Squirrel Cage (19 page)

Charlene met me at the door.
She looked awful.
“My mother called today.”

“Did you tell her everything?”

“No”, she replied. But she could tell that something was wrong.
I did tell her that we were going to talk to Elder Bradford.”
Charlene had a wonderful way of communicating without saying it specifically.
I
could
only imagine the conversation:

“What’s wrong?”

“David and I are having problems. And we are going to talk to his mission president on Wednesday afternoon.”

“Why do you have to talk to his mission president?” (this was a pretty big step going over the local chain of command in the church clear to the top.)

“I can’t tell you Mom, I promised.”

“Don’t tell me that he is sleeping around.”

“No that’s not it Mom. I told you that I can’t tell you.”

“Well is he homosexual?”

“No Mom that’s not it either, I can’t tell you.”

And so the conversation would go until her mother would ask the correct question.
Based on later interactions with her family, I got the impression that they thought I was gay but had not consummated my desires. These were my impressions, I did not know for sure.

These next two days would be living hell for all of us.

Elder “Blood N Guts” Bradford, as we called him in the field, called us into his office.
The offices in the church building were nice but not extravagant.
We sat down in two chairs placed squarely in front of his spacious desk. I looked at Elder Bradford. He hadn’t changed much.

While in South America, my friend “Ducky” related a story regarding Blood n Guts Bradford.
“You know when President Glade was here, I went in his office to retrieve his pencils.
He asked what I was doing and I told him that I was collecting his pencils so that I could sharpen them. President Glade told me that he could sharpen his own pencils and that I shouldn’t bother.
When Blood N Guts Bradford came, he called me in to his office.
“Elder, I would like you to come into my office every morning and sharpen all my pencils.”

After I was butchered by a surgeon in Santiago to remove a pilonidal cyst under my tail bone, I stayed at the mission home where the mission offices were located.
The wound was not healing.
In fact it was completely open and oozing.
Ducky was helping me to dress it one day as I lay on my stomach.
He gaped at the crater just below my tail bone.
“My God Stud (he called me stud and I called him Ducky) he shrieked, “I can see all the way to China! DAMN. This is really sick dude.”
He was freaked out. No one ever cursed in the mission home. Ever.

I ate at the family table a day later with the Bradford family.
I had been there once before to recover from typhoid fever.
I had gotten to know them and I enjoyed being there.

“When do you see your doctor again?” Elder Bradford asked.

“This afternoon.”

“Tell your doctor that you are going back to Antofogasta
and that if he wants to see you again, he can go there to do it,” he commanded.

Antofogasta is a coastal city a full days ride by bus to the north of where we were in Santiago. I had been stationed there when this little cyst appeared by bleeding in my underwear.
I went to the local hospital where I saw a government doctor.
He explained that it had to come out right away or would grow. (I had no idea that his explanation was totally wrong. I could and should have let this thing go. There was no danger to do that.) There was one restroom per floor in the hospital.
I don’t know that they had ever been cleaned.
There was no toilet paper and feces covered everything. Beds were
eight
to a room and if you didn’t bring your own sheets, you slept on an old mattress that had never been cleaned. I had called and talked to the main office.

I called the office in Santiago.
“I want to go home.
I need this surgery and I’m not going to do it here.”

Elder Bradford came
to
the phone. “Can’t you have that done up there? They have good doctors up there.”

I related to him the stench and filth I found in the hospital.

“Well then come to Santiago.
We’ll find a good doctor here for you.”

“But I want to go home.”

“Come to Santiago, you will get it done here.”

While I waited for the scheduled surgery, I heard that Elder Bradford had threatened another missionary to send him home without his membership if he didn’t have his knee surgery there in Santiago. “God will bless you t
o heal if you have enough faith.” That w
as how I had heard the story. The stories of course were rumors, but I would learn from first hand experience what the truth was.

“I can’t go to Antofogasta. I haven’t healed yet. I can’t even sit to eat”, I pleaded to him, kneeling on the floor while I ate my meal.

“Well if your doctor tells you that, you tell him that he can g
o
with you.”

T
hat was that. I
was
transferred back to the driest place on earth, to a dingy little city with no medical care. A place that took 22 hours by bus ride to reach, a place that had no water for bathing when the water trucks were dry.
A fart smear on the face of the map where I would soon nearly die from a massive infection to a gaping wound drilled nearly through on the wrong side of my body.

“Fine,” I said.

And here I sat, pained literally in the butt from the experience, with my lovely bride, in front of a Church leader, who I had learned to love with my personal experiences, who I trusted with my life.
Right.
Charlene knew the stories. But she and her family accepted this righteous man to give us counseling to resolve my problem.
I hoped he could.

“Elder Bradford,” I started, “you may recall that I came to you in confidence while on my mission to tell you about this problem I have.
Remember that I told you that I liked to dress in women’s clothing?” I
said
.

“Yes I do Elder Steele.”
And he paused.
I wondered if he did remember. I really did. “Oh well, it wouldn’t matter much if he d
id or not,” I pondered
. “The issue is now on the table,”
Squirrel
did not dare speak in the presence of a man so holy.

“Do you fantasize being a woman so you can have sex with a man?”

“No,” I
honestly
replied.

“Do you want to have sex with a man?”

Again, “No.”

“Do you masturbate when you do this?”

“No,” I answered truthfully. But then I added “but sexual release is always the unintended result. I do not force it. My hands never touch myself.” Ooh… the subject material was uncomfortable. I felt us all squirm in our seats together.

“Elder Steele, may I talk with your lovely wife alone?”

I wondered why he would ask MY permission to speak with Charlene under these circumstances.
What would he said if I had answered no?

“Of course”, I answered and I stepped out of the office.

The door soon opened and I was invited back in. I do not know what they talked about. But she clearly looked better.

“Elder Steele, I want to tell you that I’m glad you came to me with this problem.
You need to abstain from this behavior. It is not good.
It is not righteous. But let’s put this in context. I believe that your actions are similar to watching an R rated movie. I believe that if you attend to your wife and love her, attend your meetings, read the scriptures often, and go to the temple often, that you will be able to put this behind you. May we kneel in prayer?”

“Of course” I answered.

During the drive home, I felt relieved. I would be able to shake this. Why, you may ask? Why would I trust a man who was responsible for my hemorrhaging derriere? I was a cultist. I believed in this man of God no matter what his actions had been. He was an appointed minister by the prophet himself.
I truly believed what he told us.

After I returned home, and in privacy, I collected all my things from all my hiding places. I put them in paper bags. I slowly and deliberately took them to the trash bins and carefully pushed them down in.
I carried the bins slowly to the curb and waited to watch the dragon carry my life away in his belly full of garbage.
Yes, I knew what garbage was worth. The dragon belched and coughed as it lumbered down the road to its next stop.

Charlene and I had a wonderful day in Hawaii. Neither of us had ever been to the islands.
The weather was sunny without being hot and the sights and sounds filled us as music serves an eager teenager. We were having a great time together.
I thought that we were finally reaching a balance between my deep secrets and making a life together. “You know that you are back to your old tricks,” warned
Squirrel
.

Yes. I was. I had resumed my secret life on business trips. I had relearned the early lesson of my youth. If you are going to steal, you had better not be caught.
I had secured a storage locker.
I took nothing home. When I left for a trip, I stopped by the locker I picked up a suitcase. There was a his and hers suitcase. Nothing and I mean nothing was ever mixed.

I had tried to return to the life I was advised to live.
I happily accepted my position in my local congregation.
I enjoyed directing the choir.
Music had been such a great part of my life. This job over any other that I did for the church was the most satisfying. It was rare that any local group would rise to perform well. Members of the choir volunteered and came from a group of only 500 to 700 members.
Each congregation had one. I asked the bishop to individually call members with talent to a choir position. He agreed to talk to each one I asked for. The result was that choir members felt that the choir “calling” was important. They gave it a priority. We
gave
some very nice presentations.

I continued to teach gospel doctrine in Sunday school.
I enjoyed the doctrine of the church. The Holy Bible along with the additional scriptures of the LDS church were often difficult to read and understand. I loved digging out the details and sharing my perspectives. I made sure that they fell in line with the lesson plans in my manual. I would feel great anguish if I were to teach anything out of line with the official doctrines of the church.

I worked on the church farm at the end of the season that year. It was time to prune the vineyard. There were miles and miles of grape vines to prune.
I went several times a week and often I had been the only one there.
I didn’t mind. The solo work provided a calm quiet setting for me to contemplate what it must have been like in the Promised Land. Jesus had many parables that used a vineyard in his allegories.

But even through prayer, study, and much volunteer work away from my family, I could not shake the
Squirrel
.
Its
cage spun ever faster.
I didn’t blame
it
.
It
was me.
I was
it
.
I knew that.
I had only myself to blame for my thoughts.
I had been told that I was listening to Satan. That’s why I had the thoughts.
Giving into my most inner self was giving my life to Satan.
I wish that I could express the lowliness I felt, the despair I had, and the emptiness that could never be filled.
Yet, no matter how hard I tried,
Squirrel
ran only faster. He matched every act with an opposing force. “Was
Squirrel
Satan?”

“I think that you are Satan,” said
Squirrel
.

“But I try to do the right things,” I told
him
.

“So what? I’ll never stop” replied
Squirrel

Charlene and I laid
in bed after a brief moment of intimacy. We talked briefly about this and that. I did love her very much. She had been through so much.
She was coming along very well, visibly much better than I.

“David, did you get me something sexy to wear?” she asked.

“What?”

“Before we left, I saw something in the garage.”

I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. Certainly nothing new had made its way to one of the old hiding places.

“What had she seen?”
I don’t recall specifically what it was. It didn’t matter.
When I looked back, I would realize that it was something that had not been previously purged several months earlier. Still, her accusation stung home.
She knew it. I had been pursuing my secret life and she had discovered it.