Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 76: A New Generation
Saturday, January 4, 1986
Breakfast was a bit of ‘parting is sweet sorrow’ and a bit of ‘we’ll barely be gone before we see you again.’
Everyone recognized that the newly engaged couples needed time away from their parents to be couples. It made sense that the parents and the couples were going off and doing their own things. At the same time, we all deeply loved each other, and would have had fun doing either set of things together.
There would be plenty of time for that, though. The next week was about the couples.
Even with Jess there, it still would be. She was family, but a different sort of family. And only so many of us could involve ourselves with her at a time, so the others would get couple time.
Whichever couple it was. We were six couples, after all, not two.
We headed back upstairs after saying goodbye to the parents, packed up our stuff, and took it to the car. We spent the rest of the morning enjoying the Disneyland Hotel, particularly the shops. All of the girls were entirely capable of going into ‘shopping mode,’ and I was the (relatively) rare guy who could handle that and not hate every minute of it.
Maybe some of the minutes. But there were things for me to consider buying, too, even if I didn’t.
Well, except for one thing. During a break, when they were spending a lot of time looking at souvenir glassware, they sent me off and I wound up in a little jewelry shop. I wasn’t interested in serious jewelry, but they also had customizable mouse-ear earrings with whatever name you wanted printed on them in teeny-tiny letters. Machine-done, of course, but very good looking.
They would also ship to anywhere I wanted, so the PO Box in College Station it was. I wasn’t about to get my own ears pierced anytime soon, so I planned on skipping my own name, but then the saleswoman mentioned clip-ons.
Oh, heck, why not? Frank-N-Furter in Mickey Mouse earrings? Could happen! Or ... well. There were some opportunities.
By the time I was done, it was not only Jas, Angie, Paige, Cammie, Mel, and Jess, but also Candice, Sherry, Lindsay, Claire, Darla, Amy, and Amethyst (I went with both names for this). I might never give some of them their earrings, but I could get them now much more easily than later.
Just before paying, I added ones saying Helen, Camille, and Jean. Then I tossed in a pair for Kimberly. Why the heck not?
With any luck, the girls would never know until I surprised them.
Penny was waiting at the restaurant right on time and waved to us when she saw us. She shook hands with each of us, and then had the host take us to the table she’d reserved.
“It’s great to see you!” she said. “My father said he’d spilled my secret!”
Angie chuckled a bit and said, “We think it’s sweet. Fathers looking out for daughters is how it should be!”
“Definitely,” I said.
“You’re all close to your families,” she said. “It makes perfect sense that you feel that way.”
“And why we do not take kindly to fathers who do not,” Paige said, with just enough sting to make it clear it was personal.
“There’s a story there,” Penny said.
“None of us, but a friend of ours. Steve?” Paige said.
“I don’t think Cammie would mind,” I said.
The waiter came and took our orders. After ordering, I told a somewhat edited version of Cammie’s story, not mentioning some of the police antics but acknowledging that I helped her get a hotel room and a lawyer, along with rescuing her from the park. I didn’t mention the ‘naked’ part.
“My God!” she said, once we were done. “That’s horrible! I hope you don’t mind that the TV producer part of me is also thinking it would make a great TV movie.”
“We don’t,” Jas said, “Or...”
We all nodded.
“See? We don’t. We’ve thought much the same. Drama, a big showdown, bad guys, good guys, a happy ending ... it works.”
“Oh, heck!” Angie said. “Not just a happy ending — a triumphant ending!”
“I missed something,” Penny said.
“Steve skipped one part of it,” Jas said. “Cammie’s birthday...”
“And mine!” Paige said. “We share!”
Jas giggled and nodded, then continued, saying, “Her birthday was the first day of our state debate tournament. Her stupid father had tried to screw that up, but they fixed it, and Steve and Cammie went on to win the tournament. If they hadn’t gotten to the finals, they wouldn’t have made it to Nationals, which they also won.”
“Wow!” Penny said. “So, you’re a National Champion?”
Our food arrived, and we continued the conversation over lunch.
I nodded at her question and said, “That and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee in Beverly Hills.”
She laughed loudly at that.
“Modest, too!”
“We all try to be,” Angie said. “It’s just ... high school is high school. It’s a big memory for us, and it does say something, but it’s not our lives, just a cool thing.”
“You, too?” Penny said.
I took it, going around the table. “Jas is a national champion in duo interpretation. Angie is a national champion in humorous interpretation. Paige is a national runner-up in dramatic interpretation.”
Penny chuckled again.
“Quite the resumes. I see why you said no one has stage fright!”
“Oh, we’ve also done three musicals together,” I said.
“Four, for Paige and me,” Jas added.
“We got a late start,” I said.
“Thanks to Steve,” Angie said.
“He held you back?” Penny said.
“No! He let Jasmine know he could sing, and then let her twist his arm to audition for the musical. If he was going to do it, he was going to twist my arm until I did it.”
“In fairness...” I started.
Angie cut me off and said, “Best thing ever! I’m eternally grateful.”
That got an “Awww” from Penny.
“You two seem unusually close for a brother and sister this young,” Penny said. “Are you twins?”
“No, we’re two months apart,” Angie said. “Never ask a girl her age, but I’m the youngest.”
Penny laughed, then said, “Two months?”
“Long story. Steve’s adopted, I’m adopted. Only he’s really fully adopted adopted. My first dad, Daddy Frank, died when I was thirteen. My dad now is ... was? ... Daddy Frank’s brother, so my uncle. He and Mom adopted me as fast as they could, so I never think of them as uncle and aunt, just mother and father, and Daddy Frank is Daddy Frank so I don’t have to have overly confusing names for people most of the time.”
“Another TV movie!” she said, chuckling. “It’s a pretty heartwarming story. You got along well from the start?”
“Mostly,” Angie said. “Things really picked up just before high school.”
“We committed to being friends, doing things together, and helping each other navigate school. We put together a study group, met a bunch of people, dated a bunch of people...” I said.
“I introduced Steve to Jas, pretty much, and told him to ask her out...” Angie said.
“Which caused me to push into drama, where Paige snuck her way into Angie’s heart...”
“I did!” Paige said. “Kinda intentionally, too, mostly. There was ... something ... and it just got to be a bigger and bigger something.”
“So, here we are,” Jas said. “Nobody shares any blood, but we’ve really been kinda our own little family even well before we moved into the house together.”
“That’s very sweet,” Penny said. “And ... you’re really my dream. Personable, articulate, passionate, attractive ... exactly what works on TV. Thank you so much for picking our little parade for your proposals, Angie and Steve.”
Angie blushed a bit and said, “It was ... magic. Sometimes in life that happens. It’s ... good stuff seldom is just luck. You work your ass off to get to where the luck happens. If you don’t, the luck does you little good. You can’t make it work for you. That’s our national championships. Any one of maybe four to eight people or teams, depending on the event, were solidly ‘good enough.’ One of them was going to win, and that takes skill and luck. The wrong opponent or some stupid mistake and it all blows up and that’s that. For you, maybe — hopefully! — that’s us making a lucky decision. If you hadn’t jumped right on it, well, opportunity gone. Or if you’d been ham-handed or whatever.”
“Also ... really thoughtful. See what I mean?” Penny said. “That’s mature well beyond your years. You all strike me as that. You’re ... what ... twenty?”
“Nineteen,” I said. “Jas will be twenty in a month and a half.”
“I...” she said, grinning and pointing to herself, “ ... am the older woman.”
Penny giggled at that.
“I love it!” she said, clapping her hands together.
“We blame our school, mostly,” Jas said. “Memorial is seriously tough, especially for a public school. We only sort of saw it at the time, because when you’re in the middle of things it’s just ‘high school,’ but after? So many National Merit Scholars! That sort of thing. It’s like ... yeah, they pushed the heck out of us, but it worked. We got mature because you have to. That, and you can’t do academics, drama, and debate, or even two of them, at a high level and not be mature. The kids that can’t schedule, prioritize, make good decisions, and all that, fizzle out. Maybe they have a great time and great friends, but ... it’s just different.”
Paige nodded, and said, “We have a great time and all, but ... I wouldn’t be a tenth as mature without everyone else in my life showing me the way, particularly my wife-to-be.”
Angie gave her a big hug.
“Good segue!” Penny said. “You both use the word ‘wife?’”
“We do,” Angie said. “Both of us like ‘wife,’ and we can do our own thing since there aren’t any real rules. We’ll likely both wear white dresses, too. We just met with friends of ours...”
“Lizzie and Janet, from that first prom...” I said.
“Them, yes,” Angie said, giggling a bit. “They’re getting married, but Janet will be in a dress — pink, if she gets her way, which I bet she does — and Lizzie will be in a tux. She’ll be a bride, though, not a groom. And they’re having Bridesmen, which I think is cool.”
“Fascinating,” Penny said. “That sounds both exciting and daunting.”
“A little of both,” Angie said. “We’re making our own roadmap. Maybe others will like it. Maybe not. Jas and Steve will be more traditional, but they’ll write their own vows and make it suit them.”
“We’ll probably collaborate, really,” I said. “We left each other completely alone about the proposals, but the vows...”
“Four heads are better than two!” Paige said.
“Very much so!” Jas added.
“I have to ask,” Penny said. “Did you have those written out? They were really good, I thought.”
“No disagreement from us!” Jas said.
“None!” Paige agreed.
“I didn’t...” Angie said.
I shook my head.
“Me, neither. But we both competed in extemporaneous speaking, where you have to give a short speech on a randomly drawn topic with just thirty minutes to prepare. It really gets you into the habit of organizing your thoughts, thinking it through, and knowing your options. I probably had most of the phrases a while back, but I’m pretty sure some of the words turned up that morning.”
“Ditto,” Angie said. “I knew mostly what I was going to say, but stuff happened and made it better.”
“One couple had a video camera with sound. We might have a recording of them,” Penny said.
“We heard about that,” Angie said. “We’re very excited to see it!”
“I want to see my face,” Paige said. “I had been thinking I was ready for ... a while. And, I mean, I was, except ... also no. When I saw Angie kneeling, my mind went blank and I couldn’t even think. My brain turned on enough to pay attention to Steve and Jas, but when Angie started talking, I just followed her voice and ... fell in love again, I guess.”
They kissed, quickly.
“So...” Penny said. “I have more ideas than I know what to do with, and I’m just a junior producer. The first thing, the ‘Romance at the Rose Parade’ thing, that’s like ninety percent a lock. Closer to a hundred, really. It only blows up if the network has something so big that you don’t fit, but ... well. I can’t believe they’d run with a TV movie. Maybe one day. I can see it in my head, but ... yeah. On the other hand, I know there’s some buzz about doing a ‘gay rights now’ thing. It’s timely, with that court case in ... well, that’s where you are, isn’t it?”
“Criminals no more!” Angie said.
“I kinda liked being an outlaw,” Paige said, pretending to pout.
“Cool!” Penny said. “Well, that, and AIDS, and Reagan supporting research ... and then that PROMISE group, which obviously you’re more connected to than I could have hoped ... it’s all ... there’s this shift from fighting for basic rights to ... moving into the mainstream, I guess. Like you said, why should it matter what sort of couple goes to prom? Why do only heterosexuals get to go? Not that long ago, no one would have asked that question, but now it’s starting to be a mainstream thing, and people have to fall back on religion or something to justify it. Somewhat like your friend’s parents.”
Angie started to say something, then stopped.
“What?” Penny said.
“I was about to say that I don’t feel like ... well, the voice of a new generation or something. But...” she said, shrugging a bit, “I don’t know if anyone does, in the moment. I think of someone like Marco Roberts, who steered A&M’s Gay Student Services club through years of a lawsuit and held it together when it threatened to implode. And he really does count. But ... then I think of Lizzie and Janet, who maybe are less of a ‘voice’ than we are, so far — though I’m sure you’ll hear more from them — and it makes me think of Lizzie reading the paper and blurting out, ‘Phyllis Schlafly knows my name?’ And, heck, maybe she knows ours, too.”
“Not like they’re not out there,” Paige said.
“So, if Phyllis is a voice of the old generation, and a good friend of mine is on her radar ... maybe we are. I tend to say Anne and Natalie are more the real voice, at least out of our school, because we only used our platform a little, while they’re going at it full-bore, with a defined agenda and goals and a non-profit and the whole nine yards. But there’s room for a few, definitely,” Angie said.
“Any idea why this is all coming out of your part of the country?” Penny said. “Not one of the big-name cities that have been the innovators before?”
“Well ... take proms,” Angie said. “I think maybe it had to. For all we know, we’re really not the first or second or anything. Maybe some cool school in California has had lesbians at the proms for a decade. We’re news because it comes from a place no one would have expected. It was us thanks to luck, but some of that luck is a student body that’s better educated and probably less religious than the average along with a faculty that expects us to be little pains-in-the-ass and push things. A&M’s been in the news for a long time, so that’s not new, but the timing works well. Same with Baker v Wade. Some luck in the Fifth Circuit and now maybe we have a chance with the Supreme Court. Some of it ... I mean, it’s not so much that anyone’s suddenly liberal as just ... basic civil rights. Memorial’s not welcoming any sort of craziness, it’s just acknowledging that we’re the same as other students. A&M’s not gone radical, it’s just ... the courts spoke, the decision is made, and the people who were opposed accept that because that’s what you do. And the Fifth Circuit ... I mean, if you read the decision, it’s very conservative in that it’s all about privacy and preventing government over-intrusion and things like that. It’s not radical at all. All it says, really, is ‘government should keep its hands off people’s personal lives unless there’s a really good reason not to, and who someone loves is not a really good reason.’”
“Which sounds like a voice of a new generation,” Penny said, chuckling.
Angie shrugged and said, “If the shoe fits, I guess...”
Everyone chuckled at that.
“I’ll be checking in with you,” she said. “You met me here, but I’m mostly at the main office in New York. I’ve got a lot of people to talk to and things to pitch. Might just be a little segment, but I really hope for more. The wheels grind slowly, but they do grind, so ... we’ll just keep up when there’s news. I hope, anyway.”
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