I spent the past week hanging out with my good Mormon friends who grew up next door to me in SLC. We took a road trip to southeastern Kansas where a few of us were roommates while we studied singing there in 1997. I was nineteen years old and as Mormon as I could be, being the daughter of a New-Age-Hippie-Biker-Jazz Musician and a Lesbian-Comedienne-Democratic Sociopolitical Activist. In other words, I struggled with the Church Thing A LOT.
The easiest I ever had it faith-wise was living in Kansas, where I didn't relate to anybody but other Mormons, all two of whom I happened to live with. During that time all my best bonding experiences with my girlfriends involved praying together, scripture-reading and being the best little missionaries we could to all the lost, football-loving souls at our esteemed academic institution, Independence Community College (aka: IndyCC), where the un-bright but athletic boys imported from North Carolina and Atlantic City would court us with such winning lines as, "I can tell you not from Kansas, 'cause Kansas girls don't got short hair." Which advances (first made me yell BE STILL MY HEART and then) sent me running to my teacher begging her to lay down the law about boys. She did, and for the rest of our stay we actually RELISHED being able to say to them, "I'm sorry- I'M NOT ALLOWED TO DATE."
My life was all girls and all church, ALL THE TIME.
So it is no surprise to me, looking back on old journals from that time, to be reminded how conservative I was (or anyway how conservative I was trying to be); but I'd forgotten how those many cloistered months affected my perspective on "good" and "evil." And I had TOTALLY forgotten how, when I moved home to Salt Lake, I felt particularly endangered and enthralled by the rowdy antics of one Stanley Asberger, whose college lifestyle included not only beer and cigarettes, but also possibly (gasp!) s-e-x. I could never have featured that a few years later I'd end up blissfully setting up house with this wild child, long after his racy ways had come to seem practically staid to me; all I knew then was that he had the inside scoop on something I knew nothing about, and I WANTED TO TRY IT.
The following is what I actually wrote about him in my diary at the time. (I highlighted some of the awesomer ways I referred to him for you- in case you haven't taken my Quiz yet and are still looking for a good name to call your lover...) .
"I have been in a great confusion all week about Stan and his Ways of Temptation."
"And who was there sittin' at a table eatin' meat and potatoes, just waiting to beguile me, but Treacherous Stan?"
"Stan the Compelling talked to me the entire time, putting all sorts of ideas into my head and generally acting as a Conduit for Satan and tempting me like crazy. Nothing too unusual."
"Stan always invites me to join in, and while my mouth and my faith say "No," my mind cries out "Yes! Yes!""
"...really fretting over the turmoil I experience at the temptations of That Angel, The Son of the Morning*, Stan."
"Stan = Satan manifested in my life."
You read it right: Stan = Satan. How's THAT for a beautiful beginning to the story of our love?
*Isaiah 14:12 - "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning. How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations
