When I got home, Mom was in a state. Where had I been all this time? Why hadn’t I answered my cell phone? Did I see the text messages she sent me? She sent me seven of them. Seven! She had been so worried that she was about to call the police. And what was the matter with my lips? Why were they so red and swollen?
When I explained to her that I had been kissing a girl, it was like the sun had broken through the clouds. Her face lit up, and she smiled as though she had just been awarded an all-expenses paid Caribbean cruise.
“Really?” she asked, as her eyes began to tear up. “Really and truly?”
“Really,” I replied. “And truly.”
“Oh, honey! This is cause for celebration!”
She did a little happy dance right there in the kitchen, hopping around like she herself had just been kissed for the first time.
“I know,” she said, when she was finished dancing. “Let’s call your father at work and tell him.”
That night one of the boys from the motel unexpectedly friended me on Facebook. His name was Pinky Faraday. (I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that a guy named Pinky is probably gay, right? Well, he isn’t. Not in the least. Pinky is the star of the intermediate baseball team in town and everything. He is taller than me by like a foot; he has dark hair, blue eyes, and a toothy grin that he only flashes when he really means it.) When I called Katie to tell her what had happened, she told me that she thought Pinky was stuck-up and kind of moody. I told her that I thought he was deep and had a lot on his mind. As my Dad would say, we agreed to disagree.
Being Facebook friends with Pinky meant so much to me. It was a big deal and an even bigger surprise because, really, I hadn’t done anything to make it happen—it had just happened. And once it happened I felt that it was the next best thing to being popular myself. But to be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure why Pinky wanted to be my friend, so I invited him to meet me after school at the Coffee Connection to discuss the matter in person. Naturally, I didn’t mention that we were going to discuss our friendship; I just mentioned coffee and maybe tea as options.
Pinky couldn’t stay long. He said that his father was giving him and his brothers a hard time lately due to the fact that they had almost burned down the house. He said it wasn’t their fault, and I believed him. But still, his father was making them do yard work after school for like a month as a kind of community service.
“How big is your yard?” I asked him, thinking that a month was a long time.
“Not big enough,” was his reply.
According to Pinky, his home life wasn’t exactly stable. Ever since his father remarried, the Faraday household had been in turmoil because his stepmother had very particular ideas about how they ought to be living, ideas that were far from the way they had been living for as long as anyone could remember. For example, the new Mrs. Faraday was insisting that they all sit down to dinner every night as a family. Pinky was against this sort of thing because they were not, in his opinion, a family. Just because his father had fallen in love with someone did not give that someone the right to decide the eating habits of people she hardly knew. He said that his own mother, when she was alive, allowed everyone in the family to eat when and where they wanted, and as a result holidays were always super special.
“You could count on Christmas and Thanksgiving,” Pinky said as he wistfully recalled the past. “We always got together and sometimes nobody left the table for hours. Once my Dad even fell asleep right there at the dining room table and we had to wake him up the next morning for breakfast.”
Pinky showed me a picture of his mother that he carried in his wallet. She was a pretty woman with dyed blond hair, blue eyes, and the same bright smile that Pinky had; in fact, her resemblance to Pinky was remarkable. When I pointed it out to him, I noticed that there were tears in his eyes. He told me that he kept a framed copy of the picture next to his bed as well to remind him where he came from.
Pinky was the coolest guy I had ever met because, though he was tough on the outside, he had real feelings and he was not afraid to show them in public. I gave him back the photograph, and we then made a date to see one another again the following week.
Five
The Drama Club announced auditions for the winter production of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. This is a musical extravaganza featuring plenty of madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London. The score includes such hit songs as “Anything Goes,” “You’re the Top,” and “I Get a Kick Out of You.” Of course these were hit songs back in the twentieth century before there was radio, and as a result teenagers today are not as familiar with the work of Cole Porter as they are with, say, Lady Gaga. When I asked Pinky, for instance, if perhaps he and a few of the guys might be interested in trying out for the chorus of Anything Goes, he responded by saying, “What’s that?” After explaining the plot as well as the process of auditioning for musical theater, everyone including Pinky said that they weren’t too interested.
“Sounds gay,” said one of the guys.
And that, I thought, was that.
But then the following day, word got around that Tanya Handley had snagged the lead part of Reno Sweeney, an evangelist turned nightclub singer. Tanya put out an unofficial challenge, saying that if any “real men” showed up to audition for the part opposite her, she would personally kiss them on the lips. Pinky and a few of the guys took up the challenge and, though none of them were talented enough to play either the part of Lord Evelyn Oakleigh or Public Enemy #13 Moonface Martin, all of them did get an opportunity to make out with Tanya in the stairwell. Later, when the cast list was posted in the band room, I was super excited (but not surprised) to get the part of Lord Oakleigh. But my thrill was soon multiplied when I learned that Pinky and the guys had all been cast in the chorus.
“Personally,” Katie remarked, “I think it’s just the idea of being close to Tanya that’s getting those guys all worked up.”
I told Katie that that was totally understandable due to the fact that Tanya had star quality, and the responsibility of a star is to make everyone feel more excited about everything when she is around. In other words, Tanya was just doing her job, and also Katie was jealous that she hadn’t been cast in a lead part.
Since I had been responsible for getting Pinky and his gang to (a) show up and (b) audition, both Katie and Tanya considered me the go-to-guy, and they invited me to take the helm and direct the entire production. My reaction was so over-the-top that Ms. Potter, the teaching supervisor of the Drama Club, had to take several steps back to avoid injury. Once I was finished reacting to the news, I assured everyone present that not only would I consider the job, I would take it and run with it! They would not be disappointed. As I walked away, I remember thinking: life just doesn’t get any better than this.
After a week of play practice, I began to realize that this was a bigger challenge than I had thought. Though each day the guys got better and better, they couldn’t seem to learn the dance steps that I’d been teaching them, and they had yet to sing a single lyric. It seemed that they could only concentrate on their movements if they were completely silent and stared at their feet, and even then the choreography was a train wreck every time. Nevertheless, I was determined that by opening night they would be good!
One evening after play practice, Pinky and I were walking home together and I explained once again the concept of musical theater by demonstrating the dance steps while singing the lyrics. The air was crisp and cold, and the sky was like a deep blue dream of heaven. I think for the first time in my life I was totally and truly happy. The two of us just ambled along the sidewalks, occasionally stopping to review a dance move or talk about our future. Pinky said that he was thinking of quitting the show because he didn’t consider himself musical comedy material and also rehearsals were interfering with his basketball practice. I told him that one of the first
things we learned in the theater as young thespians was that the show must go on. It must.
“How come?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “It just has to.”
The minute I said this, I knew that my mind was made up. My future had been decided, and I had to tell someone.
“Hey,” I said to Pinky as we stopped on the pavement. “Can I tell you something that I have never ever told another living soul in my whole life?”
“Sure.”
“I have decided that the theater is to be my life.”
“Cool,” Pinky replied, and he started walking again.
Pinky was so understanding, and all the way home he encouraged me totally in the pursuit of my dream. Even though he didn’t have a lick of experience in the field of entertainment, he told me that he could recognize talent when he saw it and, as far as he was concerned, I definitely had whatever was necessary to become a big success. Then he added that anyone with half a brain could see that someone with my kind of passion was going to go very far in this world.
Pinky made it home in time for dinner. But before he went inside the house, he told me that I was special and he wondered why he never noticed me before. He was standing under a streetlight, looking like a superhero. As I walked away, I thought to myself, if someone came to town with a machine gun and threatened to kill Pinky, I’d offer myself instead. He definitely deserved to live.
Zac finally called. I thanked him for getting back to me, but I explained that I couldn’t possibly come over. When he asked me why not, I explained how busy I was with rehearsals and all. Also, now that Pinky Faraday and I were BFFs, my schedule wasn’t as open as it was when I was in, say, fourth grade. When I wasn’t rehearsing, I sometimes went down to watch Pinky shoot hoops, and occasionally Pinky and I met for a hot drink at the Coffee Connection.
Zac told me that I ought to be careful.
“Careful?” I said. “Of what?”
“Of becoming a gay,” he answered. “Boys doing it with boys is totally gross, and you can end up a pervert. Or worse.”
“Zac?” I said into the phone. “Are you jealous?”
“Don’t be a dickhead, dickhead” he said, snarkily. “I’m just saying that up until like yesterday that Pinky kid was totally ignoring you. Now you’re like best friends? I just don’t like it, that’s all.”
Zac has always been a big complainer. His specialty is complaining about how people are always treating us as though we’re invisible. Some of his favorite comments are:
1) They didn’t even say hello!
2) That girl looked right through me!
3) Are they just going to pretend we don’t exist? HEL-LO?
Whenever Zac gets like this I explain to him that rather than waiting around for others to say hello or notice him, he’d be much better off DOING something in order to distinguish himself. “You need to make people take notice of you,” I tell him. “You need to stand up in order to stand out.”
“Right,” he said with plenty of sulk in his voice.
“I know!” I offered. “Why don’t you get involved in the chorus of Anything Goes?”
“You mean like singing and dancing?” he asked.
“It’s not too late.”
“Dude,” he said, deepening his voice. “That is so gay.”
Six
The show went on without a hitch. Tanya was brilliant and her rendition of “Anything Goes” got a standing ovation at both performances. Jed Steckler came down with a wicked case of flu and as a result the audiences never got to enjoy his hilarious portrayal of Public Enemy #13 Moonface Martin. Instead I had to step in at the last moment and double as both Moonface and Lord Oakleigh. It was exhausting—and terrifying. But people came up to me afterwards to tell me that they were utterly amazed, not only because I could play both parts so adroitly and make all of the quick changes, but also because in scenes where both characters appeared, I was able to slip seamlessly between the two without losing my place or my footing. A tour de force, they called it. I was pretty proud.
It turned out to be a good thing that Pinky had dropped out of the show. If he had remained in the chorus, he would have been changing his costume backstage while I did my shtick onstage, and he never would have had the chance to see my performance from out in the auditorium. Besides, after two weeks of rehearsal it didn’t seem as though he was ever going to get the dance steps down and do them in a convincing or artistically pleasing manner. I looked for him afterwards, but I totally understood why he didn’t hang around. He had said on more than one occasion that he had already endured plenty of the cast’s barbed musical-comedy comments and self-congratulatory looks. Everyone was pissed at him for dropping out at the last minute, everyone except for Tanya and me. However, he did call me at home after our cast party to tell me what he thought of the show.
“You are the real star, man.”
“But what about Tanya?” I asked him as I was removing my makeup.
“Screw Tanya,” he replied bitterly. “She’s a stuck-up bitch who thinks too much of herself for her own good.”
I couldn’t believe my ears; I was so touched. He really thought I was better than Tanya!
He went on to tell me that the situation at home was not good. Apparently his father had been on a rampage for the past twenty-four hours; he had turned the Faraday household upside down—literally. I didn’t want to pry, but I did ask him if he was safe. He told me that he was for the time being because he was calling me from the crawlspace up in the attic and that was why he had to whisper.
“If anything happened to you, Pinky,” I said, trying to hold back my tears, “I wouldn’t be able to go on. I really wouldn’t.”
“Yes, you would,” he said. “You’d be surprised how quickly people get over even the worst stuff.”
A chill went up my spine because at that moment I realized that I was going to have to prove to Pinky that he was a person worth not getting over quickly.
“No,” I told him. “I wouldn’t.”
And then very quietly, so that his father wouldn’t hear him, we sang a few bars of the song “Anything Goes” together.
The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today,
And black’s white today,
And day’s night today,
When most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos
And though I’m not a great romancer
I know that I’m bound to answer
When you propose,
Anything goes.
The next night, I called Pinky on his cell to make sure he was okay and that his father hadn’t done anything crazy. When I got no response I texted him several times, sent him a message on Facebook, and then finally called his home phone. His stepmother answered. She was super polite with me, but firm. She said Pinky couldn’t speak to me, and I should not try contacting him anymore. I was so stunned I didn’t even ask her why. I just said “Okay” and then I hung up.
I sat down and wrote Pinky a long letter telling him what had happened, because I knew he knew nothing about it and was probably being held hostage by his father or something. I hardly slept all night.
The next day at school, I gave Pinky the letter. He took it from me without saying anything and then acted as though he was late for class, which he was not because the bell hadn’t even rung yet.
At lunch, he gave me a letter back; it was written on lined paper that had been torn from a spiral notebook and though the writing was nearly illegible, I could make out every word. It said that I was a fairy, a weak person and maybe didn’t even deserve to live.
This was devastating news. The worst part of it was that I felt so utterly alone. There was no one in whom I could confide. Katie and Zac had always been jealous of my fr
iendship with Pinky, and they probably would celebrate the fact that Pinky was finally out of the picture. Dad was away on business, and besides, he wouldn’t have understood the problem. And Mom? She would have told me that maybe Pinky wasn’t as good a friend as I had thought he was and then suggested that I put the whole thing behind me, call up Zac, and invite him for a sleepover like old times. How could I have told her what was really in my heart? What could she have said if I told her that I didn’t want old times or that I wanted Pinky? What nobody could understand, what I could hardly understand myself, was that the one person I wanted to talk to about all this was Pinky. And that just wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t exactly walk up to him at school and ask him the one thing I was dying to know—did this mean that he and I were not best friends anymore? Is that what he was trying to tell me? What had I done wrong?
Seven
I broke down and told Katie Quinn what happened between Pinky and me, which is to say that I told her that I didn’t know what happened between Pinky and me or why he had stopped talking to me. She mentioned that she overheard some of his friends talking about me behind my back.
“What’d they say?” I asked her.
“I shouldn’t say,”
“Tell me,” I pleaded. “I should know.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Katie, please. Whatever they said can’t be worse than what I’m imagining in my head right now.”
“Okay. So the guys were saying you walk like a girl.”
Let me just say that this was so much worse than anything that I could have ever imagined in my head. In fact, I felt as though I could have killed myself over this. Naturally, I denied it. I told Katie that I did not walk anything like a girl. I did not! She gave me a sad smile, and then I heard myself saying, “Wait. Do you think I walk like a girl?”
“No,” was her response, “of course not.”
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