Resisting Your True Sexual Orientation in the Restaurant Biz

[mallorys_camera]

Little Megan and I had a fun time tromping around Beacon and Cold Spring though the Beacon Farmers’ Market was much, much smaller than I thought it would be.

Until a dozen years ago (or so I’m told), Beacon was an absolute pit—rivaling Poughkeepsie for sheer awfulness. Then something changed. New York City folk started pouring into the town, driving the real estate prices up.

I’m not exactly sure why.

I mean, I get the basic equation: Country living and only a 90-minute commute to your office job in midtown!

What I don’t get is Why Beacon? and why not some place like Cold Spring or even Garrison, which are incrementally closer on the MetroNorth. I suppose it has something to do with the geography: Cold Spring is pitched on a steepish hillside while the countryside outside Beacon is mostly flat, which means developers are free to build concentric rings of boring condo-type developments for miles and miles and miles around.

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Little Megan is a sprightly 21-year-old who is spending the summer interning at the nearby FDR Library where she is busily preparing next summer’s exhibition – something about Churchill’s private unexpurgated correspondence with FDR.

She’s a Southern California girl! Grew up in Moorpark! Simi Valley! That part of the San Fernando Valley that spills over into Ventura County.

Despite the age gap, she’s good company.

She had a religious upbringing as one of the Frozen Chosen—youth crusades for Christ, the whole shebang—and only recently left the Church, which makes her interested in lo-o-ong conversations about comparative religion—which, of course, is my cup of tea.

She told me one very interesting story:

Her very first boyfriend in high school was LDS. “Huge community in Moorpark. Just huge.”

After much importuning on his part, she surrendered her virginity.

Then he turned 18, and was sealed in the church, and started wearing the underwear. “I just could not deal with the funny underwear, you know?”

She broke up with him.

Then it was time for him to go on his Mission.

The Mission is the time when LDS boys are brainwashed in preparation of brainwashing others. They talk about their sins with kindly elders who devise suitable fleshly mortifications. So Megan’s bf told about having sex with Megan—and he was sent back from his Mission! The sin was evidently so horrible that special expiations were required.

Furthermore, Megan’s name was circulated among the whole LDS community—And the Jezebel who used her evil wiles to defile the purity of our young warrior is… [Drum roll]—and she was shunned by the entire LDS community for an entire year.

“I mean, if I saw one in the local supermarket,” Megan said, “he or she would very pointedly turn their backs on me. And these are people I’d been friends with since kindergarten. It was very upsetting.”

“I didn’t realize the LDS were into shunning!” I said. “How positively Mennonite!”

“So when I heard I would be moving into a house with two Mormons living in the basement—“

“Benito and Caro,” I said. “Yeah. Well, Caro’s pretty strict, but Benito is definitely a Jack Mormon. Plus, I am 99.9% sure he’s gay—“

“Absolutely!” Little Megan said.

And we began to laugh.

“Do you think he knows?” asked Little Megan.

“Oh, he knows. He knows. Hey! Heterosexual marriage was a good deal for him: Caro put him through a very expensive school. As to the rest of it, who knows? I can’t imagine he’ll be able to resist his true sexual orientation long in the restaurant biz.”