Chapter 93: Year’s End

Wednesday, May 8, 1985

The Batt’s top headline was ‘Prom-inent Events Across Texas’. They summarized several other stories, but didn’t mention any connection between PROMISE and any A&M students except for mentioning that last year’s ‘gay prom couple’ were now Aggies. They didn’t name names, but how hard would it be to find out?

While yearbooks wouldn’t come out until the fall, someone on the yearbook team had sent Angie and Paige a copy of their photo. It was great, and I gave the photographer plenty of credit!

Mom and Dad would be thrilled, and we would probably have to figure out how to reprint the photo for Grandmother and Professor Berman. Dad would also want a small version to show to his customers (who, mostly, were also his friends, after all).

Dr. Huffines said something brief to Angie when she turned in her exam, just a few minutes ahead of me. I was pretty sure I’d kicked ass on this exam (as I’d expected all along), and all of my friends seemed pretty relaxed about it, too. Claire might have looked the most worried, but I wasn’t worried on her behalf. She knew all of this stuff cold!

When Dr. Huffines dismissed class fifteen minutes later, we headed to the front.

“I wanted to ask if you were involved in all of that prom stuff over the weekend,” she said. “Given your history and the school at the center of it...”

Cammie said, “Angie, Paige, and I were, Dr. Huffines.”

“Mostly Cammie,” Angie said.

“They did a ton!” Cammie said. “But ... yeah.”

“Quite something!” Dr. Huffines said, chuckling. “Not really my department, but you would have a term paper for some political science classes right there.”

“It was a surprise to us,” I said. “I mean, I knew Anne, and I knew they were up to something related to Texas proms, but the scope of it...”

Cammie giggled.

“Getting phone calls from national newspapers was a surprise for me!”

Dr. Huffines chuckled.

“Keep up with me, if you can,” she said. “I might invite you to come speak before some other classes. That is, if you’re willing. It’s much better having students speak, but I can’t count on having outgoing, articulate gay kids and supporters who are willing to speak openly.”

“Happy to,” Cammie said, “Assuming my schedule works, anyway.”

“Me, too,” Angie said, looking thoughtful.

I nodded as well, and so did the others.

We bid each other farewell, then headed out. Claire was waiting back near the door, and gave me a hug and kiss as we were leaving. I heard Dr. Huffines chuckling about that behind us.

“Still on the hook, I hear,” she said, giggling.

“Definitely, and willingly,” Cammie said.

“What are you thinking?” Paige said to Angie. “I saw that look!”

Angie grinned.

“Oh, nothing. Just that it might be really good if we urged some of the GSS crew to join Toastmasters. A few more relatively articulate, confident people couldn’t hurt.”

“That makes way too much sense!” Cammie said. “I sometimes forget just how removed we are from the ordinary, that way.”

Paige frowned.

“There’s more. You ... oh! I get it!”

“What?” Angie said, her grin moving to Cheshire cat levels.

“GSS speakers’ bureau! Some people who are polished and come off well and aren’t afraid to speak publicly!”

“Yeah,” Angie said, nodding. “It’s not like we’re lab rats or anything, but the more we’re ‘out there,’ the less we’re a ‘them’ to the ‘us’ most of the students are. It’s easy to dislike a ‘them.’ Once you meet people, and they seem mostly like you, it’s harder to dislike them. That’s the real lesson of that stupid debate with Louie Welch.”

“Besides ‘He’s a jerk?’” Mel said, giggling.

Cammie and Paige were both nodding slowly, though.

“Think about it,” Angie said. “Louie Welch, in January, turns down a debate in Houston because he might ‘catch something.’ That’s about as offensive as you can get. Then he comes here and sits down and has a nuanced, reasonable discussion about which things are ‘special rights’ and which are ‘equal rights.’ No ‘catching something,’ no anti-gay slurs, no nothing. The first is just aimed at his people. It’s an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ thing. In the other, he’s talking directly to gay people. Refusing to interact with them would be personally rude, not just abstractly rude. It’s just different.”

Cammie nodded.

“Not that people aren’t sometimes personally rude,” she said.

“Oh, many people suck!” Angie said. “No doubting that! But they often suck less when you get them in smaller numbers and in more reasonable settings.”

“Isn’t that always the way?” Jas said, smiling softly.

Claire and I quickly reaffirmed that we’d meet up at five on Saturday. I doubted we would go on a second date Sunday, but it was there if we wanted it. Saturday would probably be the night to wrap things up before the summer.

Bittersweet, but we both were pretty committed to emphasizing the sweet. We would see each other in the fall, after all — plenty, as it turned out, since we shared some classes — and undoubtedly be friends. We just (probably) wouldn’t continue dating.

Kay had been right: we were risking Claire’s heart. It felt to me like we were nearing the tipping point where we would increase the risk of really hurting her for little further gain. Being ‘friends’ would give us 90% of what being ‘lovers’ gave us, and we could be friends while she looked for Mr. Right. If we were lovers, she would probably not put as much effort into finding him.

While I was saying goodbye to Matt and Lisa, Claire chatted with Jas a bit. Being friends with her boyfriend’s girlfriend was still probably still a bit weird for Claire, but she’d been doing fine with it, and I was pretty sure Jas and Claire would continue to be friends even after Claire and I had stopped dating and moved on to being ‘just friends’ ourselves.

I had invited Claire to see ‘Grease’ with us, and Jas had invited Katy. But, for perfectly understandable reasons, they saw it as very much our thing. I think they would have been embarrassed being our ‘other dates,’ too, even in front of people who understood.

That, and how exactly would we introduce them to Mom and Dad? This was probably better.

Darla, similarly, decided not to go when we asked. She could have, but her parents were picking her up tomorrow and she hadn’t started packing.

Cammie and Mel, on the other hand, were happy to go. In fact, I expected the Rileys, and Penelope and David, to join in on the fun. It would be nice to see all of them again.

Elizabeth updated us yet again. The official request for a no-contact order was filed, we had a docket number, and the case was in motion. It still wasn’t scheduled, but the hope was to have hearings done by early June.

Cammie was to check in next Tuesday to see if there was any progress on scheduling her court appearance.

Thursday, May 9, 1985

We got the official count for the first week from Cammie. As far as they knew (not having sources everywhere), over one hundred newspapers across the United States had reported on PROMISE. Over sixty of those had run editorials, which had come out about seven to one in support of kids having the right to go to their own prom with whoever they wanted to.

They’d gotten kudos from gay rights groups across the country. Many of those groups had been completely blindsided by the whole thing. The rights of high schoolers really hadn’t been a focus item, not in the era of AIDS and sodomy-law fights. Having a group fight just this one battle was a big deal for the larger organizations. They could point high school kids to PROMISE.

They did, too. PROMISE had gotten a lot of questions they couldn’t answer. It wasn’t in their charter to fight parents trying to send their children off for ‘conversion therapy,’ or help with fights around emancipation, forcing parents to help their estranged gay children with tuition or the like, or anything else. They were about Prom, pure and simple.

Still, they did what they could. It wasn’t enough (and it could never be enough), but it was a start.

The flip side of it was: this was tremendous for visibility. The kids who would be helped the most were the ones who weren’t likely to be targeted by their parents. Almost by definition, most of PROMISE’s work involved kids from two supportive families who wanted their kids to get to go to their prom. Prom itself is a low-stakes endeavor, and schools had a devil of a time trying to come up with arguments as to why they shouldn’t let kids attend. But, for every kid who got to go, many others had someone ‘like them’ to look to right in their own school.

The true anti-gay crusaders hated it, but groups like Straight Slate were trying to stay quiet. It had become obvious there was no ‘special rights’ issue here. No one was being protected from being fired. There was very little of a political angle at all other than flat-out ‘gay people bad.’ PROMISE wasn’t supporting gay teachers, gay kids talking about being gay in school, or anything else. It was only about a single social activity.

In the best way possible, the camel’s nose was already inside the tent, and it wasn’t going away.

Friday, May 10, 1985

Another semester ground to a halt, this time ending with our logic exam. It felt appropriate in many ways. We would all finish together at the top of this class (with one or two others mixed in), thus giving Dr. Hickman a class that he expected: mostly girls at the top, but some guys mixed in.

As Dr. Huffines had, Dr. Hickman quietly asked us to stay after class. He’d been following the news and guessed correctly that some of us were at the heart of it. He initially guessed me, but I quickly pointed to Cammie and Mel and got out of the way.

He nudged them — really, all of us — to stay active around campus, and not just in GSS. Student government, perhaps? Some of the more ‘activist’ clubs?

We had no problem with that, but PROMISE was itself likely to become an ongoing commitment. It was one Dr. Hickman thought highly of, too. As he pointed out, it wasn’t the first time he’d seen students take the lead in a group that went beyond the campus or immediate surroundings, but there weren’t a lot of them. By its very nature, this had the makings of a national organization, and here we were on the ground floor, creating something new.

In retrospect, I felt even better about having stepped aside, and about Cammie and Mel leading this. I might have put myself in ‘analysis paralysis’ over things that were, in some ways, silly. Was I stepping on the toes of the ‘Gay-Straight Alliance’ movement (and when, exactly, would that turn up)? On the various Equality organizations? Someone else I didn’t even remember? Was I stealing one of their ideas?

They couldn’t care less about that. They were ‘from here,’ and this was their idea. Heck, it was Anne’s idea, and she had not the slightest idea that any of us weren’t ‘from here.’

Some things were better done by others. I could do them, but I couldn’t do everything, and my friends could do many things better than I could. This was one of those things.

One year of classes done out of four, and we had all grown and changed. We had changed the world around us, too. Maybe just a bit, maybe not, but it had changed, and it would keep changing. The stage just kept getting a bit larger, that’s all.

With that, the stakes were also getting a bit higher. It wasn’t just ‘us’ now. Now kids around the state were counting on us to help them.

Once we were done with the exam, we headed home, changed, and then piled into my car. We should have no trouble making it to the musical on time, but there was no sense risking being late.

We weren’t bringing anything except ourselves. There was no reason to spend the night in Houston, and we would be better off just going home.

We discussed, but vetoed, stopping for fast food. Maybe we would need it later, but — as of right now — we should be able to arrive in time for Rico’s. If so, that would be better.

We didn’t even mention Pop’s. That was for the cast, not for us. We would be welcome (perhaps even ‘honored’) guests, but we were guests. This wasn’t our show. We were friends and supporters, and might occasionally be mentors, but that was it.