The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,115

And everybody wants someone to dump on. Sorry they tapped you for that, but it’s over now.”

“It’s over.”

Scipio let out a snore, and Jem continued to work on Tean’s shoulders.

“Sit back,” Jem said. “Try to relax. You’re like iron.”

“Sorry,” Tean said.

“No more apologies, right?”

Tean laughed unhappily, but he settled back against Jem’s touch. From outside came the sound of a window sliding open, and then a woman talking.

“He’s just one of those guys who has to hold the door for you, you know? And he said I have the nicest eyelashes he’s ever seen. And he loves dogs, he told me all about the dogs he grew up with, but he can’t have dogs now because of his apartment, and I said, well, I can have dogs at my apartment, because, you know, I wanted him to start thinking about the possibility at least.” Her runaway narrative was interrupted by an enormous laugh, and she said, “Mama, I didn’t see his penis, so I don’t know.”

“Please never move,” Jem whispered.

This time, Tean’s laugh sounded more natural. Quiet, yes, but closer to normal. When he spoke, his voice was quiet too, as though he were testing ice underfoot. “Do you know why families are such a big deal for Mormons? Theologically, I mean.”

“Families are forever,” Jem said. “I picked that up the few times I got dragged to church.”

“That’s right. Families are forever. Individuals, for Mormons, are incomplete. You’re not a full human being until you’re packaged with someone else and pumping out babies. Eternally. That’s their idea of heaven: this unending existence of creating spirit children.”

“Christ, sounds awful if you have a uterus.”

“I guess it might. Women have always been second-class citizens. They can’t hold any positions of real importance. They can’t be priests or bishops, prophets or apostles. Motherhood is the sop they get instead, so there’s all this rhetoric about how every woman is a mother, and motherhood is this sacred trust that men wouldn’t be worthy of, and how women are so much purer by nature.”

“Have any Mormon women ever had an orgasm?”

A laugh exploded out of Tean. “Gosh, I hope so. It’s all about family. We’re all one human family going back to Adam. Eternal families. Creating families. And, of course, fags can’t have families.”

“I know you want to talk this out,” Jem said, “but maybe you should give yourself some time to get some distance from what happened today.”

“No. No, I’m not even talking about it the right way. I’m not even saying what I want to say. I guess . . . I guess I’m trying to tell you what it’s supposed to be, and then I want to tell you what it’s like.”

“Ok.”

“There’s this fantasy of transparency that’s tied up with being a family. Your parents are supposed to have special, divinely given insight into who you are. And then that percolates throughout the whole institution. Your spiritual leaders are supposed to have the same divine insight into who you are. And you have to go through these interviews where you’re asked all sorts of personal questions, and supposedly the bishop will know if you’re lying. And you get up every month and bear testimony of the spiritual knowledge you’ve received, and that’s supposed to be a form of transparency too, your soul exposed to the community. And the most important part is that God knows you too. Elements of the same fantasy exist in most religions, I guess: there is something greater than you, and it knows you, the real you. Before I formed you in the womb. The Lord looketh on the heart. If anyone loves God, he is known by God. That kind of thing, you know?”

Jem didn’t know, but he rubbed Tean’s shoulders.

“And the end of all that transparency, the paradisiacal existence under Christ’s millennial reign, is supposed to be Zion: when all the righteous will be of one heart and one mind. That’s the ultimate fantasy. Not only are we known, but we’re one. Seen and loved and bound together. That’s why the most extreme punishment in so many religions is excommunication: being cut off from family, from community, from God.” Tean shook his head. He was looking off at something Jem couldn’t see, something Jem couldn’t even glimpse. “Of course, if you’re gay, you probably never felt like you belonged. If you’re gay, then your whole life, you’re lying, and this doubt keeps building: why haven’t they caught me yet? How can they not know? And