The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir

Elna Baker

Language: English

Pages: 288

ISBN: 0452296498

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


"A wickedly funny debut. Baker is both self-absorbed and generous, whip-smart and naïve; she apologizes for none of it."
-People

It's lonely being a Mormon in New York City. Every year, Elna Baker attends the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. This year, her Queen Bee costume (which involves a funnel stinger stuck to her butt) isn't attracting the attention she'd anticipated. So once again, Elna finds herself alone, standing at the punch bowl, stocking up on Oreos, a virgin in a room full of thirty-year-old virgins doing the Funky Chicken. But loneliness is nothing compared to what Elna feels when she loses eighty pounds, finds herself suddenly beautiful...and in love with an atheist.

Brazenly honest, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance is Elna Baker's hilarious and heartfelt chronicle of her attempt to find love in a city full of strangers and see if she can steer clear of temptation and just get by on God.

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usual I am so excited I’m going to pee my pants look. Then I thought about all the times we’d just sat in the school parking lot. The keys would be in the ignition, the tank would be full of gas, but Paul and I never went anywhere. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it! Let’s go see snow!” Three hours later, at the base of Mount Rainier, clumps of partially melted snow started to appear alongside the road. I pressed my face against the window and tried to react genuinely. “Is that what I think it is?” I

came back to our table holding a red velvet box and grinning like the Cheshire Cat. He presented the box to my sister. “Os di mo,” Tina said. I craned my neck so that I was looking directly over her shoulder as she opened it. Inside the box was a gold necklace with an oval purple stone. “Ooooh.” Tina gasped. It was hideous. I mean, absolutely hideous. Tacky, gaudy, definitely fake. And still, I felt a rush of envy sweep through me. I wanted to be the pretty child now. Mine! I wanted to scream.

church, I roll my eyes at the culture, but whenever I’m in a crisis my Mormon friends are the first people on the scene.) Brother Wagner took my blood pressure and immediately put me on an IV. “I’m pretty sure it’s just mono,” I confessed to him awkwardly, like it was an STD. “Does your throat hurt?” “No.” He touched my neck. “And your glands don’t feel swollen?” “No. But I’ve kissed a lot of people this month, and last month. Well, and the month before that, too.” “I’m going to take your

immediately stood out. It was simple, a thin silver band and a small baby-blue stone. “May I see that ring?” I asked the woman behind the counter. As I slid it over my finger, the saleswoman explained that the stone was tanzanite, mined in Zanzibar, and it was supposed to bring luck. Over the course of our three-hour flight into Lusaka to see Matt, I twisted it around and around my finger nervously. No matter what happens, I still have me. No matter what happens, I still have me. As we were

along with it? I’m doing this to myself, I realized. I’m refusing to choose which kind of person I want to be. I’m saying yes to way too many things. I love that moment of unlimited possibilities so much that I’ve accidentally built my entire life there. I’ve extended this place ten years further than it was ever supposed to go. I’m a twenty-six-year-old virgin for God’s sake! While I still haven’t thought of a word for this liminal place, the transition from the many to the one, from

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