Chapter 55: Out and About

Monday, January 14, 1985

When winter break had started, it seemed like a ridiculously long time to be out of classes. Now, it felt simultaneously like we’d been gone forever and for no time at all.

My day, and Paige’s, started out the same as in the fall: Chem 9-10, Chem lab 10-11, and Golf at 11:30.

Chem was the same old, same old. Dr. Johnson promised there’d be a few ‘new twists’ in the spring, but he didn’t go into detail on what those might be.

Chem lab was pretty much the same, too. Sarah was still our TA, thank goodness! She reminded everyone of the lab rules, made sure we were good to go, then got out of our way (unless someone broke the rules).

After lab, she said hi briefly. There wasn’t much new on their end. The religious neighbors had apparently been by, though, making a last-ditch effort for any Houston residents to vote against the ordinance. Sarah said they had declined, and not all that politely.

Golf, too, was the same. While the PE program offers an ‘Advanced Golf’, it’s not suited to people who did ‘okay’ in ‘Beginning Golf’. We were definitely not ready to be ‘advanced,’ but that meant the class needed to be pitched at the brand-new people who’d joined us this semester. We’d still get lessons tailored to our needs, but we would also hear plenty of things we’d heard last semester.

All of us were ‘better.’ There was no question about that. We might, one day, be decent golfers. At a minimum, we could be trusted with clubs and free rein on the golf course. Few balls went so astray as to risk injuring anyone. That was progress!

The weather wasn’t great for golf, anyway. It was much colder now day-to-day than it’d been in the fall, after all. Some of the early classes would be indoors, and the girls were strongly in favor of that.

The first new class for both of us was Psych 107 at 1 pm. All of us but Mel were in this class. Mel couldn’t get her department to let her move what was supposed to be a senior elective to her freshman year, sadly.

Our professor, Dr. Huffines, was a middle-aged woman who seemed (at first glance, anyway) to be fairly easygoing. I didn’t get the feeling this would be easy, but she seemed to be the sort of person who would enjoy questions and discussion for their own sake.

Psych 107 was the first (and, most likely, one of the last) classes I’d had at A&M in which there were more girls than guys, if only slightly. Very few of the others were above 40% female. It was nice to see that, and I hoped it might lead to more interesting discussions than if the class had been mostly guys.

I hadn’t actually taken psychology at UT in my first life, but rather had ‘filled in the blank’ with transfer credit from summer school at UH. I wasn’t going to count on summer school this time, and the UH course had been, at best, rather light on content.

After Psych, Cammie and I had the continuation of Introductory Accounting at the same time we’d had it last semester. Once that was done, we’d head home on most days.

With only one new class (and one new professor), the day seemed entirely manageable to us.

Manageable enough to make Jas and I feel like enjoying bedtime a bit, rather than just going to sleep.

Tuesday, January 15, 1985

All of us had the same first class, but I left early to swing by the Batt’s office and pick up a copy of the article.

I read it over once while walking from the office to class. It seemed quite even-handed, covering why I’d gotten involved, my previous gay-rights activities, and what I hoped to gain by belonging to GSS. The whole thing was good as far as I was concerned. Any press is good press, right?

In all seriousness, anyone who was offended by this article was welcome to be offended. I was who I was, and I could handle it. I hadn’t set out to get my name out there, but now it would be. Hopefully, that would all be for the best (in the best of all possible worlds, naturally)!

Our first class of the day was one I’d been looking forward to. Honors Philosophy 140 - Logic, with Dr. Larry Hickman teaching, sounded like a top-notch course, even if the material was more like math than the kind of philosophy I hoped to take later.

This was a class in formal symbolic logic. It was the sort of thing computer science and mathematics majors delighted in (or should, anyway), and other people really should know (but often didn’t).

Dr. Hickman started out with an observation I found very interesting, particularly considering I was taking this class with five very close female friends. According to him, this class had been almost all men up until a decade ago. There had been only a few women, and they tended to be in the middle of the pack when the final grades had come out.

Since that point, the demographics had shifted. Most recent classes were like this one, 50/50 or so. Of that, generally most of the top students would be female.

He attributed this partly to the change in A&M’s overall demographics and partly to more women majoring in fields where formal logic was stressed. Combine that with more high-achieving women taking Honors courses (apparently the PES scholarships were almost exactly 50/50, which I hadn’t known) and you wound up with a big shift.

I fully intended to be one of the top students. After all, I’d taken college-level logic before, and had also taken graduate-level theory of computation (which requires logic skills). That said, I also expected Jas, Angie, Paige, Cammie, and Mel to all be right up there with me. That alone would help keep the demographic skew in place!

Dr. Hickman nodded to Cammie and me at one point. Without saying anything, it was clear he remembered us and probably could guess what we were capable of. He might not know the rest of our little group yet, but he would.

I was sure of that.

In contrast to Logic, my afternoon class had no one else from our house involved. That class was Math 166. Cammie and Paige didn’t want it (they were talking 166B instead), Angie would have found it ‘beneath her,’ Jas didn’t need it, and it had no place in Mel’s math requirements, which were engineering-related.

On the other hand, Lindsay Ryan was here. Not only was she here, but she came in at the same time I did and bumped her hip against mine on the way in.

“Hey, Lindsay,” I said, smiling.

“Hey, yourself,” she said, grinning back. “How was your break?”

“Good,” I said. “Really good, even. Yours?”

“Eventful,” she said, chuckling, and taking a seat in the front row while gesturing to the one next to her.

We both sat, and I said, “Do tell.”

“Oh, parent drama. They’re actually better now. They thought they could talk me out of ... things. You know.”

“I know,” I said, nodding.

“They’re now convinced they can’t, which is better all around. I wouldn’t say they’re happy, but they’re going to stop pushing.”

“That sounds good.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s very good, really. How about you and your friends?”

“No major changes. My parents and Paige’s parents continue to be good. Cammie’s parents — or her father, anyway — continues to be a jerk.”

“Sucks,” she said. “At least she’s got you guys to lean on.”

“Definitely!”

“Did you see the thing in the Batt about Lynn Scannapieco? I don’t know her, but that took guts.”

I probably blushed, because she said, “What’s up?”

“Note that ‘Part one of a series’ tag?” I said.

“You didn’t!”

“Should be running tomorrow,” I said, shrugging.

“So much for your going under the radar!”

“Eh. It was never going to happen.”

Just then, the professor motioned everyone to quiet down. We did, of course.

On the way out, Lindsay said, “Well, we’ll see.”

“Mmm?” I said.

“I figured sitting with you would both keep people from bugging me and might also give me a ‘beard’ in this class. We’ll have to see if you being ‘outed’ blows that.”

“True enough,” I said.

“See you tomorrow? Luby’s, around six?”

“Of course!”

When I got home, Marco had left a message. He’d gotten a copy of the article from Marc and thought it came off really well. He thanked me for sticking my neck out and for all of the support in general. I was pretty sure he was sincere about both.

We went over our classes at dinner. Jas thought her Public Relations professor might be a bit of a pain in the butt, but she felt up to the challenge. Mel felt roughly the same way about her Engineering Design Graphics class. That class was all lab, no lecture, and was widely reputed to be a ton of work. None of us would be much help, either, but I knew Mel would find people she could study with.

Aside from those and a few other minor gripes, everyone was feeling good about the upcoming semester. We were still freshmen, of course, and the workload would only get heavier in later years, but we were on the right track. More importantly, everyone knew that.

We gave Cal a call for his birthday, but didn’t get him. Not surprising — I imagined he was celebrating with his teammates. He had a machine, though, so we sang to it.

Wednesday, January 16, 1985

Paige and I picked up copies of The Batt on the way to chemistry and verified my profile was indeed in there and looked like what I’d expected. It matched, as best as I could tell from a quick skim.

The first ‘fallout’ from the article was at golf class, where one of the guys said he’d seen me in the Batt. I downplayed it, but his mentioning it was enough to get everyone talking about it.

Some of the obvious questions came up. Wasn’t I uncomfortable? Did ‘they’ want me there? Was I trying to hide something about myself?

The answers were, of course, no, yes, and no. I wouldn’t have done the interview if I was hiding anything. Jas also was pretty clear about my being straight. No one asked her if she was ‘just’ straight, thank goodness!

The article mentioned ‘my sister and her girlfriend,’ but not ‘Angie’ or ‘Paige’. No one in golf asked them if they were the couple in question. I was pretty sure a few people figured it out, though. Angie and I were quite open about being brother and sister, after all!

The whole thing was an extended conversation, not an attack. It seemed like a good sign for the future.

I didn’t get any attention over lunch, thankfully, but my next class was a bit different. As class was ending, Dr. Huffines said, “Mister Marshall, would you be able to stay after class for a few minutes?”

There was the inevitable round of ‘busted!’ and ‘ouch!’ from some of the kids in back, but not a lot of that. The girls all exchanged looks, of course. I was pretty sure their guess was the same as mine.

As people filed out, I headed up to the front of the room. We’d sat in the second row, so it wasn’t a long walk.

Dr. Huffines said, “I read the article about you in the Batt. I didn’t know I had a celebrity in my class!”

I chuckled and said, “Nah. Just me.”

“Not many of my students have been in the papers before. By which I mean papers other than the Batt or their high school paper.”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t ever my intention to get into the papers. That said, I’m happy about it.”

“Oh?”

“Not that any of my friends have trouble speaking up for themselves, but it deflected the media’s attention and let them simply enjoy their evenings. That, and I am straight. I’m not the target other people are.”

“Still, you’ve put a target on yourself.”

I shrugged again.

“It’s been there. Others are targets, too. We’ve been mentioned in the media, and someone knows where we live. We got some anti-gay graffiti last fall.”