Backup: 33209: Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (John & Yoko)

Backup of https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-john-yoko.html.

---

Chapter 1.5 -- Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Satomi)

Chapter 1.6 -- Homecoming Dance -- John & Yoko

When the late pre-registration system became available for classes at OC, I chose my classes and bought books -- general education and electronics classes. Taking a break from the process, I ducked into my dad's office and availed myself of his store of the snacks he often made his lunch of. I picked up one of the books I had bought and read it while munching.

"Oh, Hi, Joe."

I turned toward the door. Jeans and tee this time. "Hi, Julia. Don't mind me, I'm just raiding my dad's store of nuts and raisins and roasted soybeans and granola. Want some?"

"He won't mind?"

"I'm sure he won't. He told me I could, if I got hungry. Hasn't he offered any to you before?"

"Well, yes."

"So here you are." I hold up the raisins.

Since I was sitting in the chair at the desk, she sat down in Dad's recliner, and I poured some sunflower seeds, raisins, and nuts into her hands.

"Getting ready for next semester?" she asked, before picking a bit of the mix to munched on.

"Been to register, and went to the bookstore the library."

"Is that a textbook you're reading?"

I showed her the title of the book I had open on the desk, and she read the title.

"Body Talk -- the Psychology of Non-verbal Communication. Is that for a class?" 

"I'm not sure. I just thought it looked interesting."

"So is it?"

"It is, but it's giving me a headache to read. It seems to be written from the assumption that all relationships are founded in a 'sex-driven power competition dynamic' or something like that. I can't agree with that."

"I don't think I could, either. Can I see it?"

I showed her some passages and we shared our impressions of what was written and some more of Dad's stash. 

"Well, it does have some interesting things to say about what we say with our bodies. Why did you think you might want to read it?"

"Eh," I hesitated, then hedged. "Sometimes I get lost when I'm talking with people."

"So you want to try to read their minds?" She raised her eyebrows.

"Just, uhm, wondering if I might be missing what's going on between the lines."

"I suppose it might help -- I mean, be useful. But many times the people talking don't really know what they mean, either."

"You've got a point there."

"So what did you think of Tech?

"Tech?"

"Professor Reeves said you went up last Thursday."

"Ah, yeah. I don't think I'll be going."

"No?"

"Not much in the way of Japanese classes."

"How did things go with the girl you went to see?"

"He told you about that, too?"

"Uh huh."

I shook my head. 

"Not so good?"

"I discovered we really didn't have much in common. I suppose that's also part of the reason I don't think I'll be going to Tech."

"Too bad. Is she good looking?"

"Yeah. And I think she's a nice person. She's planning on teaching special needs children. We just don't seem to have much in common."

Julia looked pointedly at the book on non-verbal communication. "I don't think you really need that book."

"It's not for getting dates."

"Oh-kay." She grinned.

I chuckled and scratched my head. "Just a little. Maybe. But I need to understand non-verbal better in the workplace, too."

For a minute or so there was comfortable silence, broken by the sound granola and nuts makes when you eat it.

"Oops. Your dad won't have enough for himself."

I checked his drawer. "His stash is okay, but I'll warn him to bring some more."

"Anything else interesting you're reading?"

"Heh. Just some microprocessor books I borrowed from the library."

I showed her the books.

"Oh. May I?"

She thumbed through them, nodding.

"I didn't know you were interested in this kind of stuff."

She smiled sheepishly and handed them back.

"You're not really interested?"

She grinned, but didn't answer.

"Maybe we should trade places."

"Yeah. I'm supposed to be grading papers for your dad."

We traded places, and I read while she worked. 

****

Julia stood and stretched. "Did you hear about John Lennon?"

"Hmmm?" I looked up. "Lenin? USSR? Or John, Paul, George, and Ringo? Need to trade chairs?"

"And Yoko. No, just needed to stretch a bit." She continued to stretch.

"I don't really keep up. Heard he was killed by a fan last week."

"Yoko's from Japan."

"True. I doubt I'll ever meet her. If I did, I'd like to tell her what we, well, what I believe about life after death."

She sat back down. "You believe people live again after they die?"

"The spirit lives on. We'll all be resurrected, and, if we choose to accept it, we can continue our family and friendship associations in the next world."

"Is that what your church teaches?"

"Yep."

 She bit her lip and and turned back to the tests.

"Your classes next semester going to be interesting?" She marked a test without looking up.

"Electronics, a lab in writing a research paper, some general ed, and singer's diction for fun."

"Sounds fun. Is it going to be hard?"

"I've been talking teachers into letting me skip some classes. Don't want to repeat things I took in high school. So it won't be too boring. I'm skipping the basic electronics, except for basic AC circuits. Wanted to skip that, too, go straight to amplifier design and microprocessors, and I wanted to finish in a year, but my brother told me to pace myself and take some easy classes so I don't kill myself. Doctor Brown kind of agreed about the not pushing too fast, too."

"Alternating current circuits?"

"Direct current is easy -- simple math. But a number of things change when current isn't constant, so you have to learn more rules for alternating current."

"If you skip classes, will you have enough to graduate?"

"Been talking with counselors and teachers about substituting classes. I'll have to be careful not to skip too many, though."

(For what it's worth, the real me skipped as many classes as he could, and that caused me trouble in the real world. The version of me in this story may be a little smarter.)

"Is that book about microprocessors one you'll be using?" 

"Not yet. I think I could handle it, but Dr. Brown and Denny both thought I'd be jumping in too deep. The introductory class is using Intel's 8080, and that's kind of disappointing. But Doctor Brown is a friend of Dad's, and he says he'll let me use Motorola's 6800, if I can get the necessary hardware by the time I take the class, and if I can pass the tests."

She nodded. "I guess you like the 6800 better than the 8080?"

It occurred to me that Julia, like my parents, seemed to be more interested in my opinions than in asserting her own.

Well, Dad was pretty insistent that I would earn the money for my schooling. Dad and Mom would be willing to give me free room and board if I studied at Odessa College or at the University of Texas at the Permian Basin, but I would pay for my classes and materials myself.

"The year I took industrial electronics at Permian, Mr. Bluesfelt bought an Altair 8800 kit and let us put it together and try out programming on it. I read a little about the 6800, too. Denny was working at the time for a cousin of ours on a computer that uses signals from satellites to figure out where you are on the earth. It used an 8080 and an HP calculator."

"A calculator?"

"Yeah. It had an array of solenoids to feed information to the calculator."

"Solenoids?"

"You know how an electric motor works?"

"Magnets and electromagnetism. Sort of."

I looked inquiringly at her, but she was focusing on the test she was grading.

"Well, electromagnetic field pushes a rod out to hit the calculator key and a spring pushes it back. Denny and I thought there had to be a better way, but Reggie insisted on not breaching the HP warranty, and didn't seem to have the connections at HP to get information on a better interface." 

"Hmm. Maybe he didn't want HP to know what he was working on?"

"Possible. Yeah. Likely. Anyway, now Denny works for Motorola."

"Denny is your brother." She turned and looked at the microprocessors book.

"Right."

"Intel 8080. Motorola makes the 6800."

"He said the 6800 was part of the reason he applied at Motorola." 

She nodded without comment and turned back to the tests.

(Now the real me actually did bump into the real Julia in Dad's office several times over the next few months, but I don't remember much of what we talked about. Maybe a little politics and religion, probably a little about the missionary experience, some about life plans and such. I, that is to say, the real me, never quite knew what she made of him.)

*****

By the Christmas dance, Neil, the young man who had been doing the music while I was gone, had left on his mission. His little sister approached me about the sound, and I agreed to bring the system and my records and tapes and coach her how to work the sound.

So I got to get involved with the dance music once again.

"Well, Mary, I must say your taste in music is good. We brought you something from the refreshment table, since you're so busy." Sister Patton and Sister Bell approached the sound table with cookies on a paper napkin and a cup of punch. I was manning the sound while Ana was dancing.

"Thank you, Sister Patton. Of course, this is not nearly all mine. Brother Orange brought all of the recent stuff." I accepted the refreshments and found an almost safe place to set them down.

Brother Orange, who was the young men's leader/advisor, worked for one of the local radio stations. He was the one who helped the youth group plan the dance, including dance contests and other ice-breaker activities. When Ana asked if I could do the sound I pointed out that all my music was at least two years old, and he had volunteered to bring more recent music.

"Well, Josephine, can I ask a question?"

"What's that, Sister Bell?"

"You dance with all the girls, why don't you ever ask them out?"

"Good question." I looked around. Only Brother Orange was close enough to hear over the music, and he wasn't listening. "I guess figuring out why all the girls ran away when I tried to ask them out is something I'll be working on now."

The two of them looked at each other with expressions that might have said "I told you so." or might have said "Huh?".

"Well, have fun dancing." And they left.

I'm not sure why they asked. Both of them had daughters my age, both daughters were now safely married.

When Ana came back, she dragged me out on the dance floor, and Br. Orange took over for a song. Ana was cute, too.

When the dance was over, as a reward for my work, Brother Orange let me choose one of the albums he had brought for prizes, and I took home John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy.

I'll admit to mixed feelings when I selected it. I really liked three of the tracks that were getting airplay -- "Starting Over", "Woman", and "Wheels". But I hesitated between it and the debut Buggles album, because I've never been one to follow fads -- especially fads that involve famous people who have been recently murdered.

"Go ahead. Take both." I tried to decline, but he urged me, so I did.

I set the sound system back up in my room when I got home, listening to the album on my headphones and reflecting on what I knew of Lennon and Ono while I set the speakers back up, continuing to listen while I checked details of my schedule for the coming semester.

Suddenly, I was hearing the Japanese in the background of "Kiss Kiss Kiss":

Daitero Anata ... (Hug me, my love ...)
Daite ... (Hold me ...)
Motto daite ... (Hold me more ...)
Daite! (Keep holding me!)

"Daitero" is a familiar command form of the verb "daku/idaku" (「抱く」、 approximately, "embrace"). In this context, either "hug me" or "hold me" works as a translation, although, in the first three instances, a bit of a scrubbed translation. The use of "Anata" here, by a woman for her lover, is an intimate form of "You", and would make underlying meaning rather clear -- even if the sound effects hadn't.

(Japanese is interesting in this. Anata (「貴方」) is one of the formal second person personal pronouns. Kimi (「きみ」) is also one of the informal second person personal pronouns. But Kimi （「君」） means "prince". And anata (「あなた」) ends up being a very intimate form when used by a woman for a man in certain contexts, although not (usually) so intimate in the workplace. One could guess that there has been some mixed inversion in use over the centuries, perhaps something like "thee" and "thou" once being more intimate than "you" in English.

I understood her to be saying that climax was not her goal. Maybe it was important, but the pillow talk, the deep and intimate conversation concurrent with the act, and the prolonged physical comfort of embrace after, were at least as important, and maybe more.

The album reads to me, not as a glorification of objectified sex, but as saying that sex is supposed to be a part of the processes of negotiating the wilderness of a marriage/love relationship. Yoko is on record as saying that is what both she and John intended.

I generally skipped that song when I played the album after that. I didn't think I really needed to be encouraged to repeat that part of the lessons they were trying to teach. Not until I was married, and probably not after. Not with them. With the woman I would marry.

Chapter 2: Christmas Present -- Micro Chroma 68

TOC

---

[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/01/bk-33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-john-yoko.html.
Extracted from https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes.html.]

Backup: 33209: Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Satomi)

Backup of https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-satomi.html.

---

 Chapter 1.4 -- Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Beryl)

Chapter 1.5 -- Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Satomi)

More crushes. 

Satomi Mihara.

Sister Mihara was a fireball of a missionary. As a fellow young missionary in my first area, Tokorozawa, she had lead out in ways that both helped the Elders and threatened their sense of authority. I was not the only missionary who developed a crush on her. 

Some of the young male missionaries resented their feelings toward her, but she seemed able to catch them off their guard and put them at ease. 

Something about her attitude made it clear she was entirely devoted to the work, not at all interested in romantic entanglements. She seemed to understand the pure love of Christ and live it.

We were both in Tokorozawa for two months, and then I was transferred to Niigata.

About half-way through my mission, I had been assigned to Nakano Ward in Tokyo when Sister Mihara was there, and she had encouraged me not to give up trying to learn the lessons we were supposed to teach from. With her encouragement, I asked the mission president to allow me to study the lesson plans using the Kanji (the Japanese/Chinese logograms commonly used in Japan) instead of the Rōmaji (Japanese, written using the letters of the Latin script which we use in English and many other European languages).

("Rōmaji" and "Kanji" are examples of the use of the Rōmaji script.「ローマ字」 is "Rōmaji" written in Japanese script (katakana and Kanji), and 「漢字」 is "Kanji" written in Kanji. I'm sure you really wanted to know.)

I couldn't see the meaning in the words of the Romaji version of the lesson plans that most foreign missionaries studied from. Too many homonyms and near-homonyms with no familiar roots. The Kanji are the roots. Without the Kanji, I couldn't see the meaning, and without the meaning, the words and the ideas would not stick in my mind. 

But Kanji study had in the past become a strong temptation that some of the missionaries had needed to overcome, and most of the Church mission organizations in Japan strongly recommended against the non-Japanese missionaries studying them, to the point of making it the rule in those missions. My second mission president had left the question somewhat open, but regularly warned us not to let Kanji study take too much of our time.

So I promised the mission president not to study the Kanji themselves too much, and he gave me special permission to study the lessons from the Kanji version. And I finished learning them in a month. 

Somehow, I developed a crush on Sister Mihara's companion, Sister Hummer, too. As I say, it was too easy for me to develop crushes.

While I was in Nakano, I had a dream in which I went in to the mission home for my monthly interview with the mission president, and Sister Mihara and Sister Hummer were waiting outside the mission president's office. At least, I thought it was them when I woke up. I talked with them in my dream, then went in to talk with the mission president, and he told me that I would next be assigned to a female companion. I asked who, and he asked me whether I had considered the two sisters I had met coming in. And I acknowledged that I had.

In the light of my experiences since then, I can see that this dream was at least partly influenced by the Holy Spirit, to help me foresee and work out essential parts of my path ahead, and that the particulars of the dream were not important. It was something of a dramatic demonstration of what my mission president would tell me at the end of my two years, that I would still be on a mission, so to speak, receiving my new mission assignments more directly from God, and that I would be required to choose for myself, to a certain extent, both my assignments and my companions in those assignments.

At the time, I found myself wondering whether I might find myself being called to get married before my two year assignment as a missionary in Japan was finished. The adversary of our souls has various ways to confuse us, including trying to get us to pervert our revelations of truth.

I talked with the mission president about that dream, and he acknowledged that there probably was some meaning in it, though probably not literal. On the next transfer, I was assigned to Edogawa Ward.

One transfer later, Sister Mihara was assigned to Edogawa, as well. There, during our branch study sessions, she coached me about my shyness, and, in the process, told me she loved me. I understood her to mean it as a fellow missionary, and responded by trying to get out of my shell a bit more. It was not that she wasn't cute enough for me to become obsessed with, just that both of us were focusing on the work. (And, of course, there was the torch I was carrying for Beryl.)

Again, I was transferred out on the next transfer, to Kumagaya.

Sister missionaries were called for a year and a half at the time, and Sister Mihara finished her mission a few months later, while I was in Kumagaya. Missionaries of opposite gender were not allowed to write each other during their missions, but after the missions were done, there were no such restrictions. She wrote me a postcard while I was in Kumagaya, and I wrote back. Both of us kept focused on the work in our letters.

Now I was home. And, after that conversation that went nowhere in the Texas Tech cafeteria, I figured my mind was clear of concerns about Beryl. I wrote Satomi a letter, essentially as follows:

拝啓 (Haikei -- salutations),

お元気ですか？ (Does my letter find you well?)

学校の計画がうまく進んでいますか？(Are your school plans coming along okay?) 幼稚園のバイトはできますか？(Did you get that part-time job at the kindergarten?)

ボクはもう、テキサスに戻って、近くの、お父さんが教授を努めている市立短大に入学する準備をしています。 (I'm back in Texas, getting ready for school at the local college where my dad teaches.) また、しばらくして、もっと大きい学校に転入することを考えています。 (I'm planning on transferring somewhere bigger later.) 新聞配達で入学金を設けています。 (Working a newspaper route for tuition.)

夏休みになったら日本へ、また大阪へと旅行しようと思っています。(I'm thinking about going to Japan for a visit come summer break, thinking about visiting Osaka.) 恐縮ですが、大阪に居る間、付き合っていただきたいと考えては過剰な発想でしょうか？ (It embarrasses me to ask, but would I be presuming too much to ask you out while I'm there?)

元気にしていらっしゃると嬉しく存じます。(Hope this finds you well, )

敬具(Keigu -- respectfully yours,)

ジョーより (Joe,)
里美様へ (to Satomi-sama)

I don't think there is a way to ask that question that doesn't feel awkward, and my skill level with Japanese didn't help.

Chapter 1.6: Homecoming Dance --  Crushes (John & Yoko)

TOC

---

[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/01/bk-33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-satomi.html.
Extracted from https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes.html.]

Backup: 33209: Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Beryl)

Backup of https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-beryl.html.

---

 Chapter 1.3 -- Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Julia)

Chapter 1.4 -- Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Beryl)

So the girl I had nursed a terrible crush on since middle school, whom I had written to sort-of regularly during the first year of my mission, and who had replied maybe twice, had agreed to meet me at Texas Technical University, where she was attending school. My best friend outside of church, Rodrick, was attending Tech, too. Texas Tech was a pretty decent technical school, also had a good school of medicine, the one Lute would be attending when he got back from his mission.

I called Rodrick up and he talked to his roommate, and they decided I could roll out a sleeping bag on their floor so I could have more time to check the school out and talk to Beryl in the morning. 'Drick indicated he questioned my motivations, my rationality, and my sanity, but other than that did not offer advice. He knew a lot of my history with Beryl.

After delivering papers Wednesday afternoon, I ate dinner and drove the three hours to Lubbock. 'Drick and his roommate were studying for tests, so we didn't spend more than a half hour catching up on the last two years and talking about our plans for the future. He didn't seem much interested in microprocessors and digital circuits, preferring analog. 8080 vs. 6800 was a non-question to him.

First thing in the morning, I went to the school offices and got a course catalog and other information, and talked with a couple of admissions counselors. Then I went to meet Beryl in the school cafeteria.

She was seated at a table near the entrance, and I recognized her from a distance. 

Recognition was an issue. It had been two years.

She was nicely dressed, in something of the same sort of fashion as Julia had been wearing when we first met. Maybe it was the "in" fashion that fall.

Nicely dressed? 

It wouldn't have mattered what she wore. I had always found her devastatingly attractive no matter what. That hadn't changed.

She'd grown up a bit from the petite, really cute junior high cheerleader who had won a young geek's heart in 8th grade algebra by asking him why he didn't try harder, but she was still petite. Curves in all the places most guys seem to like curves, and a face that, even without makeup, seemed like it would just never wear out its welcome.

She looked up as I approached. "Hi." 

I couldn't read much from her expression. 

"Hello. Uhm, mind if I sit?"

"Of course not." She didn't exactly smile, but she didn't exactly frown, either, just nodded once towards an open chair.

I sat. "So," I hesitated, "how has school been for you?" And I could have kicked myself.

She tilted her head. "Good enough."

I looked for something to say. "Still a year to go, huh?"

"Yeah." Again, she nodded.

"So what are you planning to do after you graduate?" I think that was what I said next.

"I'm hoping to teach special needs children." Now she smiled, but she didn't really seem to be feeling that much more at ease than I was. 

"That's a good field to work in. Meaningful work."

She nodded in a matter-of-fact way. "What do you plan on doing now that you're back?"

As beautiful as she was, her physical beauty no longer gave me the kind of motivation that had once pushed me out of my comfort zone to talk to her in junior high school, or even the kind of motivation that had in times past sent me out now and then just to ride my bike past her house and wonder what she was doing. Now it was just causing me stress.

With Lizzie Ann, I was comfortable to be myself. With Satomi, maybe I wasn't as comfortable, but I always felt, I don't know, like I was with a friend. 

With Beryl, I had always felt out of my element. Her family was upper middle-class, mine was entirely outside of the social class structure -- I was a stray tomcat wandering too close to a family-of-quality's favored tabby, in her perch on an expensive, dangerous rocking chair. 

And even though I felt that I had now been allowed onto that rocking chair with her for a moment, it was not a comfortable feeling at all.

"Still not sure. Engineering or physics. Or maybe computers."

"Tech has good engineering departments, I hear."

"The physics here is pretty good, too." 

Again she nodded.

"I also want to keep studying Japanese, though, and Tech doesn't have anything but really basic classes that I wouldn't, uhm, wouldn't really be challenged by." 

Negative, negative. 

"Japanese. You don't have to be challenged by every class, though, do you?"

"True."

"You learned it pretty well, then?"

"Iya -- mā, senkyōshi toshite wa jūbun kamo shiremasen."

She smiled a tight, indulging smile. "I have no idea what you just said."

"Well enough for a missionary, I guess."

"Oh. So are you thinking of coming to Tech?"

"I'm going to take classes at OC next semester, and see where it goes from there."

"Do you plan to live in Japan again sometime?"

"I'd kind of like to work and live there for a while." 

I thought about mentioning my reason -- that I felt I could do more missionary work as an ordinary person than I was able to accomplish as a missionary, but the words just felt out of place and got stuck in my mind.

"I don't think I could live there. It would just be too strange."

"It's quite modern now. You get used to the differences quickly."

She smiled wryly. "I guess you did."

There were other things besides Japanese that would need to be talked about if we tried to get together, much larger things. 

I think she understand that, if from nothing else, from my reservations about her drinking sangría when we were eighteen. She had been so vulnerable on that occasion, and I had not dared take advantage of that vulnerability. And I was never sure that she was not disappointed that I hadn't. 

So much of what little relationship we actually had was sketched in negative space.

No, I never mentioned that occasion to 'Drick, or to anyone but my mom. Mom had just nodded her head and let me talk.

I didn't know how to broach the question of religion, and I knew I would never be happy with a woman I couldn't even talk about my religion with.

Somehow we stumbled through maybe half an hour of attempts at conversation, skirting around the important topics.

"Are you going to eat lunch?"

"I guess not." I sighed. "I'm sorry I've taken your time. We don't seem to have much in common."

She nodded. "Joey, you're such a nice guy, and all that, but I think you're right. We don't seem to have much in common." She smiled a little sadly, and we took leave of each other.

I was realizing that I had spent eight years of my life idealizing this young woman. I was not having sexual fantasies about her, but I was objectifying her. I wanted her to be something I wanted her to be instead of who she was.

I had given my heart to an idea, a dream, not a real person. 

Ironically, we had more in common than I realized. I later spent ten years teaching children, enjoying it immensely. If I had been considering the possibility of a teaching career at the time, maybe we could have found some traction. 

Or maybe not. Anyway, there was no sudden chemistry, no voices of angels telling me to fly in the face of logic and continue my pursuit of her.

I went back to talk with 'Drick a bit between his classes.

"How'd it go?"

"We talked."

"And?"

"I guess we really don't have much in common, and we seem to be heading different directions."

He grinned. "I figured you'd figure it out pretty soon."

"Had to try."

"Braver than me."

"Still not dating?"

"The idea of marriage scares me."

We talked a bit more and I headed home. Arrived in time to get the afternoon's load of newspapers delivered.

I still, every now and then, wonder whether I made a mistake in letting the differences be too much of a barrier. There must have been some reason for the terrible crush, for the torch I had born for eight years, other than her physical beauty and the fact that she had taken the trouble to ask me in 7th grade algebra class why I didn't do homework when it was clear I could make better grades.

On the other hand, making my choices clear concerning Beryl allowed me to pursue a different path.

Crushes.

My sister Louise explained her philosophy about crushes to me when I was about eleven or twelve. Crushes were one kind of love, an appreciation of the good qualities in people. She had crushes on many people, both male and female. None of them were people she was interested in marrying. It was one kind of love, but not the kind of love you give to your marriage partner.

Being in love was different. There were things you only did in marriage, and having crushes, being willing to appreciate the good in others, was not engaging in infidelity to Howard, the guy she was dating and considering marrying at the time.

She was seventeen or eighteen at the time, and I figured she knew what she was talking about.

It made sense. Not just to my mind, but in my heart, it felt right to be able to love people that I wasn't planning on marrying -- not to want to make love to them, but to appreciate them and their good qualities, to have tender feelings towards them, and to want them to be happy. And even to reach out to try to help them be happy when I had legitimate opportunity.

And that helped me recognize that I wasn't really falling in love with about every girl I ever met. I just developed crushes easily. And I should not be worried about it.

It was a great burden off a twelve year-old's shoulders. If fidelity to the feelings of my heart did not require me to learn to be a Don Juan, neither did fidelity to the people I loved require me to become a King David. (Or a Brigham Young.)

There are things you only do for love in marriage, and if you keep those separate from the other things you do for love, love can be shared with everyone.

So my sister Louise helped me untangle the wisdom of God which I was learning by means of the Spirit of God in my heart, through prayer and studying the scriptures, and separate it from the human wisdom which I was learning from the world around me, from the radio and newspapers, in stores, at school, and even through the outward church -- and also even from ideas I had brought with me from before I was born. She helped me see that there would be a way for me to learn the laws of man but follow the laws of God.

I had a crush on Louise, too, of course, but I had crushes on all four of my big sisters.

Perhaps that torch I had born for eight years was just one huge crush, after all.

In retrospect, one thing has become clear. Pursuing Beryl would have required me to break through whatever barrier prevented me from broaching the subject of Church with her.

Chapter 1.5: Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Satomi)

TOC

---

[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/01/bk-33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-beryl.html.
Extracted from https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes.html.]

Backup: 33209: Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Julia)

Backup of https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-julia.html.

---

 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.

(I forget now which school the real Julia transferred to, but Julia in this novel isn't the real Julia, so TCU will do.)

****

"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."

Dad grinned. "So what did you find at the library?"

"A book about the 8080 and the 6800."

"¿Los números?" Dad raised his eyebrows.

"Microprocessors." I chuckled my reply and shook my head.

Chapter 1.4: Homecoming Dance -- Crushes (Beryl)

TOC

---

[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/01/bk-33209-homecoming-dance-crushes-julia.html.
Extracted from https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2020/01/33209-homecoming-dance-crushes.html.]