Martha

A friend of mine recently suggested that I balance out some of the negativity of my blog by writing about my family.

Like the angst-ridden poet who turns misery into art, there is nothing that gets my fingers clacking on the keyboard more than righteous anger. lol And I have had so much lately. So.. since I am going to start writing a book about my experiences, this will be good practice.

In 1990, I had two choices before me - DJ or fundamentalist. I had just returned from Europe and had fallen in love with electronica. Acid House. Belgian New Beat. Techno. Anything with a heavy, grinding beat.

I had spent my time as a student in Belgium in 1988, and - ironically, in 1989 - all of the dance clubs in the States from Phoenix to Austin, Texas were spinning Belgian New Beat. Jade 4U, Lords of Acid, 101, Miss Nikki Trax. Anything from Belgium was hot. New Beat took the 160 bpms of techno and slowed it down to a 120 bpm grinding sound that was harder than anything this side of Deep Purple.

I spent every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights driving the 50 miles from Casa Grande to Phoenix or Tempe to work up a sweat on such underground clubs as the Assylum, Out of Water and Six Feet Under.

I looked the part. Longish hair. Smiley buttons. So many bracelets that I set off metal detectors. (The truth.) Biker's jacket. Doc Martens. Bandaids on the fingers. (Don't ask me why; I don't know.)

Not only that - I wanted to be the guy in the booth. I wanted to be a deejay. All of my spare money went to building up my vinyl collection. I pumped out homemade mix tapes and gave them to friends. I played my music at parties. (I remember someone turning off my music at one party and replacing it with Aerosmith. One girl came up to me and sneered, "Now this is REAL music.")

There was one night where me and two other aspiring deejays (with better equipment) set up in an empty cotton warehouse outside Arizona City, and I learned with joy how to work the varispeed.

My friend Steve and I found an abandoned parts warehouse in oldtown Casa Grande. We peered through the storefront window at the empty, dusty space inside. There was a loft that would perfectly serve as the deejay booth. We were going to open up Casa Grande's first dance club. We would have a stupid country night to cater to the town's cowboy crowd, but every other night would strictly play the budding alternative sounds of the late '80s.

My dad was concerned with the direction my life was heading. He perceived (correctly) that my lifestyle was taking me away from the gospel. So he made an offer - he would pay my tuition if I would move in with my polygamist uncle and go to college in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I thought for a long time about this, and then decided to accept his offer. The ironic thing was - my father only paid the first semester. After that, I was on my own. lol

But the experience was well worth it. My late Uncle Jim is still the best example of a Mormon polygamist man that I ever had. He lived this lifestyle with honor, dignity and privacy, which is why I won't speak much about him, but to say that he influenced me greatly and was the man who made me want to live this lifestyle. I am proud to have lived in his home.

Meanwhile, I was making new friends at college in Salt Lake - the same kinds of friends that I had in Arizona when I spent my time clubbing. One night, I found myself at a particularly wild party in the Avenues at an apartment building for Univeristy of Utah students dubbed "Botswana".

Realizing that I was digressing back to what I had tried to escape in Phoenix. (I had also just auditioned as a deejay at Club DV8 in Salt Lake, but they "didn't get" the techno music just yet. I did see 808 State and The Orb there a year later, however.) I left the party and headed out at 3AM for my car, which was parked about two miles away. As I walked through downtown, I was disgusted with myself, and I was also feeling quite lonely. I had met no girls in the polygamist families that I thought would be a suitable wife for me. Or rather, I did not think I would be a suitable husband for any of them.

I walked by the Salt Lake Temple - illuminated in the darkness, and I felt a stab of jealousy thinking about all the marriages solemnized inside, and after being excommunicated it seemed that getting married in a temple setting was somewhat of an impossibility for me. As I walked through the empty streets at 3AM right by the temple, I heard a voice speak in my mind. It said, "You will be married within a year."

"Yeah, right," I scoffed. "Who will I marry? There is no one for me to marry."

The voice repeated itself. "You will be married in a year."

A year later, my parents (and the rest of my family) had relocated to Utah. My parents were investigating the Allred Group (AUB) - the second largest polygamist group in Utah. They wanted to attend meeting in the large hall that the AUB owns in Bluffdale. I had heard rumors from other fundamentalists that there were many pretty girls in the "Allred Group", and so I decided to go and see for myself. I went with my family to sacrament meeting.

There was only one girl who caught my eye - a dark-haired beauty. My mother had met her, and told me her name was Martha. She was half-Japanese. I think that this was one of the things that attracted me to her - she was exotic looking. But also, she exuded an innocence and sweetness that was genuine and unfeigned. I also learned that Martha's father - a man of Irish descent - was a polygamist.

Eventually, we joined the Allred Groud. One day after Sunday School, I saw my sister Marina speaking to Martha. I went and stood next to my sister and smiled at Martha until my sister introduced us. But I learned that my younger brother also liked her. So I did what is an important ethic to me - since my brother liked her, I backed off to give him a chance.

Later that spring, there was a formal dance being planned called the "Sweetheart's Ball". There was a dance troupe being formed to perform a cha cha number during the intermission. (It was quite gay now that I think about it.) Martha had no partner, and so we were paired up to dance with each other.

So twice a week, I got to dance and talk with Martha as we rehearsed. She flirted with me and made eyes at me. (She swears to this day that she did not.) She even made me cookies. (She claims that there was no significance in this.) I was sure that I was a shoe-in.

So I took my younger brother aside, and said, "Look, I need to know what your intentions are about Martha."

He claimed he had none, so I started following the strict protocol that the AUB has one dating:

1. I spoke to Owen Allred, the senior member of the AUB Council, and asked his permission to "court" Martha. He gave me his blessing.

2. Next, I had to speak to Martha's dad and get his permission. So, one day, after sacrament meeting, I ambushed him in the back of the building while he was making conversation with another man. He made me stand there for ten minutes until he finished talking to the other man.

I was fidgeting the whole time.

When I finally got the chance to speak to him, I asked him permission to date his daughter. He told me that many, many men had asked for her hand, and she had turned them all down. He said that he would talk to her and get back to me. (The talking to the father is supposed to provide a buffer between the girl and unwanted suitors.) Basically what he was telling me was "thanks for asking but her answer will probably be no" and "there are other women out there."

3. The next step - I sent flowers to her at her place of work on the day of our next cha cha rehearsal.

When I saw her next, she was nervous and avoided me. She tried to race out of the building after rehearsal was over, without saying anything to me. I ran out after her to see if she was leaving. She saw me and came back, taking me aside. She said that she really liked me, but that her feelings didn't go beyond friendship. My heart sank as I realized that I was not a "shoe-in" after

all.

To my amazement, however, Martha danced with no one but me the next night at the Sweetheart's Ball. In fact, over the course of the next several weeks, we spent every day together. This confused me, and so one night I told her, "Look, we agreed that we would just be friends, but look at how much time we spend together. What's going on?"

She answered, "I think that we should remain friends. But I think we should take it to the next level."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

She said that she thought we should date. We dated for one month, got engaged, and were married within two months.

Another interesting story - shortly before we got engaged, I was suffering tremendously from the allergies in the Utah summers. So I decided to go see an herbologist about my allergies. He lived in a small town that was quite a drive from Salt Lake, and he was also in the Allred Group. Martha decided to accompany me.

We got there, and he performed the kooky practice of iridology, where he looked into my eyes and could discern what was wrong with me. He stared intensely into my eyes and said, "Oh, this is very interesting. You suffer from insanity and sexual deviance."

He turned his stare to Martha and said, "Are you sure that you want to marry this guy?"

I was very bewildered until a grin broke his face, and he said, "Just kidding."

He placed some herbs in my arms and asked me to hug them to my chest while he pressed down on my uplifted hand. Somehow this quack was supposed to be able to tell in this manner which herbs I should take.

Martha had some questions about some female troubles she was experiencing, so she asked me to leave the room while she spoke to the herbologist. His wife escorted me downstairs and made some conversation with me. She related to me how her husband got into herbology and then she told me that he had - at one point - got into some practices that were sort of questionable. She had almost left him over these practices, but he "repented" and everything was okay.

One hour turned into two, and still I sat in the basement waiting for them. Two hours became three, and finally after four hours Martha came downstairs to get me. She was obviously agitated. When we got into the car, she asked me to tell her how I knew that it was right that we get married.

As I questioned her, she described that this quack had given her some sort of treatment with crystals and put oils on her forehead and walked her through some guided imagery. Then he told her that he had dreamed that she would become his next wife.

It took us years to figure out what happened. For being up there for four hours, Martha only had one hour worth of memory. The bastard had hypnotized her and planted suggestions that she ought to marry him. For a few moments, she doubted that she should marry me and ought to marry him. But as the smell of the oil on her forehead faded, her doubts also faded.

I felt like kicking that guy's butt, but in a way I should thank him. This negative and scary experience pushed Martha and I closer and sped up the process that eventually led to our marriage.

Last month, I celebrated my 16th anniversary with Martha - although it wasn't much of a celebration. There are two kids who have their birthdays the same week, as well as our annual conference.

Tomorrow, I will write about Temple.

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