“It’s Not About the Sex” My Ass (8 page)

Our séances, I mean, our Prayer Sessions grew out of the
Mormon practice of “baptism for the dead.” Mormons believe that if you croak
without a chance to join their church, not to worry. In Mormon temples, officiators
read aloud from a computer-generated list the name of one dead person after
another, immersing a volunteer “for and in behalf of” each name. Should the
deceased accept Mormonism in the hereafter, the proxy baptism counts. Should
the deceased not accept, it’s off to Spirit Prison with them.

It always seemed to me that such a system would give
atheists an advantage. If you woke up in the hereafter and found Mormon
missionaries at your door, you might stand a better chance of believing in the
hereafter, not to mention of hearing out the missionaries. It also seemed to me
that in more than 150 years of baptisms for the dead, someone would have
realized it should be “
on
behalf.”

Joseph Smith told the early Mormons, “The greatest
responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our
dead.” That is why Mormons are avid genealogists who make Jews mad by doing
proxy baptisms for Holocaust victims.

For the same reason, we took baptism for the dead seriously
in the TLC. But we took it a step further. We started talking with the dead.
Taking it a step even further than that, the dead started talking back. Before
long, we had invited every famous stiff you could think of to become a member
of The True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days. Our
ranks on The Other Side soon swelled with the likes of George Washington, Marie
Antoinette, Wolfgang Mozart, Florence Nightingale, Martin Luther, Madame Curie,
Winston Churchill, Christopher Columbus, Joan of Arc, and others.

It was during Prayer Sessions that we provided the dead with
the opportunity to make known their desire to join the TLC. We formed a circle
around an altar, the women veiling their faces, and joined hands. As Harmston’s
First Wife, it was Elaine’s calling to act, not as “medium” since that would
have been necromancy, but as “voice.” Closing her eyes and rocking back and
forth, Elaine would call out, “In the naaaaaame of Jeeeeeeeeeeeesus
Chriiiiiiiiiiiist I call up”—the name of the deceased—“acrossssssssssss
the veillllllll.” Then, repeating the name of the deceased, she would ask,
“Aaaarrrrrrrre youuuuuuuu therrrrrrre?”

The dead knew our time was valuable, so they usually kept us
waiting no longer than for a suitable dramatic pause. “Yes, I am here,” a
vaguely Elaine-like voice coming from Elaine’s mouth would reply. I suppose if
you wanted to be skeptical about it, you could say it sounded like Elaine doing
a poor job of disguising her voice. Not wanting to be skeptical about it, we
chose to be amazed.

“Thank you for talking with me today,” the deceased’s voice
would continue. The famous dead were always polite like that. I guess it’s
tough to be full of yourself when you’re dead. We were moved to tears as we
heard history’s greats compliment us on our faithfulness and thank us for
seeking them out and saving their souls.

Sooner or later someone in the group would get around to
asking the famous dead person if he or she would like us to perform a baptism
on his or her behalf. No dead person ever turned us down. Nor did any dead
person ever say, “Where the heck is Manti, and how did I get here?”

Don’t think for a minute that any deceased could get a
vicarious baptism out of us, just like that, just for the asking. Abraham
Lincoln, for instance, had some explaining to do. We were still a little torked
at him for having signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act into law in 1862. We were
also peeved that he chose to ignore the Mormons instead of using his
presidential powers to protect them. He had famously compared the Mormons to a
fallen log that was “… too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to
move, so we ploughed around it.” What a jerk. Still, it’s hard to stay angry
with such a nice guy. Speaking through Elaine, Lincoln offered a deep and
sincere apology. His abject humility softened our hearts and won us over. By
the time he worked his way around to sweetly requesting that we perform his
vicarious baptism, there was no refusing him. Maybe he wasn’t such a jerk after
all.

Elaine once humbly boasted that, across the veil, she had
met with a greater number of important people than anyone who had ever lived.
No one could one-up her on that one.

There was no place in mainstream Mormonism or in the TLC for
reincarnation. We practiced polygamy, held conversations with dead people, and
believed that God was going to come to Manti, strike the nonbelievers dead, and
sit down with us for sandwiches and cookies, but come on. Reincarnation was
just plain silly.

But then, competing polygamist prophets started claiming to
be the reincarnation of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Harmston, seeing that the
idea played well with their followers, soon announced that he was the real
reincarnated Smith—
and that Smith
himself had been the Holy Ghost incarnate
. Yes, you connected the dots
correctly. Our humble servant James Dee Harmston was none other than the Holy
Ghost.

Suddenly there was a rush to have God reveal that you were
the reincarnation of somebody cool. Even better, that you were the
reincarnation of somebody cool who was the reincarnation of somebody else cool.
Better still, that you were the reincarnation of somebody cool who was the
reincarnation of somebody else cool who was the reincarnation of yet somebody
else cool. You get the idea.

There was no limit. You could be the reincarnation of as
many cool, dead people as you wanted, provided you took care not to be two
people whose lives overlapped. We joked that you really could be your own
grandparent. What made the joke really funny was the fact that, well, we weren’t
joking.

Actually, there was
one
limit. You couldn’t be Adam. According to Joseph Smith’s immediate successor
Brigham Young, that fellow running around the Garden of Eden wearing a fig leaf
calling himself Adam was actually God the Father incarnate. In less honest
moments, the Mormon Church says that’s not what Young meant. In more honest
ones, it admits that Young meant exactly that but was wrong. Like most splinter
groups, we embraced Young’s so-called Adam-God Theory. Which meant, as you can
plainly see, that claiming to be the reincarnation of Adam would have been
tantamount to claiming to be God himself. Even for Harmston, that would have
been pushing it. With no such pretentions of grandeur, Harmston contented
himself with being the Holy Ghost.

At least at that time, anyway. Years later, Harmston would
decide that he was the reincarnation of Jesus himself. Until then, however,
Holy Ghostedness was not without its perks. The Holy Ghost’s job is to bear
witness to your heart of divine truths. So when Harmston bore witness to nubile
women that it was ordained of God that they should join his bevy of wives, it
was understood that doubting him was tantamount to doubting God.

You might think that all this talk of reincarnation would
present a problem for people whose religion officially disavowed reincarnation.
Silly you. We just called it that for simplicity’s sake. It was really the
Doctrine of Multiple Mortal Probations, and any fool could tell that it
resembled reincarnation no more than Prayer Sessions resembled séances. Unlike
reincarnation, the Doctrine of Multiple Mortal Probations said that women
always came back as women, men always as men. Unlike reincarnation, the
Doctrine of Multiple Mortal Probations said that you were human in every life.
You were never, say, a dung beetle or a dandelion. (Which in some regards was a
shame. I have met people who would make consummate dung beetles.) Most
important, the Doctrine of Multiple Mortal Probations was different from
reincarnation because Harmston said it was.

Since we believed that we were reliving one mortal probation
after another, sometimes we jokingly called ourselves “re-Probates.” Get it?
Like “reprobates,” except with a hyphen and a capital P. Ironically, we thought
that the irony wasn’t lost on us.

I was proud to learn that my own husband was no less than
Oliver Cowdery. One of Joseph Smith’s closest associates, Cowdery acted as the
principal scribe in penning the Book of Mormon. Cowdery faithfully wrote while
Smith buried his face in a hat to peer at a “seer stone” and dictate the
“translation.” Later, Cowdery went down in history as one of three official
witnesses claiming to have seen the gold-like plates on which the ancient
record was originally written, declaring “with words of soberness, that an
angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes,
that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon.”

Judith was Queen Elizabeth the First. For a while she
floated about the house doing her best to effect a regal air. Learning that she
was also Josephine Bonaparte added not at all to her sense of humility. Nor did
either epiphany incline her toward increasing her participation in housework.

Most of history’s really cool dead women were taken by the
time I got in on the act. Nothing quite so glorious came to light about me. I
was Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, one of the wives Joseph Smith persuaded
into bed with the story about the invisible angel threatening him with a sword.
Prior to that I was Benjamin Franklin’s daughter and, prior to that, Martin
Luther’s daughter. Though it was no great claim to fame, I liked being Martin
Luther’s daughter. That is, I liked being Martin Luther’s daughter until a few
weeks later when Harmston told us that before he was Joseph Smith, he
was—guess who—Martin Luther.
Luke,
I am your father.

Not just grossed out, I was confused. I recalled a
protracted conversation Elaine Harmston had carried on with Martin Luther in
one of our Prayer Sessions. That session in particular stuck in my mind,
because Luther impressed me with his American English. The guy spoke without so
much as a hint of a German accent. He had an uncanny ability to sound like
Elaine trying to sound like a man.

But that wasn’t what troubled me.

When a deceased we wished to engage in conversation happened
to be reincarnated and living among us, someone from beyond the veil would
answer “no” when Elaine asked that person, “Aaaarrrrrrrre youuuuuuuu
therrrrrrre?” A game of 20 Questions would follow. That’s how we learned, for
instance, that Judith was Queen Elizabeth I. Elaine asked, “Is she here on
earth?” Yes. “Is she a member of the TLC?” Yes. Ah. We were getting warmer. “Is
she Judith?” Yes. Then we’d all be amazed and get choked up.

So here’s what troubled me. How could Martin Luther address
us from the hereafter if he was walking around Manti in the form of Harmston?
Someone on the Other Side should have said NO when Elaine asked if Martin
Luther was therrrrrrre. Instead, we had a long, lovely visit with him.

Elaine explained that popular figures like Martin Luther had
stand-ins who spoke from beyond the veil on their behalf. Silly, easily
confused, literal-minded me.

If being Harmston’s
daughter
in a past life grossed me out, you can imagine the gross-out factor when I
put two and two together and realized that in a later past life I had actually
been Harmston’s
wife
. Harmston was
Joseph Smith. As Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, I was one of Smith’s plural
wives. Elaine and Harmston’s other wives suggested that I should bring things
full circle by leaving Jeff and marrying Harmston. I declined, and not
tactfully. Harmston would have to be satisfied with dry-humping my leg.

Quite the argument broke out when two women claimed to be
Marie Antoinette. Elaine held a Prayer Session and identified the real Marie,
settling the matter. We were left to assume that Satan had deceived the other
one. Either that or God was just messing with her.

Besides using it for cooking, Mormons are encouraged to keep
on hand a small amount of olive oil, which they “consecrate” for blessing the
sick. The procedure consists of anointing the top of the head of the afflicted
with a small drop, followed by placing hands on his or her head and pronouncing
a blessing as fancy strikes.

Not to be outdone, Harmston urged his followers to anoint
their property against the calamities that were sure to come. Had you driven
past our Victorian home in Manti on one particular spring night, you might have
seen us praying over and anointing with generous amounts of olive oil the lawn,
trees, fence, driveway, property line, and, finally, the house itself. If Jesus
had chosen that moment for his Second Coming and burned any wicked people who
happened to be on our property at the time, none of them would have stuck.

One of our number was a pilot. To ensure the sanctity and
safety of our community, Harmston instructed him to rent an airplane and fly up
and down the length of the county, pouring consecrated oil from the cockpit and
pronouncing a blessing on the land along the way. Just to be safe, another
member of our cult anointed the county line where it crossed the main highway
into town. I shall leave it to you to judge how well it worked. Lest you are
tempted to judge cynically, consider that, since that time, no floods,
pestilences, or nuclear holocausts have traveled into Manti by means of that
highway.

Amid the gaiety of wife recruitment, threesomes, perverts,
racism, séances, reincarnation, and anointing, it was important not to lose
sight of why we had been called to gather and do all this marrying and
anointing and communing with the dead in the first place. It was to prepare for
the Second Coming of Christ. Which, you may recall, was imminent. A lot of wicked
people were going to fry. There would be all kinds of cataclysmic
stuff—disease, pestilence, calamity, famine, wars, and rumors of wars.
(Rumors? All that and we should care about rumors?)

It was our calling, nay, our privilege to share this
glorious news with the world. After all, you couldn’t expect God to do it all
on his own. Not when there were people who depended on his help picking out
socks.

Harmston charged the apostles with raising the warning
voice. The warning voice soon morphed into a cursing voice. Harmston often
reminded us, “The priesthood is not just for blessing. It’s also for cursing.”
Ask the poor fig tree that had the misfortune to be barren when Jesus was
hungry. With that cheery thought, Harmston sent a handful of apostles 125 miles
north to Salt Lake City. Standing atop Ensign Peak overlooking the Salt Lake
Valley, they blessed the land for the gathering of the Elect and, for good
measure, cursed the Mormon Church. Nice guys.

That was just the warm-up. Next, Harmston divided the apostles
into four groups of three, assigned each group a territory, and sent them
packing. They were not to return until they had visited and cursed each of the
nation’s state capitols, Hawaii and Alaska included. Whenever their travels
brought them near a Mormon temple, they were to curse that, too.

Jeff’s territory was New England. I envied him. My dad
served in the Air Force when I was growing up, and for a time we lived on
Loring Air Force Base in Maine. How I wished I could tag along and play tourist
while Jeff was off cursing the countryside that I loved as a little girl. I had
to make do with hearing his adventures and its sorry fate upon his return.

It is wise to exercise care while cursing a state capitol.
Especially if you’re bent on doing it in the style of The True and Living
Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days. When God dictated the
process to Harmston, discretion did not seem to be his highest priority.

For one thing, there was no pointing at a spot on a map and
cursing from afar. The apostles were to do the cursing on-site. And they had to
do it out loud. This sort of thing was too important to trust to silent
prayers.

For another, they had to wear ceremonial temple robes. They
donned white slacks and a white shirt, white socks, and white shoes. They
draped a white robe over their right shoulder, tying it in the back so it hung
about mid-calf in front. Over that they tied a bright green apron, the only
part of the getup that wasn’t white. It was embroidered with a pattern meant to
suggest fig leaves. Capping off the outfit—literally—was a circular
white hat that looked like a baker’s hat after someone portly had sat on it.

When everyone dresses that way, as in a Mormon or TLC temple
rite, the outfit doesn’t seem all that weird. Sticking out is more of a problem
on the average state capitol grounds, where not many people are seen milling
about in a white robe, green apron, and squashed chef’s hat.

Once the apostles were on the scene and properly dressed,
all that remained before getting on with the cursing was to complete a series
of secret handshakes and oaths while pantomiming self-decapitation and
self-vivisection. The pantomimes were excised from mainstream Mormon temple
rites in 1990. Our group reinstated them in our zeal to return to the old ways.

With the preliminaries out of the way, the apostles anointed
the land with consecrated olive oil for the gathering of the Elect and the
destruction of the world in preparation for the Second Coming.

At last they were ready to get on with the actual cursing.
They pronounced an extemporaneous curse “as directed by the Spirit” upon the
capitol and everything associated with it—lawmakers, aides, police,
spouses, parking spaces, vending machines, urinals, the works.

Jeff’s trio carried out the ritual in front of 11 state
capitols without drawing notice. They gave God full credit for having veiled
them from public view, calling it a miracle. Some credit may also have been due
to the trees, bushes, rocks, pillars, and other structures they hid behind
while doing the ritual.

Washington, D.C., which was in Jeff’s territory, presented a
greater challenge. Security there tends to be tight, and the locals tend to be
jumpy about oddly dressed strangers doing weird things in the name of a
not-garden-variety religion.

Not to worry. The apostles knew that if God wanted them to,
they could march right up to the front door of the White House, white robes and
green aprons flapping in the breeze, and knock. They could anoint the
presidential residence with olive oil, shout aloud their oaths, perform their
secret handshakes, pantomime their decapitations and vivisections, and
pronounce their cursing at full volume. They could do all this and God would
veil them from the eyes of security guards and secret service agents. Or God
would let them proceed in full view while miraculously stopping anyone who
tried to interfere, much less arrest them.