Chapter 95: Laughing, Singing, and Crying

Sunday, May 12, 1985

We didn’t do a lot during the day. Some laundry, some chores (mostly cleaning up for the movie party), and a bit of packing. Mostly, it was a day for lazing around.

The papers had some news about more proms. Most schools seemed to be running scared, afraid of upset parents (on either side of the issue) but just as afraid of negative media coverage. For their part, the media didn’t know what to do, either, but that generally left them going with the narrative PROMISE handed them: it worked at a top-notch school, it worked at a bunch of other schools, and just why were secular public schools trying to discriminate against gay kids, anyway? Besides simply saying they didn’t like gay people, no one had much of an argument for discrimination at this point.

It never would have worked in most small towns, mind you. They hadn’t had many small-town kids contact them, and those who did had decided the risk of violence (perhaps days later) was too high. We would have to make much bigger changes for that to not be a worry! Still, the ball was rolling, and I had this feeling it was much like the one Indy ran from: get out of its path or it’ll flatten you!

We made our usual call to Mom and Dad, who were still fascinated by it all. Most of the call was the usual, with the exception of saying ‘Happy Mother’s Day!’ to Mom. Angie and I felt much better about not being there in person having just seen her a few days ago.

We followed that with our also usual call to Grandmother and Professor Berman. He was still buzzing about PROMISE, how amazing it was that our friend had founded it, and how much he admired Angie, Paige, and Cammie (and Mel, but he’d never met Mel) for helping out. It was another highlight late in his life, and that was special to all of us.

Grandmother was very clear about looking forward to talking to Angie and me in person. I was nearly certain this involved our future wedding plans. She wouldn’t pressure anyone, but she wanted to discuss them, and that was fine with us.

I hoped she would live to see us marry. I hoped the same for Professor Berman, but I was giving her higher odds of seeing it. Perhaps not in person — she would be hard-pressed to travel anywhere, and I couldn’t imagine we would get married in Chicago — but she would see photos and maybe a recording. Videographers were a thing in 1985, after all!

Jas and I talked a bit about Claire’s ‘baby makes four’ comment. I’d been thinking about it since Claire made it, and it raised some interesting points (albeit ones Claire never intended).

After all, ‘baby makes four’ (or five, or whatever — if that’s how the math worked at all) was a very real possibility. I was pretty sure Jas would stand aside and let Angie and Paige (and perhaps Cammie and Mel) parent ‘their’ kids without input from her, but it might be tempting, since they would also be my kids and she would be my wife. How could you not expect to parent your spouse’s children, at least in part?

The answer, I think, came in a few things. First, we would likely follow the ‘it takes a village’ model, or at least I hoped we would. Angie or Paige, or Cammie or Mel, living far away from me would be a factor in how comfortable I was in donating my sperm. The idea of ‘my kids’ growing up far away and knowing me as the ‘Uncle Steve’ they saw once or twice a year was ... troublesome.

Second, they wouldn’t exactly be ‘my kids.’ I was donating sperm, not necessarily parenting. Jas was one step further removed, legally at least. Emotionally? How can one predict that?

We would face that if and when we came to it, but it made the point that these were complicated decisions, ones that would require thought and communication. They weren’t something we could settle in a few minutes or just assume would be simple when the time came.

Having to say ‘no’ might be heartbreaking, and it certainly wouldn’t be easy. Saying ‘yes’ when it was the wrong decision, though, might be far more heartbreaking in the long run. As with many things, one can always not have children, but once one has them, there’s no going back, only forward.

Well, unless one goes back the way Angie and I did, but that’s a low-odds bet.

Our movie party had grown a bit. Katy was joining us (and might stay the night with Jas), and Claire was bringing Kay. Kay wasn’t going home until tomorrow and would be at loose ends tonight otherwise.

That made it pretty clear that Claire and I weren’t going to be slipping off to a bedroom, but that made a lot of sense. I wasn’t entirely sure Jas and Katy would, either, when it came down to it.

Their dynamic was different, though, and they might still be dating a bit in the fall. It would depend a great deal on whether Katy met anyone worth pursuing. Claire and I were in the same boat, but she had a better chance of finding guys to go out with than Katy had of finding likely candidates. Finding the right guy might not be easy, but the odds were fairly good given such a large straight male student population.

The matchmakers had already considered, and rejected, Katy and Lindsay. Angie didn’t think the two of them would work very well, and Jas largely backed her up. Neither of them knew Lindsay as well as I did, but they knew Katy better, and that seemed like enough.

We used the party as an excuse to run to the grocery store and stock up. I tossed a fair number of things Cammie and Mel would use during the summer into the basket, and they either didn’t notice or pretended not to. We’d be in and out, so we might use them, too.

Cammie, Mel, Angie, and Paige might have to skip out of the movies from time to time. It was another prom weekend and they were on call, after all.

I picked up Claire and Kay around five at Mosher. They met me at the curb this time. It wasn’t exactly a ‘date,’ after all. I would walk them back to their room tonight, no matter what.

Once we were at the house, we had a brief discussion (or, perhaps, argument) about what movies to rent. Everyone wanted comedies, and no one wanted comedies that were too ‘close’ to one couple or another, nor ones we’d just seen.

In the end, that’s only sort of what we got. The first movie everyone agreed upon was ‘Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, which is nominally a comedy. It’s certainly not just a comedy, though. Wilder’s Wonka is, quite possibly, at least somewhat insane, and certainly not someone to easily trust.

The second choice got complaints from four of us, but we weren’t that upset. Claire was the one who first mentioned ‘The Sound of Music’, largely on the strength of the long-ago comment about Jas playing Maria. She’d correctly guessed that others of us must also have acted in it, and everyone who hadn’t been there wanted to see if we could do our numbers.

I wasn’t entirely sure I could, but we agreed we could do them after watching the movie version. At least that would give us a quick review of the words! My biggest song was a duet, but Paige had understudied Liesl and thought she could remember enough. Similarly, Angie couldn’t really do any of Louisa’s numbers, but she could (and would) perform ‘How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?’

I could hardly blame Claire and Katy for wanting to see us perform, nor Kay for being into it as well. We were all rusty, and ‘The Sound of Music’ was a long time ago now, but it would be good to get back to singing sometimes. Most of us sang along with the radio now and then, but this would be different.

A quick video store run later, we had both movies. Everyone wanted ‘Willie Wonka’ first, so we watched that.

We wound up arranged with Claire and Jas next to me, with Katy on Jas’s other side. Everyone got to snuggle with everyone, pretty much, to the amusement of those not involved in our snuggling.

Kay pretended to snuggle up to Claire, but couldn’t keep a straight face about it. Paige said she would be much better off trying to keep a ‘lesbo’ face about it, which got everyone laughing.

The phone rang off and on, keeping the prom crew hopping. One or more of them were in the basement much of the time. Still, we’d all seen these movies, and it was fine for them to miss chunks of them. Everyone still had a good time, and they were, after all, doing something noble.

‘Willie Wonka’ was as great as it always was. I’d never found it to get old for me, not even having seen it many times over decades.

‘The Sound of Music’ was the same — as great as it always was — but that was one I’d had to grow to like. First-life Steve had liked ‘musicals’ from a relatively early age, but I’d not really fallen in love with ‘The Sound of Music’ until my twenties, well after musicals both newer and older.

There was an odd parallel between the two. Both stories can be read at a surface level as comedies, as morality plays, and (sometimes) as cloyingly sweet. Yet, just under the surface are deep undercurrents of moral ambiguity, bad behavior, and a strong dose of bitter to go with the sweet.

In both, the good guys win and the bad guys are vanquished. But are the ‘bad children’ of ‘Willie Wonka’ really bad, or just headstrong and spoiled? Is Rolf ‘bad,’ or is he making a terrible mistake based on inadequate information? How ‘bad’ are the Nazi sympathizers given what they knew of the world in 1938, when so many of the Nazis’ misdeeds were yet to be common knowledge?

Good movies for our crowd, who had just as much fun talking about the movies as we had watching them. Claire, Katy, and Kay fit right into that, and it certainly showed how they might settle in as long-term friends of ours.

We stumbled our way through our songs. It was little surprise to me that Jas was the best of us. She’d lost very little of ‘The Sound of Music’ or ‘My Favorite Things’, and her voice was in as good a shape as ever. The rest of us were rusty, but Paige and I had a blast singing ‘Sixteen Going On Seventeen’. We pointed out that we’d been nearly the right ages at the time. Lexi, who I’d actually performed it with, had been sixteen.

I was pretty sure Claire, at least, picked up on the chemistry between Paige and me. We weren’t blatant at all, but we clearly at least knew each other very well and weren’t afraid of blatant flirting. She didn’t ask, and I would never tell, and that was enough.

On the other hand, Claire might eventually ask Jas, and she would probably tell. That was fine with me. I just wanted no part of spilling any beans.

It was a great farewell evening, and one that gave us some additional ‘sweet’ to offset the ‘bitter.’ If last night had been the last night for Claire and me (as seemed likely), it had been a great one. If it wasn’t, all to the good as well! We saw a path to being long-term friends. That was, in the end, far more important than being lovers.