Chapter 1.5 -- Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Satomi)
Chapter 1.6 -- Homecoming Dance -- John & Yoko
When the late pre-registration system
became available for classes at OC, I chose my classes and bought books
-- general education and electronics classes. Taking a break from the process, I ducked into my dad's office and availed myself of his store of the snacks he often made his lunch of. I picked up one of the books I had bought and read it while munching."Oh, Hi, Joe."
I turned toward the door. "Hi, Julia." Jeans and tee this time. She wore them well. "Don't mind me, I'm just raiding my dad's store of nuts and raisins and roasted soybeans and granola. Want some?"
"He won't mind?"
"I'm sure he won't. He told me I could, if I got hungry. Hasn't he offered any to you before?"
"Well, yes."
"So here you are." I hold up the raisins.
Since I was sitting in the chair at the desk, she sat down in Dad's recliner, and I poured some sunflower seeds, raisins, and nuts into her hands.
"Getting ready for next semester?" she asked, before picking out a bit of the mix to munch on.
"Been to register, and went to the bookstore and the library."
"Is that a textbook you're reading?"
I showed her the title of the book I had open on the desk, and she read the title.
"Body Talk -- the Psychology of Non-verbal Communication. Is that for a class?"
(As I write this, I do not remember the real name of this book. I think, unless the whitefish have gotten to it in storage over the last thirty years, it may still be in my junk that my sister has stored for me.)
"I'm not sure. Not for one I'm taking. I just thought it looked interesting."
"So is it?"
"It is, but it's giving me a headache to read. It seems to be written from the assumption that all relationships are founded in a 'sex-driven power competition dynamic' or something like that. I can't agree with that."
"I don't think I could, either. Can I see it?"
I showed her some passages and we shared our impressions of what was written and some more of Dad's stash.
"Well, it does have some interesting things to say about what we say with our bodies. Why did you think you might want to read it?"
"Eh," I hesitated, then hedged. "Sometimes I get lost when I'm talking with people."
"So you want to try to read their minds?" She raised her eyebrows.
"Just, uhm, wondering if I might be missing what's going on between the lines."
"I suppose it might help -- I mean, be useful. But many times the people talking don't really know what they mean, either."
"You've got a point there."
"So what did you think of Tech?
"Tech?"
"Professor Reeves said you went up last Thursday."
"Ah, yeah. I don't think I'll be going."
"No?"
"Not much in the way of Japanese classes."
"Things didn't go well with the girl you went to see?"
"He told you about that, too?"
"Uh huh."
I shook my head.
"Not so good?"
"I opened my eyes to the fact that we really don't have much in common. I suppose that's also part of the reason I don't think I'll be going to Tech."
"Too bad. Is she good looking?"
"Yeah. And I think she's a nice person. She's planning on teaching special needs children. We just don't seem to have much in common."
Julia looked pointedly at the book on non-verbal communication. "I don't think you really need that book."
"It's not for getting dates."
"Oh-kay." She grinned.
I chuckled and scratched my head. "Just a little. Maybe. But I need to understand non-verbal better in the workplace, too."
For a minute or so there was comfortable silence, broken by the sound granola and nuts makes when you eat it, and by sharing more.
"Oops. Your dad won't have enough for himself."
I checked his drawer. "His stash is fine, but I'll warn him to bring some more."
"Anything else interesting you're reading?"
"Heh. Just some microprocessor books I borrowed from the library."
I showed her the books.
"Oh. May I?"
She thumbed through them, nodding.
"I didn't know you were interested in this kind of stuff."
She smiled sheepishly and handed them back.
"You're not really interested?"
She grinned, but didn't answer.
"Maybe we should trade chairs here."
"Yeah. I'm supposed to be grading papers for your dad."
We traded chairs, and I read while she worked.
****
Julia stood and stretched. "Did you hear about John Lennon?"
"Hmmm?" I looked up. "Lenin? USSR? Or John, Paul, George, and Ringo? Need to trade chairs again?"
"And Yoko. No, just needed to stretch a bit." She continued to stretch.
"I don't really keep up. Heard he was killed by a fan last week."
"Yeah. Yoko's from Japan."
"True. I doubt I'll ever meet her. If I did, I'd like to tell her what we, well, what I believe about life after death."
She sat back down. "You believe people live again after they die?"
"The spirit lives on. We'll all be resurrected, and, if we choose to accept it, we can continue our family and friendship associations in the next world."
"Is that what your church teaches?"
"Yep."
She bit her lip and and turned back to the tests.
"Your classes next semester going to be interesting?" She marked a test without looking up.
"Electronics, a lab in writing a research paper, some general ed, and singer's diction for fun."
"Sounds like a fun schedule. Is it going to be hard?"
"I've been talking teachers into letting me skip some classes. Don't want to repeat things I took in high school. So it won't be too boring. I'm skipping the basic electronics, except for basic AC circuits. Wanted to skip that, too, go straight to amplifier design and microprocessors, and I wanted to finish in a year, but my brother told me to pace myself and take some easy classes so I don't kill myself. Doctor Brown kind of agreed about the not pushing too fast, too."
"Alternating current circuits?"
"Direct current is easy -- simple math. But a number of things change when current isn't constant, so you have to learn more rules for alternating current. Circular functions, phase relationships."
"So you're not a fan of trigonometric relationships?"
I chuckled. "I like things to wrap up neatly, and sine this plus cosine that does not lend itself to being wrapped up neatly."
"Extra work."
"Yeah."
"If you skip classes, will you have enough to graduate?"
"Been talking with counselors and teachers about substituting classes. I'll have to be careful not to skip too many, though."
(For what it's worth, the real me skipped as many classes as he could, and that caused me trouble in the real world. The version of me in this story may be a little smarter.)
"Are those books about microprocessors ones you'll be using?"
"Not yet. I think I could handle it, but Dr. Brown and Denny both thought I'd be jumping in too deep. The introductory class is using Intel's 8080, and that's kind of disappointing. But Doctor Brown is a friend of Dad's, and he says he'll let me use Motorola's 6800, if I can get the necessary hardware by the time I take the class, and if I can pass the tests."
She nodded. "I guess you like the 6800 better than the 8080?"
It occurred to me that Julia, like my parents, seemed to be more interested in hearing what I was thinking about than telling me what she thought I should think and do.
Well, Dad was pretty insistent that I would earn the money for my schooling. Both Dad and Mom would be willing to give me free room and board if I studied at Odessa College or at the University of Texas at the Permian Basin, but I would pay for my classes and materials myself. They did have some input, after all.
I wondered idly whether Julia would have input if we got to know each other better.
"I took industrial electronics at Permian during my senior year. Some of my friends at Odessa High called me a traitor, heh."
She smiled at the joke.
"Seminar at church before school, Chem at OHS, calculus at OC, lunch with my buddy Roderick on our way to Permian for two hours of electronics and filler class. Typing and history."
"Busy schedule."
"Yeah. Mr. Bluesfelt, the electronics teacher, bought an Altair 8800 kit and let us put it together and try out programming on it. That has an 8080. I read a little about the 6800, too. Denny was working at the time for a cousin of ours on a computer that uses signals from satellites to figure out where you are on the earth. It used an 8080 and an HP calculator."
"A calculator? In addition to the microprocessor?"
"Yeah. I asked Denny why they didn't have the 8080 do the calculations, and he said they didn't have time to write the math routines."
"Faster to use something pre-built, I guess. How did they get information in and out of the calculator?"
"It had an array of solenoids to feed information to the calculator."
"Solenoids?"
"You know how an electric motor works?"
"Magnets and electromagnetism. Sort of."
I looked inquiringly at her, but she was focusing on the test she was grading.
"Well, an electromagnetic field pushes a rod out to hit the calculator key and a spring pushes it back. Denny and I thought there had to be a better way, but Reggie, the cousin he was working for, insisted on not breaching the HP warranty, and didn't seem to have the connections at HP to get information on a better interface."
"Brute force. Hmm. Maybe he didn't want HP to know what he was working on?"
"Possible. Yeah. Likely. Anyway, now Denny works for Motorola."
"Denny is your brother." She turned and looked at the microprocessors book.
"Right."
"Intel 8080. Motorola 6800. Motorola makes the 6800?"
"Right. Denny said the 6800 was part of the reason he applied at Motorola."
She nodded without comment and turned back to the tests.
(Julia in this story is an amalgamation of women I knew in the real world.
The real me actually did bump into the real Julia in Dad's office several times over the next few months, but I don't remember much of what we talked about. Maybe a little politics and religion per the above. Probably a little about the missionary experience, some about life plans and such.
In the real world, if my memory serves me, I even went to visit her congregation once during the winter semester, and met her folks. But she wasn't interested in talking about certain things that were important to me, and we just mutually didn't decide to pursue things as she prepared to transfer schools.
That
is to say, the real me never really knew what the real Julia made of him, and already had other women that he was
struggling with his feelings for.)
*****
By the Christmas dance, Neil had left on his mission. Ana, his little sister, approached me about the music, and I agreed to bring my system and my records and tapes and coach her how to work the sound.
So I got to get involved with the dance music once again.
"Well,
Mary, I must say your taste in music is good. We brought you something
from the refreshment table, since you're so busy." Sister Patton and
Sister Bell approached the sound table with cookies on a paper napkin and a
cup of punch. I was manning the sound while Ana was dancing.
"Thank you, Sister Patton. Of course, this is not nearly all mine. Brother Orange brought all of the recent stuff." I accepted the refreshments and found an almost safe place on the table to set them down.
Brother Orange, who was the young men's leader/advisor, worked for one of the local radio stations. He was the one who helped the youth group plan the dance, including dance contests and other ice-breaker activities. When Ana asked if I could do the sound I pointed out that all my music was at least two years old, and he had volunteered to bring more recent music.
"Well, Josephine, can I ask a question?""What's that, Sister Bell?"
"You dance with all the girls, why don't you ever ask them out?"
"Good question." I looked around. Only Brother Orange was close enough to hear over the music, and he wasn't listening. "I guess figuring out why all the girls ran away when I tried to ask them out is something I'll be working on now."
The two of them looked at each other with expressions that might have said "I told you so." or might have said "Huh?".
"Well, have fun dancing." And they left.
I'm not sure why they asked. Both of them had daughters my age, both daughters were now safely married.
When Ana came back, she dragged me out on the dance floor, and Br. Orange took over for a song. Ana was cute, too.
I'll admit to mixed feelings when I selected it. I really liked three of the tracks that were getting airplay -- "Starting Over", "Woman", and "Wheels". But I hesitated between it and the debut Buggles album, because I've never been one to follow fads -- especially fads that involve famous people who have been recently murdered.
"Go ahead. Take both." I tried to decline, but he urged me, so I did.
I set the sound system back up in my room when I got home, listening to John and Yoko's album on my headphones and reflecting on what I knew of them while I set the speakers back up, continuing to listen while I checked details of my schedule for the coming semester.
Suddenly, I was hearing the Japanese in the background of "Kiss Kiss Kiss":
Daitero Anata ... (Hug me, my love ...)
Daite ... (Hold me ...)
Motto daite ... (Hold me more ...)
Daite! (Keep holding me!)
"Daitero" is a familiar command form of the verb "daku/idaku" (「抱く」、 approximately, "embrace"). In this context, either "hug me" or "hold me" works as a translation, although, in the first three instances, a bit of a scrubbed translation. The use of "Anata" here, by a woman for her lover, is an intimate form of "You", and would make underlying meaning rather clear -- even if the sound effects hadn't.
(Japanese is interesting in this. Anata (「貴方」) is one of the formal second person personal pronouns. Kimi (「きみ」) is also one of the informal second person personal pronouns. But Kimi （「君」） means "prince". And anata (「あなた」) ends up being a very intimate form when used by a woman for a man in certain
contexts, although not (usually) so intimate in the workplace. One could guess that there has been some mixed inversion in use over
the centuries, perhaps something like "thee" and "thou" once being more intimate than "you" in English. (Okay, power relationships definitely play in the usage here.)
I understood her to be implying that climax was not her goal. Maybe it was important, but the pillow talk, the deep and intimate conversation concurrent with the act, and the prolonged physical comfort of embrace after, were at least as important, and maybe more.
The album still reads to me, not as a glorification of objectified sex, but as saying that sex is supposed to be a part of the processes of negotiating the wilderness of a marriage/love relationship. I think Yoko is on record as saying that is what both she and John intended.
I
generally skipped that song when I played the album after that. I
didn't think I really needed to be encouraged to repeat that part of the
lessons they were trying to teach. Not until I was married, and probably not after. Not with them. With the woman I would eventually marry, I guess so.
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