that would harm me or subvert me.  I was confused.  I was scared.  I was also sworn to secrecy and until I wrote it about on this blog I'd kept that secret, because he asked me to.

It did change things between us.  Then, it hurt him that things were changed and now it hurts me.  Then, it was my ignorance and fear and now it's my shame.  For several weeks I avoided being alone with Alma.  For several months I didn't have him over to my house.  He didn't act like it bothered him and I didn't act like it was a conscious change.  We coasted.  But I liked him and finally I got up enough courage to talk to him about it.

I called him and asked him if he wanted to go for a drive.  Out to the reservation we went, driving the long hilly back roads, miles of lost desert land where the only crop is poverty.

“How do you know you're gay?” I asked him.

“I've always known,” he said.

“I mean when did you switch over and start liking boys?” I asked, thinking that I was clarifying my question.

“Probably at the same time that you stopped running from girls and started running toward them.”

We drove for several more miles until we got to the rec center and walked in to shoot some hoops.  We started out with a game of H-O-R-S-E.  While playing I asked him, “Do you think I'm gay?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Do you want me to be gay?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I asked, surprising myself with my reaction to possible rejection.

“Rick, you're my friend.  I'm gay, but I can have friends without being attracted to them in that way,” he said.  It made perfect sense when he said it.  It makes perfect sense now.  But then I couldn't have friends who were girls because all I was interested in doing with girls involved taking off their clothes.

I asked him, “Am I the only one who knows?”

He answered, “I've never told anyone else.  But a couple years ago my mom and dad found out that I was hiding magazine pictures of men under my bed and they figured it out.”

“What'd they do?”

“They sent me to live with my uncle because he said he could cure me,” he said.  Alma took a shot from the three-point line and it missed the basket, backboard and rim.  He turned toward the door, letting the ball bounce to a corner of the room.

“Where are you going?” I asked. 

“To get some air.”   

I followed him out of the hall.  “Wait up,” I said.

He turned to me.  “You don't want to hear anymore about this,” he assured me.

“Yes I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm your friend.”

We walked out into the desert and he told me about going to live with his uncle, where he was when I'd moved to Idaho and where he was for most of the first year, when I'd only heard the name Alma when I was playing basketball as a mysterious figure who'd come back someday and show me how flawed I really was as a player. 

“My uncle Carl has four sons and one of them had been gay.  Carl said he'd cured the boy and it must have been true because he'd grown up, gone on a mission and was now married with a couple of kids of his own,” Alma said.  “So Dad sent me out there to live on Carl's farm.  He said honest hard work, righteous living, and a firm hand would guide me back to the Lord.”

As we walked, Alma's eyes dropped to the ground and he stopped making eye contact.  He shuffled along kicking up dust and told me the story as if I weren't there.  He wanted me to hear it, but he was really telling the story to himself.

“I'd get up and do chores for two hours before school.  Carl would yell at me if I wasn't working hard enough.  He'd say, 'Tonto, you fruit, hard work will strengthen your muscles and then your wrist won't be limp.'  He'd call me Injun or faggot or queer-boy and blame my homo nature on the dark skin curse.

“Then after school I had to work hauling hay or doing other chores until it was dark.  Then I'd have homework.  I wasn't allowed to close the door to my room.  It wasn't my room anyway, it was just a room that one of Carl's boys had lived in.  It was never my room.  It was Carl's room and he'd come in and he'd make me kneel to pray to the Heavenly Father for forgiveness for my sins.”

He stopped and bent down to pull some sage out of the ground and I saw a tear drop onto his hand as he leaned over.  “You sure you want to hear this?” he asked me.

“If you want to tell me,” I said, unsure.  Moments earlier I'd been insistent, but I hadn't known what was coming.  This story was going to change my life and I didn't think it'd be a change I wanted.

“He'd make me stay kneeling and then ask me if I knew what it was like to be a fag.  He'd stare at me and ask again and again, louder and louder.  My Aunt was downstairs but she pretended not to hear anything.  Carl would get loud and angry and he'd be right in my face spitting as he yelled, 'Faggot, you want to be a faggot?  You want to see what it's like?'  Then he'd stand up and unzip his pants and pull it out.  His dick, crooked like a gnarled tree overgrown with rough grey hair.  He'd pull it out and shove in my face and I'd try to turn away but he'd grab my head with both hands and force me until it was in my mouth.  Then he'd call me names and ask me over and over whether I was really queer.  He'd ask me if this is what I wanted to do with my life.  'You want to be a faggot?  Because this is what your life is going to be like from here on out.'  Then when he'd cum he demand that I don't go wash.  'Keep my stink on you, boy.  It'll be your reminder of your sin.'”

I was horrified. 

“He did that three or four times a week to show me my sin, Rick.  He fucked my mouth and when I didn't want to let him, he'd hit me until I had no choice.  He'd demand that I pray for forgiveness and he'd ask me over and over again if I was queer.  I finally broke down and cried and promised that I liked girls and that I'd never ever do anything gay.  I prayed out loud to God that I was straight and that I'd go on a mission and marry in the temple to a beautiful woman. When I did that, he pronounced me cured and sent me back to Mom and Dad.”

I was speechless.

“Rick, they never asked me what Curt did.  They never wanted to hear about it.  They just wanted to know that I was cured.”

“Alma?” I said.

“Yes?”

“You're my friend.  Not my gay friend, not my Indian friend, just my friend.”

And for the first time in my life I hugged a gay man.

 

 

Comments

[a rose is a rose]

i have not only heard some disturbing stories, but i have been through some disturbing 'stories' myself.

i am crying and i want to vomit.

this is right up there, close to the top of the list

[mark]

sounds like the uncle needed to come out of the closet

[Cherise]

I read the whole thing, Rick, aren't you proud of me? I don't even know what to say; a rose is a rose pretty much said it for me. The one bright spot in all this is that you and Alma were lucky to have such a friendship. He probably was so relieved to finally tell someone and to have you respond in the way you did was perfect, Rick. "Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." -Yeats

[Sister Mary Lisa]

Oh. My. God.

I want to say I'm speechless, but instead I have a billion thoughts scrambling around in my head. Oh. My. God. If I believed in God, that is.

First, Alma must have been one helluva strong person to endure his life without going insane. I want to kill his adoptive family, I really do. Second, Carl's wife must have known what he was doing, considering how loud he was. WHAT THE HELL??? I mean, WHAT THE HELL??? I'm horrified that she sat back and let it go on. I'm horrified that he could do such a thing. I'm horrified that he projected his own self-loathing over his own homosexuality onto his son and Alma in such a cruel, demeaning way. The names, the hatred, the abuse. I hate that man.

Fuck. That's horrifying.

[Sideon]

If I start on Alma's uncle or Alma's "family," I won't stop. Let's focus on the positive.

"“You're my friend. Not my gay friend, not my Indian friend, just my friend.”

Those words (and hug) were probably the best things Alma ever heard in his life. You validated him, as a human being and as a friend. Whether one is "out" or not, being gay is like living a double-life - there is a dual perception, constantly, being a part of the world, but not fully of the world. For Alma, the perspective would have been even stronger when you consider the adoptive racial component.

I admire Alma. I admire his strength, his perseverance, and his trust in you. You wrestled and overcame your own demons, and this story has made me fiercely proud. I imagine and fear the worst for Alma and his life story, but for those moments you made a difference in his life.

[Hellmut]

Goodness!

[Sister Mary Lisa]

I love Sideon's comments here. Ditto.

[CV Rick]

I appreciate all the comments. It was a hard piece to write and I don't think I was as good of a friend as it might come across . . . I compressed a lot of weeks of avoidance and glossed over the looks and questions I had that hurt him. I'm not being as true to my own part in this story as I probably should be . . . but I'm using the excuse of storytelling as a way to mask it. I don't think that's honest, but it is as honest as I'm going to be right now.

[Matt]

I cannot say I am suprised by this story. Upset? Yes? Angry? Yes.

Did Curt ever realise the truth about himself? No. He probably never did.

[John]

Even when we don't live up to our own highest good, we can still be the only bright spot in someone's life. I don't know how this story ends but for at least a brief moment, Alma had a brother he could lean on. That's a wonderful thing.