by Radclyffe
*
Drama club ran long on Friday. You could tell most of the kids were itching to go home and get ready for the party, but Mr. Niddio is nothing if not a big gay perfectionist, so we were stuck. Jelson’s the performer. I’d rather stand in a pool of boiling oil than a spotlight, so I do lighting and tech.
Jelson is totally our drama star this year, and you can tell that Mr. Niddio practically fell over and died of happiness when Manetow High’s own sexy Swop was revealed to be a talented thespian. He immediately announced a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and—surprise, surprise—cast Jelson as Viola, the girl disguised as a boy that everyone in the play falls madly in love with. The whole club is pretty sure we’re doomed to put on As You Like It, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and every one of the Bard’s cross-dressing comedies before Jelson graduates. We’d do the cross-dressing tragedies too, but the PTA forbids the use of fake blood.
Not that I mind Shakespeare. Better Twelfth Night than Bye Bye Birdie or some Andrew Lloyd Webber disaster. Even if the high school acting is a catastrophe, the poetry is nice. Plus the play is all about fine dukes and ladies, so you get to see your classmates prance around in big ruffs and bright tights and funny short pantaloons. And with Mr. Niddio in charge you can guarantee that the tights will be very bright and the pantaloons as hilarious as possible. I think he uses wardrobe choices to work out some kind of latent childhood resentment toward high school students.
Late Friday afternoon found me sitting sleepily in the back row of the auditorium, watching Mr. Niddio try to shepherd a bunch of actors through a complicated bustling courtroom scene. The only problem with Twelfth Night is that it doesn’t have a whole bunch of roles, so Niddio has to stick everybody into ensemble parts as sailors and castle guards and ladies-in-waiting and then give them something to do. I was technically supposed to be in the lighting booth, but Nikki Rofa had kicked me out so she could flirt awkwardly with Greg Hammelstein.
I was just nodding off when Keith Lamar, our one black kid, plopped down next to me.
“Hey, Keith,” I said. Keith is another one of the drama club’s best performers. He got cast as Duke Orsino, the hot royal man Viola marries at the end. He and Jelson have to kiss a whole bunch, and it is basically the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.
“Hey, Allie.” Keith tugged angrily at his ruff. “Do you think I can take this off yet? We were supposed to finish like twenty minutes ago.”
I shrugged.
“Dunno. Niddio has made everybody run this bit about five times, and he still isn’t happy. Who knows when we’ll get to leave?” I waved at Jelson, who was peeking around the curtain, squinting at the stage action and waiting for her cue. Or his cue. I couldn’t actually tell. Jelson waved back and immediately got yelled at by Mr. Niddio and everyone had to start over.
“Stupid Jelson is the only one these outfits look good on,” muttered Keith. I had to admit that he was right. Everyone else looked like paunchy Renaissance Faire rejects, while Jelson looked like something out of Britain’s National Portrait Gallery.
“Poor kid got totally typecast,” I said gravely.
“True fact,” said Keith, now yanking fitfully at his tights. “But better her than me. When Niddio said we were doing Shakespeare, I can’t even tell you how afraid I was we were gonna do Othello.”
“That would have been so awkward for everyone involved.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I was hoping for Rocky Horror,” said Tony Peluzzi, our one gay boy, as he sidled up behind us, sipping a ginger ale. Tony was playing Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother. Everyone in the play falls madly in love with him too. Tony and Jelson don’t actually look anything alike, but somehow, when they’re acting on stage together, you would swear they sprang from the same womb. I don’t pretend to understand it. Some kind of magical gay theater voodoo.
“I’m sure Niddio would let us do it, but it would never fly with the PTA,” I said.
“Yeah, well, the PTA are a bunch of censorship-happy buzzkills,” said Keith.
We chuckled, earning a dark look from Mr. Niddio that shut us up real fast.
“Are either of you guys in this next scene?” I whispered. They shook their heads.
“No,” said Tony in a hushed voice. “This is Jelson’s big love speech, coming up. You know, the one that makes Olivia go gay for Viola.”
“Yeah,” said Keith. “I don’t think she’s actually gotten a chance to do it yet. It’s like the most famous part of the play.”
“God, tech week and we still haven’t done a full run,” Tony sighed. “Someone shoot me.”
“Well, maybe if someone hadn’t had so many hissy fits about not being allowed to wear glitter nail polish—”
“Excuse me? Maybe if someone could learn to pronounce ‘forsooth’—”
I rolled my eyes, turning my attention back to the performers. The bustle of the ensemble was gone, and it was just Jelson and Lauren Sharp—Viola and Olivia—on stage. I was struck again by my inability to tell whether Jelson was a boy or a girl. I had assumed that Jelson would just be a girl when Viola was openly a girl, and a boy while she was supposed to be disguised, to make the act super convincing.
The lights were dimmed, and Jelson and Lauren had spotlights on them. Jelson’s was slightly off-center, probably because Nikki and Greg were busy sucking face in the lighting booth, but it didn’t matter. Jelson still commanded all the attention. Something in the arch of the back, or the graceful tilt of the head, made it impossible to look at anything else.
“Your Lord does know my mind; I cannot love him,” said Lauren. She said a bunch of other stuff too, but it was hard to pay attention. As she spoke, Jelson’s face became pained, those delicate features forming a look of quiet wretchedness on behalf of the lord she loved. It was hard to listen to Lauren when I hated her so much for making Jelson look that way.
“A gracious person, but yet I cannot love him. He might have took his answer long ago,” Lauren finished.
“If I did love you in my master’s flame, with such a suffering, such a deadly life, in your denial I would find no sense,” said Jelson. “I would not understand it.”
I had been sure that once Jelson spoke, I would know. The voice would give it away, boy or girl. And yet somehow, I still couldn’t tell. Jelson made Viola’s tones quaver a little. But was it the voice of an artless boy, speech made high and strained by passion? Or was it the voice of a determined girl, trying to speak low, with all the gravity she felt?
“Yo, she’s a girl right now, right?” muttered Keith, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“No way,” hissed Tony, a little too fiercely. “He’s definitely a boy.”
“Why, what would you?” demanded Lauren from the stage. Her face was blushing bright pink, which was weird because I didn’t think she was that good an actress.
Jelson hesitated, hand at her throat. Or his throat. I felt my fingers clasp automatically at my own throat, and the skin there was flushed and hot. My heart was hammering hard in my chest. Jelson looked uncertain, that fluid body poised and still. Somehow, tension seemed to gather in the air of the theater.
“Make me a willow cabin at your gate, and call upon my soul within the house,” said Jelson, eyes closed, body shaking slightly now. The voice, though—the voice was clear and sweet and sure. Too low for a girl, too high for a boy, it was a harmony of man and woman. “Write loyal cantons of contemnèd love and sing them loud even in the dead of night; halloo your name to the reverberate hills and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out ‘Olivia!’”
Lauren’s eyes were wide and awed, her mouth hanging slightly open. She looked like a prime example of blow-job mouth.
Jelson turned to her now, and gave a wry, tragic little smile.
“O, you should not rest between the elements of air and earth, but you should pity me.”
Lauren stared at Jelson when the speech was done, throat working convulsively.
�
��Line?!” she squeaked desperately.
She got a loud honk from Mr. Niddio in response as he blew his nose into his sleeve.
“I think that’s enough for today, everyone,” he said, shooing us away. “Everyone pack up and go home.”
“You would think the famous speech would be a little longer,” said Keith, unbuttoning his doublet.
“I know, right?” said Tony. “What’s a canton?”
“Shut up,” I said, a little too loudly. There was a vicious twinge happening deep in my belly, making me painfully nauseous.
“You okay, Allie?” asked Tony. “You look like you’re gonna throw up.”
“Uh, yeah, no, I’m fine.” Jelson had spotted us and was bounding up the aisle toward us. Bounding like some kind of stupid, delicate, beautiful deer. My stomach clenched and I jerked up out of my seat. “No, actually, I gotta go,” I said, shooting toward the exit. “Gonna barf. I’ll see you guys later.”
*
Jelson picked me up for the party, since she’d gotten permission to use her mom’s car. She was definitely, most emphatically, a girl when I got in the car. She had on a short skirt and high boots and had clearly just shaved her legs. Not that those things make you a girl, but they do make you kind of a more definite, emphatic girl. Right?
“Hey,” she said. “You feeling okay? Keith and Tony said you almost yakked all over the theater today.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I slumped down in my seat. “I think it was just, like, PMS, y’know? Cramps.”
“I thought you didn’t usually get bad cramps,” said Jelson, pulling the car onto the street.
“Yeah, well, sometimes they’re shitty. Unexpectedly.”
“I hear that,” said Jelson.
“How would you know? Do you even get a period?”
“What? Yeah, I do, actually,” said Jelson. “Just so you know.”
“What, like, a normal one?” I asked, feeling grumpy and dull-witted.
“No. Not a normal one.” Jelson frowned at the road. “Mine are really weird and awful and confusing, actually.”
“Oh.” I realized I had never thought about Jelson having to deal with the nasty bodily nitty-gritty of being a boy and a girl. Never thought about what puberty was like for her, or whether she could have kids, or if she worried about male pattern baldness and prostate cancer. I slumped even lower in my seat, feeling like a grade-A asshole.
We rode in silence for a few minutes, Jelson drumming her fingers distractedly on the steering wheel and me staring out the window and stewing about what an awful friend I am.
“Were you a boy or a girl today?” I blurted suddenly.
“What?” Jelson asked.
“At practice. When you were up on stage. You know, your big speech.”
“Oh, the ‘Cry out, Olivia!’ speech?”
“Yeah.”
Jelson shrugged. “I wanted to try something else for the part. Mr. Niddio said it was okay. He loved the idea, actually. So, I mean, I wasn’t either. Not technically. Not physically. Or, I guess I was kind of both.”
“What?” My belly did that painful, alien twinge again. “You—you can do that?”
“Yeah,” said Jelson, sounding a little annoyed. “Of course I can. What do you think happens in between being a boy or a girl?”
“I—I mean I guess I never thought about it,” I spluttered. And the truth was, I hadn’t. But I was certainly thinking about it now, and the thought was painfully compelling. Jelson’s long, slender body, hiding coyly under its clothes. Me, gently pulling those clothes off, seeing what that body looked like, touching it. Not a boy. Not a girl. Well, kind of like a boy, but also like a girl.
“What is wrong with you?” Jelson demanded.
I realized I had been breathing heavily. In a super-creepy way, through my mouth. I gulped.
“Nothing!” I almost shouted it.
“God, sorry I’m such an enormous, disgusting freak,” Jelson said bitterly.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Look at you, you’re so grossed out you can’t even stand to be near me.”
“That’s not—I didn’t say that!” I yelled.
“Whatever. I would expect this from anyone else, Allie,” said Jelson. “That’s why I don’t do it. Even when I want to stay in between, I don’t let myself.”
“What do you mean, ‘when you want to’? Why would you want to?” Even as I said it, I knew it was coming out completely wrong.
“Because I want to! Because it feels right. Because it feels like me. But I don’t. I make myself go all one way or the other. Even if it feels wrong. Even if it hurts. Because I know how people feel about it.”
She made an angry noise in her throat. “I just didn’t think it would ever be an issue for you,” she said, hands clenched tight on the steering wheel.
“I didn’t say it was!” Desperation made my voice loud and shrill.
Jelson slammed on the brakes suddenly. I was jolted forward and almost strangled against my seat belt.
“We’re here.” She yanked up the parking brake. We were stopped behind a long line of cars, curving up the winding drive toward Ronnie Ackersim’s house.
Jelson flounced out of the car and slammed the door behind her.
“Jelson! Jelson, wait!” I cried, struggling with the infuriating seat belt. I slipped on the gravel getting out of the car and skinned my knee. By the time I was up and huffing toward the house, Jelson had already disappeared inside.
“Goddammit,” I muttered, pausing to catch my breath when I reached Ronnie’s front steps.
Ronnie’s family is one of the richest in town. They have the kind of big, ridiculous house that you have to believe his parents bought solely to live vicariously through their son’s awesome high school parties. There’s a giant, sloping lawn that you can comfortably puke on without bothering anyone. There are three stories of large, fashionably furnished rooms where you can sneak away and totally do it with somebody, or at least plausibly allege that you snuck away and totally did it with someone hot from out of town that no one else probably remembers. And they have a cool, cobblestone-paved back patio with dangly lanterns, a pool, and a killer sound system.
Ronnie’s parties used to be a lot more exclusive, but Jelson convinced him they would produce more crazy stories if he let the whole grade attend. I think she loaned him a copy of The Great Gatsby and let him come to his own conclusions about it. I never really minded getting left out. Being at Ronnie’s house too long makes me want to start a class revolution, and I have to guzzle some cheap beer and steal one of his karate trophies before the feeling goes away.
I could hear that, as usual, the action was on the back patio. I steeled myself and started making my way around the side of the house, trying to figure out what I would say to Jelson when I found her.
I almost ran smack into Amy Telenky and Danny Everson on my way. They were stuck awkwardly in the bushes, Danny pressing Amy against the side of the house, his fingers tugging urgently at the waist of her jeans.
“Come on, you said you wanted to get back together,” said Danny.
“No, I said it would be nice if things were different,” said Amy, trying to push him back.
“Uh, hey, Amy!” I called. “Nikki was looking for you!”
Danny pulled away and turned to scowl hideously at me. Amy shot to my side like a voluptuous heat-seeking missile.
“Oh my God, you’re totally right!” She clamped her hand painfully on my upper arm. “I was totally supposed to do that thing for her! God, she must be so mad at me.”
Amy strong-armed me away rapidly, leaving Danny to mutter about dumb sluts and fat bitches and kick fitfully at the garden mulch.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” said Amy. “I mean, I don’t think he actually would’ve done anything. He was just drunk. And, ugh, it’s just so awkward, with guys. You know?”
“Uh, sure,” I said. I was starting to lose feeling in my arm.
>
“Is Jelson here?” Amy asked tentatively.
“Yeah, she’s somewhere. But she’s a girl today.”
“Oh.” Amy’s face fell. She sighed. “Well, I guess that’s for the best. Do you want a daiquiri?”
“Is that like a margarita?” I asked suspiciously.
Amy laughed and led me to the bar on the back patio. I deposited her safely into the arms of Nikki and Lauren and about four Ashleys and an Ashleigh, and wandered away clutching a strong pomegranate mixed drink. My karma secure for the evening, I sat heavily in a pool chair and slurped my drink like it had done me wrong. I thought about running a hand up Jelson’s thigh and shuddered a little.
I was interrupted by Keith plopping down next to me for the second time that day. I scowled at him in a way that I hoped came off as more antisocial than racist.
“Whatcha doin’?” he asked.
“Fetishizing my best friend’s biology,” I said darkly. “You?”
“Being drunk,” he said. “And maybe a little gay.”
“What?”
“Tony ran into me by the pool house. He was way drunker, even, than me. He was all like, ‘Hey, we should rehearse our kiss for the play, it’s so funny!’” Keith was talking about a pretty hot mistaken-identity kiss at the end of Twelfth Night that Mr. Niddio decided to sneak in. We’re all eagerly awaiting the PTA fallout.
“That man is playing with you two like Barbie dolls,” I said.
“Naw. Niddio’s cool. Don’t make him sound like a big creepo sexual predator. He said not to do it if it’s more uncomfortable than funny.”
“It is pretty funny,” I admitted.
“Right? Right, gay dudes are funny. Even Tony admits it. Anyway, the thing is, when Tony said that, like, I think he was joking, but it got me, like, kind of hot, you know?”
“Are you telling me this because you think I’m a lesbian?” I accused.
“Yes,” said Keith. “Anyway, I like girls, but it made me feel weird. I just wanted to tell someone.” He stared wistfully at the shimmering lights on the surface of the pool.
“Right, well, I don’t think it makes you gay or anything. We’re young. I think we’re all excited by the idea of anyone who might want to touch our penises.”
