It was four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, and I had been helping George block out the scene where Tom Collins staggers on stage after being mugged and meets Angel for the first time. Now I sat in the audience to watch Robbie and Steven try it. The tireless piano player was working with some of the others in the Little Theater, so the boys were going without accompaniment here in the auditorium.
Angel sang, It’s Christmas Eve. I’m Angel.
And then Collins replied in his deep voice, Angel, indeed. An angel of the first degree. Friends call me Collins, Tom Collins. Nice tree.
“Wait a minute,” George called from where he was standing downstage. “Turn more toward him, Steven. A step closer. Closer.” Striding quickly, George went up to the two boys and literally pushed Steven toward Robbie with a hand on the small of his back. “Come on now, he’s not going to hurt you. You’ve got an instinctive trust of Angel, you know? Haven’t you ever felt that way when you meet somebody, that you just know you’re comfortable with them?”
Steven threw a quick glance toward Robbie. “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”
“Then imagine it happening here, and act that way.” George stepped back. “Again.” He blew into the pitch pipe for the right note.
When Angel sang, Let’s get a band-aid for your knee, I’ll change, there’s a Life Support meeting at nine-thirty, Yes—this body provides a comfortable home For the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, I made a note on my pad that he wasn’t enunciating as well as he might have.
Half an hour later the boys still weren’t comfortable with the scene. Steven was awkward as Collins; watching him stand so stiffly on the stage, a person would never guess he was a gifted athlete. Maybe he’d had second thoughts about the role. I hoped not. Having to recast the role that Sandy Porter had given up as Joanne had been difficult enough. The new girl, Marie, didn’t look nearly sophisticated enough for the part, but as George had said, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and if we had to cast sophomores like her, than that’s what we’d do. If Steven backed out on us as Collins, the quality of the show would suffer. He was perfect for the role, if only he could figure out how to be himself on stage: jaunty but sensitive, a facing-forward kind of man.
George dismissed the two of them for the day and left for the Little Theater to work with the boys playing Mark and Roger. Steven jumped directly down from the stage without using the side steps and landed with a huge thump that echoed all through the auditorium. “See you tomorrow!” he yelled back toward Robbie, and Robbie hollered, “Sure!” in return. Steven raced past me with a panted “Bye, Mr. Smith,” moving as quickly as if he were diving for a pop fly on the baseball diamond. I watched him run up the aisle, but then something made me turn around.
Robbie was still up on stage where their last scene had left him, and he was staring after Steven. I watched while he watched, until I heard the swinging doors leading out to the lobby open and then close behind me.
Now I got it, why the two boys weren’t meshing on stage together. Steven must have caught on somehow that Robbie liked him. Should I say anything? I surely didn’t want to, but this was part of my job description, wasn’t it?
“Robbie?” I called.
Startled, he looked down at me. “Yes, Mr. Smith?”
“Come on down here for a minute.”
He bobbed his head and took the same route Steven had, jumping straight down into what served as our orchestra pit, though not nearly as gracefully.
“If you break your ankle doing that,” I said mildly as he came up to me, “you’ll be sorry.”
His look of utter incredulity reminded me that I was, surely, a hundred years old, and that nothing bad ever happened to exuberant seventeen-year-olds with four times my energy. They were immortal too, weren’t they? I’d thought that once.
“Did I do okay?” he asked right away. He didn’t lisp. “I know it’s early, but I think I know how to do this role, you know?”
“You’re doing fine.”
“I hit the wrong note in that ‘band-aid’ line. But my mom’s helping me with rehearsing at night. She plays the piano. I’ll get it.”
“I’m sure you will. Robbie, is everything going all right?”
“All right?” He pushed the hair out of his eyes. George had told him not to cut it, so he could look more feminine as a drag queen. It wouldn’t take much to complete that illusion. “What, you mean with the play?”
“That and everything else. I mean....” I struggled to say the right thing. “You know I’m here to talk to if you’ve got anything you want to discuss.”
“Oh, I get it.” He looked around as if searching for someone, but there wasn’t anybody left in the auditorium except for Danielle far to the back, working on her scrims. “You mean if I’m freaked out because I get harassed all the time ’cause of me playing this role. Angel the drag queen.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. Have there been problems?”
“No. Nothing that bad.” His gaze slid off to the side, and I didn’t believe him.
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged in a way that said a thousand words: Yes, it was that bad and, no, he wasn’t going to let it get to him and, yes, it was hard to cope with it but, no, he didn’t know what else to do. And then he compressed his lips, as if he’d pledged to keep a secret.
“Are the other students giving you a hard time?”
“They always do,” he said simply. “I’m used to it.”
“We don’t allow bullying in this school.”
“Easy to say. Listen, I can cope. It’s no big deal. I really want to do this play, Mr. Smith, and nothing’s gonna stop me, especially not some dumb jocks.”
“It’s the athletes who’ve gotten on your case? Because you’re acting with Steven?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Not really, not just them. The past couple of weeks, I’ve been prayed over a lot, you know?”
“Prayed over?” I asked sharply.
“Like this morning. Before class some of the kids stopped at my locker with their Bibles, and they held a little prayer session over me, hoping that I’d return to God and all that. They want me to give up the role, renounce the play and all its evils, stop being gay, that sort of thing.”
Stupidly, I said nothing, though I was shocked. George had been right. Robbie was aware of his sexuality. And the other…. That sort of thing could go on in the hallways of my school, and no adult knew about it? There hadn’t been a whisper of these prayer sessions in the teacher’s lounge, and I surely hadn’t noticed anything like them happening. But we were a big school with lots of hallways, like the streets and alleys of a small city. Like the alleyway where Collins had been mugged.
“You’ve got to think of it as a compliment,” Robbie said, though he sounded uncertain. “That they care that much about me. At least, that’s what my mom says.”
The press of responsibility that had abruptly landed on my shoulders eased; if Robbie was talking to his mother, then I had less to worry about, surely.
“I know we’re asking you and Steven to do a lot,” I hazarded. “Playing men who fall in love with each other. It’s got to be difficult to pretend when it isn’t part of your experience, and it’s not really happening to you.”
He tried to shove his hand in his pocket, but his jeans were so tight that he could only get his fingertips in, and his elbow jutted out from his body awkwardly. “Yeah, I know.”
“Being on stage requires acting on your part,” I said carefully.
“Mr. Keating says it takes imagination. That we have to imagine how that feels, to fall in love.”
“And still know the difference between reality and script, right?”
He frowned at me. “If you say so, Mr. Smith. Listen, I promised my mom I’d meet her outside for my ride at four-thirty, and it’s past that now. Can I go?”
“Sure. If those, uh, prayer sessions get to be too much, you can always—”
“I’m okay.”
He took off
in an enthusiastic, lumbering gallop, a boy not grown into his own body yet, though in a few years he would be a beautiful gay man. Not like me, not in any way, because if I’d been Robbie this morning with those kids and their Bibles….
My hands literally trembled to think of it, a combination of rage and fear as much for myself as for him: How dare they condemn me? How dare they know my truth? My fingers curled into fists.
It was a foregone conclusion that Robbie’s classmates assumed he was gay, even if he hadn’t come out, even if he wasn’t holding hands with another boy as he sashayed through the hallways. They thought he was rubbing their noses in that fact because of the role he was playing, and so they responded by praying.
Aggressive praying. Prayer aimed not so much at healing or helping, but used as part of a teenager’s deadly arsenal to humiliate and exclude. The kids were hiding behind their religion to shield them from any accusations of doing something wrong. Oh, yes, I could imagine what that early-morning prayer session had been like. If I’d been Robbie, I’d have erupted with a volatile mixture of rage and fear, and I would have wanted nothing more than to lash out at someone, anyone. He seemed strangely serene. Certainly not distressed. I was the one who felt that way. I never would have heard about this if I hadn’t asked, because Robbie hadn’t thought enough of it to come to me, or to anyone, and complain.
Slowly I walked through the auditorium’s side doors and headed for the Little Theater at the back of the arts wing. There wasn’t anything I could do, I didn’t think. Objecting to a prayer session before school would be a very dicey proposition in this highly religious community, and I couldn’t afford to call that kind of attention to myself. I’d try to keep my eye on Robbie, though. Maybe I could find out where his locker was and strategically pass by it at some appropriate times.
I was working with the piano player, a member of the school’s orchestra, making some recordings for the kids to take home with them and practice from when my cell phone vibrated in my back pants pocket. I pulled it out to check who was calling with no intention of actually answering, when I saw I had a text message from Kevin.
My throat constricted. I hadn’t heard from Kevin or seen him since that out-of-sorts phone call. Now I stared down at the phone in my hand with an odd resentment. That call, so unique for me, had lodged under my skin, irritating and caressing me simultaneously, and I wasn’t used to that. I wasn’t used to anyone occupying my thoughts and driving me nuts. Kevin had said I was doing that to him.
I wanted to ignore this message, and I would have during school hours.
“Just a minute,” I told Marianne, and I stepped to the side of the room and scrolled to see what he had to say.
Come 2 back door now dont bring kids important.
I frowned, and then managed to smooth my expression. “Can you play ‘One Song Glory’ for Sam, please? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
The back door was the way almost everybody came and went for work in the theater department. The main entry to the arts wing, on the opposite side, led to the band hall, the orchestra hall, the small soundproofed rooms for practicing, and the choir room. The corridors and classrooms where we were doing our Rent work after hours were closest to the auditorium and a step away from a small side lot where my car and most everybody else’s cars or trucks were parked. Robbie’s mom undoubtedly had picked him up on that side of the building.
I hurried through a sun-filled hallway with windows that admitted the light of the late afternoon Texas autumn, my footsteps clacking against the old linoleum. The sounds of the band practicing for the football game drifted to my ears. If Kevin was pulling a joke, a Texas-Rangers-have-won-the-World-Series joke, I wasn’t going to laugh.
The double doors were heavy, painted a dark blue that had chipped with age. They squeaked when I pushed them open and kept them open, as if I were granting Kevin only a minute from my busy schedule. Kevin stood a few feet away on the striped asphalt, next to a red Mustang, in another one of his banker-correct suits.
“What’s going on?” I asked, and not pleasantly either.
“Watch out,” he cautioned, and he pointed down to the ground.
A broken egg was at my feet, splattered all over the sidewalk. There were more shattered shells and yellow yolk and strings of thick egg white, still glistening and wet, in an arc around where I stood.
“Turn around,” Kevin said. “Close the doors first.”
On the outside of the doors, somebody had thrown what must have been a full dozen eggs against the metal. The tracks glistened moistly where they had dripped down to the ground. A full, intact yolk, looking ready for frying, quivered smack in front of the center pole.
“What the hell?” I said out loud.
“Is this the sort of thing that happens around here all the time?” Kevin asked, stepping up next to me.
“Never. There’s been some vandalism associated with the homecoming game against North Central High, but that’s it.”
“Is it homecoming time now?”
I shook my head. “Not even close. I guess you saw this when you drove up?”
“Right. Not five minutes ago. It must have just happened. Do you think there’s any chance this isn’t directed against the play?”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “I suppose there’s a reasonable possibility, but I doubt it. What do you think?”
“You’re the teacher who knows. I wanted you to see this before I went in search of a bucket of water to clean it up.”
“We’ve got to show this to the principal first. You stay here and I’ll go see if Hiram is still in his office, all right?”
“Sure, I’m here to serve.”
I turned to go and was stopped when he tugged on my sleeve. “Hey,” he said, “this isn’t any big deal. You know kids, letting off steam. They probably drove in, lobbed their weapons, and didn’t even get out of their truck.”
“Sure,” I said evenly. “Sort of like shooting your new twenty-two at a stop sign to see if you can hit it. I’ll be right back.”
Hiram wasn’t hard to track down, since he was standing in the school lobby talking to a man in an expensive dark suit. I ducked into the counselors’ office and waited a few minutes until Hiram clapped the fellow on the back, shook his hand, and escorted him out the front doors. He came back looking like a man ready to go home to his supper, but I stepped out and told him what had happened. I didn’t want to. Mrs. Porter, Robbie, now this. Waiting, I’d made up my mind not to tell him about the prayer sessions going on in his school.
Hiram Watts was an old-school educator, deeply entrenched in the community, a social man who nevertheless ran the school efficiently. I had a mild liking for him and had never had occasion to cross swords with him, but I had no idea what his views on homosexuality were. Maybe he’d think praying over the gay students in his school was a good thing. Maybe he’d join the kids the next morning. Just because he’d given George the go-ahead for the play didn’t mean he was ready to endorse gay marriage in Texas or even understand the difficult path kids like Robbie were forced to tread.
Of course I was forced to introduce Kevin to Hiram, though I didn’t want to. The “parent volunteer” was also a professional man, a banker who was concerned and responsible as he relayed what little he’d seen. Kevin knew how to conduct himself—except maybe, sometimes, with me.
Hiram took the egging in stride and didn’t make a big deal of it. I was grateful for that, as I didn’t want to make a big deal of it either. Kids would be kids, the three of us agreed, each of us deliberately being casual about it. Hiram said there wasn’t any need to make a report to the police, then said he’d go look for Randy the custodian and ask him to take care of the clean-up job. He thanked us, made some remark about theater people keeping longer hours than the principal, and took himself off.
“Well,” Kevin said, and he massaged the back of his neck. “This school is a barrel of laughs, isn’t it?”
“Every day. How was your tr
ip to see your mother?”
He eyed me carefully. “If I said it was maddening because I’m hornier than hell and I didn’t want to be there, would that be going over the line?”
I looked away. “Yeah. Saying that here is over the line.”
“Damn, this is frustrating.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“Your world, where the kids are probably wondering where Mr. Wonderful Smith is.”
“Right. Let’s get going.”
I was so tempted to stomp on the broken eggshells as we went up the few steps and opened the doors, but I didn’t, because teachers didn’t give in to their frustrations that way. Kevin and I walked back to the auditorium, where he took off his jacket and draped it over a chair in the back row before joining Danielle down on her knees, painting what I thought was a detailed portrait of a skyscraper. I left him there with her and went back to George and the kids and the piano player, telling myself that no part of what had happened this day was a big deal.
AT NINE o’clock Wednesday night, I grabbed the cordless phone from the handset in the living room and kept lugging my load of dirty clothes toward my laundry room. After tucking the phone under my chin, I said, “Hello?”
“So now I’m telling you that my visit to my mother was frustrating because I’m hornier than hell and I didn’t want to be there. Okay?”
I heaved the laundry basket up on top of the dryer, leaned my good elbow on the pile of clothes, and said, “Okay, okay, I can’t really disagree with you.”
“No, you can’t. I’m the one who knows how I feel.”
I’d thought a lot over the weekend and come up with no real answers. “Kevin, why are you and I—”
“Why aren’t we going immediately to bed and screwing like minks in heat?”
“No, why are you interested in me?”
“You were the one who said it, right?” His voice reverberated with rich irony. “We’re the only two gay men who know one another in a queer’s wasteland. That’s got to be it.”
Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits Page 84
