I haven't seen "The Book of Mormon" yet, but you can hear the songs online, and people have already started discussing them on Main Street Plaza.
When the reviews of the musical first started appearing, I remember there was a lot of focus on whether they got the doctrinal details right (Is Kolob a planet or a star? Does God really live there? etc.). But it appears that what they really got right is unique character of Mormonism — what it’s like to be Mormon! (And, really, placing less importance on the precisions of doctrines like Kolob and more importance on Mormon practice and attitude is, itself, quite accurate.)
If you have an opinion on any or all of the songs, please vote in our poll and tell us about it. Here's my favorite (followed by what I wrote about it):
A lot of the songs had me going “Wow, fantastic! And so true!” But it was listening to “You and Me (But Mostly Me)” that made my whole youth and childhood pass before my eyes. Standing there, happy to supportively sing “my best friend…” while somebody Awesome! sings his heart out about serving God. And it didn’t hurt that the song kind of reminds me of ’80′s pop, and of “Humble Way” from God’s second-favorite musical:
This same missionary scenario — including the leader/subordinate relationship, and the fact that it’s cute that they’re not really humble about their awesome task — is exactly what the song “Humble Way” was about. “You and Me (But Mostly Me)” is what “Humble Way” wanted to be (if it had been totally brilliant).
I completely agree with Holly’s assessment that this would be perfect sung as a duet between a young LDS guy and his fiancee. I don’t think that’s reading anything into it that’s not there. Hierarchy colors so much about Mormon interpersonal relationships. And the (officially unequal) partnership between missionaries sets the model for marriage.
One point that is pure genius is the fact that their unequal relationship isn’t quite the central focus of the song. The leader’s earnest desire to do something great for mankind and God is as central (if not moreso). And the fact it’s tied in with his own ego is winked at.
You can see this symbolized in the Mormon temple endowment ceremony (which I haven’t been through, but I’ve heard about it). The fact that the wife covenants to obey her husband is OK because the husband is making a covenant with God. If you complain (or do anything other than stand beside him being supportive), then you’re the buzzing fly that’s detracting from a man and his important business between him and God!
I can’t imagine any song could more perfectly capture what Mormon patriarchy feels like.
And I can't wait to see the whole musical!!
The Adventures of a Friendly French-American ExMormon Atheist Mom Living in Switzerland!!!
Showing posts with label memoirs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memoirs. Show all posts
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
"Free to Be" -- forty years later...
I remember how old I felt when I first noticed that I could start a sentence with "Twenty years ago..." and speak from first hand experience. Now that I'm on the cusp of forty, I can easily tell you about stuff from thirty years ago, and it's only getting worse...
But, aaaaaaaaaanywaaaay....
Right up there with Schoolhouse Rock, Free to Be... You and Me totally captures (for me) the messages to kids in the '70's. According to the wikipedia article, "Free to Be has become a cult classic across the United States amongst many who were children of New Age parents in the 1970s" -- which I find kind of funny because my parents back in the '70's were pretty far from "New Age" (they were conservative Mormon Republicans). And yet I still think it's a [cult?] classic.
My parents aren't the ones who played it for me -- I don't remember exactly where I first heard it. But I bought a record album of it myself (for fun) as an adolescent in the '80's, and my mom (despite having opposed the ERA like a good Mormon), didn't appear to object to it. I recently found a CD of it, and I've been listening to it to see what I think of it now.
If you're not familiar with the album, it's a collection of clever and fun songs and skits that challenge traditional gender expectations. One central point to keep in mind is that essentially all of the messages in the album were countering other messages that kids were also hearing quite loudly. So every time you hear a song on it whose theme makes you go, "Well, duh, everybody knows that" -- then you've found a point where this album (and other voices from that time) had an impact and changed cultural assumptions.
The song that sounded (to me) the most dated was the one telling boys "It's all right to cry." I have two little boys, I watch tons of media directed at them, I read popular parenting advice, and I talk to lots of other moms in Europe and in the US, online and in person. I haven't done a formal study, but the gendered message I remember from my childhood -- that it's shameful for a boy to cry -- has fallen out of favor, and it's not just Glenn Beck. ;^)
It's my impression that our cultural expectations have changed on at least three fronts: (1) getting your feelings out instead of holding them in is viewed today as healthy and not exclusively feminine, (2) It's somewhat more acceptable for boys to express feminine traits and interests, and (3) Childhood bullying in general is no longer seen as inevitable or acceptable. Keep in mind, folks, that "Free to Be..." came out a mere three years after the popular Johnny Cash song A Boy Named Sue, in which it's presented as a more-or-less reasonable act of love for a father to name his son "Sue" specifically for the purpose of ensuring he'd be bullied, and hence come out a tougher man in the end.
Part of the spoken text says that crying boys aren't "sissies," but instead boys who are afraid to cry (and hence risk being called "sissies") are the "sissies" [implying that being a 'sissy' is still bad]. Naturally, that way of deflecting-yet-reinforcing the label "sissy" wouldn't be considered OK among liberal parents today. That said, I'd be pretty surprised if our gender awareness hadn't improved at all beyond what was on the cutting-edge-of-mainstream forty years ago.
The whole album is quite heteronormative (to anachronistically use a term that has come into ordinary public discourse fairly recently). That is, the album assumes that girls grow up to be mommies, boys grow up to be daddies, and (if they get married) mommies are married to daddies, period. Again, keep in mind that this was a mere three years after Stonewall, so mainstream awareness of LGBT issues was a fair distance in the future. The message that both girls and boys can grow up to be whatever they want to be was already pretty controversial. And teaching one generation of kids not to be limited by gender expectations helped set the stage for them to question gender roles even further -- in ways that many people in the previous generation didn't think of.
A track that hardly seems dated at all is the tale of Princess Atalanta. Female characters in kids' movies and television have sadly made a lot less progress than many parents (like me!) would hope (see, for example, The Hathor Legacy). Most parents of little girls I know are powerless against the lure of the Disney Princess pink ghetto (though I've heard some creative strategies for dealing with it). But I really like the way Atalanta's own autonomy takes center stage in bringing about her "happily ever after". [If you read the wikipedia entry, they explain how "Free to be" took some major liberties compared to the original story, but, really, no worse than Disney does.]
So, which song do I like/remember best after all these years? Probably the title track. Anyone else have memories (fond or otherwise) of this album?
But, aaaaaaaaaanywaaaay....
Right up there with Schoolhouse Rock, Free to Be... You and Me totally captures (for me) the messages to kids in the '70's. According to the wikipedia article, "Free to Be has become a cult classic across the United States amongst many who were children of New Age parents in the 1970s" -- which I find kind of funny because my parents back in the '70's were pretty far from "New Age" (they were conservative Mormon Republicans). And yet I still think it's a [cult?] classic.My parents aren't the ones who played it for me -- I don't remember exactly where I first heard it. But I bought a record album of it myself (for fun) as an adolescent in the '80's, and my mom (despite having opposed the ERA like a good Mormon), didn't appear to object to it. I recently found a CD of it, and I've been listening to it to see what I think of it now.
If you're not familiar with the album, it's a collection of clever and fun songs and skits that challenge traditional gender expectations. One central point to keep in mind is that essentially all of the messages in the album were countering other messages that kids were also hearing quite loudly. So every time you hear a song on it whose theme makes you go, "Well, duh, everybody knows that" -- then you've found a point where this album (and other voices from that time) had an impact and changed cultural assumptions.
The song that sounded (to me) the most dated was the one telling boys "It's all right to cry." I have two little boys, I watch tons of media directed at them, I read popular parenting advice, and I talk to lots of other moms in Europe and in the US, online and in person. I haven't done a formal study, but the gendered message I remember from my childhood -- that it's shameful for a boy to cry -- has fallen out of favor, and it's not just Glenn Beck. ;^)It's my impression that our cultural expectations have changed on at least three fronts: (1) getting your feelings out instead of holding them in is viewed today as healthy and not exclusively feminine, (2) It's somewhat more acceptable for boys to express feminine traits and interests, and (3) Childhood bullying in general is no longer seen as inevitable or acceptable. Keep in mind, folks, that "Free to Be..." came out a mere three years after the popular Johnny Cash song A Boy Named Sue, in which it's presented as a more-or-less reasonable act of love for a father to name his son "Sue" specifically for the purpose of ensuring he'd be bullied, and hence come out a tougher man in the end.
Part of the spoken text says that crying boys aren't "sissies," but instead boys who are afraid to cry (and hence risk being called "sissies") are the "sissies" [implying that being a 'sissy' is still bad]. Naturally, that way of deflecting-yet-reinforcing the label "sissy" wouldn't be considered OK among liberal parents today. That said, I'd be pretty surprised if our gender awareness hadn't improved at all beyond what was on the cutting-edge-of-mainstream forty years ago.
The whole album is quite heteronormative (to anachronistically use a term that has come into ordinary public discourse fairly recently). That is, the album assumes that girls grow up to be mommies, boys grow up to be daddies, and (if they get married) mommies are married to daddies, period. Again, keep in mind that this was a mere three years after Stonewall, so mainstream awareness of LGBT issues was a fair distance in the future. The message that both girls and boys can grow up to be whatever they want to be was already pretty controversial. And teaching one generation of kids not to be limited by gender expectations helped set the stage for them to question gender roles even further -- in ways that many people in the previous generation didn't think of.
A track that hardly seems dated at all is the tale of Princess Atalanta. Female characters in kids' movies and television have sadly made a lot less progress than many parents (like me!) would hope (see, for example, The Hathor Legacy). Most parents of little girls I know are powerless against the lure of the Disney Princess pink ghetto (though I've heard some creative strategies for dealing with it). But I really like the way Atalanta's own autonomy takes center stage in bringing about her "happily ever after". [If you read the wikipedia entry, they explain how "Free to be" took some major liberties compared to the original story, but, really, no worse than Disney does.]
So, which song do I like/remember best after all these years? Probably the title track. Anyone else have memories (fond or otherwise) of this album?
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Me, on Star Trek!!!
I've mentioned a few times that my brother and I produced a 13-episode community-cable Star Trek parody series (way back when we had just graduated from college). Well, I finally found a friend who knew how to convert the DVDs to YouTube-friendly format (and another who knows his way around YouTube), so you can see the show for yourselves!
I'm starting with episode 6 because the the early episodes have really poor sound quality and other technical problems, and I'd rather introduce the series with one that we filmed after a few episodes worth of on-the-job training. ;)
I'm starting with episode 6 because the the early episodes have really poor sound quality and other technical problems, and I'd rather introduce the series with one that we filmed after a few episodes worth of on-the-job training. ;)
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Blog Retrospective: Mormonism!
It's been more than twenty years since I last believed in Mormonism, but it's still a favorite topic of mine!! How could it not be?
Mormonism influenced my girlhood dreams and showed up in my childhood journal entries. (Actually, I still have yet to write the story of when I played Emily in a 1979 production of Saturday's Warrior at age 7 -- one of my fondest memories of Mormonism...)
And my teen years? Well, you can have a look at the jewelry we earned in "Personal Progress" (and what I thought of it). And who could forget what we learned in early morning seminary? Good times! But Mormonism was a big part of my identity back then, and thinking hard about my faith was a big part of growing up.
Then came BYU! To get the real story, you can read about the subversive gals in my dorm and about my "born in a resort" BYU boyfriend. Or read the article I wrote for the Student Review (on Why I Hate Church). You can also read about how I became an atheist right there in the hallowed halls of BYU, and my (imaginary) excommunication. And if the real story isn't sufficient, you can read the truer-than-life fictionalization.
And the connection runs deeper than my own youthful memories -- the Mormons are my tribe (following the Jewish model). Mormonism is a part of my family heritage from the moonshine-running hillbillies who found leadership opportunities through Mormonism, to the Utah-Mormon side of the family, with a personal connection with Joseph Smith. (For definitions, see my fabulous sister.)
Unsurprisingly, I've spent a lot of time figuring out my relationship with/to Mormonism. It wasn't long after I left BYU that I realized that I sympathize with the Mormons and I don't want to pretend I have no connection with Mormonism. Living in a foreign country, it became especially clear that I'm a cultural Mormon in the same way that my husband is a cultural Catholic. (See also my handy guide to different types of Mormons.)
And since then, I've done my own personal research on Mormon culture as an adult! I had fun chatting with mishies in France, I spoke at the Sunstone Symposium, and attended a polygamist church service.
And, with all that, I've naturally got plenty of material to write about Mormonism! You can see some of the results here. :D
Mormonism influenced my girlhood dreams and showed up in my childhood journal entries. (Actually, I still have yet to write the story of when I played Emily in a 1979 production of Saturday's Warrior at age 7 -- one of my fondest memories of Mormonism...)
And my teen years? Well, you can have a look at the jewelry we earned in "Personal Progress" (and what I thought of it). And who could forget what we learned in early morning seminary? Good times! But Mormonism was a big part of my identity back then, and thinking hard about my faith was a big part of growing up.
Then came BYU! To get the real story, you can read about the subversive gals in my dorm and about my "born in a resort" BYU boyfriend. Or read the article I wrote for the Student Review (on Why I Hate Church). You can also read about how I became an atheist right there in the hallowed halls of BYU, and my (imaginary) excommunication. And if the real story isn't sufficient, you can read the truer-than-life fictionalization.
And the connection runs deeper than my own youthful memories -- the Mormons are my tribe (following the Jewish model). Mormonism is a part of my family heritage from the moonshine-running hillbillies who found leadership opportunities through Mormonism, to the Utah-Mormon side of the family, with a personal connection with Joseph Smith. (For definitions, see my fabulous sister.)
Unsurprisingly, I've spent a lot of time figuring out my relationship with/to Mormonism. It wasn't long after I left BYU that I realized that I sympathize with the Mormons and I don't want to pretend I have no connection with Mormonism. Living in a foreign country, it became especially clear that I'm a cultural Mormon in the same way that my husband is a cultural Catholic. (See also my handy guide to different types of Mormons.)
And since then, I've done my own personal research on Mormon culture as an adult! I had fun chatting with mishies in France, I spoke at the Sunstone Symposium, and attended a polygamist church service.
And, with all that, I've naturally got plenty of material to write about Mormonism! You can see some of the results here. :D
Sunday, August 09, 2009
I had totally forgotten about that!
So the high school reunion was lots of fun, and had a few unexpected twists.
For one thing, I ran into some people who I was friends with in elementary school and early Jr High (but kind of lost track of in HS). Remember way back when I posted some choice excerpts from my journal that I wrote when I was 11 years old? Well, I met the Susan and Nikki S who were featured in that story.
Susan remembered some other stuff we did that was worse than any of those stories: We were dissecting pigs (or maybe frogs?) in science class, and she and I and one other girl saved some of the organs and put them on the piano keyboard in music class. LOL, I'd totally forgotten about that! She concluded that "When people say kids today are worse than we were back then, I don't believe them!" So true! :D
Another surprise was that people kept telling me that I seem taller. What? I've always been this tall! "Yeah, for at least eighteen years!" quipped one of my classmates. And now that I think about it, it's true -- I was small for my age through Jr. High and early HS -- I grew late. I'd forgotten about that too.
Then there was a surprise that shouldn't be a surprise at all to those of you who read the Bloggernacle: everybody kept asking me what my brother John is up to. It's clear that he's a pretty memorable guy. ;^)
And the photo I submitted? Of nerds putting on puppet shows for kids at the park? It stood out like a sore thumb against all of the shots of people cheering at the hockey games. (Of course there were also some shots of some friends who had their own band, so my picture wasn't the only non-athlete-or-rah-rah in the bunch.) And I got to reconnect with some good friends from back then, so I'm glad I went. :D
For one thing, I ran into some people who I was friends with in elementary school and early Jr High (but kind of lost track of in HS). Remember way back when I posted some choice excerpts from my journal that I wrote when I was 11 years old? Well, I met the Susan and Nikki S who were featured in that story.
Susan remembered some other stuff we did that was worse than any of those stories: We were dissecting pigs (or maybe frogs?) in science class, and she and I and one other girl saved some of the organs and put them on the piano keyboard in music class. LOL, I'd totally forgotten about that! She concluded that "When people say kids today are worse than we were back then, I don't believe them!" So true! :D
Another surprise was that people kept telling me that I seem taller. What? I've always been this tall! "Yeah, for at least eighteen years!" quipped one of my classmates. And now that I think about it, it's true -- I was small for my age through Jr. High and early HS -- I grew late. I'd forgotten about that too.
Then there was a surprise that shouldn't be a surprise at all to those of you who read the Bloggernacle: everybody kept asking me what my brother John is up to. It's clear that he's a pretty memorable guy. ;^)
And the photo I submitted? Of nerds putting on puppet shows for kids at the park? It stood out like a sore thumb against all of the shots of people cheering at the hockey games. (Of course there were also some shots of some friends who had their own band, so my picture wasn't the only non-athlete-or-rah-rah in the bunch.) And I got to reconnect with some good friends from back then, so I'm glad I went. :D
Saturday, August 08, 2009
I'm off to my 20-year high school reunion!
The weird thing is that -- looking at everyone's photos on the reunion website -- I find that I don't remember most of these folks at all, not even their names. It was a fairly big class (550), and it was heavily tracked, so I hardly knew most of them even at the time.
No matter. I happen to be in town on the right night, so I might as well go and see the handful of people I do know, and swap memories.
When the class prom queen emailed everyone to ask for old photos from back then, I sent in this one:
It's three of the class nerds doing a summer job the Park & Rec Department as puppeteers. I'm the one on the left.
The funny part was when I was sending in the photo. I didn't recognize the name of the woman we were instructed to mail photos to, but -- even so -- I'm nearly 100% certain that she was one of the more popular girls who would have been above speaking to me back then. (It's a good bet -- I think a good 98% of the girls in the school were above me on the popularity ladder.) So I wondered how to close the email.
If this were a normal conference, thought I, I'd say "see you there." But the last time I saw these folks, such a thing would have been presumptuous...
Then I thought, to hell with it, we're all grown-ups now.
Naturally, she replied with an equivalent greeting. So I'll see her there tonight (though I'm still not quite sure who she is).
Actually, it almost seemed presumptuous to have sent in a photo me and my nerdy friends at all, but, hey, we were there too. Somewhere in the background. ;^)
No matter. I happen to be in town on the right night, so I might as well go and see the handful of people I do know, and swap memories.
When the class prom queen emailed everyone to ask for old photos from back then, I sent in this one:
It's three of the class nerds doing a summer job the Park & Rec Department as puppeteers. I'm the one on the left.
The funny part was when I was sending in the photo. I didn't recognize the name of the woman we were instructed to mail photos to, but -- even so -- I'm nearly 100% certain that she was one of the more popular girls who would have been above speaking to me back then. (It's a good bet -- I think a good 98% of the girls in the school were above me on the popularity ladder.) So I wondered how to close the email.
If this were a normal conference, thought I, I'd say "see you there." But the last time I saw these folks, such a thing would have been presumptuous...
Then I thought, to hell with it, we're all grown-ups now.
Naturally, she replied with an equivalent greeting. So I'll see her there tonight (though I'm still not quite sure who she is).
Actually, it almost seemed presumptuous to have sent in a photo me and my nerdy friends at all, but, hey, we were there too. Somewhere in the background. ;^)
Monday, March 10, 2008
Carnival of stories!!!
It looks like I'm not the only one out there who has stories to tell about BYU, both true and fictional.
Beanie-cap Tom has posted his own tales of lost love at BYU (and he followed up with another love story from his youth). And then -- this is an oldie, but not to be missed -- Sister Mary Lisa's misadventures in friendship, love, and lust getting knocked-up at BYU.
Leaving BYU a bit, Ninja writer C. V. Rick has some new Mormon childhood adventures for you in Apartheid Billy. Then, if you'd rather read Mormon lit fiction instead of memoirs, Sideon has up a new episode of Season of Truth. On the other hand, if you like funny memoirs but you prefer Jewish ones instead of Mormon, check out The Exterminator's bus cruise with his grandma!!!
(Sorry if I've missed any. Feel free to link to other stories -- true or invented -- in the comments.)
Then on to the real carnival: the 16th Humanist Symposium!!! This one is full of insights on facing the void and starts with a tale of the life of a classical musician. The next one will be hosted by our good friends at Mind on Fire, so be sure to gather up your best humanist insights within the next few weeks and submit them here!!! :D
Beanie-cap Tom has posted his own tales of lost love at BYU (and he followed up with another love story from his youth). And then -- this is an oldie, but not to be missed -- Sister Mary Lisa's misadventures in friendship, love, and lust getting knocked-up at BYU.
Leaving BYU a bit, Ninja writer C. V. Rick has some new Mormon childhood adventures for you in Apartheid Billy. Then, if you'd rather read Mormon lit fiction instead of memoirs, Sideon has up a new episode of Season of Truth. On the other hand, if you like funny memoirs but you prefer Jewish ones instead of Mormon, check out The Exterminator's bus cruise with his grandma!!!
(Sorry if I've missed any. Feel free to link to other stories -- true or invented -- in the comments.)
Then on to the real carnival: the 16th Humanist Symposium!!! This one is full of insights on facing the void and starts with a tale of the life of a classical musician. The next one will be hosted by our good friends at Mind on Fire, so be sure to gather up your best humanist insights within the next few weeks and submit them here!!! :D
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Born in a resort: my real-life BYU boyfriend
Since I've written a fictional story about BYU, perhaps I should tell you a little more about what I really did at BYU.
I arrived as a freshman and newly-minted apostate in the fall of 1989. Almost everyone arrives at college friendless at first, but I had added the disadvantage of being a lone unbeliever among the faithful in a place where being an unbeliever was more than just being a pariah -- it was against the rules.
When I set out to find a boyfriend, the only real qualification I had in mind (beyond breathing, human, male) was not Mormon. Naturally when the campus environmentalists club announced an organizational meeting, I was there with bells on, dragging with me the least-Molly I could find from among my dorm-mates from Budge Hall. These days being concerned about the environment is almost respectable in Mormon circles. In those days, it wasn't. It looked like a good opportunity to meet some rebels.
Unfortunately, the organizers (and the rest of the club, if there was one...) never showed. Aside from me and my friend, the only person there was Steve. I had just turned eighteen; he was thirty-five and still an undergraduate. But he was just what I needed.
Steve was a funny guy. Mostly "funny ha-ha" but there was one thing funny-strange about him: he'd recently been expelled from BYU (for smoking pot), and instead of learning his lesson from this, he'd gone through the repentance/readmission process and came back. This is the kind of selection you get when you go looking for rebels at BYU. Of course I didn't know about his expulsion when I first met him -- I didn't even realize he still had one foot in the church. I treated him as though he were as much an apostate as I was, and after a few weeks with me, he was.
When I met him, Steve was living in a little motor home parked in a trailer park in the far end of Provo. After graduating he moved it to a cheaper-yet-less-legal spot behind his friend's shop in Salt Lake and lived there. He felt it was foolish to join the rat race just to get nicer accommodations and buy more and fancier stuff. As Americans we're born in a resort, he said, where (on just occasional, marginal employment) one can enjoy the simple pleasures of life: books and education, decent food, a little travel, a little weed. He liked to spend his evenings relaxing in his mobile home watching programs he'd recorded on his VCR at the foot of the barely-double bed, working the controls without getting up by pressing the buttons with an old fencing sword he called his "remote control."
And, yes, Steve was the guy from the infamous BYU library story. He was also the one who introduced me to reading primatology books, which I love to this day. He had great stories: about growing up in California, about the pretty Mormon girls in his High School who'd flirted with him to convert him to Mormonism, about his Italian mother and about his father who'd at one point worked setting up pins in a bowling alley, back when that was done by humans, about the archaeological dig he'd participated in to get his financial aid to attend BYU after so many years, about his years off from education, spent -- among other things -- selling heroin, cocaine, and satellite dishes. Sounds like a winner, I know, but any hard drugs were years in the past, so it was cool because he was a little dangerous but not really. He was an intelligent, articulate person who provided a window on a whole array of life experiences that were completely alien to me. He was rich in experience, and I learned from him.
Of course I didn't see it that way at the time. With all my Math and Latin I felt I was a lot smarter than he was, and in my youthful arrogance I wasn't shy about telling him so. But I loved our adventures. One time we drove all the way to Tijuana, via Las Vegas and then a crumbling hot springs resort in California, forgotten by everyone but a few aging guests. Even spending the weekends with him in Salt Lake (once he'd moved there) was an adventure since his friends there were such characters -- they deserve blog posts of their own, if not whole novels.
Back at BYU I explained all these trips as "visiting friends" until the year I moved into an (unapproved) studio apartment and no longer had any roommates to answer to. I had never found pot very interesting, but when Steve offered me a joint to take home, I took it and smoked it in the Student Review office when none of the other BYU-level-rebel kids on the SR staff were around. Why? Because I was baaaaaaad. I was the uber-nerdmeister of badassness in my rebelliously hand tie-dyed t-shirts and other naughty outfits.
It's fun to be young and out to find life wherever it may be hiding. For me, sitting in the warm sunlight on a picnic table in a little trailer park, sipping a glass of white zinfandel (or some other such foolish thing), was a taste of something entirely new.
So is truth stranger than fiction?
You be the judge: BYU
Friday, August 17, 2007
"He has his faults, such as being a perverted-democrat-atheist, but
altogether he's one of the nicest people I know."
-- authentic quote from the journal of a fifteen-year-old Mormon girl.
Actually, that's a quote from my own journal (as you might have guessed): December 6, 1986. It's kind of hilarious to think that once upon a time I saw virtues such as "perverted," "Democrat," and "atheist" as faults. But I think that having met nice (and intelligent and otherwise virtuous) liberals and atheists -- none of whom attempted to convert me -- affected my willingness to question my own position. So for blog friends who have called "witness by example" a passive-aggressive tactic: If your position has merit, "Let your light so shine" really works!
A lot of atheists recount stories about how people of faith are horrified by atheism -- that the faithful see other religions as merely wrong but regard atheism as shocking or unthinkable. Yet back when I was a believing Mormon, I didn't perceive it that way at all (and I have my journals to back me up on this). A number of my friends self-identified as atheists, thus I saw it as a common worldview (even a reasonable one, as I explained in my post If the church weren't true I'd be an atheist). Was my high school (or my circle of friends) that unusual?
The one thing I remember being surprised by was learning that my first real boyfriend's parents were atheists and that he'd been raised as an atheist. And they seemed like perfectly ordinary people, unlike the parents of the guy in the above quote who appeared (to the teenage Republican version of me) to be hippie weirdos. Of course the most shocking aspect (to the sheltered Mormon me) was that his parents let him drink coffee and beer! This was completely contrary to my usual assumptions about parenting (that it normally should involve a great deal of making the kids do odious things for their own good such as enforcing church attendance).
I don't know if this is unusual or not, but I've never had a serious (romantic) relationship with someone who believes in the existence of God. I've had a number of different boyfriends in my life (including a few minor flings with believers), but all of the real relationships have been with atheists.
Some of you may be wondering if that means that this guy was an atheist. Indeed he was (or is? I haven't kept in touch as you might imagine...). I had one conversation with him that illustrates the kind of atheist he was: after a long tirade about how incredibly stupid it is to believe in astrology, he turned around and said, "but Chinese astrology -- there's really something to that..." And he was serious!!! It just goes to show that most people just go along with whatever they've heard other people say, so in a country like France where atheism is basically the default position, even stupid people are atheists.
When I met my (now) husband, one of the first things I did was "test the waters" on this question. Since I thought he was cute and everything. He was a new arrival in grad school from on of those decadent countries in Europe (France), thus probably an atheist, but you can never be sure. So in one conversation at a party I made some sort of line involving the Pope and condoms to see how he'd react. I don't remember exactly what I said -- it probably wasn't even funny, but of course that's not really the point. There are things you can get away with saying as a joke that can help you determine what sorts of things might be appropriate to say in more serious discussions later. I'm not sure if that sounds cynical or Machiavellian, but honestly I think it's one of the reasons for the existence of humor in our species.
(Note: if the chronology of these stories is confusing, I actually met my current husband before I ever started learning to speak French, but even though I liked him from the beginning, I didn't get together with him romantically until several years later.)
I know a lot of you out there in blog space are in mixed-faith marriages and making it work, but -- inspiring as the stories often are -- I'm really glad I don't have to deal with that in my life. One non-trivial point is this cute little blog. I'm doing this for fun and love doing it, and I'd hate for my sweetheart to view this hobby as working for the bad guys' team. As it is, my husband views my Internet habit as kind of a strange hobby, but he understands that this is important to me and is basically supportive. He sometimes even takes photos for my blog and will read my articles and give his opinion when I ask him to.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my apartment-mates back when I was at BYU (this friend currently blogs as Floating in the Milk). She'd read a study that same-faith marriages are more successful than mixed-faith marriages (I guess in length or marital satisfaction or something). The topic came up because she'd been in a mixed-faith relationship back then and had chosen to go with her LDS suitor, but in the long run that didn't keep her from being in mixed-faith marriage since she no longer believes. Anyway, I protested (back then) that probably having a matching activity level is as important as having matching beliefs, but she said the study didn't show that at all -- activity level was found to be irrelevant.
After just a few minutes reflection it hit me that it was perfectly obvious that that should be the case. If you do anything at all related to your beliefs and traditions -- from simply celebrating the same events to church activity or belief-related volunteer work -- whether your spouse is physically there with you doesn't matter as much as whether your spouse is with you in spirit, supporting and agreeing with what you're doing.
That's not to say that mixed-faith marriages are inferior, but rather the people in them have that much more work to do to try to be understanding of one another. Personally I think that would be very, very hard for me to do. I've said this before, but I am ridiculously possessive of my private space and thus have a terrible time getting along with roommates. I've never had a roommate that I've gotten along with (just ask FITM -- she and I got along fairly well, but it helped that we weren't actually sharing a bedroom). I try to make an effort to get along with roommates, but I'm just not good at it. This is one of the many reasons that back when I was a Mormon I never had the remotest desire to go on a mission and thought that any girl who would choose to do it (since it's not a requirement for girls) must be crazy. There is absolutely no way I could tolerate having to be within sight of a particular person twenty-four-seven for months on end. If my companion were the nicest, most easygoing person on the planet I'd still be ready to strangle her by the end of the first week, and if she failed to be the nicest person on the planet, it would probably be more like the end of the first day...
Yet weirdly I've lived with various boyfriends, and I've never had a problem getting along with them on a day-to-day basis. I think it's largely psychological: a boyfriend is like family -- mentally absorbed into my intimate space -- whereas a roommate is an outsider limiting my privacy.
And this is the main reason why I'm glad I'm not in a mixed-faith marriage: I'm sincerely interested in trying to understand the perspective of people who believe differently, and I can see that believing differently than I do is not a manifestation of being crazy or stupid or unreasonable or anything like that. But it takes effort to try to see things from another's perspective, and I think it's an effort that would be hard for me to make on a daily basis in my intimate space.
In concrete terms, when I get home from a hard day at work, I want to be able to kick off my shoes, grab a beer, and relax. I don't want to hear my husband telling me that he's praying about this or that or about the progress he's making in trying to get intelligent design taught in schools, etc. At the same time, I wouldn't want to be married to someone and have him feel like he can't tell me about things that are important to him because I wouldn't agree or be supportive. That's not to say that we have to agree on everything, but at least on the fundamentals and basic values...
-- authentic quote from the journal of a fifteen-year-old Mormon girl.
Actually, that's a quote from my own journal (as you might have guessed): December 6, 1986. It's kind of hilarious to think that once upon a time I saw virtues such as "perverted," "Democrat," and "atheist" as faults. But I think that having met nice (and intelligent and otherwise virtuous) liberals and atheists -- none of whom attempted to convert me -- affected my willingness to question my own position. So for blog friends who have called "witness by example" a passive-aggressive tactic: If your position has merit, "Let your light so shine" really works!
A lot of atheists recount stories about how people of faith are horrified by atheism -- that the faithful see other religions as merely wrong but regard atheism as shocking or unthinkable. Yet back when I was a believing Mormon, I didn't perceive it that way at all (and I have my journals to back me up on this). A number of my friends self-identified as atheists, thus I saw it as a common worldview (even a reasonable one, as I explained in my post If the church weren't true I'd be an atheist). Was my high school (or my circle of friends) that unusual?
The one thing I remember being surprised by was learning that my first real boyfriend's parents were atheists and that he'd been raised as an atheist. And they seemed like perfectly ordinary people, unlike the parents of the guy in the above quote who appeared (to the teenage Republican version of me) to be hippie weirdos. Of course the most shocking aspect (to the sheltered Mormon me) was that his parents let him drink coffee and beer! This was completely contrary to my usual assumptions about parenting (that it normally should involve a great deal of making the kids do odious things for their own good such as enforcing church attendance).
I don't know if this is unusual or not, but I've never had a serious (romantic) relationship with someone who believes in the existence of God. I've had a number of different boyfriends in my life (including a few minor flings with believers), but all of the real relationships have been with atheists.
Some of you may be wondering if that means that this guy was an atheist. Indeed he was (or is? I haven't kept in touch as you might imagine...). I had one conversation with him that illustrates the kind of atheist he was: after a long tirade about how incredibly stupid it is to believe in astrology, he turned around and said, "but Chinese astrology -- there's really something to that..." And he was serious!!! It just goes to show that most people just go along with whatever they've heard other people say, so in a country like France where atheism is basically the default position, even stupid people are atheists.
When I met my (now) husband, one of the first things I did was "test the waters" on this question. Since I thought he was cute and everything. He was a new arrival in grad school from on of those decadent countries in Europe (France), thus probably an atheist, but you can never be sure. So in one conversation at a party I made some sort of line involving the Pope and condoms to see how he'd react. I don't remember exactly what I said -- it probably wasn't even funny, but of course that's not really the point. There are things you can get away with saying as a joke that can help you determine what sorts of things might be appropriate to say in more serious discussions later. I'm not sure if that sounds cynical or Machiavellian, but honestly I think it's one of the reasons for the existence of humor in our species.
(Note: if the chronology of these stories is confusing, I actually met my current husband before I ever started learning to speak French, but even though I liked him from the beginning, I didn't get together with him romantically until several years later.)
I know a lot of you out there in blog space are in mixed-faith marriages and making it work, but -- inspiring as the stories often are -- I'm really glad I don't have to deal with that in my life. One non-trivial point is this cute little blog. I'm doing this for fun and love doing it, and I'd hate for my sweetheart to view this hobby as working for the bad guys' team. As it is, my husband views my Internet habit as kind of a strange hobby, but he understands that this is important to me and is basically supportive. He sometimes even takes photos for my blog and will read my articles and give his opinion when I ask him to.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my apartment-mates back when I was at BYU (this friend currently blogs as Floating in the Milk). She'd read a study that same-faith marriages are more successful than mixed-faith marriages (I guess in length or marital satisfaction or something). The topic came up because she'd been in a mixed-faith relationship back then and had chosen to go with her LDS suitor, but in the long run that didn't keep her from being in mixed-faith marriage since she no longer believes. Anyway, I protested (back then) that probably having a matching activity level is as important as having matching beliefs, but she said the study didn't show that at all -- activity level was found to be irrelevant.
After just a few minutes reflection it hit me that it was perfectly obvious that that should be the case. If you do anything at all related to your beliefs and traditions -- from simply celebrating the same events to church activity or belief-related volunteer work -- whether your spouse is physically there with you doesn't matter as much as whether your spouse is with you in spirit, supporting and agreeing with what you're doing.
That's not to say that mixed-faith marriages are inferior, but rather the people in them have that much more work to do to try to be understanding of one another. Personally I think that would be very, very hard for me to do. I've said this before, but I am ridiculously possessive of my private space and thus have a terrible time getting along with roommates. I've never had a roommate that I've gotten along with (just ask FITM -- she and I got along fairly well, but it helped that we weren't actually sharing a bedroom). I try to make an effort to get along with roommates, but I'm just not good at it. This is one of the many reasons that back when I was a Mormon I never had the remotest desire to go on a mission and thought that any girl who would choose to do it (since it's not a requirement for girls) must be crazy. There is absolutely no way I could tolerate having to be within sight of a particular person twenty-four-seven for months on end. If my companion were the nicest, most easygoing person on the planet I'd still be ready to strangle her by the end of the first week, and if she failed to be the nicest person on the planet, it would probably be more like the end of the first day...
Yet weirdly I've lived with various boyfriends, and I've never had a problem getting along with them on a day-to-day basis. I think it's largely psychological: a boyfriend is like family -- mentally absorbed into my intimate space -- whereas a roommate is an outsider limiting my privacy.
And this is the main reason why I'm glad I'm not in a mixed-faith marriage: I'm sincerely interested in trying to understand the perspective of people who believe differently, and I can see that believing differently than I do is not a manifestation of being crazy or stupid or unreasonable or anything like that. But it takes effort to try to see things from another's perspective, and I think it's an effort that would be hard for me to make on a daily basis in my intimate space.
In concrete terms, when I get home from a hard day at work, I want to be able to kick off my shoes, grab a beer, and relax. I don't want to hear my husband telling me that he's praying about this or that or about the progress he's making in trying to get intelligent design taught in schools, etc. At the same time, I wouldn't want to be married to someone and have him feel like he can't tell me about things that are important to him because I wouldn't agree or be supportive. That's not to say that we have to agree on everything, but at least on the fundamentals and basic values...
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Storytelling: fiction vs. memoirs
Which do you prefer to write? Fiction or memoirs?
Fiction writing has some great advantages over memoirs. When you're recounting something that actually happened, a lot of times the story would be more interesting if it had happened just a little differently. With a memoir? Tough luck! With fiction? No problem!!! :D
Since you don't have to be true to the facts, fiction gives you more liberty to be true to the story.
Still, I love writing memoirs. I've written far more memoirs than I've written fiction. I think memoir-writing is good exercise for writing fiction since it requires the same storytelling skills.
When you're writing a story that actually happened, it's not as though it has been recorded in your brain in some canonical form and you just need to download a copy from your brain onto the paper. You need to craft the story: decide what to include, what to skip, and how to say it. Even something as basic as deciding where an episode begins and where it ends is part of the difference between a memory and a narrative.
(Ninja writer C.V. Rick is an example I've stumbled upon recently of an excellent memoirist who has been turning memories into engaging stories and posting them.)
Personally I haven't written much fiction at all in the past year. It's not that I don't want to write fiction -- it's just that I don't want to sit down with the intention of writing fiction. I'd rather wait until I feel like I have a particular story to tell. That's how I've come up with all of my best work.
At the same time, I want to stay in practice so that when inspiration strikes, I'm ready. That's where memoirs come in: they're storytelling without the story-inventing part.
Fiction writing has some great advantages over memoirs. When you're recounting something that actually happened, a lot of times the story would be more interesting if it had happened just a little differently. With a memoir? Tough luck! With fiction? No problem!!! :D
Since you don't have to be true to the facts, fiction gives you more liberty to be true to the story.
Still, I love writing memoirs. I've written far more memoirs than I've written fiction. I think memoir-writing is good exercise for writing fiction since it requires the same storytelling skills.
When you're writing a story that actually happened, it's not as though it has been recorded in your brain in some canonical form and you just need to download a copy from your brain onto the paper. You need to craft the story: decide what to include, what to skip, and how to say it. Even something as basic as deciding where an episode begins and where it ends is part of the difference between a memory and a narrative.
(Ninja writer C.V. Rick is an example I've stumbled upon recently of an excellent memoirist who has been turning memories into engaging stories and posting them.)
Personally I haven't written much fiction at all in the past year. It's not that I don't want to write fiction -- it's just that I don't want to sit down with the intention of writing fiction. I'd rather wait until I feel like I have a particular story to tell. That's how I've come up with all of my best work.
At the same time, I want to stay in practice so that when inspiration strikes, I'm ready. That's where memoirs come in: they're storytelling without the story-inventing part.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Spotlight on reminiscences
Today I've collected up all of the posts where I recount my (now legendary ;-) ) past exploits...
Personal Progress '89
Youth Conference 1986
"If the church weren't true, I'd be an atheist" and other things I learned in seminary....
Little girls, little girls, everywhere I turn...
Why I hate church
The Land Far-and-a-Half Away
Naked People at Rutgers
Naked People at Rutgers II
Celtic Knotwork
Greetings from the planet Zoltron!
My deconversion, part 1: background
My deconversion, part 2: the evidence
My deconversion, part 3: the tipping point
This is me...
Personal Progress '89
This little "improvement" I made to one of the pictures in my "Personal Progress" workbook as a teen illustrates a bit about what I thought of these lovely rewards:
Youth Conference 1986
The boys of our ward had escorted us to the dance, all except Scott. They had done a hopelessly lousy job of it. The boys walked ahead in a glob and the girls walked in a glob behind.
My mother, being a chaperone there, was determined that the girls should escort the boys to the next one, to show them how it's done, and to be polite and return the favor.
"If the church weren't true, I'd be an atheist" and other things I learned in seminary....
One morning I awoke from my usual early-morning-seminary stupor to find that Sister Intellectual was talking about the lack of unbiased historical evidence for the existence of Jesus.
Little girls, little girls, everywhere I turn...
Again because I have no shame, I'm reposting a bunch of immature stuff I wrote in my journal when I was 11 years old...lol
Why I hate church
Basically, my little friends and I would ask ourselves the following question: "Am I cold, tired, hungry, uncomfortable, bored, and have to go to the bathroom?" If the answer to that question was yes, we knew we were at church.
The Land Far-and-a-Half Away
When we got there, there were no people on the beach. So we decided to collect snail shells.
Then Johnny said "What a land, it's far-and-a-half away."
Suddenly a snail popped its head out of its shell. It wasn't a snail at all. Its head was so hairy all you could see was his eyes.
Naked People at Rutgers
The premise was that my main characters were transfer students representing a "clothing optional culture" (in California).
Naked People at Rutgers II
I'm not sure why I stopped drawing this comic strip after the second episode, but I think it was probably just that I ran out ideas. Basically, the whole point of the comic is "See? They're naked!!! Hahahahahahahahaha!!!"
I was able to milk that for two strips worth of material.
Celtic Knotwork
I used to joke around with my friends that this is the perfect hobby for me because it's Celtic and it's not work.
Hehe!! I'm such a jokemeister!!!
Maybe if I'd spent more time in grad school doing math rather than joke-smithing, learning French, and otherwise goofing off I'd be a Mathematician today rather than a code monkey... Ah, well, no sense worrying about it now...
Greetings from the planet Zoltron!
Yep, normally I try to hide that special triangular antenna I have on my head that I use to contact the planet Zoltron.
My deconversion, part 1: background
I was kind of a classic nerd, so Mormonism's "hip to be square" attitude fit my personality.
My deconversion, part 2: the evidence
This was a terrible blow, to learn that the physical evidence had been hidden away as a shameful thing and to hear an upsetting hint as to why.
My deconversion, part 3: the tipping point
She believed the stories her parents taught her with all her heart.
And her parents' stories and my parents' stories couldn't both be right.
This is me...
I've posted a lot of naughty things on this blog, and I'll probably post more, so I just thought that for balance I should post some photos to demonstrate how wholesome I really am!!!
Monday, September 18, 2006
This is me...
I've posted a lot of naughty things on this blog, and I'll probably post more, so I just thought that for balance I should post some photos to demonstrate how wholesome I really am!!!
Here's a photo of me as a BYU student. See if you can find me in this picture:
Here I am as a grad student:
Here I've finally graduated, with that Ph.D. in hand!!! Woo-Hoo!!! :D
My mom earned her master's degree in journalism at the same time, and we got some great photos of the two of us as graduates together!!! She's LDS though, so I'm not sure she wants me posting photos of her on this blog, as if she endorses it or something... (She's even hotter than I am, by the way... ;-) )
Here's a picture from my wedding reception:
A little later in the evening:
Same couple, ten months later:
(Yeah, I know, we were embarrassingly conventional on the timing of that first kid, but what can you do?)
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
More Star Trek!!!
Unfortunately my brother hasn't posted any more episodes from our community-cable series since the last time I posted about Me, on Star Trek!!!. It's too bad because some of the later ones were really cool, especially the ones where we used cheesy split-screen and blue-screen effects so I could play my own evil twin who is a Romulan...
He seems to have redirected his Star-Trek-related energy into ClassicTrek.com where we have this cool story going here. I'm "Dr. Shareb" and I'm serving aboard the Starship Concordiat. It's great fun -- in our first adventure our Starship was vandalized by some peacenik space-hippies and we went and chased them through space...
That's actually the closest thing I'm doing to fiction writing exercises at the moment. I know I signed up for Scrambled Sage on Toast and I haven't been doing the homework (because I'm very, very naughty). (And my dog ate it?) It's not that I think I'm above workshop exercises -- quite the opposite -- it's just that I know I don't have time to put serious thought into fiction exercises right now, and I don't want to do a half-assed job of it.
Now you're probably thinking: "But Chanson, you seem to have an awful lot of time lately for writing a bunch of controversial-yet-boring political theory..."
I don't know what's up with that. I seem to be having some sort of brain-dump about politics lately. I think it's just because I see blogging as an extension of conversation -- and one where I'm surrounded by intelligent people -- so I like to spend some time chatting about life and light fun stuff and some time discussing and exchanging ideas.
Or more likely it's because I see blogging as this endlessly fascinating experiment, and I'm curious to see what kinds of reactions I'll get from writing different types of things.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Don't know much about the Middle East...
But I can't be accused of not trying to make an effort to learn, in my own way.
Here's my one story about it, which I posted to exmo-social in February of 2005:
It was 1996. Rabin had recently been assinated and hardliner Netanyahu had just been elected in Israel. I was a grad student at Rutgers.
One night I went out drinking and partying with two of my girlfriends, both Jewish, in the Arab quarter of New Brunswick, as we loved to do!! Those were the days!!!
It was an interesting experience for me to participate in a discussion of the recent Israeli election with these Jewish girls and their Arab (Lebanese Christian) boyfriends. We were all disappointed about recent events because of course we all wanted peace, and it looked like things were going in the wrong direction.
At one point one of the guys said something negative that to me seemed mild (I don't remember what it was), but one of my two girlfriends took offense and belligerently said "It's attitudes like those that make me glad he got elected!"
I remember thinking "OMG, I don't think you want to be saying that here..." It was night and we were in a closed cafe, just us three girls and the cafe's owners and their friends (all Arab guys) and we were all drunk!!!
My other girlfriend -- the one who was a grad student in Mathematics like me -- smoothed things over. She talked about how Jews and Arabs are really the same people, and should work together rather than letting the west gain advantage by playing them off each other. We all agreed with that, and peace was once again restored to our little microcosm.
Then we talked about something else!!!
Here's my one story about it, which I posted to exmo-social in February of 2005:
It was 1996. Rabin had recently been assinated and hardliner Netanyahu had just been elected in Israel. I was a grad student at Rutgers.
One night I went out drinking and partying with two of my girlfriends, both Jewish, in the Arab quarter of New Brunswick, as we loved to do!! Those were the days!!!
It was an interesting experience for me to participate in a discussion of the recent Israeli election with these Jewish girls and their Arab (Lebanese Christian) boyfriends. We were all disappointed about recent events because of course we all wanted peace, and it looked like things were going in the wrong direction.
At one point one of the guys said something negative that to me seemed mild (I don't remember what it was), but one of my two girlfriends took offense and belligerently said "It's attitudes like those that make me glad he got elected!"
I remember thinking "OMG, I don't think you want to be saying that here..." It was night and we were in a closed cafe, just us three girls and the cafe's owners and their friends (all Arab guys) and we were all drunk!!!
My other girlfriend -- the one who was a grad student in Mathematics like me -- smoothed things over. She talked about how Jews and Arabs are really the same people, and should work together rather than letting the west gain advantage by playing them off each other. We all agreed with that, and peace was once again restored to our little microcosm.
Then we talked about something else!!!
Thursday, July 27, 2006
My deconversion, part 3: the tipping point.
disclaimer: I will be recounting my own experiences in a direct and straight-forward manner. None of this is intended as disrespectful to those who believe differently, it is merely a statement of my personal conclusions and how I reached them.
Continued from here and here.
I was seventeen years old, a senior in high school. My beloved older brother was off on his freshman year at BYU, having a similar epiphany of his own.
In the back of my mind I was aware that in terms of physical evidence, the case for Mormonism looked pretty grim. But it didn't matter because the physical evidence was trumped by the spiritual evidence, namely the spiritual confirmation that the church is right and true.
I knew plenty of very intelligent people who knew more than I did about Mormon history, doctrine, evidence, and "issues," and their testimonies were none the worse for it.
On the other hand, I'd never known any believing Mormon to look at the evidence and be swayed by it to the point of leaving the church. I didn't even know any of those bitter, angry "anti-Mormons" who are so easily dismissed by the faithful. Like I said, it was a different time...
The only ex-Mormon I remember having met before I became one myself was one of my debate coaches. (I was in debate for about a year, around ninth and tenth grade, and wasn't terribly good at it...)
My exmo debate coach Tim didn't try to deconvert me. On one debate trip, when he heard I was Mormon, he kind of tried to use it as a point of common interest, to make a connection with me. (Remember this was in Minnesota where Mormonism is rare.) He told me he was raised Mormon, and said "I think I know who the current prophet is -- it's Ezra Taft Benson, right?" I said "Yeah," and was thinking What do you care who's the prophet if you don't believe in the church? He never mentioned religion again after that.
Tim was a nice guy, but I had never known him as a Mormon so I didn't know what his story was. I really never knew him that well, so I felt like he didn't influence me all that much. Yet I remember that tiny exchange to this day, so maybe he did...
But when it comes right down to it, every religion has to explain why different times and places all have completely different religions. The usual explanation is "We're right, they're wrong. But we'll save them by teaching them the truth." That's definitely the approach Mormonsim takes.
Although I found it pretty odd when learning about ancient mythology that God would have given the truth to the Hebrews and to the Americas and no one else, I couldn't bring myself to believe the other popular explanation: that all religions are different ways of communing with the same God. If God tells one set of people that he has the head of an elephant and they'll be reincarnated in better forms for not eating meat and then tells another group that the unique way to avoid being cast into a fiery pit of hell is to believe that Jesus died for their sins, then, well, God is a pretty schizophrenic guy...
Naturally I believed that since Mormonism was the only true church, non-Mormons all know -- deep down -- that they're still seeking and haven't found the truth yet. Why would a loving God tell them anything else? The fact that all of the various flavors of mainstream Christianity accept each other as part of the same "body of Christ" confirmed this view -- if the Presbyterians believed that one could be saved as a Baptist, and vice-versa, then they seemed to be acknowledging that they knew neither one had any ultimate truth that was vital to salvation.
So when I heard Mormons admitting that people in religions other than Mormonism had spiritual experiences like Mormons, it seemed very wrong. There was no reason that Heavenly Father would be in the business of confirming anything other than the truth instead of prompting people to get out and seek the truth.
That's the place where I was at when I started up a theological correspondence with my best friend in high school, a devout Lutheran named Kim. The whole thing was in the form of notes exchanged in a spiral notebook, consisting of a rather rudimentary "We believe this," followed by "Oh, really? We believe this other thing..."
The thing that struck me was that these random absurdities about the trinity and whatnot -- it was clear that she believed them as fervently as any Mormon believes in Mormon doctrine. She wasn't seeking and wasn't unsure as those who don't have the truth ought to be. She believed the stories her parents taught her with all her heart.
And her parents' stories and my parents' stories couldn't both be right.
That was what made me ask myself "Why do I believe what I believe?"
I remember my moment of epiphany. It hit me that I'd been taught from the cradle by loving parents that the sky is blue, one plus one is two, and Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. It was for that reason that I believed in my religion, not because of any evidence.
And that was it. That moment was the end of my belief in Mormonism.
And though I hung on to a vague non-denominational theism for a few years after that, I dismissed Jesus' miraculous claims within seconds of rejecting Joseph Smith's.
My fictional version of this scene (in my novel Exmormon) captures pretty well the thoughts that went through my head on that day. The main difference was that in the fictionalization, the primary catalyst was meeting a desirable exmo/apostate guy whom the main character later gets to have passionate sex with. In real life that did not happen. That's just what I wished would have happened. That would have been cool. In real life, the catalyst was just that discussion with a fellow nerdy girl.
However, in real life I did have a few non-member boyfriends at the time that I was in the process of trying to hustle into the bedroom as quickly as I could, with varying degrees of success. So if you'd like to tell yourself that my epiphany was motivated by my ferocious teenage hormones that wanted an open field to "sin," go ahead.
In reality, if anything my horniness slowed my epiphany because I believed -- as I was taught -- that Satan was using my "weakness" to keep me from righteousness and a real testimony. That Heavenly Father's failure to to give any sort of evidence of His existence was my fault, not His.
Continued from here and here.
I was seventeen years old, a senior in high school. My beloved older brother was off on his freshman year at BYU, having a similar epiphany of his own.
In the back of my mind I was aware that in terms of physical evidence, the case for Mormonism looked pretty grim. But it didn't matter because the physical evidence was trumped by the spiritual evidence, namely the spiritual confirmation that the church is right and true.
I knew plenty of very intelligent people who knew more than I did about Mormon history, doctrine, evidence, and "issues," and their testimonies were none the worse for it.
On the other hand, I'd never known any believing Mormon to look at the evidence and be swayed by it to the point of leaving the church. I didn't even know any of those bitter, angry "anti-Mormons" who are so easily dismissed by the faithful. Like I said, it was a different time...
The only ex-Mormon I remember having met before I became one myself was one of my debate coaches. (I was in debate for about a year, around ninth and tenth grade, and wasn't terribly good at it...)
My exmo debate coach Tim didn't try to deconvert me. On one debate trip, when he heard I was Mormon, he kind of tried to use it as a point of common interest, to make a connection with me. (Remember this was in Minnesota where Mormonism is rare.) He told me he was raised Mormon, and said "I think I know who the current prophet is -- it's Ezra Taft Benson, right?" I said "Yeah," and was thinking What do you care who's the prophet if you don't believe in the church? He never mentioned religion again after that.
Tim was a nice guy, but I had never known him as a Mormon so I didn't know what his story was. I really never knew him that well, so I felt like he didn't influence me all that much. Yet I remember that tiny exchange to this day, so maybe he did...
But when it comes right down to it, every religion has to explain why different times and places all have completely different religions. The usual explanation is "We're right, they're wrong. But we'll save them by teaching them the truth." That's definitely the approach Mormonsim takes.
Although I found it pretty odd when learning about ancient mythology that God would have given the truth to the Hebrews and to the Americas and no one else, I couldn't bring myself to believe the other popular explanation: that all religions are different ways of communing with the same God. If God tells one set of people that he has the head of an elephant and they'll be reincarnated in better forms for not eating meat and then tells another group that the unique way to avoid being cast into a fiery pit of hell is to believe that Jesus died for their sins, then, well, God is a pretty schizophrenic guy...
Naturally I believed that since Mormonism was the only true church, non-Mormons all know -- deep down -- that they're still seeking and haven't found the truth yet. Why would a loving God tell them anything else? The fact that all of the various flavors of mainstream Christianity accept each other as part of the same "body of Christ" confirmed this view -- if the Presbyterians believed that one could be saved as a Baptist, and vice-versa, then they seemed to be acknowledging that they knew neither one had any ultimate truth that was vital to salvation.
So when I heard Mormons admitting that people in religions other than Mormonism had spiritual experiences like Mormons, it seemed very wrong. There was no reason that Heavenly Father would be in the business of confirming anything other than the truth instead of prompting people to get out and seek the truth.
That's the place where I was at when I started up a theological correspondence with my best friend in high school, a devout Lutheran named Kim. The whole thing was in the form of notes exchanged in a spiral notebook, consisting of a rather rudimentary "We believe this," followed by "Oh, really? We believe this other thing..."
The thing that struck me was that these random absurdities about the trinity and whatnot -- it was clear that she believed them as fervently as any Mormon believes in Mormon doctrine. She wasn't seeking and wasn't unsure as those who don't have the truth ought to be. She believed the stories her parents taught her with all her heart.
And her parents' stories and my parents' stories couldn't both be right.
That was what made me ask myself "Why do I believe what I believe?"
I remember my moment of epiphany. It hit me that I'd been taught from the cradle by loving parents that the sky is blue, one plus one is two, and Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. It was for that reason that I believed in my religion, not because of any evidence.
And that was it. That moment was the end of my belief in Mormonism.
And though I hung on to a vague non-denominational theism for a few years after that, I dismissed Jesus' miraculous claims within seconds of rejecting Joseph Smith's.
My fictional version of this scene (in my novel Exmormon) captures pretty well the thoughts that went through my head on that day. The main difference was that in the fictionalization, the primary catalyst was meeting a desirable exmo/apostate guy whom the main character later gets to have passionate sex with. In real life that did not happen. That's just what I wished would have happened. That would have been cool. In real life, the catalyst was just that discussion with a fellow nerdy girl.
However, in real life I did have a few non-member boyfriends at the time that I was in the process of trying to hustle into the bedroom as quickly as I could, with varying degrees of success. So if you'd like to tell yourself that my epiphany was motivated by my ferocious teenage hormones that wanted an open field to "sin," go ahead.
In reality, if anything my horniness slowed my epiphany because I believed -- as I was taught -- that Satan was using my "weakness" to keep me from righteousness and a real testimony. That Heavenly Father's failure to to give any sort of evidence of His existence was my fault, not His.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
My deconversion, part 2: the evidence
disclaimer: I will be recounting my own experiences in a direct and straight-forward manner. None of this is intended as disrespectful to those who believe differently, it is merely a statement of my personal conclusions and how I reached them.
Continued from this post.
The last straw that pushed me out of Mormonism was the question of whether this religion -- or any other -- could have the true and final word on the nature of God and the afterlife.
Before getting there, however, there were a few glaring sign-posts along the road. The first one was the evidence -- or lack thereof -- for the Book of Mormon.
Where did the Native Americans come from?
I knew that the "true" answer was written by Nephi and Moroni and all the rest in the pages of the Book of Mormon. I also knew that no one -- outside of Mormonism -- proposed that the Native Americans had arrived by boat from the Middle East.
I remember sitting in American History class -- probably in the seventh grade -- watching a film showing how the Americas were populated by migrations across a land bridge from Asia.
I thought to myself If only they knew the truth. If only they had the idea to look for evidence that these people arrived by boat, they would find it.
Another part of me said These researchers promoting these theories of Native American origins -- they aren't bitter anti-Mormons out to destroy the church. The church probably doesn't even show up on their radar. They say the Native Americans migrated on foot from Asia because they dug up evidence out of the ground and that's the conclusion it pointed to. If the same types of researchers used the same types of evidence to piece together the history of some unknown tribe in Africa or an island somewhere, I would believe them.
But some incompetent and mistaken archaeologists and anthropologists weren't sufficient to dissuade me from the truth.
Worse was later when I heard from some Mormons who were all excited about the research of Thor Heyerdahl and how it was such a boon to proving the Book of Mormon right. I pressed for details and found that he had constructed a boat using ancient techniques and had sailed it across the Atlantic. So he had shown that Nephi and Lehi's journey was not physically impossible. Do we have any evidence that it actually happened? No.
I was left forcing out of my mind the obvious question: That's the best you can do?
The point that was the most painful for me to try to rationalize was later -- when I was about fifteen or sixteen -- and I heard my parents talking about the Book of Abraham.
Like any good Mormon kid, I knew that Joseph Smith had translated some ancient Egyptian documents, found with a mummy, and that they had turned out to be a record written by Abraham of his time in Egypt. I had also learned that the original papyrus was lost, and was thought to have been destroyed in the great Chicago fire.
This story made perfect sense from a Mormon perspective. Like the golden plates that were taken back into heaven after Joseph Smith translated them, and like the Nauvoo Temple that was destroyed by fire after the Saints left for the promised land in the Salt Lake Valley, the Lord took Abraham's writings back once their purpose was fulfilled.
Then one day I heard my parents say that this story wasn't true, and that, in fact, the Book of Abraham papyrus had been found, and was in the possession of the church!!! Not only that, it had been in the possession of the church since before I was born!!!
This was very upsetting. I couldn't see why I would ever have been told this "Chicago fire" story unless... Unless the existence of the original was something that we needed to avoid talking about. The nail in the coffin was when I learned the rationalization in the very same conversation: "Maybe Joseph Smith didn't really translate the papyrus, maybe the papyrus inspired him to receive the Book of Abraham text as a revelation."
This was a terrible blow, to learn that the physical evidence had been hidden away as a shameful thing and to hear an upsetting hint as to why.
I know that today's modern, Internet-savvy Mormons all already know that the papyrus is in the possession of the church and that no scholar -- Mormon or otherwise -- claims that it is anything other than ordinary Egyptian funeral documents that have nothing to do with the Biblical patriarch Abraham nor are even remotely from the right time period to have been written by him. So one might claim that it was my own foolish ignorance or lack of study that led to me to be shocked by this information. I suppose that nowadays they're saying that they never really claimed that Joseph Smith literally translated a record that Abraham himself had written "by his own hand upon papyrus" and that information about it was never obscured or hidden away. But that's not what it was like back in the 1980's. People just didn't talk about such "deep doctrines."
For a teenager, I was actually relatively well-informed about the "meat" of Mormonism (as in "milk before meat"). I knew about polygamy and "celestial polygamy" (the fact that Mormons believe that there is polygamy in the afterlife even if polygamy is not currently practiced by the church).
I had learned in seminary about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the "Vilate Kimball test of faith" story. That's the one where Joseph Smith has a revelation that he is to take Heber C. Kimball's wife Vilate as one of his own plural wives, Heber and Vilate are terribly distraught but finally agree because it's the will of God, and then Joseph Smith says that God was just testing their faith, and that in fact God would be okay with Heber keeping Vilate as long as they give Joseph their fourteen-year-old daughter Helen in her place...
For both of those stories, I remember thinking "Hmmm, that's pretty weird."
But as disturbing as those stories were, neither one struck at the root of my faith like the question of whether Joseph Smith really had the ability to miraculously translate ancient records.
to be continued...
Continued from this post.
The last straw that pushed me out of Mormonism was the question of whether this religion -- or any other -- could have the true and final word on the nature of God and the afterlife.
Before getting there, however, there were a few glaring sign-posts along the road. The first one was the evidence -- or lack thereof -- for the Book of Mormon.
Where did the Native Americans come from?
I knew that the "true" answer was written by Nephi and Moroni and all the rest in the pages of the Book of Mormon. I also knew that no one -- outside of Mormonism -- proposed that the Native Americans had arrived by boat from the Middle East.
I remember sitting in American History class -- probably in the seventh grade -- watching a film showing how the Americas were populated by migrations across a land bridge from Asia.
I thought to myself If only they knew the truth. If only they had the idea to look for evidence that these people arrived by boat, they would find it.
Another part of me said These researchers promoting these theories of Native American origins -- they aren't bitter anti-Mormons out to destroy the church. The church probably doesn't even show up on their radar. They say the Native Americans migrated on foot from Asia because they dug up evidence out of the ground and that's the conclusion it pointed to. If the same types of researchers used the same types of evidence to piece together the history of some unknown tribe in Africa or an island somewhere, I would believe them.
But some incompetent and mistaken archaeologists and anthropologists weren't sufficient to dissuade me from the truth.
Worse was later when I heard from some Mormons who were all excited about the research of Thor Heyerdahl and how it was such a boon to proving the Book of Mormon right. I pressed for details and found that he had constructed a boat using ancient techniques and had sailed it across the Atlantic. So he had shown that Nephi and Lehi's journey was not physically impossible. Do we have any evidence that it actually happened? No.
I was left forcing out of my mind the obvious question: That's the best you can do?
The point that was the most painful for me to try to rationalize was later -- when I was about fifteen or sixteen -- and I heard my parents talking about the Book of Abraham.
Like any good Mormon kid, I knew that Joseph Smith had translated some ancient Egyptian documents, found with a mummy, and that they had turned out to be a record written by Abraham of his time in Egypt. I had also learned that the original papyrus was lost, and was thought to have been destroyed in the great Chicago fire.
This story made perfect sense from a Mormon perspective. Like the golden plates that were taken back into heaven after Joseph Smith translated them, and like the Nauvoo Temple that was destroyed by fire after the Saints left for the promised land in the Salt Lake Valley, the Lord took Abraham's writings back once their purpose was fulfilled.
Then one day I heard my parents say that this story wasn't true, and that, in fact, the Book of Abraham papyrus had been found, and was in the possession of the church!!! Not only that, it had been in the possession of the church since before I was born!!!
This was very upsetting. I couldn't see why I would ever have been told this "Chicago fire" story unless... Unless the existence of the original was something that we needed to avoid talking about. The nail in the coffin was when I learned the rationalization in the very same conversation: "Maybe Joseph Smith didn't really translate the papyrus, maybe the papyrus inspired him to receive the Book of Abraham text as a revelation."
This was a terrible blow, to learn that the physical evidence had been hidden away as a shameful thing and to hear an upsetting hint as to why.
I know that today's modern, Internet-savvy Mormons all already know that the papyrus is in the possession of the church and that no scholar -- Mormon or otherwise -- claims that it is anything other than ordinary Egyptian funeral documents that have nothing to do with the Biblical patriarch Abraham nor are even remotely from the right time period to have been written by him. So one might claim that it was my own foolish ignorance or lack of study that led to me to be shocked by this information. I suppose that nowadays they're saying that they never really claimed that Joseph Smith literally translated a record that Abraham himself had written "by his own hand upon papyrus" and that information about it was never obscured or hidden away. But that's not what it was like back in the 1980's. People just didn't talk about such "deep doctrines."
For a teenager, I was actually relatively well-informed about the "meat" of Mormonism (as in "milk before meat"). I knew about polygamy and "celestial polygamy" (the fact that Mormons believe that there is polygamy in the afterlife even if polygamy is not currently practiced by the church).
I had learned in seminary about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the "Vilate Kimball test of faith" story. That's the one where Joseph Smith has a revelation that he is to take Heber C. Kimball's wife Vilate as one of his own plural wives, Heber and Vilate are terribly distraught but finally agree because it's the will of God, and then Joseph Smith says that God was just testing their faith, and that in fact God would be okay with Heber keeping Vilate as long as they give Joseph their fourteen-year-old daughter Helen in her place...
For both of those stories, I remember thinking "Hmmm, that's pretty weird."
But as disturbing as those stories were, neither one struck at the root of my faith like the question of whether Joseph Smith really had the ability to miraculously translate ancient records.
to be continued...
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
My deconversion, part 1: background
disclaimer: I will be recounting my own experiences in a direct and straight-forward manner. None of this is intended as disrespectful to those who believe differently, it is merely a statement of my personal conclusions and how I reached them.
Ironically, growing up Mormon taught me to value non-conformity. This is ironic because Mormons are famed for lockstep conformity in action, dress, and thought.
But training Mormon kids to be like other Mormons necessarily requires training them to be unlike everyone else. And when you live in an area where Mormons are few and far between -- like Minnesota, where I grew up -- that means being unlike just about everybody.
As a kid, with or without Mormonism, there was no way I was going to fit in easily with other kids my age. I was a shy, socially awkward, late-bloomer-tomboy-bookworm, living in my own imaginary world, as likely to be talking to myself as to be talking to other people.
I was kind of a classic nerd, so Mormonism's "hip to be square" attitude fit my personality. There's a current in LDS culture that values tastes that outsiders might consider nerdy such as adults having fun by dressing up and doing silly skits for talent nights and Road Shows, or or teens and college students picking Disney movies as their favorite movies. This sort of fun nerdiness was something I could relate to, and I liked being part of a culture that said to me: "Every schmo tries to be cool by following the crowd. It takes guts to ignore the direction the crowd is going -- it's beyond cool."
"Beyond cool" was great for me because "cool"... Well, there was no way that was going to happen.
On the other hand, I never fit well into the role Mormonism had picked out for me (and for every other girl on the planet). I believed wholeheartedly that the LDS church was God's one true church, and -- motivated by the "how long will you be dead compared to how long you're alive?" argument -- I tried the best I could to "live the gospel." But my "question authority!" streak was too deep for me to fit neatly into God's divine, immovable hierarchy.
I'm not sure if my parents taught me skepticism or if it was just some sort of natural rebelliousness -- probably a combination of both -- but it limited my ability to be satisfied by learning from the examples of others rather than setting out to learn from my own experiences. So a lot of the time I was a sweet, righteous little Molly, and on the side I was testing the rules and boundaries with a vengeance.
The role of women was a big sticking point for me. But while the church taught me that a woman's divine role is to be a wife and mother period, my parents taught me something slightly different. They taught me in essence that of course your children come first -- especially when they're small -- but there's no reason that should stop you from being whatever else you want to be and from from following every dream. My mom was essentially a feminist at heart, and she had reconciled her faith with her feminist leanings in this way. Similarly, her example showed me how to deal with other church or doctrinal problems without immediately scrutinizing the church or gospel itself.
My mom falls into the category of what I would consider "Mormon intellectuals" even though she subscribed to Sunstone for only a very short time while we were growing up.
From my perspective, Mormon intellectuals are the following set of people: Their unquestionable axiom number one is that the church is true. They're educated and aware enough to know that the church has some pretty serious "issues" and intelligent enough to have the ability to warp the very fabric of time and space around the gospel so that any piece of seemingly contradictory real-world evidence can be reconciled with axiom number one.
Fixing reality to fit "the truth" is not an impossible task. Here's a simple illustration of how it works (not invented by Mormons, but this is an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about):
So the diameter of the circle is 10 cubits and its circumference is 30 cubits. Even if it's an approximation, why not say 31 cubits? Or 31-and-a-half?
The simplest explanation is that the passage is in error because whoever wrote this verse didn't know that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle is pi, which is not three.
I've heard people interpret this verse as indicating that the circumference was measured from the inside of the basin and that the diameter was measured all the way to the outside edge of the brim, and thus the passage cleverly gave thickness of the wall of the basin. There is nothing in the passage to suggest this interpretation except for one's prior knowledge that the Bible is not wrong.
By similar reasoning -- and granting that the Devil and his angels are doing everything in their power to destroy the church -- anything at all can be reconciled with the axiom that the church is true. Everything has an explanation. I learned many of the familiar ones, and learned to come up with them myself.
For a time.
to be continued...
Ironically, growing up Mormon taught me to value non-conformity. This is ironic because Mormons are famed for lockstep conformity in action, dress, and thought.
But training Mormon kids to be like other Mormons necessarily requires training them to be unlike everyone else. And when you live in an area where Mormons are few and far between -- like Minnesota, where I grew up -- that means being unlike just about everybody.
As a kid, with or without Mormonism, there was no way I was going to fit in easily with other kids my age. I was a shy, socially awkward, late-bloomer-tomboy-bookworm, living in my own imaginary world, as likely to be talking to myself as to be talking to other people.
I was kind of a classic nerd, so Mormonism's "hip to be square" attitude fit my personality. There's a current in LDS culture that values tastes that outsiders might consider nerdy such as adults having fun by dressing up and doing silly skits for talent nights and Road Shows, or or teens and college students picking Disney movies as their favorite movies. This sort of fun nerdiness was something I could relate to, and I liked being part of a culture that said to me: "Every schmo tries to be cool by following the crowd. It takes guts to ignore the direction the crowd is going -- it's beyond cool."
"Beyond cool" was great for me because "cool"... Well, there was no way that was going to happen.
On the other hand, I never fit well into the role Mormonism had picked out for me (and for every other girl on the planet). I believed wholeheartedly that the LDS church was God's one true church, and -- motivated by the "how long will you be dead compared to how long you're alive?" argument -- I tried the best I could to "live the gospel." But my "question authority!" streak was too deep for me to fit neatly into God's divine, immovable hierarchy.
I'm not sure if my parents taught me skepticism or if it was just some sort of natural rebelliousness -- probably a combination of both -- but it limited my ability to be satisfied by learning from the examples of others rather than setting out to learn from my own experiences. So a lot of the time I was a sweet, righteous little Molly, and on the side I was testing the rules and boundaries with a vengeance.
The role of women was a big sticking point for me. But while the church taught me that a woman's divine role is to be a wife and mother period, my parents taught me something slightly different. They taught me in essence that of course your children come first -- especially when they're small -- but there's no reason that should stop you from being whatever else you want to be and from from following every dream. My mom was essentially a feminist at heart, and she had reconciled her faith with her feminist leanings in this way. Similarly, her example showed me how to deal with other church or doctrinal problems without immediately scrutinizing the church or gospel itself.
My mom falls into the category of what I would consider "Mormon intellectuals" even though she subscribed to Sunstone for only a very short time while we were growing up.
From my perspective, Mormon intellectuals are the following set of people: Their unquestionable axiom number one is that the church is true. They're educated and aware enough to know that the church has some pretty serious "issues" and intelligent enough to have the ability to warp the very fabric of time and space around the gospel so that any piece of seemingly contradictory real-world evidence can be reconciled with axiom number one.
Fixing reality to fit "the truth" is not an impossible task. Here's a simple illustration of how it works (not invented by Mormons, but this is an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about):
2 Chronicles 4:2
Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
So the diameter of the circle is 10 cubits and its circumference is 30 cubits. Even if it's an approximation, why not say 31 cubits? Or 31-and-a-half?
The simplest explanation is that the passage is in error because whoever wrote this verse didn't know that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle is pi, which is not three.
I've heard people interpret this verse as indicating that the circumference was measured from the inside of the basin and that the diameter was measured all the way to the outside edge of the brim, and thus the passage cleverly gave thickness of the wall of the basin. There is nothing in the passage to suggest this interpretation except for one's prior knowledge that the Bible is not wrong.
By similar reasoning -- and granting that the Devil and his angels are doing everything in their power to destroy the church -- anything at all can be reconciled with the axiom that the church is true. Everything has an explanation. I learned many of the familiar ones, and learned to come up with them myself.
For a time.
to be continued...
Monday, May 29, 2006
Stalker
The stalker memoir that I've posted seven excerpts from was written in the Spring of 2001 from a detailed chronological outline that I wrote in August of 1999.
1. The Escape
2. New Year's Eve
3. After the First Break-in
4. Threatening Gestures
5. Locked in and Threatened at Knife-point
6. Spying and Terror
7. One Last Chase Scene
All of this really happened, which is why I haven't posted the complete memoir nor used anyone's full name -- to avoid posting personal information about real people.
I don't have the statistics, but I understand that when a woman meets a violent death, it's more likely to be at the hands of her own husband, boyfriend, or ex than anyone else. Fortunately I lived to tell this tale, so I'm posting this because I'd like to talk a little bit about this danger.
One thing you'll notice while reading the above is that I voluntarily met with this person on a number of occasions even after he started displaying pathological behavior. But keep in mind that the memoir was written in retrospect, and I specifically distilled and presented the worst of it. So, unfortunately, the story gives the misimpression that it was totally obvious the whole time that the guy was a psychotic fruitcake, and that the lesson to be learned is that as long as you avoid blatant psychos you're fine.
The point that's missing is that this stalker was someone I'd know for more than a year before the events described in this memoir. I was in regular phone contact with him -- with occasional visits -- for a year, and then had been living with him for about three months when I finally broke it off.
During all of that time it was essentially a normal relationship with no glaring red flags to indicate that he was potentially dangerous.
The somewhat red (pink perhaps?) flags were that he had kind of a fiery temper, and had vivid stories of how he and his brothers and his mother were beaten by his father. But I've known people with bad tempers who won't snap to the point of hurting a person, and just because someone is a victim of abuse doesn't mean he will necessarily follow the same pattern. He had told me how much he hated his father, and how he would never even consider forgiving him. So I assumed that meant he would be very wary of following in his father's footsteps. Yet, from my various discussions with him during the time period covered by this memoir, it became clear that on some level he had internalized some bad ideas about how a relationship functions by observing his primary relationship example: his parents.
So when he started behaving in a pathological manner, I felt frightened and angry, but I also felt sorry for him because he was someone I knew and had some feelings for, and I could see that he was having serious problems. Additionally, I felt somewhat responsible because I knew basically from the beginning that the relationship was more serious for him than it was for me. So I felt guilty when he accused me of having led him on.
So I guess the primary lesson I'd like people to take from this is that no matter what your feelings towards the person may be, when a guy starts acting in a violent or threating manner (physically restraining you from leaving, breaking into your apartment, etc.), really it should take a lot fewer of these signals for you than it did for me before you cut off contact, put some distance between yourself and the guy, and consider that helping him get better is someone else's responsibility...
Anyone who is compiling a website of true stories of stalking can feel free to link to this page. Obviously I don't want people reprinting, distributing, or making a movie out of this story without my consent, but if someone is compiling an anthology of real-life stories of domestic violence or something like that and wants to include this one, they can contact me: chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com.
1. The Escape
2. New Year's Eve
3. After the First Break-in
4. Threatening Gestures
5. Locked in and Threatened at Knife-point
6. Spying and Terror
7. One Last Chase Scene
All of this really happened, which is why I haven't posted the complete memoir nor used anyone's full name -- to avoid posting personal information about real people.
I don't have the statistics, but I understand that when a woman meets a violent death, it's more likely to be at the hands of her own husband, boyfriend, or ex than anyone else. Fortunately I lived to tell this tale, so I'm posting this because I'd like to talk a little bit about this danger.
One thing you'll notice while reading the above is that I voluntarily met with this person on a number of occasions even after he started displaying pathological behavior. But keep in mind that the memoir was written in retrospect, and I specifically distilled and presented the worst of it. So, unfortunately, the story gives the misimpression that it was totally obvious the whole time that the guy was a psychotic fruitcake, and that the lesson to be learned is that as long as you avoid blatant psychos you're fine.
The point that's missing is that this stalker was someone I'd know for more than a year before the events described in this memoir. I was in regular phone contact with him -- with occasional visits -- for a year, and then had been living with him for about three months when I finally broke it off.
During all of that time it was essentially a normal relationship with no glaring red flags to indicate that he was potentially dangerous.
The somewhat red (pink perhaps?) flags were that he had kind of a fiery temper, and had vivid stories of how he and his brothers and his mother were beaten by his father. But I've known people with bad tempers who won't snap to the point of hurting a person, and just because someone is a victim of abuse doesn't mean he will necessarily follow the same pattern. He had told me how much he hated his father, and how he would never even consider forgiving him. So I assumed that meant he would be very wary of following in his father's footsteps. Yet, from my various discussions with him during the time period covered by this memoir, it became clear that on some level he had internalized some bad ideas about how a relationship functions by observing his primary relationship example: his parents.
So when he started behaving in a pathological manner, I felt frightened and angry, but I also felt sorry for him because he was someone I knew and had some feelings for, and I could see that he was having serious problems. Additionally, I felt somewhat responsible because I knew basically from the beginning that the relationship was more serious for him than it was for me. So I felt guilty when he accused me of having led him on.
So I guess the primary lesson I'd like people to take from this is that no matter what your feelings towards the person may be, when a guy starts acting in a violent or threating manner (physically restraining you from leaving, breaking into your apartment, etc.), really it should take a lot fewer of these signals for you than it did for me before you cut off contact, put some distance between yourself and the guy, and consider that helping him get better is someone else's responsibility...
Anyone who is compiling a website of true stories of stalking can feel free to link to this page. Obviously I don't want people reprinting, distributing, or making a movie out of this story without my consent, but if someone is compiling an anthology of real-life stories of domestic violence or something like that and wants to include this one, they can contact me: chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Stalker, part 7: One Last Chase Scene
Since our previous installment here, St- broke into my apartment two more times and stole more things. Fearing for my safety, I gave up my apartment (losing the deposit) and temporarily moved into a studio apartment of some friends of E-'s which he had arranged for me to rent from them in a month-by-month arrangement. My roommate Sh- went and moved in with someone else.
Monday, Feb. 1 - Saturday, Feb. 13, 1999
At one point St- somehow got a hold of the number of my cell phone. This was less of a nuisance than you might expect because I kept it turned off almost all of the time anyway, so all he could do was leave me messages. And since I never did figure out how to work the message service on that phone to retrieve my messages, I didn't even have the bother of having to listen to them. Of course I eventually had the number changed.
Even though I knew that I would soon be leaving, I was still worried that St- would find my new address and harass me there and possibly damage the C-s' apartment. The biggest risk was that St- knew where I worked, and there was always a danger that he might follow me home.
Since he insisted that I call him regularly, the system we hit upon was for me to call him from the subway station immediately after work. That way he was happy because he had my attention long enough to recite to me over and over his distorted vision of what had happened between us, and I was happy because I knew that if he answered the phone in Montrouge, that meant that he wasn't there in the subway station intending to follow me home.
He told me over the phone that he felt bad about the fact that he still had a suitcase full of my things (which he had stolen the last time he had broken into my apartment) and wanted to return them to me. I told him that he could drop it off with G- or with the police, and I would pick it up from there. He refused, saying that he wanted to give it to me in person because he wanted a chance to try to rebuild our friendship, and he wanted to show me that we could get together without anything bad happening.
After everything that he did, I was still concerned about him, and I wanted to believe that he could get better. So when he suggested that we meet at the Mustang Café for a beer, and promised that he just wanted to use this as an opportunity to show me that all of those bad things he did were in the past, I thought to myself "It's a public place, full of people -- I won't be in any danger, and maybe it will help him, as he says."
The attentive reader is probably wondering at this point how many times this poor gullible woman can fall for this psycho's promises before she finally catches on. Read on, and you will see that this time was definitively the last time.
So, one evening I foolishly walked into the Mustang Café to meet St-. Of course he hadn't brought the suitcase. He explained that since we're friends now there would be plenty of opportunities for me to get it from him in the future. (Translation: I hate to give up my hostage so easily if there's potential to continue to use it as bait.)
I sincerely tried to carry out my new role as friend (in part because I felt bad for him that he had essentially no other friends), but it was difficult because he was at least as creepy as ever. He tried to pressure me into agreeing that all of the bad things that he had done weren't really as bad as all of that, and that he had just had a bad reaction to the terrible way I had left him.
Then, to demonstrate to me that he was getting on with his life and even had new romantic prospects, he told me a rather disturbing anecdote. There were couple of people (boyfriend and girlfriend) who were living in the other apartment on the same floor of St-'s building while I was living there with him. St- told me that they had just recently broken up, and the woman had gone off to live with her new boyfriend. Then, the other day, St- ran into the woman on the street and said "bonjour." She didn't respond, but as soon as she had passed him he turned to look back at her, and he noticed that she had turned to look back at him as well. Then they each walked a little bit farther in their respective directions, and he looked back again and noticed that she had again turned for another look. When he reached the end of the block, he turned and looked back a third time, and noticed that she turned to look a third time as well.
Now, I'm almost positive that she was there on the night that I was screaming "He's threatening to kill me with a knife, somebody please call the police!" (or at least she would have heard about it later) so my immediate interpretation of her behavior was that she was keeping an eye on him out of apprehension, or perhaps she was curious to look at what kind of a person would do such a thing. St-'s interpretation, however -- and this really amazed me -- was that she was looking back at him because she was interested in him and was checking him out! When he told me that that was what he thought, it was all I could do to keep from exclaiming "Are you crazy?!?"
I restrained myself because I knew that the correct response was that, yes, he is crazy, so to avoid upsetting him, I acted as if his little story were perfectly reasonable. But to myself I was thinking, "Yeah, I'm sure that most women find it to be a big turn on when they hear that a guy locked up his ex-girlfriend in his apartment and attempted to kill her."
After the outing had gone on for a reasonable length of time, St- surprisingly demonstrated his improved behavior by being willing to end the evening and go our separate ways without a fight. I was so impressed that I even agreed to a future outing of the same type. I walked with him to the Gare Montparnasse (Montparnasse train station) and escorted him to his subway platform and said goodbye.
He peacefully got into the subway car, and then at the last minute, as the tone was sounding for the doors to close, he made the fateful, horrible decision to get back off. He then accused me of seeing him off like that so that I could make sure that he wasn't following me. I didn't deny it, but I couldn't very well be blamed for it either. I tried to remain calm, and told him that it was okay, that he could get on the next one, but as the next subway train came and went, he refused to get on that one as well.
What followed was a frightening chase through the halls of the Gare Montparnasse. I ran through the various tunnels in a vain attempt to get away from him, and he chased right after me. I knew that if I could just get on the subway -- any subway in any direction -- without him getting on the same train, I could escape him. I ran to a couple of different subway lines to try to take one, but each time I got on a train, he would just get on the same one, and it was impossible to stop him.
In the subway station of the Gare Montparnasse, there's a large tunnel connecting various subway lines that is so long that it has rolling conveyor-belt sidewalks in it, and our chase from one subway platform to another involved following this passageway back and forth a couple of times. There I experienced another astonishing example of how little you can count on the aid of strangers. This passageway is huge, and it was absolutely packed with people. I was yelling (in French) "help, this person won't stop following me!" as he followed me onto the conveyor belt and was grabbing me to keep me from getting away.
I violently tried to push him away, screaming "dégage !" (get away from me!) and "au secours !" (help!). The people in the tunnel just kept a certain distance and watched. I have a very vivid image of seeing the people on the opposite conveyor belt staring blankly at the scene as they went by, as if they were watching something taking place on television. It was absolutely terrifying to see that I could be attacked in a well-lighted, crowded place and that no one would lift a finger to help me. Even today, sometimes when I'm in that passageway the image comes back to me.
At one point I managed to slip away from St- by going outside of the subway area and into the train station. (I had a monthly transportation card, so I could go in and out of the subway as much as I wanted without running out of tickets.) I went upstairs to a small bookshop and read magazines for about ten or fifteen minutes, waiting for him to go away.
Figuring I had waited a reasonable length of time, I stepped out of the bookstore and received a call on my cell phone. It was St-, and he told me that he was still in the Gare Montparnasse. I didn't tell him where I was (obviously) because I didn't know if he knew that I was still there too or if he thought perhaps that I had gotten on the subway.
I was in the main hall of the train station where there's a large open area, several stories high, criss-crossed with escalators. I looked down and saw him on the floor below me, talking to me on his cell phone. It was almost surreal -- I felt like I was in some sort of action movie. He didn't see me, and I was careful to stay outside of his line of vision, but I was trapped there because I couldn't go up or down the escalator without risking being seen, and he had positioned himself in such a way as to have a clear view of both the entrance to the subway area and the main doors of the building.
I was petrified and didn't know what to do. All the while on the phone he was telling me that he could tell that I was upset, and he wanted to talk to me and make it okay again. It was crazy of him to imagine that anything other than his leaving me alone could possibly make things okay. I told him that all I wanted was for him to go home peacefully and let me do the same.
Finally, when I thought he was sufficiently far from the gate to the subway area for me to possibly get past without being seen, I tried to slip back in unnoticed, but he saw me, and the chase resumed in full force. I searched everywhere for a security or police officer who could be counted on to keep St- in custody for just fifteen minutes so that I could get on the subway unmolested, but when you really need a cop, they can be hard to find. After what seemed like an hour (but was probably more like fifteen minutes) of this horrible pursuit, I was completely hysterical with fear and rage. I pushed him away and ran out of the subway area again, and this time I ran outside and got on a bus. He didn't follow me outside of the building, probably because he figured that I would wait around and make another attempt to get on the subway.
On the bus, everything was peaceful and calm, and I was able to easily verify that St- did not get on the same bus with me. After riding along for a certain distance, I noticed to my chagrin that this bus I had so cleverly chosen was going straight towards Porte d'Orleans -- St-'s subway stop -- and that that was the end of the line where everyone had to get off! As soon as I noticed this, I got off the bus immediately. I then consulted the maps on the street and walked toward the nearest subway station that wasn't for line number four (St-'s line). I'm pretty sure I ended up taking the RER B at Cité Universitaire. I remember thinking how much safer I felt walking alone down the dark streets of Paris than I had felt in any situation that involved St-.
Even after this last horrible incident, I continued to talk to St- on the phone, but I no longer felt the slightest responsibility towards helping him. The only reason I even maintained phone contact was that when he lost contact with me completely, he would start making harassing phone calls to G-, So-, and my parents, and I figured that this was my problem and not theirs.
He continued his insane, deluded monologue, and I basically non-committally went along with anything he said that didn't involve telling him where I was living or agreeing to see him again under any circumstances. I figured that it didn't really matter what I said to him at this point because he was so deluded that whatever it was he would twist it up in some bizarre way in his deranged mind anyway.
One of the things he took to repeating was that we needed to both forgive each other and become friends again. I knew that there was no point in taking anything he said seriously, but I was disgusted that he continued to believe (apparently sincerely) that although he had done some bad things, it was really that we had both done bad things to each other, and, in fact, what I had done to him was probably even a bit worse than what he had done to me because I started it.
I'm sorry, but let's take a short visit to reality universe here.
Occasionally it happens that you're in a relationship that doesn't work out, and your partner leaves you for someone else: that's life. And to respond by terrorizing the person (and her friends and family) with repeated harassment, thefts, and violence is not even in the same universe with an appropriate response.
He also would tell me that he really wanted to give me back the remaining suitcase of my things that he had stolen from me (although he always carefully avoided the word stolen). I told him that there was nothing of value in the suitcase, so he might as well just throw it away. He said that he felt bad just throwing it away, but after everything he had done to me, I didn't care in the least if he felt a pang of remorse while throwing away things he had stolen from me.
So in the end, I decided it wasn't worth it to try to continue my little dream of living in Paris, so I quit my job and got on a plane bound for the U.S...
I then lived in New Jersey for two years before moving back to France.
Fin
Monday, Feb. 1 - Saturday, Feb. 13, 1999
At one point St- somehow got a hold of the number of my cell phone. This was less of a nuisance than you might expect because I kept it turned off almost all of the time anyway, so all he could do was leave me messages. And since I never did figure out how to work the message service on that phone to retrieve my messages, I didn't even have the bother of having to listen to them. Of course I eventually had the number changed.
Even though I knew that I would soon be leaving, I was still worried that St- would find my new address and harass me there and possibly damage the C-s' apartment. The biggest risk was that St- knew where I worked, and there was always a danger that he might follow me home.
Since he insisted that I call him regularly, the system we hit upon was for me to call him from the subway station immediately after work. That way he was happy because he had my attention long enough to recite to me over and over his distorted vision of what had happened between us, and I was happy because I knew that if he answered the phone in Montrouge, that meant that he wasn't there in the subway station intending to follow me home.
He told me over the phone that he felt bad about the fact that he still had a suitcase full of my things (which he had stolen the last time he had broken into my apartment) and wanted to return them to me. I told him that he could drop it off with G- or with the police, and I would pick it up from there. He refused, saying that he wanted to give it to me in person because he wanted a chance to try to rebuild our friendship, and he wanted to show me that we could get together without anything bad happening.
After everything that he did, I was still concerned about him, and I wanted to believe that he could get better. So when he suggested that we meet at the Mustang Café for a beer, and promised that he just wanted to use this as an opportunity to show me that all of those bad things he did were in the past, I thought to myself "It's a public place, full of people -- I won't be in any danger, and maybe it will help him, as he says."
The attentive reader is probably wondering at this point how many times this poor gullible woman can fall for this psycho's promises before she finally catches on. Read on, and you will see that this time was definitively the last time.
So, one evening I foolishly walked into the Mustang Café to meet St-. Of course he hadn't brought the suitcase. He explained that since we're friends now there would be plenty of opportunities for me to get it from him in the future. (Translation: I hate to give up my hostage so easily if there's potential to continue to use it as bait.)
I sincerely tried to carry out my new role as friend (in part because I felt bad for him that he had essentially no other friends), but it was difficult because he was at least as creepy as ever. He tried to pressure me into agreeing that all of the bad things that he had done weren't really as bad as all of that, and that he had just had a bad reaction to the terrible way I had left him.
Then, to demonstrate to me that he was getting on with his life and even had new romantic prospects, he told me a rather disturbing anecdote. There were couple of people (boyfriend and girlfriend) who were living in the other apartment on the same floor of St-'s building while I was living there with him. St- told me that they had just recently broken up, and the woman had gone off to live with her new boyfriend. Then, the other day, St- ran into the woman on the street and said "bonjour." She didn't respond, but as soon as she had passed him he turned to look back at her, and he noticed that she had turned to look back at him as well. Then they each walked a little bit farther in their respective directions, and he looked back again and noticed that she had again turned for another look. When he reached the end of the block, he turned and looked back a third time, and noticed that she turned to look a third time as well.
Now, I'm almost positive that she was there on the night that I was screaming "He's threatening to kill me with a knife, somebody please call the police!" (or at least she would have heard about it later) so my immediate interpretation of her behavior was that she was keeping an eye on him out of apprehension, or perhaps she was curious to look at what kind of a person would do such a thing. St-'s interpretation, however -- and this really amazed me -- was that she was looking back at him because she was interested in him and was checking him out! When he told me that that was what he thought, it was all I could do to keep from exclaiming "Are you crazy?!?"
I restrained myself because I knew that the correct response was that, yes, he is crazy, so to avoid upsetting him, I acted as if his little story were perfectly reasonable. But to myself I was thinking, "Yeah, I'm sure that most women find it to be a big turn on when they hear that a guy locked up his ex-girlfriend in his apartment and attempted to kill her."
After the outing had gone on for a reasonable length of time, St- surprisingly demonstrated his improved behavior by being willing to end the evening and go our separate ways without a fight. I was so impressed that I even agreed to a future outing of the same type. I walked with him to the Gare Montparnasse (Montparnasse train station) and escorted him to his subway platform and said goodbye.
He peacefully got into the subway car, and then at the last minute, as the tone was sounding for the doors to close, he made the fateful, horrible decision to get back off. He then accused me of seeing him off like that so that I could make sure that he wasn't following me. I didn't deny it, but I couldn't very well be blamed for it either. I tried to remain calm, and told him that it was okay, that he could get on the next one, but as the next subway train came and went, he refused to get on that one as well.
What followed was a frightening chase through the halls of the Gare Montparnasse. I ran through the various tunnels in a vain attempt to get away from him, and he chased right after me. I knew that if I could just get on the subway -- any subway in any direction -- without him getting on the same train, I could escape him. I ran to a couple of different subway lines to try to take one, but each time I got on a train, he would just get on the same one, and it was impossible to stop him.
In the subway station of the Gare Montparnasse, there's a large tunnel connecting various subway lines that is so long that it has rolling conveyor-belt sidewalks in it, and our chase from one subway platform to another involved following this passageway back and forth a couple of times. There I experienced another astonishing example of how little you can count on the aid of strangers. This passageway is huge, and it was absolutely packed with people. I was yelling (in French) "help, this person won't stop following me!" as he followed me onto the conveyor belt and was grabbing me to keep me from getting away.
I violently tried to push him away, screaming "dégage !" (get away from me!) and "au secours !" (help!). The people in the tunnel just kept a certain distance and watched. I have a very vivid image of seeing the people on the opposite conveyor belt staring blankly at the scene as they went by, as if they were watching something taking place on television. It was absolutely terrifying to see that I could be attacked in a well-lighted, crowded place and that no one would lift a finger to help me. Even today, sometimes when I'm in that passageway the image comes back to me.
At one point I managed to slip away from St- by going outside of the subway area and into the train station. (I had a monthly transportation card, so I could go in and out of the subway as much as I wanted without running out of tickets.) I went upstairs to a small bookshop and read magazines for about ten or fifteen minutes, waiting for him to go away.
Figuring I had waited a reasonable length of time, I stepped out of the bookstore and received a call on my cell phone. It was St-, and he told me that he was still in the Gare Montparnasse. I didn't tell him where I was (obviously) because I didn't know if he knew that I was still there too or if he thought perhaps that I had gotten on the subway.
I was in the main hall of the train station where there's a large open area, several stories high, criss-crossed with escalators. I looked down and saw him on the floor below me, talking to me on his cell phone. It was almost surreal -- I felt like I was in some sort of action movie. He didn't see me, and I was careful to stay outside of his line of vision, but I was trapped there because I couldn't go up or down the escalator without risking being seen, and he had positioned himself in such a way as to have a clear view of both the entrance to the subway area and the main doors of the building.
I was petrified and didn't know what to do. All the while on the phone he was telling me that he could tell that I was upset, and he wanted to talk to me and make it okay again. It was crazy of him to imagine that anything other than his leaving me alone could possibly make things okay. I told him that all I wanted was for him to go home peacefully and let me do the same.
Finally, when I thought he was sufficiently far from the gate to the subway area for me to possibly get past without being seen, I tried to slip back in unnoticed, but he saw me, and the chase resumed in full force. I searched everywhere for a security or police officer who could be counted on to keep St- in custody for just fifteen minutes so that I could get on the subway unmolested, but when you really need a cop, they can be hard to find. After what seemed like an hour (but was probably more like fifteen minutes) of this horrible pursuit, I was completely hysterical with fear and rage. I pushed him away and ran out of the subway area again, and this time I ran outside and got on a bus. He didn't follow me outside of the building, probably because he figured that I would wait around and make another attempt to get on the subway.
On the bus, everything was peaceful and calm, and I was able to easily verify that St- did not get on the same bus with me. After riding along for a certain distance, I noticed to my chagrin that this bus I had so cleverly chosen was going straight towards Porte d'Orleans -- St-'s subway stop -- and that that was the end of the line where everyone had to get off! As soon as I noticed this, I got off the bus immediately. I then consulted the maps on the street and walked toward the nearest subway station that wasn't for line number four (St-'s line). I'm pretty sure I ended up taking the RER B at Cité Universitaire. I remember thinking how much safer I felt walking alone down the dark streets of Paris than I had felt in any situation that involved St-.
Even after this last horrible incident, I continued to talk to St- on the phone, but I no longer felt the slightest responsibility towards helping him. The only reason I even maintained phone contact was that when he lost contact with me completely, he would start making harassing phone calls to G-, So-, and my parents, and I figured that this was my problem and not theirs.
He continued his insane, deluded monologue, and I basically non-committally went along with anything he said that didn't involve telling him where I was living or agreeing to see him again under any circumstances. I figured that it didn't really matter what I said to him at this point because he was so deluded that whatever it was he would twist it up in some bizarre way in his deranged mind anyway.
One of the things he took to repeating was that we needed to both forgive each other and become friends again. I knew that there was no point in taking anything he said seriously, but I was disgusted that he continued to believe (apparently sincerely) that although he had done some bad things, it was really that we had both done bad things to each other, and, in fact, what I had done to him was probably even a bit worse than what he had done to me because I started it.
I'm sorry, but let's take a short visit to reality universe here.
Occasionally it happens that you're in a relationship that doesn't work out, and your partner leaves you for someone else: that's life. And to respond by terrorizing the person (and her friends and family) with repeated harassment, thefts, and violence is not even in the same universe with an appropriate response.
He also would tell me that he really wanted to give me back the remaining suitcase of my things that he had stolen from me (although he always carefully avoided the word stolen). I told him that there was nothing of value in the suitcase, so he might as well just throw it away. He said that he felt bad just throwing it away, but after everything he had done to me, I didn't care in the least if he felt a pang of remorse while throwing away things he had stolen from me.
So in the end, I decided it wasn't worth it to try to continue my little dream of living in Paris, so I quit my job and got on a plane bound for the U.S...
I then lived in New Jersey for two years before moving back to France.
Fin
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Stalker, part 6: Spying and Terror
Continued from our previous installment here.
Monday, Jan. 18 - Thursday, Jan. 21, 1999
St-'s harassment activities were incessant. He came to our apartment almost every evening demanding to be let in. Considering what had happened the previous week, we had already stopped letting him in at all.
On one occasion he forced his way through the door -- he had asked Sh- for a cigarette, and when she opened the door a crack to give one to him, he pushed his way in -- and he refused to leave. I wound up getting into a physical fight with him, which was unwise because he was a lot stronger than me, but I was so worn down by being constantly terrorized in this manner that I couldn't think straight.
I received a number of bruises and a large bruised cut straight through my work jacket and across my arm, but we managed to get St- out. After that incident, he would come over to our apartment and stand just outside for hours screaming that he just wanted to be let in for a cup of coffee.
Our apartment couldn't be worse in term of vulnerability to this type of harassment. The outer gate of the complex actually housed several buildings, and our apartment occupied the whole ground floor (except a small common entryway) of the building in the middle of the courtyard. This meant that we had the advantage and disadvantage of having windows on the front and the back. Because of this, St- could walk all the way around the apartment and yell at us from all sides, which he did frequently. It also meant that he could look in through the windows of any room, which he also did frequently.
My bedroom was in the back and had a huge, tall window with light wispy curtains. After a single experience of having St- come around and look in, I took a printout of a Java program I had written and used it to cover every square millimeter of my window with paper. I did it all the way up to the top because St- could (and did) climb up on the metal bars of the window to look in from various angles.
The day after I had papered my window, St- was outside again yelling to me that it was very "stupid" of me to have put paper all over my window. I wasn't acknowledging his presence, but I told Sh- that my response was "And how do you know that there's paper all over the window -- because you were trying to look in? Well, that's why there's paper on it!"
The windows that had shutters were shuttered closed at all times (in Sh-'s room, the kitchen, and the glass door in the living room). Still, there was a small window above the glass door that we hadn't bothered with, and so one time when we were minding our own business in the living room St- startled the living daylights out of us by jumping up and looking in through that window. In no time, we had papered that window as well.
The worst window problem of all, however, was in the bathroom. In the shower stall there was a small window that was heavily tinted so it would let in some light, but it was impossible to see through it in either direction. St- responded by breaking it. He just broke it a little so that we wouldn't notice it right away and have it repaired. We noticed it pretty quickly, though, since showering in January with a window that you can't close completely is not the sort of thing that you might do without realizing it. We repaired the hole as soon as it appeared by stuffing it with a ratty hand-towel and covering it with a fair amount of duct-tape. Our showers were still chilly, though, since the crack let in a bit of air and there was no radiator in the bathroom.
One evening after my usual hot-water-cold-air shower, as I was finishing my routine at the sink (still naked), I distinctly heard some faint muttering, and it frightened me so badly that I jumped. I looked all around and for a moment I couldn't think where it might be coming from.
I thought perhaps I had imagined it, but then I heard it again. This time I looked at the window and noticed that our diligent repair job had been re-opened a tiny bit near the top, leaving a small slit that someone could look through. I was terrorized by this new and intimate invasion, so I ran to the bedroom.
I got the distinct impression that St- had deliberately made noises because I hadn't noticed him at first, and he was as intent on frightening and traumatizing me as he was on simply spying.
I got dressed and got back to the book I was reading, but I could hear him climbing on the bars of my window, and from the tiny noises coming from the bars I knew he was there for some time. I sat with my back against the same wall as the window because it was the only spot in the room where he couldn't see me even if he were able to make out some shadows through the paper screen.
The next day I repaired the window again, even more thoroughly, and afterwards made sure to check the repair job carefully before each shower.
to be continued...
Monday, Jan. 18 - Thursday, Jan. 21, 1999
St-'s harassment activities were incessant. He came to our apartment almost every evening demanding to be let in. Considering what had happened the previous week, we had already stopped letting him in at all.
On one occasion he forced his way through the door -- he had asked Sh- for a cigarette, and when she opened the door a crack to give one to him, he pushed his way in -- and he refused to leave. I wound up getting into a physical fight with him, which was unwise because he was a lot stronger than me, but I was so worn down by being constantly terrorized in this manner that I couldn't think straight.
I received a number of bruises and a large bruised cut straight through my work jacket and across my arm, but we managed to get St- out. After that incident, he would come over to our apartment and stand just outside for hours screaming that he just wanted to be let in for a cup of coffee.
Our apartment couldn't be worse in term of vulnerability to this type of harassment. The outer gate of the complex actually housed several buildings, and our apartment occupied the whole ground floor (except a small common entryway) of the building in the middle of the courtyard. This meant that we had the advantage and disadvantage of having windows on the front and the back. Because of this, St- could walk all the way around the apartment and yell at us from all sides, which he did frequently. It also meant that he could look in through the windows of any room, which he also did frequently.
My bedroom was in the back and had a huge, tall window with light wispy curtains. After a single experience of having St- come around and look in, I took a printout of a Java program I had written and used it to cover every square millimeter of my window with paper. I did it all the way up to the top because St- could (and did) climb up on the metal bars of the window to look in from various angles.
The day after I had papered my window, St- was outside again yelling to me that it was very "stupid" of me to have put paper all over my window. I wasn't acknowledging his presence, but I told Sh- that my response was "And how do you know that there's paper all over the window -- because you were trying to look in? Well, that's why there's paper on it!"
The windows that had shutters were shuttered closed at all times (in Sh-'s room, the kitchen, and the glass door in the living room). Still, there was a small window above the glass door that we hadn't bothered with, and so one time when we were minding our own business in the living room St- startled the living daylights out of us by jumping up and looking in through that window. In no time, we had papered that window as well.
The worst window problem of all, however, was in the bathroom. In the shower stall there was a small window that was heavily tinted so it would let in some light, but it was impossible to see through it in either direction. St- responded by breaking it. He just broke it a little so that we wouldn't notice it right away and have it repaired. We noticed it pretty quickly, though, since showering in January with a window that you can't close completely is not the sort of thing that you might do without realizing it. We repaired the hole as soon as it appeared by stuffing it with a ratty hand-towel and covering it with a fair amount of duct-tape. Our showers were still chilly, though, since the crack let in a bit of air and there was no radiator in the bathroom.
One evening after my usual hot-water-cold-air shower, as I was finishing my routine at the sink (still naked), I distinctly heard some faint muttering, and it frightened me so badly that I jumped. I looked all around and for a moment I couldn't think where it might be coming from.
I thought perhaps I had imagined it, but then I heard it again. This time I looked at the window and noticed that our diligent repair job had been re-opened a tiny bit near the top, leaving a small slit that someone could look through. I was terrorized by this new and intimate invasion, so I ran to the bedroom.
I got the distinct impression that St- had deliberately made noises because I hadn't noticed him at first, and he was as intent on frightening and traumatizing me as he was on simply spying.
I got dressed and got back to the book I was reading, but I could hear him climbing on the bars of my window, and from the tiny noises coming from the bars I knew he was there for some time. I sat with my back against the same wall as the window because it was the only spot in the room where he couldn't see me even if he were able to make out some shadows through the paper screen.
The next day I repaired the window again, even more thoroughly, and afterwards made sure to check the repair job carefully before each shower.
to be continued...
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