Chapter 64: Unlocking Some Things

Friday, February 15, 1985

Between Valentine’s Day and Jess Day, we’d all missed the announcements for another Hitchcock festival this weekend. After a fair bit of discussion during golf and over lunch, we decided to skip it this time. Everyone wanted to go watch ‘The Breakfast Club’ anyway. Angie and I were especially eager to see it again.

While checking the movie listings, I came across a fact-checking failure of epic proportions. Well, for certain values of ‘epic,’ anyway.

In a listing for ‘Yellow Submarine’ (which was showing next Thursday, and which we all wanted to see) the eager (but inaccurate) writer wrote, among other things, ‘The animated musical tale of how the Beatles drove the Blue Meanies out of Pepperland. Lots of Peter Max animation. (You know who he is. He does the stuff for Monty Python).’

There were two problems with this. First, while ‘Yellow Submarine’ does look a lot like Peter Max’s art, and he was a consultant early on in the project, the actual work on the movie was done by Heinz Edelman (as I’d learned many years later, but still, I was pretty sure about it). Second, and even worse, any Monty Python fan could tell you that Terry Gilliam did their animation. It’s not even very close to Peter Max’s style at all!

Had Gilliam faded into obscurity, this might be somewhat understandable, but both ‘Jabberwocky’ and ‘Time Bandits’ were already out, and ‘Brazil’ would be out this year.

Paige volunteered to write a nasty letter to the editor about this inexcusable failure of fact-checking. If they were lucky, the letter wouldn’t set anything in the office on fire. With Paige, who knew?

Claire, along with Lisa and Matt, caught up to us just before class.

“Your friend was terrific!” she said. “I loved it!”

“She was telling us,” Lisa said, with Matt nodding along.

“We have a recording,” Ang said.

“I want to see it!” Lisa said.

“We could bring it Monday?” Ang said.

“No VCR,” Lisa said.

“You could watch it at the next study session,” Paige said.

“That works!” Lisa said. “Thanks!”

“We’re building the Jessica Lively fan club, I think,” Jas said. “You get to be charter members!”

They all chuckled at that. It might be true, though!

Claire found me after class, walking along with Cammie and me.

“You really dated her? Jessica?” she said. “I mean, not that I doubt you, but...”

“Oh, he really did,” Cammie said, chuckling. “It was the talk of the school. Every time they kissed on campus, it was the biggest piece of gossip at school that week.”

Claire shook her head.

“You explained it a bit, but it still feels like Jas would’ve slapped you silly. Jessica is ... um...”

“Incredibly hot?” Cammie said, grinning.

“That!” Claire said, nodding. “Wait, I mean ... you ... oh, duh!”

Cammie giggled and said, “Mel and I can look. We just can’t touch.”

Claire blushed, but it wasn’t bad.

While she was temporarily speechless, I said, “So ... first, Jas is also incredibly hot, at least in my opinion.”

Claire nodded, still a trifle red.

“Second, it’s not about ‘hot.’ I mean, obviously, ‘hot’ matters. People want to be with someone they find hot. Though, that should be taken broadly. Someone who’s drop-dead gorgeous but dull as a rock isn’t ‘hot,’ at least in my opinion.”

“She’s obviously not that, though,” Claire said.

“Oh, heck no,” Cammie said. “Our friend Connie was our valedictorian, but I suspect Jess might have actually been the smartest person at Memorial. She...”

Cammie ran out of steam looking for superlatives, so I took over.

“She’s three steps ahead of most people most of the time, and sees around corners better than anyone else I’ve ever met,” I said.

“So, it’s not looks, not brains...” Claire said.

I nodded.

“First, I love Jas, and I’d loved her long before Jess even asked me out. Second ... Jess and I make terrific friends. We’re on the same page about a lot of things. We just wouldn’t work as a couple.”

“Why?” Claire said. “I mean, if I can ask.”

“You can ask,” Cammie said, giggling. “We’re good with questions. Maybe we won’t answer...”

I chuckled, and said, “What she said. And, yes, I’ll answer. She wants to steer the ship. All the way, all the time. She’s remarkably focused and driven. Her chosen career — if it works out — may take her all over the world, with little time for conventional relationships. I can support all of that as a friend, but as a romantic partner it would wear on me.”

Claire nodded.

“Okay, I get that,” she said. “I mean, it really makes sense. It’s still weird, but it’s less weird. Even a good sort of weird. Like ... it makes your open relationship make more sense. I can’t see that working for most people, ‘cuz ... well, in my experience, there’s a lot of people thinking the ‘hot new thing’ is better and dumping what they have. Then that spoils and they’re on to the next one. If you’re calmly assessing things and going, ‘Yeah, friends is great, partners is a no-go,’ then the rest works a lot better. A lot of relationship jealousy is about risk and loss. The less risk, maybe the less jealousy.”

“There’s an old line that says ‘Guys get jealous if girls sleep with someone. Girls get jealous if guys like someone. Guys don’t care that much about hearts and flowers if there’s no sex, girls don’t care as much about sex if there are no hearts and flowers’”, Cammie said.

“Makes sense. And...?” Claire said, raising an eyebrow.

“Mel and me? Both,” Cammie said, giggling. “Look, don’t touch, definitely no hearts and flowers.”

“And obviously, for you...” Claire said, looking at me.

“Hearts and flowers for both of us, but by that I mean the kind that leads to breakups,” I said. “I love Jess, but not as a romantic partner. Jas knows that and supports it.”

She nodded slowly.

“It’s kinda funny that you say you love her, but...”

Cammie shrugged. “I love Steve. I’m really open about that. Obviously, that’s not in a romantic way, but I love him. I’m not the only one, either.”

“The way I see it, love doesn’t divide, it adds or maybe multiplies,” I said. “The more you love, the more you can love. What divides is time and attention. That’s its own thing, though. The love isn’t the problem. Messing up your priorities is the problem. A big part of jealousy is seeing someone you love spending time with someone else, but most people allow for a reasonable amount of time spent talking, playing games, watching movies, eating dinner, or whatever. We just add ‘being romantic’ to things we can spend time on with other people. That would make for jealousy for a lot of people, but that’s rooted in fear of loss, like you said.”

“This is fascinating, really,” Claire said. “And cool! I’m not sure what to do with it, but it’s totally new to me.”

“It was totally new to me, too,” Cammie said. “And it’s not for me, but I’m happy for them. I’m a jealous enough person that I’d worry about myself. Mel is, too. Where we are right now, we trust each other fully, so we’re perfect. But, if we gave each other a reason to doubt, we’d probably doubt, as bad as that makes me feel. Anyway, Jas is ... she’s maybe not unique, but definitely ... different. Good different, I mean. Maybe I aspire to be more like her, and maybe Mel does, too, but we know our limitations.”

Claire nodded.

“That’s probably where I am. Whatever works for you.”

“It wouldn’t work for a lot of people,” I said. “You have to be very certain of your primary relationship. Jas and I have been through it.”

“She was a bit insecure about Jess at first,” Cammie said.

Claire nodded again.

“That makes a lot of sense. Seriously, if a guy won’t dump you for a shot at her... ”

Cammie giggled.

“I know, right?” Cammie said. “Or a girl, for that matter! Not that Mel ever had a shot. Or me, either.”

Claire blushed at that just a little, but giggled, too.

“I wouldn’t know!” she said. “Different strokes for different folks, though!”

“We’re not proselytizing,” Cammie said, grinning. “We’re just fine with straight people being straight.”

“Thank goodness!” I said.

“As long as they’re not narrow-minded!” Cammie added.

“Makes sense!” Claire said, grinning.

As we reached an intersection, she said, “I need to head the other way. Thanks, though! That sorted out a lot of questions.”

“Anytime!” I said.

“See you soon!” Cammie said.

Once we’d parted, Cammie’s hand found mine, and she said, “I like her.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“We’ve met a lot more good people here than jerks, so far,” she said. “I’ll admit, I was worried.”

I shrugged a bit, and said, “This is jumping right into a broad generalization...”

Cammie giggled a bit.

“ ... but I tend to think most people are basically okay when you can talk to them one-on-one and meet them as fellow human beings. Some of them are jerks and will always be jerks. Some of them are ignorant and don’t want to learn. But, mostly, if you respect them, they’ll respect you. It’s when they’re in groups, and the group reinforces each other as being ‘the good guys’ and the other group, or groups, as ‘the bad guys’ that many people turn into jerks.”

She nodded slowly.

“That ... makes a lot of sense,” she said. “It’s maybe not what I think, but my thinking is definitely influenced by my parents’ ‘group,’ and they’re about as self-reinforcing as it gets.”

“There’s still a lot of give and take there, but it’s better than thinking people are basically bad. Which, implicitly, most of Christianity does, at least nominally. I find that amusing, since Christianity simultaneously teaches that ‘we were made in the image of God’ and that ‘all have sinned and fallen short.’ Even newborn babies aren’t free of sin.”

“You know what both of those mean and where they come from...” Cammie said.

I nodded.

“But ... yeah,” she continued. “It’s interesting to juxtapose it that way. It does ignore ‘original sin,’ though, which is how we get from the one to the other. Without that...”

“Sure,” I said. “But Christianity didn’t have ‘original sin’ until the third or fourth century. Judaism certainly doesn’t have it. There are a lot of contortions people go through to make it work, and I tend to reject them.”