Jack Mormon Manifesto

I didn't have too tough of a time grabbing the reigns from uncle Bone this week. I pitched him my idea and even though he doesn't believe the story, I figured he'd be ready for a break after that "One Joke--One Year Anniversary" piece of crap that he allowed to be published last issue. I pretty much have to kiss up to the guy if I'm going to get a chance to write from time to time, but I had to level with him about that last one. I've been trying to get him to lose the Clinton jokes for months, but he's still at it, still thinks they're funny. I finally put it to him like this, "you know what they call it when a group of words ends with a period and there's no punch-line? A sentence. You're writing Bill Clinton sentences."

By way of introduction, my name is Maddy Bonham, I'm the Boneman's step-niece and on a sporadic basis, he allows me to sit behind the wheel of the Bonemobile. If you've caught any of my previous installments, you may remember that I"m a recent transplant from southern California and I attend a local high school. To get you up to speed, in my last article I recounted the events of an enjoyable Day Trip to my aunt Iris' home in Pahrump, Nevada. A Thanksgiving visit that was made surprisingly bearable due to a chance meeting and a few stolen hours spent in the company of a Piute guy named Jack Featherwood. Jack is my aunt's next door neighbor and in my always dependable opinion, the most attractive human being in North America.

Since then, my obsession with this Native American speciman has become purely ridiculous. In bed at night, I allow my imagination to decorate a world where Jack and I must continually conquer the wilderness, armed with nothing but our insatiable love and a bottle or two of fire water. It saddens me to have to report all of this, particularly since I've only spent about four hours with the guy--two of which were spent watching Pulp Fiction. Yet as pathetic as this certainly is, I scarcely draw a waking breath that isn't quickened by "Jackness." I've rented Dances With Wolves so many times that I told the lady at the video store that I'm doing a report on Kevin Costner. (In which I speculate that Waterworld and The Postman were quite possibly the tragic result of an accidental peyote overdose during the filming of Dances with Wolves).

My mother's alot of help, she's on to me and thinks it's funny to ask me how things are going in my little "wigwam world?" She's a terribly mean-spirited woman. She claims that on several occasions she's heard me yelling "Tatunka, Tatunka" in my sleep. I think she's full of crap, but just in case I told her I've been having recurring nightmares about stampeding buffalo. She just looks at me with her annoying little smile and says that's not what it sounded like to her. She's even got my little brother in on it, he started calling me "Sleeps With A Fist." That came to a swift halt when I came up with a nickname for him that was remarkably similar. We're a terribly mean-spirited family.

As imaginary as this relationship may be, it does do my heart good. In total defiance of all logic and reason, almost every last teenage girl in this town is drop-dead gorgeous. I'd say a good 90-95%. They're tall, thin, beautiful--pretty much perfect. It's like Mannequin High. When I lived in Whittier, I was well within the upper 25th percentile of the babe scale, but up against St. George's Alpha generation I'm not even on the chart. It's really not fair.

Guys that I wouldn't even so much of given the day of the week to back in Cal, pretty much size me up with a fleeting "top-to-bottom once over" and mentally toss me back like some five ounce trout with a growth. As many times as I tell myself I shouldn't care, I find myself wanting to scream "hey, can't you see I'm smart and funny--you shallow, acne-plagued wankers . . . " But now that I've got Jack to protect me from this kind of daily rejection, I accept it all with a kind of regal grace. Jack is a very comforting concept. "Jack would cut the fuzzy scalp of your oblong head, you freak'n losers," is my silent war cry. In this manner, I console myself and live proud within my Forcefield of Dreams.

Then came last Saturday, Valentine's Eve. I answered the door in my nasty old sweats and there stood Jack! Even though we'd exchanged phone numbers when we met, we hadn't spoken since Thanksgiving so I didn't expect him to pop up at the door and I certainly wasn't prepared for the fact that he was wearing a suit and tie and toting a handsome leather bound set of scriptures. My recollection of this encounter is a total blur, but the upshot of it all was that he wanted to know if I would have dinner with him after his temple session. I must've indicated affirmatively, because he responded with a smile and spun on his heel and whistled down the sidewalk. What the . . . temple session? I don't think I could've been any more stunned if he'd handed me the severed head of a raccoon in a ziplock bag and went and jumped in some bushes. Was this a joke?

First thing to do was call my aunt Iris, she would know what was going on. Turned out, all Iris could do was confirm my worst suspicions. Yes, Jack was a Mormon and yes, he was an RM (I knew what that meant). But what about the long hair--we watched Pulp Fiction? "Most of those videos belong to his brother and besides Jack's been back from India for over a year, he likes to wear his hair long. Spent two years in Bangladesh and he'll talk your ear off about it--he likes to think of himself as the most "Indian" Indian in the world." "Red Dot on the forehead-India?" I was babbling. "That's the one, dear. Paint one on your head when he comes to pick you up as a joke, he'll love it." "Thank you aunt Iris, but I have to go vomit now."

I immediately assumed the fetal position on the couch and began to rewind my life to try to figure out what I'd done to deserve such a harsh dose of Karma. Having been raised by a series of step-fathers in California, as far as religious training is concerned, I might as well've been Raised With Wolves. As religions go, the Mormon-thing doesn't seem too bad. So far I've kept my distance from it and it's kept it's distance from me--and I certainly prefer it that way. Yet as I thrashed my closet looking for something Mormony-looking to wear, I wished I'd paid more attention. I don't know how to have dinner with a Mormon--are you supposed to pray to your bread? You can't have a coke? What's the deal?

When Jack showed up, I was on the Internet looking up Mormons, wearing a dress I hadn't worn since Easter. True to my luck, Jack was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I fully intended to change right out of my dress, but he insisted that I looked stunning and after he put his jacket back on we didn't look ridiculously out of place among the relatively mixed batch of folks that pack themselves into Chili's.

The sum total of my knowledge about Mormons is how to make fun of them, to which he didn't mind at all and even tossed in a few shots himself. It was going pretty well, but I couldn't help suspect that this was shaping into a heart-breakingly ironic deal. All I wanted him for was his body, and all he wanted from me was my soul. Here I was, all in love with the idea of taming the native savage and I was getting the feeling his motive was more about saving me from my wayward ways. I decided to point-blank him. "So am I just another notch on your Mormon totem pole? Another feather in your head-dress? Do you just convert 'em and desert 'em and move on to the next sinful sucker?" "Excuse me," he feigned innocence. "Let's just say for the sake of argument that I did join your church--I'm pretty sure I'd be doing it because of Jack not Jesus." He let this sink in a moment then smiled and said, "right, we get alot of that, their called Jack-Mormons." After he stopped laughing, I looked at him seriously and asked, "How do I know you haven't left a trail of broken-hearted Jack Mormons from here to Bangladesh?" He was obviously taken aback by all this candor and smiled, "I just wanted to have dinner and talk I didn't expect a full scale Holy War. But since we're being so truthful I guess I should confess that I am interested in your soul, but mainly because I've got a hunch that it's somewhere inside your body." He shoots he scores.

"The last thing I want to do is populate the world with Jack Mormons," he went on, "in spite of all outward appearances I'm not an Indian giver." I gave him his laugh for that one, and then got all seductive and asked, "so what if after dinner I want a piece of Piute for desert, do I have to get baptized first?" You know you've got a shot with a guy if you can make him laugh Coke through his nose.