Confessions

Folks, I'm afraid this a long one, but if it helps... I thoroughly enjoyed writing it up!

I mentioned in a previous post that I have no real problem opening myself up to the world, and cited both my salary and my confessional with my mission president as two things I would be willing to share. An anonymous commenter took the challenge and asked about both. I answered the first, but thought that the second might make a good blog post, plus it kind of involves sex, and so it's bound to be a popular one!

First, I'm not going to be completely forthcoming about all the details in this story, because it also involves someone else, and while I'm totally willing to be completely open, she is likely not willing. That, and out of respect for her, I'm afraid all the really juicy details are going to be absent from this post. So I build the excitement with the promise of sexual explicit stuff, and then let you all down by saying I'm going to skip the nitty gritty details... I know, I know... I suck!!

Alright, so... some time before I left to become a Mormon missionary, I dated a young lady, and we dated quite seriously. Our getting together was actually quite interesting... How about I build the suspense again with a quick trip down memory lane...

I'd been living in New Zealand for about 6 months. There was a girl who may or may not have been into me. I wasn't into her though. She was somewhat nerdy, sarcastic - but different from the good kind, and while I hate to admit to being superficial, she just really was not my type.

Anyway, one day a friend of hers tells me that she could never date me because I was a member of a cult... Which I thought was a little presumptuous on her part, but hey... Whatever!

I dated a couple of girls that first year, and as the year wrapped up, I found myself single... I'd kind of know... Well, let's call her April, since I like that name... I'd known April for most of the year, but only as casual friends. We kinda hung out in the same group. On Christmas Day, I found myself down at a friends house for a party, and a bunch of us went for a walk. I remember walking with her and telling her the incident of the 12 year old - which is another fun story I'll have to share sometime - remind me if I forget!

Anyway, so following that discussion, somehow we got together again, and I ended up inviting her to a Young Adult New Years dance at the local chapel. We ended up going together, although it was fairly lame. And it was held on the 30th, since I think the 31st was a Saturday, and so, you couldn't exactly celebrate something on the sabbath...

Anyway, fun night anyway... We ended up sitting on the curb in the parking lot and chatting for most of it.

I invited her up to our home for New Years the next night, and she came and hung out with the family. By 10pm most of the family had crashed for the night, and by 11pm, we were all alone watching TV. Midnight hit, and the dude on TV said something about snogging whomever you were with, and one thing led to another, and... drum-roll... First kiss!!

Shortly after that, I offered to walk her home, so I turned off most of the lights, and headed off down to her house.

We got to her house and kept on walking... Ending up at a park on the side of the hill overlooking the valley where we lived. This may be one of those - I'm not going to kiss and tell, but it ended up being a good time for all involved - "Watching the Fireworks!".

Eventually I walked her home again, and headed back up to my house, almost floating on a cloud. I think it was about 4am by this time... And there were different lights on inside the house.

CRAP!!

I walked in the door and was greeted by my mother...

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!?

What ensued was 10 minutes of yelling and screaming as my father came downstairs and joined her. I seem to recall a couple of F-bombs being dropped and that kind of thing. Years later my younger brother, whose room was right next to the door, told me that it woke him up, and he lay in his bed, just grateful that it wasn't him.

It turns out they'd pulled out my year book, found April's picture and had been furiously driving all over town for most of the night trying to find out where she lived, and to try and find us.

And then all of a sudden it stopped... It was quiet... My mother took my hand, and in a calm and tender voice asked... If there is anything you need to talk to us about...

LIKE HELL!!!!

Anyway, it actually wasn't too bad. I think since they'd found her house and all the lights were off, they assumed we were playing the 'beast with 2 backs' or something. It was FAR from that, but unfortunately not the first time my parents assumed I'd just hopped straight in bed with a girl.

So things calmed down, I got a couple of hours sleep, and then April and I hooked up again the next morning. It was awesome!

Oh and back to the original story... Apparently she'd been into me for a while, and had actually been the source of the "He's a member of a cult" suggestion given to the first girl I mentioned.

We dated and saw each other pretty much every day for the next 9 months or so. It was invigorating physically, spiritually and any other way you could imagine. Again, I'd rather not share the details, but she recently described the situation as being two teenagers, both madly in love with each other, and experimenting with each other. It was fun, although, as the relationship progressed, I did start to be plagued with a little guilt about how far it was going.

We were best friends as well, which made the whole thing even better.

There was only one problem. My mother described her as a heathen. She wasn't a Mormon - hence the assumption that we'd hopped right into bed with each other. She was a good Christian girl from a good family and we got on great, and that was all that mattered to me.

My parents had other plans though. Videos were brought home and shown to me about marriages to non-mormon people and the heart ache and pain which ensued. The missionaries were set upon her, and she was even given the first missionary discussion, but she just didn't want to become a Mormon.

She even came to church a couple of times, but remarked that the services were pretty boring. I agreed with her, and mentioned it to my parents as well... THEY.... HIT.... THE.... FREAKIN'... ROOF! "Church is NOT boring", they shrieked, although my experience since then has only reinforced my feeling that April hit the proverbial nail on the head.

Anyway, the religious thing kind of got between us, and by the time September rolled around, we'd started to grow apart. She was concerned about me heading off to serve a mission, although I recently found out that it was something she had accepted, and was actively planning on dealing with.

The break up came in November I think... It wasn't pleasant for either of us, and we both set about trying to prove to the other that the time we had spent together meant nothing. She moved on apparently and so did I.

May of the next year I headed off on my mission to South Africa, having been completely chaste in the Mormon sense, since the breakup, and ready to be a good Mormon boy.

The first 3 weeks were at a training facility in New Zealand and it was kinda cool. I was paired with a really interesting guy from Fiji, and there are plenty of funny stories I could share.

Then I hopped on the plane and headed off to the mission field.

I've mentioned before that growing up in South Africa left me with a very distorted view of race. I had always leaned liberal, but still feared blacks, still was convinced they were somewhat less intelligent, and also convinced they would kill a white guy in a heart beat.

I arrived jet-lagged, fatigued and worn out, but also wanting to get my two years over with...

They paired me with a black guy from Zambia and assigned me to work in an area which was 100% black. On many days, I was likely the only white face for miles and miles. My companion, we'll call him Elder Innocent. Elder Innocent was older (26) which was caused an interesting dynamic, especially since I was older than most new missionaries as well, although older was only 20 years only, which is actually pretty young to me now!

Elder Innocent had also grown up in a very tribal culture with a strict hierarchy, and he when he had been baptized, he had slipped right into the hierarchical thinking of the LDS Church.

He was the senior companion, and saw it as his job to make me a perfect Mormon, and make sure I was successful, so that he would look good. And I should add, he did all of this whilst being a complete and utter Arsehole (I was in South Africa - hence the spelling).

He chewed me out for writing letters to people on days other than P-Day - the half day a week you get off from missionary work.

He chewed me out for drinking condensed milk - love the stuff!!!

He took every possible chance to put me down. Even when I got hit by a drunk driver one night, he managed to tell everyone that it was my fault because I couldn't drive well enough (The fact that at 26, he didn't even have a license was beside the point)

Usually you're with your trainer for two months. I ended up spending 4 months with this bastard, but I think in hind sight it was because I complained to the Mission President about him. For some reason leaders think that they need to make life hard, so that you can learn from them.

Bastards all of them!!

Anyway, so there I was, far from home, out of my comfort zone, getting dumped on daily by the egotistical dictator, and I started questioning why? Why me? Why was I being put through this hell?

The guilt from my former relationship with April came back and started to completely consume me. I found myself thinking about it every single minute of the day, convinced that God was punishing me for being an evil little boy, and for going on a mission when I was clearly unworthy to do so.

I didn't used to be so open about stuff. I had trouble holding girl's hands around my parents, and so in my pre-mission interviews, when I was asked about my worthiness and whether I was sexually pure, I couldn't say anything other than the lie that I was...

The guilt so consumed me that I just couldn't function anymore, and finally I asked my Zone leader to schedule me an interview with the Mission President.

It was late Sunday night when I finally got to see him. He took me in to his bedroom, and sat across from me in a chair. He asked what was wrong, and I spilled my guts about the extent of my relationship with April. I described how far we had gone, and the awful regret and remorse which I was feeling.

And then when I was done, he told me that he needed to ask some very specific questions to determine the extent of my sin.

Rumor has it that my Mission President was a very sexual man. Apparently he had to get medicated when he was first married to give his wife a bit of a break from his libido, and he seemed to love talking to each missionary about masturbation, wet dreams and stuff like that. So I just assumed that the questioning which followed was linked to that side of his personality. Recently, in other stories I've read, it seems like this is standard Church leader stuff, because apparently if God is going to forgive you, he needs to know in very specific detail exactly how far you went... Down to fractions of an inch.

And so, after sharing the full extent of our sexual relations, he started with the questions. I won't share my answers, but here is an assortment of what he asked.

Did you touch her breasts through her clothing?

Did you touch her nipples through her clothing?

Did you put your hand under her shirt and touch her breasts through her bra?

Did you put your hand under her shirt and touch her nipples through her bra?

Did you allow her to stimulate your nipples though your shirt?

It was excruciatingly painful, especially since he already knew what we had engaged in, and based on that, the nipples and clothing questions seemed completely redundant.

He finished off by asking if penetration had occurred and if so how much had been inserted?

I can only assume that maybe the length of my punishment may have been tied to the percentage of the length of my penis which had come in contact with her vagina.

The whole thing seemed weird and uncomfortable, even more so that I had originally thought it might.

He then asked about my relationship with my trainer.

I told him how I was struggling, and he then asked me if my problems with him were because he was black.

I should point out at this point, that I had almost gotten to the point of being a reverse racist. The Zulu people had been so warm and welcoming to me, and I had spent so much time with them, that being around white people was starting to make me nervous, and in all honesty I was developing a really severe dislike towards white South Africans.

I vehemently denied any racial feelings.

He then informed me that he would have to speak to 'The Brethren' in Salt Lake City, and informed me that I may have to leave my mission and head home.

I informed him that while I didn't want to, it was something I had considered as a possibility and was willing to accept.

He also said that he would need to speak to my Stake President and my Bishop (who happened to be my Dad) and I acknowledged that I was aware that he would, and just wanted to put it behind me.

ALL I WANTED WAS TO BE FREE OF THE GUILT.

He gave me a blessing - mostly to help me get on better with my companion, and then saw me out and invited my companion in.

The next few days were hell.

Finally I was invited back to the mission home late one night. He informed me that 'The Brethren' had determined that I could stay but I was to be disfellowshipped for a month - While serving as a missionary?!?? He also told me that I couldn't take the sacrament for 8 weeks and needed to write him an essay on Justice and Mercy.

Finally he gave me my fathers office phone number and told me that I needed to call him.

He left the room, and I called my father, and apologized profusely. My dad was actually pretty cool about the whole thing. He talked about how great it would feel to be forgiven, and that I could forget about this part of my history and move on. It felt good to talk to him.

As a side note however, he was my Stake President when I got done 18 months later, and the first thing he brought up when I got home was this whole incident, and that even though it was forgiven and forgotten, I needed to be aware of it, and not get into trouble again - How the hell could I forget about it, when obviously he hadn't and felt the need to keep bringing it up?!!?

Anyway, life kind of returned to normal, except:

2 days later as I sat on my bed, listening to Elder Innocent wax eloquent about how awful I was as a missionary, he then decided to share that the Mission President was under the impression that I was lying about the entire incident to try and get sent home.

WHAT THE F*CK?!?

Things got better about a month later because I'd decided that I didn't need to write the Mission President the required weekly letter about how I was doing, and so perhaps he thought I was enjoying mission enough to have another companion.

The whole skipping sacrament thing just turned out to be awkward since as missionaries we were often tasked with leading music in sacrament and that kind of thing, and so in front of an entire congregation I had to just pass it along, and people notice crap like that. So you're a missionary and you can't take the sacrament... How does that work?

Finally it was all over, although for the remainder of my mission and for the first couple of years of marriage, I was still plagued with feelings of guilt.

I'd given a full confession, down to the itty bitty details, he had been so intent on wanting to know, and yet after all of that, he was convinced I had staged the whole thing, as a ploy to get sent home.

If you confess a sin, and the person who hears your confession thinks you're lying, does it even count?!

Anyway, those feelings are completely gone now. What April and I shared was actually something pretty cool, and not even close to the evil thing religion would have had us believe it was. April and I connected a few years ago on Facebook, and we were able to work out some of the things which had gone wrong, and there was a lot of understanding and forgiveness on both sides. It turns out that the end of our relationship was pretty much just a result of my parents and their religious meddling, which really, really sucks.

Now... Don't get me wrong here... I love Mrs. Koda like nothing else, and would not give up my marriage to her, or the 5 wonderful kids we have together for anything at all. But all that aside, I still feel sad that religion, as stupid and pathetic as I now view it, was able to screw up my life so badly back in my history.