Reading Devout

I recently watched Alyssa Grenfell's interview of David Archuleta and they were talking about his new book, Devout. David was a singer who rose to fame in the early days of American Idol. I never listened to his music, but I knew who he was because he was, "The Mormon kid that almost won American Idol."

A few years ago he came out of the closet and has since left the church. In listening to that interview, I decided that, while I didn't listen to his music, maybe I would read his book. I ordered it from Amazon and it was delivered in less than 24 hours. I started it almost immediately after its arrival.

What He Said

David talks about growing up in an LDS home, the role of boys and girls. He talks about being forbidden to do "naughty things" but of never having what those naughty things are explained to him.

Then he told a story about a neighbor friend. Being told to kiss a girl. The butterfly feelings he felt when he did.

And just like that, something unlocked in me.

The Neighbor Girl

There was a neighbor girl in my life, too. We couldn't have been older than 7 or 8 years old. We used to spend a lot of time in our back yards playing, imagining, exploring. One of the things we explored was each other. Not in a graphic way, but somewhere along the way we kissed. I must have enjoyed it because I asked her for more. She said yes at first, but eventually she stopped. I'd ask and she'd say no. I'd ask again, she'd say no again. I never forced her, but I remember feeling frustrated by her rejection.

What struck me the most, though, was the question it sent me back to: What did I feel during those first kisses? Was I even old enough to have the right feelings at that point? I don't think we were doing much more than mimicking what we'd seen our parents do.

That Little Boy

Looking back at that kid now, I feel curiosity. And a healthy dose of compassion.

He was just trying to make sense of the world. The one person he thought was willing to make sense of it with him closed herself off, and it made him feel alone. He didn't have the language for any of it. He barely had the feelings. He just knew that something about that closeness felt good. Then it was gone, and he didn't know why — he wasn't doing anything wrong. He was doing what children do — reaching toward warmth, toward connection, toward the things that feel good and safe. He hadn't yet been taught that those impulses were dangerous, not explicitly.

The Girl at Sixteen

I didn't kiss another girl I liked until I was 16. But when we did, it was like falling into someplace safe that I never wanted to leave. That first kiss turned into my first makeout session and it lasted for hours. Just us two, lost in each other and the movement of lips and tongues.

She was someone I didn't get to see often because she lived far away, so I was happy to see her. I thought she was gorgeous. Her smile and her laugh were treasures to me.

And it did feel safe. Comfortable. Easy and natural.

But looking back, I wonder if there should have been something else.

Those raging teen hormones that are supposedly hard to resist — they weren't raging. We both seemed controlled, even if we were lost in the moment. There was no heat, no tingling that I recall. For a sixteen-year-old boy with a girl he thought was gorgeous, lying on the grass with her for hours, that absence stands out now in a way it didn't then.

I don't remember feeling any particular way except that I didn't want to stop. Perhaps that's all that I needed to feel. Or maybe there was something darker at play.

By sixteen, I'd had lessons on immorality and the law of chastity.

I'd had interviews with my bishop about personal habits that, in pretty much every other context, would be inappropriate for a child and non-family adult to discuss. I'd already learned that talking about those things was surrounded by guilt and shame. Forget about what comes from acting out those things: not being able to take the sacrament and knowing people are watching leaves its own kind of scar.

Looking back, I can't help but wonder what else happened between the kisses at 7 and the ones at 16. What happened before the age of 7?

What I Know Now

I know that children learn certain behaviors as early as two years old — when the brain starts developing beyond the initial state of survival and starts turning into a person, patterns get locked in. If they aren't recalibrated, they endure.

I know now about emotional neglect and what comes from it. I know that feeling emotions was something I'd learned wasn't safe. And these memories — that seven-year-old kid asking for kisses, that sixteen-year-old lost in a makeout session but somehow still not quite there — serve as a reminder of how early those feelings set in.

It's clear to me now that I'd already internalized the idea that sex is the sin next to murder. I was too scared to let myself feel anything too deeply.

While the church taught me that such intimate kissing was starting to break the law of chastity, I know now that I was only doing what teenagers do. It wasn't wrong, it wasn't dirty. It was beautiful because it was real and it was what we both wanted.

Reading Devout is only a few pages in and it's already doing this to me. Whatever David Archuleta is excavating in his own story, he's kicked up dust in mine. I'm not sure what I'll find when it settles. But that's part of why I bought his book — I wanted to see what in his story would resonate, and it didn't take long to find something.

I wonder what else I'll find.