When Marlies moved to town that spring she was immediately a star. Some were disgusted by her, others inspired. Some were just perplexed, but everyone was obsessed.
She was European, from Belgium or something like that, and she spoke two or three other languages besides flawless English. Now she was one of the few girls at Bountiful High School who wasn’t Mormon. That was the most interesting thing about her, but even for a nonmember she stood out. She had short hair, buzzed on one side and long in the front, and her face was full of piercings. Her arms were covered with tattoos that seemed to slide underneath her tanktops and down her slender body.
We talked about her after school. We talked about her at Young Men’s. We talked about her in the Priests’ meeting on Sundays. “Do you think her parents just let her get all those tattoos?” Some of the guys were outspoken about their distaste, but I believed it was only because the Laurels they were dating made them say it. Other guys said they thought she was pretty, even if she was half metal, and some would even whisper if the leader was out of the room how they’d love to get her alone in the baptismal font, if I knew what they meant, and I did.
The girls were not as divided. They all hated Marlies, even if they hadn’t met her. “Aren’t all those earrings just disgusting,” they’d say at joint activities. “And those tight jeans. What is that about?” You could tell which of the Priests had finally gotten a kiss from which of the Laurels by who nodded and agreed when the talking started.
I only met Marlies because we had biology together. For the evolution unit, we were lab partners. When Mr. Caldwell implied that evolution was a lie and said he only taught it because the Utah Board of Education mandated it, she stood up in unprecedented protest.
“The word ‘theory’ in a scientific sense,” she said as Mr. Caldwell turned to the white board, “just refers to an explanation of phenomena, not the validity of the conjecture.”
Mr. Caldwell turned back around. “The fact is, it has yet to be proven,” he said. “And I, for one, choose to believe we are children of our Heavenly Father rather than just giant monkeys.” Some girl from my seminary class clapped.
“But it has been proven,” Marlies said. “Fossils, DNA research. It’s obvious. You even look like a Monkey.”
Needless to say, she was sent out of the class and received several days of detention.
The next biology lesson, we were partners for the natural selection lab, the one where you take M&Ms and smash them to see which colors become more dominant in the bowl or something like that.
Everyone had noticed we were partners. The day before after the Young Men’s activity, my buddy James had elbowed me in the side and said, “You’d better talk to her.”
Noah joined in too. “Ask where she got all those tattoos.”
Esther, the Laurels president, overheard and made a noise of disgust. “You’ll probably get an STD just sitting next to her.”
Marlies and I worked quietly most of the time. I kept making eye contact with James, and he kept nudging his head as to say, “Just do it already.” As the class neared is end, I took a deep breath and said, trying to keep my voice from quivering, “This is so stupid.”
She stopped working. “Don’t tell me you don’t believe evolution either.”
“No,” I stuttered. “Well, that’s not what I meant. I mean, I don’t know. I just meant this assignment is stupid. M&Ms? Kid stuff.”
A brief smile flitted across her face. “It is a bit childish.”
James slipped me a thumbs up. He pointed to arm and mouthed the word “tattoos.” I rolled my eyes.
“Hey, can I ask you something,” I said.
“I guess so.” Marlies was pressing the last of our M&Ms against the table. The chocolate oozed out beneath her finger tips. She kept flipping her long, dark bangs out of her eyes.
“Where’d you get all those tattoos?” I tried to say it as nonchalantly as possible, but my voice cracked on the last syllable and betrayed my nerves.
She laughed.
I felt my face heat up. “I just mean, not many people have them, you know. And I don’t know a lot about them. Does it hurt?”
She laughed again. “I got most of them back home,” she said. “Except for this one.” She pointed at a red, black and yellow flag near her elbow. “I got this one in LA before my family moved here. I was homesick, I guess.”
“It’s pretty,” I said.
“You know what it is, right?”
“Uh…”
“The Belgian flag.”
“Right. I knew that.”
She laughed again. It was a lilting, cafefree laugh that I wouldn’t have expected. “Yes, it does hurt,” she said.
That afternoon when I got home from seminary, I had a Facebook friend request from Marlies. As I looked through her profile, I checked to make sure my mom couldn’t see. Her profile picture was her flipping off the camera with her arm around an even more heavily pierced friend. They both had beers in their free hands. The caption read, “Berlin with Sylvie.” There were pictures of her smoking and drinking and even one of her in the tattoo parlor with the needle against her bare back.
I found an album of her at the beach in a bikini. All the captions were in Dutch. I checked again to make sure my mom wasn’t around and clicked through them. The other guys were right—the tattoos continued under her shirt. Across her stomach were flowers and animals. Her back had a banner with something written in what I guessed was French.
I heard my mom walking toward the room, and I clicked out of the windows. I went to the bathroom and masturbated. Afterwards I spent an hour kneeled before my bed asking Heavenly Father for the strength to resist temptation. Later that evening I sent Marlies a Facebook message.
That weekend was the Festival of Colors in the city. I asked Marlies if she’d ever been.
“Never heard of it,” she said.
I told my mom some of the Priests and Laurels were going—which was true—but I picked up Marlies in my car, and we went alone.
The Festival of Colors took place every year in Salt Lake. You wore white clothes and then everyone would throw this colored chalk stuff around. It’s put on by the Krishnas of Utah or something, but I’ve never seen anyone there but blond Mormon kids.
Afterwards Marlies and I walked around downtown and got ice cream. We sat in Temple Square and watched as the fountains lighted up in the dusk.
“So you believe all this?” she asked. “You’re Mormon and all that?”
“LDS,” I said. “We say we’re ‘LDS.’”
“So what goes on in there?” She pointed at the temple that rose above us. The spotlights were beginning to shine on the steeples and the gold statue of the Angel Moroni.
“I actually don’t know,” I said. “It’s all secret. I mean, sacred.”
“That’s weird.”
“You’re the one with dolphins swimming across your waist.” I blushed the moment I said it.
She smiled, her lip ring gleaming in the light and her face all a mix of colors. “And how would you know that?” she said. “Do I have myself a stalker?”
“I just saw a couple pictures,” I stammered.
She laughed. “I don’t think tattoos are weird. A lot of people back home have tattoos like that. Even in LA. It’s just here that everyone’s so whitewashed.”
“Do you not like it here?”
“Everyone thinks I’m weird.”
“That’s not true.”
“You just said so.” She nudged my shoulder. A cloud of pink dust puffed into the air. “And you’ll actually hang out with me.”
“So would everyone else,” I said. “The boys at least, the ones who aren’t already after one of the Laurels.”
“What’s a Laurel?” she said. Our shoulders were beginning to touch.
“It’s just the name for the young women from 16 to 18.”
“Young women.” She snorted. “Is it true Mormons can’t date?”
“We can date,” I said. “Just not until we’re 16.”
“I heard you can’t even be alone with a girl till you get married. You just hang out in groups and then decide to get married, like the 50s or something. And you don’t kiss till you’re wedding day?”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Maybe some people do that. My brother didn’t really date anyone till he came home from his mission.”
“Do you have to serve a mission?”
“The men do. For two years.”
“Are you going to?”
“Yeah.”
“So you follow all the rules?” she said. “Have you ever even kissed anyone?”
I looked at her. Her green eyes were dilated in the waning light. I thought about how at dances they always told us to keep the width of a Book of Mormon between us. I tried to remember how big that was.
“Once,” I said.
“A ‘Laurel’?”
“Right.”
“That sucks,” she said. She moved her mouth a little closer to mine, and we kissed. I could feel her lip ring cold against my mouth, and when our tongues made contact, I could taste the metal there too. She pulled away and said, “Now twice.”
On Sunday James and the rest of the Priests’ Quorum hounded me for all three hours of church. “Did you kiss her? You didn’t kiss her. You pansy. You kissed her, didn’t you.” But when we went to Sunday school with the Laurels, half of them quit asking, and Esther, who must’ve heard we’d hung out said, “So, do you have Chlamydia yet?”
Finally the teacher came in, and we had a brief lesson about keeping your body pure for the Lord. That meant no drugs, no alcohol, no coffee, no tattoos, girls get one pair of earrings, and absolutely no sex or anything that makes you even think about sex.
Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I felt like Heavenly Father was trying to tell me something, especially since Marlies had made me think about sex a lot, the way her hand had rested on my leg when we kissed, and later on the drive home how she’d held my hand in the car.
I sat and waited in his office while he took care of something. It was cold and I could hear the fluorescent lights humming above me and feel their cold white light reflected off the white walls.
The Bishop came back in and sat at his enormous polished wooden desk. He made a motion over it as if to sweep away dust, though there was none.
“How’s your senior year going?”
“Good,” I said.
“Your birthday’s coming up, right?”
“In a few months.”
He made the motion across the desk again. I searched for a place to rest my arms, but my chair had none, so I just held them in my lap. “As I’m sure you know,” he said, “the Prophet just lowered the age for serving a mission to 18.”
“Right.”
“I wanted to call you in and make sure you were still planning on serving.”
“I am,” I said. “Definitely.”
“A mission is a sacred calling from the Lord,” he said. “It is vitally important to his plan.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I said
“It’s nothing to be entered into lightly,” he said, again sweeping the table. “Missionaries must be worthy and dedicated.”
Was that a pointed remark? I forced myself to make eye contact. “I know.”
“Are you going to be sending in your papers soon?”
“I plan to.”
“When you do, just come let me know. We’ll do the interview and get it all sent off.” He stood up and opened the door. He reached out his hand. As we shook hands he said, “I know you’ll serve righteously.” He winked.
I checked Facebook when I got home and found a message from Marlies. “What’s the deal,” it read. “Why is everything fucking closed today?” At the end she left a winky face.
If we hung out again would we go further? Would I get to run my hand up her waist, maybe touch her breast? I went to the bathroom and masturbated.
Afterwards I cried sitting on the toilet. How could Satan have gotten me again? I went into my bedroom and prayed for forgiveness. I spent all night reading my scriptures and trying to repent.
On Tuesday, I had biology again with Marlies. She wore a see-through shirt unbuttoned over a low-cut tank top.
Mr. Caldwell was giving a lecture on DNA mutation. Marlies slipped a note to me. Her fingers linged against my hand. It read: “My parents checked me out for the elective period. Skip seminary.” It had another winky face at the end.
I made an unsure face.
“I’ll be so bored,” she wrote on another note. “My parents will be gone. There’s nothing to do around here.”
I thought of us alone in her house, the air conditioner playing softly in the background. I would peel off the shirt, the tank top, the skin-tight jeans…
Skipping seminary wasn’t hard. I was a good student. I just told my seminary teacher I wasn’t feeling well, and he gave me a note without asking questions.
Marlies had given me directions to her house. It looked like all the other houses in Bountiful—brick and cubic. The lawn was conspicuously green for the desert climate, a perfect green rectangle punched out of the red dust. The inside was different, though. Instead of paintings of Christ and photographs of temples, there were pieces of abstract art on the walls, shelves of books in Dutch and French.
As soon as the door was shut behind me, Marlies pushed me against it and kissed me on the mouth. My hands moved onto her body, and I could feel the subtle curve of her hips. “Let’s go to my room,” she said.
I thought maybe there’d be a TV in there. We could watch a movie or something. Instead she lay down on the bed. I stood there just looking at her until she said, “Come on already.” I slowly lay down beside her, and she pulled my body next to hers.
We made out for what turned out to be hours. In the end I did get her skirt off and her tank top and her jeans, even if I had trouble with the button, and she got me down to my boxers. She ran her hand across and through my legs.
She pulled my underwear off, and I got my first handjob. I’d done it to myself. I thought I knew what was coming, but she touched me in a way that made me forget anything they’d ever told us in Young Men’s, Sunday school, even Primary.
Afterwards we lay on the bed in each other’s arms. I traced the vines down her arms, the symbols on her shoulders.
“That’s something you’ve never done before,” she said. “Not with any Laurels.”
“Your parents let you get all these tattoos?” I said.
“Of course,” she said. “As long as they’re special to me.”
“And you can drink and they don’t care?”
“And you can drink and they don’t care?”
“You can drink when you’re 16 in Belgium.”
“Sixteen?”
“It’s different there,” she said. “People don’t care about the same things. People don’t judge you like they do here.”
We heard the door being unlocked. “My mom,” Marlies said. She threw me my shirt and pulled on her clothes. I walked out behind her to find her mother standing in the living room.
I thought we were in trouble for sure. I wanted to crawl under the couch like they always said the sinners would do when Christ returns. I wanted to climb out the window and speed away, but Marlies’s mother just said, “Hello!”
“Hi, Mom.”
Marlies’s mom walked into the kitchen. “I’m making coffee,” she said. “Would either of you like some?”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“That’s right,” she said, peering in from the kitchen. “You’re that Mormon boy.”
A few minutes later Marlies’s father came home too, and we all sat in the living room while they drank their coffee. Both parents also had tattoos and piercings, though not as many as Marlies. Her dad had both ears pierced and tattoos on his forearms. Her mom had several ear piercings as well as a nose ring and a tattoo on her calf. I soon learned they also spoke as many languages as Marlies and sometimes reverting to Dutch in the conversation. Once or twice they even asked me which English expression was more appropriate in the given situation, though I never would have guessed English wasn’t their native language.
“Mormonism is very interesting to me,” her dad said. “I saw your missionaries once or twice back in Europe, but I never met an actual member till I came to the United States. It’s very foreign to me.”
“You really can’t even have coffee?” her mom said.
“No coffee or tea,” I said.
“They didn’t even have a coffee maker at the office,” her dad said. “It was strange. It’s been hard getting used to.”
“Marlies has had trouble adjusting too,” her mom said.
“Mom.”
“It’s so much different even than Los Angeles. I’m glad she’s found a friend.” She winked at me.
“Mom!”
I looked at my phone and saw it was nearing dinnertime. My parents would be concerned if I wasn’t home to sit down with the family. I said I had to go, and Marlies walked me out to my car. “Thanks for keeping me company,” she said and kissed me on the cheek. “Again soon?”
“Of course,” I said.
When I got home my brother and his wife were there. They’d driven up from Provo to eat with us.
“Hey, little bro,” he said. He picked at his fingernails. “Put in those mission papers yet?”
At dinner the family talked, but I couldn’t pay attention. I could only think back to the afternoon with Marlies, how her hand had felt between my thighs and then how it’d felt just to lie there against her, all my muscles relaxed up against the heat of her skin, and when my brother announced they were having a baby, I didn’t even hear. Instead I was thinking about my mission. Was I still worthy? Well this way, I thought, I wasn’t touching myself, so really it was a good thing, right?
“Did you hear your brother?” my dad said.
“What?”
“I’m having a baby.”
I said congratulations. My mom was crying. My brother had been home from his mission about a year. He’d met his wife at BYU where they were both studying. “Your turn now,” he said to me and winked.
Over the next month or so Marlies took me to new planets, filled my blood with a new heat. Sometimes I’d find a way to skip seminary or we’d just meet after school. There were the backseats of cars, movie theaters, behind the stage at the high school. She taught me what the hands of one person can do to another person and that eruption you feel when two hands close together, like I could never press against her fully.
She told me about her tattoos, the French poetry, the ancestral crests, the uncle that had passed away. “This one’s for him.” She told me what it was like to take the U-Bahn in Berlin, how the streets smelled in Paris, how the men would paint themselves silver for money in Brussels.
When I was with her I forgot about repentance. I wasn’t having sex, masturbating or looking at porn. I was in love, and love was of God. We started holding hands in the hallways at school and kissing before class if the teachers weren’t around. We ate lunch together.
Then Esther and James had started dating. Well, they started doing something, “hanging out” at least. I assumed they’d kissed a few times.
“What is wrong with you?” Esther would said to me at a joint activity. “Do you actually find all that attractive?” She waved her hand over her face and then shuddered.
The guys changed their tune too. Not just James, they all acted appalled. “A kiss is one thing,” they said. “But actually going out? Where’s that going? You can’t get married. They’d never let her into the temple.” Noah had a cousin that had started dating a girl like that. Now he was an atheist. “Slippery slope,” he told me.
Then Marlies and I had sex. I remember it was raining. It never rains in Bountiful, but that day it rained. Marlies’s parents had gone out of town, and I’d told my mom James and I were going into Salt Lake for the day. We had a whole Saturday to ourselves. We kissed and made sandwiches and watched television like we were real adults.
Finally we were on her parents’ bed kissing and taking our clothing off like usual. Outside the sun was starting to fall back behind the mountains. The light was coming in fractured through the raindrops.
I don’t know. I’ve heard the Prophet speak a lot. Once, on my mission, I even met him. I’ve read through the scriptures maybe a hundred times. I’ve been inside the temple and felt the veil between this life and the next, and I’ve sat in the Celestial Room, where God himself lives on Earth. Still, if you say Heaven, I think of how she whispered what she wanted in my ear, and we made brief love as the Wasatch Front lighted up in the setting sun.
When it was finished we lay there entwined as we’d done so many times. “I hope that was okay,” she said.
“It was,” I said.
“I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” she said.
I kissed her. I had done it so many times that the cool pressure of her lip ring was a familiar anchor. “I wanted to,” I said. “I love you.”
The next Sunday I was back in the Bishop’s office. I sat in the same chair feeling my neck tie tight against my throat.
The Bishop shook my hand again and sat at his desk. He continued to brush dust from the wood and stare at the white walls.
“We just need to do your interview before you send that paperwork off,” he said.
“We just need to do your interview before you send that paperwork off,” he said. He told me again how important I was to God’s plan. He asked me a string of questions to make sure I was worthy to enter the temple, receive my endowments and go serve a mission for the Lord. Did I pay tithing? Was I honest in my dealings with my fellow man? Then he asked if I kept the law of chastity.
My legs were quivering. “Yes,” I lied.
“I know you’ve been hanging out with a young lady in town. Is that true?”
“I know you’ve been hanging out with a young lady in town. Is that true?”
In the cold light I grew hot. “Yes.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said. “Just as long as you’re chaste with her.”
“I am.” I lied and lied and lied.
“Good,” he said. “Bring her to church sometime! Always a missionary.” He winked, then filled out my temple recommend and mission paperwork. “You’re all set.”
When I got home I sat in the shower like maybe I could be baptized again for all my sins. What could I have done? If I’d told the truth, I couldn’t go. My parents would be ashamed. I’d never get in to BYU. I wouldn’t get married in the temple. I had to lie, but I could repent. I’d fast and I’d pray and I’d beg the Lord for forgiveness. I could be clean again. From that point on I would be worthy.
At school the next day Marlies grabbed my hand to walk to the first class. It made me feel slimy all over, and when she tried to kiss me at the door, I dodged it. “Sorry,” I said. “I thought I saw a teacher.”
The next week passed like that. I said I couldn’t come over because there was something I had to take care of. At lunch I looked away while she talked. We hadn’t so much as made out in over a week, and I was starting to feel a little better. I was on the road to repentance. I would be worthy to serve a mission.
That Saturday she called me. Just seeing her name light up on the screen of my phone made me feel weak and guilty. “Hello?”
“I have a surprise for you,” she said. “Can you come get me?”
“I was supposed to help my dad build a crib for my brother,” I said.
“Come on,” she said. “We haven’t hung out in forever.”
Eventually I gave in. She asked to drive. It was part of the surprise. She drove us down I-15 to Salt Lake City to the Sugarland district. We parked in front of a tattoo parlor.
“What are we doing?” I said.
“Surprise,” she said.
“I don’t get it.”
“I’m getting you a tattoo,” she said. “I’ll get one too. They’ll match.”
“Are you crazy?” I said. “I can’t get a tattoo.”
“Why?”
“It’s just not allowed,” I said. “It’s against the commandments.”
“Why?”
“We can’t defile our bodies,” I said. “Look, I don’t know. Heavenly Father just doesn’t want me to. I have to serve a mission.”
“It’s not defiling,” Marlies said. “It’s art.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I can’t. It’s against the rules.”
“But you can have sex?” she said. “I thought I was more important to you than the rules.”
“Nothing is more important than Heavenly Father’s commandments.”
“Then why did you have sex with me?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I shouldn’t have.”
She started to cry. “I’m so fucking stupid,” she said. “Now you hate me like everybody else.”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes you do. You’ve been ignoring me all week.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “And I don’t hate you.”
“Then get a tattoo with me.” She was almost screaming. “If you really loved me, you’d get one.”
“I don’t really love you.” I stared out the front of the car and avoided her gaze.
“What?” She sobbed.
I began to scream too. “I don’t love you. If I loved you, I wouldn’t feel this way.”
“What way?”
“Guilty.”
“That’s not my fault. I didn’t force you to have sex with me,” she said. “You didn’t have to.”
“You tempted me,” I said. “And now you’re tempting me to get a tattoo. Satan is using you against me.”
“No one is using me.” She was staring out the window letting the tears run down her throat and over the ink trapped inside her chest. “This is all me,” she said. “This is just who I am.”
“Who you are is destroying my life.”
“If you really think that,” she said, “then you do hate me.”
“Then maybe I hate you,” I said.
She threw the keys at me. “Please take me home.” She pulled her knees up to her face. She cried and cried and cried.
The drive home was silent. It was hot in the valley. You could see the heat waves shimmering off the salt flats to the west and out twoards the oil refinery. The sun burned throughout the car. Spring was over in northern Utah. It was the dry season now, and it would be that way for a long time.
Marlies and I never talked again. She wasn’t in school for a few days. By the time she came back, we were on a new unit, and Mr. Caldwell had given us new lab partners. Otherwise, I hardly even saw her.
Summer came. I graduated.
One day an envelope came in the mail from Church headquarters. It was my mission call. Of course, we had to wait to open it. That Sunday all the family in that part of the country came, my grandparents down from Ogden, my uncle from Salt Lake, an aunt clear from Idaho Falls. My brother and his wife came up from Provo too.
We sat in the living room. Everyone fidgeted on the edge of their seats, waiting for me to open it. “Where do you think he’ll go,” my uncle said. “My money would be on Brazil,” my grandma said. “Like his brother.” Then she added, “If I bet, of course.” Everyone laughed.
“Go on, open it,” my mom said.
A part of me was hoping to open it and see Belgium printed there in bold, or even Germany or France or the Netherlands. I wanted to see the French cafes light up at night or get lost in the streets of Cologne. I wanted to see a place where all the people were like Marlies. But when I pulled out the letter and read it aloud, it was a call to the Birmingham, Alabama mission. I wouldn’t even learn a new language.
A few tears slid down my face. My mom was crying too. “Don’t you just feel the Spirit so strongly here right now?” she said.
“Yeah,” I lied. Seeing the call there in black in on a white sheet of printing paper made it seem so trivial. I shouldn’t have even been able to go. I was technically unworthy. I was unchaste and a liar a dozen times over. Yet here it was, stamped and signed. The Lord was calling me to go preach his gospel.
The family sat around talking and crying. My aunt now claimed to have had a dream I’d be serving in Alabama. My dad just knew I’d have the most baptisms in the mission. I held the papers in my lap. Here was this thing I’d waited so long for, something I’d spent so much time thinking about, something that was supposed to fill me with joy, anticipation and a love for the Lord. But I felt nothing but an absence. Love was what I’d felt lying in bed with Marlies tracing words I couldn’t read as the Bountiful rain fell against the window.
I served an honorable mission. I taught the gospel and performed many baptisms. I wrote letters home and tried to keep up with BYU football. I served in several towns across Alabama and went home after two years.
I enrolled at BYU where most of my high school had also ended up. I began seriously dating a girl from St. George who was studying psychology. Sometimes when we’d hang out with my old high school friends, they’d tell her the story of when I’d dated the weird tattooed girl before my mission. Everyone would laugh
I’d feign a smile and ask casually, “Whatever happened to her?”
Some people said her family had moved to Florida when we’d graduated. Others said her parents were in Sandy now and she was going to the U. One person was pretty sure she’d gone back to Europe for college, but no one really knew.
