may 7.2004'
T S 11
I U K T
A T C Kl
w».JH b S &* Ä m
Reality theater
Confessions reveal the true story
of a spiritual survivor
by
T imothy K rause
teven Fales says he’s an “oxy-Mormon.”
He was once the epitome of a nice
straight hoy— Boy Scout, missionary, hus
band and father of two. When he began
to explore his sexuality, however, the Mormon
Church quickly excommunicated him, and his
family subsequently abandoned him.
He journeyed to New York to start anew as
an actor, writer— and gay man. Lonely and
broke, Fales turned to prostitution and drugs.
Only after a life-changing moment amid a
cheesy self-improvement workshop did the
young man again find his “smile,” that unique
ly Mormon manifestation of integrity itself.
Fales, who recently relocated to the Port
land area, shares his personal transformation in
Confessions of a Mormon Boy, an autobiographi
cal one-man show that plays May 14 to 29 at
Hollywood Theatre before stopping in Salt
Lake City on its way to an off-Broadway run.
Fales first performed Confessions in Portland
last November as a staged reading to benefit
Basic Rights Oregon. In January he moved to
Clackamas to live with his partner, Jared Ivie, a
fellow Brigham Young University alumnus who
shares many of Fales’ experiences with the Mor
mon Church. The two met at a national confer
ence for Affirmation, a queer Mormon support
group, and now are engaged to he married.
Which is a long way
away from living the
prescribed American
Mormon dream in Utah.
“Being a gay Mormon,
trying to he straight— that
wasn’t who I was," says
Fales. “Putting on that
Mormon smile, hut inside
feeling like I’m a phony,
like I’m a fake, not having any full self-expression
to express that part of me— you stop smiling.”
As a teen-ager, Fales questioned his sexuality
more than once. “I felt the weight of having to
pretend way early.... One of my favorite things
to do growing up was to watch the Donny and
Mane show. While most boys my age wanted to
he Donny (or) marry Marie, I wanted to marry
Donny and he Marie.”
But Fales was firmly instmeted that homo
sexuality doesn’t really exist within the context
of Mormon culture. Rather, “same-gender
attraction" is a condition to overcome. “In our
religions, we make it wrong,
and it doesn’t need to he
wrong,” he comments.
ver faithful, Fales tried to
he straight and, in a
strange twist of fate, mar
ried the oldest daughter of
Mormondom’s leading liter
ary light, Carol Lynn Pearson.
Pearson’s best-selling
memoir, Good-bye, I Love
You, tells the story of her
Visitors welcome! to Steven Fales’ Confessions of a Mormon Boy May 14 to 2 9 at Hollywood Theatre
relationship with her ex-hus
band, who also was gay and died of AIDS in her
port, he soon fell into a “gay adolescence” that
Through writing, he has started healing.
home. From the beginning, Fales had been
began with a newfound taste for sex, alcohol
And helping. “I have seen so many Mormon
upfront with his wife about his same-sex attrac
and, later, crystal meth.
boys in sex work— taking their pain and anger,
tions but explains, “My ex-wife, Emily, and I had
“I was always an overachiever in other
being a victim of it all,” Fales notes. “One of
the audacity to think we could write a different
things, so I was going to overachieve in this
the things that became very clear after this
story from her parents.”
way, too,” he jokes. “I was panicking but deter
course is that you’re nothing you’ve ever done,
Fales underwent reparative therapy with
mined to survive.... So I had an interview with
good or bad.”
Joseph Nicolosi, well-known anti-gay author
one of the town’s best escorting agencies at
That message is at the heart of Confessions,
and president of the National Association for
midnight and— boom!— I’m in all the pent
which he wrote for his kids— to let them know
Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.
houses in New York: $500 an hour, $2,000
how much he loved them and to have the
Nicolosi’s simplistic premise argues that
overnight. I’m not wearing Payless shoes any
opportunity to relate the story of his
absent fathers and overbearing mothers lead to
more— I’m buying Prada.”
transformation in his own words. Telling his
a fractured masculinity that causes homosexual
But then life got darker and darker, he says,
experiences with warmth and humor, Fales
ity. Fales was told to distance himself from his
because once again he was pretending. “Sex
says he strives to illuminate the dilemma of
mother, leading him to write a scathing letter to
work is another pretense. You’re selling your
those struggling to reconcile their dreams of
affections— the
becoming straight with the realities of being
most human thing
gay and what it costs to accept or deny that
you have.”
truth, especially when children are involved.
—
The freedom
“The play is a valentine to Mormonism and
he worked so
my escorting past,” he says. “ I’m in a unique
hard to get sud
position. I don’t fit the stereotypes, although I
denly felt worth
could define both groups externally. The Mor
.
less. He tried giv
mons kicked me out for being gay, and the gay
ing up drugs and
scene doesn’t quite know how to react to a
the sex once—
father of two.”
her demanding that she stay out of his and his
cold turkey. But 9/11 hit, and life again
In that regard, Fales notes: “The play chal
son’s life. (He was convinced she would influ
became desperate.
lenges the ultra-right and the ultra-left. I guess
ence his son’s sexuality, too.)
that’s why the play seems to speak to so many,
“I had done all this reparative therapy and
phone call one day from old friends con
gay or straight.” JH
tried to he straight, and I realized I was not
vinced Fales to attend one of those week-
going to be smiling the rest of my life," reveals
1end courses promising to change one’s life.
C onfessions of a M ormon B oy ploys
Fales. “So, I started to explore what that was
And, for Fales at least, it did.
7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays from May 14 to
behind my wife’s back, and I was very out of
“I had this huge aha! ...I was looking for
29 and 2 p.m. May 23 at Hoiiymxxi Theatre,
integrity in my marriage, anti when I came
my father’s love and money in the penthouses
4122 N .E . Sandy Blvd. Tickets are $15 from the
clean to her, it all blew up.”
of New York. I was being a victim of the
theater, Gai-Pied or uAwu.ticketweb.com.
Fales’ swift excommunication, divorce and
church of all these different things. I had this
abandonment pushed him to New York to start
huge awakening, and I never went hack to sex
TIMOTHY K rause is communicatitms coordinator
over. Both without financial and family sup-
work after that,” he says.
for City Club of Portland.
“I had an interview with one of the town's best
escorting agencies...and boom!—Pm in all the
penthouses in New York: $500 an hour, $2,000
overnight Tm not wearing Payless shoes
anymore—Tm buying Prada ”
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