Chapter 90: Carrying Torches

Saturday, April 27, 1985

We spent much of the day working on the fence. At this pace, we would be done tomorrow, except for the gates. They were a bit of extra work. I still wasn’t quite sure how to do them right, but we would get there. We had two gates: a driveway gate suitable for cars, and a walk-through gate for people. It didn’t make a lot of sense to make them the same gate.

We had some decisions to make about the walk-through gate. The basement entry was in the backyard. If we locked the gate, that meant Candice and Sherry would have to deal with the lock every time they came and went. That meant, in turn, that a simple padlock wouldn’t work. Where would you put it? Outside, and they couldn’t lock themselves in at night. Inside, and they couldn’t lock the gate when they left. Moving it from one to the other meant they had to do everything together.

Oh, they could come and go through the house, but that meant giving up a fair bit of the advantage the apartment offered.

Paige made the obvious suggestion: change the fence line so the basement entrance was outside the fence. Sometimes the fix is so simple no one thinks of it! It was also a bit better for Candice and Sherry. The odds were low, but someone could jump the fence and hide in the backyard waiting for them to come home. Can’t do that in a narrow controlled path to and from their door. Good lighting would thwart the plans of any sneaky marauders.

Mind you, we’d looked up the crime statistics. This was a safe neighborhood in a safe town. The odds of marauders appearing were, statistically, very low.

That hadn’t stopped the people who’d attacked me, nor the guy who’d threatened Mel on campus, though. It hadn’t stopped someone(s) from putting graffiti on our house, either. All it would take is a more serious incident and we would all regret not taking steps. With five (and soon seven) girls living here (albeit ones who knew something about self-defense and who carried ‘bear spray’) taking reasonable precautions made sense.

If this had been the 2000s, cameras would have been a must. Since it wasn’t, we would make do with what we could get: lights, panic buttons, sensors, alarms, and bear spray.

Changing the fence line would only add a few hours. No existing fence had to be removed — we just needed to add some new fencing. It would change where we put the drive-through gate, but perhaps in a better way. If we later built a freestanding garage, it would replace the drive-through gate, and moving it back a few feet to account for the basement entry was better in terms of garage placement. We would still need a walk-through gate, but we could design for a future garage now.

During the day, we spent much of our break time on the phone catching up with everyone and anyone. We’d done well with keeping up ties and building post-high school relationships with our scattered friends, and we wanted to keep up with that. Most of our college-aged friends felt pressured by impending finals, though A&M’s (and UT’s) were the earliest. Janet and Lizzie were barely feeling any pressure yet, since Stanford’s finals weren’t until after Memorial Day.

Jess’s roommate was indeed willing to purchase tickets for us, particularly if we bought one for her, too. Jess herself was very interested. No commitment, not until we knew the date, but she seemed to be leaning that way.

I hoped Bob Geldof and crew would give us enough advance notice that airfare wouldn’t be outrageous. Either way, we would make it work! That, or we’d go to Philadelphia. We could drive there from anywhere, pretty much.

Sunday, April 28, 1985

“So...” Cammie said. “We — PROMISE, I mean — have ads in a number of major newspapers, plus a word-of-mouth campaign. It’s hard to reach closeted people, but we’re managing. If someone says they want to go, we start putting out feelers to local media, the schools, and so forth. A lot of it is very indirect, like asking a school, or a district, ‘If you had a gay couple who wanted to go to your prom, as has happened recently in other high schools, what would you do?’ For the media, it’s almost the opposite. If a reporter will work with us, we try to prep them with things like ‘Spring Branch Memorial has had lesbians go to their prom two years in a row with no disruption, no problems, and positive press. If your local school won’t, why not? What are they worried about? Why don’t they want to follow the lead of the best public high school in the state?’”

“Best public high school in the state...” I said, mulling it over. It was perfectly fair, I thought, if perhaps bragging just a bit.

“Principal Riggs has been making that case for us,” Cammie said, giggling. “I mean, obviously it’s to his benefit, but Memorial’s breaking records for National Merit Scholars, SAT averages, and the like, plus all of the state and national championships. There are only a handful of schools who would even be in the conversation.”

“Makes sense,” I said, quietly wondering if any of that was my ‘reality distortion field’ at work. Probably more than a bit of it. Memorial had been ‘damn good’ in my first life, but I’m not sure there would have been as good of a case for it being the best public high school in the state. Maybe?

Cammie went on, saying, “We send press clippings, stuff like that. Point them to Fricke v Lynch, which isn’t precedent but is the last time the courts really waded into this. Point them to Principal Riggs’ comments and the school board’s statements. Put all of that together, and the press is primed to ask tough questions of any school that balks. We’re not challenging the schools, and PROMISE has no legal staff. We won’t fight in the courts or help with that. Maybe one day, but the entire point is that, if it’s in the courts, everyone’s already failed.”

“Yeah. Even if there’d been a ruling supporting Janet and Lizzie, or you and Paige,” I said, looking at Angie, “It would’ve been a big mess. Janet and Lizzie won by surprise, combined with a strong coalition of students, and you guys won because of precedent.”

“That, and surprise,” Angie said. “Most of the school didn’t know about Paige and me, after all. We just think they did because we did.”

“Good point,” I said.

“Anyway,” Cammie said, “That’s the thing. We’re the ‘adult supervision,’ such as it is, for Anne’s group. Really, we’re volunteer workers, but making us the ‘adult supervision’ both takes Anne’s parents out of having to run things and also puts a couple who’ve ‘been there, done that’ and have positive press coverage out front and center.”

“And we’re good with that,” Angie said, grinning. “It’s fun, really. And, as you say, we’re paying it forward.”

“Which...” Cammie said, “is pretty awesome.”

“I’m glad!” I said. The whole thing sounded great. Hopefully, it sounded great to a lot of other people. We would find out soon enough.

After breakfast, Jas, Angie, Paige, and I settled in the living room to plan our summer. Cammie and Mel were, at most, occasionally checking in. The only thing they might join us for (beyond the occasional brief stay in Houston) was the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting, but it seemed likely they would wait until at least next year.

I’d told them as much about Live Aid as I was comfortable sharing, and they decided it simply wasn’t worth it to them to make the trip to either Philadelphia or London. I couldn’t dispute that. It would be expensive and disruptive to their summer plans. ‘Concert of a lifetime’ or not, neither were such big music fans that they would seriously regret it.

Or, if they did, at least they’d gone into it with their eyes wide open.

The easiest things to pin down were the Omaha trip and the family trip. We could take off in the car around May 16th and easily be in Omaha by the 20th. That wasn’t hard at all, and we’d have a day to recover before the meeting. We needed to be back in Houston by the 24th, which was still entirely reasonable.

That deadline was due to the next update, which came from Angie and Paige. It might have been something of a ‘hiccup,’ but it was a very good one. The Seilers wanted to take a family trip in late May starting just before Memorial Day and returning June 2nd. They were including Angie in the trip this time. In my opinion, that was a pretty brave move, and both Angie and Paige agreed. It seemed ‘old hat’ because our parents had done it (twice), but the first time they had the excuse of ‘it’s just because of Northwestern.’ That also set a precedent, making the second time easier. Plus, Paige and Jas were there anyway, thanks to our RV adventure.

The Seilers’ trip would be much more a no-excuses ‘this is Paige’s girlfriend; deal with it’ sort of thing, by necessity. Oh, they might say ‘Angie’s just a friend’ to select relatives, but who takes ‘just a friend’ on a family trip when there’s no other reason for the ‘friend’ to be along? Not to mention, the two of them had been in the papers. Whether the extended Seiler family knew that wasn’t clear to me, at least.

Most of their relatives were, roughly speaking, in the Boston area. Not a new state for Angie, but our previous trip (to Lexington) had been rushed. We’d barely seen anything. They were likely to be able to see a bunch of tourist locations and possibly visit adjoining states. It was less likely that they would see Amit and Sheila or Sue and Gene, but it was at least possible.

The next big event after that was the Marshall family vacation. Mom and Dad had staked out Saturday, June 29th as the departure date, returning to Houston on Friday the 5th or maybe Saturday the 6th. As of now, train travel was a serious contender. Paige had never been on a long train trip and was pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing. Dad wanted at least one whole day in Houston before going back to work. Two would be better.

We weren’t taking an RV for that trip this year. Maybe in the future, but this time we would rent two cars in Chicago. We could maybe make do with a station wagon again, but everyone agreed two cars made more sense.

That left us a big hole in June. We all wanted to be in Houston on June 25th for Angie’s birthday. Beyond that, we had over three weeks open.

Angie was ready. She and Paige had picked out a Carnival cruise that left Miami June 11th and returned June 18th, stopping at several Caribbean islands.

We might drive for that trip, too. We would have nearly a week to get there, sail, return, and drive home. It would be cheaper than flying, and we generally enjoyed long drives. We would almost certainly skip the Keys this time. Been there, done that! Disney World was an option, though. ‘Been there, done that’ does not apply to Disney parks.

While Angie didn’t say anything, it hadn’t escaped my notice that the gambling age on cruise ships was eighteen. That would give her and Paige a chance to ... well, take chances. I imagined more practice sessions would be in order! I might also set them up with a good computer blackjack and poker program. Blackjack was easy: a human dealer has exactly as much flexibility as a computer program (none at all). Poker was harder, but current programs were ‘good enough’ to give you practice against an opponent with no ‘tells’ — the hardest to play against.

If Live Aid was (as I thought it would be) in July, we were good. If it turned out to be in late June, though, we might have to take steps.

That left Jas and me kicking around ideas for late May. California, New Orleans, and Canada came up. Since any of those might be a driving trip, we had time to figure it out.

No matter what, Jas and I would spend at least a week or two in Houston (happy parents!), followed by trips to carry us to mid (or late) July. We would already be in England, after all. Why not do some sightseeing in Britain, and perhaps on the continent? We kicked around the question of whether that would be the two couples apart or together, but came to no conclusions.

It might be a mix of both. Jas wanted to avoid Paris (so there would be no ‘You were in town? Why didn’t you drop in?’ questions, or reasons to duck them), but Angie and Paige might want to go there. We might travel together to some places and split up for others.

In any case, we had no school until September. What to do with August was an open question. Angie hinted at having a few ideas. We really didn’t have to decide yet. Perhaps we would just hang around Houston, but I really doubted it. The parents would love a week or two with us. However, the longer we just hung out, doing little, the less happy they would be to have us ‘at home,’ I thought.

No matter what, we would arrive back in College Station by the third week of August. There was too much to do to get ready for school for us to delay that. Plus, Candice and Sherry would be moving in. We wanted to be settled before that happened.