My own version had sounded okay when I sang it in the shower. I had concentrated on making my voice sound bouncy and clear like Kristin’s, and though I had to admit the high notes were hard for me to reach, I thought the overall effect was pretty good.
But now, after hearing Demi, I knew it wasn’t working. Why on earth had I picked a song written for a four-foot-eleven opera-trained blonde?
I thought about my small voice coming out of my big gawky body. My strained high notes. My utter lack of bouncy, Kristinish clarity. “I should shoot myself now,” I said, interrupting Demi.
“What? Why?”
“Look at me. I am not remotely Kristinish. I need a different song.”
He knew what I meant immediately. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “
Charlie Brown
or
Wicked
?” (Kristin won a Tony for playing Sally in
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
)
“‘Popular.’”
“Okay.” Demi was all business. “Here’s what you’ve got to remember. You’re not Kristin.”
“Duh.”
“No, don’t say duh. I mean, no one is Kristin. And true, you’re not even Kristin
ish
. But that doesn’t matter, because those people in there don’t want to see you trying to be Kristin, even if you could be as Kristinish as Kristin herself. They want to see Sadye, and find out what Sadye can do.”
“I don’t sing like you do, believe me.”
“Well,” Demi vamped, “no one does. But you should work what you’ve got. The way you work that nose.”
I socked him on the arm.
“I’m serious,” Demi said. “You’re like Barbra.” (He meant Streisand). “You take a nose that would be ugly on lots of other girls, and you make it fabulous.”
He thought I was working my nose. And maybe I was. “So?” I asked.
“So. Do that with your voice.”
H
ALF AN HOUR
later, my name was called. My throat felt tight and my palms were wet. I went in, clutching my application and sheet music.
Sitting at a table were three adults. Ordinary white grown-ups in jeans and sweaters—two women and a round, disheveled man with a brown beard. Someone reached a hand out for my application, and motioned for me to give the sheet music to the piano player. “Sadye Paulson. Start with the monologue.”
“Juliet on the balcony,” I said, and the man with the beard snorted. As if he’d heard the same speech three times already that day.
I took a deep breath and thought about what Demi had said.
Work what you’ve got.
Show what Sadye can do.
And I realized, as I spoke the first words, that the way Miss Delilah had acted out the scene might be good; it might be what these Wildewood people were looking for; might be real acting—but it wasn’t what I could offer. I had never taken an acting class, and there was no way I could reach pinnacles of conflicting emotions in the space of two minutes without being fake.
So I spoke it. Like I was talking. Like it was as natural to say “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” as it would be to say “Why do you have to be named Romeo, of all things?”
I didn’t do any of the gestures I had rehearsed. I left my arms down at my sides and said the words, thinking—not about Romeo, or some imaginary boyfriend, as I’d tried to do before when I’d rehearsed—but about something I wanted.
Juliet and I both wanted something badly. She wanted to be with Romeo. And I wanted to go to Wildewood with Demi.
“Thank you,” said the man with the beard when I had finished. “Do the song now.” His voice was higher than you’d expect from a person his size, and there was no emotion or encouragement in it.
The piano player banged straight into the chorus. I had practiced the song with cute, small, Kristinish movements that allowed me to sing as loudly and clearly as I could manage—but I had to change what I’d planned or I’d never get in.
I grabbed Demi’s bowler hat off a folding chair where I had put it when I entered—flipped it up my arm onto my head (a trick I’d learned in tap class), and struck a pose.
I couldn’t sing like Kristin—so what? I wouldn’t try. I would do what
I
could do. What Sadye could do.
I growled that bouncy soprano number out—talking over the music in the most anti-Kristinish voice I could manage.
I was ironic, I was condescending, I was authoritative. I was probably a little ridiculous and weird.
And I danced. Some Bob Fosse knockoff I made up as I went along.
And while I was doing it—for those sixteen bars— I didn’t think. I didn’t think about how my voice sounded, or what feelings I was supposed to feel, or how I had to take a breath after “flirt and flounce” in order to get to the end of the line.
I just performed.
When I was done, I felt a bizarre mix of shame and exultation.
Had I been brilliant, or had I been a fool?
The faces of the interviewers were blank.
At least, I thought, I did something memorable.
I
did
something just now. Something Sadye.
I wasn’t home watching musicals on television. I was here, letting my Lurking Bigness out.
“Thank you,” the man said coolly. “Now, Miss Paulson, tell us why you want to attend Wildewood next summer.”
I had known they’d ask me this; Demi told me. And I’d meant to say that I hoped to learn the craft of musical theater and be part of a community.
Instead, I blurted, “I want to get out of Ohio.”
And they all laughed.
I
FELT A BIT
hysterical, after. Not knowing if I’d completely bombed—or nailed it. Demi suggested we go out for sandwiches, and we got soaked in a sudden downpour. But instead of hurrying through the wet with my shoulders up around my ears as I usually did, I danced and splashed in the puddles. Showing off to cover my nerves.
Demi laughed and belted out “Singin’ in the Rain,” grabbing my hands and twirling me down the sidewalk.
We found a Blimpie and went in, still singing. Customers with damp hair and sour faces looked up from their lunches, scowling. But we didn’t care. We were like balls of sunshine brightening up the Blimpie.
We got drinks.
We ordered meatball subs.
For Demi’s amusement, I made up the following work of questionable genius:
Meatball, oh meatball,
you’re a small round lump of meat (meat meat!)
Soaking in your sauce, you are
a treat I plan to eat (eat eat!)
It’s true, you are faintly repulsive
if I think about you too much.
You’re probably full of elbows and eyeballs,
knuckles and entrails and such.
The meatball chef has ground up all
the things that should be waste,
and so . . .
I shouldn’t analyze you, or
I won’t enjoy your taste!
Meatball, oh meatball,
you’re a small round lump of meat (meat meat!)
Soaking in your sauce, you are
a treat I plan to eat (eat eat!)
Stephen Schwartz, eat my dust.
The Blimpie manager politely asked us to keep it down, but we completely failed to do it. We were ejected for harmonizing about the questionable contents of the company’s meat products, and forced into the rain. We ate the rest of our subs under the awning, and dashed back for the dance audition.
(click)
Sadye
: It’s
still
June twenty-fourth.Demi:
And we are
still
in the car.Sadye:
There is so, so, so much traffic.Demi:
Traffic like for miles.Sadye:
And we have to pee.Demi:
We trashed the back of the minivan. Sadye spilled her corn
nuggy things.Sadye:
Demi sang all of
Rent
until
we made him shut up. He sang “Tango: Maureen” all by himself.Demi:
With distinctive character
voices! And Sadye did
interpretive dance.Sadye:
While
wearing my seat belt,
no less!Demi:
Safety first, that’s our
motto. You outdid yourself on
“Seasons of Love.”Sadye:
Thank you.Demi:
Of course.Sadye:
Anyway, we turned on the
recorder again because we want
to state our goals for
Wildewood. So we can listen
back at the end of the summer
and see if we achieved
them.Demi:
Okay, so what are your
goals, Miss Sadye?Sadye:
I want to get a part with
actual lines.Demi:
You are selling yourself so
short. Shorty Shortson, that’s
you now.Sadye:
All right . . . Hm.Demi:
Go on. Bust out with it.Sadye:
I want to learn to sing.Demi:
Good. And what else?Sadye:
I want to figure out if I’m
any good at this stuff. Like if I deserve to be there.Demi:
(laughing)
My only goal is
total domination.Sadye:
Hello!Demi:
That’s really what I want to
accomplish.Sadye:
You know what I think?Demi:
What?Sadye:
Not about total domination.About what you should do this
summer?Demi:
What?Sadye:
I think you should find love.
(click)
A
FTER THE AUDITIONS
, Demi and I took the bus home together. And we never parted again.
He lay low at school—his invisibility routine perfected. We ate lunch together, and laughed at the cheerleaders together, and passed each other notes in the hallways.
People assumed we were a couple.
And in a way, we were.
I wasn’t the Kristinish, vanilla-type of girl who appealed to Brenton boys, and once I met Demi, no one even looked at me. Because I was taken. He called me all the time, ate dinner with my parents, took me to the movies, bought me presents, and really, did most of the things a boyfriend would do. I hardly thought about anyone else.
For his part, it wasn’t like there was any competition for his attentions. Demi had known he was gay in fifth grade, and told his parents in tenth. But he’d never had a boyfriend. His lack of romance was a combination of minimal opportunity and parental disapproval. His dad was a lawyer and his mom did something with bonds. When he told them he was gay, his mother embraced him with a tight fake hug, and his dad patted him on the shoulder and said, “You’re our son and we accept you”—like they’d suspected it for a while. He saw a well-thumbed copy of
When Your Child Is Homosexual: A Coping Guide for Loving Parents
in the trunk of his mother’s car a few days later.
Thing was, the acceptance wasn’t real. I could see it when I went over to Demi’s house. I had dinner with his parents lots of times, and while his dad would be perfectly charming—telling stories about some ball game he’d gone to or some hilarity that had happened at his office party—as soon as he had to actually interact with Demi, he became this tight, false person, with nothing to say. He stretched a smile across his mouth and forced himself to pat Demi on the shoulder, but you could tell he thought his son was a limp napkin of a boy instead of the hetero breeder he’d been hoping for, and that he was simulating affection and comfort, instead of feeling them.
Mrs. Howard was the same. Being in that house was like being in a bad sitcom. Good-looking people told amusing jokes, the decor was nice, and the living room bigger than most people’s—but no one was relating to each other. No one seemed like a real person.
So Demi knew that an actual flesh-and-blood boyfriend—even if he could find one in razzle-dazzle– deprived Brenton—would shatter the house of ice he lived in. His parents were only okay with him being gay so long as they never had to know anything about it.
Me, at least I had parents who—though boring— actually meant it when they said they loved me.
Demi had no one.
That’s why in the car, I said Demi needed to find love. Looks, brains, money, talent: everything else, he already had.
* * *
Y
OU DON’T SPEND
eight years taking your kid to jazz and tap lessons without meeting some gay people. My parents lived life on the straight and narrow path, but they had long since got used to the idea of homosexuality. The jazz teacher at Miss Delilah’s, Mr. Trocadero, was flamboyant, and they’d known him for years.
They liked Demi fine, and though at first he did his invisible straight-boy routine around them, soon it became clear that they never got worked up over anything, and in fact, barely noticed whether he was there or not—so he might as well be himself.
Of course, Demi hates not to be noticed unless he’s trying to be invisible on purpose, so soon it became a game with us—to see if he and I could make them laugh or jolt them out of their small, even-tempered mode of relating. But it never worked. They saw him (and me) as rowdy animals of minimal interest.
The teenagers are jumping on the couch. Sigh. I’ll read the paper in the armchair, then.
The teenagers are attempting to stage
Godspell
wearing pillowcases on their heads. Well, let them enjoy themselves while I pay some bills at the kitchen table.
The teenagers are singing songs about meatballs at top volume during dinner. Hm. This is good tomato sauce. Honey, did you buy a new brand?
The teenagers are choreographing halfway pornographic dance numbers to songs from
Fiddler on the Roof
. Has anyone seen my eyeglasses?
Like that.
S
PRING ARRIVED
. Suburban gardens bloomed, plump dads pushed lawn mowers across the grass every Saturday. People played soccer in the park. My mother retiled our kitchen and my father joined a club for people interested in the history of the Civil War.
Demi and I watched
Cabaret
sixteen times. (Yes, we counted.) We spent a day talking only in sinister German accents. We bought fake noses at a theatrical and costume supply shop in Cleveland, glued them on with spirit gum, and wore them all day while we shopped in department stores. I directed
My Fair Lady: The Drag Interpretation
in Demi’s living room while his parents were gone, to a wildly enthusiastic audience of no one. I played Henry Higgins, Colonel Pickering, Freddy Eynsford-Hill, and Alfred P. Doolittle, while Demi played Eliza and everyone else.
We saved each other, if you can call it saving when it takes the form of body glitter and cast albums and singing “Hot Lunch” in the back of a public bus.
And so, my life was no longer razzle-dazzle— deprived but utterly fabulous—as long as I was with Demi.
W
E GOT
our Wildewood acceptance letters on the same day.
I was in. He was in.
We were—we
were
—what we had hoped we were.
Good enough. Great.
Talented.
And—thank you, thank you, oh, Liza Minnelli and whatever other gods and goddesses watch over theater-mad, pizzazzy teenagers—we were
leaving Ohio
.
On June 24th, we packed our sheet music and our dance clothes, bought large amounts of potato products and sugary drinks, lost the map and then found it again, argued about what cast albums to bring for the road, dusted ourselves with body glitter, and got in my dad’s beloved minivan to begin the endless drive to Wildewood.
Demi:
Hold on, wait, oops--
(thump, crash)Sadye:
You’re gonna break it!Demi:
No, I didn’t. See? The
hoo-ji-whammer is still turning.Sadye:
Okay.Demi:
Okay then.
(deep breath)
Two hours after our previous dispatch, we would like to announce that we can finally
see
it.Sadye:
We are going up a long drive lined with trees.Demi:
(disappointed)
It looks like a boarding school.Sadye:
It
is
a boarding school. An academy for the performing arts.
It goes all year.Demi:
Yeah, but didn’t you think it would look more--more theatrical?Sadye:
No.Demi:
It is way too preppy here. We didn’t drive six hours in traffic to come to some prepston boarding school.Sadye:
For posterity’s sake, let it be noted that Demi is having a snit fit over architecture. Probably because all he’s eaten today is potato chips, French fries, and potato sticks.Demi:
Untrue. I had two Cokes and one of your corn nuggy
things.Sadye:
Potato overdose always makes you cranky.Demi:
For posterity, let it be noted that Wildewood looks like a collection of preppy brick buildings and green lawns nestled on the scenic edge of Lake Ontario and--Sadye:
(interrupting)
Ooh! There’s one of the theaters! The Kaufman Theater, did you see?Demi:
Ooh! Okay, I’m happy now. The theater looked big. That was a honking big theater.Sadye:
Turn the recorder off.
We’re here.
(thump, click)
W
E PULLED UP
in front of the dorms and parked.
Demi leaped out of the minivan and I followed; we did a waggly joy dance as soon as our feet hit the pavement. Then he disappeared. It hadn’t occurred to me that we wouldn’t be together until my father checked in with a counselor and lugged Demi’s suitcases over to one dormitory and mine to another. (Since Demi’s parents had departed mid-June for a two-month second-honeymoon European tour/safari, my dad was in charge of both of us.)
Girls and boys.
Demi and I had slept on each other’s shoulders on the bus to Cleveland. We had held hands in the movies and cried over the death of Tony in
West Side Story
. Once he even peed while I was in the shower at my house, pulling his hoodie down so it covered his eyes and barging through the door singing:
I’m not looking at you,
no no no.
You’re not looking at me,
no no no.
I don’t wanna see your
scrawny girly booty.
I just really
really really
hafta pee!
We had always talked about going to Wildewood together. Everything, everything we did was together, everything—and now, there he was, walking into a red-brick building, popping back out to give his name to another, different clipboard person, getting his info packet, and disappearing again.
Gone.
My dad lugged my bags into my dormitory while I looked at a map of the campus and got my own info packet from a counselor.
“Do you want to come around with me and see the dance studios?” I asked, when my father returned. “They have five different theaters, too.”
He looked at his watch.
“Come on, Dad,” I pleaded. “You can take me to lunch and see what the cafeteria food’s like.”
“I want to beat the traffic home, Sarah. Your mother wants me to look at some tile this afternoon.”
“But she’s done with the floor.”
“This is for the backsplash.”
“You can’t even walk around a bit, stretch your legs?”
He patted my shoulder. “I’d better be going.” He gave me a kiss and got in the minivan.
T
HE DANCE
studios were a cluster of rooms on the ground floor of an old stone building, with windows set high in the walls and doors open to the warm June air. There was no one around, so I went in.
The floors were scuffed, but the mirrors glowed and the pianos were baby grands—nothing like the battered uprights that had stood in the corners of Miss Delilah’s rooms. I tapped a little, in my boots, then strolled down the hall to look at the girls’ changing room. It had a large mirror outlined in lightbulbs and it stank with the familiar smell of sweat and shoe leather. I flipped a switch to turn the bulbs on and looked at myself in the glass; the too-bright light made me look older. I stared at my short, nearly black hair, the heavy eye makeup, the knee-high boots with bare legs, the purple suede mini, the glitter nail polish.
No one at Wildewood has ever met Sarah Paulson, I thought.
And none of them ever would. Here, I could be Sadye through and through. I could work my big nose, my gawky-sexiness, my height, my Broadway obsessions. Everything that made me out of place in Brenton would make me special here. I would let my Bigness out. Not just to Demi.
To the wide, wild world.
“Sadye, Sadye, Sadye,” I whispered to the girl in the mirror. “Show me what you can do.”
* * *