Pieces of the Past: The Mission, "It's probably nearing disaster level" (or Months 18-24)

By Mister Curie

It was only after my disaffection that I was able to see a pattern in my life indicating that I was not strictly heterosexual. This is part of a series of posts as I try to account for all the pieces to the puzzle of my sexual orientation. By documenting the pieces of the puzzle, I hope to be able to put the picture together. Only by being as completely honest with myself as I can will I be able to understand who I am. This sixth post in the series will deal with months 18-24 of my mission.

The reprieve from the difficulties focusing and "Satan's temptations" were not to last. Two companions later, I developed another crush on a companion. I was with the favorite companion of my mission. We were together for five months and got along great, probably too great in fact. We were emotionally very close and the other companionships in the district starting calling us a "married couple," largely due to our frequent mini-arguments and "lover spats." It probably only confirmed this impression of a married couple when we used our extra Missionary Support Funds to purchase a waffle iron and new pots and pans. We very nearly purchased new carpet for our apartment as well (we got ample Missionary Support Funds and the economy of the country was declining so we got progressively more money as we exchanged dollars for the local currency). I again became distracted by sexual thoughts, had a supercharged libido, and turned to masturbation. It was nearly impossible for me to admit that I was in love with my companion and what that would mean to me, although my journal entries clearly document that I was getting close to understanding that I was homosexual.

About two months into our companionship we started wrestling. The first time, I recorded in my journal:

Last night, Elder ****** got me out of my bad mood by getting me involved in a wrestling/tickling match. It was pretty fun and we had a good companionship bonding moment.

I loved the close contact our wrestling provided and frequently became aroused during our wrestling. The repressed sexual attraction made working together difficult. I recorded a few days after our first wrestling match:

We haven't been working very well and we've been getting offended a bit and getting angry at each other. The reason is that I haven't been trying to do work, or be one, or to work with him. I've just been thinking about him and we've been wrestling and tickling each other.

With such strong attraction, I began to see that I was compartmentalizing my life, although I had a very negative view of the homosexual feelings I was repressing, writing:

It seems like I'm developing two faces. I have the mask of a missionary and one of a sinner. These masks even affect my thoughts. When I put on the missionary mask, my thoughts improve, I judge others of things that even I do, and I focus more. My sinner mask mostly comes on when I'm left to myself and then my mind wanders to hidden realms, forbidden. I feel like a cavern of darkness is opening inside my ind and that I'm being sucked in.
I need to close that cavern and focus my thoughts on good things. . . I need to stop before things get too bad. I don't feel much like a missionary and my mind is easily distracted now - I've allowed it to roam without constraints for too long.

But our companionship also seemed to be going very well and I was intoxicated by my love for my companion. A few days later, my journal entry reads like I am describing a date:

We got some ice cream and had a nice walk home in the evening. We rough-housed and had tickling fights and kept playing human bumper cars with each other. I felt like a little kid again. . . . We had fun. Then we got home and talked a little bit. It's a pretty weird thought the he's a cowboy. I never would've become friends with a cowboy, but now we're the best of companions. Life is looking pretty good right now.

The next day I recorded:

We were pretty tired from our late night. We had companionship wrestling last night and were worn out.

Our interactions with each other became more intimate. We often put our arms around each other's shoulders when doing companionship study in the morning, or while kneeling side by side at our beds with our legs and sides touching to pray at night. We also regularly gave each other hugs before going to bed. My mission pictures of us together always have our arms around each other, or sitting close to each other touching. One photo even has us practically cuddling on the couch after having eaten a large meal at a member's house. I definitely used the constant counsel that we love our companions to deny that anything inappropriate might be developing between us.

The wrestling continued. A couple days later I wrote:

I wasted Companionship study time with wrestling. It was fun, but I think that I'm beginning to waste a lot of time with this desire to wrestle. I don't know why. I'm not even much of an athletic guy. It's pretty dumb.

Another entry records:

We woke up and had a little bit of exercise/wrestling and so we got started [with Companionship study] a bit late.

And then notes:

When we got home [this evening], we found a note on our door from the neighbor asking us to stop our morning exercises because it wakes her up and she's getting cracks in the ceiling. So it looks like we'd better stop wrestling. It's probably a good thing.

It was probably a good thing because I was getting increasingly aroused by our wrestling. I wonder what our neighbor really thought our "exercises" were.
Then my companion and I had to take a trip to the mission headquarters for a training session for mission leadership. It involved an 18 hour train ride. We sat with each other, touching as we traveled. I wrote about the trip:

The time in the train has also given me some time to think about less wholesome things. I need to focus my mind and be clean... I don't mind the train. I really like being rocked to sleep. The only problem is having too much time to think and allowing your mind to wander. I hate such problems.

The relationship I had with my companion, however, felt very wholesome and good. I believed it was just the manifestation of the pure love of Christ in our companionship. My negative journal entries actually focused much more on the evils of the desire to masturbate, or were filled with negative self-talk when I did masturbate. I did not really connect in my mind the increased desire for sexual release with the repressed sexual feelings I had for my companion.

My "wake-up call" came during a prolonged wrestling session. In my journal, I cryptically wrote:

We sat together on the couch for a couple of hours and I got four letters written. We also wrestled a little, but tried not to disturb our neighbor downstairs. I think the wrestling is getting a little bit out of hand. Actually it's probably nearing disaster level. I need to be more focused on my work. But everything was alright in the end.

What that actually meant, was that we had sat on the couch, our sides touching each other, frequently putting our arms around each other's shoulders while we were writing letters. That progressed into a wrestling session and while wrestling with my companion I could feel my body's arousal intensifying as it progressed through the natural stages of the sexual response and I felt it nearing the point of orgasm. In fact, I felt as if I was starting to ejaculate. I pulled back from the wrestling and tried to regain control. I have no idea what my companion was thinking at this. After an appropriate pause, I excused myself to go to the bathroom where I checked my garments. I had not, in fact, ejaculated, but did have large amounts of Cowper's fluid, or pre-ejaculate. I considered it disaster averted. I had not, in fact, climaxed while wrestling with my companion and had therefore not done anything wrong.

I tried to be better in the future while wrestling so as to avoid the potentially disastrous consequences. I do not know what my companion's feelings about any of this were, as we never discussed it. I don't know if he knew of my arousal or if he was also aroused during our wrestling. However, we continued to sit close to each other during companionship and personal study, prayer, etc. My journal entries record increasingly frequent episodes of bad moods on the part of both of us. I wonder if it might have been a subconscious effort on our part to keep our physical relationship at bay. It may also have resulted from the repressed sexual desire kept boiling underneath the surface. But emotionally we remained closely connected. We didn't wrestle again for about a month, but then my journal records that we started again on a second train trip we were taking to mission headquarters for another mission leadership conference. I just couldn't control the attraction I felt for my companion:

We wrestled for a little while to build up the companionship unity and then discussed concerns. It was pretty good. I hope our wrestling didn't disturb the neighbors too much... Elder ****** wanted to go to bed for the night. We rough housed for a while and then I stopped bugging him and let him go to sleep.

The day after returning from the trip, I wrote:

We came home to prepare a lesson. But I couldn't focus on it. So I ended up wasting a ton of time and bothered my companion. I wrestled with him for quite a while, which wasn't too effective. Actually, it really distracts me and wasn't good... I [again] tried to prepare a lesson ... Then Satan struck me and I fell spiritually [masturbated.] It all happens so fast, but in hindsight I could see it coming. What with all the time to think, wrestling, etc.

Here, I was finally connecting the desire for sexual release and masturbation with thinking about my companion and the arousal I experienced while we wrestled. We were nearing five months together and learned that the plan was to keep us together for another 2 months. But then a problem elsewhere in the mission necessitated an emergency transfer that pulled my companion away. I was devastated when he was transferred and cried frequently before his departure, mourning my loss.

I made it through the remaining 3 companionships of my mission without developing another crush.

After returning home with honor, I heard rumors that one of my high school friends was sent home from his mission early for homosexuality. The rumor was that he had apparently crawled into his companion's bed one night and tried to fondle him. I was never able to confirm these rumors and didn't know what, if any, church discipline he faced. I remember being shocked and thinking to myself that if things had turned out slightly differently on my mission, or if one of my companions had interpreted things slightly differently, that would have been me. But they hadn't, and I couldn't admit to myself that I was gay.

Disaster averted.

Pieces of the Past: The Mission, "I'm not here for this!" (or months 12-18)

By Mister Curie

It was only after my disaffection that I was able to see a pattern in my life indicating that I was not strictly heterosexual. This is part of a series of posts as I try to account for all the pieces to the puzzle of my sexual orientation. By documenting the pieces of the puzzle, I hope to be able to put the picture together. Only by being as completely honest with myself as I can will I be able to understand who I am. This fifth post in the series will deal with months 12-18 of my mission.

I wrote in my journal:

Things have been pretty tough since the new year began. I hate it when things get tough in the way that these things got tough. What caused it? I can't even put my finger down on the cause. It's been bad. I've been wasting 20 days of my mission. Lame! . . . I need to stop thinking about other things, stop letting eyes and mind wander, and stop repairing and repenting when I should be clean and serving the Lord. I'm not here for this!

What I am cryptically writing about was a difficulty to keep my mind focused on missionary work. My mind was constantly on sexy thoughts and my libido was super-charged, such that I was actively looking for sexual explicit or sexually charged pictures whenever we were out. These types of images were plentiful on magazine's displayed in roadside stands. The majority of the pictures were female, but it wasn't so much what the image was (although I'm sure I would have preferred male images), but that the images made me think sexy thoughts. After having kept myself from pornography and masturbation to be clean for my mission and keeping myself that way for the first year of my mission, suddenly I was actively looking for incidental pornographic images and I began to masturbate again. I couldn't understand why I suddenly had these strong urges. Looking back on the journal entries in the three weeks leading up to this, however, and the added perspective of time and a better understanding of my sexual orientation, it becomes obvious that I had a huge crush on my companion. While I couldn't admit it to myself at the time, these strong urges were a manifestation of my internalized sexual attraction to my companion and were an attempt to relieve those pent up feelings.

I was training a greenie and he was really cute. I have a picture of him that I remember thinking was absolutely adorable, although I didn't realize (or couldn't admit to myself) that my feelings were of a sexual nature. We had a great companionship and got along very well. He was very dependent on me as his trainer and I felt a strong connection to him. Things began to get difficult over the New Year holiday when we were ordered to stay in our apartment for two days to avoid the potentially dangerous street conditions of drunken New Year revelry. While you are always with your companion 24 hours a day as a missionary, something about 48 hours alone in the apartment without contact with anyone else allowed my innate attraction for my companion to blossom.

A couple days later I wrote:

Today was tough to stay focused. I don't know why, but Satan sure is working hard on me. . . The bus ride was so crowded, everyone all squished together. Elder ****** was practically spooning me because of so many people.

However, I believe I intentionally mis-recorded events to hide the attraction I felt for my companion and to remove responsibility from myself. How I actually recall events, the bus was crowded when we got on and was standing room only. While traveling to a fairly distant destination, the bus got progressively more crowded and eventually everyone was pressed up against everyone else. I was pressed up close to my companion and was behind him. I felt my body begin to respond to the close contact. I tried to shift my body, but only ended up spooning him closer (the bus was really crowded). I tried to mentally will my erection away, but it only seemed to get stronger. I hoped and prayed that my companion would think it was my Book of Mormon poking him from behind. He never said anything about it.

I also noted in the same journal entry that we later went tracting and were invited into an apartment where there was a large poster of male pornography hanging on the wall. It was a huge temptation for me and I tried to avoid looking at it.

In the next day's journal entry I describe my companion in endearing terms and compare him to a little puppy. I was enamored.

The next day we were cleaning our apartment and I found a stack of pornographic magazines in the closet (I assumed they belonged to the people we were renting the apartment from as our apartments came fully furnished and often had the belongings of our landlords in them, perhaps it was naive of me.) I tried not to look at the magazines and put them into a box so that I wouldn't stumble across them unintentionally, but I didn't feel free to throw them away because I assumed they belonged to the landlord. I think the magazines had pictures of naked couples and it was hard for me to not think about the magazines sitting in our closet. Combining the pornographic images with my repressed desire for my companion was a difficult situation. I ended up masturbating for the first time in a couple of years. I wrote an anguished journal entry and worried about being sent home.

The masturbation, however, apparently didn't relieve the attraction I felt for my companion. Later that day I wrote:

We ended up wasting time [at the apartment] and I gave Elder ****** a back massage to help him study, a mistake! I had to push myself to go out and work after that.

I am sure that my mentioning that giving my companion a back massage was a mistake was due to my becoming aroused while giving him the massage. I also noted on a different day that I gave him a good backscratching. I suspect I also got aroused during that.

I was constantly distracted by my repressed feelings and had a hard time thinking clearly. I even recorded that I almost got hit by a car because I stepped into traffic without looking because my mind was distracted by looking for pornography at the street vendors. A few days later I accidentally cut myself with a knife because my mind was distracted by my repressed sexuality. I started to have difficulty sleeping, recording:

Last night was a pretty rough night. I didn't get a lot of sleep. I hate waking up often during the night. I don't understand it. Satan sure is tricky in his work.

I am sure I was distracted by my desire for my companion and that I would wake up and stare at him sleeping in the bed next to mine. I developed this theory that if Satan was tempting me, his presence might also be causing temptation for my companion. I began to wonder if he was having difficulties with keeping his thoughts properly focused or if he was also being tempted to masturbate. This allowed me to think of him masturbating and was another highly distracting thought.

Luckily I was transferred a couple of days later, and suddenly the difficulty focusing and all of "Satan's temptations" disappeared as I was not attracted to my new companion.

Pieces of the Past: The Mission, "Leading it to paths I'd rather avoid" (or Year One)

By Mister Curie

It was only after my disaffection that I was able to see a pattern in my life indicating that I was not strictly heterosexual. This is part of a series of posts as I try to account for all the pieces to the puzzle of my sexual orientation. By documenting the pieces of the puzzle, I hope to be able to put the picture together. Only by being as completely honest with myself as I can will I be able to understand who I am. This fourth post in the series will deal with the first year of my mission.

I think missions can be particularly difficult for the homosexual. All day, every day, is spent with with other men and specifically avoiding women. You are told to love your companion and love for one's companion is a highly prized attribute. As I mentioned in my previous post, it can also be compared as preparation for marriage.

I think these puzzle pieces will begin to define the picture of my sexual orientation, perhaps we are finally getting to the corner and edge pieces. Dump, dump, dump . . .

I entered the MTC and was shocked to discover that we had communal showers. After my fears concerning communal showers had been relieved concerning the BYU dorms, it never crossed my mind that there would be communal showers at the MTC. They came to be known in my MTC district as the "Tree of Life" due to their construction of a single pole with shower heads protruding from it. I woke up thirty minutes earlier than required at the MTC so that I could avoid the traumatic experience of a communal shower. I also discovered that there was a separate handicap shower in the bathroom, which I used. However, that didn't stop me from finding reasons to wander into the bathroom later in the morning, when everyone else was communally showering, to watch.

After having been in the MTC for 4 weeks, a new batch of elders arrived, and a rumor erupted that one of the new Elders would tap dance naked in the bathroom because of the great acoustics. There definitely was a tap-dancing Elder in the new group. However, I never found him to be naked when I wandered into the bathroom while he was tap dancing . . .

Out of the MTC and in the real world, I had a difficult time transitioning to missionary work, due to my introverted nature. It became particularly difficult with my second companion, who was also a fairly young missionary, because he wanted me to take more responsibility in the companionship. We actually had a great companionship and became quite good friends. After one particularly difficult morning tracting, he offered to give me a blessing. After the blessing, he gave me a hug, and it felt wonderful. It felt very much like the good-bye hugs I got from my best friend when I left for BYU. The hug actually made me feel much better than the blessing. A few days later, I asked for another blessing, probably because I knew I would get another hug afterwards. Although I didn't admit it at the time, I suspect I allowed myself to have difficult days on my mission, just so I could convince him that I needed a blessing (and a hug). Admitting that, now I feel manipulative . . .

I served in a Russian speaking mission under a Russian-born mission president. He was excited for us to learn about the Russian culture and encouraged us to participate more fully in it. While with my second companion, our zone planned a trip to the Russian bath house. Basically the Russian bath house experience consists of a sauna, where you sit around naked with the other guys until you sweat your brains out, and then you go jump into a cold pool of water. Then you return to the sauna to repeat the process again and again. This supposedly removes the impurities from your body. To help get those toxins out, you also take damp branches that are covered with leaves and hit each other with them while you are in the sauna. I was very nervous about the trip, and the majority of the Elders were completely naked. Luckily there were several who wore shorts the entire time (perhaps they were also gay?), so I didn't feel too uncomfortable leaving mine on and participating in the festivities (although I had fully planned on forgoing the sauna and shower just so I could keep my shorts on). I still spent a good amount of the time indulging my curiosity and enjoying the view of the naked elders, with the shorts hiding the evidence of my arousal. (As an aside, I later learned that the main organizer for these trips to the Russian Bath house was actually a gay Elder in our mission who wanted to get the naked men together). After the trip to the Russian bath house, I wrote in my journal:

Satan was working really hard on me today. But it was from a different, older approach. He wasn't working so hard with fear and depression but rather with my mind's focus and leading it to paths I'd rather avoid. I had to pray several times for divine help to avoid temptation.

My fifth companion and I also had a great companionship. We worked hard and tried to include the Lord in all of our decisions. This companion was also a very touchy companion and gave me regular hugs. I really enjoyed his hugs. My companion was Zone Leader and always going on splits with other companionships and making overnight trips to a distant city in our zone to conduct baptismal interviews. It was probably a good thing that we weren't able to spend more time together.