Happy Accidents

by Jane Lynch

  Chris introduced me to a few new things, too. The first time I smoked pot was with him, during sophomore year. He failed to tell me that he’d laced it with angel dust, so I began to hallucinate at Pizza Hut and was so out of my gourd that I had to spend the night in his garage.

  Pot scared the hell out of me, with or without angel dust. I panicked when I smelled it. If I went to a party where someone was smoking it, I expected the cops to swarm the place, and judgment and paranoia must have been written all over my face. I began to be known as “the Narc,” and I started to notice that I wouldn’t be invited to certain parties. It hurt my feelings, even though I continued to feel that pot smoking was evil. I was, however, very happy to get loaded on booze.

  If you look back through my high school scrapbook, you’d think I was one of the popular kids. I was involved in a million activities—speech team, girls’ choir, basketball, tennis, theater guild. And despite earning the “quitter” label after The Ugly Duckling, I even managed to get small roles in a couple of plays my sophomore year, playing a male police officer (go figure) in Arsenic and Old Lace and a tomboy (ditto) in The Brick and the Rose.

  But it wasn’t until my senior year that something transformative finally happened. That was the year my theater arts class put on Godspell.

  Somewhere in the back of my head I was aware that Godspell was based on a Bible gospel—we sang “Day by Day” at guitar mass at St. Jude’s—but I didn’t care. I just wanted to put on a show! I loved the music, and we wouldn’t have to try out; if you were in the class, you were in the play. Chris and I listened to the original cast album over and over.

  We also went downtown to see the show live at the Drury Lane Theater. Chris, our friend Ed (another soon-to-be-gay musical theater lover), and I went at least ten times. That professional cast added some funny bits and one-liners that we claimed for ourselves and brought home to Dolton. We were obsessed.

  Our production played one Friday night only. Everyone in my family, extended and otherwise, came. We thespians were beside ourselves with excitement. We put everything we had into this thing and made a plan to drink real wine during the final betrayal scene that closes the play. We wanted to be crying real tears, and we were pretty sure we couldn’t unless we were tipsy.

  Ed played Jesus, Chris was John the Baptist/Judas, and along with being in the ensemble, I played the hussy who sang “Turn Back, O Man.”

  I was now a part of the magic that had so mesmerized me when I was a kid seeing my first stage play. I actually lost my balance I was so excited—I almost fell over several times the day of the show—and I smelled funny. I would have this smell many times in the future and would come to know it as the pungent odor of pure, unadulterated fear. But because it was mixed with pure, unadulterated joy, I survived.

  We were all swept up in the electricity of putting on this show. We were more focused, disciplined, and committed than we had ever been in our young lives. We had all pitched in to build the set together, and showed up after school for rehearsals. When we finally performed, no one missed a line or a cue. We were a team, and we supported one another. Being a part of this group of fellow actors, feeling needed and valued and there for one another, was a high I would chase for the rest of my life.

  We were playing pretend, but we were sharing the experience. I had always felt so different and thus “less than” my peers. I remember thinking that even if I, Jane Lynch, wasn’t worthy of friendship, then at least I knew the character I was playing was. In everyday life, I second-guessed myself relentlessly. But in a play, my difference was hidden and I was worthy. I was needed. Because it’s written—it says, I am.

  And that was the heart of the matter: on stage, playing a role that was written in black and white—I could not be rejected. The only place I felt safe from that possibility was on stage, and I loved it. In fact, I still get joy from it, even today. In any movie, TV show, or play that I’m in, I’ll still have that fleeting thought: These people might not want to be my friend after this, but for the next 8.2 seconds, they’re all about me and I’m all about them.

  Finally, I had found my place.

  But unfortunately, right in the middle of this transcendent, fantastic experience, disaster struck. Jesus and John the Baptist, also known as Ed and Chris, started spending all of their time together, without me. I didn’t know what was happening—or didn’t want to. All I knew was that now I was the odd man out.

  In response, I acted as cold and mean as I could. With this, I was starting a pattern that I would rely on for far too long in dealing with what felt like rejection. My hope in acting this way was that the person I felt had wronged me would ask what he’d done wrong. Chris didn’t, of course—I’m not sure he ever even noticed. My mom noticed, though, and she became worried that I had fallen in love with Chris—not a surprising conclusion, since I was acting exactly like a jilted lover. One afternoon, she finally gave voice to the fact that I was still too stubborn to admit.

  “Honey,” she said, “I don’t want you to get your heart broken. But I think maybe Chris likes boys. Don’t you think that maybe he and Ed are boyfriends?”

  “No, no, no!” I snapped. “Chris isn’t gay.”

  It was getting harder to deny it to myself, though. I mean, even my mother knew. It was hard to miss. My wild and free-spirited Chris had always stuck out in our little suburb, but by the time we were seniors, he was taking it to a whole new level, with an afro and parachute pants. It was the late seventies, but still: to say he stood out is an understatement. But I still didn’t want to acknowledge that “gay” existed. Now it was right in front of me. Chris and Ed were having an affair. Chris even wrote “I will love Ed forever” in my yearbook.

  In the pain of feeling dumped, I wrote Chris a scathing letter telling him that he looked like a freak and I didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. I was a stereotypical closet case, rejecting him for his open homosexuality that got him a boyfriend and left me alone. I pushed him away for what I was afraid of in me. Maybe I was also afraid of guilt by association, that other people would think I was gay, too. Whatever it was, I felt that he needed to be punished for flaunting his gayness. Didn’t he understand you were supposed to keep it under wraps?

  But also, deep down, my heart was broken. I felt rejected on a soul level. In some ways, Chris was my first true love. I trusted him like I trusted no one else in the world, and I showed him parts of myself that no one else saw. Now he was gone. All that had been good in those final months of my senior year of high school was suddenly buried under despair.

  After graduating from high school, I reluctantly set off for Illinois State University, which at that time was where the B and C students in Illinois went to college. I had absolutely no academic curiosity or drive, and I didn’t particularly want to go to college, but that was what people did. With my impressively low ACT score ISU was the only school that admitted me, so I packed up my things and headed for Normal, Illinois (of all places).

  I was assigned to a room in an all-girls dorm, and at any given moment, I had at least three very severe crushes: I was obsessed with the ladies of Hamilton Hall. Perhaps getting out of Dolton and away from my family allowed me to admit these feelings . . . sort of. I still put them in a mental file labeled “intense feelings of friendship,” managing to continue to ignore the pounding refrain of “You’re gay!” knocking on my psyche’s door.

  Before I left Dolton, my mother had said, “Jane, don’t major in Theater. Major in something like Theater but where you can get a job, like Mass Communications.” In her mind, a general smear of media would satisfy my need to trod the boards. I desperately wanted to be an actress, but wanting also to please, I followed my mom’s advice.

  Unfortunately—or, really, fortunately—when I tried to register for Mass Comm 101, all the classes were closed. So instead, I started taking acting courses on the sly. It was truly luck that the one state school with low enough standards to admit the likes of me had one of the bes
t undergraduate theater departments in the country. Several original Steppenwolf Theater ensemble members had been recent graduates, including Laurie Metcalf and John Malkovich. The professors were treated as minor celebs themselves and managed to inspire both respect and fear in their students. Freshmen weren’t allowed to audition for shows during their first semester, but as soon as second semester started, I tried out for Lysistrata, a very cleverly updated musical adaptation of Aristophanes’ classic about the Peloponnesian War.

  The play had been rewritten with a Southern theme: the Athenians were Gone With the Wind–style upper-crust Southerners, the Spartans a big old tribe of hillbillies. I managed to land a speaking role, which was a huge coup for a freshman. I’m sure there was nothing subtle about the way I played the country bumpkin Karmenia of Kornith, but I also added a minor twist to her character—one that, in retrospect, seems a bit odd, considering how deep in the closet I was. I made her an open lesbian.

  There was a line where the lady warrior from the Isle of Lesbos said something like “You know, we women hang very close on Lesbos,” intimating that island’s Sapphic past (as if the name of the island didn’t make that clear enough). So I thought it would be funny to be super-obvious and ad-lib, “You told me weren’t gonna say nothin’ . . .” When I first delivered the line, the director cracked up. Which I guess wasn’t surprising; there was a lot of whispering that she was a closeted lesbian herself.

  As far as I can recall, there was only one open lesbian student in the theater program. She was burly, with a deep voice and hairy legs and armpits: the perfect stereotype of a butch lesbian. She also had a chip on her shoulder and a demeanor that said “Fuck you. This is who I am, take it or leave it.” Looking back now, I can appreciate how brave she was.

  Our theater department was full of closeted homosexuals. We were too afraid to look at this aspect of ourselves, so of course we marginalized the one person who had the courage to be who she was. Needless to say, I didn’t want anything to do with her.

  I was so excited to be a part of the cast of Lysistrata, which was a huge production featuring all the big department stars. (It was like in the old days of Hollywood, when MGM would do a movie like Grand Hotel and the entire roster of studio talent would appear in it.) I was always taking a look from outside my body and marveling that I was now one of them. A few of the women were so talented and such bright lights that I worshipped them like they were movie stars. The comedy was very pithy and smart. The music was inventive and fun. I was over the moon.

  Sophomore year, I auditioned for Gypsy. The list for principal cast went up before the chorus list, and I almost didn’t check it because I was pretty sure that if I got anything it would be chorus. But there it was: my name on the principal cast list. I was gobsmacked. I was cast as Electra, one of the three strippers.

  I had always loved singing, which is perhaps not surprising given how musical my parents were. Our whole family sang together almost every day, mostly Christmas carols and show tunes—Funny Girl, Man of La Mancha, The Sound of Music. In fact, we were mildly obsessed with The Sound of Music. When it was playing at the River Oaks Cinema, my mom dropped me, my sister, and the Climack girls off for the first showing of the day, and we never left our seats. We watched it over and over until she picked us up later that evening.

  Gypsy would be my first time really singing a solo on stage, and although I was terrified, I proceeded to “act as if” I could do it. I also had no reason to believe anyone in their right mind would ever buy my baby-dyke self as a stripper. Obviously the director thought I could do it—he had given me the part—but I was afraid that what he saw wasn’t really there, that I had somehow fooled him. Looking back, I can see that I couldn’t give myself credit for anything, like I felt obliged to bow to the altar of my fears and trepidations. Maybe it kept the bar low, expectation-wise. But unlike my reaction to this kind of inner challenge when I walked away from The Ugly Duckling in high school, it never crossed my mind to quit.

  The big show-stopping burlesque stripper number in Gypsy is called “You Gotta Have a Gimmick.” My character, Electra, had the gimmick of electricity: she “did it with a switch,” an actual electrical switch on her costume that lit her up. “I’m electrifying and I ain’t even trying!” she squealed. I worked my butt off rehearsing, and suddenly I found this full, robust chest voice I’d never had before. It felt wonderful, like massaging my soul. And even though I was über-critical of myself at this point in my life, I was flushed with victory. I’d walk through the quad with a giant inner smile, thinking, I’m in the school musical.

  Unlike the other shows I’d been in, Gypsy was practically a professional production. The auditorium was state-of-the-art, and we had top-notch sets, lights, costumes, and a full stage crew. I imagined that this was what it must be like to do a show on Broadway.

  My parents, true to form, weren’t too concerned about what grades I was making in college. They were more interested in whether I was happy and making friends, and whether I needed money. (My dad would periodically mail me $20, with a note saying, “Here’s some green for the scene, teen.” He also sent $1 rebates for Ten High Whiskey to my dorm room, because you could only cash in one per address.) When I changed my major to Theater Arts, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t notice, and they didn’t. The Theater Arts Department had talent-based tuition waivers, and I auditioned and got one. My parents learned of my new major when they received the tuition bill marked “paid.” “Hey! Good for you!” Suddenly, being a theater major was pretty cool.

  I loved my acting classes, and I even loved my theater history class. I actually started to get good grades because I gave a hoot about what I was learning.

  One Christmas break, I was particularly excited to go back to Dolton because I wanted to show off a new skill I’d been developing. In one of my acting classes, I was learning to speak in what is called American Standard English, which has the objective of neutralizing speech to get rid of obvious regionalisms. I not only took to this process, I loved it in the way only a pedantic, overcompensating, insecure young person could. I practiced and practiced and decided I would speak American Standard English all the time. When I went home for the holidays that year, I launched right into showing off my new skills at the family Christmas party. “I had an in-ta-view lahst week,” I declared haughtily, as my sister rolled her eyes. My mom had a squinty “say what?” look, and our neighbor, impressed, said, “Gosh, Jane, you sound just like you’re from Boston!”

  But sounding haughty was only the beginning. With my newfound success in the theater, I suddenly discovered—and unleashed—my inner diva. The more comfortable I got and the more empowered I began to feel, the more I tried to force my genius on others. If something in a production I was in wasn’t to my liking or up to my standards, I’d pitch a fit. I never hesitated to tell everyone exactly what they were doing wrong, in the most condescending tones possible. After someone poured their heart into a scene, I’d protest with “I didn’t believe you at all.” And for some reason I was surprised that this behavior seemed to alienate people. . . .

  Looking back, I can see I was a repressed, judgmental adolescent who mistook my newfound adequacy as brilliance. As with most overcompensating virgins, my puffed-up ego would soon be deflated by a heavy crush.

  Chapter 4

  Normal

  It was in my junior year at Illinois State that I became mentally and emotionally consumed by a full-on crush. This was beyond the vague feeling of dread that I’d had since the Stevenson twins’ revelation. My “gay” now had a focus, and she was a petite, spritely professor with perfect handwriting. That she was straight didn’t matter. I wasn’t thinking I would ever actually win her love. And when I daydreamed about kissing her, I imagined myself as a handsome boy, so I still wasn’t entirely on board with the whole “gay” thing.

  But nonetheless, the intensity of my obsession was almost overwhelming. Seeing her for class on M/W/F wasn’t enough, so I used to walk by he
r office just to smell the patchouli. I still hadn’t done anything about being gay, but the fantasy was awesome, and gay was getting good.

  And then, suddenly, she left. She got a job somewhere else, and for the whole of that summer break home in Dolton, I couldn’t even get up in the morning. For the first time in my life, I understood what depression was. In order to get through it, I turned it into something noble, heroic almost. I even gave it a soundtrack. I was depressed to the song “Another Grey Morning” by James Taylor. I am pretty sure for him it’s a song about heroin addiction, but for me it was about the loss of a fantasy. And I grieved this loss like the death of a loved one.

  Here comes another grey morning

  A not so good morning after all . . .

  Oy gevalt, the drama.

  Having tasted the thrill of a first crush, I was primed for another. After the great summer of mourning, I returned to Normal for my senior year on the hunt for love. I found another teacher, but at least this time I picked an actual gay lady. She had spiky hair, unshaven legs, and a low, butchy voice. She didn’t rock my world, but there was enough projection on my part to get the crush going.

  My initial reaction to her was shock, though. She was obviously a dyke, which made me extremely uncomfortable. But then I got to know her, and I really started to like her. She loved to party, and she loved to hang out with us undergrads, and we just thought that was so cool. Yeah, she was a professor, but she was only ten years older than we were, which at my age was just enough to make her seem wise and alluring. And she was out and proud about who she was, unlike so many of us Midwestern theater majors who were still firmly encased in our shells. Normal, Illinois, had not seen anything like her, and I found myself positively intrigued and excited. We began to flirt. She started it. But I followed. We’d sit too close, let our eyes linger too long, and brush our hands together. It was the first time I had ever flirted with anyone.