CV Rick

Growing Up Mormon - Apartheid Billy - Part Four

I worked nearly every day at my dad's Television Shop.  My duties included cleaning the store, answering the phone, calling customers, and delivering televisions, both new and used.

The television deliveries were often very difficult and almost always a long drive.  The sets were big, bulky wooden consoles.  Remember, back then televisions were pieces of furniture that you placed vases on and that you matched your couch to.  Some of the sets were triple consoles - a television in the middle, a stereo record player on one side, and an eight track player on the other. 

Since it was a small shop and we couldn't afford to take the technicians, William, Billy, or my dad away from their work, I'd recruit a friend to help me on deliveries.  Sometimes it was Kelly, my rock-solid red-headed classmate who resembled a tank more than a boy.  Sometimes it was Blaine or Shane, twin brothers who were always anxious to make some cash but rarely capable of actually carrying something bulky and heavy without dropping it.  Sometimes it was Alma, my troubled Native American friend.  He almost never wanted the money and wasn't excited about the work, but getting out of the house and away from his adoptive parents was motivation enough.  We also talked a lot on the long drives.  All the other kids told me that Alma was quiet and reserved, but in that delivery truck he was animated and talkative.  I don't know if he was like that with anyone else, but I feel like I got to see a side of Alma no one else saw. 

I think y'all can see where this disaster is heading, so I'll skip a lot of the niceties.

One day I called Alma to come over and help with three deliveries.  The standing rate for my friends was five bucks a delivery, so that was going to be fifteen dollars to drive around for an hour and carry three large, bulky sets up horrible, small staircases.  I just now realized that all of my friends were saints or masochists. 

What I've Written Because of Alma

I've written two stories over the past few years that were inspired by Alma.

I'm linking them both in this post for anyone who wants to read them. 

The first one is Eagle Horse.  It's about both bringing freedom to Leonard Peltier and peace to the world.  It's an ambitious fable.

The second, Carnivorous Creations, is about a boy from the rez who goes to L.A. with the dream of becoming a famous artist. 

Both of these stories have received dozens of rejection letters from all different kinds of markets, so the editors, at least, believe they're crap. 

Enjoy, nonetheless.

- Rick

By the way, I'm gone on vacation for the next week.  As a result I won't be able to answer the comments.  I do have blog posts scheduled to appear each day while I'm gone . . . so the blog lives on.

Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite Part Eight

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.

“Hi, Rick.  It's me, Alma,” the voice at the other end of the phone said.  I hadn't heard from him in more than three years, since he ran away that night and here it was, twenty years ago today, July 19th, 1987.  “Happy Birthday,” he said.

“Holy Christ, Alma.  How in the hell did you remember my birthday of all things?” I asked.

“You were my best friend in Blackfoot, Rick.  Maybe ever,” he said.

After he'd left, things had gone into meltdown in Blackfoot.  The Bishop called me into his office where Brother and Sister Bischoff were waiting.  They grilled me for over an hour about where Alma had run off to.  I had no information for them.  They assured me that if I heard from him that they could get him help.  “I heard you got him help before,” I said.  That ended the meeting and I left the three of them to discuss methodologies.

My dad said that it was for the best, some souls are beyond saving.  Of course he'd heard the rumor that Alma was gay, but his worry about my own sexuality transcended logic.  I'm sure he figured that I'd been seduced into the life of homosexuality by that “degenerate.”  My father would never come out and just ask the questions, however. Instead he tried to turn everything into an uncomfortable joke. “You're not wearing pants that tight, are you?  That's what the fruits in California wear.”  “I thought Lisa looked really pretty in church today but you didn't even look at her.  I bet you would've if that dress had been on Larry.”  “I'd ask you to help Brother Simmons move, but with your limp wrists and lisp you probably aren't strong enough.”

Conversely, Kevin wouldn't even speak to me.  He was afraid that I'd ruin his carefully crafted fictional life.  It became unbearable on the team. He'd never pass the ball back to me.  Finally I got angry enough during the regional finals that instead of a nice alley-oop assist he expected; I grabbed the ball in one hand and baseball-pitched it straight at his head.  Damn near knocked him out.  “Sorry, I thought you could handle a hard pass,” I said in apology.  We lost the game and that ended the season.  I was glad.

I never acknowledged anyone's accusations, or questions, about Alma's sexual orientation.  I'd made a promise and I didn't feel a need to talk about it.

Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite Part Seven

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.

“Your faggot friend tried to make the moves on me, Rick,” Kevin yelled across the parking lot.  He was standing next to his corvette surrounded by the other monied Mormon kids.  Walking over to them made me feel as if I were visiting another world.  These were the children of wealthy professionals and they had their own section of the parking lot, a showroom for new cars.  I imagined them making fun of the teachers and other school employees pulling up in vehicles with dents and faded paint.  I know they made fun of kids like me, who made monthly payments for beat-up cast-offs. 

I tried to look surprised.  Emily was leaning on Kevin's chest looking contented.  Not the emotion I'd have expected from a girl who caught her righteous boyfriend fondling another boy's balls just the night before.  He was telling the story, “So he told me he wanted to show me some cool Indian stuff up on Riverside Road and we drove up there. But when I parked he took of his shirt and started making moves on me.  He tore my shirt off and I think he was going to try and rape me.  Can you believe that Alma's a faggot?”

I asked, “He tore your shirt off?”

“Yeah, he was on me before I'd even finished parking.  Good thing Emily and her friends showed up and scared him off.  Even if he is a fag, I'd have hated to have to hurt him.”

“Yeah, good thing,” I said.  I walked away without a confrontation.  I walked away keeping what I knew to myself.  I walked away like Judas, betraying my friend before Pontius Pilot.  I was sick.  This was going to get really ugly I knew.  It was going to go around school and no one would doubt Kevin's story.  Not even Emily doubted it and the story he was telling contradicted her own eye witness account. He was too good looking to lie.  He was too righteous to lie.  He was too Mormon to lie.

Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite Part Six

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.

There were several reasons Alma wasn't on the High School basketball team. First of all he wasn't a team player, he was a ball hog.  Secondly, he refused to follow the strict workout regimen demanded by Coach Watkins. And thirdly, he couldn't be trusted to show up to the practices and the games.

He was the best player I've ever seen on the court.  However, each of those reasons came directly from Coach Watkins who'd been grooming his teams since they were in Middle School.  Despite the fact that over twenty years coaching the Blackfoot High School team, he'd amassed a total win-loss record slightly under .500, he was the team's coach and therefore the authority in all things basketball.  I didn't like his reasons because I liked to win and I knew that Alma was a superstar.  Oddly enough, when looking along the wall of team photos going back to the mid-sixties there wasn't a brown face to be found on any of the teams.  That was startling considering the large percentage of the student body from the Indian Reservation.

I made the team because I could play.  I also made the team because my family name carried a lot of weight in Blackfoot, in both Mormon circles where the extended family was so large as to have tendrils in just about every ward in town and in civic circles where my uncle was the City Manager and my grandfather had been chief of police when he'd died a few years earlier.  I was in.

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.

Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite Part Four

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.

Alma looked up from the bean bag chair where he'd been sitting for an hour reading comic books and asked, “Why aren't there any Indian superheroes?”

The loophole in my father's ban on non-Mormon books was comic books .  Since he'd enjoyed comics as a kid and since there was never any message in comics that wasn't altruistic, righteous and pro-American, he allowed me comics as a reading past-time.  It was a good thing he didn't actually look at my comic collection to see how the stories had become more complex, the characters deeper and flawed, and the subject matter much more adult than in the Silver Age of Superman and Batman.  My comic book collection was quite impressive at the time.  I kept them in a foot locker and there were a couple thousand, all paid for out of money earned through various jobs.

Alma and I had been spending an entire rainy afternoon reading the comics and listening to music in my room. We hadn't prayed, sang any hymns, or studied anything more religious than how Daredevil could possibly defeat Bullseye.

“I don't know.  Maybe they can't sell enough comics to Indians to make it worth their effort,” I said. “What kind of Superhero would an Indian be?”

“I think he'd be able to teleport through nature.  He'd touch a tree and be able to appear next to any other tree anywhere.  Or he'd jump into a stream and leap out of a river hundreds of miles away.”

“Sounds cool.  What would he look like?” I asked.

“Like me,” Alma said.

Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite Part Three

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.

Three weeks went by and Alma stopped coming to church, both on Sundays and Wednesday nights.  We'd talked once and I told him that I'd gotten in trouble for hanging out with him and playing ball on the rez.  I saw him at school but we didn't have any classes together so there wasn't any time for us to really hang out.  On the other hand some of the other kids were far friendlier to me now.  Veronica and her cousin stopped by at lunch every day to say a few words to me and Lester moved across the room in chemistry and we asked for the change so we could be lab partners, thereby guaranteeing us both top spots on the grade curve. 

Some of the white kids noticed.  I heard “Indian Lover” tossed in my direction as well as whispers about me ruining my reputation and not wanting any “good” or white friends.  I was a teenager and these things really did hurt.  I was torn because no one had shown me any particular fondness, being the new kid, and since Alan (Success Warrior) had moved away there wasn't anyone who really wanted to hang out with me.  Lester and Veronica and their friends were really nice to me and didn't care about appearances and cliques.  They were far nicer than all the Mormon kids.  It wasn't until I was much older that I really stopped caring what people thought of me, but as a teenager that's a hard hurdle to leap.

Then my father got called into see the Bishop after church one Sunday.  Because I was on restriction (grounded), I had to go to church and return from church with him, meaning I had to wait while he had his meeting. 

Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite Part Two

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.

Alma was both athletic and quiet.  Kids interpreted that as confident and intimidating, but because he was so quiet he didn't have any close friends and the others either stayed away from him because he was an Indian, because he was trouble, or because his silence made them think he didn't like them anyway.  He talked to me, though.  At first just a bit while we shot baskets, but later on he started opening up.

Alma spent a lot of time speculating about his biological family and I suspect that was a result of the amount of time his parents spent telling him how horrible they must have been.  We talked about the Navajo, which was the tribe that he'd been adopted from.  Alma craved knowledge about them and had scoured the libraries for information, but all that he could find was written by white people, second or third hand.  We'd play ball and while we did we'd theorize about the kinds of games he'd play if he'd been born two or three centuries earlier.  We'd talk about what it would've been like to learn hunting and tracking as a true warrior. Truth was that most of our information came from stereotypes from Hollywood but it was fun because we both enjoyed the game.  “If I came into your hunting lands, would you have killed me, Alma, for being a cruel white invader?” I'd ask.

“Damn right I would, Paleface,” he'd answer.

“Alma, do you think that the Navajo were really Lamanites like it says in the Book of Mormon?” I asked him once. 

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, if that's true, then they were cursed to be brown.  Do you think your skin color is a curse and that God will change it to white someday?”

He shot several free throws while thinking about that.  I got used to him taking his time to answer questions.  He wasn't one to speak to fill silence or to answer thoughtlessly. 

“Yes.  I do believe that,” he answered.

Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite, Part One

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.

Living in Idaho, I considered myself an outsider.  For one thing I moved there in high school while most of the kids in town had been there since birth.  For another I'd been on several continents and most of those kids hadn't even left the Mormon Valley which stretches from Southeastern Idaho to Southern Utah.  But I wasn't the outsider I considered myself to be.

During my junior year I became friends with Alma Bischoff, a boy who showed me everything I'd ever learn about being an outsider.  Alma was the fourth and youngest child of an elderly couple in our church ward.  He was also the only one of the four to have been adopted, and obviously so, for you see Alma was Native American and his family was decidedly Caucasian.  It was from my association with Alma that my interest in American Indians and their heritage first began.   

At church everyone knew him, but no one was close to him.  He was dark and sinewy. In his legs and arms his muscles were defined in long strokes like those of a paintbrush, creating the illusion of rapid motion even when he was standing still.  His face was cut at angles that contrasted the rest of us with our softer, rounder, whiter features.  He looked through people with an intensity that would convince you he could.  For those reasons he was watched intensely by the girls as if he were the forbidden fruit.