Chapter 18: Getting In A Rhythm

Monday, September 3, 1984

I think all of us found the listing in the Batt for a couple of midnight showings of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’. Cammie and Mel had never been, so (of course) the rest of us nearly demanded that they go. They weren’t too hard to convince. We would have to pass on Saturday night’s showing thanks to the Houston trip, but Friday’s was fine.

Jas, Angie, Paige, and I talked about dressing up. We decided that we would pass on it for Friday. If, by some strange chance, Cammie and Mel didn’t like the RHPS experience, that would factor into whether we did so in the future. If they did, we might try for something at the next showing (whenever that was).

Not that it would necessarily be easy to find the right outfits, particularly in Bryan / College Station, but we could try, and even something half-hearted might be fun. The girls knew of a few places to look in Houston, and I knew of several places in Austin as well.

Tuesday, September 4, 1984

One week in, and we were already at the point where ‘classes are classes’ was about right. For me, everything had settled in, and I was enjoying the pattern of going where I was expected to go and learning what I was expected to learn.

There were differences from my first life. This version of me was much more willing to participate in class. Oh, I wasn’t Hermione Granger (another reference only Laura would understand), raising my hand on every question in the sure knowledge that I had the correct answer, but I tended to contribute more than the average student.

That likely attracted some attention. I’d started to meet a few people in each class, and could see the outlines of some little class-specific study groups starting to take shape. No one was so noteworthy that I had to befriend them yet, but there were some good people out there.

Golf was a comedy of errors for the most part. None of us was good at hitting the ball straight. Or very far. Or ... anything, really. Oh, we were learning, but it was quite something.

A guy named Danny, who seemed to be particularly hapless, managed to hit another of the students. A student who was standing about 5 yards behind him. None of us knew how he managed. Fortunately, there was no injury, but people made jokes about needing crash helmets whenever it was Danny’s turn to practice.

At least five people, including Paige, managed to hit the ball at nearly a right angle to the tee. That also had some people diving for cover.

With this bunch, ‘Fore!’ was to be taken seriously.

After dinner, we all headed off to Brison Park for the GSS meeting. It turned out to draw a pretty good crowd. I guessed nearly one hundred people were there for the meeting.

There was a small protest group off to one side. They weren’t really doing that much. Mostly, they had their Bibles out and were doing what sounded like a loud Bible study. Of course, the verses that seemed most negative about gay people were included, but a lot of it seemed simply to imply that gay people were not only not Christians, but that they’d never even heard of Christianity.

We ignored them and stuck to the point of the meeting, which seemed mostly about meeting one another, collecting dues (a paltry $5, which we happily paid), and discussing things like t-shirts and the like.

One planned event, which recurred monthly, was ‘Blue Jeans Day.’ GSS printed up a bunch of fliers about it each time and put them all over campus as well as in local businesses. The idea was that everyone who was gay or lesbian or was a supporter wore blue jeans. Anyone wearing blue jeans thus might be seen as a member or supporter, with the resulting conversations making people aware of the gay community. They’d been doing it for years and felt that it really worked well.

Local clothing businesses loved it. Anti-gay students would come in, see the flyer, and buy anything that wasn’t denim. Some stores claimed they’d sold their entire inventory of corduroy pants in a day on the strength of one of the fliers.

I thought I recognized one or two of the people at the event from my classes, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t get the chance to talk to them. As time went on, perhaps I’d get to meet them.

Before the meeting ended, Marco pointed us to the meeting of another A&M club — SWAMP. SWAMP stood for ‘Students Working Against Many Problems.’ They held largely libertarian views, which grated against some people in GSS but also made them natural allies in that SWAMP supported GSS’s right to exist and be recognized as a campus organization. As a recognized organization themselves, SWAMP also had a history of inviting GSS to participate in their meetings, thus effectively allowing GSS a way to meet on campus. Technically, that table on Sunday had been SWAMP’s doing.

SWAMP’s organizational meeting for this year was to be held tomorrow near the Sul Ross statue, a campus landmark. We all planned to attend. It sounded interesting, if nothing else.

Wednesday, September 5, 1984

The SWAMP meeting was indeed interesting. I couldn’t agree with them fully, but I could at least support them in principle.

One of the things they opposed was tradition for the sake of tradition. I saw the virtue in challenging convention, but traditions also created a community in a way that nothing else would. I’d only been at A&M for a week and a half as a student, and I already could feel that there was much more of a true community here than I’d ever found at UT.

Not that UT didn’t have its own traditions. It did, of course. But they weren’t as many, and they weren’t as varied or as rich as A&M’s. It simply meant more to Aggies to be Aggies than it meant to a UT student to be a Longhorn.

Still, challenges were good. If a tradition couldn’t muster the support necessary to stay vital, perhaps it was time to retire it. SWAMP would be exactly the sort of group to promote many of the changes A&M had already been through (admitting minorities and women, making the Corps optional, and so forth), and its support of GSS was challenging yet another pointless campus barrier.

Friday, September 7, 1984

We’d finished out the week of classes with everyone feeling good about things. By now, we were fully in the cycle of homework and studying. Everyone was spending hours at home working problems, reading textbooks, and trying to keep up, but that was a good thing for us. For most of our classes, there were groups of us who could study together. Anyone taking a class that was ‘all their own’ could still rely on us to help however we could.

Our nightly studying was interrupted by a knock on the door at around seven. I’d mostly become the one to answer the door, at least by default, so I went over and opened it.

Three guys wearing preppy clothes and smiling a bit too widely were standing there.

“Hi,” the first one said. “I’m Phil...”

“ ... and I’m Craig...”

“ ... and I’m Robert,” they said in turn.

“We’re your neighbors from down the street,” Phil said, pointing to a house that I was pretty sure was the one Danny had warned me about.

“We wanted to invite you all to come give our church, First Baptist of Bryan, a try,” Craig said.

“Everyone’s welcome!” Robert said. “We’d love to have you join us this Sunday.”

Angie had gotten up and come up behind me during all of this. I suspected this might end badly — for them — but who knew?

Since she hadn’t said anything, I said, “I’m sorry, but we have plans this Sunday.”

“That’s fine,” Craig said, giving what sounded like a slightly forced laugh. “We’re there every Sunday. Wednesday night services, too!”

“What church do you attend?” Phil said.

“I grew up in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod,” I said, which wasn’t an answer. I continued by saying, “However, we haven’t decided on a church here yet.”

Robert frowned a bit. I’m sure he knew that it would be hard to attack the Missouri Synod for being insufficiently conservative, and their theological differences (which were many) with the Southern Baptists weren’t the sort of thing for a ‘casual drop-by.’

Instead, Craig called into the house, saying, “How about the rest of you?”

“I grew up Catholic,” Jas called. She was barely avoiding giggling.

“Methodist,” Mel called.

“Ditto,” Paige called.

“Evangelical free church,” Cammie said, which was pretty much accurate enough, though I was pretty sure her parents’ church took the ‘free’ to extremes. You could hear the distaste in her voice, too, unsurprisingly.

“Lutheran, like my brother,” Angie said.

“Interesting mix,” Robert said.

“Like we said, we welcome everyone from any religious background,” Phil said.

“We’ll let you know,” Angie said. She made it sound like a dismissal and, for a wonder, they went with it.