A Gay Mormon Love Story: Elder | Op-Docs | The New York Times

you the psychiatrist had me do tests he said well you have a very high feminine quotient and I looked at Emily said I could have told you that without taking the test he prescribed the antipsychotic Thorazine because I was attracted to guys six months later I was on a Mormon mission so the expectation is you are a missionary every moment of these two years at the exclusion of interaction with family friends you don't date there wasn't anything of any sort other than proselytizing we were the first Mormons that had ever basically stepped foot in Pescara was beautiful it was springtime but I could not shake the sadness nighttime was a torture and as I would sit there wide awake all night long I would lean out the window of the apartment I would watch the prostitutes to be picked up dropped off again you know in some ways they were more real to me than anybody else around me at that point I shared a sense of being the bad one one Sunday late in the summer this group of Italian kids came to our meeting at the end of it one of the guys came up to me and introduced himself and he said that's a rather strange choice of music that you played for the prelude and posted music and I said why and he said well that that's the famous song from death in Venice multi Vinnitsa which is of course a very famous classic about an older gay man who falls in love with a young boy in Venice during a cholera epidemic johnny was absolutely stunningly beautiful he was a very brooding and he was a communist and so he was very intense everything about him had gotten hold of me one of the fundamental rules of Mormon missions is that you have to be with a companion 24/7 365 Johnny and I wanted to be together we wanted to be together all the time but I had to have an excuse so we argued for hours and hours and hours about communism versus Mormonism one of these arguments one night got so loud that one of the Companions said would you guys just like go outside the front door cuz it's like you're keeping all of us awake here and of course as soon as we got outside the front door we stopped arguing we sat there holding hands and we were just talking and he just leaned over at one point without saying anything he just leaned over and kissed me for the longest time and I sat there thinking Dovie sono stato to Tamia Vita is so Laura ProQuest I finally knew who I was Bhutan was and in a kiss of all things it certainly didn't jive with what I was about as a Mormon missionary or what my life was supposed to be about my mom used to tell us very specifically that homosexuals were the next to the lowest rung on the ladder that murderers were right here and they were reaching up trying to grab our ankles and pull us down we were very aware that this was totally completely against the rules and it was wrong and I was going to hell and all of that but from that moment forward Johnny and I were basically inseparable I remember many times they would be walking down the street together I'd have my hand in Johnny's hand inside of his coat and then Johnny and I would like race behind a closed door real quick and kiss and I remember one day looking out the window and there was Johnny down below with all the communists college students marching in the streets and it was just so utterly bizarre and yet for me it all just fit he tasted like cigarettes and we'd had big arguments about cigarettes you know I kept saying you have to stop smoking it's ridiculous it's horrible it's a sin and my companion was oblivious to what was going on granted he's 19 years old how could he have even imagined that I could be carrying on this you know this love affair there was no possibility to have sex and we just didn't care I was happy for the first time in years completely off the drugs I threw away what was left of the Thorazine the reality of being missionary for the Mormon Church is that you're transferred from one city to another or as they say from one district to another so when the transfer came oh my god the drama neither of us could conceive of being without the other was a lung transform so is Johnny if he would come along to help me carry my luggage we both knew that was a big lie the train goes pescado Brom Civita Vecchia and from civitavecchia the ferry boat that crosses the Mediterranean out to the island of Sardinia I was still putting on a show you know wave and everybody as the trains pulling out of the station smiling and Johnny of course was like death he absolutely did not would not put on the show for anybody we pulled the luggage down into an empties go Bootsy no and then we closed the door behind us and started sobbing and sobbing and I I just felt like my whole insides were coming out I just had held on to all of this emotion for the last six seven months with John nay never being able to let anything go ever the entire train ride we were alternately crying and kissing we thought that day was the end of our lives it just felt so how can you be that much in love and not be together by the time we got to Civitavecchia we missed the ferryboat for the island so we had the entire day now to spend in civitavecchia and i have movies of this because i you know every once in a while remembered to pull out the movie camera civitavecchia a seaside town on the mediterranean we have not slept and we are so emotionally spent and we are so in love something was altered it was like in a dream I remember seeing a horse carriage coming down the street and there was no sound It was as if all sound had disappeared everything stopped you so we get on the ferryboat just a little before dusk and it pulls away and we're standing on the back of the ship looking towards the mainland and I just see Italy getting smaller and smaller and the most amazing thing happened I suddenly started feeling calmness come over me it's the day of the Sun ramble Festival and musics on the TV in the background Johnny said I'm tired can we go back to the room just this tiny little cabin the bunk beds Johnny got undressed and went into shower and I started to undress and I remember leaning up against the wall of the cabin in my garments the underwear the Mormons wear and I had a talk with God I just said you know god I'm tired of fighting and I'm tired of asking you to take this away from me I've asked you a thousand times take these feelings away from me and you won't and you haven't so I'm going to do what I need to do and that's what I said to God that night I'm going to do what I need to do and you do what you need to do and that's the deal you want to punish me you go right ahead I'm tired of hurting that's what I told God that night early the next morning the ferry boat docks at this almost primitive port Johnny and I logged all my luggage behind us up that dirt road and up to the train station and the world was quiet and Johnny and I knew at this point that it was the end of the line out in front of the train station face-to-face we just would touch each other's faces and kiss and hug and then I go to push him away to say goodbye and he'd pull me back and for the first time he was crying too he said stay live here with me we'll have the rest of our lives together this is what we want he couldn't understand why I kept saying no pulse so I had no way to explain it to him there was no bridge between these two there was no way for me to be with Johnny and be Mormon he lit a cigarette turned around and headed off down that road every once in a while he would wave and I could see the trail of smoke rising above him until he finally got so tiny down there at the bottom that it really could hardly see him anymore I knew something at that point had changed radically it wasn't just love it was also the awakening of me

Channel: The New York Times

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Keywords: The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, nytimes.com, news, newspaper, feature, reporting, Gay (Film Genre), LGBT (TV Genre), gay mormon, love story, gay love story, romance, gay romance, mormon missionary, gay mormon missionary, op-docs, Italy (Country), Homosexuality (Quotation Subject), Prostitution (Quotation Subject)

Id: EHvnZbPBzFo

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2015