The Lord works in mysterious ways. My message from The Great One came in the form of a flyer for The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance.
See, my boyfriend and I had just broken up. As a Mormon, I didn’t believe in sex before marriage. And as a guy, he didn’t believe in that.
The breakup was devastating. I’d given up the love of my life for my religion and so, in a state of post-break-up despair, I decided to call on God. If I’d followed His commandments in the first place, and dated only other Mormons, I wouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place.
OK, fine God, I said, I will date only Mormons. But you need to bring me the Mormon man of my dreams and you need to do it right now.
Shortly after, on my way out of church, I was handed that flyer.
I’m going to go to that dance, I decided, and I’m going to meet The One. But I have to have the best costume ever.
I started to brainstorm and then it hit me: I’ll be a fortune cookie, and when guys pull out the fortune it’ll say, “You will meet a beautiful woman tonight,” at which point I can wink and say, “Look no further.”
I spent all week building my costume. I bought a beige mattress pad and folded it in half, added wire and stuffed it. I even made the fortune retractable so that every guy could have his own experience with it. Brilliant.
The night of the dance arrived. Wearing the fortune cookie, I walked from my apartment to the subway. On the way there, I noticed people staring. I got on the 1 train heading uptown.
The minute I entered the car I heard a shrill voice, “Oh noooooooo!”
I turned around. A woman was sitting at the end of the train with two small boys, looking furious.
“Oh noooooooo! No, no, no, no, nooooooooooooo!”
She looked at me. “I got my children with me,” she screamed, “I got my children with me!”
I turned to my right and left, but no one was behind me. There was no mistaking it: She was talking to me.
Just then, the subway doors sprang open, and I jumped out of the car, still confused. I guess she had a bad experience with Chinese food, I decided.
Crossing the street, I walked through the front door of the Mormon temple, and over to the elevator doors. I was just about to get in when glanced to my right — a full-length mirror.
Oh nooooooooooo. My jaw dropped open in horror, No. No. No. No. No.
The center of my costume had begun to fold in on itself, creating these flesh-toned flaps. I did not look like a fortune cookie. I looked like a giant vagina. And you can’t go to a Mormon dance dressed like a giant vagina.
I held my arms over my chest in an attempt to cover up my indecency. What do I do? Do I run? But The One, he’s supposed to be up there.
And so, in one last desperate attempt to win that Mormon Man of My Dreams, I took off my vagina and hid it in the broom closet (which I guess is what you do every time you go to church). In just beige leggings and a nude top, I took the elevator upstairs and walked into the dance.
But it was too late to turn things around. Standing alone in a corner, I watched a 38-year-old man dressed in a duck costume do the electric slide. It was an all-time low.
The irony of the evening, though, was not lost: After years of exercising sexual restraint, my vagina had finally made its public debut, but to the wrong crowd. Wroooooong crowd.
Elna Baker, author of “The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir,” attended last night’s dance as a Freudian Slip.