Scott's Fuzzy Navel
It was orange, slightly pear-shaped, and
effervescent, just like Scott. He had an angular drape of naturally bright
orange hair brushing over his nose to his chin, and abruptly shaved tight on
one side. He was the comic-book reading, model-painting, early video-game
playing type, but don't mistake that for being inactive. We used to walk the
rails, or at least I always wished he was walking the rails with me. I don't
remember anymore.
He was a surrealist- he was always
painting, sculpting, spilling paint on carpet, eating junk food and sewing old
keys to his military jacket like jangly badges of repetitive nonsense. Very
Dadist. He was witty and so weird but amiable and fun and child-like in a
timeless way. I know he eventually made a pretty great Dad- as a likely
permanently precocious adult-child. He was probably one of my favorite people I
ever spent time with.
Scott was 2 years older than me- Mindy's age and
grade. My mother had an incandescent loathing for the Ligons, who lived
literally on the wrong side of the train tracks that split Layton
latitudinally. Scott and his little brother Keith, who was my grade and age,
were early comrades in some of my earliest feats of mischief, pranksterism and
general rebellion. We were on similar wavelengths along the lines of
alternative radio listening, combat boot wearing, class-cutting and art-making.
Mom thought of them as bad influences and ne'er do wells. She was correct. I
have the photographic evidence of a night of silly antics at Temple Square
where we posed sacrilegiously with the Church's sacred bronze statues of
Emma and Joseph Smith. Looking back on the history, I am struck at how benign
our activities were in comparison to what I hear other teenagers outside of
Utah were routinely up to, yet the guilt I carried for mockingly kissing a
statue of Joseph Smith with tongue to make the Ligons laugh
was enough to qualify me for a confession of my irreverence to the Bishop. It
has to be immoral to make fun of The Smiths. My grandmother would be appalled
if she knew what I was up to at night in Salt Lake City.
One particular evening when my parents were not home, meaning that I had
the rare opportunity of having the entire house to myself, Scott and Keith came
over to hang out. Time has faded memory of the specifics, but the one thing I
am sure about was this was the night I realized I was raised in a house of
lies.
Mormon girls are encouraged to journal daily- for the posterity of their many future children. There is a legacy of documenting daily life in Mormon history, which explains all the Mormon Mommy Bloggers proliferating social media today- they were born to document themselves. Pioneers brought their journals along with them across the plains in the journey to Nauvoo Illinois and then eventually to Salt Lake City Utah. There are pioneer museums and vaults stacked with journals written by early Mormons and latter day officials and prophets, which is funny considering how often this egotistical obsession with documenting every moment is used as evidence in court- (See Mark Hoffmann).
Because I was raised as a living saint who was saved for the latter days to be one of the finest fighters for Jesus in the Second Coming, I was a dutiful journaler from the age of 14. So there would be a record of my very important time on this Earth.
In thinking about this
particular evening with the Ligon brothers, I searched for journal entries but eventually found that I had excluded the night I lost my faith in my parents from the historical record. Either because I knew the magnitude of what had
occurred that night, recognized it was a sin and was ashamed and buried it deep within myself secretly, or more likely it was because I didn’t want my
snooping mother to read what I had done. She was often perusing my journal
looking for incriminating evidence and I would not have wanted to throw her any red meat if I could avoid it. I have actual journal entries addressing
her directly, because I knew she was nosing around while I was at school. So I realize now that I am an unreliable narrator for not accurately documenting this significant moment in my life, and if I have left anything out, the Ligons are free
to chime in with their own memoirs anytime.
What I remember is that Scott brought over a 4 pack of Bartles and James Fuzzy Navel Wine Coolers. I am not sure if this drink is still available today, but back in the late 80’s and early 90’s there were limited beverages available to the Utahn youth that tasted like the Kool-Aid or the soda pop we were raised to drink like water. Wine coolers were a reliable introduction to alcohol for teenagers in Utah partly because the alcohol content is regulated in Utah- so it was probably only 3% at the most. Gateway drinking to actual drinking.
When Scott brought it in the
house, I was nervous- such contraband would cause me to catch such heck from my
parents- I had to have been sure the coast was clear- I was the kind of kid who
preferred to do my sinning outside of the home, preferably in the company of other
kids who were not doing what their parents thought they should be doing. But at
age 16, I had never seen a Bartles and James up close before that night. It’s
bottle was wide at the bottom and slender at the top, like a lean Snapple
bottle made of clear glass, as if it had no sin to hide.
We all sat on the floor and shared the 4 pack- I don’t know who had the 4th one. There may have been someone else with us, too. Unreliable narrator strikes again. The lid twisted off with that sassy familiar fizz that sounded and also looked identical to orange soda. With that sound my mind flashed back to that time when I was 12 and Dad had brought home the beer. His 40 oz brown bottle hid the color of the fluid as if it knew it was shameful. The Bishop's bottle had already been open and was sitting in the back of the car for who knows how long therefore it was flat and warm. This bottle was frosty cold and brightly colored with portraits of the happy elderly gentlemen who invented it and full of fun chilly bubbles. Mr. Bartles and Mr. James looked merry on the label. The Bishop’s Budweiser didn’t have a particularly interesting label just loosely patriotic with the red, white and blue graphics.
The beverage in my hand was not the same strained garbage
juice my father had told me about. I had a taste of Scott’s Fuzzy Navel and
beamed in wonderment at how delicious it was. Sure, I could taste the odd
burning of alcohol in the back of my throat as I gingerly swallowed my first
sip of truth. And after a sip or two came the warming sensations and the rosy
cheeks, and the euphoria. Oh, yes. We chase this feeling for decades and do not
ever back to it again. The first time I ingested alcohol is the sort of thing I
should have felt safe enough to have written about in my diary so that I would
be able to look back on this day with more accuracy and with a clearer memory.
Instead of a useful diary entry, I am like everyone else my age who chases the
fading memories from a time before were recorded every moment for social media.
This was a jolly evening, where the details of what we did, where we went and who I was with mattered less than the lesson that I picked up from having the relatively tame and low-risk experience of drinking a single wine cooler in my parent’s living room with some friends. What registered in my head that night was not that I had transgressed and needed to repent and never touch alcohol again. One 12 oz bottle in, I did not feel ashamed. I felt the scales of Mormon programming fall from my eyes in that evening. If this is what alcohol felt like, it could not possibly be a sin. It felt too good to be a moral crime- it made me feel popular, pretty, fun and hilarious and I didn’t spin out of control like I had seen portrayed in a bevy of after school specials about saying “NO” to various substances. It was a giddiness and a self-assuredness all worldly people probably recognize as some of the classic distortive effects alcohol can have on your behavior and mood, but I didn’t recognize them as distortions.
I learned that wine coolers were a fantastic
truth that had been kept from me.
And the floor absolutely did not come up and hit me in the head.
I had a good time! There were no negative consequences. It tasted
great and I liked myself more. If this was a sin, then I realized that day that
I was perhaps not a latter day saint. A latter day saint would feel bad about
this lapse of faith but I felt like I had been deceived my entire life. How could this silly little drink be all the
evil that I had heard of- how it was the destroyer of countless souls? Mormons
are special because we are not in danger of losing our souls because we don’t
ever drink. But what happens if you do? Well if this was hell, maybe that's where I belong.
It was the seed of doubt, planted
by my dad in the form of an uninformative sermon that had sprouted in the
waters of the Fuzzy Navel.
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