The Music of Your Life

by John Rowell

  “Obviously you’ve given this some thought,” he says dryly.

  “It was a long ride from the city. I was able to observe quite a bit from the backseat.”

  “Well, I’m not immune to the charms of youth, I just don’t get this particular youth.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Thomas. I think he’s sweet, in a Tiger Beat kind of way.”

  “Speaking of youth,” he says, “wait till you see some of the boys in our show tonight. I mean, I feel like their father sometimes, but oh Lord, are they beautiful.”

  “Beauty is all around,” I say.

  “Yes, you said that before. Odes to beauty.” He kisses me and hugs me good-bye before he gets into his car. He holds the hug for a few extra moments. “It’s good to see you,” he whispers in my ear. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Have you really? Well, thanks.”

  “No, I mean it. Do you think I don’t mean that, Jackson? I have missed you. It’s hard to be gone all summer and never get into the city to see people.”

  “Poor you, Thomas. All alone in your little house in the big woods, surrounded by flora and fauna, working in the theater, attended to by muscular, naked chorus boys running around the dressing room … I don’t exactly feel sorry for you, Precious.”

  He rolls his eyes, then reaches for his sunglasses from where they’ve been nestling in the forest of his curly hair and slides them on. Hopping into the front seat and starting the ignition, he says, “Well, I’ve missed you anyway, whether you choose to believe it or not. And just for the record, the chorus boys are not attending to me.”

  “Then how will I know,” I say, leaning against his window, because I still need to steady myself, “which of tonight’s young thespians are your personal favorites?”

  “Oh, you’ve known me long enough; see if you can figure it out. God, Jack, they’re so young. Twenty-one, twenty-two. What would I do with one even if I caught it?”

  “I don’t know, ask Perry.”

  “Well, I don’t want to catch one like that. I’d have to cruelly violate him and then throw him back. And that’s so unfair.”

  “Agreed. Perry can have him. I don’t want him, either.”

  He glances at his watch. “All right, Precious, I’m going. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Break a leg.”

  “Thanks. Do try to stay sober, at least for my big number. And try not to be too critical. It’s just summer stock, you know.”

  And I watch him back out of the beautiful sloping driveway—which he does … beautifully.

  July 1981, Big Rock Mountain Theater,

  Appalachians of North Carolina

  Thomas and I are alone in our room in Mildew Manor, the boys’ cast house. We’re spending the summer of our eighteenth year doing summer stock, for twenty dollars a week plus meals. It’s two o’clock in the morning; Thomas is trying to sleep, but I can’t even think about it, since there’s a humongous flying cockroach on the loose in our room.

  “It must be destroyed!!” I say, using my stage voice. I’ve got my sneakers in my hands, ready to throw one or both of them at the invader as soon as he shows again.

  “It’s just a cockroach, Jackson,” Thomas groans from his bunk. “You’ve seen too many horror movies.”

  “That’s right!” I wail. “And horror movies have taught me how to use weapons of mass destruction to save the world!” I brandish my Chuck Taylor All-Stars and scan the room, whirling in all directions, making myself dizzy. I’ve had one too many Purple Jesuses tonight at our cast party for the closing of Little Mary Sunshine—my first-ever taste of a Purple Jesus, and my first taste of alcohol of any kind except for beer. “Oh my God, there it is!” I scream, spying the hideous creature and hurtling my sneaker at it. I miss, but it knows I’m after it, and—shit!—it flies up at me, sending me running and screaming into my bed and under the covers.

  “Lord, let me kill this thing before you kill yourself,” Thomas says. He gets out of his bunk and, with what sounds like a couple of masterly swipes of a rolled-up magazine, ends the life of a summer stock flying cockroach.

  “That’s why they call it Mildew Manor,” he says.

  “That thing had no manners,” I say, from under the blanket. “Did you get it?”

  “Yes, Little Miss Muffett. You can come out of hiding now.”

  He stands next to my bed, holding the dead cockroach in a wadded-up Kleenex. “Hey, Jackson, maybe you ought not to drink so much. I mean, at the next cast party.”

  “Really? Why not? Didn’t you drink too?” I say, in a deliberately challenging tone of voice. The window is open, and the night mountain air is blowing the threadbare red silk curtains across the peeling, crumbling window frame. The wind ushers in faint scents of honeysuckle and mountain laurel.

  “Sure, I did. But only two. That’s usually enough. And not that Purple Jesus stuff, either. Wine is much safer, just so you know for the future. Besides, we have rehearsal tomorrow, so …” He disposes of the cockroach out the open window: “Back to nature,” he whispers, almost like a blessing. Then he snaps off the overhead light, a globe with a huge black mass visible at its base—bug corpses from a hundred seasons of summer stock—and climbs back into his bed on the other side of the room.

  I prop myself up, watching him. The moonlight shines in clear and silvery-white, illuminating everything. We’re both in nothing but our white Hanes briefs; our legs are long and sinewy, deeply tanned from rehearsing musical numbers outside on the rehearsal deck in the noonday sun. I’ve only recently sprouted some chest hair—a late bloomer—but Thomas’s torso is admirably furry with thick black ringlets. I’ve seen some of the girls in our company looking at him lustfully when he’s walking around with his shirt off. Some of the boys, too.

  “You’re so wise … and grown-up,” I say.

  He laughs. “Mama always says I have an old soul.”

  “Really? My mother is always saying stuff like that, too. But not about me. I don’t think I have an old soul.”

  “No, you’re definitely a little boy.”

  “Really? Why do you think that? I mean, what about me makes you say that?”

  “Oh, Jackson, you don’t want to talk, do you? I have to sing in the morning.”

  “OK …”

  But it really is much too early to stop talking. “Thomas? One more thing. I was wondering … when I couldn’t find you at the party tonight … where were you? Where’d you go?”

  A moment or two passes before he answers. “Oh,” he says, finally. “I was just talking to Lee.”

  “Up in his room?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Nothing, I was just wondering.” We listen to the night sounds—crickets and rustling leaves—outside our window. There’s also the faint murmur of a radio, trickling in from someone’s room in another part of the house.

  “We were just talking … it was no big deal,” he says, but his voice sounds distant.

  “I know.”

  “Why, did somebody say something?” He sits up in bed and looks over at me, pulling his knees up and hugging them.

  “No … why would they?”

  “Never mind,” he says.

  “You mean did they say you guys were maybe being weird with each other or something?”

  “Did somebody say that?”

  There’s a knock on our door, and Lee opens it and sticks his head in. He’s the director and choreographer of the musicals this summer. Lee is in his late thirties; he’s a college teacher from Tennessee. He’s cast me in all the musicals, just as he’s cast Thomas. He told us privately that we’re the only two actors in the company who can get rid of our North Carolina accents when we’re onstage, and he thinks we’ll both have careers in the theater. Lee is nice and everything, but I have to admit I’ve kind of steered clear of him offstage ever since he handed me a magazine called After Dark and told me he thought I’d enjoy reading it, since it features lots of articles about New York City and Broadway and actors and stuff.
What I enjoyed most were the pictures of muscular guys, models, in bathing suits—I think it’s kind of a magazine for homosexual people—but I just thanked him and never said anything about what I liked in it one way or another.

  “Are y’all OK?” he asks. “I heard a lot of jumping around.”

  “Yeah, we’re fine,” Thomas says.

  “OK, then,” Lee says. “Jackson … kiddo, you probably shouldn’t drink so much at the next cast party. Do you feel all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” I don’t want him to come over and feel my forehead or anything; that would give me the willies. It’s bad enough he’s talking to me like my dad, calling me down for bad behavior.

  “I’m expecting you in shape at rehearsal in the morning then, young man.”

  I smirk, but I doubt he sees it.

  “Tom … you OK?” He whispers this, almost like he didn’t want me to hear him. Thomas has told me he doesn’t like to be called Tom, only Thomas.

  “Yeah … I’m OK,” Thomas whispers back. It’s odd that they’re whispering, even if it is two-fifteen in the morning.

  “Good,” Lee whispers again, closing the door on his way out. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Good night.”

  We’re silent for a long time after that, even though I’m dying to ask Thomas questions. But I don’t; I’m too afraid he’ll turn around and ask the same ones of me. But there’s nothing to tell, really; after all, I have a girlfriend in the company, Shelley, even though we haven’t done anything but make out. A little.

  “Good night, Jackson,” Thomas says, finally.

  “G’night.”

  I can’t sleep though, and in a moment or two, I whisper: “Thomas?” I’m resting my head back on the pillow, when suddenly I feel a wave of something hot and clammy rush through my body.

  “What?”

  “I think—Thomas, I think—”

  “Oh God, Jackson.” He jumps up.

  And he’s at my side, helping me out of bed. “Stick your head out the window!”

  And he guides my torso halfway out the window, so that my chest and head are all the way outside and my brief-clad butt is sticking up inside. Just in time. Woe unto the poor, thin patches of clover and dirt underneath our window, and any insects that may be lurking there unawares.

  Thomas rubs my back while I’m leaning over, which feels good and maybe a little scary; I’ve never had another guy’s hand on my bare back like that. Even as I’m heaving, I’m grateful to Thomas for helping me out, though I can hardly express my thanks with my head out the window. Yet I wonder how different this would feel if, instead of Thomas, one of the other guys in the company were doing this for me, rubbing my back like this—Chris maybe, or Greg, or D.J., those athletic blond dancer boys, the ones I’m always trying to steal glances at in the dressing rooms when we’re all getting out of costume. Thomas is like my brother—he even treats me better than my own big brother does—so I don’t steal glances at Thomas taking off his clothes. I wonder if Chris or Greg or D.J. might rub lower than my back, something I think I’d want and not want at the same time.

  “Just relax,” says Thomas. “You’re gonna be OK.”

  Oh boy. Maybe. I ask myself if I’d do this for Thomas, if it were him who was drunk and sick instead of me. I would, yes. But I know, deep down, it would never be like that; it’s always the old souls who take care of the little boys, not the other way around.

  The Briar Hill Playhouse is filling up with the Friday-night audience as Perry, Duffy, and I take our seats. Duffy is carrying on about how Rent is his favorite musical, the only musical he can “personally relate to.” He still doesn’t seem to understand what 1776 is about.

  “I bet I know other musicals you’d like, Duffy,” I say, trying to be helpful. “The girly ones, like Mame, and Hello, Dolly! I’ll bet you could relate to those.”

  Perry kicks me under the seat. “Be nice,” he hisses in my ear. “He’s still my boyfriend.”

  “And why do you think I’d relate to those shows, dude?” Duffy asks me, looking at me with his studied I’m focusing on you now intensity. His attention always seems to be riveted when a conversation centers on what he might do, what he might think.

  “Well, you know … all those feather boas and sequins. You’re a fan of that type of thing, aren’t you?”

  “Well, I do like Evita, so maybe,” Duffy says, cocking his head to the side and thinking. “But I think basically any show before 1980 is, like, totally unimportant. But, hey, you know … whatever. As long as I’m not bored.” He flips his hands, palms upturned, and shrugs, a gesture that says, “Hey, that’s just who I am!”

  The lights go down, and the overture—played by a lone piano and a snare drum—begins. In a few moments, the “Continental Congress” takes the stage; most of them sport cheesy-looking powdered wigs tied in the back with black ribbons, and they are costumed in waistcoats over blousy shirts, buckle shoes, and white tights. It’s clear that the cast features quite a few young, college-age actors—nineteen- and twenty-year olds—playing older characters. A few of them exaggerate “old age” characteristics—speaking in bizarre scratchy voices and walking with pronounced stoops, like old witches in fairy tales.

  “Wait a minute,” I whisper to Perry. “Aren’t they supposed to be playing, like, forty-year-olds?”

  “Oh, yes,” he whispers back. “That’s what they’re playing. That’s what they think we look like.”

  I decide this would not be a good time to remind Perry that he’s ten years older than Thomas and I. Duffy, for his part, is already fanning himself with his program.

  “This is like history class,” he whispers. “Bo-ring!” He says this too loudly, and an elderly couple in front of us turns to look at him, and he rudely glares back.

  “Duffy,” I say, under my breath, “I think you’re disturbing them.”

  “Oh, please!” he whispers. “They look like they’ve been here since 1776,” whereupon I cover my face with my hands.

  “Duffy, shut up!” Perry hisses.

  Duffy rolls his eyes and snorts. “There aren’t any divas in this show,” he whimpers. “I want divas. Big black women.” He snaps his fingers in a circular sweep.

  “I know,” I whisper, “but try to concentrate on how cute some of the boys are.”

  “OK, I can always do that,” he says, instantly altered, the way a child stops crying when you hand him a toy. “Good call, Jackson. Let’s see … I want to meet … that one and that one and that one …” He jabs his fingers in the air toward the stage, nearly rising out of his seat with enthusiasm for this new activity. I gently coax him back down.

  “We can meet them after the show,” I whisper. Fortunately we’re in the midst of a rousing musical number, in which the Congress is singing and yelling at John Adams to “Sit down, John!” Which John Adams, of course, refuses to do.

  Clearly, that bit of advice doesn’t work any better on Founding Fathers than it does on Chelsea Youth.

  At intermission, Duffy goes off to the men’s room and Perry and I mill about on the theater grounds. I’m drinking coffee, remembering Thomas’s edict to be sober for his second-act number. I have been de-inebriated for hours now, of course; the coffee is just insurance.

  “He’s driving me nuts!” Perry says, as he lights up a Marlboro. “How did I ever get myself into this? It’s like baby-sitting. I mean, he’s not even socially adaptable, for God’s sake. He can’t sit still in a theater without talking. And he wants to be an actor? Jesus Christ.”

  The outside lights start to blink on and off, prompting the audience to return to the theater for Act 2.

  Perry looks around. “Where is he? Do you think we can get him back in his seat before they make America an independent country?”

  “Not if he’s having sex in a toilet stall.”

  And Perry suddenly looks at me with an awful expression of horror, as shocked as John Adams looked onstage when he was told he couldn’t put his slavery clause into the Dec
laration.

  “Perry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” I say, putting my hand on his shoulder.

  He glances in the direction of the men’s room, wrinkling his brow and biting his lip.

  The lights blink again, and suddenly Duffy comes rushing up from the other direction. “Are we late?” he says, sounding actually concerned, almost like a normal person.

  “You’re lucky we’re not,” Perry snaps, but then he’s so obviously relieved to see him that he kisses him on the cheek.

  Duffy links his fingers through Perry’s fingers and they walk on ahead of me, holding hands all the way into the theater. I’m one of the last audience members still standing outside, so I chuck my red, white, and blue coffee cup into the nearest trash can, and start to head into the theater behind them, but then …

  Why? Why should I? Really … why? I don’t want to sit through the godforsaken second act of this miserable production. I don’t want to have to make a silly twenty-two-year-old Chelsea boy behave while his lover sits there saying nothing, paralyzed with fear that one wrong word out of his mouth will send the kid skipping into someone else’s open arms the next time he’s trawling down Eighth Avenue. And Thomas … how many times was Thomas conveniently out of town when I was in some poor dumb show? And I’ve not forgotten that both Thomas and Perry had slippery excuses for not coming to my birthday party last year. And my Christmas party the year before that …

  No. What I want is to head out to the highway and hitchhike myself back to New York, where I could do what I should be doing, which is wearing all black and sitting alone at the end of an expensive hotel bar nursing a martini and looking every inch the femme fatale, or whatever the male equivalent of femme fatale is, projecting a patented air of mystery and glamour and driving the other male patrons wild with my particular allure. Oh, what is the male equivalent of femme fatale? Gigolo? Bon vivant? Man-child-about-town?