During the last few months of living in Indianapolis, I also developed a crush on the one other Broad Ripple H.S. marching band member, a white high school sophomore woman, who lived, with her older sisters and parents in a house her parents owned, on the same block where I lived in the part of the duplex house that my parents rented.
Her mother seemed to feel that, as a sophomore high school woman, she was still too tomboyish and may have feared that she might end up becoming a lesbian (in an early 1960's historical period when the U.S. mass media and many U.S. psychiatrists seemed to regard woman who were attracted to other women sexually or emotionally as being in need of being "cured" by psychiatric treatment, etc.); unless she began showing more interest in using make-up, dressing up and trying to attract boys to date; instead of then still being more interested in athletics and playing the trumpet in the band.
So one Spring morning in 1964, on a day when she happened to be driving her daughter to school while I was walking on the sidewalk to the bus stop on College Avenue, I was surprised when my "bandmate"'s mother, who seemed to be in her late 40's, pulled her car up beside me on the sidewalk; and then invited me to hop into the car and get a lift, along with her daughter, uptown to Broad Ripple High School.
Yet after we reached the high school and her mother dropped her and me off together in the front of the school building, I still didn't get any indication from the "bandmate" from my block that she was particularly interested, herself, in getting to know me better. And, although by this time I realized I had a crush on her, thought her face pretty despite her not using lipstick and make-up, and was physically attracted to her, the thought didn't even cross my mind that I might ask her if she wished to go with me to Broad Ripple High School's "Junior Prom," that year.
In New York City, the public high schools had "Senior Proms" each year for the high school seniors who were graduating that June; but not also "Junior Proms," for the high school juniors, who weren't graduating that June. Broad Ripple H.S., however, held a "Junior Prom" each year.
Yet, by the second term of my junior year in high school, attending either a high school "Junior Prom" or, during the next year, a high school "Senior Prom," was not something I felt I would enjoy doing; and in my junior year at Broad Ripple H.S., the thought of attending its "Junior Prom" was not one that I ever even considered.
So when, surprisingly, I received, in the mail at home, some kind of an invitation in late May, from one of the white high school women who had been in one of my English "G" classes, inviting me to a "pre-Junior Prom" party that she was holding, I was not glad to have received the invitation because I had never considered going to the "Junior Prom," itself. In addition, I don't think I had ever had any kind of one-on-one conversation with this particular English G classmate inside or outside school during the three terms I had attended Broad Ripple and had never felt any particular interest in getting to know her better.
But I was able to escape going to a "pre-Junior Prom" party, that I assumed I would likely find uninteresting for me, by sending her, by mail, an RSVP note which thanked her for the invitation, but indicated that I was unable to attend her party "due to other plans;" although I likely spent the evening and night of her party and the "Junior Prom" in 1964, just staying at home and watching TV.
