Chapter 1.2 -- Homecoming Dance -- Work
Chapter 1.3 -- Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Julia)
I opened the door to my dad's office at the college. "Dad, Mom said you needed ..."
Dad was not in his office.
A very striking woman my age was, however, seated at his desk, working on something that looked like Dad's tests.
"Uh, hi."
"Hello." She turned to greet me, and stood up. "You must be Professor Reeves's son, Joe."
She was even more striking when she stood up. Well-constructed and about as tall as I, she was dressed in a sheer but demur two-layer dress of blues and deep reds which revealed the facts of her curves while keeping the details hidden. And brought out the blonde of her hair and the blue of her eyes. Beauty pageant natural good-looks. Just as attractive as Lizzie Ann.
Some of the women at church dressed similarly for Sunday meetings.
When I was approaching my teens, I'd find myself distracted, trying to discreetly observe the curves hidden, but not really, by the clothes the girls and the women at church wore. (Why do they call that Sunday best? Hemlines. Necklines. Really.) And then I'd have to correct both my thoughts and behavior.
Or not correct, depending on my mood, but I was self-aware enough to understand that looking made it even harder for me to talk with the girls, in addition to making them uncomfortable. And I knew inability to talk with them was not what I wanted.
I didn't know the phrase "objectifying women", but I understood parts of the problem from a practical side.
Somewhere along that time, Elder Packer gave his talk, "To Young Men Only", and I took the counsel about controlling thoughts to heart. It took a few years before I was reasonably able to exercise self-control and was not too distracted to talk with young women my age. And I felt the efforts at self-control definitely made it much less awkward to be try to be sociable.
When I was sixteen, I realized I needed to try to refrain from judging ill of the women who dressed in ways to emphasize their curves, who were too willing to cater to fashion more than to sense. Social pressures are a terrible thing. With help from some of my sisters' female friends who chastised me for my Pharisaical attitude towards women who were just trying to look attractive, I figured out that judging them was another thing that made it hard to talk with them -- and another way I had to learn to control my thoughts.
Objectification does seem to be a double trap. As I say, I sort of understood the concept, even if I had yet to become familiar with the term. But, even at twenty-one, I still wasn't quite getting beyond the boundaries of the juvenile interpretation of René Descartes's tautology, "I think, therefore I Am."
It takes practice to communicate with the person you're talking to, instead of with your internal concept of that person, and I had spent most of my practice time through the end of high school immersed in science fiction and fantasy novels. Mostly good novels, but my mom was probably right. Averaging over seventy a year was probably too much, and, while I was exposed to good ideas through such greats as Bradbury, there was too much Heinlein, Clarke, et. al., and way too much of the likes of the Victor Appleton syndicate. Maybe not enough E. R. Burroughs and HG Wells.
George Orwell gave me a headache. Too much of a kind of truth I was unprepared to deal with until I had had time to reflect on the experiences of my mission. But his stuff really wasn't science fiction. Speculative fiction framing an allegory in the case of 1984, and allegorical fantasy in the case of Animal Farm, but not science fiction.
During my mission, I was able to come to somewhat of an ability to ignore the clothes and the makeup and see through the socially enforced elements of presentation to focus on the person. Somewhat, if I were not taken too much be surprise.
(And 1984 might have part of what helped me with that. The scriptures helped a lot, too, of course.)
Anyway, for ten seconds or so I was struggling to keep my eyes from straying. I think I succeeded, but I'm not sure. Only she would know whether where my eyes first went made her uncomfortable, and she never mentioned it.
"Uhm, yeah. That's me." I thought about asking who she was and what she was doing there. Dad hadn't mentioned hiring anyone new, and the students he hired never dressed like this to work for him, at least, not after their first day, that I knew of. Jeans and a tee were the usual.
She didn't make me ask. "I'm Julia. I'm doing some work for your father. He just stepped out."
Right. Sure. No. Something didn't add up.
"Oh. Well, my mom asked me to drop this off for him." I put whatever it was on his desk, in a place where he would see it but it wouldn't be in her way, and tried to make my escape.
"I hear you've just returned from serving a mission in Japan."
I hadn't even gotten myself turned back towards the door. I nodded. "Maa, sore wa sō desu ga."
"That's Japanese?"
"Oh, sorry. Yeah. It means something like 'Well, that's true.'"
"Sounds cool."
"Erm, I guess."
"Uhm, so was it fun?" She paused, as if she were worried she'd said something gauche. "I mean, tell me about it. I've been thinking about going on a youth mission, myself."
"I have no idea what, ..." But I realized I was going to be stuck before I finished out the thought about what she'd think was fun. "You're not from the other ward?"
"Ward?"
"No, I guess not. Uhm, the other congregation. We have two here in Odessa."
"You mean of your church."
"Well ..."
"I'm Baptist."
"Oh."
Not
a member of my church. But what was I going to say to that? Beryl was
Methodist, and I was carrying that torch for her. If it mattered.
"Guy I used to work for was a Baptist." I snortled at my non-seqitur. "Not that I'd expect you to know him necessarily. There are lots of Baptist congregations around, aren't there?"
"Yeah."
"Several of the families in the wards here used to attend one of the Baptist congregations."
"Did they?" She didn't appear impressed with that line of conversation, either.
"Come to think of it, my best friend, Rodrick, is Baptist."
She shrugged. "Don't know him."
"Well, his mom is. Anyway, I don't know much about what youth missions are like for Baptists."
"You went for two years."
"It's sort of standard for us."
"Our youth missions tend to be much shorter. A few months, maybe half a year at most."
"Oh."
"But we can go more than once."
"Once, and then we're supposed to get finished with college, get started on our ..." I had to pause again. "... careers."
"Families?" She blinked.
"Yeah.
Families, too." I did not add that families were supposed to be more
important than careers. I didn't want her misinterpreting.
"I guess you spent most of your time witnessing about Jesus? Your dad tells me you believe in Jesus."
"We do. But we spent a lot of our time looking for people who'd listen, and studying Japanese so we could talk to them, too."
"Japanese. That must be hard, witnessing in Japanese."
"It can be. But the Spirit often guides us."
"Gift of tongues?"
"A little bit. Well, yeah, we claim to have a lot of help sometimes."
"Wow." She seemed genuinely impressed.
"Of course God expects us to be diligent, too, but when we've done our part, He fills in the gaps. Sometimes the gaps are pretty big."
"Do you witness from the Bible?"
"Yeah. Of course. And from the Book of Mormon. Have you heard about it?"
"Professor Reeves has mentioned it a couple of times. Is your family all Mormon?"
"Oh, yeah. For several generations."
"My family's been Baptist since my grandfather joined. We feel pretty comfortable with the Baptists."
I nodded my head, and thought for a moment how God never seemed to allow me to get comfortable anywhere. And the conversation seemed to bump into a wall.
After a bit of struggling for something to say next, I said, "Well, I need to get over to the library and then the school offices. Gotta look at textbooks and arrange for classes this winter."
"Oh." Now she seemed disappointed. But she brightened. "Are you taking classes here next semester?"
"Yeah. It looks like it. I think I plan to get a lot of general ed in and transfer to another school. Or maybe get an associate's in Electronics."
"I'll be transferring to TCU after I finish winter semester and graduate."
"Texas Christian University."
"Yeah."
"Do you do work for my dad often?"
"Several times a week."
"Then we'll probably bump into each other again, I guess."
"I guess so."
"See you around."
"Sure."
I ducked my head in the Japanese o-jigi that had become habit, turned to leave, and felt her eyes on my back as I walked through the door.
Probably my imagination. I often worried that everyone was watching me.
"See you around." Her voice followed me.
"So what do you think of Julia?"
"You could have warned me. Really, Dad, next time you want to set me up, warn me. I'm not offended, but is she?"
"She saw your picture on my desk, and I told her a little about you. And she seemed interested."
"If I'd known even that much, I'd have been better prepared to make intelligent conversation."
"You won't hold it against her?"
"No. But we sure struggled to find something to talk about. She's a Baptist, Dad."
"You're not prejudiced." This was both an assertion and a command.
"I guess we can share about Jesus. We can share scriptures from the Bible. How am I going to talk with her about Abinidi or Mosiah in the Book of Mormon? Or about the temple? I'm not as shy as I used to be, but I need more common ground."
"How are you going to know if you don't give it a try? Give her a chance, man."
"When? It's not like we're going to have reasons to spend time together."
"A book about the 8080 and the 6800."
"¿Los números?" Dad raised his eyebrows.
"Microprocessors." I chuckled my reply and shook my head.
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