Summer In Serendip 20.

    

     One Afternoon toward the end of Winter Quarter, I came home to find Mom crying hysterically.  Lois was over and had evidently been there for some time.  The two of them had a way of whipping one another to a froth.  Mom kept saying that she’d lost all respect for herself.  Lois was telling Mom she needed to get away from all of this.  Dad’s drinking and the other pressures.

     I’d been as much in the know as anybody had about what was going on in our household.  Dad was often so drunk he’d fall down in the carport.  I’d seen him nearly fall on top of a hot stove burner!  He was spending hundreds of dollars each month on booze and probably gambling too.  Mom had been threatening to leave for years but hadn’t taken any action.  Now with little apparent consideration for Chris or I, Mom and Lois were preparing to go.  I don’t recall either of them saying much.  They just left.  

     I think there was a pot roast, potatoes and carrots, which Mom had planned to cook for dinner.  She left a note for Chris to put it all in the pot roast.  The food arrived about half cooked that evening.  Chris didn’t eat anything.  Dad and I chewed through our portions without comment.  Dad didn’t seem particularly surprised that Mom was gone, rather like he expected it.  He started bringing home groceries after work.  Chris didn’t see why she should have to cook every night.  Frankly neither she nor I had ever received much preparation in this line.  The pressure-cooker was supposed to make up for the lack of cooking expertise.  I guess one evening Dad yelled his head off at Chris for not having dinner on the table. 

     Mom stayed away for several days, presumably living at Lois’s house.  I recall crying on the phone to Laurie McGowan, how my parents had been married for twenty-two years.  Now it appeared the marriage was ending.  Laurie let me talk, saying it was very sad, but of course, there was nothing anybody could do.

     Mom showed up one afternoon to talk to Chris and I.  She wanted to know if I could get to the Social Security Office to apply for benefits.  This had been a sore point between us for several years now.  The Supplementary Security Income Program, (S.S.I.) had been established a few months previously, offering monthly checks and medical coverage to blind or disabled persons over the age of 18.  I’d wanted to get an apartment, thinking the dorms would be too noisy.  Though I’d looked for work I hadn’t really found any. I’d received some additional scholarship money from the department of Communications, but the idea of getting money to live on, which was not awarded on the basis of academic performance, was abhorrent to me.  Of course Mom and Lois had told me I was being ridiculous.  I said I didn’t want to go on Welfare.  Mom said it had nothing to do with Welfare.  It was Social Security.  Of course this was mere quibbling.

     I said Yes; I could make it to the Social Security Office.  Not surprisingly, this wasn’t enough for Mom.  Within a few days, she’d taken it upon herself to make the appointment for me and picked me up after school for the interview.  Now, was I ready to move into the dorms?   An apartment was too much for me to take on.  For someone who’d run away from home, Mom was making a lot of decisions for other people!

     Mom asked Chris if she wanted to share an apartment with her.  Chris Refused.  She’d always had an aversion to being around sick people, which is rather interesting because Chris would eventually become a nurse.  I think Chris also saw Mom as the cause of our current, rather chaotic mode of existence.  Mom tried to explain to Chris that she was to young to live on her own.  Chris didn’t see why.  I was moving out wasn’t I? 

     Mom fixed dinner that evening and stayed till Dad came home.  We all had a fairly amicable meal together, after which Mom tried to have a family meeting concerning our situation in general and Dad’s drinking in particular.  Chris went to her room pretty directly.  I sat at the table for a while, but it seemed the conversation was getting pretty personal, the sorts of things which should pass between husband and wife.  I told Dad that I knew he could stop drinking if he wanted too, that he was a good man.  He just needed to make up his mind.

     Dad said he probably cold stop drinking if he wanted to.  He just didn’t want to and he knew it wold probably kill him eventually.  I went to my room then, having several books to read for my literature class.  I hadn’t intended to snub anyone.  I was there for about an hour, thinking that would give Mom and Dad time to hash some things out. 

     I came out to go to the bathroom or something, found Dad watching TV.  I asked if Mom was still there.  She wasn’t.  Where did she go?  Dad hadn’t any idea.  I assumed she’d gone back to Lois’s.

     Next morning was Saturday; Dad worked that day as he often did.  I started reading fairly early.  Lois called around nine to ask where Mom was.  I said I’d thought she was at Lois’s.  Mom hadn’t shown up the night before and Lois was worried about her.  Well, so was I for that matter.  Lois suggested that Mom might have driven down to the beach.  Everyone knew how much it relaxed her to sit and look at the water.  Lois drove down to the nearby beach at Mukeltillo, but Mom wasn’t there.  I didn’t know what else to suggest.

     Chris answered the phone next time Lois called.  Mom had thrown up.  Chris evidently wasn’t sufficiently responsive.  “Well don’t you care, damnit!?”  Lois had shouted over the phone.  Chris told me she didn’t need this kind of shit.

     I called Lois’s, ready to read the riot act to somebody.  I asked to speak to Mom.  Why had Lois yelled at Chris?  Mom said she was sick and tired of hearing everybody say Poor Chris, Poor Chris.  I said I hadn’t said anything of the kind.  I just wanted to know why Lois had yelled at her.  Where Had mom been by the way?  Why did she leave without saying anything to anyone?

     Mom said she’d left the house because nobody cared about her or gave her any sense that she was welcome there.  I told her that I’d left the dining room table and gone to my room, in order to give her and Dad some time to talk.  I’d said so at the time.  Mom said she’d asked Dad if he intended to stop drinking and he’d said no.  She’d said, “Then I guess there’s no reason for me to stay around here.”  He’d supposedly said, “I guess not.  Goodbye.”  I never heard Dad’s side of the story. 

     Mom had gone to Grandma Lois’s (Lois Jackson’s apartment) to spend the night.  She of course, hadn’t called anybody, which would have incensed her if I’d done similarly.  Mom evidently got her fill of Poor Chris from Grandma Lois as well.  She always had cared a great deal for both Chris and myself. 

     Now it transpired that Mom had seen a psychiatrist, under what circumstances I don’t know.  According to Mom’s own account, she had the presence of mind to demand an ashtray in a nonsmoking office.  Mom claimed she’d been having a nervous breakdown, brought on by Chris coming home drunk from school several weeks before.  This was something around which Mom was able to pile up lots of energy.  Later she said she’d also had a heart attack at this time.  Whether any medical evidence was available for this I never learned.  Eventually Mom got around to saying that it wasn’t only Chris and Dad who’d been bothering her.  I’d bothered her too; I told her she’d bothered me some too.  So ended that particular conversation.  Mom had tried to get the psychiatrist to give her tranquilizers for her nerves.  He’d evidently refused, saying he feared she’d use them to commit suicide.  “And I would!”  Mom declared.  “I’d take them!”

     

  

     It was at this time that Mom started to exhibit more and more psychological problems.  A lot of things would be misremembered.  Mom had always been pretty controlling but now she started remembering things that just hadn’t happened and conveniently forgot a lot of things which had.  She became much more prone to crying if she didn’t get her way.  I wouldn’t realize for quite some time though, how pervasive and how permanent her condition was.

     I spent part of my Spring Vacation with Mom.  Our vacation trailer was parked in Lois and Bruce’s side yard.  Mom had hook-ups for electricity, sink, show and toilet.  I don’t recall much of what we did during this time.  Talked a lot I guess, took walks, went to the beach.  Mom could drive well enough.  She took me home again after three or four days.  

     In the fairly screwy manner that would characterize Mom and Dad’s relationship over the next four years or so, Mom moved back home and they began making plans to sell the house.  Dad promised they wouldn’t get rid of the house until Spring Quarter was over.  That would give me the between-quarters break to move.  They had such an arrangement with one family, who liked the house very much and had even offered to take our cat.  A few days later though, Dad got a better, or perhaps faster offer from a real estate developer and agreed to vacate about mid-Quarter.  Chris still didn’t want to live with Mom nor would she leave her school.  I told Chris I didn’t think she should reject Mom like that.  She called me a bastard.  “Why should I do anything to help Mom when she hates my fucking guts!?”  I thought that sounded rather harsh at the time, but now I can see how Chris might get that opinion, especially if she’d gotten wind of any of the material Lois and Mom were busy conjuring up between them.  There’d been talk about laying hands on Chris and dragging her to the Youth Center.  Would I help?  I ignored the question.

     Chris moved in with a school counselor, Miss Rose.  I moved to Terry Hall at the University Of Washington.  

   

     My brother-in-law Bruce gave me a ride over to the dorm.  On the way he told me he thought I’d have more of an opportunity to be independent now.  He knew that  it was difficult when one had parents like mine.  This made me rather defensive.  After running away from home four and a half years before, I’m become quite protective of my parents.  He was right though.  My leaving home had been delayed too long.

 

     This was Sunday night and my roommate hadn’t returned yet from his weekend at home.  We’d meet evidently after class next day.  I called up everybody I could think of, giving them my new number, did my exercises, went to bed by nine, my usual bedtime.  

     I woke about Three, read a new book I’d just received, did another hundred push-ups, and went across the hall to shower, shave and dress.  I went back to my room and sat around some more.  I had an Eight thirty class and was fairly nervous, I wasn’t that familiar yet with the terrain between dorm and campus.  Breakfast started around Six-forty-five. 

     Just as I was about to venture out, there was a knock at my door.  It was Bruce Hedman, a friend from high school.  Bruce had begun taking calculus courses at the U. when he was still a junior in high school.  While I was puzzling over triangles, he was analyzing spirals.  I knew Bruce was on campus.  I’d run into him a few times, but had no idea he was in Terry Hall! 

     “Are you ready to go to breakfast?” Bruce asked.  We had a huge morning feed, poached eggs, Toast, Doughnuts, sausage, Chocolate milk, coke, coffee, and a couple of juices.  The other meals I’d eat that quarter and the one that followed would be similar.  Dorm fair in those days was plentiful and packed with calories.  I weighed 125 in Early April when I first checked into the dorms.  I’d weigh 145 by the end of July.

     I had five courses this quarter, Physics with Dr. Dash, Differential equations, a branch of Calculus, especially important for engineers; an engineering course called Kinematics and Dynamics, essentially more and better Physics Mechanics.  I also had College Rhetoric, Public Speaking to the Great Unwashed; as well as The Folktale, survey of world folklore, taught by Dr. Schiels who’d done our Science Fiction course the year before.

     In Rhetoric I learned that I actually could deliver a credible speech in front of a group of people, a useful thing to know since I’d be doing a lot of it in the next few years!  My speech topics included Women In Engineering, Respect for Old People, (based on my relationship with Grandma,) The Virtues Of A diversified Education and Strange things people do to blind persons. 

     In Dr. Schiels’ class, I began learning about the universality of many folkloric themes. The Legend Of The Seal Woman and Her Child for instance, can be found in various versions from the South Seas to the Lands of the Eskimos, though the most familiar versions are from Ireland and Scotland as Fiona and the Laird Of The Isles or Daughter Of The King Ronn.  I also found out that the traditions of Judeo-Christianity were not quite as unique as most of us had been taught.  It would be a while till I realized the religious significance of some of the things I learned in Folklore, but I was currently quite young in theological matters.

     It was however, this Folklore class which would give me the only Humanities grade less than A since Ninth Grade.  I was having too much fun to study adequately the five courses and 19 credits I was taking that quarter.

     

     I came home at the end of my first full day in the dorms to meet my roommate Larry Barclay.  Larry was a rather taciturn-seeming guy with very obvious interests in sports and in religion.  He had religious posters all over his side of the room and whenever I asked him about his major or his career plans; the answer was usually something like “where ever God leads me.”  We’d be a while getting comfortable with one another, but it would happen.

     Our next-door neighbor, Ed Rennie, came by to introduce himself a few minutes after I’d arrived from class.  “Hi, I’m Ed,” said a rather mirthful voice with undertones of impending mayhem. 

     “Oh,” said Larry, nonenthusiastically, “Ed’s in R.O.T.C.” 

     “You smile when you say that, Barclay!” Ed exhorted.  I asked what branch Ed was in.  He told me he was Army, Of Course, and intended to become an M.P.  Later on in the conversation it transpired that Ed was interested in hypnosis.  He’d been practicing it for some time and had read a stack of books on the subject.  I’d also been interested for a long time in hypnosis and the mind in general.  I’d pretty much given up on the idea of sleep suggestion as a means of teleporting to Mars, but had been working on another idea, almost as fascinating.

     Around 1968 a researcher named Paul Bachi had demonstrated a sort of artificial vision for blind people.  He used a small TV camera to scan objects in front of the used.  The TV picture was translated onto a grid of tiny vibrators, (typically 20 by 20,) worn on the back or stomach.  Having the picture drawn on one’s skin in this way, for some people, could manifest as a visual sensation.  The human nervous system was able somehow, to take tactile information and turn it into something closely approximating sight. 

     My idea was to vary the frequency of vibration from one tactile-pixel to the next, in a manner to suggest the three primary colors.  The combination colors, like purple, orange, brown, and shadings between could be suggested by vibrators of appropriate primary vibrations, clustered together as in a color RV picture.  Perhaps hypnotic suggestion could be used to closely associate vibratory patterns with colors.  In this way a person born with sight and remembering colors might recognize several colors or shades in the same picture.  I told my idea to Ed.

     “Alright!” Ed shouted.  “Finally somebody with some imagination around here!”  

     “Ed seems like a pretty good guy,” I commented when Ed had gone.

     “Ed’s a pretty good guy about half the time,” Larry replied in his laconic drawl, “The other half he’s awake.”  Ed and I became buddies but spent most of the time over the next few weeks giving each other hell.

     Ed squirted me with his plant spray bottle.  I shot him in the face with my leather Bota bag from a laying position in bed as he harangued me from the doorway.  Ed stole my boots when I was in the shower.  I filled a large balloon with water and shot it under his door.  Ed pulled corks out of our wall, put there when fixtures were removed.  This allowed him to squirt me with a fire extinguisher from the neighboring room.  I wired his door shut with a coat hanger and strapping tape, while he was inside. 

     Larry didn’t much appreciate drinking in the room or women guests with the door closed or probably my language either.  Bruce was sometimes rather chagrined by my carryings on too. 

     Almost as soon as I moved in I started making wine from orange juice, fortified with white sugar and worked with baker’s yeast.  The process tended to generate a fair amount of sediment, as well as a beery odor.  I called Laurie Mcgowan and her roommate Jeannie, who lived nine floors above us, and asked if I could have a nylon stocking for straining my beverage.  A few days later, one of them tied a pair of pantyhose on my doorknob when I was away at class.  Bruce spotted the gift and took it, not entirely sure what it was, but terribly concerned my roommate would find it and be embarrassed.  He hid the pantyhose in his drawer and bringing them down to my room on my return, was spotted by Ed.

     “Dave wants these for Straining!” Bruce said quite defensively.  Ed said he didn’t care what I wanted them for.

     

     A chance remark one evening suddenly made Larry and I much better roomies.  There had recently been some vandalism on campus, connected to some Hispanic students, then called Chicanos.  There’d followed some half-witty editorials in the U.W. Daily.  In connection with something or other, I said, “We’re Chicanos, Mon!”  in the right sort of accent.   Larry cracked up.  After that we told a lot of Chicano jokes, did a lot of Chicano imitations, usually having to do with eating pinto beans and flying around the room on a board.  (Childish, but a lot of fun then.)

     Another evening, in connection with the little flag which accompanied my Freedom Medal, Larry asked me if I knew what the American Flag actually looked like.  I had the general idea, stripes alternating white and red, a blue field in the upper quadrant nearest the pile, with stars of white, silver or gold, one for each state.  Miss Gourder had shown me in First Grade and I had seen a few flags before I lost my eyesight.  

     Larry explained how the stars were arranged in five rows of six and four rows of five, with the 5-rows each between two 6-rows.  so the stars had a sort of Xing pattern if you examined a given star and it’s four closest neighbors.  I went to the Brailler and made a diagram with dots for stars, dotted lines for white stripes and dashed lines for red stripes.  We put our creation on the door of our room, saluting when we went in or out.  Ed attacked our paper flag, squirting shaving cream on it.  Larry and I carefully cleaned it off and put up a sign reading

 

Eds come and go

But Old Glory never dies!

  

     Our crude flag diagram would turn into something rather big.  I called Joe Marshall and discussed the idea of making a pamphlet of some American flags so blind people could feel them.  Joe liked the idea and referred me to George Paynton, my friends Jim and Val’s dad and current president of the Seattle Chapter Sons of the American Revolution.  I was still looking for a job and proposed making several Braille flags in quantity, charging around $180 for materials, design, production and distribution.  If I could keep coming up with projects like this, I wouldn’t need to use the S.S.I. checks.  In those days $188 was a whole quarter’s tuition. 

     Mr. Paynton seemed delighted by the idea and invited me to attend another of the S.A.R. steak-luncheon meetings to present my idea.  There were also present some of the D.A.R. ladies, who invited me to address one of their meetings later that summer.  I accepted, giving a talk on the Alamo and the courage of the women in the mission at the time it was breached—then by extension American womanhood generally..  I guess I did okay, but these groups tended to applaud enthusiastically for any patriotic topic.

(The flag project itself was tabled for nearly two years.)

     

    

     Most Sunday’s Ed and I listened to the Dr. Demento Show on OK102.5.  It was full of songs and sketches ranging from merely silly to downright obscene.  I told a lot of dirty jokes, sang lewd songs and drank a fair amount.  When I moved onto the Quiet Wing of First Floor Terry, my hall mates seemed like a bunch of pretty clean-cut, almost nerdy guys.  By end of Quarter, most of them were acting like Me!  Still these fellows were almost to a man, good and sincere Christians, attending church regularly, participating in campus crusade activities.  This made for a bit of friction.  I considered myself to be fairly religious, though I didn’t make a big deal about being a Christian in particular. 

     I’d grown up believing in God, but frankly, had never been told much about Jesus.  I knew Jesus was supposed to have died on the cross for the sins of this world, but never quite saw how that worked.  At school we sometimes discussed what heaven and Hell could be like and we’d even argue the bible’s position on drinking or premarital sex.  I think though, it was considered rather bad form to discuss too closely the tenants of one’s own church, certainly to try and convert someone from one to the other. 

     During my sophomore year in high school, along with the beginnings of the ecology movement and the emergence of women’s Lib, we saw the first of what we called The Jesus People.  This was a rather grassroots, pretty fundamental movement of young people mostly, who took religion to the streets, the hallways, even into the classroom sometimes.  Sometimes Jesus People acted fairly furtive, rather like a boy wearing girl’s clothes I thought.  Blind people however, seemed to be fairly safe targets.  For the first time in my life I had kids coming up to me and asking if I put my faith in Christ.  Boys tend to pick on boys and girls on girls.  I think all of us blind students were approached at one time or another, often with hands placed over our sightless eyes, (without any permission from us and often an assertion that we would not be blind if we had sufficient faith in Jesus.

    

     Most of the Jesus people I met in those days had been on drugs, in trouble with the law or had been some sort of social outcast.  I tended to see the movement as essentially another addiction or at least a last resort.  To be fair though, June Claflan, as well as Jim and Val Paynton could be characterized as Jesus People.  They were all happy enough to talk about their beliefs, though they usually didn’t unless asked.

     When I came to the U.W. I found Jesus People were common there too and that they often made some effort to evangelize, though not quite so intrusively as many of my high school acquaintances.  One young man, a Chemistry major, gave me a copy of the Gospel According to Mark on cassette and in modern English. I’d of course read excerpts from The bible and had in fact, taken every opportunity offered to do so.  I’d never read an entire gospel from end to end however.  Several pastors had offered to get me a Braille Bible, but none had ever come through.

     My eyes were opened somewhat in reading Mark, not so much by the basic message.  I’d heard that before.  The miracles commonly attributed to Jesus were there as an integral part of the text, which surprised me.  I’m not sure what I’d expected.  I guess I thought the narratives about Jesus would be more of a first-person account by himself and not third-person descriptions of what he did.

     Reading Mark didn’t do a great deal to change my views on The Bible or on religion generally.  I’d never assumed that every word in The Bible must be literally true.  Rather, I had assumed the turning of water into wine was on a par with Davy Crockett oiling the gears of the world with bear grease, thus ending the winter that was so cold that words froze and hit the ground before they could be heard!

     Now I found myself in the midst of a group of believing, practicing Christians, most of whom had really studied The Bible, not merely excerpted or skimmed.

     I think it was Ed who first asked me if I was a Christian.  He objected to me swearing, since Christians shouldn’t do that.  I told him “Sort of.”  He said one either was a Christian or he wasn’t.  That conversation never got much of anywhere.

     One morning at breakfast, Bruce Hedman and his roommate Mark Ingham were discussing the inadequacy of theories taught at university level, concerning the origin or humanity.  I put in that the theory of evolution from primitive molecules to mammals seems to account for the development of human life.  Bruce said this might account for the development of the body and the brain but not of the soul.  (Very well then, what is the soul?)  Bruce said essentially it was the part of ones being that could perceive God.  I’d been so used to thinking of Mind and body as the totality of human existence that I really hadn’t imagined educated people still thought of the soul as something distinct from the scientifically variable mind. 

     Bruce had been one of the resident atheists at Queen Anne.  He’d been raised that way, and supposedly insisted on pure logic in everything.  He and another boy, Dave Oden, whom I’d know since Primary Grades, had supposedly disrupted prayer meetings in our high school.  Sometime during the present year, Bruce had gotten religion. 

     Bruce claimed that through pure logic he’d noticed there were too many things missing in the scientific theories of life and existence, necessitating the existence of God and that similarly he’d discovered that Christianity must be the only appropriate way of worshipping God.  Characteristically, he’d read both Testaments and the theologians from Saint Paul to C.S. Lewis in the space of a few months.  He was now engaging his best friend, Dave Oden, on the logical necessity of faith in Christ.  He was engaging me as well.

     I’m not sure how the particular conversation got started but Bruce asked me one evening if, since I believed in God, I also realized the necessity of salvation as well.  I said that honestly, I did not.  Bruce then wanted to know in what way did I disagree with the concept of salvation.  I said I thought people could do a lot more good if they operated as if Works mattered, rather than seeing heaven as a free gift.  Bruce asked me if I thought I had to work my way into heaven.  I said I thought that was a more reasonable assumption than the idea that someone dying on a cross, or in any other wise, could save me.  Bruce said the Bible made it very clear that man could not save himself.  I said that I didn’t accept that notion or anything else merely because it happened to be in the Bible.  Bruce was obviously not happy.  The conversation wasn’t going the way he’d intended.  I asked if he wanted me to say I believed in things that I truly did not.  He grumbled a bit but said that of course he didn’t want me to do that.  He said that I needed a bible to read.

     None of us had much money but Bruce didn’t let that be too much of a stumbling block.  A sign-up sheet was put up on Bruce’s door.  A group of volunteers, dorm mates, fellow students, were recruited.  I provided as many cassette tapes as I could.  Others were purchased, some reimbursed by me, some not.  The New Testament was recorded for me, in many different voices, reading styles, two or three different versions.  Bruce read most of the Letters of Paul.  Mark read Mark.  Ed read Matthew.  Larry read John.  Dave Liux read Luke.  The remaining Epistles fell to others, some of them only vaguely known to me.  It was true sincerity in action, impressive, whether I accepted each and every word, a precious gift.  It took me a while, but I did read it, all of it.

     I’d taught my roommate Larry to do some basic Brailling on my Perkins machine.  On our last day together at school, he lettered out the first few lines of the Gospel according to John, with the post script Your friend Larry, remember Praise The Lord. 

 

     I spent the interim week between Spring and Summer quarters with Mom and Dad.  They’d sold the house and were living together again, now in Lois’s side yard in the vacation trailer.  I can’t recall much of that week except for a metal box full of treats Lois gave me for my 20^th birthday, and the June issue of Galaxy Magazine.  There was a new feature now, A Step Farther Out, by Jerry Pournelle PhD, a column on science and technology. 

     I’d never met Dr. Pournelle before but soon came to admire him a good deal.  I learned that he’d double-majored in Aerospace Engineering and History while at the University Of Washington.  He’d taken a Masters Degree in Statistics and Doctorates in Psychology and Political Science.  He was a space buff with a lot of experience in the Manned Space flight Effort and seemed to be interested in most of the things I was.

     Dr. Pournelle’s first article for Galaxy was entitled Halfway to Anywhere.  It stemmed from a conversation he had with Robert Heinlein.  If you could get into orbit you were halfway to the rest of the universe, because you could get anywhere in the solar system or beyond, with less energy than it took to initially climb away from earth and orbit.  What, therefore was a cheap way to get into orbit? 

    

     Jerry Pournelle talked about something called a Laser Launcher, a huge billion-watt laser that could be used to heat gases to very high temperatures at a distance of many miles.  A ramjet space vehicle weighing about a ton, would scoop up air, which would be flash heated by laser energy to provide thrust.  The craft would accelerate for about thirty seconds at thirty gravities, ending up in orbit for a small fraction of what it would cost to do the same thing with chemical rockets.  It was an inspiring idea.  I’d heard hints over the years about using lasers for propulsion.  I’d envisioned a system using a big orbital laser to orbit space planes.  In my plan a craft would take off from earth like a jet, using conventional engines to climb above the cloud layer.  Then laser energy would be used to superheat water to high pressure steam which would rocket the plane into orbit.  This was the first time I’d ever seen anyone else’s proposal for doing anything remotely similar.  And as Dr. Pournelle made clear, he was reporting on a design proposal from the Avco-Everett Corporation. 

     For when one was in orbit, I’d been refining my biodyne concept.  I was now thinking about hydrogen peroxide, liquid ammonia and lithium as fuel components.  This system would consist essentially of three generators, four actually, if you considered crew members peddling bike generators, each person pumping 8 hours in 24.  In my new plan hydrogen peroxide would be broken down in a familiar process, to yield steam and pure oxygen.  The steam and oxygen would first pass through a generator to produce power.  After word it would pass through a heat exchanger to condense the water and cool the oxygen.  Concurrently, ammonia would be fed into a fuel cell with some of the free oxygen, to yield more power as well as additional water and free nitrogen.  The nitrogen, mixing with the oxygen, would provide the crew of six with a breathable, nonflamable atmosphere.

     Metallic mithium would react with dry cabin air to yield lithium-oxide.  Excess nitrogen could be separated from the cabin air in this process, to be jettisoned or used for steering thrust.  Lithium oxide would removed excess moisture from the cabin air, forming lithium hydroxide, which could be used in turn to remove carbon dioxide from the cabin air. 

     We’d end up with a lot of gray water, carbonate and sewage.  The gray water, resulting from washing and other activities, would be used to cool the heat exchanger, which originally condensed the decomposing hydrogen peroxide.  Sewage solids could be jettisoned or burned with a little extra oxygen and everything would be added to the gray water, including the lithium carbonate, which would make the watery solution electrically conductive. 

     Using the electricity from all four sorts of generators, (less power needs of the system itself,) the water, carbonate, organic solution would be electromagnetically accelerated to provide continuous thrust for the biodyne craft.  Food would be carried in reconstitionable freeze-dried form, or perhaps a tanking material could be developed, composed of proteins, carbohydrates and fiber, which could either be prepared directly of digested by yeast of bacteria to provide a fuel source from otherwise inert mass.

     The system still needed several major refinements.  A computer model written with the help of a friend, indicated my system could provide reasonable velocity changes but tiny accelerations.  Too much time would be needed for breaking away from Earth and Matching with destination planets.  Still the biodyne would determine many of the courses I’d take over the next three years.

   

     McMahon Hall was the only dorm available that summer.  Instead or corridors with rooms on either side, with which I was familiar in Terry Hall, McMahon was organized in clusters.  A cluster consisted of 4 or 6 rooms, (perhaps six to ten residents per cluster,) a living room, bathroom and balcony.  The cluster was entered by either one or two doors, (depending on its size,) from the outer corridor.  It was rather difficult to make contact with others in the building outside of one’s own cluster.  One needed to either find the person somewhere in the hallway, the dining room or elsewhere, or gain admittance to his/her cluster.  I found it depressing, feeling quite isolated after class, at least at first. 

     This summer I’d be taking a five-credit Electrical Engineering course recommended for mechanical, chemical and aeronautical majors, as well as Social Psychology, Communications Law and News Writing.  I was getting into the meat of my Journalism major.  I expected this to be a good, rigorous and highly productive quarter.  Rigor there was, though devotion to study was somewhat lacking.  Good there was, and quite a bit of bad as well. 

     My roommate, Duncan, had just completed his Freshman year.  His father was a pediatrician who for several years had done a short Noon TV program on childcare.  He’d also written a good deal for syndicated papers and had appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.  Duncan and I didn’t agree on much of anything.  He did pot.  I did not.  He smoked tobacco. I no longer did, though I didn’t care if he did.  He was a sort of neosocialist while I’d supported George Wallace in ’72.  He thought I was a bit of an overachiever since I exercised everyday, kept a journal and studied Engineering. 

     Though we didn’t exactly resonant, Duncan and I helped each other out quite a bit.  He took me to the bookstore to buy my texts and since his money from home hadn’t arrived yet, I lent him some cash to pay for his.  I shared my goodies with him and we talked about all sorts of things.  I noticed that whenever we discussed dating or relationships, Duncan always said Person instead of Woman or Girl.  About the third day I knew him he told me he was gay.  My sister Chris and I had joked about what would happen if I got a gay roommate.  I said I’d tell him he’d better behave himself or I wouldn’t let him live in my room.  When it actually happened, I was rather astonished at my reaction. 

     We had a lengthy discussion one night about sexuality generally and his lifestyle in particular.  I shared with Duncan that I had transvestite tendencies.  He asked if that meant I dressed up in women’s clothing.  I said yes, for a period of time.  We discussed opposite gender apparel for a while.  He suggested that I just say that I was a cross dresser.  He sited an example of a man who wore items of female apparel, but said that they were his clothes, they just happened to be something a woman might wear.  I said that things went a bit deeper than that for me.  Besides, everything I’d ever worn in this regard had been borrowed.  I hadn’t purchased any female apparel for myself. 

     Duncan told me a story about a friend in Portland, a full time transvestite, born male but called She in the gay community because her female persona was permanent.  A boyfriend, unreconciled to the crossdressing behavior, had broken a beer bottle and blinded this person.  Atrocities like this, visited against crossdressing gay men were quite common according to Duncan.  At the end of our conversation Duncan and I shook hands warmly.  We talked more that night.  He told me about coming out to his parents who were quite accepting. He told me about the time he’d gone out in drag with a friend, another gay male, who’d lent him clothes and made up his face for him.  Duncan said that going in drag was an intentional kick to the balls of all rigidly-masculine men, gay or straight, a gesture of challenge and defiance. 

    

     Duncan’s gayness was quite political.  He espoused a lot of leftist causes, said he’d like to cram gay lib down Nixon’s throat and would start a revolution if he could.  For a couple of days it was interesting, even intriguing to have a gay roommate.  I had political ambitions in those days and I thought a summer with Duncan would help me understand about gay issues, which had been in the news of late, especially around the campus, whether I agreed with him or not.  I’d read a fair amount of feminist material, including Sexual Politics, without considering myself a feminist.  I’d read a good deal from the political Left, certainly without identifying myself with that either.  I did idly toy with the idea that at end of summer, he and I might have sex, once, just for the experience.  Doing something once, just to try it, didn’t make one gay or bi, did it?

These thoughts grew over the next couple days and I found myself thinking more and more about Duncan.  This was the first time in a decade I’d shared a room with anyone, and the first time ever that I’d shared space with someone who might potentially be interested in me.  Duncan evidently picked up on some of the energy or was feeling some of his own.  He began making rather suggestive remarks, such as (in a Mae West voice,) “Hey Big Boy, is that a gun in your pocket or do you just like me.”  He wanted to walk with his arm around my shoulders, pat me, that sort of thing.  I told him I had to hang onto his elbow.  McMahon was difficult at first for me to navigate and I depended on my roommate to get back and forth to and from meals. 

     The thing that surprised me most wasn’t so much that I was having fantasies about sex with Duncan, but that they were overwhelmingly about me being in the feminine role, being penetrated, especially performing orally.  One particular evening was hot and sultry in our dorm. I took a shower after dinner and when I dressed, alone in our room, I put on a pair of bikini panties I’d borrowed from Lois’s drawer when I was at her house over Break.  The smell of flowers wafting through the open window, mingled with layers of ancient floor wax, permeating the building, my own perspiration and the perfume from my sister’s lingerie drawer.  It was a somehow Intense summer.  The surroundings were still strange to me.  Now I was having feelings I’d never really admitted before, even to myself. 

     When we got ready for bed that night, Duncan noticed that I had women’s underwear on and he said “Oh, Yes.” but nothing more.  I slept fitfully, waking to successive arousals.  I don’t know what, if anything, Duncan felt.

     Next day I was pretty well disgusted with myself.  I was also getting pretty bugged because every time I shared a meal with Duncan, he made sure we sat at a table devoid of women, but crowded with gay men.  The fantasies I’d been having had been less about wanting to touch a man than they were about wanting to be like a woman and isolation from women was definitely not what was foremost on my agenda.  I missed the female friends I’d had in Terry Hall and had not yet met any others.

     Duncan also kept bringing his gay friends to our room.  I’d hear them whispering together, kissing sometimes.  His business to be sure, but I didn’t think I’d behave similarly with a woman in front of a roommate.

     About Friday morning I decided that I really needed to move.  I got the phone number for the Resident Assistant on our floor and resolved to demand a different room. 

     It was a big weekend.  Friday evening I made my way down to the dining room on my own and found myself seated at a table with One Woman.  One was enough!  Before Summer Quarter had begun, I’d had a very interesting dream.  I was on a ship, bound for Seattle I think, and was sitting on the deck, in a armchair, near the stern.  I fell into conversation with a woman about my age, who asked if I was an Aeronautics and Astronautics major.  I said I was.  She said she was too.  She asked if I was a writer.  I said yes.  She said she was also.  In a very short while we got to know one another very well.  The problem was, she needed to continue on to some distant destination, while I’d be continuing at the U.W.  I was trying to convince her to stay in Seattle when the dream ended.

     It was like that with Ninian and me except that we didn’t meet on shipboard and she wasn’t in engineering.  Strictly speaking she wasn’t a matriculated student at the U.W. but was taking an intensive, 19-credit summer course in Japanese.

     Ninian was from Alabama but her family was rather wealthy and they had a second home near Mount Eagle in Tennessee.  She was 19 to my 20, had been to Japan for about a year and wanted to go back.  A guy named Curt was eating with us and evidently intended to watch Star Trek with Ninian after dinner.  He found he had something else to do though and gave her a key to his room.  When he left Ninian and I fell to discussing all sorts of things, including my roommate, a Lesbian gym teacher she’d had, her feeling that all persons, male or female, should be treated alike, academics, religion travel.  When it was time for the episode to begin, I was much loath to give up her company and asked if I might go upstairs and watch it with her. 

     It was Miri, the one about the adults who died from the anti-aging treatment and the children who never intended to grow up, a rather unpleasant story, now inextricably linked with that evening.  Our conversation continued and before it ended I suspected I was in love.  By the time I got back to my room, (Ninian had a heavy study schedule,) I was sure of it. 

     Duncan was off for the evening and the night too as things turned out.  I sat down at my desk and wrote a love sonnet.  I’d written little poetry since the summer following high school, but it was no problem getting back in harness.  I no longer have this poem or anything else of the fairly large amount of material I wrote that summer. 

     There was a knock on our cluster door.  A young woman from 618, three floors above us, invited me and anyone else in my cluster to a party I told everyone I could find and no one else seeming all that impressed, went up alone at the appointed time.  There was good conversation, much beer, other women.  I think I stayed till about 1:30.

     The following evening there was a party down in 218.  This one was somewhat more challenging with a very diverse ethnic mix of students, Half-witty calling of names such as honky, comments about black people drinking Ripple wine.  I met two very interesting people that evening.  One was Jim Watson, from Eastern Ohio and sounding almost English in his attempt to avoid stereotypical Negro speech.  Jim was a Physical Oceanography major, (a very rigorous course of study,) and was in Navy ROTC.  If possible he was further to the Right than me. 

     The other person was also named Jim.  He was from New York and was a Master’s candidate in biomechanical engineering.  He had quite severe cerebral-palsy and was involved in a project in which feedback theory was being used in an attempt to help C.P. children to control trembling and lack of coordination.  Jim Fee was quite concerned about me.  He’d seen Duncan and me walking together and was afraid that I was a “queer too.”  I told him and anyone else who wanted to listen that I wasn’t.  Not very generous of me, but having met Ninian, gayness seemed an entirely inadequate substitute.  Eventually Jim Fee and the rest of the party drifted away, leaving Jim Watson and me to continue our conversation till 3:30, the latest I’d ever stayed up conversing with anyone. 

     I spent much of Saturday ringing the Resident Assistant’s phone.  Toward evening she finally answered and said irritably that she’d had a neck injury and had been lying on her bed all day.  (Well, no way to know that ahead of time.)  I told her what my difficulty was and she said I had a point in not wanting to stay with a gay roommate.  I stressed that Duncan had done nothing really overt and that I didn’t want him disturbed. 

     She arranged a meeting with the Head Resident of McMahon Hall, with whom I conceived a mutual dislike pretty much from the beginning.  He tried to tell me that I needed to be a bit more patient and realize that one couldn’t change rooms anytime one wanted.  I knew that there were in fact, empty rooms in the building and said so. I frankly didn’t see why they’d let a person who was openly gay have a roommate.  Wasn’t that like housing a boy and a girl together?  Certainly that would be against the rules.  Homosexuality was against the law in most states and the laws, even in Washington, were quite frequently enforced in those days. 

     I made my points and was given a new room, a new cluster and a new roommate, Bruce Werner, an evangelizing Transcendental Meditator.  In hindsight I may have been well-advised to have stayed where I was!  Mid-summer Duncan moved out of the dorms and went to New York where he intended to become a secretary.  Bruce was a pain all summer long.

     Meanwhile School was happening.  Communications Law and Social Psych. were lecture classes.  Electrical Engineering was mostly lab.  I had a partner named John, a grad student in Aero and Astro.  We built things like amplifiers, ac-Dc converters, modulating circuits, motor-generator hook-ups.  John’s favorite expression was “Ain’t life a bitch!”  In E.E. life frequently was.  News Writing was Hard Labor. 

     Back in High School Mr. Charland had drilled into us to put Who What When Where Why and How into the lead paragraph of every news story.  Now it appeared it was improper to put more than three of the Ws &H in the lead.  William, (B. J.) Johnston a professor though not a Dr. had come from the city desk of a major local newspaper to teach the next generation of news writers.  Both a sacrifice and a mission it appeared.  He loved reporting so much that he wanted to see it continue after him.  On the first day of class, he gave us a lecture in which he laid out some basic ideas about reporting.  He said that different journalists might approach a story differently, but would in the end convey essentially the same information to the reader.  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John each had his own way of telling the story but managed to get across the same basic message.  Our first assignment was to do a news story on our instructor’s talk.  I liked the MMLJ quote, so I based my lead on that and went ahead from there.  Next day we were told that there had been nothing in his lecture which was particularly quotable, so B.J. Quotes in this particular story was less than good journalism. 

     Next we were told to pair up with another student and interview one another.  My partner was a young woman, perhaps eight or nine years older than me, named Irene Richmond.  After some memory searching, Irene recalled that she’d been a secretary for my 8^th-Grade U.S. History class in Worth McClure Junior  High.  I mentioned to her, among other things, and she reported, that I wanted to get married and raise a family.  Irene confided to me that she feared she’d never get married because she had a severe acne problem and people were very judgmental about such things.  I wanted to say something to comfort her on this score and did try, but I knew sighted people were very much caught up in appearances.  I felt it would be inappropriate to suggest she date some blind men, but I do hope she found someone to appreciate her gentle and generous nature. 

I found this exchange especially touching because it was the first time I think, that a woman had shared something like this with me.  Lots of women said they were too fat of course, but one was always well-advised to disagree.

     I disagreed strongly with Prof. Johnston over another lead.  We would typically receive a story assignment as a set of facts or sometimes with Johnston acting as a news source to be interviewed by the class.  One story had to do with a dormitory fire, in which 23 boys were trapped.  The students happened to be deaf-mute and might possibly have had difficulty sensing fire alarms or warning shouts.  I suspect however they could probably have detected a fire.  To me it was a case of 23 young men being trapped in a fire and being subsequently rescued.  Oh yes, they happened to be residents of a school for deaf and mute children. 

     B.J. insisted the most important element of this story was the students were deaf and mute and wouldn’t be able to hear fire alarms.  Moreover they were not merely deaf-mute boys or students or children, but Deaf-mutes!  I suspect his story would have sold more copies than mine would, but I still disagree.

     B. J. also insisted that he be used in the plural pronoun case, as in Everyone in the orchestra tuned his instrument or everyone in the audience felt he had experienced wonderful music.  I suppose I’d gotten a bit cocky about my writing, especially my journalistic work.  Now it appeared I still had a great deal to learn.  Well, I was learning. 

     We learned about stories I’d never suspected of existing.  One such was the first Lead story in which all of the facts are not in yet, but you’ll want to rush to press as soon as possible when they are.  Elections are examples of this sort of story. So probably would have been the match between David and Goliath.  One writes a story with as many facts as possible in place ahead of time but which can reflect the correct outcome with the addition of as little new copy as possible.  We learned to write stories from contributions from stringers, making the story more printable yet avoiding insult to the stringer who might be a 65-year-old grandma from Upper Beavercreek who took great pride in working for His local newspaper.

     I found that obituaries were surprisingly interesting to write.  Johnston said that for most people, an obituary would be the only thing that would ever appear about their lives, save perhaps a short marriage announcement.  Looked at this way, an obit was a highly significant piece of writing and family members would generally be pleased to talk with you about their loved one, even though you would be reporting a very sad occasion.

     One day we wrote a story about a small town scandal, described to us by our instructor.  The police chief was accused of malfeasance and certain of his cronies were also under suspicion.  A town meeting was called for this evening!  After we’d handed in the assignment, Johnston said “I thought you might be wondering what was going to happen at this meeting tonight, so I thought we’d go ahead and hold the meeting in class tomorrow and find out.”  Most of us were assigned parts to play in the upcoming drama.  I caught the role of rascally chief Fosdick and next day I was amazed at how seriously even a pretend villification could be taken by some students, especially those in the adversarial majors.  There was naked hostility in the room!  I wriggled and blurred and blustered and dissembled as well as I could but had I been the real Chief Fosdick, I’d have been heading for the Mexican Border before the night was old.  I never was formally charged with anything, but it looked like I’d be heading soon for a Grand Jury. 

     We worked with a typewriter on each desk, a drawer full of yellow copy paper up front of the room.  It wasn’t unusual for us to complete three separate and sometimes quite lengthy news stories during the course of a two-hour session, three classes per week, four credits received.  We also had homework, due next class as well as a running assignment to submit an average of one real news story, somewhere each week.  I never had a nonengineering class in which I worked harder, nor one in which I learned more. 

     Engineering and Journalism has similar standards and goals; thoroughness, attention to detail, objective judgement, systematization, efficiency.  One day Prof. Johnston said “It may not happen today or tomorrow or this year, but if you keep writing you will eventually come to the idea of excellence, that every story you write will be the best story you can write at that particular time.”  It certainly didn’t happen to me that year, or for several to come, but eventually I found myself writing a column for a small town newspaper, 1000 words per week, 45-cents per column-inch printed.  I labored to make every sentence, every word, as good and informative as I could make it.

     For the time being I was feeling pretty overwhelmed about what I didn’t seem to know concerning news writing.  One day I made time to come in and talk to B.J. about my talent as a writer, as opposed to my work as a student.  “Do you think I have any writing talent?” I asked.

     “Yeah Dave,” he said, “I do.  I think you’re a pretty good writer and you also write pretty fast, which is real useful in this business.” 

     We talked a while and he mentioned that he thought I’d be disadvantaged on the copy desk of a major paper such as The Seattle Times.  Editors tended to shove a slip of paper at you, with some fragmentary information scrawled on it and tell you to go cover the story.  Everything had to be done in a hurry in order to make Press time everyday or oftener.  B. J. suggested that magazine writing might be more conducive to my style of research.  I could have a longer time to research a story and could do the in depth work in my own way. 

I confided that I felt as if I weren’t really pulling my own weight.  I came from a working class family with a strong labor ethic.  I’d been in college two years already and still didn’t feel as if I was ready to do any real work.  He suggested that I write one or more good articles about the Engineering College for The Daily.  This would make me feel more like a participant in journalistic affairs and would be good for my work ethic.  I took his advice and wrote several articles about The College.  The Daily gave me no response whatever.  I don’t believe I ever did break print in The Daily, though I should have.  Before I was finished at the University though, I’d edit my own newspaper.  I never took another course in newswriting as such, though I did a great deal more writing in other classes.  I probably will never take another course in expository writing, though I write everyday in the work I do now.  I cannot think of another body of study that I ever undertook among the many subjects I’ve undertaken, that has proved to be more useful to me than the journalistic practice I underwent, especially that endured under B. J. Johnston, newspaperman, hard teacher, fair man. 

     My new roommate was 28, a double major in Physics and Math.  He’d been in a traffic accident while in his teens and had suffered severe head trauma.  It had taken him several years to get back into school and he was now a Junior.  He attributed his recovery from brain injury, (significant I thought though not complete,)) to transcendental meditation, which he practiced several times a day, in a process he referred to as Rounding.  Bruce had made an unfortunate error.  He’d been short of cash and having trouble paying his single-double room fee.  The desk clerk had advised him to let his room be listed as a double, thereby lowering his fee.  Nobody would likely be assigned to the other space.  Just about that time though, I showed up in The Head Resident’s office, demanding different accommodations.  Bruce was quite unhappy when I knocked on his door, telling him I was his new roommate.

     He hit me with the T. M. spiel just about first thing, right before telling me he kept the window open at all times and he kept the radio on at all times and he expected the room to be as quiet as possible.  I let him know in my turn that I was also paying for a room and though I’d try not to bother him, I had a life to live as well.

     I had studied about Eastern mysticism, especially Hinduism, in Dr. Conlen’s  Ancient Indian History Class the previous summer. Of course everything I’d learned was wrong, or I didn’t say it right.  According to Bruce, no acceptable world order could be achieved until everyone in the world meditated daily and according  the style he embraced.  At that time TV watching would stop.  People would still work, but only toward acceptable ends and nobody would worry about anything.  I said it sounded like a lobotomized populace.  Bruce wanted to know if I thought stress and strife was good for people.  I said to some degree.  Small problems are good practice for unavoidable big ones.  Bruce was the first person, though not the last, who tried to include the teachings of Jesus and the Bible in general into the Tmer’s view of life and existence. 

     During those years before Jesus’s ministry began and most people would say we don’t know what he might have been doing, he was supposedly in The East, possibly in India or Tibet, learning Hindu disciplines.  He’d actually wanted to teach the world enlightenment through meditation Bruce claimed, but had died before his work was finished.  Now it remained for certain adepts to finish the work Jesus had begun. 

     Another theory held that Adam and Eve were partanogenic nuder individuals.  They produced young externally, growing on their sides.  When the Bible speaks of a rib being taken from Adam to create Eve, what was really taking place is a process of giving first. 

     I did not particularly believe in any version of the Garden Of Eden story, but felt the faith I was trying to build was being unduly challenged by a rather arrogant sophistic individual.  Bruce didn’t want his beliefs of lifestyle criticized but had no problem criticizing or prosytilizing to me.  I’d pretty much had it with roommates by then.  The first night I roomed with Bruce, I took my bedding outside on the balcony and slept there, which I did every other night that summer, fair or foul, except when Bruce went home for the weekend, which he started doing more often once I showed up.

     One morning during the second week of the quarter I met Ninian again at breakfast.  She asked if I remembered her.  Bruce had been eating with us and I asked him later what she looked like.  He said she was sort of chunky and her hair was probably what you’d call the ultimate shade of dishy blonde.  Well, I didn’t really give a damn about what she looked like.  That week I stopped on the Ave and bought several carnations.  I’d found from Curt where Ninian’s cluster was, so I went up and taped the flowers next to her cluster door with a computer card addressed to her, with Dave Plassman Esq. offers his compliments. as well as a poem typed on it.  The next evening I was walking on the outside of the building toward the wing where my room was when Ninian caught up to me and thanked me quite profusely for the flowers, saying it was the first time in quite a while anyone had given her flowers.  I was having difficulty saying much of anything, but I put my arm around her and said I’d like to get together and talk sometime, could she possibly visit me sometime soon.  She said she was going on a short trip, but would come see me either Saturday or Sunday. 

     I spent a rather tense weekend listening to some issues of Analog Magazine Andy Andrews had recorded on open-reel tape.  Bruce was home for the weekend.  I hand washed my socks and underwear so I wouldn’t have to go to the laundry room and be away from my room.  I scrubbed the items so hard I wore my fingers quite raw! 

     Late Sunday afternoon Ninian knocked on my door.  She apologized for taking so long getting here (indeed I’d almost given up hope that she’d come,) but all of that went away as soon as I heard her voice.  Ninian exclamed over my shelf of books with Calculus, Physics Chemistry texts and Engineering handbooks.  I showed her my injured hands and told her how I’d damaged them and she said, “Dave your underwear couldn’t have been that dirty!”  We talked about a lot of things; things I’d invented, places she’d been, books we’d read, solutions to pollution problems, spaceships, star travel, energy sources, much else.  Ninian had little grounding in science but had no trouble understanding anything I talked about and had much of her own to add.

     Though we talked for hours, I never got things around to a personal perspective.  It all seemed to be over in a few minutes.  When Ninian said she really needed to be going I said “My God, we’ve talked for nearly three hours and I never said what I wanted to tell you.”  I told her I was in love with her.  She said, somewhat taken aback, that she liked me too.  I said I’d been attracted to her since the first time we’d met.  She told me she couldn’t get emotionally involved with boys right now.  I asked her if she’d go out with me.  She said she would.  I asked if it would be too much of an intrusion if I were to kiss her good evening.  She said it would not.  She kissed with her mouth open.

    

     Ninian and I went to The Seattle Center the next Saturday, ate in the International Food Circus, sat on the edge of the Fountain sharing a bottle of wine.  It turned out she did Transcendental Meditation.  I asked if she thought she could teach me.  I wasn’t entirely against the idea of TM per se, just didn’t like Bruce’s badgering.  Ninian said she couldn’t teach me because she wouldn’t know which mantra to give me.  A mantra had to suit the individual.  I had shared with her how much of a pain my new roommate was.  When we got back to the dorm I invited Ninian to my room to meet Bruce.  I’d tried to present Ninian to him before but he’d refused to meet her.  After Ninian had gone and I’d decided he was more of a rude so-and-so than even I had imagined, Bruce told me he’d been doing his yoga, which he did several times a day and was in his shorts.  This caused myself and several others in our cluster to dub Bruce The Bare Yogi, which provided an excellent needle to his pomposity. 

     This evening Bruce was both in and dressed and received us courteously enough.  Ninian led off directly, asking Bruce if he did Transcendental Meditation. 

     “Yes, I’m a Tmer,” he said happily.

     “Dave was asking me if I could teach him,” Ninian said, “but I told him I wouldn’t know what mantra to give him.”  It turned out that she would really have liked to go to a big T.M. confab this weekend, to which Bruce had gone, but she didn’t have the money.  They talked about the event quite a while then, seeing I was getting upset, Ninian excused herself to Bruce and asked if I’d like to walk her to her room.  When we got near her door I burst out, “Sometimes I just don’t understand you!”  She asked me what I meant.  I said that what I’d shared with her was supposed to be a confidence between us.  Why had she Told Bruce I’d asked her to teach me meditation.  She’d heard how much of a boore he could be.  Now he’d bug hell out of me!  She didn’t have an answer to that.  I asked her why she hadn’t told me she’d rather go to the meditation event.  I could have lent her some money to go there.  Ninian said she’d decided to go out with me instead.  She asked if I’d like to come in and talk for a while. I did so and she offered me a beer.  We sat together on her bed, she smoking a cigarette, me drinking the can of beer.

     It turned out that she had friends visiting from Tennessee, though they weren’t there at the moment, having gone out for the evening. 

     I told her that I’d had a wonderful time that evening, that I felt we’d been very natural together and that I felt somehow our meeting had been preordained.  I just couldn’t understand why she was so against having a relationship with me. 

     Ninian sighed as if exasperated and said, “I think I should tell you I’m involved with a guy.  He’s not here.  He’s in Japan.”  I asked her why she hadn’t told me that straight off when I’d said how I felt.  She seemed to have no answer for that either.  About then the friends came back.  Gilly and Chuck had driven from Tennessee to visit Ninian and also to see the Northwest.  Their families, like Ninian’s evidently lived part of the year in Alabama as well.  I asked them what they thought of all the Yankees up here.  They told me we weren’t Yankees in Washington.  We were Westerners.  Yankees were back East. 

     It turned out that George Wallace was a close friend of Chuck’s family.  Chuck thought the world of Alabama’s Governor, even though “Everytime he sees me he says “Goddam you, why don’t you get a haircut!!”  Chuck staunchly defended Governor Wallace’s blocking black students from the University of Alabama.  He said George Wallace believed very strongly in states’ rights and would disregard what the Supreme Court in Washington said if the Constitution of Alabama said something different.  I was aware that Ninian despised George Wallace.  I had an idea though, that if Governor Wallace could meet some well-rounded, well-educated people such as myself, who were also aware of the impending danger of civil war in America, he might be persuaded to moderate on some things.  In fact this did occur eventually, though I had nothing to do with it.

     I’d pulled out of my funk for a while to give good conversation to Ninian’s guests.  After a while I got up and said I’d better be getting home and think about going to bed.  When I reached my cluster, I kept replaying what Ninian had said about having a steady boyfriend after she’d told me she couldn’t get involved with anyone. 

     I’d bought three bottles of wine, rather on a whim, a couple of days before.  Ninian and I had pretty much demolished one of them.  I opened another and began to drink deeply thereof, trying to make the desolate chasm inside me go away.  I think this was the first time I ever drank to cover pain, Or in the attempt I should say.  The empty feeling didn’t retreat particularly, but I was beginning to feel numb, dull, leaden.  At some point I called on God, saying, “I don’t want this numb feeling anymore.”  Whether by direction or instinct, I made my way to the bathroom and caused myself to vomit, one of the only times in my life I’ve done that.  I hate throwing up, but that time did me some good.  I still felt desolate but at least could communicate after a fashion.  I gained admittance to my neighbor’s room and poured out my soul.  Dave, actually Samyot Kupacanchana, who used the American name because he didn’t trust us to pronounce the other, was a Chinese who had grown up in Thailand.  He listened patiently, not offering advice, there really being not much to say.  When I’d nearly done he said, “Something I envy you for is you know what it’s like to be in love.  I’ve never felt that before.”  At the time it was difficult to decide which of us was less fortunate. 

     Later that morning I woke up on my balcony, with surprisingly little hangover but I was full of angry thoughts.  I determined to go to Ninian and demand that she either decide to love me or have nothing whatever to do with me.  I supposed I knew what she’d say but at least I’d know where I stood.  I really didn’t think she was acting very much like someone who was all that committed to someone else and the boyfriend in Japan might even be mythical.  Still I felt mean and ugly, thinking such hateful thoughts about someone I loved.

     I remember a bird landing right next to me on the balcony.  I literally felt the power of its wingbeats and became aware of how hard it must thrash to swim through the air.  I believe it must have been either a crow or  a pigeon and I don’t know that it had anything to do with what happened next, but the event stays fixed in my mind. 

     At about this time I prayed again, saying I didn’t want to lay here thinking these angry thoughts.  An amazing thing occurred.  It was as if my brain was suddenly subdivided by a plane, passing through my skull, so that the top of my brain was divided from the bottom.  I had the strong impression of thinking in the top of my head, where I could think reasonably, calmly pretty logically I thought.  The angry thoughts swirled about in the lower part of my brain.  I knew they were there and that I could access them at any time if I wanted them, but I could also hold them at bay, which I did. 

     I got up then and taking my last unopened bottle of wine, left it near the entrance to Ninian’s Cluster, with a friendly note to Gilly and Chuck, saying how much I’d enjoyed meeting them the night previous.  Then I went downstairs and ate an enormous breakfast.

    

     Ninian and I continued to keep company, having long conversations on the phone, sometimes eating together, sometimes visiting in her room.  There seemed to be some issue about financing her trip to Japan.  She might be staying in Seattle.  My dream came back to me. 

     One day Ninian met my friend Jim Watson, who told her he’d heard of her from me.  Ninian told Jim “Oh yes.  We go together sort of.  I really like him.”  Again it wasn’t seeming all that much like she was tied up with someone in another country. 

     Ninian and I had other problems too.  She believed in a sort of admixture of Hinduism, Buddhism and white magic, while I was struggling to come to grips with Christianity as I had begun to understand it. 

     Ninian and I argued about other things as well.  She espoused what I perceived to be a rather abject form of pacifism, saying that she would allow herself to be raped a thousand times before she would do violence to another human being.  She did not appear to be all that passive and I pointed that out to her.  She said then that she’d been speaking figuratively.  Ninian thought I was a person with too many answers.  I countered that if a mind be to open, it cannot hold anything.

     I was feeling very much pressured from a variety of directions.  I kept getting messages from Christian fundamentalists, meditators, atheists, behavioral psychologists, reminiscent of things I’d been bludgeoned with when a child, that A or B was true and I that it to be so and did not admit this because I was being stubborn or close-minded.  I actually spent a great deal of time wrestling with various issues, be it the need for salvation, the appropriateness of self-defense, the supposed necessity for transcendentalism or the existence of free will.  I finally reached a decision which may seem obvious now, but was quite pivotal for me at the time.  Simply, though I might amass evidence or hold strong opinions, I could not entirely Know anything.  No matter how apparent something seemed to me or to someone else, there was always uncertainty.  The more important the issue, the more uncertainty there appeared to be.  I wrote a short piece on this point, proclaiming that I could not be held responsible for knowing the unknowable, that I must reason and hope that I made appropriate decisions.  To direct someone to believe implicitly and without reservation (as does the Bible,) is nonsense.  Thus liberated I began reading my Bible in fits and starts, attempting to discern how it coincided or differed with respect to the various belief systems around me.  

     One day Ninian saw an apartment for rent, near campus.  She’d soon be moving out of the dorms.  I spent another long evening with her shortly before her moving date.  Again we discussed many things, among which were favorite books and things both of us had written.  Most significantly though, I remember telling her to go to Japan and if she found what she was looking for there, then God bless her.  If she did not, come back to me.  She said I was a beautiful person and that she would always love me.

     The morning of Ninian’s move she had breakfast with me.  Duncan, my former roommate came over and asked if he could sit down.  I told him he was welcome and he and Ninian both lit cigarettes.  I had smoked off and on since age ten to age 16, when I’d stopped in order to avoid spending all of my spare money.  Duncan said he was moving to New York, where he intended to go to secretarial school and become the confidential secretary of a rich, influential man. 

     I went up to Ninian’s room, bringing my pack and loaded up the stuff she had left in to move.  I think I toted about 50 pounds over several blocks to Ninian’s apartment.  I’d also fetched along a bottle of apple wine, flavored with cinnamon, which I’d made, and when we arrived at her new home, we both had a glass and talked about the future.  We seemed to be agreeing that someday I’d come down to Alabama and meet her parents.  It seemed that we’d be there together, at least that was what I got from the conversation.  At some point though when I was talking about what I intended to do over the next couple of years, she said “I’ll probably be married within the next two or three months.”  That hit me like a hard punch to the stomach and I think she must have seen me go white or something.  She asked me what was wrong.  I said I was in shock.  We tried to talk it through and it did not get acrimonious, but I’m afraid I was poor company. 

     Ninian was having dinner with her elder brother and his family.  He drove over toward evening to pick her up.  It turned out that Charles was a professor of banking here at the U.W.  He offered me a ride home and I talked with him a bit about his background.  He’d started out in Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. 

   

     Weeks would pass before I saw Ninian again.  I hand-delivered notes to her door and sent messages via mutual acquaintances.  I hired a woman whom I’d met the previous year, to type The Waves, my short story about love and sharing, in good form and I sent Ninian a copy.  I heard that she’d loved the story, but received nothing directly from her. 

     It was about this time I think that I fell into or reentered that strange condition I’d experienced earlier that year.  It wasn’t really a depressive state.  Again I felt I was unlocking the secrets of the cosmos.  I felt imbued with some glowing strength.  I recall laying on my bed and having the distinct impression that I could reach my hand down to the floor and support the entire weight and moment of my body on one arm, my body held out straight, essentially floating in the air.  It didn’t work.

     I threw myself into my writing, outside of my classwork and at great length.  This was my novel, dissertation, compendium, That Which is—A Book About Everything.  Stemming from my liberating missive about the lack of Knowing, it was building on several levels and along several threads.  I felt driven to write chapters in the story of Confederate Colonel Beauregard McCormac, ancestor of The McCormacs in my novel Thumbing Down A Star.  The Colonel cradles the head of his dying son-in-law following a clash with Yankee troops.  As I wrote, I had an incredible impression that I’d been there, had seen the blood-soaked Georgia clay, the threadbare gray and blue uniforms and had smelled the smoke of Atlanta burning.  As the book progressed Colonel McCormac returns to his decimated plantation, to his wife and daughter Laura, to whom he must bring the grievous news. 

     Another thread was a series of discourses I was setting down, chronicling various philosophical arguments I was having, with my roommate and with Bruce Hedman. He was also in the dorm with me, with Walt a Sophomore Psych major and computer buff, who insisted on a mechanistic view of the human mind.  I also included conversations with Milt, a procelytizing Morman who was also a pretty good friend, and with others.  The arguments probably weren’t all that significant to anyone else but of course seemed critical to me and they helped me clarify my own positions on important issues.  In the section of That Which Is, I included this verse.

    

     They say our gain is Heaven’s loss

Though a protein construct perished on the cross.

And furthermore the angels say,

My soul is spun from DNA.

With a cosmic egg it all begins

And social norms rive right from sin.

Though vistas loom at every glance

And dust motes whirl in inorganic dance

Please say you love me, Random Chance!

   

     The third thread of my book was about my relationship with Ninian, which as I’ve previously stated, appeared to be something preordained and perhaps cosmic.  I set things down in much greater detail than I’ve included here and began with, Let me tell you of my love—Tell?—such an inadequate verb to describe the process I must undertake, for I can tell with no completeness but can offer a mere segment, jagged at either end with fracturing and it’s shape distorted from segmentation.  Yet that which I have I give and freely.  It went on in that vein for a long time.  In my mind’s eye it would coalesce into an eon-spanning epic of the Parkers and the McCormacs, being a cosmic romance with overt religious overtones.  

Subthemes would show exploration of the solar system with biodyne craft, Couples exchanging bodies, The Maharishi as Antichrist, the journey toward God as the only means of discovering other individuals besides self exist in the universe. 

     There was some good stuff in what I was writing, if quite florid, but the process was a lot like building a coil pot in clay, when the vessel insists upon growing very large upon a very slender stem.  Though my starting points were highly magnetic to me, they weren’t particularly good foundations on which to base a project of such scope, even assuming I was qualified to write a project of the magnitude I’d set myself.  In any case I had a profound need to write and write.  I fully expected the work to be finished and bound, if perhaps in only one copy.  I imagined subtitling the novel How I Wrote My Way Out Of Madness.  During these days I felt adrift much of the time and sometimes frightened, though I was always fascinated.  I ate a phenomenal amount, drank much more than I was used too, was very argumentative, though also quite loving at times.  I continued to write as if my project were a survival float or perhaps as if I were racing away from a conflagration.  Eventually the writing bogged to a grumbling halt, short of halfway finished, as did the quarter and eventually the madness itself ebbed away too, for the most part.

     Other things were going on around me and I was aware of them.  The university always seemed to be highly charged politically and we had opportunities aplenty for the exchange of ideas with the highly diverse ethnic and national mix in McMahon Hall.  One evening a radio was heard suddenly playing over the Cafeteria P.A. and the voice of President Nixon was heard.  As the hall quieted Richard Nixon explained that he was resigning as our president and how much he regretted the decision he had to make.  Of course we’d been breathing Watergate for more than a year now.  I was sitting with several Oriental students who became quite still when Nixon’s voice began speaking to us.  When he’d finished, they began exchanging hushed comments in their own language.  I’m not certain whether they were Japanese or another Asian group.  When things had normalized a bit, I told them I’d like to make a few comments about my country.  I said that when our leader did something wrong we could talk about that freely and though a person might hold the highest office in the land, he was not above removal from that office.  I didn’t mean to be truculent. I don’t think they took my comments as such, but I felt that in spite of the obvious covering up of some of Nixon’s actions and those of his close associates, that the aftermath of Watergate had turned out to be a victory for the Common person in America.  We were all subject to the law.

     

     Though summer quarter had ended, I remained in the dorm.  Mom and Dad had invited me to come stay with them.  They’d bought a larger trailer and had moved it to a park called Bow Lake Trailer Town, out in South Seattle.  I said I had things to finish up before I could leave.  I stayed on and on, sometimes taking potluck with a group of Chinese students, sometimes going to a drive-in, sometimes eating dry oatmeal and drinking sugar water to keep up my energy.  I avoided shaving for days at a time and washed about as frequently I fear. 

     When day there was a knock at my door and Ninian’s voice said “Hi.”  I was caught between What took you so long and Are you really here?  She asked if I’d come to her apartment for dinner.  I told her we needed to talk for a few minutes, then she could decide if she really wanted me to come over or not. I left her in my room while I went and cleaned up a bit.

     When I returned I said that I’d come very close to losing my mind with her dropping off the end of the earth like that.  Couldn’t she at least have taken a couple of minutes to write me a note or call?  Ninian said her boyfriend from Japan and his friends had been staying with her and she hadn’t had the time to write or call.  I asked if they’d been there the entire six weeks or so since I’d seen her last.  She didn’t answer.

     I confronted her with the things already mentioned; why had she told Jim Watson that we went together, sort of?  Why had she acted so close to me?  Why did she kiss like that?  She really had no answers except “That’s just how I do things.” 

     I told Ninian I thought she was deluding herself trying to be something she wasn’t I.E. a Japanese person.  I said I didn’t think she was cut out to be a servant.  I’d talked to a number of oriental men, including my friend Samyot, who had said Ninian’s boyfriend might talk about equality while he was in the U.S. but once married and in the Orient, Ninian would do what she was told.  I’m sure a lot of things I said were out of line and fairly harsh, but I did try to moderate. 

     Suddenly Ninian fell into my lap and began to cry.  “What should I do Dave? I’m in love with a Japanese boy.  I’ll probably be married pretty soon.”  I asked her what should I do.  She said she didn’t know.  I held her for a little while.

     I did go to Ninian’s apartment that evening.  More visitors had arrived from Tennessee and a friend from Princeton who was going with Mary, Ninian’s best girlfriend.  We had a nice dinner, fish rice and vegetables, cooked in sesame oil.  After dinner I bought everyone a round at Bascon Robins.  Ninian told me she was leaving soon for Japan.  I asked her to come see me once more before she left the country.

    

     Ninian stopped around one day to see if I could help type out some things for a new passport application, but I wasn’t home at the time.  True to her word she came back once more and found me in.  Ninian had a letter she’d written to me and asked how I was going to read it.  I said I’d have a friend read it for me.  I said I could get a woman to do it if that would make her feel more comfortable.  She said she’d try to tell me what she’d written.

     Basically she said, she shouldn’t have cried last time she’d visited me, she should have gotten mad and told me off.  I had no right to talk to her as I had.  I told her rights were not involved there was nothing wrong with me telling her how I felt.  She’d had every opportunity to say what she wanted.

     Ninian said I’d managed to shake her faith in all of the friends she’d made in Seattle.  (These presumably were two, Kurt who’d introduced us and had told me privately that Ninian was kind of dingy, and Nancy, a very sweet half-Japanese woman who’d been quite sympathetic with me and had said she thought Ninian was less than honest in her dealings with me.)  I had not however, as Ninian now accused, been going around telling people Ninian had lied to me.  I’d actually been very respectful concerning Ninian when discussing her with anyone else.  I told her so.

    

     At last we stopped arguing.  She said she’d write to me from Japan and if I wanted to come to a land where women lit men’s cigarettes I could visit there.  I now took a gold-colored champagne token I’d been carrying for a couple of years, from my pocket.  It had the face of George Wallace on one side, an eagle on the other.  It was one of my most treasured possessions.  I asked her to take my uncle George to Japan with her so he might benefit from the Oriental serenity and patience.  Ninian said she’d take the spirit with her.  She wouldn’t need the coin.  I tried to press the coin on her, which made her angry.  She walked out.  I let her go, not even walking her to the door.  She was gone. I never saw Ninian again.  I never heard from her. 

     A mysterious bag of chocolate-chip cookies were left for me with a dorm neighbor during Fall Quarter, Junior Year. The young woman who’d left the gift could have answered Ninian’s descrption as I knew it, but so could have thousands of others.  I looked up the number for Professor Charles Halley in the Campus directory but never called.  What would be the point?  If Ninian were well, I would be glad.  If not, what could I have done?

     Though things were over between us, they didn’t feel all that over.  I continued to dream about Ninian for years.  I’d told her I would be around the Seattle area for another two and a half years, after which time I’d make sure she couldn’t find me.  I intended finishing my degree, then taking another three or four quarters at the U.W. before moving on to Texas or somewhere else.  Before that time was up, I’d pretty much stopped being hung up on Ninian, though the dreams didn’t stop even then. 

     The last one happened when I’d been married for 20 months, our daughter more than a year old.  We were in our 3^rd home together.  I dreamed Ninian had called me and I was trying to respond.  The message had come to me through some third party.  I knew in the dream that if I could reach her, I’d try to get her to meet me somewhere.  That bothered me in the dream and it bothered me when I woke up.  I knew I was, subconsciously at least, still not quite over her.  That was the last dream of its kind however and though I still have quite sharp memories about Ninian, both good and bad ones, she is no longer the person with whom I wish I could spend my life.  I do still wish her well.

     I think my friends thought I was rather psychotic at this time and they may have been right.  More recently, with many more years maturity behind me I took another look at why it was so hard to turn loose of Ninian when she was leaving, of her memories when she’d gone.  Something that wouldn’t have occurred to me then, did now.  I think I saw Ninian very much as I thought I’d be, had I been born female.  I think I saw her as a soul mate, even though currently, we had wide differences, certainly in our viewpoints, though not necessarily in how we felt.  Seeing her leave was truly like losing a large piece of myself and it hurt very badly, for a very long time.