This is excerpted from my essay, “I Love to See the Temple, Part 2: Anointing,” from my thesis, A Light in Outer Darkness.
Content warning: ritualized, non-consensual touching. Transcript below.
I created this artwork as I work to process this experience. Though it was 27 years ago, I can still feel its embodied impact.
Yep, that’s me in the photos. I kept the middle picture whole because I like how I looked there, and because through it all, I am me. My Self is constant and whole.
I chose this piece for my thesis reading because it’s a major moment of psychological rupture and fragmentation. I wanted the audience to feel, to get close to what I felt. It showcases my abilities as a writer to convey that visceral response.
After I chose, edited, and rehearsed it, I then freaked out about my choice. My past Mormon programming came rearing up. The first rule of the temple is that you do not talk about the temple.
I found every excuse to doubt my choice. It’s too intense. It’s too private. It needs a content warning (which we don’t give in the writing program). Most of my family hasn’t talked to me since they learned I criticize their church, including this essay. When I worked my way through one excuse, I found another. I talked through them all in two therapy sessions.
“Why shouldn’t you be able to share your experience?” my therapist asked.
“Because the Devil declared he’d have all power over me if I do,” I told her. Not that I believe that. I don’t believe in a devil, or an afterlife. Or any gods. But the fear, mapped onto my body, into my brain, is real nevertheless.
Ultimately, I emailed my thesis advisor, Susan Muaddi-Darraj, an amazing fiction writer and acclaimed author. She also writes about her cultural heritage in ways that I’m sure she’s gotten flak for. I told her my hesitation and asked for a gut check. She wrote back, ”It’s so filled with tension that it crackles. Nice choice.”
I stuck with my choice. I stand by it. Even though it was terrifying.
Transcript
I'm Will Cole. This is from my memoir entitled, A Light in Outer Darkness. I'm a trans man, and at the time of these events, I was living as a woman, age 19, and being initiated into the Mormon temple, days before my wedding ceremony. I had been told nothing about what to expect. We enter the action right after I have followed instructions to remove all my clothes and cover myself with a large, white cloth, similar to a poncho.
Mom knuckle-taps twice on my stall door, "You okay, honey?"
A familiar discomfort radiates out from my torso. I stand barefoot, covered but exposed. This is what Heavenly Father wants. I open the door.
Mom's lower jaw is askew and her dark eyes dart around my face. [whisper] “You don’t ever have to be naked,” she says. “Didn’t your dad tell you?”
My left hand clenches the poncho's edges into my stomach like I’m staunching the seeping blood of a stab wound. Mom envelops me in a hug, saying, “It'll be okay.”
I command my legs to move, left, right, left, toward a row of curtained cubicles. A gray-haired guide gestures me through with a saccharine smile. I am alone in a four-by-four-foot stall. A wrinkled hand appears around a second curtain and pulls it aside. My brain is a TV stuck between channels. This is what Heavenly Father wants. I step forward.
A new woman in white taps my left fist to release my vice grip, and the cloth falls open. Something in my head is pulling me backward, far, far away.
“Sister,” she says, “say your full name.”
[mumble]
“Say your name again.”
After I repeat, she dips her hand in a burbling fountain and wipes water across my forehead, praying in a lilting rhythm, I wash your head, that your brain and your intellect may be clear and active. I long to bathe in this moment of power, the sole liturgical authority that belongs to women, but I register little. I remember less.
With a wet finger, she blesses my eyes that I may discern between truth and error, ears, and nose, then I feel her stroke the bare skin between my shoulder blades. A roaring white noise fills my ears. Under the cloth, the finger strokes my chest, my belly. A single word penetrates the fog—loins—as a cold finger grazes my inner, upper thigh. My body recoils. Her hot breath hisses as she blesses my feet, that I might run and not be weary, and walk and not faint, but I am a statue.
The blessing of the body parts repeats, now with oil. In and out under the cloth, a hand slithers. I retreat further into the Silent Place.
In the next cubicles, new women’s voices seal the anointing, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. One phrase pierces through: preparatory to becoming a queen and a priestess unto your husband.
Unto my husband?
My guide holds up a translucent white, knee-length jumpsuit. She holds it open and gestures for me to step into the Garment of the Holy Priesthood. It’s baggy. As she pulls it up under the cloth and onto my shoulders, she drops her hands and gropes for the zipper. My hips jerk backward. From between my legs to my collarbones, she zips the garment up, chanting.
My body is their puppet.
