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It was my first day working the phones at an escort service in Salt Lake City, and Violet, a perky, nineteen-year-old redhead, returned from her date looking like she'd just stepped off the stage of a high-school musical.
    "How was it?" I asked.
    "He was a Mo, so he had some hang-ups."
    "He was gay?" I had just moved from San Francisco.
    "What? Oh. No, he was Mormon. He had his garmies on," she said.

    Garmies, she explained, were sacred undergarments that devout Mormons wore under everything, a cotton undershirt and shorts to their knees to protect them from the world. Magical. Secret. Steve Young, the 49ers quarterback, received special permission to take them off when he played football.
    "He didn't want me to look at him," said Violet. She was "Jack Mormon" — someone who grew up in the faith but no longer went to church. Lapsed. Wayward. Like many of the escorts. "But I think he had fun."
    I added garmies to my growing inventory of Mormonisms: wards and stakes and family home evenings, the Prophet and President, coffers underneath the city, a fourteen-year-old farm-boy mystic, golden tablets, solemnized marriages, everlasting life, the second coming of Christ. To me, it was fascinating. To everyone else, it was well-trod ground.


I was working on an MFA at the University of Utah when I answered the classified ad for a phone manager at an "entertainment company." Flexible hours, good pay, fun environment! I had just been dumped by my long-distance boyfriend of five years. I was reeling and alone, and what I wouldn't have done in San Francisco seemed like a great idea in Salt Lake.
    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) projects a well-finessed image of clean-cut optimism, modesty, a

strong work ethic and family values. About three-fourths of Utah residents belong, and for most of them, Mormonism is a lifestyle steeped in self-control: no alcohol, no tobacco, no caffeine, no premarital or extramarital sex, no R-rated movies, no MTV, no sunbathing, no masturbation. Life is everlasting, and marriage performed in a temple is "sealed" for eternity. Young people, sixty thousand at any given time, are traveling the world on two-year missions.
    And there are stranger aspects to the faith which members are less inclined to discuss with outsiders: Many believe in a star named Kolob around which God's throne physically orbits, and that Christ's return is imminent (he's headed for Missouri). And of course, there's the matter of polygamy, which the church publicly disavowed in 1890 as a condition of Utah's statehood, but which thousands still practice in insular fundamentalist sects.
    Unlike in most of America, escort agencies in Salt Lake City are not covers for prostitution. They are tightly regulated by a lengthy list of ordinances and kept in line by frequent sting operations, making each encounter a navigation of semantics and what seem at times to be arbitrary regulations. Suffice it to say, there is nudity and gratification, but no sex.
    When I went to the courthouse to apply for my Sexually Oriented Business License from the city, the cheerful clerk's smile slid downward when she saw what I was applying for. I was fingerprinted and interviewed by a detective who talked of perverts, bestiality, sin and the awful things that could happen to girls sent to meet strange men in hotel rooms. He handed me a pamphlet that began: She drives carefully, but as fast as she can. She reaches for a piece of gum. It will do until she gets home and scrubs that taste and filth from her mouth.
    When I stopped reading, he looked so disappointed in me that I thought I might apologize and tell him I would get an office job instead. When I didn't, he stood and sighed with resign. "Well, at least you'll just be on the phones." As I shuffled out he told me to call him with "any suspected pedophile" who requested the youngest girl.
    There are seedy parts of Salt Lake City, but Executive Escorts wasn't located in one of them. The office was in the shadow of the looming granite spires of the LDS Temple, the symbolic heart of Mormonism, two blocks off the square in an unmarked office on an alley next to a parking garage. Inside was a small, mismatched lounge with an outdated Zenith, a counter and a wooden desk with two old push-button phones. Paul, the owner, drove a bronze Jaguar and wore shiny silk suits. He was an Albanian immigrant who'd landed in Utah by chance fifteen years earlier, after his cousin had proclaimed it the U.S. state with the most entrepreneurial opportunities.
    On the wall he had posted a typo-riddled list:

Can't Do: intercourse, handjobs, blowjobs, any touching of sexual areas, give a massage, masturbate, encourage masturbation (just don't say anything about it).

Can Do: kiss, cuddle, caress, tease, strip, take a shower, nibble on ears, give a bubble bath, tell sexy stories, play with his nipples, sexy poses, get a massage, model lingerie, talk dirty, role play, tickle, talk about fantasies, lick chocolate off him, kiss his thighs, put on baby oil, moan and groan, tell secrets, tell jokes, dance, kiss his neck, lick his nipples, have your toes sucked and do anything else not on the can't do list.

    "Girls who escort in other states I don't hire," Paul said on my first day of work. "Because you can't go backwards, they are too easily tempted to give a handjob for a little extra."
    I punched my timecard, took my seat behind the desk and waited for the phone to ring.
    "I can send a lovely young lady to see you," I purred to the first caller. "She can dance, model lingerie, do a little striptease. She can role-play or fantasy-talk. For a gratuity she can kiss and caress. Of course, this is for entertainment purposes only. There is no sex involved and no touching of sexual areas."
    It was a first-time caller. He expressed disbelief.
    "We are a legal escort agency," I explained. "But you won't be disappointed. No one ever complains."
    And they didn't. Most of the business was repeat customers, local Utah men. Mainly white and white-collar, many married and Mormon, ranging in age from eighteen to eighty. I think they got hooked on not ever getting quite enough. The principle of self-control. A pretty girl who laughed at their jokes and listened and made no demands.