It’s Rainbow Snippets time again, and I’ve still got a bit more from “Mi Alma” to share, including updated cover art (check out previous posts to see earlier versions). Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on earlier versions!
“Mi Alma” is a short story that appears in my collection Falling Hard: Stories of Men in Love. But I’m also releasing it as a standalone for individuals who sign up to the Queeromance Ink mailing list in September. Hence, the cover art.
“Mi Alma” is the story of a Dominican-American bartender who unexpectedly finds love when he answers a Craigslist wanted ad seeking staff for a Christmas party. This week’s snippet picks up a few sentences after last week’s left off. Damian has just arrived at a coffee shop to meet with the thrower of said party, a dude named Alma, and Damian apologizes for having kept Alma waiting. Alma is the first to speak in this snippet:
“No, I was here way too early. An old habit from my missionary days that I never was able to break.”
Damian wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Missionary days?”
Alma’s cheeks turned rose-pink to match the sunglasses that had been on his head earlier. “Sorry, I spent too long living in Utah. I forget not everyone—” He heaved a sigh and started over. “You heard of Mormons?”
Sounded vaguely familiar. Damian nodded as if he understood.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? They send nineteen-year-old boys out in pairs to convert people all over the world. We all had ‘Elder’ on our name tags even though we were wet behind the ears.”
“Oh!” Damian remembered some guys named Elder coming to his apartment complex back when he was a kid. His mom sometimes let them stand in the door and read a few Bible verses to her, but when they told her they didn’t believe in praying to the Virgin she stopped answering their knocks. “The guys in the white shirts and ties?”
If you’d like to read more about this story, you can check out these other posts about “Mi Alma.”
Nice snippet 🙂
Yikes. Just what every 19 year old kid wants to be doing.
Sounds like he’s had an interesting life.
Yes, and that’s just the beginning. Damian soon finds out even more that intrigues him.
Thanks for stopping by!
“The guys in the white shirts and ties?”
That line made me laugh out loud.
Yay! I don’t know about where you live, but around here 19 year olds don’t wear white shirts and ties. Even when they’re interning at an office, the shirts tend to have color. So it’s really easy to tell who the male Mormon missionaries are. Even the sister missionaries are fairly easy to spot, though their outfits aren’t as uniform as the young men’s.
Ah, I remember this story! (heart)
Awww! And I remember you saying really nice things about it on Facebook and me regretting later that I didn’t copy and paste them into my reviews spreadsheet 🙂
Ooh, I can’t wait to read the whole thing. I sort of have a fascination with Mormons because of local history. Great snippet. I love Damian’s thought process here, about his mother’s interactions with them.
Thank you! I didn’t realize how close you were to Palmyra until I just looked it up now on Google maps. Have you been to the Hill Cumorah pageant? It’s on my Mormon stuff bucket list 🙂
I have other stories about Mormons. They’re sprinkled across various anthologies. I mark those anthologies on my book page with a rainbow Moroni:
It’s not the best organizing system, though, so I’m planning to update my books page to make them sortable by tags, which will of course including “Mormony stories.” And of course release them all in one collection when I get the rights back. Well, maybe. The heat levels vary wildly, so i waver on that.
This one isn’t super-Mormony since Alma has left the church by the time the story starts, but it’s got some cultural stuff. I hope you enjoy it!
I can see where “missionary” could be misleading, without proper context. LOL!
Ha ha!
“The guys in the white shirts and ties?” — LOL, yes, we pretty much all know what it means when a couple guys matching that description are standing at the door. 🙂
Ha ha! Back in the day, when door-to-door sales were still common in the U.S., that became the uniform to help missionaries blend in—or so I’ve read. People were used to opening their doors to guys in white shirts and ties, so the missionaries dressed in the same ‘respectable’ way. Now, door-to-door sales are not so common, and the outfit is a way of standing out.
Interesting…I’d never heard of that. The outfit is such a cliché these days. 🙂
I listen to A LOT of Mormon history/culture podcasts 😉
Great snippet, I’m looking forward to hearing more about Alma.
Thank you!
He has an interesting history.
Nice snippet. Looking forward to learning more.