Today I feel failure.

My Japanese failure started when I went to the mormon chapel for the second week running. I arrived ten minutes early (as opposed to last weeks' twenty minutes late) and there was a guy standing in the hall. He started chatting at me and I had no idea what he was saying. No. Clue. I eventually made out that he had shared his name with me(don't know if I can say I forgot it since I didn't really understand it in the first place)and was asking for mine; that he had invited me to an as yet unplanned YSA activity in February (more confusing because it's apparently just SA here, even though this guy turned out to be 27); and (most awkwardly) that he was thanking me for accompanying the elders on a dinner meeting with an investigator last week.

Is that what that was? Whoops.

I didn't know how to assure him that it was not my intention to help convert anyone, so I just said "It was fun."

I understood maybe thirty percent of the first two talks (female speakers who gestured and spoke kinda slow) and ten percent of the last one (a male speaker who did not speak slowly or gesture at all). They were all on the word of wisdom, which was ironic because I enjoyed a cup of coffee with a friend on Friday day, a beer and a mixed drink with a friend on Friday night, and a cup of tea with a friend on Saturday. Still, I like the spirit of health consciousness behind the topic.

I left quickly after the meeting ended, and as soon as I rounded the corner I was asking myself why I'd gone at all.

• Sacrament meeting reminds me of my family. We sang "In Our Lovely Deseret" as the closing song, which in addition to being hilariously fast when you're reading the lyrics in Japanese script was my family's FHE theme song, sung at least twice a month for most of my childhood.
• There's a feeling of community there that I haven't felt anywhere else. Everyone (or the adults at least) is there because they want to be there. There's no pressure to learn, no tests or paychecks involved.
• It's safe. I can't really fail at mormonism, at least not the unorthodox way I'm engaging with it.
• Being there helps me see that I'm not spiritually battered guy I used to be. Where once I got panic attacks, now I have peace.
• The missionaries are thrilled to have me there. I feel like I'm making their day.
• The missionaries are there. This one I feel is dangerous. As lovely as it is to sit next to an American guy my age, to sing together and whisper occasional commentary back and forth, he's a missionary for a church I don't believe in. Our interaction is wholly dependent on my participation in the Mormon church. 

I don't regret going. I felt warm and fuzzy and special there. But I wonder if it isn't unsustainable, like drug happiness. The next few weeks will make it clear, I think. If it's the novelty, that'll wear off. Sometime the elders will bring more people to church and I'll sit by myself, or they'll get transferred out, or I don't know.  I awkwardly imagine what the conversation will be like if they try to get me to be more active than I want to be and it isn't pretty, full of righteous gay pity-party indignation. If I keep it up, I imagine someone will get close to the topic eventually and that will be messy. But for now, I don't regret going.

Oh yeah, this was about failure. After failing to understand Japanese there, I went to an extra kendo practice that my coach had set up for me because of the impending grade level tests. He doesn't speak English, so I failed Japanese some more with him. I also failed at politeness (arrived a few minutes late) remembering the forms (there are ten, and the names and steps are all new Japanese vocabulary), and, pleasing my Japanese teacher, who was there to translate and who ended the evening with the comment "Sometimes I forget how much you don't know," which I suppose might not have been intended as an insult but which still hurt because sometimes I forget too but not today.

But this is all angsty. To be honest, now that I'm a little removed from the events of the day and I can just think about them, it's been a pretty good day. I enjoyed the Mormon church and the train ride to and from. I chatted for a few minutes with my mom (who does not know about my chapel visits because I don't want her to get her hopes up), I enjoyed some lovely bakery snacks, and I finally got a written copy of the kendo form names so I can practice them. I didn't have to teach any classes. I slept in. I read some Michael Creighton and washed things.

I guess the angst is there because I feel like something's missing, and the whole Mormon-elder complex is similar to the missing thing but not it. That and the Japanese and the kendo all together feel like failure, even though on the whole today was good.

Anyway. If you were here I'd probably punch you in the shoulder and then act like I didn't do anything. Just to see what you'd do.

I feel like talking but there's no one here. I've been washing my dishes every night for the past couple of weeks because I read somewhere that the way to become a person who keeps a tidy apartment is to keep a tidy apartment. It's a steady clean clear area in my cluttered house.

I taught mentally challenged third graders about "I want" and "I want to" this morning. We played a white elephant type game and then go fish, and then a fill in the blanks thing plus a review about telling time. It went smoother than I expected. The special first graders were in a bad mood when I taught them last Tuesday, and then their abilities are different and I didn't put as much effort into that lesson, so what can I expect.

You're not here, so I'm talking to myself.

Last week I went to the Mormon chapel, did I mention that? I want to see if I can make it mine, somehow, instead of Mormonism being an accident of birth. Y'know. Like mental retardation, or a crooked finger. I want to demote it from worldview to heritage experience. If I completely stop engaging with it, it'll always be ingrained in me. That's probably unhealthy.

It's been a busy week. I want to go grocery shopping, but it's so cold, and I really enjoy laying in bed.

The elders are not lookers, but they're white and male and American and around my age so I feel myself drawn to them. I think I have to be careful about that. They're so like me, but also so very very not. I have to keep reminding myself—Matthew, these boys do not care about you. They're here to proselyte for a church in which you were burned for years. They may want what's best for you, but their idea of what that is is very different from yours. So be careful.

Anyway. If you were here tonight, I dunno. I might ask to cuddle and then fall asleep on you. I'm feeling young and vulnerable. I'm tired.

If you were here tonight, I'd tell you about how I went to the Mormon chapel today. We'd sit on the bed, I think, because there are a few days of clutter everywhere else and it's cozy up here. We could watch everything like lords of it all. Lords of the grocery bags and discarded jackets.

I found the chapel with the little map that the elders gave me some months ago—I think I mentioned it. On the way there I asked a woman about the correct train stop to get off at, and later a man about a park where I could eat my bakery-bought lunch. I understood half the words. That was enough though. I got off at the correct and tiny station in a depressing area of Atsugi where there was a factory smell and a lot of concrete and wires and cars. I found a garbage-strewn set of benches and a little shrine by the river and ate my lunch there.

I was anxious but not freaking out when I passed the chapel the first time. It sort of pops out at you with sudden white largeness. A spiral staircase, half of the first floor given over to parking, a couple of people walking out. I walked past them and past the Create drugstore across the street. (This is when I found the park and ate my curry roll, my tiny pizza, and my doughnut.)

I felt light and fizzy when I walked back and in. I lingered in the empty little front room and looked at a display of different language editions of the Book of Mormon. '80s era posters in English. Ads for the English classes the elders teach.

Up the stairs. They were narrowish, just enough room for a person going one way to pass a person going the other way. At the top, a Japanese woman saw me and said "Hello" in English. I tried to ask for the meeting schedule in Japanese, and she asked what meeting, and I had no idea how to say "sacrament meeting" and she didn't switch to English, so "Hello" was probably the extent of her abilities in that regard. She said there was a meeting going on then and held open a door right there in the narrow hallway and ushered me in.

This was at two thirty or three, by the way. "Baptism," I said to myself when I saw a little Latin American kid at the front and his family up there too and not exactly a full house in the rest of the folding chairs. Bingo. I sat down right by the door I'd come in and listened to the little guy thank everyone for coming. Someone in the column of chairs next to me went up to the front and told the elders I was there and they came back by me, smiling huge. I bet I made their day.

Are you from England? I'm guessing you're a member. How long have you been here?

American, actually, from California. Yeah, haven't come for a long time though. About nine months.

He gave me the schedule for the meetings. The bishop spoke a little. We sang "I Am A Child Of God" in Japanese and it felt warm in my head and then a prayer, a few more pleasantries, and I left.

"See you next week" he said, and maybe he will, I dunno. It felt good to sit there. It was familiar and comforting and I didn't feel suffocated. It was interesting to see how much I could understand. It was a baptism, though, and I arrived close to the end. Two of the three people I heard speak were adorable and Latin and simple and children. There was a lot of space. There was no sacrament ritual.

If you were here, I don't know if you'd ask why I'm going or not, but I ask myself. Answer: Mormonism is part of my heritage. I don't really want to cut it out of my life. Pain aside.

I imagine you'd raise an eyebrow if you were here, but maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Now I need to turn on the heat and wash the spoon I ate mango yogurt with earlier and brush my teeth and sleep. School starts again in a couple of days. I'd get up and we'd hug, if you were here.

I don't feel dirty anymore.

What I mean is that I feel like I can shine sometimes now and I don't have to fight through layers of muck.

I was reading Gay Mormon Guy's blog tonight and thinking* that if I believed in it, it wouldn't be all that different for me to be active in the church. I'm not dating and I don't have a boyfriend, so no change there. I like to read, so if I thought it was worthwhile I could pick up the scripture habit. Prayer would be a little more iffy, but if we're supposing I believed in the church I guess we'd also suppose I believed that the formality of prayer was useful. I usually have some free time on Sundays, so going to church would be possible, and if I believed, it might even be enjoyable. It would be good Japanese practice, for sure. It would be nice to believe.

Because, you see, that's what I was breaking myself against all those years ago, my unbelief. For a short while I thought the problem was my desire to be with men, but it never was. The problem was that I expected to believe, but all I ever felt was empty. I thought that acting as if I believed would make me full; it didn't. It turns out stretching to be all the church expects of its believers just made the emptiness bigger. I tried to be an Example to the World, part of a Marked and Chosen Generation, and I felt such an enormous space inside, because I didn't believe I was the things I was trying to be. It was a terrible space.

The point is that pretending to believe again would be a problem.

I'm thinking of this because before the blog I watched Brideshead Revisited, which is a gorgeous, gorgeous movie about love and loss and faith and belief and, perhaps most relevant, other people's belief. A gay character loves a straight character; an atheist character loves a Catholic character. There are unrequited feelings all over the place, and I guess that I feel that for the life I could have in the church, if I only believed.

So we have Gay Mormon Guy, who believes, and also the friend with whom I first watched BR at BYU, who is attracted to men and yet who believes, and then lots of other people and then me, who doesn't believe.

The point is that BR makes me feel how I feel about the church, and also sometimes about men, and I suppose that this is also how Gay Mormon Guy feels about men, and also sometimes about the church (although he may not, I wouldn't know), and when the movie's over and the blogs are written there's nothing left but to feel.


*Yeah, it's one of those nights.

Today was an unexpected holiday. The school I was scheduled to be at was on holiday because they had an event on Saturday, but they'd forgotten to tell my company. I'll go Thursday instead.

On Wednesday I'm going to a doctor to make a fuss about the herniated discs I've had for oh-so-long. For the longest time I'd given up hope that anything could be done about it, which was unwarranted. I didn't give medicine a fair shake (though I shook chiropractic for longer than it deserved, and I'm still bitter about it). I was focused on school, and there were whispers that the doctors would eventually want to do risky surgery; a possible six-month bed rest was above the acceptable consequence threshold. Looking back, after reading much more about disc herniations, I see that what I was afraid of was a worst case scenario taken to eyebrow raising extremes. And even so, looking back, it would have been wiser to take six months off school if that's what it took to have a fixed back.

But then . . . then there was the pressure to transfer to BYU, and then the pressure to get in as much as I could before my mission, and then pressure to graduate. And then there was no money, no job, and no insurance.

There are not a lot of things I honestly regret, but not taking care of my back earlier is one of them. I regret not pushing for resolution. I regret settling. I regret procrastinating. My injury hung over my teens and early twenties like a sour fog.

But I'm twenty-three now. I ain't no child. I'm going to get this fixed now or find out for certain that it's unfixable.

I want very badly for it to be fixed.

If I sound a little stiff today, it's because the pertinent emotions are scary. I don't want to touch them. Maybe if you were here.

Tonight would be a good night for cuddling. (Ha! As if most nights aren't.) It's cold out. My Christmas playlist is going strong, and my hair is still wet from cleaning up after kendo practice.

We're having practice next week too. Christmas Eve. It's surreal how not-a-big-deal Christmas is here, and I do not like it. I feel strongly that Christmas should be surrounded with blinking lights and the smell of pine and pie. There should be stockings, my parents, and a large fake tree weighted down with their collected ornaments. All I have is a tiny poinsettia and the Christmas playlist.

I'm a little irrationally upset about the way this holiday season is unfolding. It will be a good Christmas. I'll be with nice people who mostly speak English even. Still though.

To be honest, life is going well. Mainly as I planned.

And then, if you were here, I'd begin to talk about Orson Scott Card's books and how they're infuriating and disappointing. I just read the Ender saga. I'd peter off after a bit. Coldplay in the background. We'd both be quiet for a minute, and then a little awkwardly we'd go to our beds and fall asleep. If you were here.

I'd say "Holy crap don't touch my forearm, it's bruised all over."

I went to a martial arts dojo today with a fellow teacher and her sons. It was a painful blast. They grappled the heck out of my wrist. It was odd to be punching and yet not be boxing. It was odd to kick.

My default when someone speaks to me here is to nod and smile and make little affirmative grunting noises, and generally this works. Sometimes I understand what people are saying, but mostly I watch what's going on and guess. The people bent over backwards to help me out, with the sensei or undersensei chilling with me the whole time, as well as a few other people. There was much praise for my punches (they are pretty awesome these days) and much good-natured ribbing for how my hands kept floating up into a boxing-style guard. They threw me around and let me throw them, and then the sensei told me to lay down and gave me a massage in the middle of the dojo.

That was a little weird.

Not unpleasant, though. No one touches me here, except in my violent sports and sometimes my students. I'm not sure what to do when it's my students. Sometimes they grab my balls and my instinct is to hit their faces. Sometimes they take my hand or wrap my arm around them and I feel like someone's gonna call me a pedophile. I was pleasantly surprised to be touched so much, with such good intentions, by the man who'd thrown me across the floor a few minutes earlier. In the rest of the room, people kept practicing. Next to us, a kendo club started hitting each other with sticks.

I don't know what adult relationships are supposed to look like, but apparently sometimes they look like gentle hands pressing into my back in the middle of a dojo.

I'm learning so much here.