Chapter 29: Party Time

Saturday, October 27, 1984

Perhaps it’s an overstatement to say that ‘all bad things must come to an end,’ but the Aggie game was a massive improvement.

The weather was better, for one thing. That alone made a big difference! The Batt had run a cartoon last week of A&M players practicing for the Rice game in a swimming pool, after all!

The team looked much better, and it wasn’t just about the weaker competition. Rice was weaker, but they weren’t that much weaker than Baylor or UH.

In any case, A&M prevailed 38-14. The game wasn’t really ever close.

The one sour moment was that some of the others near us were a bit rude about Angie and Paige kissing after the first touchdown. It got into a bit of a shouting match before others nearby got things calmed down.

Angie, in particular, thanked the bystanders. I could say that was simply her being polite (and it was), but I could also say it was playing up to them so they’d side with us.

In any case, the shouting didn’t stop the kissing, of course. That was never going to happen. They were even more exuberant after the next score.

They got some more grief, but they gave better than they took, and by the second half the other people had mostly given up.

Part of that, of course, was that they were girls. Two guys might have had it far worse. That was one of the little bits of infighting in GSS. Some of the lesbians thought ‘gay’ biased it toward guys. Some of the guys thought lesbians ‘had it easy’ because society tended to accept girls holding hands, hugging, and even kissing more than it accepted men doing the same thing.

Both sides had their points, but ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good.’ Too much insistence on being ‘right,’ or on getting your ruffled feathers soothed, might bring the whole thing down. It probably wouldn’t be that bad, but it certainly could cause a lot of unnecessary angst.

During the walk back, Angie brought up a subject we’d just talked about a few days ago.

“So, everyone,” she said, “Just checking. Who’s got their ‘bear spray’ with them?”

All of the girls nodded and showed off the little cans we’d gotten. They should be enough to blast someone and get away long enough to call for help. The nice thing about a campus like A&M’s, and a neighborhood like ours, was that there were almost always a few people in earshot.

“Good!” she said. “The game pointed out again why it matters. Sure, those jerks probably wouldn’t follow us, but they could. Or Paige and I might smooch somewhere...”

Paige giggled and said, “We do do that sometimes!”

Angie nodded and continued, saying, “And some jerks might see it and we wouldn’t know until they made a point of it.”

“We’re vulnerable,” Mel said, nodding.

Jas nodded and said, “Plus, like you said, many of us have painted targets on our backs to one extent or another. And someone knows where we live.”

“Yeah,” Cammie said. “If I’m walking by myself, my hand is usually in my pocket. You know ... just in case.”

Angie grinned.

“Good. They won’t suspect a thing until they’re rolled up into a ball, sobbing!”

After another flurry of phone calls, we finally settled on seeing ‘Annie’ for the matinée performance on Sunday, December 23rd. Everyone who was going would be home from college by then and none of the parents had any conflicts.

The one exception — and it was up in the air as of now — were the Rileys. They’d almost always taken a trip at Christmas. Mel was currently at least claiming she didn’t know if she would go, and Mark and Morty were considering opting out, too. That would be a ton of instant family drama!

I suspected there would be some compromise involving a shorter trip and perhaps some conciliatory comments from Alex and Carol Riley. If they continued to grumble about Cammie, Mel was someone who might hold it against them for quite a while.

Cammie herself would have plenty of invitations for Christmas (including from Penelope and David, who’d firmly established that they didn’t mind upsetting Joseph and Magnolia). She was still enthusiastic about seeing ‘Annie’ with us, of course.

All of that said, I still expected Cammie to spend only a relatively short time in Houston. As much as we all considered this house to be ‘home,’ it had a special meaning for Cammie, and we all knew that.

This was her only home, after all. The rest of us could, and did, ‘go home’ sometimes. For Cammie, that was gone.

‘Let’s have a few people over’ had, over time, turned into ‘we’re having a party!’ Parties, of course, require snacks. They also require beer, wine, paper plates, plasticware, cups, napkins, and a zillion other things.

That was the ruling of the hosts, anyway. So, with that in mind, Jas, Mel, and I took off for the store to purchase all of the necessary supplies.

In one of those comments that got me whapped, I mentioned to Jas and Mel that, while this was the first real party that I’d hosted as an undergraduate, I had hosted a few while in graduate school. Both of them were giggling, so I figured they weren’t too offended.

We probably overspent a bit, but we could afford it. That resulted in a bit of disagreement. Mel was much more for reining in spending than Jas and I were. There wasn’t much of a surprise there, and we smoothed over the ruffled feathers, but it was a reminder that there might be issues.

Jas and I came up with a bunch of things that the typical freshman party wouldn’t have. We were careful not to break the bank, though, and Mel came around over time as she saw things working out to be reasonable.

One of those was Brie en Croûte, which we made the (very) easy way (Brie wrapped in Pillsbury crescent roll dough, then baked). I’d learned that trick from a friend in graduate school. When I explained that, they refrained from whapping me again, but only barely.

Another was bacon-wrapped cocktail sausages. Labor-intensive but also quite cost-effective, and they tended to be a big hit at parties. I’d thrown plenty of parties, after all — they just weren’t when I was an undergraduate.

We had some decent wines, too, and the beer wasn’t the ‘get me drunk the cheapest’ brand. There was normally some alcohol in the fridge. It got consumed slowly but steadily. None of us seemed to have any problem with alcohol, and all of us were watching each other’s backs.

I had no particular issue with pot, either, but none of the girls were into it (nor, of course, was I). If that changed, we’d see what things looked like. Angie was the one most at risk (at least in theory), but she’d repeatedly said that pot wasn’t a problem for her. Of course, she hadn’t had any in years.

For the same reason that gambling was a bad idea, I preferred that we all avoid pot for now. While it was completely stupid, simple marijuana possession could be a felony bust in 1984. None of us needed that on our records, and we certainly didn’t need a stay in prison.

Sunday, October 28, 1984

The party turned out to be quite a bit of fun. We had five guys, in the end (Brent, Tom, John, Wyatt, and Ed) and four girls (Monique, Allison, Sandra, and Lindsay). Brent and Tom were engineers (Mech E and Electrical, respectively), John and Wyatt were business majors, and Ed was in Physics. Monique and Allison were also engineers (both Computer Science, which seemed unusual but cool) and Sandra was in Architecture.

I made a mental note to see if I could introduce Sandra to Rebecca Mears. She’d been Kathleen Collins’s assistant on the house remodel. Unless Rebecca had graduated last spring (and I didn’t think she had), she might be a good contact for an aspiring architect.

Right after I did so, though, Cammie produced Rebecca’s contact information. Sandra looked happy at the idea of having someone experienced to talk to.

None of the guys made a pass at me, but John did joke about my being ‘hot.’ Honestly, I think the idea of being ‘hot’ was more uncomfortable for me than that it was a guy saying it.

Mental image strikes again. Angie, Jas, and others had made the point over and over that I was ‘a catch.’ Jess certainly wouldn’t have invited me out if I’d been a social liability. Looks mattered a great deal to that first invitation.

In my mind, though, I was often the guy I was in my first life: the guy no one was making passes at while in college, gay or straight. It was a blind spot. One that I should probably work on, but I didn’t think it was doing me any great harm, at least not so far.

Lindsay came over to where I was sitting about an hour into things, clinked her beer bottle (St. Pauli Girl) against mine, then sat next to me.

“So,” she said. “How does a straight guy — and his girlfriend — wind up housemates with four lesbians? Off campus, as a freshman, no less!”

I chuckled and said, “We’ve all known each other since 1980 or 1981. We’ve been through a lot together.”

She nodded, then said, “Angie’s your sister, right?”

I nodded again.

“Twins? I mean, being the same age and all.”

“Nah,” I said. “It’s a complicated story, or ... well, no, it’s simple, and it’s not a secret. Anyway, Angie’s father was my uncle. When he passed away ... well, stuff happened with Angie’s mother, and my parents wound up taking her in, then adopting her. So we used to be cousins — still are, really — but are also siblings by adoption. I’m also adopted, for that matter.”

“Cool story!” she said. “And Paige comes along as Angie’s girlfriend. How do Cammie and Melanie fit in?”

“Ang and I founded a study group when we were freshmen. Mel and her twin brothers were part of the initial group. She was pretending to date a guy then, and dropped out because they felt bad about deceiving us. I met Cammie in Debate, which I started in Spring 1981.”

“And Cammie and Mel met...?”

“The previous fall,” I said, chuckling.

Cammie put her head over the couch, between us.

“Steve was the first straight person to find out about Mel and me,” she said.

“How’d that go?” Lindsay said.

“Great!” Cammie said, at the same time as I said, “Kinda a mess.”

Both of us laughed at that, while Lindsay looked confused.

“Explain, please!” she said.

“I phrased things badly at first,” I said.

“Not nearly as badly as he could have!” Cammie said, grinning.

“I just wanted Cammie and Mel to know that I knew, and that I hoped they’d rejoin the study group,” I said. “It came out a bit more ominous than I meant.”

“It was fine,” Cammie said. “We were nervous, but only for a bit. Steve got it all fixed.”

“That’s good!” Lindsay said.

“Anyway, we rejoined, and we dragged our ‘beards’ along with us,” Cammie said.

“That’s ... shockingly cool, I think,” Lindsay said.

I shrugged. “Cammie and Mel are awesome. Always have been.”