During my second semester at BYU, I went with some friends to Blockbuster, and picked up some used movies for a song. Among them was one of my new favorite films, The Royal Tenenbaums, and a few other movies that were (gasp!) rated R. I dropped them off at my apartment, leaving them on my bed, then went out to dinner.
When I came back, my roommate, Leah, immediately lit into me.
“Why did you buy R-rated movies?” she asked.
“Because they’re really good,” I said sheepishly. I knew I was technically “wrong” and that nothing I could say would justify the evil letter R.
“You know you shouldn’t be watching those!” Actually, what I knew was that A: I wasn’t going to let anybody tell me what movies I could or couldn’t watch, not even the prophet, and B: I was really tired of all the you’re-not-Mormon-enough guilt trips.
“I won’t watch it when you’re around,” I said.
“It drives out the Spirit. The Spirit can’t be here with that kind of filth in our house.” She wasn’t going to budge on this issue.
“Fine,” I said. “You won’t see it.” I put my movies in my sock drawer, wrapped up in a t-shirt. I only took them out to watch when Leah wasn’t home. This worked just fine until Leah decided, early one Saturday morning, to deep-clean the apartment.
TO BE CONTINUED!
