How to Be Happy

by David Burton

  School itself didn’t help. Assignments grew in length and ferocity, piling one on top of the other. Relentless pep talks about responsibility and becoming an adult only served to raise anxiety levels. We were asked, almost daily, what we intended to do when we left school. And we weren’t even in our final year. It seemed that every second week we were drawing up a list of goals, either spiritual, academic or personal. Adults made every effort to instil in us a spirit of aspiration. But this rarely had the desired affect of turning our attention outward and to the sky, inspired by the prospect of a bright and sparkly future. More often it left us feeling as though being the natural people that we were just wasn’t good enough. We had to get better marks, achieve greater successes and create more unique opportunities before we could be fit to join society. Left to just be ourselves, we were significantly less than ideal.

  Wonderfully, my parents exerted next to no academic pressure on me, a piece of good fortune that didn’t befall the majority of my peers. My folks probably picked up that I was manufacturing more than enough anxiety all by myself. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my future, and I was almost certain my career choices would be limited by my perverse sexual desires and the fact that I could barely walk past a female without somehow making her suicidal.

  Drama classes, my one forum of unrestrained expression, changed significantly in senior years. Mrs Coates, whose altar I had knelt at and who had inspired so much confidence, left the school to become a parent. The drama teachers who remained were equally competent, but nothing could persuade me from my singular devotion to the now-absent Mrs Coates.

  She left me with a parting gift, however. Her husband was a drama teacher at an all-boys school across town, and I received a phone call inviting me to participate in their weekly drama group after school. I would be the only boy in attendance who was not enrolled in the school. No girls were allowed.

  I had thought my own co-ed school was about as chaotic as any school could get. I knew nothing.

  I arrived at the empty unknown music hall on a frosty Thursday night, not daring to think of what lay ahead. Inside the hall (which was wonderfully better resourced than my own school) were a couple of dozen rowdy teenage boys, playing a game that seemed to be made up of a lot of tagging, tackling and yelling. I spied the friendly familiar face of Mr Coates across the hall, and he approached.

  ‘Hi, mate,’ he said. ‘Just join—’

  But he was interrupted by a shout across the room.

  ‘FUCK OFF, LIAM!’

  Mr Coates raised his eyebrows. ‘Callum,’ he said, warning.

  ‘Sir, Liam pulled my pants down.’

  It was true. Callum was pulling his pants up from around his ankles. The offender, Liam, was in hysterics. Mr Coates smiled and turned back to me.

  I was shocked. At my school, a dacking or swearing would easily land you in detention. Here, Mr Coates had done little but raise his eyebrows. The whole thing had played out with smiles. Everyone enjoyed the joke, even Callum, who had had his blue underwear shown to everyone. It was a different world.

  ‘Join in,’ said Mr Coates. ‘We’ll get started soon.’

  I entered into the fray. ‘Guys,’ yelled out Mr Coates. ‘This is Dave. He’ll be joining us tonight.’

  I received a few nods of recognition, and play resumed. That was it. I was welcomed. The game had now evolved into tackle, tag and dack. Pants were flying up and down quicker than could be seen.

  I had entered a super-charged masculine circus. Compared to the restrained and almost entirely female drama class at my school, the boys’ drama club was like a late-night cable special.

  When the evening began proper, we launched into a series of improvised scenes that seemed to have no rules. The social communication was a battle of wits; we were competing for the dirtiest jokes and the most creative and liberal use of profanity. Silliness was embraced. Nonsense was applauded. Friendships were made quickly and easily, and any initial fears I had about being an outsider dissolved in the thunderous cloud of Pythonesque madness.

  I went every week, and considered the boys my friends, even though we shared little beyond the funny scenes. We never swapped secrets or had anything more than giggly conversations, but an intimate camaraderie grew out of the club’s ambitious performance schedule, which saw us delivering a new bare-bones production every couple of months.

  The shows were spectacles in themselves: equal parts classic comedy sketches, original stories and utter chaos. The audience, of parents and friends, was treated to students fire-breathing in intermission. Hastily thrown-together bands would play. Backstage was a mess of props and piles of unlearned scripts, and it smelled straight-up of sweaty balls.

  I had some of the best nights of my life there. Away from the politics of school, I allowed myself to be the loud and expressive drama kid without limits, and I was surrounded by peers who embraced the opportunity in exactly the same way. I slowly began to realise that the boys were the outcasts of their school, and the club was an important refuge for them too from the sport-saturated environment of their day-to-day school life.

  The real success of the performance evenings were the original pieces written by Mr Coates. Presented as an episodic adventure, these shows focused on a boy and his gang of imaginary friends, with recurring characters. So each of us was given a character that we would improvise and slowly build over time.

  ‘Okay,’ began Mr Coates one evening, ‘we need to write the next show. Tonight we’ll come up with some new characters. You’ll get a piece of paper with a name and a few words of description, and then we’ll start playing around.’

  The hat was passed around. I pulled out a piece of paper.

  ‘Eugene,’ it read. ‘Hare-brained professor.’

  We got up in small groups to introduce ourselves. One of the central rules of improvisation is that you don’t think. You just do. So when Eugene introduced himself I was just as surprised as anyone else was.

  ‘Helllloooooo!’ came Eugene’s effeminate drawl. ‘I’m Professor Eugene, and I’m here to conduct experiments.’

  I arched my eyebrows on the final line, and dropped my hands to circle my nipples, slowly. The boys erupted into laughter.

  Just like that, Eugene was born.

  Without meaning to, I had created a gigantic caricature of the type of man I was terrified of becoming. He was a big, flaming fag. An emphatically effeminate, limp-wristed, barely-closeted homosexual. His jokes were not based on wit, but on thinly-veiled attempts to crack on to the other boys with ceaseless innuendo (in-your-end-o). He would return for every show. He would say things the other boys would not say, perhaps because I didn’t have to attend the school the following day.

  ‘I hear a noise!’ Eugene said, in a memorable haunted-house outing. ‘I feel energy…wait, I can feel it…’

  At this point Eugene closed his eyes and let his hands wander, attempting to feel ‘energy’. ‘I’m getting a strong, pulsating kind of vibe. It’s coming from… right here!’

  I’d open my eyes, right on cue, I was pointing right at one of the other boy’s genitals. The teenage audience applauded; the joke was pure scandal.

  In another show, Eugene described his reci
pe for a meaty bolognese. ‘Lots of meat and plenty of cumin.’ (Pronounced, of course, as come-in.) ‘I love CUM-in.’

  Hard to believe this original wit didn’t instantly launch a national comedy career.

  Still, our audiences grew, and the characters became known and attracted their own followings. Soon, my classmates started attending performances, interested in how I was spending my Thursday nights. I so enjoyed the bountiful audience laughter with every limp-wristed ‘Yoo-hoo!’ that Eugene yelled out into the crowd. I was terrified of being gay, but Eugene absolutely loved it, and his audience loved it too.

  On stage my most private of fears were brought out in freakish exaggeration, and the result was adolescent comedy gold. It was terrifying and thrilling. I left each night feeling free and light, as if I had shed some intense weight.

  My performances in every regard were accomplished for my age. The advice I had given to Mary—‘just don’t be yourself’—had evolved for me into a constant and extroverted piece of fraud. No one knew of my anxiety. No one.

  In fact, I had become a leader at school. I was loud, sarcastic and running so fast my feet barely touched the ground. I was in the choir, two school bands, the school production, debating, mooting, and on any committee that would have me. In year twelve, the young man who had started school by being thrown across a visual arts table was voted School Vice Captain.

  I didn’t tell anyone how I actually felt. I was constantly anxious and depressed underneath an extroverted guise. I was putting an extraordinary amount of work into being a liar, and for the trouble I was elected as a school leader and promoted as a role model to my peers. In every way, my deception was rewarded.

  It was only a matter of time before it all fell apart.

  7

  Bruises

  I didn’t comment on Tiff’s wrists. No one did. Besides, year eleven was nearly over. I made the final sprint through exams and collapsed into my summer holidays. I was exhausted. It was hard to believe that in just twelve months I would be graduating from high school. The thought was too scary to contemplate. Anyway, I had to survive year twelve first.

  The difference between year eleven and year twelve was palpable. We all felt it the moment we walked through the door on our first day back. Our teachers reminded us constantly that we were no longer students, we were ‘leaders’. My extra-curricula activities doubled as I took on as many responsibilities as my Vice School Captain status could allow.

  Simon was still by my side, and our friendship group was stable. The summer holidays had provided a convenient break for Tiff and me, and we resumed being friends as if nothing had happened.

  In that final year of intense academic pressure, you may be surprised to learn that my friends and I didn’t talk that much about exams, or the concept of leadership, or our future as adults (or, as our teachers insisted upon calling it, our ‘sacred journey’). We didn’t ruminate on Catherine’s inner-motivation in Wuthering Heights, which we studied for English. We didn’t interrogate the quadratic equations that we were studying in maths.

  We mostly talked about the formal.

  There are three critical ingredients required for a formal: dancing skill, formal wear and a partner.

  For one afternoon a week leading up to the formal, the entire senior school body would pile into our massive gymnasium and learn dances that we would NEVER DANCE AGAIN, except at our own children’s formals, perhaps. Nevertheless, we threw ourselves into the task as if we were living in a Jane Austen novel and this was the only way we would ever fit into society.

  The dances all had archaic names that seemed to encourage us to go back to a simpler time when women were subjugated and gender lines were crystal clear. The ‘Merry Widow Waltz’, the ‘Marching through Georgia’, and my favourite, the ‘Pride of Erin’. Who the hell was Erin? And why was I displaying my pride through dance?

  We learnt the dances in two giant circles: the men on the outside, the women on the inside, and we swapped partners every few bars or so. As each girl arrived in my arms, they inevitably said, ‘God, you’re so much better than the other guys at this.’

  I cursed God. Yes, apparently I had rhythm.

  An alarm went off in my brain.

  GAY GAY GAY.

  I attempted to cover up my dancing prowess by constantly mucking up the moves. That the world has missed out on my natural dancing abilities is something many people are weeping over to this day. (Don’t worry. Upon request, I can break into the Pride of Erin with a moment’s notice.)

  The second ingredient proved to be slightly trickier than the first. I wish I could say I pondered extensively what type of suit to wear, but I didn’t. I knew exactly what I wanted months in advance.

  In the shop window of a quiet menswear store were three matching zoot suits. One in garish yellow, another in lime green, and another in royal purple. I decided I wanted the purple one. I would go to my senior formal in a purple suit.

  Let me try to explain why I wanted to look like a Batman villain.

  To wear a black suit, or anything resembling what most of the men were wearing, felt like a betrayal of who I was. It would be a lie to say I was a normal man, because I wasn’t. The purple suit fitted perfectly with my extroverted, clownish, Eugene-like persona. Not only that, it had a bright yellow silk lining and shirt, a glaring purple tie and two-tone purple-and-gold shoes. As ridiculous as it was, it was the perfect suit for me. I was the perfect joke of a man.

  Problem was, the suit in the shop window was expensive. I was insistent that that was what I wanted, and my mother was sympathetic. But we couldn’t afford it. Mum, however, had the skills to make a replica from scratch.

  So, months away from the big day, Mum bought a pattern and started making a purple zoot suit tailored for my skinny teenage frame. After all, she didn’t have enough to worry about with my two disabled brothers battling high school (we will return to them later).

  The third element, finding a partner, was a complicated social dance in itself. The entire year level tricked each other into believing that couplings were arbitrary, and usually based on casual companionship as opposed to romantic desire. But the opportunity served as a chance for those harbouring long-time crushes to try their luck. All around me, new dating partnerships emerged.

  Since Tiff and I had broken up, I had all but given up on finding a partner. Despite being constantly drawn to naked men in my mind, I was equally attracted to finding a wife and living a beautifully quiet, normal life. In fact, I believed it would be my salvation. I believed in my romantic vision. I would be a normal man, and find someone who would accept me.

  I had plenty of crushes, but I found it difficult to take the next step and actually do something about it. This is true for most guys. But for most guys, it’s a fear of rejection. I was stopped by a fear of success. What would happen if a girl said yes, and suddenly I was in a Tiff situation again? I would stuff it up and destroy the poor girl’s heart. I felt as though I should come with a warning sign around my neck: ‘Loving me will almost certainly result in wrist-cutting.’

  I needed a risk-free partner.

  Because we were friends, and because I felt comfortable with her, and because I knew I couldn’t let her down more than I already had, I asked Tiff.
She said yes. Simple. Easy. No stress. The marks on her wrist had faded, and our friendship had resumed its natural course.

  It would all be fine.

  Right?

  I watched with interest as a blonde girl named Maddie began a campaign to take a female partner to the formal. The year was 2004, and teenage homosexuality was really only a shadow on the public consciousness. Maddie ended up getting her way. She was the first open lesbian in the school’s history. The students didn’t really care. But it was a long debate between Maddie and the staff, who at first dismissed her desires as a cry for attention. She went to the formal with her girlfriend. If it was a cry for attention, it was one of the bravest cries I’d ever witnessed.

  Maddie was tolerated, but not accepted. I had the opportunity to get involved in the debate as a representative of the student body, almost all of whom didn’t care who Maddie took to the formal beyond making it a subject of rumours. But the thought of actually using my School Vice Captain status to help Maddie’s campaign for acceptance never crossed my mind. Instead, I took part in the schoolyard rumours as the saga played out. It was such a delicious scandal. Looking back, I can’t imagine what Maddie was actually going through.

  Also becoming prone to gossip was the boys’ drama group I was part of across town. With our audiences growing, we were determined to push the envelope on what was acceptable, and every show was immediately followed by a long list of complaints from the principal. We enjoyed getting in trouble. I had no concerns at all, as I didn’t attend the school and I didn’t have to put up with the principal’s disciplinary lectures.