“Good luck bestows upon you,” it said. “You will get what your heart desires.”
I laughed, too. And that is when I kissed her.
I was going away to work at Ramah again that summer, and Rebecca would be going to Rhode Island in the fall. But none of that mattered in the moment. All that mattered was that our first kiss was real, and it was wonderful. I knew that when I refused Rebecca at that party I’d been doing the right thing. That first kiss proved it. And it wasn’t until a few weeks later that I learned it was Rebecca who had once called me about the physics homework.
WHEN I SPOKE UP
Hunter’s senior class was gathered in the auditorium as it often was—to hear announcements, to discuss important events coming up, and because most of us didn’t want to go to class anyway. Once every few weeks, we’d all get to miss a class period to discuss a pressing issue.
Usually the issue was something clerical. The college application process, how to receive advanced placement credits, and other such boring but necessary information for high school seniors. This particular assembly started boring as well—by going over the program for graduation. Suddenly, there was a turn.
“As most of you know, our graduation speech is not given by the valedictorian, but rather by the student whom the class chooses to speak on their behalf.”
Most of us did not know that. Hell, I’d been to graduation the year before to support Colleen, and I didn’t know that.
The administration went on to tell us that Hunter would be accepting speech submissions over the next two weeks, and my heart soared. I had been speaking in USY for three years, and I could ace this. I actually had a chance to deliver the class speech at graduation. Forget dancing—this would be my real chance to be the person I’d wanted to be.
The administration continued to tell us that we would convene again in the auditorium in a few weeks to hear the top four speeches as selected by the faculty, and the winner of those would be determined by student vote. And my heart sank.
Winning any sort of election at Hunter was not something I ever thought I could do. Unlike USY, I never ran for any offices and never got involved in the leadership of any club where students voted on the leaders. I had been appointed president of the improv club and a teacher had asked me to be coach of the softball team, but I’d never have tried for either if there had been an election. Even when I auditioned for Brick Prison, I never went out for a lead role. Because I knew that I had no shot.
“You should do it anyway,” Jacob said. “Who cares if you win or not? Even if you lose the vote, you’ll still have given a kickass speech in front of the whole grade.”
“What if it sucks?” I asked.
“Write one that doesn’t suck,” Jacob responded.
Touché.
Over the next two weeks, I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again until I had a speech that didn’t suck. I used everything I had learned in history class about speeches with refrains and rallying cries and everything I learned in USY about staying positive and making promises. By the end of those two weeks, I was ready. And I submitted my speech on the last possible day. But not after the deadline—I know what happens when you miss deadlines.
A few days later, I was notified that I was one of the four finalists selected. Getting through the first cut wasn’t the part I was worried about. I believed in my speech, and Mrs. Acker was on the selection committee. I knew I could win a popularity contest with Mrs. Acker.
When the senior class convened in the auditorium the following week, I learned that I would be speaking fourth out of four. Damn it. None of the students listening to the speeches particularly wanted to be there, and by the time I was up, they would have sat through three boring speeches that all had similar themes.
The first two speeches were the standard, run-of-the-mill graduation fare. Well written, for sure. But nothing spectacular. We will miss Hunter, we wish you luck next year, we know everyone will be successful, and so on. The speeches were so similar, it was almost cruel to place them back-to-back.
The third speech was a bit . . . different. Micky Ottorino marched onstage with the kind of angry look on his face that scared everyone into paying attention. He also brought his math textbook. We didn’t have to spend much time wondering why Micky brought his math textbook—he opened the speech by saying, “Well, we don’t need this anymore!” and slammed it to the ground. The rest of the speech was a missive on the sheer amount of time we had all wasted in high school and how worthless the exercise of graduation was. Well, Micky wasn’t going to win, though he’d probably get the wouldn’t-it-be-hilarious-if vote. The only thing stranger than Micky’s speech is that the administration chose it as a finalist. I started to think that only four of us had submitted speeches.
I had to follow that uncomfortable weirdness, so I took a chance.
“Micky,” I started, as I picked up his book and walked over to him. “You dropped this.”
It got a few laughs, and I began my speech.
“We are leaving,” I said. “To where, we are not sure. But we know that we are leaving.”
I went on to talk about how uncertain our world was and how much more complex our choices were than our parents’ choices.
“Their heroes were Superman, Batman, and Captain America,” I said. “In our high school years, all three have died at least once.”
My intent was to alternate between the right amount of silly and serious.
“Hunter’s advanced academic environment,” I continued, “has not taught us just the atomic weight of tungsten and how to say ‘where is the nearest hotel?’ in Spanish; it has encouraged us to reach out further than the classroom. We have learned how to deal with hunger and AIDS, we have learned how to direct a musical, and we have learned how to throw a fastball.”
I took a dramatic pause.
“We have learned how to live,” I said. “We have learned how to learn.”
I paused again and realized that everyone was quiet. They were listening. The entire senior class was listening to me, actively wanting to hear what I had to say next. This was not a group of students surrounding me in the hallway, rooting for Scarlet Daly to devour me. This was something I’d never experienced before at Hunter—this was respect en masse.
As I got to the finish line, I felt I had them.
“We are headed into what we are told is the real world, and we are not supposed to be ready for it. We are supposed to be afraid and hesitant, we are supposed to be reluctant. So why aren’t we?” I asked, again, to silence.
“We’ve been in the real world for years. We’ve interacted with those of other cultures; we’ve held jobs; we’ve braved subways, busses, and ferries—and all to learn.”
They were still silent. Still listening.
There’s a line in “New York, New York,” that says, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” This line means that New York is such a tough place to make it that everything else seems easier by comparison. I felt the same about high school. All the garbage I had dealt with from hallway humiliation to principal punishment to ball field bullying had toughened me and given me a voice.
When Tommy Tillet teased me, when Theo Webster threatened me, when Phillip Cuchillo assualted me, I could have been broken. At times, I cracked. I let them embarrass me, scare me, and quiet me. I let them win battles. But I never let them win the war.
I’d always had a problem with the phrase, “You can do anything if you just set your mind to it.” It’s missing the most important piece of that puzzle. The phrase should be, “You can do anything if you just set your mind to it, surround yourself with the right people, and put the work in.”
My right people were everyone from Jacob Corry to Mr. Mikkelsen, from Rebecca Chaikin to Mrs. Acker. My work was everything from improv to softball, from Brick Prison to USY. My years of heartbreak and hope informed that speech. There I was, the quiet kid who once refused to speak in class, holding the attention of every one of my classmates. This was the a
dvice my brother, David, had given me so many years before. This was me risking living my life on the bottom line by reaching for the top.
“We are our own icons,” I said, defiantly. “We are ready for the world. We are ready for anything.”
I do not know how long the time was in between when I finished and when the crowd applauded, but it seemed painfully long. In reality, it was probably less than a second: the standard, don’t-clap-until-we-know-he’s-done pause that most crowds will give a speaker. It felt like forever. But their applause was explosive.
“Well,” Jacob said as I returned to my seat. “That definitely didn’t suck.”
And now it was time to see who’d won. The administration explained that if no one got more than two-thirds of the vote, there’d be a run-off between the top two speeches. Waiting for the results the next day was extremely nerve-wracking. I had made the mistake of getting my hopes up, like I’d done in USY. I thought I had a decent chance at this thing. I knew Micky wouldn’t win, so the question became whether or not the students wanted the standard graduation fare from the first two speakers or something a little more Freak Hallway.
Like USY, there was no run-off between the first two voters. But unlike USY, I won.
When graduation came, despite having practiced that speech hundreds of times, I had never been as nervous as I was that day. It didn’t matter that I knew my speech by heart and that my classmates liked it enough to vote it the winner. I was terrified of screwing up. Graduation was the biggest stage I’d ever been on, and I didn’t want to let the opportunity pass.
When the honored alumni guest went off on a weird tangent about the vastness of the universe that made most of the audience confused and uncomfortable, my nerves got even worse. I tried to remind myself that this was just like improv, and if the scene didn’t work out, I’d always have another one. My advice to myself didn’t work in this particular situation.
“Don’t worry, Steve. You can do better at your next high school graduation,” wasn’t true or comforting.
The alumni speaker finally finished her rant about aliens, and it was my turn.
When you perform, you have one moment to get the audience’s attention and set the tone for the rest of the time you’re onstage. Like I did when I followed Micky, I had to deal with the uncomfortable weirdness in the room. I had help from one of my heroes.
I was told by Dr. Haanraats I’d have to remove my hat before speaking, so I did. I thought the formality of needing to be hatless was silly, and like everyone else at Hunter, I had learned not to respect authority when it didn’t make sense. I took my hat off so it faced the crowd—revealing a Bat-signal that I’d taped to the top of it. The crowd chuckled, I smiled, and I began.
“We are leaving,” I began. “To where, we are not sure.”
The next few minutes went well, and I was emboldened when the crowd laughed where they were supposed to and applauded where I hoped they would. By the time I reached the critical moment of the speech, I was feeling pretty good about myself.
“We have learned how to live,” I said. “We have learned how to learn.”
And, like I’d planned, there was a dramatic silence as I dramatically paused. Until a baby very loudly yelled, “Yahhhhhhhhhh!”
Like when Scarlet Daly had confronted me in the hallway, I was given a moment. A pause where everyone’s attention was focused on what I was going to say next. I had an opportunity. Unlike that moment in the hallway, I was prepared.
Not the USY snowstorm, not getting into Mr. Mikkelsen’s economics class, and not cleaning up after those ferrets—that baby was the most important sliding door of them all. My response to him was simple but set the tone for who I would be the rest of my life.
Improv took over, and without thinking, I turned toward that baby and very seriously said, “Thank you, sir.” The room busted up laughing.
From there, the rest of the speech was cake. I held that room in a way I had never held a room before.
“We are ready for the world,” I closed. “We are ready for anything.”
That time, there was not as much space between my final word and the applause. I smiled, said thank you, and walked back to my seat.
It was over: the speech, high school, and my transformation. All of it was over. I was finally the person I wanted to be.
I was a pretty unhappy teenager. And then I wasn’t.
ONE MORE THING
It was my first week at Columbia, and the plan was to go to Times Square and people-watch. As my classmates and I walked through the madness, someone barked at us that they had free tickets to a stand-up comedy show. I’d never seen stand-up live and had always wanted to, so I was immediately drawn in. My new “friends” (people who lived in my dorm) were convinced easily enough, and we headed to the back room of a hamburger joint to watch the “show.”
The show turned out to be an amateur night, and many of the acts were terrible. I didn’t care—I just loved being in that environment. As we settled our bill, I was talking a mile-a-minute about what I liked and disliked, and I was discussing what I would have done given the chance on stage. On our way out, we thanked the show’s MC, who was also working the door. Because it was an amateur night.
“Thanks, Red,” she said, extending a flyer. “If you want to come and try it, here’s how you sign-up.”
My classmates all said, “no, thank you,” but I took the flyer.
On the walk to the subway, one of my classmates pressed me.
“You’re going to do stand-up?”
“Why not?” I asked. “I’ve done improv before. Seems fun.”
“I’d be terrified of the rejection,” he replied. “Aren’t you afraid of people judging you?”
“No,” I laughed. “I went to high school.”
I carefully folded the flyer and put it in my wallet so I wouldn’t lose it, and I wondered how Rebecca was doing in Rhode Island.
AND NOW FOR THE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Beth,” who nurtured my love for storytelling and stayed up late with me on summer nights pretending to be sportscasters, actors, directors, and other things I’ve gotten to be.
“David,” who hit baseballs over my head until I was old enough to do the same for him and who lobbed jokes over my head (and continues to do so).
“Leah,” who is more like me than I care to admit, and not just because we both have red hair.
My mother, whom I love very much, despite how many times I joke about her in this book, and whom I will be taking out to a very nice dinner sometime soon.
My father, whom I miss very much. Every time I do something that I know he’d have been proud of, I get a little sad knowing I can’t show it to him.
Thank you to Russell Best, Jane Dystel, and the entire team over at Abrams/Amulet who worked to publish and design the book. Your tireless creativity is what made this a reality. Without your help, this book would have just been a very long Facebook post.
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