Chapter 1.2 -- Homecoming Dance -- Work
Chapter 1.3 -- Homecoming Dance --Crushes
[Latest version of this part at https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-julia.html.]
I opened the door to my dad's office at the college. "Dad, Mom said you needed ..."
Dad was not in his office. A very striking woman my age was, however, seated at his desk, working on something that looked like Dad's tests.
"Uh, hi."
"Hello." She turned to greet me, and stood up. "You must be Professor Reeves's son, Joe."
She was even more striking when she stood up. Slender, and about as tall as I, she was dressed in a sheer but demur two-layer dress of blues and deep reds which revealed the facts of her curves while keeping the details hidden. And brought out the blonde of her hair and the blue of her eyes. Beauty pageant natural good-looks. Just as attractive as Lizzie Ann.
Some of the women at church dressed similarly for Sunday meetings.
When I was twelve, I'd find myself distracted, trying to discreetly observe the curves. And then I'd have to correct both my thoughts and behavior. Or not correct, depending on my mood, but I was self-aware enough to understand that looking made it even harder to talk with them, and I knew inability to talk with them was not what I wanted.
I didn't know the phrase "objectifying women", but I understood parts of the problem from a practical side.
Somewhere along that time, Elder Packer gave his talk, "To Young Men Only", and I took the counsel about controlling thoughts to heart. It took a few years, and I was never perfectly able to exercise self-control. (Is anyone?) But the efforts at self-control made it much less awkward to be try to be sociable.
When I was sixteen, I tried to refrain from judging ill of the women who dressed in ways to emphasize their curves, for their willingness to cater to fashion more than to sense. Somewhere along the line, with help from my sisters' friends who chastised me for my Pharisaical attitude, I figured out that judging them was another thing that made it hard to talk with them -- and another way I had to learn to control my thoughts.
Objectification does seem to be a double trap. As I say, I sort of understood the concept, even if I hadn't yet heard the term, but, even at twenty-one, I still wasn't quite getting beyond the boundaries of the juvenile interpretation of René Descartes's tautology, "I think, therefore I Am."
It takes practice to communicate with a person, instead of with your internal concept of the person, and I had spent most of my practice time through high school immersed in science fiction and fantasy novels. Good novels, but my mom was probably right. Averaging a hundred a year was probably too much, and, while I was exposed to good ideas through such greats as Bradbury, there was too much Heinlein, Clarke, et. al., and way too much of the likes of the Victor Appleton syndicate. Maybe not enough E. R. Burroughs and HG Wells.
George Orwell gave me a headache. Too much of a kind of truth I was unprepared to deal with until sometime after my mission. But his stuff really wasn't science fiction. Speculative fiction in the case of 1984, and allegorical fantasy in the case of Animal Farm, but not science fiction.
During my mission, I was able to come to somewhat of an ability to ignore the clothes and the makeup and see through the socially enforced elements of presentation to focus on the person. Somewhat, if I were not taken too much be surprise.(And 1984 might have part of what helped me with that.)
Anyway, for ten seconds or so I was struggling to keep my eyes from straying. I think I succeeded, but I'm not sure. Only she would know whether where my eyes first went made her uncomfortable, and she never mentioned it.
"Uhm, yeah. That's me."
I thought about asking who she was and what she was doing there. Dad hadn't mentioned hiring anyone, and the students he hired never dressed like this to work for him, that I knew of. Jeans and a tee were the usual.
She didn't make me ask. "I'm Julia. I'm doing some work for your father. He just stepped out."
Right. Sure. No. Something didn't add up.
"Oh. Well, my mom asked me to drop this off for him." I put whatever it was on his desk, in a place where it wouldn't be in her way and tried to make my escape.
"I hear you've just returned from serving a mission in Japan."
"Maa, sore wa sō desu ga."
"That's Japanese?"
"Oh, sorry. Yeah. It means something like 'Well, that's true.'"
"Sounds cool."
Somehow I stumbled through introducing myself and learning a little about her. She was from a good Baptist family, considered herself to have a witness of Christ. And she was getting ready to transfer to Texas Christian University for her third and fourth years of college.
(I forget now which school the real Julia transferred to, but Julia in this novel isn't the real Julia.)
"So what do you think of Julia?"
"You could have warned me. Really, Dad, next time you want to set me up, warn me. I'm not offended, but is she?"
"She saw your picture and I told her a little about you and she seemed interested."
"If I'd known even that much, I'd have been better prepared to make intelligent conversation."
"You won't hold it against her?"
"No. But we sure struggled to find something to talk about. She's a Baptist, Dad."
"You're not prejudiced." This was both an assertion and a command.
"We can share about Jesus. We can share scriptures from the Bible. How am I going to talk with her about Abinidi or Mosiah in the Book of Mormon? Or about the temple? I'm not as shy as I used to be, but I need more common ground."
"How are you going to know if you don't give it a try? Give her a chance, man."
"When? It's not like we're going to have reasons to spend time together."
We did end up bumping into each other in Dad's office and talking several times after that during the next couple of months. Talked about religion and plans for the future, talked about some of my mission experiences, talked about her interest in serving in an international interdenominational youth mission.
(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 she made of him, and already had other women that he was struggling with his feelings for.)
[Latest version of this part at https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-beryl.html.]
Beryl, the girl I had nursed a terrible crush on since middle school, whom I had written to during the first year of my mission, and who had replied maybe twice, was in Lubbock attending Texas Technical University. My best friend outside of church, Rodrick, was there, too. And Texas Tech was a pretty decent technical school, even had a good school of medicine, the one Lute would be attending when he got back from his mission.
I called Beryl and she said she could talk with me before lunch, on, I think it was, the next Thursday.
So I called Rodrick up and he said I could roll out a sleeping bag on his floor so I could check the school out and talk to Beryl in the morning. He indicated he questioned my motivations, my rationality, and my sanity, but other than that did not offer advice. He knew most of my history with Beryl.
After delivering papers Wednesday afternoon, I drove the three hours to Lubbock. Rodrick was studying, so we didn't spend more than a half hour talking about the last two years and our plans for the future. He didn't seem much interested in microprocessors, either, preferring analog circuits. 8080 vs. 6800 was a non-question to him.
In the morning, I went to the school offices and got a course catalog and other information. Then I went to meet Beryl in the school cafeteria.
For what it might mean, she was nicely dressed, in something of the same sort of fashion as Julia had been wearing when we first met. Maybe it was the "in" fashion that fall.
I really don't remember our conversation, except that it was strained. I was realizing that I had spent eight years of my life idealizing a young woman when I did not even know enough about her to ask intelligent questions about her life and her plans. Even though (as I say) I did not yet know the word "objectify", I realized I had given my heart to an idea, a dream, not a real person.
As beautiful as she was, her physical beauty no longer gave me the kind of motivation that had once pushed me out of my comfort zone to talk to her in middle school, that had in times past sent me out now and then just to ride my bike past her house and wonder what she was doing.
I vaguely recall that I mentioned I might be returning to Japan in the future, and that I was studying electronics and planning to study physics, and she didn't seem especially impressed. Japan, especially, didn't seem to interest her. She was proceeding in her study of childhood education, and, ironic as it now seems, that held no interest for me at the time.
Church never came up, but while we talked I became sure our differences in religion and culture were as much a barrier to her then as they had been in high school, and as they were beginning to feel to me there in the cafeteria.
I'm not sure what I expected, but there was no chemistry, and no voices of angels telling me to fly in the face of logic and continue my pursuit of her. All I could see was evidence that we had never had much in common and were apparently headed in different directions.
We didn't even talk about having lunch together, just said our goodbyes after about a half an hour.
I went back to get my stuff and talk a bit more with Rodrick between his classes.
"How'd it go?"
"We talked."
"And?"
"I guess we really don't have much in common, and we seem to be heading different directions."
He grinned. "I figured you'd figure it out pretty soon."
"Had to try."
"Braver than me."
"Still not dating?"
"Marriage scares me."
We talked a bit more and I headed home. Arrived in time to get the afternoon's load of newspapers delivered.
I still, every now and then, wonder whether I made a mistake in letting the differences be too much of a barrier. There must have been some reason for the terrible crush, for the torch I had born for eight years, other than her physical beauty and the fact that she had taken the trouble to ask me in 7th grade algebra class why I didn't do homework when it was clear I could make better grades.
On the other hand, making my choices clear concerning Beryl allowed me to pursue a different path.
Crushes.
My sister Louise had explained her philosophy about crushes to me when I was about twelve. Crushes were one kind of love, an appreciation of the good qualities in people. She had crushes on many people, both male and female. None of them were people she was interested in marrying. It was one kind of love, but not the kind of love you give to your marriage partner.
Being in love was different. There were things you only did in marriage, and having crushes, being willing to appreciate the good in others, was not engaging in infidelity to Howard, the guy she was dating and considering marrying at the time.
She was seventeen or eighteen at the time, and I figured she knew what she was talking about.
It made sense. Not just to my mind, but in my heart, it felt right to be able to love people that I wasn't planning on marrying -- not to want to make love to them, but to appreciate them and their good qualities, to have tender feelings towards them, and to want them to be happy. And even to reach out to help them be happy when I had legitimate opportunity.
And that helped me recognize that I wasn't falling in love with about every girl I ever met. I just developed crushes easily. And I should not be worried about it.
It was a great burden off a twelve year-old's shoulders. If fidelity to the feelings of my heart did not require me to learn to be a Don Juan, neither did fidelity to the people I loved require me to become a King David. (Or a Brigham Young.)
There are things you only do for love in marriage, and if you keep those separate from the other things you do for love, love can be shared with everyone.
So my sister Louise helped me untangle the wisdom of God which I was learning by means of the Spirit of God in my heart, through prayer and studying the scriptures, and separate it from the human wisdom which I was learning from the world around me, from the radio and newspapers, in stores, at school, and even through the outward church -- and also even from ideas I had brought with me from before birth. She helped me see that there would be a way for me to learn the laws of man but follow the laws of God.
I had a crush on Louise, too, of course, but I had crushes on all four of my big sisters.
[Latest version of this part at https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-satomi.html.]
Crushes. Satomi Mihara.
Sister Mihara was a fireball of a missionary. As a fellow young missionary in my first area, Tokorozawa, she had lead out in ways that both helped the Elders and threatened their sense of authority. I think I was not the only one who developed a crush on her. Some resented their feelings toward her, but she seemed able to catch them off their guard and put them at ease.
About half-way through my mission, I had been assigned to Nakano Ward in Tokyo when Sister Mihara was there, and she had encouraged me not to give up trying to learn the lessons we were supposed to teach from. Having her encouragement, I asked the mission president to allow me to study the lesson plans using the Kanji (the Japanese/Chinese logograms commonly used in Japan) instead of the Rōmaji (Japanese written using the letters of the Latin script which we use in English and many other European languages).
("Rōmaji" and "Kanji" are examples of the use of the Rōmaji script.「ローマ字」 is "Rōmaji" written in Japanese script (katakana and Kanji), and 「漢字」 is "Kanji" written in Kanji. I'm sure you really wanted to know.)
I couldn't see the meaning in the words of the Romaji version of the lesson plans that most foreign missionaries studied from. Too many homonyms and near-homonyms with no familiar roots. The Kanji are the roots. Without the Kanji, I couldn't see the meaning, and without the meaning, the words and the ideas would not stick in my mind. But Kanji study had sometimes become a temptation that some of the missionaries in the past had needed to overcome, and most of the Church mission organizations in Japan strongly recommended against it, to the point of making it rule in those missions.
So I promised the mission president not to study the Kanji themselves too much, and he gave me special permission to study the lessons from the Kanji version. And I finished learning them in a month.
Somehow, I developed a crush on Sister Mihara's companion, Sister Hummer, too. As I say, it was too easy for me to develop crushes.
While I was in Nakano, I had a dream in which I went in to the mission home for my monthly interview with the mission president, and Sister Mihara and Sister Hummer were waiting outside the mission president's office. At least, I thought it was them when I woke up. I talked with them in my dream, then went in to talk with the mission president, and he told me that I would next be assigned to a female companion. I asked who, and he asked me whether I had considered the two sisters I had met coming in. And I acknowledged that I had.
In the light of my experiences since then, I can see that this dream was at least partly influenced by the Holy Spirit, to help me foresee and work out essential parts of my path ahead, and that the particulars of the dream were not important. It was something of a dramatic demonstration of what my mission president would tell me at the end of my two years, that I would still be on a mission, so to speak, receiving my new mission assignments more directly from God, and that I would be required to choose for myself, to a certain extent, both my assignments and my companions in those assignments.
At the time, I found myself wondering whether I might find myself being called to get married before my two year assignment as a missionary in Japan was finished. The adversary of our souls has various ways to confuse us, including trying to get us to pervert our revelations of truth.
I talked with the mission president about that dream, and he acknowledged that the might be some meaning in it, maybe literal meaning, maybe not. On the next transfer, I was assigned to Edogawa Ward.
One transfer later, Sister Mihara was assigned to Edogawa, as well. There, during our branch study sessions, she coached me about my shyness, and, in the process, told me she loved me. I understood her to mean it as a fellow missionary, and responded by trying to get out of my shell a bit more. Not that she wasn't cute enough, just that both of us were following the rules and focusing on the work.
And I was transferred to Kumagaya, the next transfer.
Sister missionaries were called for a year and a half at the time, and Sister Mihara finished her mission a few months later, while I was in Kumagaya. Missionaries were not allowed to write each other during their missions, but after the missions were done, there were no such restrictions. She wrote me a postcard while I was in Kumagaya, and I wrote back. Both of us kept focused on the work in our letters.
Now I was home. And, after that conversation on the Texas Tech campus, my mind was clear of concerns about Beryl. I wrote Satomi Mihara a letter asking whether she would consider dating me, if I visited Osaka. That was my awkward way of asking permission to court her. It felt awkward asking, anyway. I don't think there is a way to ask that question that doesn't feel awkward.
[Latest version of this part at https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-john-yoko.html.]
The lack of Japanese courses at Texas Tech pretty much decided me against applying to attend there after Odessa College. Well, that, and the clarification about where things would not head with Beryl.
When the late pre-registration system became available for classes at OC, I chose my classes and bought books -- general education and electronics classes.
At the college bookstore, I found a book on non-verbal communication. It was written from the assumption that all relationships are founded in a sex-driven power competition dynamic, and it gave me a headache to read, but I learned some useful things that I had not known about what people are saying with their bodies.
I was aiming, in the courses I chose, for an Associate's degree in electronics to help get work to support my college studies, and on being able to transfer some of the course credits to the four-year school. I didn't want to repeat things I'd learned in high school, and I didn't want to repeat things in the four-year school, either.
OC let me skip the classes I thought I was good on, if the teachers agreed. Jackson Brown, the electronics technology teacher, was a friend of my dad's. With his permission, I skipped the introduction to electricity and the basic Direct Current (DC) circuits classes.
I wanted to skip the Alternating Current (AC) circuits class and go straight to the class in amplifiers and the microprocessors class, but when I was talking with my brother Denny on the phone, he suggested I take some easy classes to give myself a little time for doing other things.
Even though I wanted to finish in a year, if I could, I allowed him to persuade me. So I signed up for the AC circuits class instead of skipping it.
(FWIW, 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.
The counselors did warn me I might run out of classes for the Associate's degree in electronics if I skipped too many, but we discussed substitutions, and I thought I could work it out.
The introduction to microprocessors class would use Intel's 8080, which was disappointing. But Doctor Brown was a friend of my dad's, and he agreed that he would let me use Motorola's 6800, if I could get the necessary hardware by the time I took the class.
My parents listened while I talked about what I wanted to do, but refrained (mostly) from giving advice.
Well, Dad was insistent that I would earn the money for school myself. They 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.
By the Christmas dance, Neil, the young man who had been doing the music while I was gone, had left on his mission. So I got to provide the sound system and some of the music one more time.
"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 stood by the turntable with cookies on a paper napkin and a cup of punch.
"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 a place to set them down.
Brother Orange, who was the young men's advisor, worked for one of the local radio stations. He was the one who helped the young men plan the dance, including dance contests and other ice-breaker activities. When I had pointed out that all my music was at least two years old, he had volunteered to bring more recent music.
I helped with the turntable and with the activities during the dance.
"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."
I'm not sure why they asked. Both of them had daughters my age, both daughters were now safely married.
When the dance was over, as a reward for my work, Brother Orange let me choose one of the albums he had brought for prizes, and I took home John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy.
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 because I've never been one to follow fads -- especially fads that involve famous people who have been recently murdered.
I set the sound system back up in my room when I got home, listening to the album on my headphones and reflecting on what I knew of Lennon and Ono 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 makes the context rather clear -- even if the sound effects don't.
(Japanese is interesting in this. Anata is one of the formal second person personal pronouns. Kimi is one of the informal second person personal pronouns. But Kimi also means "prince". And anata also is a very intimate form when used by a woman for a man in certain contexts. One could guess that there has been some inversion in use over the centuries, perhaps something like "thee" and "thou" in English.)
I understood her to be saying 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 reads to me, not as a glorification of objectified sex, but as saying that sex is supposed to be one small part of the processes of negotiating the wilderness of a marriage/love relationship. 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.
First backup at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/01/bk-33209-homecoming-dance-crushes.html.
Originally part of https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance.html.]
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