What link Nude dancers, Graduate studies, and city of Norman? Introspection
City of Norman (Summer 1975, chapter 22 of autobiography)
The program coordinator for advanced English decided that I didn’t need any further English study. But since the dues were paid, I had to finish one month.
I learned how to navigate the library and hunt for the appropriate manuscripts and enter the classroom bare feet, as I have noticed American students doing. Wrong behavior: Foreigners had no such rights of freely entering classroom not wearing sandals, and I was admonished by the ugly, skinny Jewish lady teacher never to show any further disrespect.
One of the teachers was amazed that I used the term “petrified” in my essay; he had no idea that I mastered the French language and my vocabulary was very formal and Latin rooted: I would learn the slang and the American expressions in due time.
I rented a room with another Jordanian older student at a house, two blocks away from the university. The Jordanian student was accepted in San Antonio for graduate studies in economics. The house belonged to a tall and skinny widow and she lived at the house; the next summer I learned that she married a zealot Moslem Syrian graduate student in chemical engineering; she was to wear long tunic and a scarf.
The blue-eyed Syrian student was renting a room that summer, and he was very aloof: I had no idea that he was the extremist type until later: I was told that he used to spread his praying rag in class before exams.
I enrolled for a two-week program to lean swimming and that is how I got hooked into swimming three times a week for many years. I think that these two weeks were kind of initiation to befriending with water, since I was no fish in the water at the age of 25.
My first project, as I relocated to another city, was to find a covered and heated swimming pool around my residence.
The next summer of 1976, I participated in aiding a missionary organization, specializing in linguistic, since I knew the Arabic language (I am under the impression that I used formal words instead of the Lebanese slang, especially when it comes to food); the organization rented a flat in a university building during summer vacation. I was paid two dollars per hour.
Graduate studies: The industrial engineering program
I enrolled in the graduate MS program at the University of Oklahoma at Norman in the fall of 1975. At that time, the administrators in the USA universities were flexible, had larger control in their positions and were friendly with foreigners. The Jewish Dean of the department, Dr. Kumin, valorized all my math, physics and chemistry courses and I was left with just four undergraduate courses to finish my BS in Industrial engineering, as prerequisite courses before I take on courses in the graduate program next semester.
Back in Lebanon, courses in Physics did not require any projects to do for each course and thus, I felt overwhelmed and totally inexperienced with these kinds of “bothering” projects in engineering.
Although I learned to program in FORTRAN in Lebanon, I was not that familiar with computer hardware architecture. I believe that I mostly copied parts of my textbook and another book that I borrowed from the main library as substitute to an individual reflection. Gary Capshaw, a last year PhD student, was very lenient with me and gave me an “A”.
The industrial engineering program didn’t match my perception and expectation. My expectation of a hand on program was totally lacking; it was merely more of the theoretical concepts with less mathematical formulas to handle. Except for the stochastic courses, even the operations research courses required simple basic math, a fact that suited me because I was getting wary of the deterministic aspects in the physic and chemistry courses.
The truth is, however you restrict your research in Industrial Engineering to deal with clean-cut equations, there is no avoiding the human elements operating in industries and thus, most formulas are lacking the deterministic values so cherished in the other engineering fields that deal with inanimate matters.
I enrolled during summer for a two-week swimming lessons and spent the next summers most of my afternoons at the university swimming pool; the advisor for my thesis Dr. Bob Foote, a Zionist non-Jew, who read most of the editorials and student’s opinions in the university daily, including my articles, used to see me frequently in the swimming pool and thus, concluded that I was more interested in the beautiful naked women than in studying.
Nude dancers
I had my first experience with nude bars, where beauties danced on stage, completely naked. The Walter Mitty bar was around the corner of my dorm, which was reserved mostly for foreign students. My friend Ramez was the RA of the dorm and he was studying History of Sciences, simply because the university library possessed very ancient manuscripts on Arabic sciences. Why? Ramez could barely read modern Lebanese Arabic newspapers, much less classical Arabic!
There was this lovely brunette of Maria, a nude dancer. I sent a letter to my cousin Jihad telling him that Maria looked like his wife Nada. I am not sure how Jihad took it. Nada should have appreciated it; shouldn’t she? I know that years later, Jihad reminded me of receiving this letter. Eight years later, I returned to Norman for a PhD and Maria was still living in Norman. She was working at the university Power Plant and wearing regulation yellow helmet. Nude dancing is far harder than even fashion modeling: In no time you are put to pasture.
I told Maria that I liked her when she used to dance totally naked; she appreciated that I still recalled her. We had a date and she showed up wearing high-healed long boots and tight, very tight Jeans. She used to take my arm when strolling and she didn’t attempt to fool around with men in the bars we made the tour of.
Maria showed me her apartment a few days later and I met her sister (maybe half-sister who didn’t resemble Maria). I also visited her at the hospital after her surgery for infected uterus; she was wearing regulation hospital long shirt showing her buttocks. As Maria returned home she invited me to her apartment and asked me if I liked to share a joint of marijuana. I never learn from my experiences or anything from life: I told her how marijuana affects me after just two puffs. Maria told me then that it would be useless to get any further dates.
There was this tall, skinny, and blond girl dancing nude. She used to set fire to her pubis every night. Obviously, she had no pubis hair and would never be able to confirm if her white blond hair was original. I once asked her to leave together. I think that she said “Yes”. I waited till the bar closed and she had left. I was a very shy guy and I wished that the rules would be that she would sit by my side, take my arm and drag me out. I still don’t know the rule of asking a nude dancer to actually leave with me: if you truly do know, please forward it.
Worst of all, patronizing this nude dancing bar exposed me to my first cigarette smoking. I was 26 of age and had never smoke before. I am now nicotine addicted. More on that later and the few times with marijuana.
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