A Memory of a Summer Drive

I was a theatre kid. All through middle school and (at least) at the beginning of high school I auditioned for every play, and though some I couldn't appear in because of other activities, I often got cast. I got burnt though. I was doing mostly construction toward the end of my sophomore year but put a lot into the department even when I wasn't acting. During the big end of the year party/speech the drama teacher thanked everyone but me, so I stopped doing it. I was too insulted, and that probably led me to pursue writing more than acting. Also, by Junior year, I was on track to spend two months in Russia in the middle of the year, so I had other things to do, and my love of film was growing to the point that I would rather study Criterion editions (on laserdisc, I'm old) than appear in Auntie Mame (not helping - I couldn't sing). By senior year my best friend had graduated and lived less than five minutes from campus and my schedule was such that I could duck out at lunch. So I was done. Nowadays I would never think to act, though as someone who is a nerd, I have certain improv abilities based around the fact that when bullied the best recourse is often "yes and."

Regardless, when my eighth grade was coming to an end I auditioned for an acting troupe called Teens and Company, because an older student - who was obviously awesome - did the exact same thing, and I too got cast. We would go from school to school doing sketches we wrote ourselves about sex and sexuality. I had a killer audition, I could tell. The problem was everyone else in the troupe was sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. I was fourteen. I had maybe kissed a girl at summer camp at this point, but... I think I got in because they needed more men (mostly women auditioned) and I was snappy, but also there was a sense of intentional diversity NINETIES STYLE. So we had one gay performer, an African American male and female, a fat girl, an Asian lady, a stoner, a super serious actor, and a class clown. But once we found our positions, I was the kid brother. I was a ham. I was that year's Brooks Whelan.We had a pow wow at the end of the year after we did this thing, and one person kinda apologized that I was butt of a lot of jokes. Looking back, I get that I deserved it, but maybe I never should have been in the troupe to begin with. I had nothing to say about sex, my experiences were non existent.

Many of our shows (to which I would have one, sometimes two bit parts) involved traveling around Oregon. And one time we went to the middle of nowhere so our advisors had to rent a van and drive us to - I believe - Corvallis. Bruce, who as cliche would lead you to believe was in fact the gay one, was our defacto leader, and he had a couple of the girls as his partners in crime (and since we all came from difference schools and groups, three was enough to be the deciding voice in a troupe of ten), as such, much of the music on the trip was Depeche Mode. Violator had just come out, and so I probably heard it eight times on that trip alone. As a fourteen year old boy in 1990, I wouldn't say I was homophobic - I liked Bruce, we were friends - but I wasn't a dancer yet. I was an insecure, sexually inexperienced boy who wasn't comfortable enough in my sexuality (which at that point was just kinda coming into the fore, I had recently figured out how to masturbate) to enjoy it. But because of AIDS, pop culture was knee deep in exploiting gay panic, and I was consuming all of it. It wasn't a fear of the other, it was a fear of self. I wasn't ready to accept Depeche Mode into my heart, because at the time Depeche Mode was known for being a gay band (for more background: https://gawker.com/5951419/the-stigma-of-synth-my-secret-life-with-depeche-mode), and I was a little more Public Enemy. That said, as much as it may have been gay panic, it could have been also that that was all they ever wanted to listen to, and as the younger kid brother, I felt sat on.

The funny thing is, I actually got one of my tapes played at one point I think because they recognized their monopoly. And my choice was a tape that contained the first two albums by The B-52's. They HATED it. Because it wasn't cool. I wasn't cool. But it makes me chuckle to think about. Because the band I loved was probably more gay than the band that every straight white male in 1990 would call gay. The eighties were weird. If you missed it, you missed nothing (except some great art, but that happens in all decades). Still, it was pretty awesome trolling. And The B-52's are the fucking best.