October 1999 Cover
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And Hank James
By
Mitzel
The party was filled with genial bores, the kind of queens who talk only about real estate, their fabulous vacations, their pension plans, and always use the
pronoun "we." Finally, it was revealed that one guest, a medical doctor, had grown up as a Mormon and left the faith. From one alert guest the questions came fast and
thick: what about the sex lives of Mormon boys. LDS fantasies. And the Big One: wasn't it a fact that founder Joseph Smith got himself assassinated because he was not
only getting on everybody's nerves, but his congregation found out he was making out with the young males in his congregation? At that very second, the host jumped
in: "Bringing the conversation around to more genteel matters, did I mention that we had this fabulous time-share in Provincetown, and we can't wait--"
Next day at work, there was a cute 30ish guy who was on a tear about Henry James-- unreadable, boring, people that have to go off to Italy to have
adventures, timid characters, suffocating atmosphere. I let him go on. At some earlier age, I, too, had very likely said similar things. But the fellow was a cutie and he wanted to
flirt and talk about books and his experiences.
Ą propos what I can't remember, but he mentioned that he had been raised as a Mormon in Southern California. Aha!
He would now get the questions shut off by the boring queen of the night before. Was Joe Smith a fudge-packer on the sweet Mormon lads? My cutie, Michael his
name, didn't know, but said it wouldn't surprise him if it had been the case. Smith was an oddball-- had founded a religion in his early 20s, got the Book of Mormon
published by age 25, and met a violent-- but cult-inspiring-- death by age 39. The utopian cults of that era (1830s, 1840s) all had unusual takes on sexuality-- Oneida,
Fruitlands, etc, excepting, I think, Brook Farm was just plain neurotic Boston. Smith was pro-sex, and especially if he could get it. Like Jim and Tammy Faye in our time,
Joe Smith was among the Party People of The Good Book Gang-- Joe even wrote his own book, golden tablets no less. His outrages lost him many of his congregates,
then cost him his life. Next up was the tamer Brigham Young, and that name always reminds me of the
thrown-away line by the late male actress, Charles Pierce: "Honey, I'm
a Mormon from New York: bring 'em young!"
At any rate, Michael told me that he, at age 19, was sent out, along with three glubs from the church, to do their missionary work. The church elders sent the lads
to Italy to convert the heathen to the truths of Salt Lake City, an act in itself revealing an advanced degree of mental illness. Michael and his boys worked Milan,
Florence, and Venice. Michael was already gay as a goose, and he must have been a complete American knock-out beauty then. A conversion was made, but not to the ways of
Joe Smith.
"My co-religionists were bores. They complained about not having basketball courts in Florence. I spent as much time away from them as I could, going
to museums. At one museum, I was in the men's room, taking a piss. Sidling up right next to me came this beautiful Italian man, the kind you always imagine meeting.
He twinkled at me and moved in right next to me. He reached over and grabbed my cock."
I was suddenly interested. "What did you do?"
"I was completed conflicted. Of course I wanted him, but I didn't want anyone to know, to see. When you grow up gay and Mormon, you get very paranoid. So I
put my pecker back in pants and fled the scene."
Michael didn't know it but he had just slipped into an updated version of a Henry James story and ole Hank was busy scribbling.
"In Florence, the Mormons have taken one floor of a palazzo as their Italian headquarters. That's where we stayed. Out one day with one of the bores, we
met another gorgeous Italian guy, who took our literature and pretended he was very interested. I invited him back to our digs. My colleague didn't have a clue what
was going on, most straight guys don't, and wasn't particularly interested in giving him the Mormon pitch. We arrived at the palazzo, and my colleague went into the
other room, closed the door and played the piano. And I knew that, as long as we could hear the piano, my new Italian friend and I would have privacy."
"Did you instruct in the ways of the Book of Mormon?" I asked.
"Please! In 30 seconds we had our clothes off and were humping each other like crazy on the floor of the Mormon HQ in Italy. I wasn't going to miss out
on this opportunity to get a cute Italian guy. No way. Then back to California, off to college, and good-bye to the Saints."
"A lovely story, Michael." And I meant it. It's just that, well, for a man who dislikes Henry James's novels, it seems that a new look-see at Daisy Miller, from
a queer-studies reading, might turn out to be very illuminative. And Henry, for Michael and others, as good a recorder of fact, like James Purdy, as they come.
And brother, they do come! Now, about my religious mission to Italy... **
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