Chapter 27: Playing Politics

Monday, September 30, 1985

Paige finally talked to Marco. He loved the idea and was going to approach a bunch of other groups, including most of the ethnic and religious clubs as well as SWAMP. Even if they weren’t in, he was probably going to run with it unless one of the other club leaders pointed out some problem none of us were seeing.

Score one for Paige!

This week was complicated on the dating front. We would be out of town Friday and Saturday night. Thursday night was ‘Side by Side by Sondheim’, our first show of the MSC Broadway season. We were all very much looking forward to that.

As luck would have it, MSC Cinema was showing ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ on Wednesday night. Darla had never seen it and, at first, was hesitant to give it a try. I convinced her that she might enjoy it, so that would be our date for this week. Fortunately, it was easy to say I’d seen it before, even though my most recent ‘before’ was actually in the mid 2010s.

I found the whole thing amusingly ironic. First-life me, at nineteen, would probably have joined Darla in scoffing at ‘Singin’ in the Rain’. A decades-old musical about the film industry even longer ago? How cool could that be?

Now I knew how cool it could be. It was justifiably a classic and one of the finest movie musicals in history — perhaps the finest. Hopefully, Darla would feel the same. That might be a double victory, honestly. A good date for us, and a chance for her to connect to her parents (who probably loved it, unless they were among the rare people who were around for its first run and didn’t love it).

Mom and Dad loved it, and would be happy to find out I did, too. That would have startled them not long ago, but now it would feel perfectly natural.

As had happened before, Jas, Angie, and Paige wanted to see it, too. There was only one showing, but we would arrive and depart separately. With such a wholesome film, there was little chance of anything embarrassing happening between Darla and me, and she wouldn’t mind the others being there on our date.

Wednesday, October 2, 1985

I met Darla at her dorm room at five and took her to the MSC cafeteria for dinner. Not the most romantic location, but — as I said — it was ‘a wholesome location for a wholesome date.’

She giggled at that.

We held hands most of the time, which made it that much more wholesome. The whole thing might have been a 1950s date, perhaps.

That included during the movie. It wasn’t the sort of movie that had her leaning into my lap, but it was the sort of movie where my arm across her shoulders while holding hands with my other hand fit perfectly. We were hardly the only couple doing that.

Heck, Angie and Paige were. They’d increasingly gotten to the point of just not caring what anyone might think and doing what they wanted. I did worry a bit, but not a lot. Both of them could take care of themselves, and they knew what they were getting into. Discouraging them from being themselves would have felt very, very wrong.

I noticed them only a couple of times, though. My attention was on my date and on the movie. It was clear to me that Darla was really enjoying it. Thank goodness! ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ wasn’t the sort of make-or-break film that, say, ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ was, but it was a good yardstick in itself.

When we left, she said, “That was so much fun! I had no idea it was that good!”

“I’m glad you liked it!” I said, giving her hand a squeeze.

“From now on, I’ll just have to trust your judgment on everything,” she said, giggling. “Seriously, we’ve seen four movies so far. All of them are very different from each other, but I’ve liked all four quite a bit. Three of the four I was pretty unsure of, too!”

“One twice,” I said, chuckling.

“I knew I’d enjoy ‘Rocky Horror’ the second time!” she said, giggling. “Doesn’t count! And I’m not counting either time as a date, but we did see them together. And at your instigation, too!”

“Guilty as charged,” I said.

She grew quiet as we got back to Krueger and walked up the stairs. Before I opened the stairwell door to her hall, she turned to me, still holding hands, and put her other arm around my neck.

“I’m ... not sure where this is going,” she said, blushing.

“As long as you’re enjoying things, that’s more than good enough for me,” I said. “Always has been, always will be.”

She blushed a bit more.

“I don’t like feeling like I’m leading you on,” she said, looking down.

“Darla,” I said, reaching out to nudge her face up, “You’re not leading me on. This is what I want to be doing. I’m not expecting you to know where this is going. I’m chasing, but ... you know ... patiently.”

She giggled a bit, still red, nodding.

“We’ll be fine, whatever happens. You will need to figure out where you want things to go, but not tonight. Not next week, and maybe not even next month. We’ll find out together, but...”

She bit her lower lip, nodded, and said, “But it can only go as far as I want, and ... I don’t know what I want.”

“Exactly,” I said. “I’d be happy to catch you...”

I wiggled my eyebrows, which got her giggling.

“ ... but only if that’s what’s right for you. And for me, but...”

“But you’re pretty sure you’d...” she said, not finishing the sentence.

I just nodded. We were both pretty clear on what I was pretty sure about. It didn’t need to be said, and just putting voice to it might amount to pressuring her. Which way it would pressure her was unclear, but that didn’t matter. Either way would be wrong.

I walked her to her door, where we exchanged a fairly heated kiss. More than I was expecting. Part of Darla was, I thought, ever more certain of what it wanted.

However, she wasn’t going to think with that part of herself, any more than I was going to think with anything other than my brain about this. Hurting Darla would be wrong, and it would be wrong even if we both thought we were doing the right thing at the time. Excusable, in that case, but still wrong.

Thursday, October 3, 1985

Angie and I both found enough time apart to update the parents. I took Mom and Camille, while she talked to Jean.

We laid out the trip. I didn’t explicitly mention a proposal. Nor did Angie, as far as I knew. We got the point across, though: the trip to Hawaii would be a surprise and the two couples would be apart for a few days. It would be pretty easy to fill in the dots with what they already knew or could reasonably guess.

The parents were all fine with our relatively limited time after Christmas, especially given the circumstances. We would see them for nearly a week in December and nearly a week in January, though. If there was a big omission, it was the New Year’s party at Anderson and Rita’s, and we would apologize to them in due course. They would certainly understand.

We had a plan! Now we could start working on booking things.

Friday, October 4, 1985

The six of us piled into my car after our last class and hit the road for Houston. Cammie would be staying with Camille and Francis, as usual. Jas and I were staying with Mom and Dad tonight and Camille and Francis tomorrow night. Angie and Paige were reversing that, staying with Tony and Jean tonight and Mom and Dad on Saturday night.

All in all, it would give the parents just a bit of time with us. Not too much, but this, along with a trip to the Rice game in late October, would be more than enough to tide them over until Thanksgiving weekend.

We wouldn’t actually spend Thanksgiving Day itself with the parents, though. The game against t.u. (it still amused me how quickly I’d gotten used to calling it that instead of UT) was at seven in the evening on Thanksgiving Day. Annoying for the parents or not, we would be at the game, as would the vast majority of our fellow students. Meanwhile, it would be very hard for them to get tickets, so they weren’t considering attending.

Since it was a night game, there was no point in driving to Houston after the game. Instead, we would drive down Friday morning and make that the day of Thanksgiving meals and visits.

Since Angie and Paige weren’t staying with Mom and Dad, we stopped by the house just long enough for them to say hello. Then we dropped them off at the Seilers’ house, followed by Mel, then Cammie (giving Jas and I a chance to say hello to Camille and Francis).

By the time we got back to the house, Mom and Dad were ready for bed. They stayed up and talked briefly, but it was pretty clear any real conversations would wait until tomorrow.

That was fine with us. We didn’t have much to catch them up on, really. Regular phone calls took care of most of that. There would be things I would have to say in person, but it wasn’t yet time for them. I still had a year or two on the biggest of those.

Saturday, October 5, 1985

Mom had clearly gotten in the habit of going all-out on breakfast when we were in town. I imagined she didn’t cook this much food in a regular week. It was more than we could eat, but she and Dad would enjoy the leftovers.

They had eaten by the time we got up, but that was expected. We followed a fairly ‘early to bed, early to rise’ schedule, but nothing as aggressive as Dad’s. Dad himself had said, later in life, that he regretted it a bit, but his work schedule had never bothered me, nor had I ever felt like he was an absent parent or anything of the sort. It was the right thing for him to do work-wise, and he was usually home before I got home from school. That meant more ‘quality time’ than if he’d been driving home during rush hour.

I missed a lot of that quality time in my first life, but that was by my own doing, not Dad’s. This time, I had done far better. I don’t think it really hurt my relationship with Dad in my first life — it had been very good, really — but this one was better still.

I caught them up on how many of our friends were doing. That included Darla, but I didn’t say anything about dating her. Any conversation with Mom about open relationships was going to be awkward and embarrassing. I expected it might happen one day, but I could happily put that day off for many years. Preferably at least until Jas and I were married!

Mom and Dad would be going to the rally, but they weren’t going with us. As speakers, we were expected to get there a bit earlier. I expected all of the parents to be there.

Well, not the Clarkes. The Rileys? We would see. It wasn’t out of the question, unlike last year. Much had changed, after all.

As with last year’s rally, this one was held in Cherryhurst Park. The conversation on the way amused me. Last year, the girls had ‘uncovered’ the fact that I’d actually been to a gay bar in the Montrose (albeit not until 1988). This year, the girls were more concerned with not having been to one themselves.

Sure, none of them were really ‘on the market’ (though Angie and Paige were, at least nominally, and Jas was as well, albeit in limited ways), but going out dancing with the girlfriends sounded like fun.

It wouldn’t be during this trip, but it sounded like something we should do. We weren’t the ‘go out to dance clubs’ crowd, for the most part, but Angie and Paige were famous for dancing, after all.