Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

I have to say, I was shocked to discover that Mormon widows go through a slutty stage. I mean the church-every-Sunday, garment wearing, sealed in the temple types. The things they get up to, honestly I was clutching my pearls! (And my opera glasses!!) They engage in heavy petting after playing pickleball, they hike the Y and make out in their Suburbans with divorcees they met on LDS Singles dot whatever. They enjoy necking with elder singles they find on facebook recently bereaved widows groups. Those widowers, they’re a hot commodity. They have no shortage of action.  I was in Utah right after Matt died, and all of my widow friends were nice Mormon ladies in grief. And, not gonna lie, in heat. And I love that for them!  Even though I thought it was kind of funny to hear about their moms-gone-wild-exploits, it made perfect sense to me. They've been married -- they've been sexual grownups for years or decades. And they are not messing around for the sake of it-- they are takin...

So I'm writing a romance novel about gay mormon missionaries and it started as me cackling over my keyboard: "heheheh, this is quite scandalous, the church leaders say 'grab your muskets to defend yourselves from the gays? I'ma make missionaries *Kiiiissss* and touch each others' BUTTS, So there!! " It started as a thumb to nose at the church, neener neener. Well, really at the specific homophobia of the church in the early 2000s. That's when I was marinating in it. Pfff, I knew I was queer when I went on a mission. I fell in love with girls since middle school! (Hi Elly! I love you!!!! You're literally the coolest person in the world!!!) but I also fell in love with boys and I kinda... hoped that would cancel it out (sorry Elly. I'm the worst. You deserved better and I'm glad you got it. Still love you, though.) I even put words to it-- I bought bisexual pins for my paisley flute case! I was out! And also Mormon! What the fuck!! So then I went...

Right after Matt died, a well meaning neighbor smiled sadly and told the kids, " your daddy is your guardian angel now!" Maile responded in her flat jaded 6 yo way: "he is definitely not an angel." We all agreed. Angel Matt-- not a possibility. But then Maile considered it for another moment. "He's a more of a spirit." Vigorous nodding. Yup. Definitely more spirit than angel. * I don't know what I believe about the afterlife. If you asked me 20 years ago, as I was preparing to go on my mission, I would have been really clear about it. We are spiritual beings having a human experience! We persist in the next world, and serve others by teaching them the truth, and eventually maturing into greater and greater spiritual beings, and eventually even godhood! Ten years ago, my answer would have been just as definite. Nothingness. The electrical silence of the brain is the end. We only persist in the sense that the matter that made us and passed ...

When I was 10, I got my period. A black smeary embarrassing surprise in my panties, discovered after the long walk back from the Takoma Park Folk Festival. I hid the soiled panties, threw them away.  What did this onset mean? What kind of person did this determine I would be? I had some alarming ideas about immaculate conception. Perhaps God, someone who seemed terrifyingly real and literally potent, would want me to be the special chosen vessel for the next of his sacred seed. In my room, amid the hoarded little boxes of shells and peach pits and candy wrappers and coins and stickers and fruity smelling erasers, a pile of ruined underwear grew, ignored, a testament to a kind of hostile takeover of my body, over my life. * When my daughter Rosie Jo was 9, her dad died. With her stunned big hazel eyes in her round white face, she told me seriously that she was scared she had to be the man of the family now. I said, no honey. We don't replace the people we've lost. They...