This was the second cassette tape that T sent me. It was the first one that was a direct reply to a tape that I had sent him. I was so unimpressed by his first tape that I didn't listen to this one for over two months. This is tape 1 of a set of 2. I no longer have the second tape, much to my chagrin. Cassette tapes were expensive and we did not usually keep them around to reference. We listened to them, took some notes about what was said, and then recorded over them.
I will not be transcribing entire tapes as it would be pointless, relatively uninteresting for people who don't know the context of the conversations, and incredibly time consuming given the volume of taping. I will transcribe select pieces of certain tapes because of what they say about our friendship and how that sort of talk contributed to our future LDR. Note that transcripts will not be utterly verbatim as "ums", "you knows", and other non-essential verbal "tics" will be removed from all such content.
In the case of this piece, it mentions the fact that I had other pen pals, but all of them had been fans of the rock group KISS. In fact, KISS were the reason that I sought out pen pals as I wanted to talk about the band. T was my only pen pal who was not a pen pal and that was part of why I was not especially interested in corresponding with him initially.
Select transcript of March 12, 1987 tape:
Typical to my personality, I got your tape Monday, was it Monday, yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Monday. Monday, I got home from school and I had some things that I had to do. I didn't have any classes that night, but the next day my Fundamental Analysis paper was due and I had things to do for the banking test and all that. But, I got home and I see your tape there and my first reaction was "All right," because I wasn't positive that you would write back. I figured you probably would, but you never get too confidant about those kinds of things. You don't want to be expecting it and then when it doesn't happen, you say, "Gee, you know, I wonder why." I personally don't like to get my hopes up for things. And then, it's just so after they happen, "Oh, good, okay, it did happen." So, I was very happy to see your tape there and I liked the card. I think it's a neat card. It's too bad (name of KISS fan magazine that S. worked for) is now defunct as I understand it is. That was neat.
So, naturally, I've got all these things that I have to do, right? So, what do I do, I go into my room and listen to the tape. I couldn't help it because, I don't know, I was just very curious and also it's part of my personality that whenever I get tapes, I like to listen to them right away. There's some times when that's simply impossible, but generally speaking, I have this impulse to put them in right away.
It's like, "oh, good, I want to hear the latest news, be it from J or A.*" With this tape, it was even more like that because I'd never heard you before. It's like, "Oh, a whole new person. I've got to hear what she sounds like." So, I took the tape into my room and listened to it and I must say that, I was like, "Whoah, this is neat!" I think I'm going to really enjoy talking to you. I think we can have some really interesting conversations because while we're not... our major fields are different and everything, and no, I'm not a KISS fan... you said you never had a successful pen pal relationship with anybody who's not a KISS fan before. My reaction to that, was "Well, there's a first time for everything." I'm not terribly worried about that.
I think we'll have more than enough to talk about without that. When you were talking about that, you said part of the reason that it hasn't worked before with other non-KISS fans was that, when you're writing letters or making tapes, it facilitates communication a lot quicker, but when you're trying to get beyond the superficiality of just knowing somebody for the first time, then if you didn't have anything to talk about, then you'd fall back on KISS as a way to have something to talk about. You'd get to know each other better and then you could start talking about more things.
I don't know because, I don't think that's going to be a problem because I do not feel, for some reason, and I don't know why... maybe I should, but I do not feel constrained by whatever bounds are involved in not knowing you very much yet. I've only heard you for an hour or so, but, for some reason, and I may be wrong, I got the sense, just kind of a sense, nothing that you can really put into words too much, I got a sense from listening to you talk that I can talk to you about a lot of stuff and that I can trust you to listen to what I say and... It's a just a feeling that I can talk and I'm not really going to worry about if I say the wrong thing, or, "maybe I shouldn't say that because I don't know her real well." I don't know if you know what I'm trying to say, but, like you say, I suppose that when you do start writing people, there would tend to be a holding back process on one side or the other about certain things because you really don't know the person. With you, I feel like it's different because you have an air about you of "Hey, this is just the way it is and I'm going to say it if that is the way it is, so the hell with it." And, I'm a little like that myself. So, I don't think it's going to be a problem for either of us as far as that goes.
*J and A were mutual pen pals at that time. They were responsible for T starting to correspond with me as I'd known them for some time before.
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