Loud Laughter and Lightmindedness

Saturday, August 5, 2006

I first went to the temple on my first wedding anniversary. June 22, 1994. I was nervous and excited. I had promised Donna a year earlier that I would take her to the temple as soon as we could.

We would have been married there in the first place were it not for the church's strict ban on mutual masturbation and rabbit-like fucking. Instead, we were married in a church gym.

That day I also remember the overwhelming feeling of faintness and hunger from the 24 hour fast my Bishop had proposed to prepare my soul for the day's events.

I felt I was prepared, after all, Donna and I had attended a 6 week temple preparation course at the home of a man in the neighborhood. Since there wasn't much discussion in the class about the details of the ceremonies, I figured it would all seem familiar to me.

When we got to the Salt Lake temple that morning the men and the women were separated and I was escorted by my grandfather and father-in-law down a long yellow tile-lined hallway to the men's locker area.

I was told to change into what can best be described as a large pillow case with a hole for my head and slits down the side for my arms. The slits were long enough to give me the overwhelming sense of immodesty one normally only gets from a hospital gown or a dream about going to school in your underwear. After I changed, I was taken into a tiled room with a bank of curtained stalls and led into a stall about halfway down the row. It smelled and looked just like the locker room at my middle school.

Inside was an older gentleman dressed in the same all-white attire as the rest of the temple workers. What happened next was the first of many head-reeling events to come that day. The old man said a few things I only remember from having read them on the internet years later, to which I responded "umm... ok". He then doused his index finger in oil and "consecrated" my head, eyes, navel, loins, knees, and so on.

That's right. The old fart consecrated my loins with oil through the slit in the side of the pillow case. I was instantly reminded of George Castanza getting a massage. "It moved, Jerry."

I was shocked. But this was the House of God so I didn't question. The man told me to go back and change into the new undergarments I had bought the day before.

I met my escorts back in the locker area. They had me dress in a white shirt, white tie, white slacks, white socks, and white slippers. They led me to a chapel.

The chapel was familiar. There were no old men in hidden stalls. There were carpet-upholstered pews, a pulpit, and an organ. Familiar church hymns were being played softly by a temple worker. My family was there too.

Shortly afterwards we were told the Endowment Session was starting and we should take our places. I had my pouch of temple clothing - robes, a cap, a sash, and a green apron- under my arm, packed carefully "like a parachute"¹ just like my father-in-law had taught me a few minutes earlier.

Once again, my pregnant wife and I were separated. The men on the right, the women on the left. The ceremony was delayed because, I would find out later, Donna's grandmother had the runs. She actually held the proceedings up 3 or 4 times that day.

I won't go into the specifics of the entire ceremony. If you're really interested, the entire script is available any number of places online. Suffice it to say, I was not prepared for the absurdity and strangeness of the entire event.

We were stood up and seated a dozen times, just like the Catholic Mass I had been taught was an apostasy. We were led from room to room. We also made a number of "covenants to the Lord".

Some of the promises seemed straightforward and were nothing out of the ordinary. Others were a bit much. My favorites were the promises to "avoid loud laughter and lightmindedness" and to not "speak ill of the Lord's anointed".

What the fuck? Do these people know I am a comedian for a living? Do they know I do a killer Gordon B. Hinckley impersonation?

After the endowment we moved on to the "sealing", the ceremony where we were to become an eternal family. No longer the cheap, counterfeit, till-death-do-us-part losers we were just hours before.

There we were in our robes, sashes and fig-leaf aprons, doing our newly-learned secret handshake, mine and Donna's new names emblazoned in my mind for eternity.

Maybe it was all the people dressed like pastry chefs, or maybe it was the fasting but damn, I was hungry. In fact, that is all I remember of the sealing. "Damn, I'm hungry".

When it was all finished Donna and I sat in the car for a moment. I'll never forget this conversation.

"Was that the strangest thing you've ever done, or what? I can't believe that is the same church I was raised in", I said.

"No, that's pretty much what I expected."

I had nothing else to say. I guess there was something wrong with me. I never felt good enough for Mormonism. No matter how much right I did, someone or something was there to remind me that I just didn't fit in with the whole experience.

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