From Punk To Polygamy, Part 3: Moving To Utah

Me around 1997

On a chilly September morning in 1990, at age 20, we loaded my parents' cramped car and headed to Utah, my parents taking me and my younger brother to Utah to start college and move in with my polygamist relative, Uncle Jim.  It was my turn to drive that night, and a fog poured over the rolling highway in rural Utah, my first time in my birth state in many years.  We arrived at my Uncle Jim's house in Salt Lake City, and we were met with open arms.  That afternoon, a group of polygamist men stood around a large tree in the sunlight of the afternoon sun and talked gospel.  Even though I was a novice, I joined in.  Later, one of the women told me that she admired me for having the nerve to discuss with older men who knew more than me.  I didn't know that I had committed some faux pas.

The next day, my parents dropped me off at the campus of the local community college for registration, and then they drove off to Arizona, leaving me alone.  Apart from my summer in Belgium, this was my first time being away from home.  I puked in the bathroom, I was so nervous.  It didn't take long for me to make friends, mainly with the international students.  I joined their organization and was involved in organizing their social events.  For one Halloween party, I was asked to deejay.  Of course, I spun house music, and then someone requested Aerosmith.  Some French girl approached me and sneered, "Now, this is real music!"

Me in Sedona, 1990, with my personal go-go dancer

I found that Salt Lake City, at the time, was roughly yet consistently about three years behind the times.  Stuff I had listened to three years earlier, like The Smiths or The Cure, were popular on their popular alternative radio station.  I auditioned as a deejay at a local modern club, DV8 and played house music.  I was told firmly that this was not the kind of music their patrons listened to.  A year later, I saw a live show - British acid house outfit, 808 State, and, before the show, the deejay was spinning house.  I just shook my head.  I applied a year too early.  That is not to say that there was not a good music scene.  Fans were enthusiastic about the live shows.  While I lived there, Throwing Muses did a free show on the lawn at University of Utah, and Frank Black (of Pixies fame) did an acoustic set in a record store while on a road trip across the States.

However, I really missed Arizona, even if I did like living in Utah.  Thirty years ago, there was not as much of a latino presence in Utah as there is now.  I missed my people. I missed my food in a place where sweet salsa and Taco Time were people's idea of Mexican food.  I started listening to Mexican music, Cuban music, Puerto Rican music - anything with a latin beat.  One night, I went to an open mic poetry night at Bandaloops, and I was pining about how much I missed Arizona.  Some hipster girl rolled her eyes at me and told me that Arizona wasn't exactly "the cultural mecca of the Southwest".  Later, that girl asked me if I wanted to go to a party with her.  I think she was baffled why I coldly turned her down.  I found friendship and companionship with many of the single kids from the polygamist families my age and started attending the dances put on by Joe Darger's family in Murray Park.  Following the tastes among the polygamists, I started, for the first time in my young adult life. to listen to country music - something that shocked some of my siblings.  To this day, I still listen to it, although I can get sick of it pretty quickly.  I also reunited with Chad, a friend from high school, who lived in Salt Lake City at the time.  Since we didn't really have many other friends, we used to hang out and go to movies.  There was an art house downtown - I don't remember the name - that used to show obscure art films, and it was so cold they used to serve hot cider to help warm you up.

Me in 1990

At the end of 1991, I, along with all of my family, joined the AUB, which is one of the largest polygamous churches in Utah.  The AUB are not as physically distinguishable as the FLDS.  Most do not wear the prairie dresses (although some of the old-timers do).  Being in the AUB was like being in the LDS Church, except they practice plural marriage.  When I joined, I ran into a couple of women that had attended college with, although I had no idea at the time that they were plural wives.  One of them told me, "I wondered if you were a fundamentalist because if your last name, but when you walked into class, you were wearing a bandanna on your head, a biker jacket, cutoff shorts, and combat boots.  I had no clue that you were a Mormon fundamentalist!  You looked pretty wild!"

In the AUB, I quickly learned that I was the odd man out when it came to my musical tastes.  Rock music, in general, was eschewed as evil and generally avoided.  One evening, I was invited with other young people to BYU to attend a concert of Mormon fluff rock act, Afterglow.  There are no words to describe how much I hated this music.  It was wimpy, effeminate, and passionless, all in the attempt to engender an uplifting, spiritual version of Mormon easy listening music.  With a sour taste in my mouth, I left the concert, and Martha - who would become my wife one day - was on a date with another young man.  They were gushing about how good the concert was, and I felt nauseous.  (Okay, I was a little jealous.)  I had to tell them how much I didn't like it.

AUB leader, the late Owen Allred and me, 1994

As Martha and I started to court, I tried to share some of the music I liked with her, and I was shocked that she didn't like any of it.  I placed her Dead Can Dance.  She shook her head and said that it was too dark.  I played her the most innocent, innocuous record I could think of - "In My Tribe" by 10,000 Maniacs,  "You have to ask yourself - is this uplifting?" she asked me.

I have since come to the conclusion - why does art always have to be uplifting?  Is life always uplifting?  Can life not be dark sometimes?  Or is it always sugar and fluff?  Art should reflect life, which is sometime uplifting, yet sometimes heavy and burdensome.  It's easy for me to say that now, but I did something to myself that was unconscionable.  I tried to rewrite myself in order to fit in with the AUB.  No one forced me.  No one made me do it.  I did it on my own.  I wanted to fit in.  I wore the button-up shirts that polygamist men wear.  I ceased being controversial and was completely mild-mannered.  But mostly, I stopped listening to the music I loved, because I viewed it as evil and not conducive to an uplifting spirit.  Shortly before I got married, I took a trip to Arizona to hang out with the Baron and Matt.  I took my crate of records and cassettes and sold ALL of them at Zia Record Exchange in Tempe.  Those that I could not sell, I gave away to my friends.  I purged that out of my life.

When I come back with Part 4, I will tell you how music saved me.