Time Travellers from the 1960's Pt. 02

The young guy was called Jim. When he became confident that she liked him he became more forward. After dancing together for a while he asked if she wanted a drink. She was quite impressed, because, as the older party she hadn't been sure he would be so generous. She was quite prepared to buy him a drink, although it was traditional for the man to buy some drinks. He evidently wanted to get to know her and talk to her, which was what she wanted if events were to proceed in the way she hoped.

He returned with her drink, a straightforward beer, just a small one because she did not want to lose any self control in this new modern world. She was still a stranger. She did not have any friends here as yet, or relatives, although as far as they knew some of their relatives might very likely still be alive, and much older than when they 'left'. In the New Seminary such questions had been discussed and they had been advised not to seek out relatives or friends. Meetings with those they had known would probably be very upsetting, and place them in difficulties. The others had thought that it was best to make a clean sweep, to enter the future independent and unencumbered with responsibilities.

"I ain't seen you here before?" said the young guy, predictably. Louise was pleased. He was polite, which she liked.

"I haven't been to many clubs recently," she returned. "But you have, I imagine."

"Sure it's the best thing to do. I'm here every Saturday, and Fridays too, ya know. Just looking for the right lady to show up." She wondered whether he did much else, but didn't say anything yet.

"So you ain't got a girl at the moment?" she asked.

"No. I am young, free and single, and at your mercy, maam," he said, his eyes flashing with switched on interest. She had his full attention, and she liked it.

"Well Jim, what else do you like to do? I mean when you're not at the club." She was playing with him a bit now, but she wanted to find out a bit more about him. She'd already decided she would try to give him a go. He looked nice, sweet, and he was a charmer so far. She hoped he wouldn't blow it and spoil her fun. But she wasn't too fussy, when she was in this mood.

"Baseball," he said.

"Baseball?" she checked, hoping there was something else. "I don't know too much about that. It's a bit of a man thing I suppose."

"Yeah, I suppose it is," he said, picking up that she didn't know too much about it. That showed sensitivity. "I'm in a team. We play on Saturday afternoons, and we party a bit afterwards. Some of the other guys are in the club tonight.

Ted saw Louise at the other side of the dancefloor. She had not been watching him and seemed to be getting on well with a man, dancing and getting pretty close on the dancefloor, doing a sexy dance together with a lot of touching. Judging by the amount of time they spent on the dancefloor and in deeper conversation in the bar area Ted intuitively knew that Louise wanted to spend the night with the man. She did not usually spend exclusive time with any young adult males without an intention to end up in bed. It was an understood agreement between them, from the days of their past lives, that when they came to nightclubs or parties together they were entitled to leave separately with different partners, if they so wished. It did not always happen that way, but it was what kept their sexual lives interesting. It held them closer together because they allowed each other space within their marriage. Going to parties and clubs had become a shared adventure, far more fun than those couples who jealously guarded each other and exploded in anger at the slightest sexual interest shown towards outsiders. Those couples in the sixties and seventies never had any fun. The men fat, bored and lazy, and the women became petty and closed minded. Ted saw them go off together. Louise winked at him making sure he had seen what she was doing. The young man looked very pleased with himself, stretching his arm around Louise's waist, like a proprietor' but Ted could tell she was giving strong signals of encouragement. When she wanted someone sexually she sure went for it. He hoped she would have a good time. He wasn't concerned. She was a good judge of character, and she knew exactly where they were staying.

"You come to this club a lot then?" she continued her conversation with Jim.

"I certainly do. It's the best club in the city, my favourite anyway. There are others though." He listed a number of other places, the names of which sounded very modern and exciting, but which went straight through her brain and out again.

"You seem to know them all?"

"I do. I've been to them all," he agreed. He gave the distinct impression he was proud to know them all.

"Do they all play music like this? You call it 'dance music'?"

"Well some of them are more r'n'b, more hip hop, and there's some that play rock sounds or soul and disco from the past. I go to them all." He was willing to explain, at what seemed like great length, about the various clubs and the styles that were played. Although she liked the music in this club, she already felt a lot of it was too repetitive, too thudding for her tastes. Maybe she would have to listen more, but perhaps this music was not quite what she expected of music, although there were moments, on the dance floor when the music came together for her, and it sounded good, almost better than anything she had heard before.

There was something about the young man which made her feel he could be their son, but that could not be their ages. She was still only 30 herself and this young guy said he was 23. Perhaps it was something about her attitude to nightclubs which made her see Jim in that way. He was physically attractive to her. She regarded him as a treat, very definitely not as a partner. He seemed much too young for her to regard him as being on an equal level in mentality, experience or taste.

To her nightclubs were an occasional treat. There was far more to life, and she wouldn't normally have wanted to spend half her weekends in this place, not two whole evenings. This young guy seemed to want to hang around in these places, picking up women and never doing anything else. Perhaps she was being unfair. Perhaps, coming from an older culture 30 years before, she was wrong to place her own tastes upon this young man. He was a product of his generation, just as she was of hers.

Ted tried a few more half hearted attempts on ladies present. He found they were not all charming and polite, some were and some were not. He asked simple questions when he had the opportunity, but was disappointed to find that he was not getting into good conversations. Of course the music was very loud and made real conversation difficult because neither party could ever hear everything that was said clearly.

These were not people of depth on the surface level, but perhaps this was because of their impatience towards spending time, understandable given the time constraints of the working life. Somehow they seemed like kids to him although they were all over 18, had to be to get into the club. He was only a few years senior to some of them and was by no means one of the oldest in the club, but somehow they seemed to come from a more childish age in which even adults never grew up. Their fascination with sexual matters, was evident from the covers of their reading magazines, which he had seen, where young, predominantly female 'models' showed off their beautiful features, clothed, semi clothed or naked. He had seen it too on the television adverts which they seemed to place such emphasis on.

They had more channels than in his day, but many of the channels were broken up every quarter of an hour or so with these wonderful but inevitably unsatisfying creations, which presumably appealed to the short modern attention spans, but certainly got in the way of interesting programme watching. This could also be seen in the much more sexually provocative films, where sexually attractive men and women usually featured, and sexual themes of all sorts frequently enter into even those plots which seem to have nothing to do with that subject. It hadn't really been so different in the sixties and seventies; it was just that the sexual references were now more explicit and open. Their books too appeared often to be in this vein, as far as he had so far observed.

Belinda saw Louise was ready to leave, and went over to speak to her, to warn her to be careful. Louise returned the next day, with a mild headache from lack of sleep and some pleasant memories from an enjoyable and physically demanding night at the young guy Jim's apartment.

Ted was not so successful that night, going home, to his disappointment, empty handed and mildly lonely in this future world. Even so it had been an interesting night, and he had learned plenty. Louise would return to him, as always, the next day, and he was quite sure there must be more successful adventures to be had, but he was disappointed to have found the future not to be as freely sexual as he had expected. It seemed to him at that moment, that it was a woman's future, more than a man's, and that the supposed sexual revolution he had heard about and fully expected, had not really happened.