Summer 1974: Engaged at Summer Camp

Manville, Illinois, Summer 1974

I have a confession to make: during the summer after 8th grade at Washington Junior High, shortly after my boyfriend Dan and I decided to run away to Saudi Arabia together, I got engaged.  To a girl.

Manville, our Nazarene summer camp on the prairie, had church services every morning and evening, with altar calls, sports, and jump quiz practice in between. 

 In Tuesday morning's chapel, I happened to sit next to a short, rather husky girl who bore an extraordinary resemblance to Jimmy on H.R. Pufnstuf: rounded features, red lips, houlder-length black hair. During the altar call, she glanced over at my Bible and saw Psalm 2:8 marked with the initials S.A.: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

“Who’s S.A.?” she whispered.

“Saudi Arabia,” I said.  I was framing our escape as a missionary endeavor. “God’s Will is for me to become a missionary to the Bedouins of the Empty Quarter."

“No, I don’t think so. God didn’t say anything about Arabia. He said you should go to West Germany."  Her voice was calm, matter of fact, as if she had said “No, the test is on Chapter Three, not Chapter Two.”

Germany was a bona fide Nazarene mission field, all Lutheran or Catholic.  Still, I was astonished.  “When did God tell you that?” I asked.

“In the service last night.  I was...um...looking at you, and God gave me a vision of you preaching in a big stadium in Munich.  You were leading an altar call, and hundreds of people were Praying Through."  She began to sing "Just as I Am," our altar call hymn, in German. “Oh, Gottes Lamm, Ich komme. . . .Ich komme.”

All Nazarene kids knew that God had a specific Will for us, usually a career for the boys and a marital partner for the girls.  He might reveal it through "a small still voice," or through "opening a door," or, most dramatically, through a Vision of Our Future.

"Why would God give you a vision of my future?"

“It was for both of us," she said.  "I was playing the organ, so obviously His Will is for you to become a missionary in Germany, and me to be your wife."

“No, I already heard His Will," I protested.  "It's to go to Saudi Arabia with my friend Dan.  Definitely with Dan."

"He told me Germany.  And who knows, this Dan guy might be there too, with his wife."

"That's crazy!  We're not going to have wives!  We're going to be missionaries together, like Paul and Barnabas."

The altar call was over, so I walked out with the others into the heat of mid July. The girl -- her name was Sarah -- followed me toward my Bible study class.

"You can't be a missionary without a wife!" she said.  "You have to go to the field as a team, like Adam and Eve."

I laughed.  "You're crazy!"

 But I found my cabin counselor, Brother Dino, who was my Sunday school teacher back home (the one whose sons became male strippers later).  He went to the office and dug up a list of requirements for the Nazarene ministry.  You had to be male, at least 21 years old, saved and sanctified, never divorced, never a Roman Catholic -- and married!

So, in order to escape to a "good place" with Dan, I would need a wife!  God said so!  Later I met Sarah in the snack bar and gave her my grim consent to our future wedding.

Manville Camp, with the woods on the right

We were engaged for part of Tuesday and all day Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  We ate our meals together in the camp canteen, sat together in chapel and the evening service, and even walked through the woods behind the tabernacle where boys and girls went to kiss -- though we never kissed.  Sarah hated "that mushy stuff" as much as I did.

I enjoyed being engaged -- being seen with a girl got me endless triumphant shoulder-pats, thumbs up, cries of "Awright!," and approving grins.  It meant absolute, unwaivering acceptance, none of that awkward confusion or the deliberate refusal to see that happened when I was with a boy.  Not bad!

Why did we call off the engagement?

On that last night, we were walking back from the kissing woods.  Someone was listening to the radio in the distance: John Denver's  "Annie's Song," which was at the top of the charts:

Come, let me love you

Let me give my life to you

Let me drown in your laughter

Let me die in your arms

Let me lay down beside you

Let me always be with you

Come, let me love you

Come love me again

That's how you were supposed to feel about "The One" that God intended for you to spend your life with.  You were supposed to dissolve into them, lose your soul, your individuality, become one.

I looked at Sarah walking beside me.  We were just reaching the girls' cabins.  I could go no further.  "Thanks, see yah," I said, and ran as fast as I could to my own cabin, and jumped under the covers of my bed and prayed for God to give me Dan.

Nude Photos of Saudi and Bedouin Men

These are the uncensored photos of Saudi and Bedouin men from the post on Boomer's Beefcake and Bonding.

Perfect in every way except for the weird haircut.

Does he strike you as a little small?



















Or are you so used to seeing this size that 7" seems small by comparison.



















I couldn't post this one on the other blog; censoring the penis took up half the frame.

Dan and I Decide to Escape to Saudi Arabia

Dan and I were boyfriends for about two years, from 7th grade to 9th grade (1973-75).  Our bond was more passionate and more physical than my bond with Bill, but not as instinctive.  It took work to maintain, with the distractions of Spanish club, French club, wrestling, orchestra, and other boys, not to mention the constant "what girl do you like?" interrogations.  Everyone insisted that the "discovery of girls" was inevitable, that one day soon we would abandon childish things, like boys, and spend the rest of our lives obsessed with feminine curves and smiles.

Every class and school activity began with the assumption that all boys were girl-crazy, or soon would be.

In English, we watched old black and white films that taught boys the proper technique for asking girls out on dates.

In Wood Shop, the purpose of every project, from bird houses to hat racks, was to “impress girls with.”

In Gym, if we failed to climb the rope or do enough push-ups, the coach bellowed that we’d have the strength if we would just cut back on the girl-kissing and get some sleep.

At home, there were advantages to the assumption that the Discovery had come. Mom and Dad doubled my allowance, reasoning that I would need cash to finance my upcoming avalanche of dates. I could get permission to go anywhere, even across the Mississippi into Iowa, if they found out that there would be girls there.  I could get away with almost any misdeed, from staying out after curfew to losing my new jacket, because they assumed that I had been trying to meet girls or impress a girl.

But the advantages were outweighed by the constant interrogation of  “what girl do you like. . .what girl. . .what girl. . . .”  When I tried to explain that I didn’t like girls in that way, Mom just smiled, and Dad refused to believe me: “I’ll bet you don’t! What’s her name?”

So I decided to pretend. At school, I taped a picture of Raquel Welch to my locker door, and imitated my friends’ comments: “She’s bitchin!”; “She’s hot!”; “I wish she would take her clothes off!”  At home and at church, I invented a ghostly spectacle of girls who walked in slow motion across a silent schoolyard, their long hair blowing in the wind. I found a poem about a girl’s “long blonde beauty” and copied it into my notebook and left it open for Mom and Dad to find.

But I could relax with Dan, and talk about Donny Osmond, and Barry Williams from The Brady Bunch, and what boys at school were cute.  Every once in a while I would nudge him and whisper"Girls are gross!", a secret message that only the two of us shared.

"They sure are!" he would answer.  

But how could we survive in a world where every boy longed for girls, every man longed for women?  We decided to escape.  We began looking for a "good place," where boys could walk hand in hand, and kiss, and live together through all their lives.  We discussed Greece, Italy, Japan, Yugoslavia, England, and many other countries and regions.

The Middle East had never been on my list of "good places," but Dan argued that the desert was clean and free, almost empty, and practical: Dan's father, an engineer, said that Americans were needed in Saudi Arabia to drill for oil and help civilize the nomadic Bedouin.

So it was settled: after high school we would move to Saudi Arabia, the only place in the world where same-sex love was celebrated, and live in the holy city of Mecca.  

In retrospect, I can think of several problems with that plan.