I’m Back In Seattle Again 14.

This year my family really was coming out west to stay. They’d be taking the long route, down through the southern states, across Texas and up the California and Oregon Coasts. There’d been some talk about flying me to Richmond or Atlanta and having me make the rest of the trip with the family. Mom said that I actually had been offered such an opportunity but had declined. I don’t recall such a specific offer being made, but it could be that two or three weeks at Lois’s sounded a lot more peaceful than an immediate confrontation with my folks, though I thought everything would work out once I got a chance to explain matters fully.

Things were fairly peaceful in Seattle during the first part of Summer Vacation. Instead of buying me a single present, for my birthday, Lois took me to a sort of hobby/toy store and I bought a three-bladed plastic boomerang, some of those rubber band-powered balsa plane models and a monster bubble set to entertain my nieces.

I’d been talking for some time about wanting a hunting knife for larger carving projects. Though I’d been whittling since I was Six, I really wanted it just because I wanted a hunting knife. The craft idea was the way to justify it. During the past year I’d read a biography of Jim Bowie who’d been a hero of mine back in Kindergarten and beyond and I was full of fantasies about knife fights and designs for new fighting blades.

Ruth and Bill gave me a Bowie Hunter with a five-inch blade and a nice leather sheath. I believe Ruth purchased it with cigarette coupons.

I went to the Library for the Blind and checked out two more of the Lucky Starr books by Asimov as well as a novel by Andre Norton, Starman’s Son. This was a story of the far future, long after The Bombs had fallen, concerning the adventures of a young man named Fores, a mutant, marked by his silver hair. He carried knife, sword and bow and hunted with a telepathic Mountain cat named Laura.

Fores must choose between a life consigned to the workhouse of his village or absenting himself from the society he has known. He takes the latter course, rescues and befriends Arskane, a man of another tribal people. After a series of harrowing adventures with his new blood brother, Fores learns the true purpose of the Starmen, in whose ranks his father was an honored member though Fores had been denied a places in this group, owing to his Difference. Eventually of course, Fores is singled out as one of the most honored young men of his age.

I resonated a lot with this story, keeping my hunting knife and boomerang by me as Fores would his weapons. I imagined Paul as Arskane and my brother in arms. I wondered if I’d ever see Paul again.

I began writing once more. This time, a series of short stories and vignettes, beginning with a rocket launching, a UFO sighting over Seattle and A meeting with Aliens on Mars. There followed the journal of a Space Forces officer in a lifeboat in orbit about the sun and how he facilitates his own rescue after his ship, The Cruiser Solaris is suddenly destroyed.

At the same time, I was doing what I called Rocket Design Work, which consisted mostly of breaking down the various stages of a moon trip; Climbing into orbit, reaching Earth escape velocity, landing on the moon, taking off and returning to earth. I imagined and wrote about the rocket systems, which would accomplish each stage of the journey. I consulted with Jim Magnus on some matters and he gave me about as good advice as I gave him, I.E. not very. Neither of us knew as much about science as we thought we did, but we had fun with our ignorance.

I began talking to Marty, Chris and John from my previous Seattle days, on the phone again. Chris and John in particular seemed terribly intent on convincing me that the work I’d be expected to undertake at Worth McClure Junior High the coming Fall, would be so advanced that I might well flunk. (Seems I’d been this way a time or two already.) The effort to discredit Vancouver was still alive and well and I felt myself being put in the position of defending a school that I hated.

One day Chris called and said he’d just heard from Stan McGovern and Stan wanted me to have his number. I wrote the number down with my Brailler and tried to call it several times, each time getting a business, which seemed to have nothing to do with Stan or his family. That was the last I ever heard from Stan, though I believe he was at Vancouver the following year and perhaps longer. There was a rumor going around a number of years ago that Stan may have been killed in a car accident, but that may have been an extrapolation of the accident which had supposedly blinded him. Since it was largely because of Stan that I went to Vancouver in the first place and saw my life changed quite abruptly in several ways from the way it had been, it feels curious that Stan should exit my life again so precipitously.

I continued to baby-sit for Lois and Bruce when they went out in the evening, which was frequently. If they were going to be out quite late, a girl named Lindi, who was about my age, came over and we sat up till all hours, watching movies and talking. I told Lindi some of the stories about the trucking company and our rivals, The Glovers, and she was horrified but said she did believe me.

One evening when I was in charge, I screwed up my courage and asked the information operator if there was anyone in South Seattle with the name Brito. There was a listing and after many hang-ups I finally said something when Mr. Brito answered the phone. I asked if I could please talk to him for a minute and he said he guessed so. I told him that Paul hadn’t been entirely responsible for being kicked out of school, that some people had made it their business to get Paul into trouble and he’d been caught merely taking something I needed to give to him.

Mr. Brito said he’d had a long talk with Paul over what had happened and they both felt that Paul didn’t really deserve what had been done to him. He said he’d have let me talk to Paul, but he was out for a walk. I asked if I could call back some other time and he said that would be okay. (It would be quite a while before I called back again.)

Things changed rather suddenly when my family arrived at the end of a three-week trip, circling much of the country. Mom and Dad now had a big Mercury station wagon in which they’d been travelling with Christine. I think they said they left Michigan with ten thousand dollars cash. Uncle Verne had bought back the dry cleaners, feeling very badly that we hadn’t decided to stay. Unc sold the plant for the same $30,000 for which he’d contracted with my parents, two-and-a-half years previously. The new owners turned around and sold the business within a year for $100,000.

Chris and I hugged each other hard when we met on Lois’s lawn after everyone was decanted from the Mercury. We were polite to one another for a day or two, then were back again to brother-sister wrangling.

We stayed at Lois’s and Bruce’s two or three weeks I guess, during which time much of Mom’s pent-up anger had built up and a lot of it was valid enough, had opportunity to express itself. There seemed to be something wrong with just about everything I did. I mentioned early on, that I intended to build another rocket this summer and this time I meant for it to Work! Mom said that I needed to forget that stuff and find something the rest of the family could share. I said I was interested in rockets. She countered that there were lots of other things to be interested in and it was time I found something else. Then I wasn’t supposed to talk about rockets or missiles or space or UFOs "or I’ll cave your head in!"

Fourth of July arrived soon after the family did and Bruce was helping the girls set off fireworks on the patio. These were the fountains of pretty lights variety, nothing which actually exploded. One item remained to be lit and Bruce decided to let me light it. I think he let me hold the punk and guided my hand to the fuse. Chris protested rather loudly, not because she thought I’d be hurt, but because she’d been expecting to shoot off the last one. I mentioned the incident to Mom a while later saying that Chris had been upset that I’d usurped her firework but I felt that since I couldn’t see the fireworks, it was fair that I should be able to light off one or two. I think I put it just about that way. Suddenly Mom was screaming again. "Are you looking for sympathy!? If you are, I’ll kick your butt for you!" I don’t think I’d intended my comments that way and was basically just making conversation, no more.

Mom objected to me making unsupervised calls to Ruth Johnson, since I was probably looking for sympathy. I’d been calling Lois Jackson, (Grandma Lois,) again and Mom didn’t like that either, since Grandma Lois had evidently always felt sorry for me.

When Mom and Bertha Magnus got into the same city, my calls to Jim stopped as well. Bertha had evidently been exaggerating again. One day when I was talking to her on the phone, she asked if Mom would like to come talk with her for a minute. I relayed the request to Mom but she and Lois were going shopping and were heading out the door at the moment. Mom said she didn’t have time to talk right now, but would call later. By the time this story made the circular path back to us, it seemed that Mom had said, "Of course I don’t have time to talk to Bertha!" (More sickness, both in my family and in Berthas.)

Several days after my family was reunited, Mom and Dad came into Lois’s living room to confront me about Paul and some of the matters that had been hinted at over the last few months. Lois stood in the kitchen, calling out topics which needed to be discussed. I believe Mom had a written list.

I’d mentioned The Disease and the company to Lois, without providing much detail. I’d also spoken of Paul being Out, that other consciousness state he often assumed. I tried to explain that I had been getting letters from a variety of people, their styles of writing being all different as well as their competencies with Braille. Mother, reducing everything as usual, to their lowest common denominators, said there was no trucking company. Paul had written everything himself, lying to me, therefore showing himself to be no friend of mine. Mom’s analysis of the situation was valid enough. I’d wondered at times myself if Paul were lying or at least stretching the truth, but what he had managed to do was so much beyond any normal hoax, and I’d seen many, that it seemed highly inappropriate to dismiss my feelings and concerns as mere stupidity.

Next we came to the subject of The Disease, which of course turned out to be just another bunch of crap. Doctors had seen me all my life. I couldn’t possibly have some deadly disease, and what business had a teenage boy giving me medical advice? Paul was just trying to scare me, which was likely true but it had worked and besides, this is just what Paul warned me my parents would try to tell me if I discussed The disease with them.

Mom wanted to know if Paul took any kind of medicine for this disease. I said he did.

"What was it like?"

"Little pills."

"Did you ever try any?" I admitted that I had and got the expected reaction, how stupid could I be?! But what did it taste like?

I said it was sort of sweet. "A sweet tasting powder!" Mom exploded, (though I’d specified pills,) "do you know what that was?"

"Some kind of drug maybe?"

"You’re damned right that’s what it was!" She tried to make me admit that the medicine had made me dreamy but it hadn’t and I said so. It after all, had been only Saccharin that Paul had been giving me to lend a bit more tangibility to his brilliantly concocted Disease con.

Dad and Mom agreed that I’d have nothing further to do with Paul. That wasn’t a huge surprise at this point. The interview went on a long time, taking many twists and turns and Lois offering her input here and there, but we ended with the subject of the guitar. What progress had I made toward learning to play my Christmas present?

The correct answer was None to speak of. (You were at the State School for the Blind where they have an extraordinary music department. Why didn’t you arrange to get guitar lessons?) I tried to explain that things didn’t work that way. There was a standing rule that one had to take two years of piano before taking up another instrument. Mr. Sherman, the instructor of instruments other than piano and Organ said he didn’t want to put a guitar into my hands until they’d grown some more. Even if he’d let me take guitar, along with piano, that was two instruments I’d need to practice, besides being in Choir. I’d gotten some afternoon study halls this year and felt I needed them. I didn’t mention that actually my studies this past year were the least of my problems beside Paul and all of his phantasms, but I really did have quite a lot of homework.

Lois popped in at this point to announce helpfully that when in school, there’d been times she hadn’t thought things were exactly fair, but she’d never seen a kid as negative as I was. Mom said "You’ve built up a nasty attitude against the whole world and I’m going to spend the summer booting it back out of you." (This was of course a regular Dr.’s prescription for getting cooperation out of me!)

As a sort of parting shot for the time being, I was ordered to "Get that guitar, go outside with it and when I talk to you next, you’d better be playing something!" My parents said a lot of stupid things at times, but this was one of the sillier.

I saved myself though. I’d had a whole lesson at Lansing and when I was eight or so, Ruth had shown me how to play Taps and Reveille on a toy trumpet. I’d also had the Sixth Grade with the Piano, so I played Taps and Reveille on the guitar. Not very impressive but the parents were mollified somewhat. This was certainly not setting up like Last Summer.

We rented a house on Beacon Hill, not too far from where we’d lived before Michigan. Chris and I had our own rooms. I made a couple trips to the library, so I had a fair number of books to read. Things were starting to settle down a bit. Paul was out of our lives and things were supposed to start over right where they’d been when I first went away to Vancouver. Only, they weren’t the same.

I’d been living away from home now for the majority of two years and though I’ve had a lot of hard things to say about Vancouver, I’ve never faulted them for not trying to teach independence. I was used to doing many things I hadn’t done at home, such as setting and clearing tables, waiting on other diners, making my bed according to specification, putting away my clothes, keeping track of my personal effects.

One day I asked for a can of deodorant. It was purchased and somebody handed it to me when I was preparing to wash up in the bathroom. I used the Right Guard spray and went to put it away in my room. Not really a conscious thought, that’s just how things had been for a couple of years. It was automatic to put things in my room. Mom had still another screaming fit. The rest of the family needed to use deodorant too. I wasn’t going to be hiding things in my room. She’d had enough of my sneaking ways!!! It hadn’t occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong but nothing I said seemed to make things any better, so I shut up.

The next set of problems I learned about gradually. While I’d been in Vancouver, there’d been much going on in Michigan, concerning which I’d had little or no inkling. Chris had been having considerable troubles at school, not academic so much as social. She’d been seeing a psychiatrist and was on tranquilizers for a while. Dad’s drinking had increased dramatically. Mom and Dad had come very close to separation or divorce.

It’s difficult of course, especially to me, who was not there, to ascertain exactly which was the chicken and which the egg, which the yolk and which the feather. I gathered that Chris went to a school with a high percentage of black students. Mom blamed the racial make-up of the school for much of Chris’s problems. We had not been used to interracial strife in Seattle. Prejudice certainly existed there, but we’d never seen the open hostility between blacks and whites that was so common in the Midwest. Additionally, Chris was quite good at antagonizing people of any color. As I related in chapter 3, Chris came to us as an Angry, frightened child. This didn’t change a whole lot in the next dozen years or so. I’d seen her deliberately picking fights with kids who’d done nothing to her, calling them ugly names, spitting, etc.

Still Chris had legitimate problems with other kids. She seemed to be getting hurt a disproportionate amount of the time. Whether or not she always helped to bring on these conflicts, she was just a child and not fully culpable for everything that was happening.

Mom told frequently of an incident when Chris was set upon by several other students just outside of her classroom and the teacher sat inside the room, with the door closed, but a few feet away, ignoring Chris’s continuous screams for help. I think the Principal and School Counselor may have mandated Chris’s therapy as a condition of remaining in Regular Classes, I.E. non-special. Dr. Jones was a large, black man who understood the racial problems with which Chris was struggling. He also identified her as an intelligent, sensitive person and seemed to have helped her to a considerable degree. Unhappily, no effort was made to follow up the treatment for Chris once we reached Seattle. I’m sure money was a factor. Chris was supposed to remember what Dr. Jones had taught her and in effect, be her own maintenance mental health worker.

Chris told me a few weeks ago that her entire stay in Michigan was like a two-and-a-half year nightmare. A good deal of the nightmare, especially near the end, was due to Dad.

I mentioned in the last chapter that drinking had not only become a greater part of Dad’s life, but also of his lifestyle. The family had a lot more money than before, more social contacts, greater opportunities and obligations to entertain and be entertained. Dad started keeping hard liquor in the house as well as beer and using it all at a greater rate.

On one occasion while I was in the West, some of Mom’s relatives, visiting in Michigan, were spending a few days with Mom, Dad and Chris. Dad became intoxicated and Mom and him quarreled. At some point Dad threw Mom against a door, drew back his fist and shouted that he would smash her fist through the door. Mom kept her cool and said that Dad could go ahead, but if he did, he’d never see her or her kids again. No one intervened. Chris said later that she was praying so hard that she knew Dad wouldn’t hurt Mom. In fact, Dad didn’t strike Mom, then or ever, but he made a lot of threats and raised his hand more than once.

On another occasion, Dad had been drinking hard and again, Mom sensed a fight brewing. She was getting dinner and asked Dad please not to drink anymore. He agreed and went down stairs, supposedly to do an errand of some kind. A while later Mom asked Chris to go down to the basement and tell Dad dinner was ready. She got partway down the stairs but came running up, telling Mom That Dad was drinking the wine from Uncle Vick and it was running all down the front of him. Vick and his friend had made a hundred gallons of wine a couple years before. Dad had been given a gallon jug, from which he was now drinking, as if it held water.

Mom told Chris to get her coat and go to the car. Dad must’ve heard them leaving for he came running out of the house after them. Chris and Mom locked all four doors and Mom gunned the engine as Dad pounded on the glass of the driver’s window with his fist, screaming "If you leave, don’t you Ever come back!"

Mom and Chris put up at a local hotel and Mom was beginning divorce proceedings. Mom went back to the house to get some things and she said she found Dad sitting on the couch looking scared, and stone sober. They talked for quite a while. Dad begged her to come back, promising he’d stop drinking and seek psychiatric help. Mom came back but Dad did neither.

It must’ve been right about this time that I was having the worst of my troubles in Vancouver and my problems were just one more load atop an already teetering pile. However, I hadn’t known any of this.

Dad was enjoying his vacation so much that August was here and he still hadn’t sought work. He and Mom intended to buy a dry cleaning plant in Seattle fairly soon, but cash reserves were running low. Dad eventually decided, with some considerable nagging from Mom, to go back to truck driving for a while to keep the bank account from growing too thin. (Paul had told me once that he could give my dad a driving job, but I knew better than to bring that up!!)

Our new neighborhood was a fairly peaceful place at the time. It had long been populated by a mix of Caucasian, Japanese and Chinese residents who had coexisted quite well together. More recently an increasing number of black families had moved into the area. My parents talked a lot about blacks taking over the neighborhood, but I don’t recall a great deal of racial tension at the time. Chris would go back to Vanassalt Elementary where she’d attended Kindergarten and part of First Grade.

Next door lived a 16-year-old girl named Sherry, who came over one day, shortly after we moved in, and offered to introduce me around the neighborhood to some of the other families. There was Stephanie, about my age, and living right across the street. She was of some interest to me because she was female, my age and There. Mom declared just about immediately, that she looked like a grown woman and was too old for me. Whether this had to do with Stephanie being Chinese, or some other reason, I don’t know. From time to time I’d mention that I might go over and visit Stephanie and Mom would always have some cutting remark in store.

The Moffats with four grade school aged boys, lived next to Stephanie’s house. They had an aboveground, steel swimming pool, about 20 feet across, in which Chris and I sometimes went swimming on hot days.

I made a couple more trips to the Library for the Blind this summer and checked out a number of other titles, including Asimov’s science fiction detective story, Caves Of Steel. I also got a twin vision book, (meaning Braille and print pages faced each other,) called Rockets and Spacecraft. This may have been the only book every written of the subject, especially for the blind and their sighted parents, children or friends. The book had raised line pictures of rocket engines, satellites and deep space probes.

Probably the most significant book I read this summer, at least to me, was a modest biography of Robert H. Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuelled rocket. Like most youth biographies, this one gave just about enough information to titillate but did provide some valuable insights into the life and dreams of this eccentric, creative and thorough individual.

The combination of my own space dreams and speculations from past generations were providing me with some fascinating ideas, which had been out of circulation for quite some time. One of these was the concept of a reloading solid-fuelled rocket, using charges fed from a clip like the shells in an automatic pistol. Another was the use of unneeded rocket parts being used as a source of fuel once a spacecraft reached orbit. The first idea was one of Dr. Goddard’s patents. The second was the brainchild of a Soviet engineer back in the ‘30s.

I began speculating about a craft for travelling to mars, which after climbing into earth orbit, would use a sort of mill to grind up rocket fins, excess structural members and empty fuel tanks into a fine aluminum or magnesium powder. This could be burned with liquid oxygen to furnish thrust to travel beyond the earth.

Another idea I had was a huge hydrogen balloon, companioned by a heated oxygen balloon, supporting rocket engine and capsule. This craft would float high in the atmosphere then the rocket engine would use the hydrogen and oxygen gases to thrust into space. This wasn’t as economical an idea as I first thought, but at the time, fairly creative.

Another sort of fantasy had begun to surface and once acknowledged, returned fairly frequently thereafter. I’d been replaying the conversation I’d had with Mrs. Howgan a few months before, about the time Charles Shortridge had dressed like a girl. The details of the costume she’d described had intrigued me a good deal and I began to imagine, in a far-distant future sort of way, myself wearing a girl’s costume to a masquerade dance or some like occasion. The setting for my fantasy continued to be Vancouver, even though I never intended to go back to school there.

I think it was on a Saturday in August. I was sitting on the couch, daydreaming and it occurred to me that I might try dressing in Chris’s things. The object would be to find out what it was like to dress as a girl. Since I was just thirteen and fairly small, it seemed more appropriate to dress as a girl rather than as a woman, wearing an undershirt instead of a bra and anklets instead of hose. Mom wasn’t working outside of the home just now, so I wasn’t alone very much just presently, but the seed was planted and opportunities would arise.

My parents bought The Price Cleaners in Lake City. Dad continued driving truck for a while. The man, who’d been doing the dry cleaning previously, had agreed to stay on. Mom could press and Susie clothes. (A Susie is a steam device, shaped like a woman’s body, for restoring shape to a dress or coat.) We were back in business, though the plant never earned much.

Somehow or other, I got the rocket ban lifted and set to work with a slimmer cardboard tube to which I affixed nosecone, tapered nozzle and fins, by means of fiber reinforced tape. I poured a mixture of sulfur, sugar and salt into the rocket as a solid propellant. In this I was wrong in several particulars.

For one thing fuels in powdered form are more apt to explode than to provide steady burn. Other kids I’d talked to from my generation and the one previous, had used powder fuels and some of their rockets had worked. What I really got wrong though, was using salt as an oxidizer.

As everyone knows, wood, coal or gasoline requires air to burn, just as we need air to bur the food we eat. Rockets that use alcohol, kerosene or liquid hydrogen for fuel carry along a supply of liquid oxygen to mix with the fuel and allow burning to take place. In solid rockets such as mine, the fuel needs to have a supply of oxygen combined in one or more of its ingredients. Potassium nitrate, (salt peter) or potassium-percolate are examples of such chemicals. Sometimes a chemical other than oxygen is used which can combine energetically with another element or compound. A mixture of sulfur and zinc is an example of such a fuel. At high temperatures, sulfur behaves very much like oxygen, burning zinc, or other powdered metals if brought into close contact.

In combining sulfur and sugar in my fuel mixture I had a fairly good start, but in substituting salt for saltpeter, I committed a grave error. I knew at once a little too much about chemistry and a lot too little.

While saltpeter used commonly in the manufacture of gunpowder and fertilizer compounds, contains a large amount of oxygen, table salt contains chlorine. I knew chlorine could combust with flammable materials in the same way that oxygen can make things burn. But while saltpeter gives off it’s oxygen fairly readily, the chlorine in table salt is bound tightly to sodium atoms and it requires more energy to break apart the salt than is to be had by combusting sugar or sulfur with the chlorine produced. Hence no sustainable combustion. No thrust. No rocket.

In retrospect, I’m glad my rocket didn’t ignite. I doubt my cardboard construction would have stood up to any serious pressure and it would certainly have been a fire hazard had I been a better chemist. It was significant though that Dad and Mom were both on hand to help with the launch attempt.

Toward the end of the summer I again tried my hand at writing with science fiction, with results which at least to me, were more satisfactory than previous attempts. Aunt Margaret was visiting from Billings for the week and was quite impressed that I was actually writing a story and had even finished it while she was still around.

The story was nowhere near publishable, which is interesting for reasons, which shall develop presently. It was entitled Through Time And Space, written under the penname Joseph Parker which was an alias I’d picked up in Fourth Grade when Stan McGovern, Marty Lancer and I were planning our lives of crime.

A boy of thirteen or so, named Jim, is working a math problem when his friend Billy drops by to inform him that a spaceship has been seen down in some scrub woods at the edge of the neighborhood. Jim takes his time walking over there and sure enough, there’s something that looks like a rocket ship and no one’s about just now. Perhaps there’s a baseball game going on somewhere. That would account for the absence of other kids. Who’d expect an adult to believe such a preposterous story as a spaceship just standing around in the woods?

Jim climbs the built-in ladder up the side of the hull and tries the hatch, which opens easily. He steps into a comfortable, well-lit cabin, begin looking around, when suddenly, the hatch slams shut and a loudspeaker proclaims "Liftoff at 21:00 hours."

Jim is taking to the moon, a trip lasting only 8 hours, since this is a futuristic, alien craft. Jim finds food and water as well as an emergency pressure suit. Flashing signs direct him to don the later.

On landing, Jim is met by a girl named Cathy, who introduces herself as a secret agent, working on behalf of earth, with a group of alien allies. Her group is engaged in a struggle for Earth’s freedom, against a sinister organization of Other Aliens. Since Cathy is only a teenager, she can pass freely through the enemy facilities. The enemy is studying earthlings before mounting the intended Takeover, and has a number of young people under surveillance.

Another girl, also an agent of earth, has been scheduled to join Cathy and a spaceship had been sent to fetch her to the moon. The very same spaceship which Jim had boarded. It appears the girl had been ill and hadn’t made pick-up and Jim has absconded with the boat! Cathy has been able to link Downearth and put together a dossier on Jim, who of course, is a very intelligent boy, and scientifically inclined, (which I believe were Cathy’s exact words in the story.) But the Other Aliens are expecting another girl agent. Now Jim is here and obviously the wrong sex. In a chapter entitled Spy For A Day, Cathy helps Jim pass among the Baddies as a girl. She has extra clothes, which happen to fit. Jim wears a small microphone device pinned to the collar of his blouse, which changes his voice to a more girlish timbre. This is a bit of electronic wizardry Cathy just happens to have laying around. (Of course to the Baddies, all Earthlings look and sound more or less alike anyway.)

While among the aliens Jim and Cathy discover an enemy point to point rocket craft, which after a bit of inspection and his knowledge of basic physics, Jim manages to pilot. They reach an enemy munitions dump which has recently been discovered and blow up the Baddies’ missiles, bombs and laser guns, turning the tide of the invasion effort before it is entirely underway.

Jim and Cathy are set aground in Des Moines, (now in South Seattle) and as the flying saucer lifts, they kiss, exchange phone numbers and vow to get together soon and to return to space as quickly as possible. (Hit those science books!)

Worth McClure Junior High had been built a year or so after I left John Hay. When I’d been in Seattle, Queen Anne had accommodated both Junior and Senior high classes. Now Queen Anne served Grades 10-12. I’d be attending McClure this year and the next.

Dad drove me to school the first day of Eighth Grade and registered me. In those days Seattle schools always started on the second day after Labor Day. As before, the transportation service for Special Ed. Students didn’t commence until the Monday of the first full week of classes.

McClure was a two-story building, build on a squared U floor plan. The main building housed most classrooms, shops and gym. There were additionally a few extra classrooms in portables as at John Hay. I arrived at school rather excited, expecting to pick up more or less, where I’d left off at the end of Fourth Grade. I’d dreamed once or twice about meeting John Zimmerman again and what we’d say to each other. I’d been in contact with Marty by phone and he’d been intrigued about Paul and the company had expressed also an interest in building rockets with me. Chris Gray would be in my roll-room, along with Marty and John, also Karen Fredericks, Shannon Hurd, Pandy Pierce, and Mary Rita Ohearne; all of whom I’d known at Hay. There were also several other students I’d never met, including Jane Pedden. I’d been hearing of Janey since the year I’d left for Vancouver. She’d moved to Seattle from Fort Worth Texas and John had immediately become smitten by her, (though not necessarily visa versa.)

This year Mable Joiner, a nervous and highly excitable Japanese woman, would be serving as Special Ed. teacher for the blind. Loraine Evans, a professional Brailist and Sally Knold, a large-print typist, who also served as tutor when needed, assisted Mrs. Joiner.

Since we’d all be spending our class time with regular sighted students, Mrs. Joiner was really a resource room superintendent, but she helped with homework sometimes and tried to liaison with teachers.

My schedule looked fairly easy. First period I had Study Hall, which I’d spend in #113, the resource room. Second Period I had U.S. History, Third, Science, Fourth Math, Fifth a second Study Hall and Sixth Language Arts.

U.S. History was conducted in an experimental team teaching set-up. This meant walls could be slid back to turn four individual classrooms into one large lecture hall. Mr. Lavernicke, a rather challenging individual, conducted lectures and directed activities from a microphone up front. Later the barriers could be restored, turning us into separate discussion groups; each with it’s own teacher. This class was supplemented with many excellent films, filmstrips and other sorts of presentations.

I fell in love with Mrs. Oliver, my Science teacher, pretty much immediately. She sounded a lot like Sally Field, who was premiering that fall, in The Flying Nun. Mrs. Oliver said the first half of our semester would be devoted to The Solar System, the second half to Body Systems. She was very encouraging about special interests and special projects and said she’d accept anything to do with space. She asked each of us to write an essay about what our interests in science might be and how we might use science, now or in the future. (You can see why I was in love, or at least acute psychic resonance.)

My Math teacher, Mr. Wilson, was less exciting, but our text Mathematics A Modern Approach, had a fascinating intro which highlighted the history of Math and ended with a challenge for students, to read and enjoy math books in the same way we would any other sort of book. I went home that night and wrote a short essay on number lines and timelines and speculations on time travel. Unfortunately, the interest quotient in the text proper didn’t quite live up to the expectation set by its introduction. At long last though, I was confronting the hobgoblin of Three-R-schooled parents, New Math.

My Language Arts class was with Miss Bulletin, soon to be Mrs. Watts. I still wasn’t particularly keen on English but we’d be doing a fair amount of writing and some significant reading. The later would include The Gift of the Magi, The Diamond Necklace, and an excerpt from Johnny Tremain and much else. We were encouraged to do book reports, both oral and written and could read pretty much anything we wanted. Miss Bulletin taught us to write dramatic book reports and introduced us to Madlibs.

For those unfamiliar with this haphazardly educational game, Madlibs are stories in which words have been replaced with blanks, each blank labeled with the part of speech of the deleted word, such as noun, verb, adverb, adjective, number. Sometimes a color, body part, article of clothing, animal or piece of furniture might be requested instead of an actual part of speech. The category of each blank is read aloud and students or other players, suggest words of the same category to go in each blank. When read aloud, with the new and generally inappropriate substitution words, the result is hilarious! Yes, we did our best to insert off-color possibilities or insinuations drawn from a store of adolescent slang, which we hoped the teacher would not possess. It was amazing how quickly she seemed to catch on.

I had a fairly good time the first couple of days. I was reunited with John, not quite so dramatically as I’d imagined, but we were glad to see one another. I sat with Marty at lunch, met some old friends, and started making some new.

Friday morning I woke myself up being sick and spent the day and much of the weekend on the couch in the living room. I must’ve come down with a fairly ambitious flu, because I didn’t make it back to school until Wednesday of the following week. The school system was using van-type school busses to transport us instead of the taxicabs. I shared a van with Chris Gray, Shannon Hurd, Anne Grant, Tommy Robertson, Steve Harrison and a couple of other kids from the Old Days, as well as three or four new ones.

Gwen, our driver, had stopped by on Monday, to chat with Mom and see if I was going to school that day. Mom described her as a very pleasant Negro woman, with her hair in a bandanna.

Wednesday morning I climbed aboard, strapped in and we were perhaps five minutes down the road, when Gwen said, "Paul’s sure lookin’ to see you, David."

"Paul who?" I asked, rather dumbly.

"Paul Cline," she said, then added "You’ll have him on your afternoon run."

I whispered to Chris that I wasn’t supposed to be seeing Paul and asked him not to tell anybody. He said he wouldn’t. Chris had been one of my chief confidantes when I’d left Fourth Grade and we’d kept in fairly close contact by phone through the intervening period. As I’d be learning though, things had changed.

I was on pins and needles all day. I discussed my situation with Marty, who said Paul had as much to ride on the bus as I did. This was very true, but Mom didn’t see things that way. I resolved I’d need to tell my parents about Paul being on the bus, but no way I looked at it seemed simple. It would be virtually impossible for me not to talk to Paul on the bus this afternoon and even having spoken to him would be sufficient to incriminate me. Once Mom and Dad knew about his presence, I’d be again mandated to spend long periods of time ignoring someone conspicuously occupying the same space as myself. Bus rides home were 90 minutes long and parental directives to Just Ignore Him, are not as easy to follow as they might seem.

"Hello, Brother" I said as I sat down in the seat Paul’d reserved for me. I’d liked the way Fores and Arskane had spoken to one another in Starman’s Son. Paul said we were indeed blood brothers, whether we’d done the ceremony or not and from that time on, we called one another by that honorific. I told him I had a hunting knife and he said that was good. I also told him about the story I’d written and he asked me to show it to him, saying there was a guy in New Mexico who would publish it for me. Paul gave me a letter he’d written when he had first heard I was attending Worth McClure. I asked him quietly how things were with The Company and with The Glovers. He said the war was over and we’d killed all of The Glovers. He claimed to have spent part of the previous summer in Texas.

I told Paul I’d need to tell my parents he was on the bus. He said they’d never find out. I shouldn’t say anything. (Again conflict, what else?)

Now Paul was claiming to be a songwriter. When we were together and certain tunes would come on the radio, he’d tell me "I wrote that." Supposedly other people took official credit for their authorship, but Paul had made connections, through The Company of course, to get his songs recorded. One of the songs he claimed was Love Of The Common People, recorded by Waylon Jennings. I still love the song. It begins;

Living on free food tickets,

Water in the milk from the hole in the roof

Where the rain came through,

What can you do?

Tears from Little Sister,

Crying ‘cause she doesn’t have a dress without a patch

For the party to go,

Ah but you know,

She’ll get by,

For she is living in the love of the common people.

The pride in the heart of a family man.

Daddy’s gonna’ buy her a dream to cling to.

Mamma’s gonna’ love her just as much as she can.

I asked Paul if he’d been around when all the hang-up calls had occurred last summer. He said he had and his mother had been upset, but had thought it was Duane Smith. Duane was another boy who’d been at Vancouver the previous year and who’d been expelled for fighting with a male houseparent and breaking the man’s ankle. I mentioned that Paul’s step-dad had given me permission to call their home. Paul said his mother had made his step-dad a bastard and he was now forbidden to talk to me.

As he was the last time I’d seen him, Paul was Out, in that strange, semi lucid state in which I’d so often found him while we were at Vancouver. When in such a state, Paul spoke in broken sentences and in accents suggestive of a Mexican or Native American person. His grasp upon reality was often tenuous. This is the state in which I’d experience him for the next several months.

When I got home I went to my room as soon as possible and read Paul’s letter. It said he and Charlie Carrol, (still another boy from Vancouver) were at Queen Anne High and "doing pretty damn good." I’d never really heard of Paul doing class assignments at Vancouver and my own were dismissed as mere trivial irritants. The only time I heard Paul mention schoolwork was when his English Class was reading The Grapes Of Wrath. Paul liked the book because of all the cussing. Somehow though, Paul had been promoted to Tenth Grade. Paul said his Disease had been giving him trouble, as had his parents, but he was glad we’d be able to write letters and would find some way of seeing each other. Though I’d been intending all day to talk with my parents about the Paul issue, this evening they were both either busy or gone. I really didn’t have time to talk, especially about a subject, which looked as if it would take up a lot of time. After compounding my felony by sitting with and talking to Paul again on Thursday the prospect of coming clean seemed even more remote. By Friday evening I resolved I’d just need to keep my parents away from Queen Anne, when I was a Sophomore and Paul was a Senior. Since my parents never attended my school activities in Seattle, this didn’t appear to be too much of a challenge.

Paul and I resumed our routine of exchanging letters each night. Mack Davis was in Seattle. Another Navajo girl was now writing to me. Her name translated as Sunset Wrongway, because she had been born at sunset and her parents had wanted a boy. According to Paul, Navajo women fought over the man they wanted. Pretty Flower the year previous, had defeated four other girls and now Sunset Wrongway had overcome the remaining competition. I didn’t particularly approve of this custom and have no basis on which to credit it’s veracity. All I was told about Navajo ritual was presented as the darkest of secrecy, to be hidden from Whites. I mean no disrespect to Navajo people in relating what I was told and at the time, took to be given in good faith.

Sunset Wrongway and I were now exchanging letters also, almost daily. She had come up to Seattle to be near me and to help Paul, but she couldn’t speak to me by phone. As a little girl she had been terrified when trying to use the one Reservation phone and an operator had been very nasty to her. Even though Paul claimed to have gone to the phone company office and kicked that particular operator in the ass, Sunset couldn’t be persuaded to let me phone her, though as "my woman" she was technically obliged to do anything I told her to do. She admitted that much in one of her letters.

At school things were going well enough. I wasn’t really getting the Math, but didn’t know that yet. In the other classes, things seemed easy enough certainly not near as onerous as at Vancouver. I had two study halls per day, so nothing much to bring home at the end of the day.

Mrs. Evans, our Brailist, found several science-related pamphlets in our resource room. One of these was about the creation of the first nuclear reactor and the subsequent development of the atomic bomb. This gave me additional fuel for thought in speculating about future spaceships.

I met Linda Leake, who had walked me to lunch in 3^rd and 4^th Grade. I was hearing more and more familiar names all of the time and noting changes in old friends (and enemies) I met.

When I went down to Vancouver at the beginning of Fifth Grade, I was somewhat overwhelmed by the number of kids who turned out to be stronger than me. I’d been pretty used to holding my own on the playground back home. Perhaps sighted kids didn’t always try as hard as they might to hurt me, but other blind kids certainly didn’t pull punches. Still, I’d done okay, generally.

At Vancouver, I’d pretty much stayed overwhelmed, not always the worst in the gym class, but pretty close. Still, I’d been subject to ongoing and strenuous physical training for two whole years now, plus a quarter in Fifth Grade and athlete or no, some changes had been worked in me.

One day in Science class, a kid named Kent Brown, who sat behind me, was poking and hitting at me, hassling the new kid sort of stuff. I turned around in my chair and gave him a fat lip.

"Goddamn" Kent said, "He’s pretty strong for such a little punk!"

With the exception of some gansterish behavior I encountered in Ninth Grade, I didn’t have much real trouble with kids assaulting me after that. I don’t say it never happened, but fewer kids generally, wanted to pick on a blind kid and I dealt fairly well with those who did.

Paul didn’t waste much time alienating himself at school and on the bus. He insisted on playing his transistor all the time. He and I liked Country Music, and the other kids didn’t. Paul was snooty with other kids who tried to talk to him and he despised the driver.

Gwen was a reasonably nice woman, though she tended to be loud and sometimes arrogant. Once she called a boy’s name and he answered What? "Is that how you address your mother!?" she shouted. "What do you mean answering What? To me?" Gwen would get bothered by the traffic sometimes, especially in the afternoon and at such times she’d shout "Restriction!" which meant everyone had to remain silent, except for direct questions to the driver, for good reason. Since Paul and I got on the bus with a full agenda of things to discuss, this rankled quite a bit.

One day, when Paul made angry noises about Restriction lasting through most of the run, Gwen asked "Don’t you guys ever get together at home or anything?" We said we did not. Gwen said, "Okay, you can go on with your knitting circle then." We heard her muttering that she didn’t know who was going steady with whom. Paul picked up on that right away and tagged Gwen as a likely enemy.

Though it would be a couple of years before I’d find out about this, Gwen was a Lesbian. She had a son who attended a live-in Catholic school, some distance away. She was known by her own admission to dress up in a tuxedo and attend dances at Lesbian clubs. At this time, she was evidently having a romantic relationship with a dispatcher at the Bus Company, a much more feminine woman. With her own experiences and perceptions, Gwen was pretty well equipped to spot something out of the ordinary going on, such as the relationship between Paul and me.

Another interesting thing about this situation was, though Paul and Gwen disliked each other, Gwen liked me quite a bit. I heard as much from other drivers. Gwen and I joked once, for the sake of the kids in the bus, about her and I going on a date together. She also tended to like the sorts of jokes I told. Over the years I’ve had a number of friends who were Lesbian women or girls, especially when I was younger. Paul tended to offend such folks because he had a sort of intimate bantering manner he used with females, which could be quite off putting. I don’t know to what extent Gwen’s own sexuality influenced her handling of the situation, which was about to develop, but I suspect it was a nontrivial one.

One morning Gwen asked me if it was true that Paul and I weren’t really supposed to be seeing one another. I said this was true, but added that since we were on the bus, there didn’t seem to be anything Paul could do. I had no way of knowing how the information about Paul and me had reached Gwen. She said "I have had it to here about it through the schools and the like." Since I’d heard nothing from my school, and Paul had heard nothing from his, it was hard to see why a school bus driver should be involving herself in something that had happened the year before, in another city!

I think Paul was absent that afternoon but next morning Gwen had opportunity to talk with him and he’d evidently told her something of our troubles at Vancouver. Paul was predictably angry when told that a separation would be made on our bus.

Wednesday afternoon I got aboard the bus and Gwen told me to sit in the far back. Paul was only a seat away from me though and we were able to exchange letters. Paul got off at his house; muttering. I had only five minutes or so to ride to my house. Gwen said she’d just talk with my parents for a minute.

Trying to be tactful, Gwen asked if I could go someplace while she discussed a certain matter with Mom. It was raining, so Mom suggested that I stand under the tree in our front yard. Gwen indicated this was a serious matter, so I was sent indoors. Lois was visiting at the moment and was excited about an outing she and Bruce were planning for the following Friday. She asked me if I’d baby-sit for them and I said I would. Lois said she’d feed me tacos for dinner, which she knew I especially loved. I stashed the letters Paul’d given me in my toy chest, came back out of my room and said hi to Mom. She said "Hi" in an ominous, Just wait a while, sort of tone. By now Lois was clued in as to what was happening and she offered to take Chris home to spend the night. Mom, Dad and Chris went outside, the adults taking their time saying good bye, while I sat down in the living room and waited.

Presently, Mom and Dad came back in, sat down across from me and stared at me a while. Pretty soon Dad said "Well David?" and Mom began screaming

"Why didn’t you Tell Us!?" The line of questioning was obvious. Why hadn’t I let them know Paul was on the bus at the outset? I said I’d meant to, but hadn’t gotten a chance the first evening and after that, I was afraid to. "Because you were being sneaky!" Mom interrupted me. Then she asked why I’d been stupid enough to tell other kids, Chris Gray for example, about Paul. Evidently Gwen had heard about the parental injunction against Paul and me associating, from Chris, but I never knew the precise context or form of that disclosure.

I’d also been saying, it turned out, that Mr. Burhow and other officials at Vancouver were a bunch of liars and didn’t know what they were talking about. In fact I held that opinion, but really don’t recall any statement I’d made which would have passed from Chris to Gwen. Chris Gray and I really weren’t talking together that much this year and as mentioned in earlier chapters, Vancouver bashing was quite popular within the Seattle program for the blind. However actuality, I was given to know that Mr. Burhow and Mr. Donaldson were highly educated men and it wasn’t for a thirteen-year-old to criticize them. This was a valid enough point. With all of the hysteria surrounding the manner in which the administration of the State School had attempted to put across their message to me and Paul, it was easy to confuse the actual message with the manner in which it was presented and the circumstances surrounding delivery thereof.

Then things turned in a direction I’d never heard between a kid and two parents, particularly not in my home. Mom said nobody wanted anything to do with a queer or a friend of a queer. Any man got sick to his stomach at the very thought of a queer. I was going to be called every dirty, filthy name in the book as soon as other kids got the word about Paul and me and who knew how many kids Chris Gray had told about us already?

Expanding on her theme, Mom said that once tagged as homosexual, or having homosexual associations, (as I’d already been, through my own actions,) a man or boy had trouble the rest of his life. Boys were expelled from college, court-martialed from The Service, fired from jobs, even on the rumor of being homosexual.

Dad came in at this point, to say that Paul was going to wind up on Skid Row with not so much as a pot to piss in and I was going to wind up in the same place. (Well, I thought ironically, at least we’ll be together, but I didn’t say it.)

Then followed a list of my faults. I was a liar and a cheat according to Mom, because I’d promised her faithfully that I’d never have anything to do with Paul again. In point of fact I’d never promised anything. I’d been ordered to stay away from Paul and had not done so. It was so much more dramatic though to make me a liar and a cheat instead of merely disobedient, especially since Mom knew how much I resisted lying.

"In your own home, among your own family," Mom said, "You close and lock the bathroom door. Don’t you ever again try to convince anybody you’re modest!" Actually I didn’t lock the door at such times though I’d been raised to think that closing the door was mere courtesy. Mom didn’t like to be interrupted with facts in the middle of a grand indictment like this.

Then I was asked what it meant to live in a family. I said it meant to love the people in your family and to protect them. Of course it was obvious that I didn’t love or want to protect anybody in my family and I cared only for that filthy queer. This was a bit confusing since I’d always been given to believe that I wasn’t able to protect anybody and it was hard to see how my seeing Paul was depriving anyone of protection, save possibly myself.

Then Mom said, "When you came to me when you were two years old, you were a sweet little boy who I loved. When I stepped out of that station wagon last summer, it was like looking at a total stranger standing there on Lois’s lawn. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to feel the same about you again." She went on to say to Dad, "I don’t want him."

Dad said, "I don’t particularly want him either right now."

"What should we do," Mom said, "take him out of school and send him back to Vancouver?" Then she asked what I thought should be done to me. I said I didn’t know. All things considered I didn’t see that I’d done anything particularly bad.

Now as a parent myself, I see that Paul was a highly dangerous individual and I was in a terribly dangerous situation, though the specifics thereof were obscured from my parents. At that point in my understanding, having just been so villified, rejected and trashed, I swore a mighty oath that one day, my parents would pay for the things they’d said. I kept that oath and though it saddens me to recall what happened just about two years from the time of this confrontation, I cannot say that I am entirely apologetic.

Our Talk went on for a while longer and the overall message was, my picture would be in the next edition of Webster’s right next to the word pariah. Mom said if Paul set his filthy feet in her house, she’d strangle him. Dad said "Your mother may strangle him, but I’ll kill you." I received the silent treatment for the next three days. Nothing like this had ever happened before to anybody in my family.

Mom had to go somewhere that evening, so she threw together a hasty dinner. Afterward I went to my room and began a new science fiction story, sharing the background of Through Time And Space. An astronaut named George Ferguson is sent into space to investigate a strange phenomenon in earth orbit. He finds it is one end of a time-space tunnel, leading to another star system. Dad was particularly concerned when I accidentally worked past my bedtime and didn’t seem to be quite so concerned about ignoring me either.

Mom through in lots of little flourishes over the next few days to show just how displeased she was with me. She knew I disliked buying lunch at school because of the long lines and the hassle with trays, so she threw forty cents on the table every morning, saying, "Your lunch money." She woke me up by throwing my pants (with force) on the bed. (For some reason, I wasn’t deemed capable of taking my own pants off a hanger. She always had to do it for me.) Now this became another means of her demonstrating disapproval.

When we first got a phone that summer, Christine would harass me by chanting "Talking to Paul!" when I made a phone call. Years later, She said she’d never really understood what the whole thing about Paul was really all about. Through the rest of the present week, she was the only one in the house who’d talk to me except to deliver a sermonette. Taking a leaf from Paul’s self pity book, I was tempted to call Lois and ask her if she really wanted a pervert like me around her girls.

Friday afternoon came at last and so did Lois. She never mentioned Paul. I didn’t try any funny stuff with the phone while I was baby-sitting. Lois gave me an excellent dinner and the next day, presented me with $2.00 for my fee. Mom said Lois shouldn’t have paid me so much, since she’d given me a good dinner, but Lois disagreed and made me keep the money.

On the afternoon school bus I was now required to sit next to Gwen up front. Paul sat in back, taking every opportunity he could to send veiled messages at me.

When Mom found out about the seating arrangement, she wanted to know why I was separated from the other kids, why wasn’t Paul put up there by the driver? Well, good question, but I suspect Gwen didn’t want Paul next to her for an hour and a half every day.

Later on that year Mom and I had some talks about Paul and homosexuality generally. She’d evidently been doing some reading from magazines and the like. Mom said homosexuals usually started out as a mamma’s boy when young. This continued till about age thirteen or fourteen, when they suddenly switched and started favoring Dad, rejecting Mom. In time, they rejected all women. Mom and Dad had told me that some people were born homosexual, but others made themselves that way and Paul was one of the later type. How they could possibly tell that, even if the assertion was correct in the first place, I'm sure I don't know.

I also got the story why Mom in particular, was so angry with me when the revelation came about Paul being on my bus. It seemed to me I’d been treated harshly, since all I’d done to date was to talk to Paul on a school bus, in full view of a driver and eight other kids. Now I found out that I’d created a terribly dangerous situation for Christine, since Paul feeling vengeful might take out his hatefulness on her and possibly even take Chris’s life. Since however, Paul’s vengefulness would have been largely owing to our being separated on the bus, any attempt on my part to reveal his presence earlier, would seemingly have contributed to that same vengefulness.

Mom asked me if I’d even want to protect my sister if Paul found us out in the yard, or on the way to the store. Though the question didn’t even deserve an answer, I said yes. I talked to Paul about this conversation and he said he wouldn’t hurt my sister. Then reconsidering, he said, "unless they give me any trouble." I told him to leave Chris alone or it wold be over between us. He grumbled that he thought my little sister was spying on me for my parents. I never saw any evidence of this.

If I was in trouble at home, things weren’t any more pleasant as far as Paul and the gang went. This seemed a bit much, considering how much flak I’d been taking and for whom. Sunset Wrongway seemed more articulate than Pretty Flower and more pushy too. After we’d been exchanging letters for a while, she asked me which one of them did I like better. I said I’d alwas love Pretty Flower and would always be saddened about her dying, but I loved them both and in different ways, since they were different people.

Early on Sunset asked me for an article of clothing. I sent her a pair of my underwear, asking her if she could send me something. She sent me an empty cold cream can, which she said was one of her favorite keepsakes. Later she sent me a pair of baby socks she said she’d worn when she was little. (It’s interesting to note that Paul had a baby sister.)

Soon enough, Sunset was functioning essentially as a mouthpiece for Paul, taking me to task for his pains and dissatisfactions. Even when we could sit together, Paul didn’t really count the time we spent on the bus as Time Together. He was angry that he hadn’t actually been able to See Me. Now that we couldn’t even sit together anymore, he was of course angrier.

A few weeks after we were found out, Paul was transferred to another bus. Still we stayed in touch. Marty rode the same bus as Charlie Carroll, so I could send and receive letters via Marty and Paul could do the same through Charlie. Later, Pandy Pierce, who loved to be involved in intrigues, carried letters for me, handing them either to Charlie or Pam Kenny, the girl whose parents had let swimming lessons be held in their private pool, a whole world ago it seemed. Pam was also attending Queen Anne.

I was also in trouble with Mack Davis and Manuel Lopez most of the time. Paul was never receiving the care he needed either at home or anywhere else, and oh yes, he missed me terribly. Manuel’s son, Little Pavlo, had supposedly gotten The Disease. Paul of course, generously volunteered to fix him. Paul told me via letter that he needed me to bring a stool sample to him on the bus, since it would contain veins he needed for some restorative work. Since Pavlo and I both had The Disease, we could exchange tissue. Paul kept demanding of me, "Bring" Jorsh, (a Navajo word, supposedly meaning the same thing,) tomorrow!" He "wasn’t even supposed to be addressing me and I certainly felt it was too risky to try to bring him anything on the bus, let alone what he was asking.

A few days later I got a letter from Manuel, saying he’d just buried his boy. "An’ oh God, Dave, it was such a leetle Grave." Then Manuel told me how Pavlo had always been so brave when Paul checked him and how he never complained.

Things went on and on like that. Mack had supposedly gotten into a fight with Paul’s real dad and had killed him. Mack went to prison and within a day or two, was hanged. His last letter was to me.

Charlie Carroll, with whom I’d been quite friendly at Vancouver, was now sticking in his oar, excoriating me for my sundry shortcomings, saying he was going to kill me some dark night and crap like that. Marty said Charlie’d told him Paul had asked that Charlie write these letters, but Paul said that wasn’t true. One day a letter from Manuel told me that Charlie was a traitor and we’d lynch him pretty soon. Paul of course was always Out and couldn’t be held responsible for anything that was going on.

A man named John Huckabee, of Lubbock Texas, Supposedly President of another trucking company, one originally friendly to us, wrote a letter, offering to buy the entire El Paso Lubbock Line for a large sum of money. Since supervisory duties were delegated to me, I wrote him a very polite letter explaining that we cared about each one of our drivers as we did our own families and loved what we were doing, so we couldn’t see our way clear to sell. Mr. Huckabee and his company declared war on us. According to Charlie, Agents of the Huckabee Company (disguised as teachers) were working at Queen Anne and I was under surveillance too. There followed more weapons designing and military communiqués to Lubbock and El Paso, all of which was resented by Paul, because I didn’t write enough letters just to him.

Paul was complaining more and more of his parents’ cruelty. His mom found a pair of my pants Paul’s had from Vancouver. According to Paul, his mother had said "I’m going to send them back to that girl! I’ll address the package to Miss David Plassman." She evidently decided to burn them instead. Now he wanted another pair of pants and they had to be blue jeans, the kind with reinforced knees. I told him I only had two pair of blue jeans and either would be missed by my mother. That didn’t seem to matter.

Sunset wrote now and said she wanted a pair of blue jeans and the red sweater she’d seen me wearing in the pictures Paul had shown her. I’d had this zipper-fronted cardigan since Fifth Grade. It was a Christmas present from Lois. I wore it every time we ran out of oil in the house, which seemed to happen every month or so, as well as to school Fall and Spring. I told her I couldn’t give away the sweater or the pants. She replied that she’d have thought I could give her something she asked for, since we were supposed to mean so much to one another. I gave her my copper knife Ronny Johnson had given me back when I was Seven. Still she insisted she had to have the jeans and sweater.

Finally it turned out that since all the truckers thought of me as wearing that outfit, they all wanted pictures of these clothing items in their trucks. Sunset said also that she thought it would be fun to dress up like me. I asked her if she wouldn’t be disturbed if I wanted to dress up like her? She ignored the question.

This conversation went on for months, with the subject of the pants and the sweater constantly emerging as a bargaining demand to keep Paul from killing himself, mutilating himself or any number of other things.

At home Paul was being whipped by his parents, evidently with a whip, This happened when Paul was caught using the phone or trying to come over to my house, according to Paul and all of the other voices in the letters I received daily.

Paul had known where I lived since before the time we were found out on the bus and he’d been pressing from the beginning to get me to fix a time he could come see me there. This was hard to arrange, but I was alone at home more often than before because Mom and Dad were both working at the plant now. Sometimes Chris went there as well, or on the late evening visits I’d valued so much in Grade School.

Finally an opportunity arrived. Mom and Dad would be out till the wee hours. Chris was spending the night at Lois’s. Paul agreed to come over about eight. I was of course terrified, but I let him in. He’d walked the eight or so blocks from his house to mine and he was in his usual half-stupor. He was literally stumbling all over the place. I took him to my bed and helped him lay down, He dozed for a while, then aroused sufficiently to ask what would happen if my parents came home and he was still there. (A fine time to worry about that now!) I said I’d have to put him in my closet then sneak him out the window when everybody was asleep.

Eventually Paul was able to get up and he begged met to let him smoke with me in the bathroom. I was afraid he’d leave ashes on the floor, but he promised to be careful. We shared a cigarette and flushed everything down the toilet. Then of course, he wanted to check and of course, I was in much worse condition than before. I was falling apart inside even More than last year.

When Paul was ready to leave I gave him a piece of cold pizza I’d been saving in the fridge, one of my favorite treats. Paul would be back to the house several times this year, most of them pretty hellish experiences for me. If Paul hadn’t felt he was really Seeing me on the bus, I didn’t feel that we were really visiting at my place either for most of the time had to be devoted to his preoccupation with The Disease.

Paul started pouring on even more pressure. He demanded that he be able to see and Check me twice a week at my house and I was to call him everyday by phone. Our phone was at the juncture of bathroom, living room and kitchen and I’d need to either disguise my voice or give a girl’s name to get past Paul’s mother. (Fat chance of getting that past mine.) I also had no control over when I could have the house to myself. Even so, Paul would kill himself if I didn’t comply.

I kept getting grisly messages about the various things Paul was doing to himself which would eventually add up to his doing himself in. He didn’t actually seem to be changing all that much but still the whole thing scared and depressed me. Once or twice, Paul was supposed to have died, but God brought him back again on condition that I make some concession or other.

One Friday night, Paul came to our house, rang the doorbell and asked Mom what time it was. She told him and closed the door, then asked me if I knew who that had been. I said no, because it hadn’t really sounded like Paul at first but she said it had been. I didn’t doubt her, because even though I knew well Paul’s various moods and voices, he sometimes let himself get exhausted or something, and then spoke just above a whisper. Monday morning I got a message from Sunset, saying that if Paul knocked on my door and asked what time it was, it would mean that he had died for sure and it was only a ghost visiting me. Paul managed to thoroughly scare hell out of me then by not showing up to school for the next week.

Paul started hanging around our house, not visiting me, just lurking out beyond the fence, staring at our windows. My Aunts Margaret and Winnie, the later nicknamed Spooky Winnie, because she delighted in brooding about murders, burglaries and dead bodies spent Christmas with us. My parents had trouble concealing Paul’s visits from them. At one point someone dropped a roll of papers in our yard. It had been wrapped in several sheets of phone book pages, one corner of which had been scorched in a Company sign meaning IF About To Fall Into Wrong Hands, Continue Burning. Mom read some of the roll to me. It appeared to be a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of our drivers. I recognized all of the names. Mom said this proved Paul was sick. To me it was some evidence that a company actually existed.

Both Charlie and Pam had claimed to have met Mannie Lopez. I couldn’t see why Paul would have dropped such an important item in my yard. When brought to Paul’s attention, he said it had accidentally been done by a driver named Toribio who’d mistaken my yard for Paul’s. It could be Paul did it though in order to present me with some kind of tangible evidence that he was telling me the truth. I know he’d been feeling pressured by my repeated questionings as to why he never seemed to be able to deliver things he’d promised me.

When Paul didn’t show up with a switchblade or a gun or a miniature walky-talky or a copy of one of my books he’d promised me, he’d always need to manufacture some excuse for showing up empty-handed. A gang had beaten him up. If he’d arranged to come by and I signaled him away as I had to sometimes, by turning the porch light off then on again quickly, he’d have had the wanted items with him. I hadn’t allowed him in the house so he couldn’t give them to me.

Sunset Wrongway had planned to meet me one evening, but at the last minute, her great grandfather had died and she had to be back to New Mexico for the funeral. Later she had other strategies, which had the effect of making me postpone her visits.

Once Paul said he couldn’t give me several items because he now believed me to be a robot built by John Huckabee and that the real Dave was dead.

Christmas was fairly pleasant this year in spite of all that was going on around us. Mom had called Buck Richie and asked if he’d possibly give me a Christmas card since I had continued to listen to his show and admired him. He said he’d do better than that, and when I was away at school, arrived with seven record albums which were surpluses from KAYO radio. I had these for many years.

New Years was interesting too, since we lived in a largely Oriental neighborhood. I hadn’t been used to fireworks at the stroke of midnight, but it was fun. Fireworks in those days were illegal in Seattle.

Not all of the messages I received via Marty and Pandy were bad news. One day I got a letter from Billy Holder, who claimed to be owner-editor of The Alamogordo Daily News, promising to publish Through Time And Space. He said there was much great talent in my writing and he accepted every other story and collection I wrote that year.

I followed my first two stories with a third, a supposed sequel to the others, but unabashedly about our Company. It was about a trucker called Big Sam who was involved in a battle to save our rocket facilities from villains.

I wrote the lyrics to several country songs, which Paul said he’d set to music. These were supposedly recorded by the country singer Dave Dudley and were played on radio on stations in the Southwest only.

Later in the year I compiled an omnibus of short stories, entitled The Future And What It Holds. These were mostly about the colonization of Mars and some other planets, dissatisfaction of certain individuals on Earth and visions of what the future on earth and in space, might be like. I incorporated much of the writing I’d done over the last couple of years, including a story about space pirates I’d begun when Danny Lander and I had avoided going to Mount Hood that day in Sixth Grade.

Paul said I did a very good job with my books but he was angry with scientists who wanted to destroy the trucking industry by inventing atomic power and new forms of transportation, which would make semis and diesel engines, obsolete. Now he and several of the other truckers felt like killing themselves. After this I made it very clear that ground vehicles used in my story were fuel-driven and used diesel when possible.

Once John Zimmerman started pressuring me about the letters I was receiving from Paul. He said either I’d tell him exactly what was going on, or he’d spread what he did know all over school by lunchtime. John didn’t know enough to spread but I mentioned that I had some pals here at school who were gang members and who’s be delighted to work him over. John shut up more or less. Though I’d been looking forward to going to school with John again, I was now seeing what I’d over-looked or put up with before, in John’s manipulative self-centered personality. John appeared to be able to wrap everyone else around his little finger, but I let him know it wouldn’t work with me anymore.

Chris Gray and I had nearly been best friends after our pugilistic exhibition back in Fourth Grade, but he was behaving in a manner I thought of as pretty arrogant. He thought he could inflict minor punishments of others, such as Indian burns and other such nonsense and he talked in a pretty snotty way to me a fair amount of the time. I smacked him a couple of times and put a stop to the Indian burns at least.

Pandy and I were fairly close for a while. She liked being in the loop, privy to Paul and my secrets. We talked on the phone a fair amount, as did Pam and I, at first to transmit messages to and from Paul, later, just to talk.

Shannon and Anne Grant did seem even closer than before and as before, insufferable when together, reasonably okay when apart. Anne said laughingly one day on the bus, "We’re the female equivalent of homosexuals." She didn’t evidently know the term Lesbian yet, nor did I. I mentioned this conversation to Paul and he said, "Girls are allowed to have Close relationships. Things are supposed to be different for boys."

So far as I could tell though, there was no real joke about it. I think Shannon and Anne had been in love for some time.

In Eighth Grade, I was in trouble over more than just Paul. Mr. Wilson, my Math teacher, gave me an E. for the first quarter and a D. for the semester. Grades Spring Semester stayed at the D-level, though I got Mike Capretta, one of my hoodlum friends, to change one of them to a C. with the correction feature on his mom’s typewriter.

Mr. Wilson was an arbitrary sort of guy who based a third of our grade on a rather trivial notebook. He waited till nearly the end of the quarter to let me know how much I was losing by not maintaining a notebook of printed pages. He also waited till the end of the quarter to let me know just how much trouble I was in math wise. I had one of the funniest dreams I’ve ever had about Mr. Wilson. He was yelling at me about a paper I’d turned in, on which I’d gotten 13 points out of 100. He was holding the paper out to me, but I couldn’t find it. He kept yelling, "It’s right Here!" but I kept missing it. Finally, after one shout too many, I said,

"Okay, if you’re going to be nasty to me, I’ll just wake up and leave you here." And I did. He was still yelling as I left the dream to emerge in my bed. I’ve never done anything quite like that since.

Of course the yelling that ensued when I fetched home my E and later the D, was no dream. Eventually, Mom went up to school and talked with our principal, who backed the teacher and suggested that maybe I wasn’t a very good Math student. At the time this was probably true, but I was tested on basic Arithmetic skills and did well. In all fairness, I’d have to say that Mr. Wilson just didn’t seem very interested in helping me raise my Math grades. I did try and my parents tried to help me, but this was The New Math and they didn’t understand it very well. Sometimes I didn’t even know what questions to ask.

I met Mr. Wilson on a bus one morning when I was in college. I told him I was majoring in Engineering and had taken Calculus. He said this didn’t surprise him, that I’d had good study habits in 8^th grade. Mr. Wilson was now teaching Spanish.

In other classes I was doing well enough. In Science, I built some futuristic spaceship models, based mostly on the flying saucer plan. I also designed a base to be built on Pluto, which was the planet on which my study group was making a report. In second quarter, I did a mechanical analog of the human body, using electromagnets instead of muscles to move limbs, a battery power system in place of heart and lungs and a remote-control device in place of a brain. This wasn’t intended to be a fully functional robot as such, but rather as a sort of surrogate body which could be controlled at a distance to fight or do dangerous work.

In Social Studies Class I formed the opinion that The Civil War had been fought over more than just slavery and that the text books contained a lot of Northern propaganda, though of course, both sides had valid issues. This conviction was helped along by the fact that the State of Texas was part of the Confederacy, but this wasn’t the only reason. I also gained a lot of respect for the Labor Movement and also conceived a suspicion that Native American culture was disappearing under the onslaught of modern technology and business practices.

In English, I found that I still didn’t spell or punctuate worth a damn, but this was no surprise. All in all, my grades were pretty much at the B-level, with a few As excepting of course, for Math.

Second Semester was much like the first, but I had a different English class and Crafts instead of Science. I completed a variety of projects, a balsa wood pirate ship, a ceramic beer stein for Dad, a soapstone carving, a glass and resin sun catcher, a copper embossing, a cat looking over the back of an armchair for Christine, to represent her white cat Worry.

This year I reread Tom Sawyer and enjoyed it as much as before. I read another history of the PT109, and a fictional book about PTs, by Rob White, called Torpedo Run. I also read Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes, a novel about a young man in the early days of the American Revolution.

As I had at Vancouver, I read extensively from the World Book Encyclopedia, which was in something like 289 Braille volumes, and covered most of a wall. Now I had the yearbooks, supplementing the 1959 printing up to about 1965. In these I read of ion rockets, beamed energy and Dyna Soar, a forerunner of the Space Shuttle though never fully developed.

Once that winter we visited the Magnuses and Jim and I had an old-fashioned walkabout and talk about in the back yard. I think he was building some sort of motorized scooter at the time, though I’m sure he’d be getting a real car soon. Following up on our talks about rockets he was going to build, I asked Jim if he’d tried out that mysterious chemical propulsion process he’d told me of several months before.

Jim said he and his friend had built a liquid-fuelled rocket, two of them evidently and had put one up first, carrying a large magnet. The second had gone up shortly thereafter, carrying a transmitter and a quantity of magnetic iron. Supposedly, and we recall that Jim would be Sixteen at this point, the higher rocket had whipped the lower one up into orbit. This is ridiculous for several reasons, but at the time I didn’t know that and believed Jim as usual. I think that was the last time I saw Jim by himself. We’d meet again a time or two, but for his wedding and perhaps another Official Occasion.

Surprisingly enough, considering the fairly minor inconvenience of schoolwork at home and the fairly major inconvenience of Paul at school and at home, I found some time to accomplish my own things. I was compiling a loose-leaf notebook of scientific speculations and design ideas. Much of this had to do with an anticipated trip to Mars. I’d envisioned a sort of Command Module, able to land on Mars and take off again, from which the various rocket systems necessary for the round trip could be operated. The craft would be launched from earth by a multistage rocket vehicle. Once in orbit, the spent upper stage would be pressurized with air, to serve as a sort of combination work/living space and greenhouse. I planned to grow pinto beans and perhaps corn en route, to provide high protein-carbohydrate food supplement for the crew, and to purify the air. Water for the plants could be condensed from the cabin’s air and beans could fix atmospheric nitrogen for the corn.

The craft would break out of earth orbit using fuel stored in the command module structure. On achieving Mars orbit, the crew would place a small chemical processing plant on one of the Martian moons, which would generate some sort of propellant to be used for Mars landing, takeoff and return to earth. The tanks of the command module would be replenished, for the landing mission. Later the command structure would be refueled a second time and the greenhouse module would be turned back into a fuel tank.

The greenhouse module would carry the fuel necessary to break away from Mars and begin the return to earth. After that was accomplished, plants would again be grown in the greenhouse module. Returning to earth, the craft would take up orbit and the command module would land with it’s crew, the greenhouse left orbiting as a permanent space station, parked there to assist future space missions. Not the most complete plan perhaps, but not entirely silly either.

War or no war, I insisted that our company launch a probe to Mars, in order to examine potential landing sites. A five-ton kerosene-oxygen rocket was intended to deliver a 10-pound package into the Martian atmosphere. The package would consist of a small telescope, TV camera and transmitter. According to reports back from the company, the rocket was successful, though the 35-day transit time I’d calculated would have been absurd even if the rest of the project wasn’t.

Borrowing

Flame Orange, belonging to my sister,

Selected randomly, more or less.

An experiment in movement, modes of walking.

Sitting standing;

Twirling; short and long strides;

High kicking.

Trying it girlwise, boywise,

In-between wise.

Furnished beneath, traditionally,

Experimentally, not at all.

A meditation on zippers and pockets.

A poetry of limbs.

Modesty and convenience vying.

A challenge to orthodoxy.

I was conducting another sort of research at home. I hadn’t found a dress to fit me, the ones available being either too large or too small. I did find that I could wear one of my sister’s skirts quite comfortably. One of these was kept in Chris’s bottom drawer and seldom worn. I learned later that it was orange, when Chris referred to it in a conversation with one of her girlfriends.

I’d been hearing both men and women talking recently about a French designer, who was trying to introduce a line of conventionally feminine fashions for men, including skirts and lounging pajamas. Most of the commentary was negative but people were certainly buzzing about it and this hadn’t been the first marketing attempt of this kind. I wondered what it would feel like to wear a skirt, move around the house in it, use the bathroom, do chores, and hang onto stuff. I did not perceive this as a female impersonation sort of thing. I was interested to know what else would need to be true if a man were to wear a skirt.

This was a simple; non-pleated skirt, a bit above my knee, with a zipper and hook. The flair of the skirt was not extreme, and if worn zipper side forward, the opening could answer the same purpose as that in a man’s trousers. Pockets would have been welcome.

As many people have said before me, I liked the way it felt to move in a skirt, the freedom my legs had. Of course nowadays, it’s generally held among females that one can be more at ease in a pair of slacks than in a skirt or dress. Other things are conventionally worn with the generally more dressy items and there is significant restrictions of posture and leg positioning when seated. It’s true that a lot has to do with what one is used to. What is novel to one person can be tiresome to another.

The same women, who wear slacks to work though, will often wear a robe or gown when they don’t have to leave the house. At thirteen, I didn’t particularly like robes. They suggested bedtime or illness to me. A skirt suggested neither. It was a ready-to-greet-the-day garment.

I wore a variety of things underneath, including a pair of nylon pettipants. Mostly though, I wore my own underwear. Later I decided that women’s briefs, or something like them, provided more reliable coverage. Jockey shorts tend to be a bit looser in the leg and the fly can allow fall outage. This is minimized somewhat when wearing pants, but when one’s underwear must act alone the closer, though not necessarily more restrictive leg bands in most women’s underwear tends to keep things more reliably in place. Of course the fly is absent as well. Now there are men’s shorts, which could be worn successfully under a skirt, but in those days most of us had little enough with which to experiment.

I still wear skirts and dresses when I can, probably just as many people slip into a robe or a smoking jacket. I feel at such times a bit more relaxed and more Congruent with myself, a little more in touch with that part of me which is soft and quiet and introspective.

Robotics had come up several times this year; in books I read, in class projects, in Paul’s fantasies. Now, the story was, our archenemy, John Huckabee, had built a robot to take my place. Paul believed me to be dead, and of course, would soon follow me.

Sunset Wrongway had a convenient vision just at this time. A mannequin must be prepared with coloration to match mine, and dressed as me of course. (You guessed it! It must be wearing my blue jeans and red sweater.) By now I’d gone through so much, and was so full of remorse at all the terrible things I thought I’d done, I finally handed over the items Paul had so desperately wanted. I was told that Paul found the robot, carefully undressed it, and then smashed it to bits. When he saw me next, he knew it was really me!

We ran out of oil about a week after I gave away the sweater. Mom went to get it for me to wear while eating breakfast. She wondered where it might have gone. I kept quiet and somewhat amazingly, the matter was never brought up a second time.

Toward Spring I started receiving phone calls of a very different sort. For a while I’d kept Paul from having my number, which was unlisted. Eventually though, he got it from other kids and started calling me from time to time, hanging up if Mom or Dad answered. I tried not to answer the phone when anyone else was home. I knew my face would give me away. These new phone calls though were in a voice like Paul’s but unlike his usual manner of speaking, even when I had first met him. This voice was somewhat more articulate, calmer, less inflected. It was like speaking with someone who had Paul’s memories but a different persona, and to some extent, a different set of viewpoints. I liked the guy and enjoyed talking to him, but never really had a name for him. He said he’d come from God to help Paul and me.

This guy claimed he inhabited Paul’s body when he needed too, but would sometimes with draw. He said he cold move things at will and effect other changes in the physical world, like freezing people in place if he needed to accomplish something an remain unobserved. He didn’t seem to have the power to take The Disease away from Paul and me.

The Disease had become a test for Paul and Me, through which we were to prove our commitment to one another and to God. Even Sunset had been given The disease and I’m first asked, then implored Paul to fix her, he being at the time, more interested in talking about suicide. I’m sure some concession on my part was needed to make him change his mind.

This messenger from God said I was going to receive a gift, so fantastic, that even he was not allowed to tell me what it was. He also said that God would give back to us the truckers we’d lost, such as Mack, Cecil, Jerry, Juan, Speedy and Ken. Still, that wasn’t the Big Gift.

I asked this person if I would ever discover a means of teleportation, like Tessering in A Wrinkle In Time. Also, did Madeleine L’Engle know how to tesser or did she just make up the idea. He said she didn’t know how to accomplish tessering and had just needed a way to make her story work. Paul had never read Wrinkle, but I was suitably respectful of God, not to cross-examine too closely a representative from Above. He told me that I would in a sense, invent a process like tessering someday, and that wasn’t the Big Gift either. In a much later chapter I’ll relate the theoretical progress I’ve made so far on the general subject of teleportation, and I’ll also discuss gifts I currently possess and will do a little speculating on possible meanings of his words. (God is not the only person who can prophesy.)

I told him I’d like to ask God for a special favor. My elder Niece Debby was at this time, finding it rather hard living in a household operated under Lois and Bruce’s rather sterile affections and where God had been made unwelcome. So it seemed at least, from the perspective of our own family. Lois had been going to Church the year previous and I’d attended with her when in Seattle. Now Debby wasn’t even allowed to say her prayers out loud, because Bruce ruled it was just a time-wasting strategy to keep attention focused on her at bedtime. When I babysat, I always made a point of listening to Deb’s prayers. It was our little secret. Now, could Debby please have some comfort? The voice sounding like Paul yet unlike Paul, said that it would be arranged and I was asking for a worthwhile thing.

This individual even commended me on my rocket and seemed to know a lot about me, though I suppose it was probably all things Paul knew already. He said I acted like a baby, but this wasn’t really my fault, since it had to do with the manner in which I’d been raised.

Once I received a taped message from this individual, which Pam Kenny played for me over the phone and which had evidently been dictated in the same manner. It was a set of instructions and meeting with Paul, Checking, providing gifts, which needed. At the end, he said, "This has been Unslatti." This was a word I’d learned a year or more previously and was supposed to be the Navajo name for God. It was the name Paul and I used in referring to The Creator.

Though this individual invoked the name of God and spoke in a voice which claimed to be God’s, he also spoke of having to be punished for some infraction or other he’d committed. A few years later, when trying to come to terms with this strange series of visitations by phone, tape and letter, I wondered if the whole thing didn’t smack more of The Devil than of God. Paul told me once that he thought once someone was dead, he or she would be put in a place where whatever good or bad this persons had done to others, would keeping happening to him/her, over and over again, throughout eternity. I am charitable enough to say, Goddess Forbid!

Dp#1. As I’ve indicated, God was a much greater part of the brainwashing this year. The first time Paul Checked me in the Fall, I was so much worse than before, that no medicine could help me. Paul must find out more about the progress of The Disease and any resistance on my part had a way of becoming a sin against God.

DP#2. Though I’d achieved ejaculation once, toward the end of Seventh Grade, it didn’t happen again for several months. Whether this was due to a failure to master technique, or punctuated development, I did not know. Paul said of course, that The Disease was preventing my testicles from developing further. Perhaps I’d loose the progress already made.

DP#3. Sunset, after missing our first intended meeting at my house, due to her Great-grandfather’s funeral, repeatedly said she would come another time soon, and she wanted to have sex with me. Since Paul assured me that a girl could tell if a boy orgasmed, and that Navajo girls took these things very seriously, I felt I needed to keep putting Sunset off, until I could get healed. Personally, I’d have liked to try, orgasm or not, but this would be disastrous, so my motivation to do what Paul told me was strong, at least in this sense.

DP#4. Paul decided he needed to know what my rectum felt like when it was full, so he took a length of hose, which was supposed to be from the fuel line of one of our trucks, inserted that in me and blew through the hose, inflating me as it were. This being accomplished, he’d quickly transfer his finger for the hose and could supposedly gain the information he wanted. Once the air was lost with a loud exhalation and the whole process had to be started over again. (Let’s say it hurt.)

DP#5. Now Paul was working with two fingers in me. He claimed to be doing some kind of reconstructive work and it felt like it! I would never be able to ejaculate again unless he kept up with this process and of course, I’d die soon. A new wrinkle was now thrown in. I’d recently been growing body hair and had even shaved my face a few times with my dad’s razor. Paul said he was going to shave my pubic hair off. Since he was Out virtually all of the time, I said I couldn’t trust him to do that. That upset him but he finally said I could do it myself. I kept coming up with reasons to delay. Paul kept saying that he couldn’t tell the process of The Disease when I had hair on my body any more than I cold read a page of Braille with a cover sheet on top of it. He also said I couldn’t drink alcohol, with which I’d been experimenting a bit, because it wold erode my penis from within. I think a lot of this probably stemmed from the fact that Paul was essentially attracted to young boys. Hair on the body and alcohol on the breath did not remind him well of the prepubescent child he’d met the previous year at Vancouver. Though he was always excoriating my parents for keeping me a child, he was in his way, bent on the same end.

DP#6. Though I wasn’t supposed to be able to ejaculate again, I did from time to time, during the Winter and Spring of ’68. It usually happened during erotic dreams and I woke up a few times thinking I’d peed the bed. Once or twice, it happened when I was awake. Since I knew it would be expected, I sent Paul a sample. Paul said there was something wrong with my sperm and this condition must be fixed, (big surprise!) If healthy sperm were shot into my rectum it would end up in my testicular sack and would combat the diseased sperm I was currently producing.

DP#7. Twice Paul had anal intercourse with me, once with me lying on the basement floor with my pants around my ankles, once on a chaise Lounge which had recently been moved indoors. Both experiences hurt incredibly, but I kept mostly still and nearly quiet through both ordeals. Afterwards Paul inserted a cylinder of modeling clay inside of me to keep his semen from leaking out prematurely. This I must recover in the morning in order to avoid damage to the bathroom plumbing. It is these two encounters in particular to which I refer when I identify myself as a rape victim. Though much of my relationship with Paul was one long psychological rape, these instances constitute rape certainly under feminist definitions and were forced intercourse through threat and terror.

DP#8. Paul told me he’d had to have his friend Albert enter him for the same purpose on six different occasions, (though neither of them had wanted to do it of course,) before he’d gained the ability to ejaculate. Paul’s problems when younger had paralleled mine, and he hoped it wouldn’t take six times to make me better. On the occasion of Paul’s last visit to my house, after The Treatment, we were vertical once more and making small talk I suppose. Suddenly Paul slipped and fell full length on the cement floor of my basement.

Paul and I were standing, facing one another in the basement, where we carried out most of our visits, in case the family might return suddenly. When this had happened on one occasion, Paul’d bolted out the basement door at the back of the house and had escaped to the road beyond. As we stood talking, Paul suddenly lost his footing and fell heavily on his back. I was frightened, thinking he’d knocked himself unconscious, perhaps worse. He soon roused though and said, "Dave, is that you?" I said Yes, it was. "This ain’t Texas is it?" He asked. I said no, I was sorry to say it was still Seattle.

As I’ve mentioned, through this entire year, Paul had been in that strange, almost trance like condition I’d come to know so well. He’d been that way the last few times I’d seen him at Vancouver and I’d not really seen him behaving fairly normally since before then. Now for the first time in nearly a year, Paul was lucid, clear speaking, wholly present. He was the friend I’d had in the beginning! We embraced and told each other how glad we were to meet again, after all this time. According to Paul, all of this school year was just a large blank in his memory. I doubt this was entirely true, but I believed it then.

My family was apt to come home soon, so Paul returned to his house and we reconnected by phone. I brought him up to date on things that had been happening this year. Paul and I talked several more times by phone. Soon after his visit, our family moved from Beacon Hill.

The couple from whom we were renting the house was returning from Alaska and they wanted to move back into their home. We had a month to vacate. Mom and Dad found a house in North Seattle, near the dry cleaners and we stayed in Lois’s basement for most of a month until our new house was ready.

Two news events occurring during the second semester of Eighth Grade, touched me quite deeply, though in different ways. One was the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Bobby seemed to have the same sort of ideals that had been so much associated with his Brother John, and he appeared to have the necessary charisma to heal some of our internal wounds as well as our problems abroad. I’ve never been ashamed of or apologetic for being an American, but I knew we were starting to lose some of the pride in ourselves we’d had in the days when everyone saluted the flag at the start of each school day. Bobby’s death seemed like a second belly blow to our country only a handful of years after most of the world had mourned President Kennedy. I sat at breakfast with tears as the radio announced the end of Bobby’s struggle to stay alive.

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. affected me primarily in that it affected certain of my classmates and brought to the surface, angers of which I’d been previously unaware. I’ve never been overly impressed by Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech, which seems to get trotted out by every white liberal who wishes to show just how much s/he understands black issues, in the same way that Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Lady? speech gets read by white feminists, bent on showing the unique similarity of all women. To me, Dr. King did what was incumbent upon him as a minister of the gospel and as a black activist. He advocated well for peaceful demonstration and resistance, but when one is outnumbered and outgunned, this is generally the prudent course where available. Certainly many of his contemporaries did not take up the message of peace. Still the murder of Dr. King was a despicable and an odious thing. The anger felt by black persons, old and young is understandable.

A problem I had was, black students with whom I thought I’d shared friendship, suddenly turned away from me, as if I’d somehow assisted in the assassination of Dr. King. This I did not understand though soon enough learned to expect it in similar situations.

On the day following Dr. King’s murder, Seattle Schools officials said classes would be devoted to the discussion of this event. Perhaps this was intended to mean the first period of the day would be so spent. We discussed the killing in Crafts Class, where Miss Lloyd, our teacher, asked us to consider what factors could lead to a terrible event like this. I think we discussed prejudice and how some people couldn’t stand to hear anything with which they disagreed. In the middle of this discussion, a notion smote me, as if it were a revelation from Above.

I’d taken to heart the things my parents had told me about prejudice, even if they hadn’t always modeled them for me in practice. I’d punched kids who’d said bad words about or picked on kids who were Black, Indian or Mexican. Prejudice, it seemed to me, was a process of ganging up on people who were different in some minor way, under the dictates of some stupid mob rule. If everyone followed his or her or conscience, I thought, and did what was Known to be right, it would be difficult to justify on an individual basis, discrimination against anyone because of skin color. Prejudice would therefore, find it very difficult to survive. Be An Individual! became my motto and I put it quite passionately in class, though I don’t think anyone was overly impressed.

Simplistic? Most assuredly. Still I knew that it was possible to do evil just in trying to be Cool. I don’t know that I’d seen myself up till now as being a follower particularly but I resolved that I would be an individualist. Even Paul would have to make some concessions to my preferences and stop insisting that I agree with him in all things.

I’d hear from Paul a couple more times before the year ended. Sometime before my family moved to the Lake City Area, Paul got into a fistfight with Mr. Conroy, the teacher for the blind at Queen Anne High. He was expelled, but somehow managed to get two more letters to Marty, and thence to me.

In one of the letters Paul said that in analyzing my sperm, he’d discovered a chemical it contained, which, if allowed to come into contact with any sort of female tissue, would kill the girl instantly. (A brave try at keeping me virginal and dependant on him.) Paul knew that I cared a lot about most girls and wouldn’t wish to harm one of them. Well, there were always condoms and the withdrawal method, even if I didn’t know how dangerous the later option was.

In the final letter, Paul said a lot of things, protesting that I wouldn’t give him my new phone number for instance. We did not yet have a phone, nor would we for more than a year. He also had a grievance about my abandonment of Sunset Wrongway. Paul told me then, that he’d found out that his parents weren’t really his parents, that he’d been adopted from some from other woman when he was a baby. How this information might have been discovered, was unclear. Shortly after we’d met, I’d told him about my own adoption. Now he said he’d found Violet Shaw, my birth mother, and she wanted me back; but, he warned, if I went with her and her husband, God had warned that Paul and I wold never see one another again. The end of this little mystery would be revealed a year and a half later, when Paul would again enter my life, for a comparatively brief, but dramatic last chapter.

The last two things I wrote that school year, were brief essays on mind power and rocket propulsion. I had the idea that strong emotion, such as love, anger or fear; might be electronically detectable. This method of working with detectable signals from the brain, might be a more direct approach to studying telepathy, than Dr. Rhine’s method of trying to communicate specific shapes through mind-to-mind interaction. If we could detect brain signals of any kind, perhaps we could amplify and rebroadcast them, to see if they elicited similar feelings in a calm subject. If we could transmit feelings or emotions, perhaps we could learn, by trial and error, how to communicate ideas, pictures or words.

It seemed that energy transmitted by laser, as well as solar and nuclear energy, tended to be transformed into electricity. It would be useful to have some sort of rocket, which could run on electricity. Perhaps a heating element of some kind, cold superheat air, water or some other easily available substance, to produce thrust. I had no idea how many Watts of electricity would be required to equal a Pound of thrust, or even that this answer would itself depend on what sort of fuel or Working Fluid, was being used. The question wasn’t merely an idle one though, for Arc-jets have been the subject of much speculation and research. I couldn’t find a good way to discover the information I needed, which is too bad, because these sorts of questions can lead to a wide understanding of physical and mechanical principles.

Summer was here again and I seemed to be getting along better now with my parents. I still felt I was treated younger than I really was, but I also knew many secrets, the nature of which, those around me couldn’t even begin to Guess!