So there I was, a sexually repressed old maid in Sin City. I started going to the Single's Ward, church services for those of us who somehow managed to graduate without getting hitched and knocked up. They were comprised of those of us whom nobody wanted, who were rapidly approaching full-scale hysteria about still being single at 25. In this sanctified meat market, the men check out each year's fresh crop for wife-material and the women pray and fast to find their valiant returned missionary. Talks often center on the importance of family, and the church bulletin board is plastered in cookie-cutter wedding announcements, the couples in matching Old Navy outfits.

To be an unmarried Mormon woman in your mid-twenties is to be in a desperate race to the Temple. We learned how to make Engagement Chicken at our weekly Enrichment Meetings and went to all the state-wide young adult dances (spectacles of awkwardness). All we wanted was to make it on that bulletin board; to get sealed for time and all eternity; to make our mothers smile. To be initiated into a lifetime of crafts, cookies, cupcakes, casseroles, board games, minivans and Boy Scouts. To wear temple garments underneath Capri pants and modest blouses. To have cute kids to haul to church, just like our parents before us.

But I wasn't ready to be a housewife and to settle down in the suburbs with three kids. So one Wednesday night, I looked around at the other frumpy over-the-hill twenty-somethings trying to tie raffia bows onto wooden blocks, and I just couldn't do it anymore. From there, my descent to the dark side was gradual but inexorable. I started going out to nightclubs and wearing short shorts. I drank for the first time. One summer, I broke down and had sex, in a downtown apartment off the Strip, with a bad boy photographer with a ponytail, tattoos, and a major passion for weed. It was awesome, and totally worth giving up an eternity of exaltation. I'm hoping I'll get a slap on the wrist, like Brandon did, and then next season, be back in God's good graces.

Because I need to live, and to enjoy life. To be free: free from the guilt of my youth; free from the fear of judgment by other Church members. Free from worrying about the disapproval of my Heavenly Father.

I need to be my own person, able to think for myself. I now know that I'm not the only woman in the world who masturbates, and that it's okay to have a sex drive. I can make my own decisions without slavishly following a million rules. I know I can get drunk and still be a good person and that getting wild every now and then can be incredibly joyous and life-affirming; the stuff of which memories are made of, and from which wisdom is earned. 

I wear bikinis now, the tinier the better, and enjoy my wine dry, my coffee dark. I'm still in touch with some of my old LDS friends via Facebook, where they post pictures of their multiple children, all very cute and well-dressed, and on Pinterest, where they post recipes and modest wedding dresses and clever craft how-tos. They are the mothers I could have been, teaching the next generation of Mormon girls about chastity, and modesty, and waiting until marriage. Maybe in seminary or on Sunday, they'll pass around a crumpled rose, a popped balloon, or a bag of M&Ms, warning the fresh-faced virtuous pre-teens about the dangers of temptation.

They seem happy and I hope they are, though you never know. They could be popping Prozac in-between prayer sessions, their husbands addicted to porn. Either way, in their eyes, I have failed the great test. My mom is disappointed; my former best friend (that uptight freshman roommate) and I no longer speak. My returned-missionary boyfriend married someone else; they just had a son. If their doctrine proves true, I will never make it to the highest kingdom. I will never be a Goddess, a companion of a God (one of several; while plural marriage is no longer practiced by Mormons here on Earth, apparently it may be reinstated in the world to come). According to them, I will have to live as a single spirit forever, a servant to those who were able to look at the M&Ms and refrain.

For now though, I get to accept myself without the burden of crushing judgment. I have some freedom, and I can do as I please. And damn, does it taste good.