Don’t get me wrong. I
still lie. I try not to, but sometimes it’s
really hard. When I do lie, it’s about
small stuff.
In a movie I saw once (I forget the title), an older man
teaches a young boy that of the Ten Commandments, the most serious one to
violate is “Thou shalt not steal.” Violating
any of the other 9 is a form of theft.
For example, if you kill, you’re stealing someone’s life. If you commit adultery, you’re stealing
faithfulness and perhaps love from your partner. And if you lie, you’re effectively stealing
the truth from yourself and others.
I’m not sure who taught me to lie. I can remember being a very small child, and
lying about a lot of things. The paradox
is that while I was learning to tell lies, I was also being taught to be “an
honest Mormon boy.” I quickly learned
that it was better to pretend to have a testimony than to admit to not having
one. And as a gay boy/young man, I was
only too willing to present myself as straight.
What a “tangled web” I wove for 35 years! UNtangling it has been a life-long
pursuit. When I finally began the
process, I began to feel better. I started
admitting to myself and others within Mormonism that I did NOT in fact have a testimony. And eventually, I woke up to my true sexual
identity, and admitted to myself and others that I was NOT in fact a straight
man. Coming out of both those closets
around the same time in my life was certainly no easy task. But man! was it WORTH it!
I’m not what you’d call an ecstatically happy person, but I’m
a helluva lot HAPPIER now that I once was.
And learning NOT to lie is a huge part of the reason.
For the past 18 months, I’ve been retired from my career
job, and have been working part-time for a psychologist, Dr. P. Although he’s well passed retirement age, he still
has, and regularly sees more than 50 patients.
But he himself is not well physically.
He has difficulty finding the energy to get out of bed in the morning,
and sometimes can hardly walk without great pain and effort. He needs
an assistant to help him with his monthly billings, and to carry his heavy
brief case, and to just help him get around.
I’m quite willing to do all that for him, in large part because it makes
me feel so very young!
A few months ago, a former employee and long-time friend of
Dr. P accompanied him when he went to buy some new computers. While at the store, the employee apparently
stole a $2,000 laptop. When Dr. P
confronted him, he claimed that the store had “given” them the extra laptop. Dr. P was suspicious and later called me to
ask if I thought this could be the case.
I replied that no, I did not think so.
And further, I said, Dr. P would likely be complicit in the theft, since
he had paid for the other equipment. So,
at great physical effort, Dr. P went back to the store and returned the extra
computer himself. In the next few days,
Dr. P confronted his friend with the theft, and this unfortunately has led to
the dissolution of their friendship.
I told Dr. P that nowadays, I’d have trouble being a thief
for $2, let alone $2,000. Dr. P knows my
“ex-Mormon, ex-Straight” story, and he often comments on how I’m such an honest
Mormon. “No,” I correct him. “I’m an honest EX-Mormon boy.”
But what I’d really like is to be known as: An honest gay man.
