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THE CREATIVE LIFE by Julia Cameron, Excerpt Three
By Steven Fales | August 23, 2010
It’s a gray and rainy day, not a deluge, just a light, constant drizzle. I flag a cab and give the address of Saint Bartholomew’s Church at Fifty-first Street and Park Avenue. I am en route to see a reading of Steven’s new play, Missionary Position, which details his two years as a Mormon missionary in Portugal. Not yet at peace with his homosexuality, Steven spent his missionary years yearning–yearning for sex, yearning for connection, yearning for acceptance.
As Steven reads his adventures, his audience, mainly gay Episcopalians, is with him. There are rueful laughs and collective sighs. By journey’s end, the audience is won over completely. Steven’s long road to self-acceptance is one many of them have traveled. Several years after being excommunicated from the Mormon Church, he joined Epsicopalianism. His new church received him with open arms. Saint Bart’s, as it’s affectionately called, offered Steen a reading with a buffet lunc ahead of time and coffee and dessert afterward. His reading is held in the Terrace Room, a handsome, wood-paneled room that seats a hundred. Most of the chairs are filled.
Steven does an uncanny job of capturing the universal struggles of adolescence. Who as an adolescent hasn’t suffered from an unrequited love? Mine was over a boy named Bob O’Leary. Early this year I got an e-mail from Lynne Burke, the girl he married instead. Did I remember her? she wondered. For my part, howe could I forget? Listening to Steven’s recollections, I wince at their poignancy. I join the crowd in prolonged applause as Steven’s show draws to a close.
From The Creative Life by Julia Cameron coming out this fall by Tarcher/Penguin.
Topics: Confessions of a Mormon Boy, Missionary Position, Mormon American Princess, Steven Fales | No Comments »