by Chely Wright
Most of us in Blue wanted to continue on with the show, but we had heard through the grapevine that we didn’t have a shot. It seemed that only one performer from the Red Cast was choosing to leave the show. Randy Harrell had been one of the veteran performers at the park for years, and he had decided that it was time for him to pursue other career opportunities, so only one male performer from Blue would get to be in Purple. We Blue Cast members were happy that our friend Ken Mellons would get to be the one to fill that spot. That said, the rest of us were all worried about how we’d be able to pay our bills in the coming months. A few kids from our group were headed back to their home states to attend college, but most of us had rolled the dice on our dreams to get to Nashville and would have done most anything to keep from having to pack up and leave. I knew that if I found myself out of work I had no options back home, and I was not going to move back to Kansas. Some of my cast mates knew that if they got really down and out they could borrow money from their parents. I didn’t have that luxury.
We were each in charge of retrieving our many different costumes from the wardrobe trailer, which sat directly behind the theater. Every day I’d load up my six or seven different costumes, including shoes and boots. As I walked up the back stairs of the theater, one of the crew guys was walking down the steps, eating a popular Opryland treat called Dippin’ Dots, a cup filled with tiny multicolored ice cream balls the size of BB’s. “Congratulations,” he said, as he spat two of the Dippin’ Dots on my face. “Oops, sorry,” he said, as we passed one another on the stairs and kept walking. My stage manager asked me if I’d known prior to the announcement. I didn’t know what he was talking about. That was a remarkable day for me. A few minutes before I arrived at the theater, the Purple Cast list had been posted and I was the only Blue Cast member other than Ken who was promoted to the Purple Cast. The worst had been confirmed for the rest of my cast members who were not on the list; their jobs at Opryland would be ending in a week. I quietly went about my day and accepted the heartfelt pats on the back from my peers.
There was little acceptance of me in the Purple Cast during the first two weeks. Ken was welcomed with great excitement and warmth because he was taking a spot from someone who chose to leave, but my situation was different. Every female in the Red Cast had wanted to stay on through the Purple season. The directors and creative staff of the show had made a decision not to renew one of the girls’ contracts, and I was hired to move up. I hated how it felt to be unwelcome. All of the gals in Purple were older than me—I was eighteen and they were between twenty-two and thirty. A couple of the girls were overtly vocal about how much they didn’t want me there and how unfair it was that their friend’s contract didn’t get renewed. I toughed it out and held my ground. Within two weeks of my joining the Purple Cast, things couldn’t have been more different. I suppose they got tired of working so hard at excluding me, so they began to let me in. In no time, real friendships were forged, and some of those friendships have gone on.
I was lucky to have employment for those additional three months, but the park was scheduled to close for the season and I needed a job, any job, to get me through the winter.
I loved my job at Opryland USA as a performer in the Country Music USA show. I wasn’t a strong dancer, but I had fun and did the best I could. That’s me smack-dab in the middle. 1991.
I had moved from my furnished single-wide trailer into a house that was closer to downtown Nashville and closer to Opryland. Laura-Grace, her brother, Gardnar, and I ended up living together for years, and their entire family was as much a family to me as I’d ever known.
Laura-Grace and I were nineteen years old, and Gardnar was just a year younger than us. Their mom and dad lived in Kentucky but had purchased the house as an investment since they knew that their kids wanted to work and go to school in Nashville. I was told that I could have the basement bedroom, and I was thrilled with it. I asked Barbara, Laura-Grace’s mom, if I could have permission to paint it. She encouraged me to treat the house as if it were my own. The room had dark wood paneling, so I bought two gallons of light blue paint and spent days rolling four coats of it on the walls; the paneling just soaked it up. Eventually it looked just how I wanted it to look. The three of us took great pride in that house; we’d have days where we power-cleaned it top to bottom. It was just so nice to have a beautiful, clean place to call home.
My bills were minimal, but I knew I needed to find a job immediately. I’d heard from the other young performers at Opryland that if all else failed, one could always get a job bagging groceries at Kroger, a well-known chain of grocers in the South.
After a four-show day at Opryland, I drove over to the strip mall near home and parked my car in front of the Kroger store that anchored the entire shopping center nearest my home. It was about nine in the evening when I asked the gal behind the service counter if I could fill out an application for employment. She picked up the store phone and summoned the manager. He appeared a few minutes later and told me that they weren’t hiring. I asked if I could fill out an application in case a position should open up. The only position open at that time was the position of a butcher. I asked him if I should come back in a few days to see if applications were being taken then. He said it would be a waste of my time. I swallowed hard and thanked him.
The Kroger job was supposed to be a sure thing. I got into my yellow 1980 AMC Concord (the Banana) and sat for a minute. I put the key in the ignition and thought about my options. I had none. I had to find a job. I saw a store at the end of that strip mall that appeared to be open. I parked my car in the spot nearest the front door of the store called Sport Seasons. I saw that the sign on the door had been flipped around to display the SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED side of it. The man who was inside cleaning was squatting down behind the cash register counter. As soon as he stood upright, I knocked on the glass door. He jumped, and as he walked to the door he put his hand on his chest, signifying to me that I’d nearly given him a heart attack.
He got to the door and pointed at the sign and mouthed the words “We’re closed.” I said loudly that I realized they were closed but I just needed to ask him a question. He turned the key and said to come in, and he locked the door behind me. I stuck out my hand and introduced myself, asking him for his name. His name was Doug. I asked if I could fill out an application for employment. He started shaking his head from side to side before I was even able to finish my question. They weren’t hiring, and if and when he made a new hire it would be someone with extensive retail experience in sporting goods. When he asked me if I had any qualifications like that, I was truthful, but I told him I could learn anything. I asked him if I could come back and talk to the manager during business hours, and he said, “I am the manager. Hell, I’m the owner, too.”
Zero for two. I got in my car. I reached into my purse, grabbed one item, and walked right back up to that door. I knocked again. He was bent over a big cardboard box, and without standing, he looked in my direction and waved his hand at me to go away. I knocked again, this time harder, and he stood up. I held the item from my purse flat up against the window, and he squinted his eyes to see what it was that I was trying to show him. He shook his head in frustration but walked over to the door and unlocked it. He asked me, “What are you doing? What are you holding up to my window?” I showed it to him again. It was my checkbook. I showed him the balance register of my checkbook and asked if he’d give me one minute to tell him something. He asked if he had a choice.
I said if he would look closely at the balance of my checkbook he’d see that I had $13.33 left in my account. Then I committed the cardinal sin of being a wannabe entertainer trying to find employment to pay the bills. I told him that I had come to Nashville to be a famous country singer, that my job at Opryland was ending soon, and that I was dead set against moving back to Kansas. Then I suggested that I come and work for him for one week, starting the next day, for free. I declared that I was good at math, I had the ability to coun
t people’s change back to them, I had an excellent memory, I was good with people, and I was a hard worker. I said that I was finished with what I had to say. He finally threw his head back and groaned, “Okaaay.” He told me to come back ready to work at ten o’clock the next morning.
The other employees were all helpful, professional, and welcoming. I had a crash course in stock codes, products, orders, returns, running credit cards, stacking, sorting, and pricing. Shortly before that first long day ended, I had to go to the back office to ask Doug a question about something. After he answered, I turned to walk back out to the front of the store. He said, “Come back tomorrow. You’re hired.” I spun around and said, “Thank you. I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.” I worked for Sport Seasons for a couple of years, and that job got me through the leanest times.
When I knew for certain that I had the job, I felt a sense of triumph and a glimmer of hope. The way I saw it was this: if I had been able to find a job even when there wasn’t one to be had, I was going to be able to parlay that luck into landing a record contract. Getting that job was a foreshadowing of my destiny—I was convinced of that.
There were six or seven employees at that time, but for the most part, three of us ran that store every day. Skid was a late-forty-something single father of one and was the most dependable and disciplined person I’d ever known.
Joy was the in-house bookkeeper, and when I started at the store, she was about eight months pregnant. She was helpful to me, but she stayed in the back most of the time, filling in numbers on the blank spaces of spreadsheets and signing checks.
Brenda was nineteen, just seven months older than me. She was a native Nashvillian and had worked for Doug long enough to have the freedom to stroll into work three minutes late every day. She was tall, tan, thin, and athletic, and she was blessed with long, pretty legs and a perfect white smile.
Brenda and I started to spend time together away from Sport Seasons. I liked to hear her speak and, more importantly, I liked to watch her speak. She had the prettiest teeth, and I was taken with the way her lips looked when she spoke in her slight Southern accent. She had a kind disposition, and everyone liked her. The boys flirted with her and tried to date her. She didn’t flirt back with them much, I noticed. It seemed to me that she simply tolerated their advances and did her best not to lead them on.
We were spending all day together at the store, but I never grew tired of her company. After three or four weeks or so of knowing her, I wondered if she could sense that I had a crush. I did nothing and said nothing about it, of course. I’d developed crushes on girls before and knew that I just had to deal with the feelings privately and hope that they would fade away. I had no intention of making my feelings known. I had promised myself years before that I would never act on my homosexual inclinations. I wanted to have a successful career in music and I wanted to have a happy life. I was still working at Opryland, and I’d often been vocal with men in my cast about the sins of being gay. I was truly tortured and I knew that I was a hypocrite.
Brenda invited me to go to a party one Saturday night, and since it was the last weekend of Opryland for me, I told her that I didn’t want to go out. I wanted to be fully rested for my Sunday performances. I’d been working with the cast and crew for months and we had all become close. It would be an emotional day and I wanted to be in top form.
I got home that Saturday night at 9:30 p.m. Brenda’s car was in my driveway. She said she wanted to make sure I hadn’t changed my mind. She suggested that I go for an hour or so and said she’d bring me right home after that. I was planning to take a shower and watch some TV in the basement. There was a makeshift living room downstairs by my bedroom, and although I was certainly allowed to watch TV upstairs in the main living room, I seldom did. I told Brenda that she was more than welcome to come in for a while before she went to the party.
I got out of my makeup, took a quick shower, put on sweatpants, and flopped on the couch. She had already been surfing the channels and found a movie that was just starting. We were sitting on the couch with our feet up on the coffee table. I turned the lamp off because it was causing a glare on the TV. Also, looking at Brenda made me nervous. I wondered why she was there. I knew that she was expected at that party. I wondered if she had a crush on me and if she was feeling scared about it. I was scared that she did have a crush on me. On the other hand, I was scared that she didn’t.
I leaned away from her and put my head down on a pillow at the end of the couch. She invited me to put my legs in her lap, so I did. After a few minutes she asked if she could lie next to me. The couch was deep enough for two people, and I said yes.
She stretched out directly behind me and we covered up with a blanket. Since the day we’d met, I’d loved how Brenda smelled, and I’d come to associate her perfume with a feeling of excitement. I breathed in her scent as if it were a cloud of gold dust, shimmering with little specks of magic that made me feel like I’d never felt before. It was the first time I’d ever had a girl’s body pressed against mine, and I was sure that she could hear and feel the pounding in my chest. She slid her arm around my waist and pulled me even closer to her. I was thankful that we weren’t facing each other and looking into each other’s eyes.
I felt her breathing on the back of my neck. Her heartbeat thumped between my shoulder blades. I’d been with boys before in similar situations, and I’d heard their breathing get heavy with excitement. It had always been easy for me in situations with boys who begged me to go further or to go all the way with them. I just said no every time. I was able to say no not because I was a good girl brimming with virtue and restraint, ready to resist the urges of physical pleasure for reasons of morality but simply because I was not aroused. I was never tempted. My heart never pounded, my breathing never changed, the private parts of my body never made themselves known with an urging for me to keep going, keep going. But now everything was different.
I didn’t have a fear that Laura-Grace or Gardnar would come downstairs and interrupt. It was nearly midnight. I’d already heard the familiar sounds of their bedroom doors being closed for the night, and there was a part of me that knew I needed to be drifting off to sleep as well. Every day at Opryland was a physical challenge. We performed four shows a day, and the added emotion of our last day would be draining. There I was—anything but sleepy.
I felt her lips gently touch my right ear. I rolled over onto my back, and with our faces now just inches from one another, I quietly said, “I’m scared.” “It’s okay, it’s just a kiss,” she whispered. Our lips touched, softly.
In my efforts to avoid going all the way with boys, kissing had become my specialty. Until that night with Brenda on the couch, kissing had been a menial chore that I performed.
My body was in full command, feeling things and doing things that I’d never known it to do. In the hours that followed, I started to understand conversations that I’d been a part of during high school. When other girls in my class and I would have “girl talk,” they’d go on about how difficult it was for them to say no to their boyfriends. I had often judged them for not resisting the temptations of sexual activity. Suddenly, I had a new and enlightened understanding. In the early hours of that morning, I felt whole.
Brenda left my house around three o’clock in the morning. I fell asleep for a few hours. There was a beautiful antique mahogany wardrobe in my bedroom that belonged to Laura-Grace’s mom. It had shelves and drawers and a place to hang clothes. There was also a long, vertical door with a full-length dressing mirror, and when I awakened every morning and opened my eyes, the first thing I would see was the reflection of my face in that mirror. The morning after Brenda, when I realized that I had, indeed, been with a girl, I stared at myself in that beveled antique mirror. I wondered if this was a first for that hundred-year-old mirror. Was this the first time that a young girl of nineteen had ever stared helplessly into it the morning after having been consumed by passion for another girl?
I cried until it was time to get up. I showered, made my lunch, and drove myself to work. I usually listened to the radio during the thirty-minute commute to the park. My car had only an AM radio, and that was just fine with me because the station that I listened to—650 WSM-AM—was the home of the Grand Ole Opry. I didn’t even think to turn it on that morning. Instead I replayed a lot of what had happened the night before. Blood rushed to my face; my heart began to pound. I was certain that I smelled her perfume.
I took pride in being punctual, but I was late that day. My stage manager forgave me with a wink because it was the last day of the season. Many cast members had brought cameras, and there were continual flashes of light in the dressing rooms and backstage, followed by cheers and hugs. It was a festive occasion, and although we did have four shows to sold-out crowds to perform, the shows seemed to take a backseat to the emotions of the day.
I held it together until after the first show. I was resetting my costumes in the backstage area when I started to cry. The costume station next to mine belonged to Ray Kinman. He saw that I’d suddenly erupted with tears and grabbed me to hug and console me. “Shhhh, don’t cry, don’t cry,” he said. He reassured me that this wouldn’t be the end of all of us being friends and that he was confident that we’d both be back for Red Cast, which would be starting up again in the spring.
How was he to know that I was crying because my world had changed in the past twelve hours? How could he even imagine that I was scared and upset because I’d been sexual with a girl? I was crying because I was ashamed of the things I’d said to him about homosexuality. I cried so much into his shoulder that I messed up my eye makeup, most of which remained on his shirt. He gave me a kiss on the forehead and quipped in his best Southern diva voice, “Child, go fix yourself. You’re a mess!”