Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 21:54:33 -0700
From: L
Subject: Signs and Tokens

------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: While this story is fictional, it draws on my
actual experience as a former LDS missionary. (There's
a story there, of course, but it's not the story
you're about to read.)

For conscience's sake, I should say that my decision
to submit this story to the Nifty Archive does not
necessarily mean that I approve of the content of
other stories in the archive. However, I applaud the
archive's goal of collecting "the diverse hopes,
dreams, aspirations, fantasies, and experiences of the
Queer Community." Gay Mormon experience--and fantasy--
is one piece of that diversity.
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SIGNS AND TOKENS

At first I thought that Elder Langford and I were the
only Americans in Barrio Nuevo. I discovered there was
a third about a week after we had arrived to open the
area to missionary work.

The front tire of Elder Langford's bicycle had gone
flat, so we had stopped at a gomero stand next to the
main street to get the tire fixed. Elder Langford and
the gomero were hunkered down, looking for the
puncture. I stood nearby, bored, leaning against my
own bicycle and looking idly around.

That was when I happened to see the American. He was
standing by the side of the road about a block away,
haggling with a motoconcho, one of the many
motorcyclists who provided a kind of taxi service to
and from the capital. The American looked to be in his
late twenties. He was wearing a polo shirt, khaki
shorts, and sneakers without socks. He had a full
black beard, and even from this distance I could see
the dark fur that covered his arms and legs. A lust
I'd managed to keep dormant for months rolled over
inside me. I kept watching as the American climbed
onto the motorcycle, behind the driver, leaning
expertly as the motorcycle pulled away from the curb.

I wondered who he could be. I wondered what he was
doing in Barrio Nuevo. I hoped I would get to see him
again.

*	*	*

Barrio Nuevo was, as the name indicated, a new
development on the outskirts of the capital. Only its
main street was paved; all the smaller streets were
mud. There were no phones or running water. People who
could afford to built cisterns next to their houses,
hired trucks to fill them, and sold the water to their
neighbors. Officially, there was no electricity in
Barrio Nuevo, but the residents had put up their own
precarious poles and wires. One of the first things
Elder Langford and I had to do when we set up house in
Barrio Nuevo was pay someone to shimmy up the nearest
pole and splice us into the power line. The power was
off more often than it was on, but at least we were
able to keep our tiny refrigerator reasonably cool.

I didn't mind the primitive conditions. I considered
it a tremendous honor to have been chosen to be part
of the first missionary companionship to work in this
barrio.

I questioned the mission president's wisdom in
assigning Elder Langford to serve with me. Elder
Langford was "trunky," to use the missionary slang.
With two months left in his mission, he already had
his suitcases mentally packed. He saw Barrio Nuevo as
an ideal place to spend his last weeks as a
missionary. The district leader was a bus ride away.
There were no branch presidents, bishops, or high
councilors to snitch to the mission president if we
weren't working hard enough or broke mission rules. We
were isolated from the rest of the mission, and he was
senior companion, and that gave him the freedom to run
things however he liked.

Not that he was lazy. On the contrary. Elder Langford
subscribed to the "work hard, play hard" approach to
missionary work. He was the kind of missionary who
would stay out for hours after the curfew prescribed
by the Missionary Handbook so he could teach people
who couldn't be found home during the day. Then he
would use the next morning's allotted study time to
catch up on his sleep. He would use proselyting hours
to shop for souvenirs, and then persuade the
shopkeeper to receive a visit from the missionaries.
He didn't work by the book, but we did teach a lot of
people. Before he went home, we'd baptized three
families, plus a handful of singles--an admirable
beginning to the new local congregation.

Still, I found it hard to be Elder Langford's
companion. He talked about home a lot: the girls he
was planning to ask out, the movies he was going to
see (two years worth to catch up on), the car his
father had promised to buy him if he finished his
mission honorably. I was barely six months into my own
mission; the last thing I needed to be thinking about
was home. I fumed whenever Elder Langford would point
to a jet passing overhead and crow, "Do you know how
far away that plane is, Elder Seeley? Twenty-two
days!"

Mission rules required us to perform four hours of
community service a week, in addition to our quota of
proselyting hours. Elder Langford convinced the
superintendent of the local elementary school to let
us teach a free English class there a couple evenings
a week. But Elder Langford had no intention of
teaching English himself. "That's your specialty," he
told me. "You teach the class. I'll use that time to
find new investigators."

Leaving your companion alone was a deathly serious
violation of mission rules; the only time missionary
companions were to be out of sight of one another was
when one of the two was in the bathroom. Had I
complained to the mission president, I could have
gotten Elder Langford into deep trouble. But I didn't
complain. By then I was so fed up with Elder
Langford's trunkiness and maverick proselyting that I
enjoyed having a few hours away from him. He, I
imagined, had similar feelings about me.

On Elder Langford's last evening in the mission field,
I left him packing his suitcases at the small house we
rented, while I walked alone to the school to teach my
English class. After the class, a girl maybe eighteen
years old approached me and asked if I knew where
"Langford" was. I'd never seen the girl before. She
introduced herself as Francia. I told her that Elder
Langford was back at the house, packing. She didn't
know where we lived. It became clear that she also
didn't know this was Elder Langford's last night in
the mission field. She was visibly distressed by the
news, though she tried to keep her poise.

Francia walked with me back to the house. I felt very
uncomfortable. As if it wasn't bad enough I was
separated from my companion, I was committing an even
more dire infraction of mission rules by being alone
with a member of the opposite sex. And what was the
story with this girl and Elder Langford?

When we got to the house, Elder Langford wasn't there.
I thought he might have walked down to the corner
store. I brought two chairs out from the house so that
Francia and I could sit outside to wait for him to
return. Inviting her in was out of the question. There
were limits to how far I would go in transgressing the
rules.

I asked Francia how she knew Elder Langford. She was
evasive, but I gathered that they had met during one
of my English classes, while he was wandering the
barrio alone. He had apparently been to her home on
multiple occasions.

It was getting dark now, and there was still no sign
of Elder Langford. Francia asked for a piece of paper.
She penned a note to Elder Langford, being careful not
to let me see what she was writing. Then she asked for
an envelope to seal it in. She asked me to give the
sealed envelope to Elder Langford (whom she continued
to call simply "Langford"). Finally she asked if it
might be possible to have a photo of Langford.

As it happened, Elder Langford had just developed
photos of a trip to the campo we'd taken with some
other missionaries on one of our days off. The photos
were still lying on Elder Langford's desk; he hadn't
gotten much packing done. I found a photo that
pictured Elder Langford alone and gave it to Francia.

"Tell Langford good-bye for me," she said. And then
she was gone.

I sat up in bed when I heard Elder Langford come home.
My watch showed it was after 2:00 in the morning.
"Where have you been?" I asked.

He was nonchalant. "I caught a ride into the capital
to say good-bye to some of the people I knew there."

Travelling outside our proselyting area without
permission was another serious infraction of mission
rules. Travelling outside the proselyting area alone,
without his companion, was a double infraction,
probably serious enough to get him sent home
dishonorably. Of course, since he was on his way home
anyway, Elder Langford wasn't worried.

"Francia came looking for you," I said.

He froze, eyeing me warily. "What did she say?"

"She said to tell you good-bye. There's a letter from
her on your desk." I was settling back down to sleep
as I spoke. "Also, she asked for a picture of you. I
gave her one."

I should have been scandalized. No doubt Elder
Langford expected me to be. But I wasn't, which
surprised even me. If anything, I felt envious of
Elder Langford, of the fact that he had found a way to
get something he wanted precisely without creating
scandal. He'd found...maybe not a girlfriend; that
might be saying too much. But someone to unwind with,
maybe even to fool around with. I had no idea how far
things had gone between Francia and Elder Langford.
But presumably he hadn't done anything with her that
would come back to haunt him later; he had been
discreet; none of the local church members or anyone
in the mission knew, except me. There was nothing to
be scandalized about. Whatever had gone on was between
Francia, Elder Langford, and Elder Langford's
conscience.

Besides, I was beyond caring. Within a few hours,
Elder Langford would be out of my life for good.

*	*	*

My new companion, Elder Crogan, also had just two
months left in his mission. He was every bit as
"trunky" as Elder Langford and considerably more lazy.

I was furious. Every week, each missionary was
supposed to write a letter to the mission president
describing our feelings about the work. The week after
Elder Crogan arrived in Barrio Nuevo, trunky and cocky
and determined to have a good time, I wrote in my
letter to the mission president that I thought it was
unfair to be given two companions in a row who were so
close to going home. I never received a reply. This
made me suspect that the mission president didn't
actually read our letters, so I stopped writing them
altogether. He didn't seem to notice.

I began to ask myself why I was out here.

Elder Crogan was a self-proclaimed hick ("And proud of
it!") from some tiny town in southern Utah I'd never
heard of. It became obvious within minutes of our
first meeting that he disdained me. He saw me as an
uppity egghead who didn't have a clue about missionary
work or anything else. He loved trying to bait me into
arguments about gun control, or environmentalism, or
the United Nations. I was determined not to give him
the satisfaction. At the same time, for the sake of
the missionary work, I tried not to develop a bitter
attitude. I spent a lot of my personal study hours
reflecting on scriptures about charity and patience. I
tried to keep my thoughts focused on the work we were
doing with new church members and investigators.

We weren't teaching as many people as I had been with
Elder Langford. Elder Crogan tended to leave the house
late and come back early. We spent a lot of our
proselyting hours "checking out" unexplored sectors of
the barrio, taking long soda breaks in corner stores,
or hanging out at the homes of the members we'd
already baptized. Early on in our companionship, I
tried to take the initiative to find new people to
teach. When my efforts didn't prove immediately
successful, Elder Crogan told me to lay off, since I
obviously didn't know what I was doing. "You have to
wait for the Spirit to tell you who to talk to,
Seeley. You can't force the gospel down people's
throats." So we went back to wandering the streets,
waiting for the Spirit to tell Elder Crogan to
approach someone.

I felt depressed and lonely. It was hard to get out of
bed in the morning--though since Elder Crogan
routinely slept in, there was no rush to get the day
started anyway. One morning I stood in the bathroom,
looking wearily at myself in the mirror, and felt an
intense wish to have someone's arms around me.

I started masturbating late at night, something I had
sworn off when I started my mission. Up until now, I
had lapsed only rarely. Now I was jacking off every
three or four days, though I made a point of resisting
the urge as long as I could.

*	*	*

That was when the mysterious American appeared again.

Actually, I had seen him a handful of times in the
intervening weeks, usually on a motoconcho headed to
or from the capital. According to someone Elder
Langford and I had run into during our proselyting,
the American was a Peace Corps volunteer who had moved
into Barrio Nuevo not long before we had. Elder
Langford had been interested in hooking up with a
fellow American. But the person we were speaking to
didn't know the American's name or where exactly he
lived. We could probably have gotten more information
by asking around, but then we forgot.

One Saturday morning, Elder Crogan and I were at the
small house the mission had rented for use as a
church. Elder Crogan and Tijo, one of our recently
baptized singles, were at the back of the house,
trying to fix a problem with the wiring. Elder Crogan
fancied himself a handyman, but I expected it would be
Tijo who actually identified and solved the problem.
Electrical wiring held no interest for me whatsoever.
So while they tinkered around in back, I scrounged up
a broom and set out to sweep the front porch, which
had become extremely dusty thanks to the unpaved road
running directly in front of the house.

Across the street was a tiny shop set up like an open-
air bar, with stools on the sidewalk. It was a place
where people could buy sandwiches and drinks. The
American was sitting at the bar. The proprietor had
just handed him a beer. He was dressed, like the first
time I'd seen him, in khaki shorts and sneakers
without socks, but today he was wearing a bright
Hawaiian-type shirt.

As he drank his beer, he turned around on his stool to
look out onto the street. Immediately I set to work
sweeping. After a few moments, I looked up. He was
looking at me. I looked down again; in the split
second before he passed out of my sight, I saw that
he, too, was turning his head away. I stole a couple
more glances while I finished sweeping. He was looking
up the street now, affording me a profile view of his
face. He had both his elbows resting on the bar behind
him. His feet were tucked behind one of the rungs of
the stool, his legs spread open casually. The top two
buttons of his shirt were undone, allowing me a
glimpse of the hairiest chest I could remember seeing
since coming to this country.

When I didn't feel I could dawdle anymore over the
sweeping without becoming obvious, I went back into
the house to find a dustpan. I couldn't find one, so I
tried to sweep the dust up into a sheet of old
newspaper. The newspaper kept crumpling up, instead of
lying flat against the floor. But I finally managed to
get most of the dust swept up onto the newspaper and
leaned onto the broomstick to take a break. I looked
back across the street. The American was now eating a
sandwich. While I watched, he turned around, for no
apparent reason, to look in my direction. Our eyes
met. He smiled and raised his beer bottle in greeting.
I nodded. He turned back around to continue eating.

I no longer had any excuse to stay on the porch, so I
picked up the broom and the dust-filled sheet of
newspaper and started back into the house. In the
doorway, I had an idea. I put down the newspaper,
walked out through the porch to the curb, and began
sweeping out the gutter. I continued to steal glances
at the American as I did so. Most times, all I saw was
his back. Once I looked up to find him watching me.
Our eyes met again, but this time neither of us smiled
or nodded. We just looked at each other for a second,
and then I resumed sweeping. For me, that second of
just looking had been tense.

I had finished sweeping the gutter and was wondering
whether I ought to leave the dust, leaves, and litter
in a heap or try to sweep them up into the newspaper,
when I saw the American crossing the street towards
me. My heart skipped a beat. Stay calm, I told myself.
Look him in the eyes, so you don't seem nervous, but
don't stare.

He stood in front of me with his hands tucked into his
back pockets. "Hey. How you doin'?"

"Good," I answered.

"Paul Zoltowski."

"Elder Seeley."

I automatically extended my hand. We shook--he had a
warm, firm grip--and then he returned his hand to his
back pocket. The posture forced his shoulders back,
which in turn opened his shirt a little wider at the
throat. I didn't dare look directly, but through my
peripheral vision I could see the hair bursting up
towards his neck. He was solidly built and so tall
that the top of my head came up only to his shoulder.
This was a guy who could move around the city alone
without fear of being mugged; few men in this country
could match him in size.

"How come you guys are always named Elder?" he asked.

His expression and tone were serious, and indeed I'd
had people ask me that question in all seriousness
before. But somehow I could tell that Paul was joking.
I smiled.

"Elder's a title," I said. "My first name's Tim."

"So should I call you Tim or Elder Seeley?"

Missionary protocol dictated that I insist people call
me by my title. Dealing with people as a missionary, I
felt perfectly natural introducing myself as "Elder
Seeley." Speaking to Paul, I didn't feel like a
missionary. But I hadn't been "Tim" to anyone, not
even my companions, since entering the Missionary
Training Center. "You should probably call me Elder
Seeley," I said apologetically.

"Then Elder Seeley it shall be." He spoke with a
jovial mock formality. "It's good to finally meet you.
I'd heard there was a pair of American missionaries in
town. I even passed you guys on the street a couple
times. But I've never had the chance to stop and
talk."

"Yeah, I've seen you around too," I said. The words
felt inane as soon as they left my mouth. "I
understand you're with the Peace Corps."

He nodded. "About a year now. I mean, not here in
Barrio Nuevo for a year; I've only been here for three
or four months. But I've been in the country a year."

"How long do you serve for?" I knew nothing about the
Peace Corps except that they dug wells in Africa, an
image I'd seen on a poster somewhere.

"Two years."

I was struck by the similarity. "Hey, same here."

"Interesting," he said, though he didn't seem to find
the coincidence quite as interesting as I had. "Now,
what is it you guys do exactly?"

I started to answer, but he cut me off. "Actually, the
heat's starting to bother me. Do you mind if...?" He
gestured towards a shady spot on the curb.

"No, sure." We sat on the curb, in the shade. He sat
with his knees raised high, so he could rest his arms
on them. As a result, I could look partially down (or
rather, up) the legs of his shorts. Don't go there, I
warned myself.

"You were saying?" he said.

"Well...we do just...missionary work." Had a local
asked me what I was doing in Barrio Nuevo, I would
have launched into a practiced speech explaining that
I was here to share a message about the restored
gospel of Jesus Christ. But I couldn't imagine myself
saying that to Paul--partly because I'd never said it
in English before (only in Spanish), and partly
because this didn't feel like that kind of
conversation. "We talk to people about the Church, and
we prepare them to get baptized, if that's what
they're interested in."

"So you do evangelization. You're not here building
clinics or schools or that kind of thing."

I had no reason to think he was passing judgment, but
the statement made me feel defensive nevertheless.
"Well, we do some community service. I teach an
English class up at the elementary school a couple
evenings a week. But yeah, I guess mostly we do--
proselyting." I couldn't remember the word he had
used, though I'd understood what he meant by it at the
time. "What do you do?" I asked.

"I do work related to HIV/AIDS education and
prevention, mostly."

"Really?" He'd rattled it off in a way that left me
feeling intimidated.

"Have you seen those stickers shaped like a stop sign
that say 'Alto al SIDA'?"

"Yeah." I'd seen them pasted to light poles and walls.

"I was part of the team that created those."

"Wow. Hmm." Say something articulate, you idiot, I
chastised myself. But I couldn't think of anything to
say. I just looked at Paul, nodding a little. He kept
looking back. There was something about his face that
suggested he was amused. Or perhaps more precisely,
intrigued.

I felt I needed to break the silence. "So--" I started
to say, and at the very same time Paul started to
speak. We laughed a little. "What were you going to
say?" I asked.

"No, you go ahead," he insisted.

"Well, I was going to ask how long you've been living
in Barrio Nuevo. But actually, I remember now that you
already said you'd been living here for...three months
was it?"

"Something like that. I moved out here..." He thought
back. "Near the end of March."

"We arrived in the middle of April," I said. It
occurred to me that I ought to explain the "we." "At
first I worked here with a missionary named Elder
Langford. Then he finished his mission and went home.
Now I work with a missionary named Elder Crogan."

"Ah." What I'd just said seemed to have suddenly
reminded Paul of something. "I have to ask you.
Whenever I see you guys around the capital--other
missionaries, I mean--you're always in twos. And
you're always with, like, a same-sex partner." He
seemed to place a slight emphasis on the words "same-
sex partner"; and as soon as he'd said the words, he
laughed a little, as if he were nervous, perhaps.
"What's the story with that?"

I didn't see what was so strange. "Missionaries always
go out two by two...like in the Bible. And you work
with someone of the same sex because you have be with
your companion 24 hours a day."

I regretted mentioning the Bible. I was afraid it
might give Paul the impression I was trying to
proselytize him. But Paul zoomed in on what I'd said
about being with my companion 24 hours a day. "So you
and your...companion have to do everything together?
Live together, work together, eat together,
everything?"

"Right." At least we're supposed to, I thought,
remembering Elder Langford. Since Paul seemed to find
it peculiar that companions would spend so much time
together, I added, "Missionaries often say that
learning to live with your companion is good practice
for marriage."

"I...would imagine so," Paul said. He sat in silence,
giving me a slightly quizzical look. The silence
lasted only a few seconds, but I became uncomfortable
under his gaze and had to break eye contact.

"So where is this companion who's with you 24 hours a
day?" Paul asked.

I started guiltily. "Oh. He's, um, in back, trying to
fix an electrical problem." I gestured towards the
house.

"Can I meet him?"

"Sure." We stood up, dusted ourselves off.

"Is this where you guys live?"

"No. We just use this place for church meetings. We
live up at the other end of town." I pointed in the
general direction. I thought he might reciprocate by
indicating where he lived, but he didn't.

When we came around to the back of the house, we found
what I'd expected: Tijo was working up on the roof,
while Elder Crogan stood on the ground giving the
impression that he was supervising. I did
introductions, though Paul had to give his own last
name, because I couldn't remember it. Elder Crogan was
excited to meet a compatriot.

The three of us stood in a kind of circle while Elder
Crogan and Paul exchanged basic get-to-know-you
information. Elder Crogan was better at small talk
than I was. He learned that Paul hailed from a suburb
of Chicago, was a loyal fan of both the Bulls and the
Bears, and in fact had played on his high school
football team. That explains the body build, I
thought--though I wouldn't have pegged Paul as a jock.

If Elder Crogan had been excited to meet a fellow
American, he was thrilled to meet a fellow athlete.
Elder Crogan had run cross-country in high school and
had aspirations of doing it in college as well. He'd
tried to get me to run with him in the mornings so he
could start to get back in shape. I'd refused, partly
out of spite. Since Elder Crogan, unlike Elder
Langford, wasn't willing to break the rule about
leaving your companion, my refusing to run meant that
Elder Crogan couldn't run, which had become one more
source of resentment between us.

Once the conversation turned to athletics, I had
nothing to contribute. I feigned interest in watching
what Tijo was doing up on the roof while Elder Crogan
and Paul continued to shoot the bull. A couple times I
saw Paul glance over at me, as if he were concerned I
might be feeling left out.

"Listen," Paul said, and as he said it he made a point
of turning his body so that he was no longer
exclusively facing Elder Crogan. "I've got some things
I have to do. But why don't the two of you come over
to my place later tonight? If you've got the time, I
mean."

"Sure, we can do that," Elder Crogan said. "That'd be
great."

"Actually," I said, feeling intensely annoyed at Elder
Crogan all of a sudden, "we're scheduled to meet those
friends of the Acostas tonight."

If he was irritated, Elder Crogan refused to show it.
"That'll be over by nine, easily. Would that be too
late?" he asked Paul.

I noticed that as he said this, Elder Crogan shifted
position so that he and Paul were facing each other
directly again, putting me outside the conversation. I
also noticed that before Paul answered, he turned his
shoulders around so that he was mostly facing me
rather than Elder Crogan. "Nine would be OK. American
time or local time?"

He was alluding to the fact that the local culture
didn't place much value on punctuality; missionaries
told variations of the same joke. "American time,
absolutely," Elder Crogan said. He spoke in a fervent
tone, as if this were a serious question of national
pride.

Paul was still looking at me, not at Elder Crogan.
"Great. I'll see you at nine, then." He flashed me a
warm smile that made me feel as if something were
melting inside me. Then he turned to Elder Crogan to
give him the address.

*	*	*

Paul lived on a street not too far from our house.
We'd passed his place many times on our bicycles, in
fact, without knowing it. He rented a single room
tacked onto the side of a house belonging to a widow
and her grown son. The house was made of wood, not
cement, which surprised me, though presumably Paul
paid less for the room as a result. I was also
surprised that there were no bars over the door or
windows. For security reasons, missionaries always
lived in cement houses with bars.

"Aren't you afraid of getting robbed?" I asked Paul.

"Not really." He was wearing the same khaki shorts,
but he'd put on a less casual shirt, presumably for
company. "Either the landlady or her son are almost
always at home." His casual air struck me as
adventuresome.

Paul's living quarters were even more Spartan than
ours. He had a bed, a table, two chairs (he'd had to
borrow a third from the landlady to entertain us), and
a makeshift bookshelf put together from planks and
cinderblocks. His clothes hung from a line strung taut
in the back corner of the room. There was nowhere to
cook; he ate with the landlady or wherever his work
happened to take him.

The entire barrio had lost power earlier that day--a
frequent occurrence--so we talked by the light of a
gas lantern hanging overhead.

My question about whether Paul was afraid of getting
robbed prompted Elder Crogan to tell anecdotes about
missionaries who'd been robbed in ingenious ways. Paul
reciprocated with similar anecdotes told by Peace
Corps volunteers he knew in the city. That in turn led
us to talk about Paul's work with the Peace Corps. He
explained that he helped local institutions create
AIDS awareness campaigns, like the "Alto al SIDA"
stickers he'd mentioned to me earlier. He also helped
train local people to do presentations on AIDS
awareness and prevention in schools, neighborhood
groups, and sometimes even churches. With what struck
me as practiced diplomacy, he offered to arrange for
someone to give a presentation to our local
congregation sometime if we'd like.

Elder Crogan was evasive. All this talk of AIDS seemed
to make him uncomfortable. "That might be good," he
said, with an unconvincing show of enthusiasm. "We'll
let you know." He changed the subject. "Now, the Peace
Corps pays you, right?"

Paul was surprised to learn that the Church didn't
give us a stipend--that missionaries (or their
families) had to cover their own expenses. He told us
he was impressed that we would be willing to make that
kind of sacrifice. The conversation turned to the
subject of missionary work: how we spent our days, how
strictly our behavior was governed by mission rules,
how quickly the LDS Church was growing in this
country. Elder Crogan and I talked enthusiastically
about our work. Our meeting with the Acostas' friends
had gone well: we'd taught them the first missionary
discussion and they'd agreed to hear the second. So
for the moment at least, we were both feeling very
good about missionary work.

In the midst of this conversation, Elder Crogan asked
Paul about his religious background. Instantly, our
interaction turned awkward. We had slipped from a
friendly conversation among fellow Americans into what
felt like an attempt at proselyting. Paul replied,
quietly, as if embarrassed, that he was a lapsed
Catholic. Elder Crogan sensed the awkwardness he'd
created and immediately backed off. I wondered if he'd
asked the question out of a sense of obligation--a
twinge of guilt that we were taking time out from what
should have been proselyting hours.

I redirected the conversation by asking Paul why he'd
chosen to live in Barrio Nuevo. He replied that at
first he'd shared an apartment in the city with
another Peace Corps volunteer, but after a while he
began to feel like he wanted a place of his own. "I
need my privacy," he explained.

Elder Crogan cast a bemused glance around the tiny
room. "Well you certainly got that here."

Paul smiled. "It's probably overkill. But actually, I
like living simply. Americans are too obsessed with
things. Our lifestyle's crazy. We think we need a lot
more than we actually do."

"I agree," I said.

As soon as I said it, I felt stupid. But Paul looked
at me and nodded pensively, as if I'd just uttered
some gem of wisdom. He kept looking at me for a couple
seconds (I was getting used to him doing that) and
then returned to distributing his eye contact between
both me and Elder Crogan. "That's what I really like
about Barrio Nuevo. It's still such a new development
that people have to live simply. You don't have the
noise and the crowding and the traffic and the fumes
and all the craziness that you have in the city. All
that stuff will be here, too, in ten years. But for
now, it's almost like being in the campo. I like that.
So this is where I live now. It's a hell of a commute
into the city to work, of course. But I think it's
worth it."

"I'd go crazy if I had to live by myself," Elder
Crogan said, incredulous.

"It does get lonely sometimes," Paul said. As he said
this, he glanced over at me and then looked quickly
away again, as if he'd realized at the last minute
that looking at me wasn't a good idea.

There was a lull in the conversation. Elder Crogan
broke the silence by pointing to something on the
table and asking, "Is that a sports page from back
home?"

"Yeah, my parents mail it down to me. Wanna to take a
look?"

Elder Crogan practically shot of his seat. Soon he was
loudly lamenting the fact that So-and-so had lost to
Such-and-such... I tuned out immediately. While Elder
Crogan and Paul talked sports, I checked out Paul's
bookshelf.

He had a lot of reference books related to his work--
AIDS and community health and medical anthropology.
Many of these books had "used" stickers on the spines,
suggesting that they were textbooks he'd bought in
college. He also had some health-related books in
Spanish. Then came a row of novels in English, some
paperback, some hardback. I recognized a couple of the
titles as bestsellers from back around the time I
started my mission. Most of the titles were
unfamiliar. They weren't genre novels. They were more
literary, the kinds of books you'd expect to find on
the syllabus of a college course on contemporary
fiction.

Then I saw a title I recognized. Maurice, by E. M.
Forster. Immediately next to that was another title I
recognized. Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin. After
that came a book by an author whose name I recognized,
though the title was unfamiliar: Jean Genet. After
that came two paperback novels by a completely
unfamiliar author named David Feinberg. These were
followed by two hardback books by another unfamiliar
author whose name was printed on the spines as
Monette. At the end of the row, almost hidden up
against the cinderblock, was a book with the peculiar
title His3.

I glanced over at Elder Crogan and Paul. They were
engrossed in conversation about their experiences as
high school athletes. I quietly eased His3 off the
shelf. The cover was a black-and-white photo of what
was obviously male flesh, but I couldn't tell what
part of the body I was looking at. A close-up of an
arm, perhaps, bent at the elbow? Suddenly I realized
that what I'd taken for an elbow was actually the
profile of a tightly muscled buttock, and that I was
looking at not one but two bodies engaged in an act I
had never actually seen, not even in pictures, only
imagined...

The blood rushed to my face. I hurried to replace the
book before I was caught looking at it. I made quite a
bit of noise doing this, so I quickly grabbed another
book in case Paul or Elder Crogan looked over at me.

"Find something that interests you?" Paul asked.

He was leaning against the edge of the table, watching
me. Elder Crogan had his nose in the sports page. I
looked at the book in my hand. Maurice.

Paul came closer. "Have you read that?" he asked.

I moistened my lips before answering. "Yes," I said.

"What did you think of it?" His voice had dropped just
slightly in volume.

I checked to see what Elder Crogan was doing. Still
reading the sports page. "I found it very moving," I
answered, cautiously. "A lot of books I've read
with...that particular theme tend to have tragic
endings. It was refreshing to read a story of this
kind that ended happily."

Paul nodded. He was sitting now on a chair he'd pulled
up next to the bookshelf. I was down on one knee,
leaning back on my haunches for comfort. Paul leaned
forward with his hands clasped between his thighs so
that our heads were closer together. My eyes wanted to
travel to his open collar, but I looked down at the
cover of Maurice instead. "It's a shame Forster
wouldn't let them publish it until after his death,"
Paul said. "I think the book could have done a lot of
good. It might have helped change society's thinking
about...the issue. Did you see the movie?"

I hadn't known there was a movie. "Merchant and Ivory
made it," Paul told me (whatever that meant). "It's
very faithful to the book." He pointed with his lips
towards the bookshelf, a gesture he'd picked up from
the locals. "Have you read Giovanni's Room?"

I shook my head. Before my mission, I'd completed a
year at BYU. Walking through the campus library one
day, my eye had been caught by a yellow book on the
reference shelf with the title, The Male Homosexual in
Literature. I'd kept walking, but a couple days later
I returned. When I was sure no one was watching, I
took the book from the shelf and retreated to a carrel
in a far corner of the library. I leafed through the
book, taking mental note (I was afraid to take written
notes) of the titles of works that seemed prominent
enough even BYU might have them in its library. That
was how I found Maurice. Giovanni's Room was on my
list as well but had been checked out every time I'd
gone to look for it. I hadn't dared to fill out a
recall form for fear someone in the know might wonder
why I was so eager to have that particular title. I'd
read a few other books from my mental list, always in
an isolated corner, afraid to check the books out of
the library. Then it came time for me to start
thinking about putting in my mission papers, and I
decided that if I was going to get through my mission
(there was never any question I was going to serve), I
would have to put off exploring this particular side
of my life until later. That was how I'd felt about it
back then, anyway.

"No," I told Paul. "I haven't read that one. I did
read Another Country, though."

"I don't know that title," he said. "Also by Baldwin?"
I nodded. "Any good?"

"It was weird. I didn't...connect with it the way I
connected with Maurice."

"Hunh." He looked thoughtful. "If you connected with
Maurice, I think you'd probably connect with
Giovanni's Room. It does have one of those tragic
endings, though. It's about a...relationship that goes
really bad. But there are some very moving passages."

"You read that stuff?" Elder Crogan interjected. He
sounded as if he wasn't sure whether to laugh or
sneer.

My heart skipped a beat, but then I realized that when
Elder Crogan said "that stuff," he meant literature in
general.

"Being an athlete doesn't mean I have to be
uncultured," Paul said. His tone was friendly, but
from the look on Elder Crogan's face, I could tell the
words stung. "English was my undergraduate minor."

Paul turned his attention back to me. Elder Crogan hid
his face behind the sports page again, but he didn't
look like he was actually reading anymore.

Paul reached out towards the bookshelf with one hand.
At the same time, he put his other hand on my knee as
if to steady himself. He kept his hand there while he
showed me the book he'd retrieved. It was one of the
books by Monette--Paul Monette, I could see, now that
I was looking at the cover instead of just the spine.
The book's title was Last Watch of the Night. "Have
you read this?" Paul asked.

"I've heard of him." This was a lie, but I didn't want
to look quite so ignorant. "I haven't read anything by
him, though."

"He's very good. I strongly recommend him. He's not
easy to read. A lot of his stuff is really harsh or
gut-wrenching. But he puts his finger on some very
important issues. He even mentions Mormons in this
one, if I remember right." Paul took his hand off my
knee so he could flip through the pages. "Here." He
handed me the book, his finger indicating a passage.

I read silently for almost a page, a story about the
author's being invited to speak on a talk radio show
hosted by a politically conservative Mormon. Monette
thought the show might be a set-up, that this Mormon
host might be planning to lay into him on the air. But
immediately before the show began, the host said to
Monette, "I just found out--I mean he told me--my son
is a homosexual. Good kid. I guess I've had it all
wrong."

When I finished reading, there was a crawling
sensation at the base of my scalp. I had the feeling
that a threshold had been crossed. Up until now, Paul
and I had been like wrestlers circling one another,
checking each other out, feigning a lunge, retreating,
waiting to see who would make the first move. Now it
felt as if Paul had made that move. We weren't just
flirting with danger anymore. Things were serious now.

Elder Crogan had returned the sports page to the table
and was watching us. "What does it say?" he asked me.

I panicked. Paul came to the rescue. "He talks about
this time he went on a talk show, and he thought the
host would be politically opposed to him, because he
was a Mormon. The host, I mean. But then he turned out
to be sympathetic, which really surprised him."

Elder Crogan made a sound that was supposed to
indicate he understood. He wants to seem cultured, I
thought vindictively. "So...who is this guy again?"
Elder Crogan asked.

"Paul Monette. He was a prominent AIDS activist. He
died of AIDS-related complications not too long ago."

"Oh." The mention of AIDS had made Elder Crogan
uncomfortable again. He didn't know what else to say.

Paul turned his attention back to me. "Would you like
to borrow the book, or any of the others?"

I hesitated. According to mission rules, we weren't
supposed to read anything besides the scriptures or
other Church publications. More importantly, I was
worried about what would happen if Elder Crogan should
look through any of these books. It wasn't likely, but
still... "I probably shouldn't," I said reluctantly.

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Seeley," Elder Crogan
chimed in. "You can read it on p-days. That's
'preparation day,'" he added, for Paul's benefit.
"It's the day we have time off from missionary work
for whatever we want to do to relax. Elder Seeley
loves to read."

He was trying to work his way back into the
conversation. But what was unfolding now existed
strictly between Paul and myself. "What do you want to
do?" Paul asked me. Something about the tone of his
voice suggested that he might be inquiring about more
than just borrowing books.

"I'd like to borrow Giovanni's Room, if I could," I
said.

"No problem." He took it from the shelf and handed it
to me. He seemed pleased. "Enjoy."

"I will," I said. I made a point of looking him
directly in the eyes. "Thank you."

Paul smiled. And then, with Elder Crogan safely behind
him, he winked at me.

I became flustered and dropped my head as if studying
the cover of Giovanni's Room.

"It's getting late," Elder Crogan said with an
apologetic air. "We should be heading in for the
night."

"My apologies," Paul said. "I forgot--I usually sleep
in on Sundays, but it's probably one of your busiest
days."

"Yeah." Elder Crogan chuckled a little, as if to say,
You don't know the half of it. "Hey, if you're not
doing anything in the afternoon, maybe you'd like to
come by and check us out. We start meetings at three."

He seemed to be saying it out of a sense of obligation
again. Never let pass an opportunity to invite people
to accept gospel commitments, the Missionary Guide
taught us. Paul blew it off gently. "Maybe I will.
Depends on what I end up doing tomorrow."

We walked to the door. Elder Crogan stepped outside to
unlock our bikes, which we'd left leaning against a
nearby tree. Behind him, Paul and I lingered together
in the open doorway. Paul leaned against the doorjamb,
his hands tucked in his back pockets, looking at me. I
looked back; I was getting much better at returning
his gaze.

"Do you ever get lonely?" Paul asked me. His voice was
quiet, serious, a little intense.

Elder Crogan still had his back to us, so he thought
the question had been directed to him as well. "Sure,
everyone gets homesick at times."

Paul gave no indication of having heard Elder Crogan.
He was still looking at me. "Yeah, I do," I said. I
was trying to speak in the same tone Paul had used,
but my voice just came out sounding hoarse.

Paul nodded understandingly. "Come by again later," he
said to me. Then, as if continuing the same thought,
he turned his head towards Elder Crogan, who had
unlocked the bikes and was now facing us. "It'd be
great to visit with the two of you again. We Americans
have to stick together, right?"

An asinine grin broke out across Elder Crogan's face.
"God bless the USA," he twanged.

I felt I had not fully appreciated until that moment
what an idiot Elder Crogan was.

*	*	*

I set Giovanni's Room on my desk, on top of my
scriptures. As we were getting ready for bed, Elder
Crogan picked the book up, cast a cursory glance at
the dust jacket, ran his thumb idly across the pages,
and set the book back on my desk. That was the closest
he would ever come to reading it.

It was so late that, by unspoken agreement, we
dispensed with companionship prayers and went straight
to bed. I lay awake, listening to Elder Crogan settle
down to sleep on the other side of the room. I thought
about the book sitting on my desk. I thought about
Elder Langford and Francia. I thought about Paul. I
began to get hard.

When I could tell from his breathing that Elder Crogan
was asleep, I climbed stealthily out of bed. My
clothes were hanging on the back of my chair. I put
them back on. As silently as I could, I left the
house.

I rode my bicycle down quiet, unpaved streets. The
power was still out. Most of the barrio appeared to
have gone to the bed. Occasionally I would pass a
house lit by a kerosene lamp or hear a battery-powered
radio playing. The moon was bright enough that I had
no trouble finding my way.

There were no lights on at Paul's house, no sign that
anyone was up. I tapped softly, three times, on Paul's
door. For a moment I waited, hearing nothing. Then
someone stirred inside. I heard bare feet making their
way across the cement floor. A latch clicked, and then
Paul was standing in the open doorway. He was clad
only in boxer shorts. The hair blanketing his chest
and stomach stood out sharply against the white of his
flesh. Even by moonlight, it was a breathtaking view.

Neither of us spoke. Paul reached out, took me by the
hand, and pulled me gently inside.