Trevor (2 page)

Three

L
ast week in
art history class, Mr. Livorgna explained to us how sometimes great art can be both a reaction to the politics of the moment and an enduring statement about the human condition. To prove his point, he pulled up some famous paintings on his laptop. He showed us a mostly black-and-white painting of crudely drawn people and animals—they all seemed to be suffering violently. A horse, a bull, a baby, and a person lying on the ground stretching out his hand for help. To us, it looked like a gruesome mess drawn by a fifth-grader. Mr. Livorgna explained that the artist was, in fact, Picasso and that gruesome was the whole point.
Guernica
(that's the name of the painting) was created to show the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. He said the work gained a monumental status right from the start, becoming famous and widely acclaimed when it was displayed around the world. Incidentally, he said, this tour helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world's attention. Who knew that Spain even had a Civil War?

“Can you think of any other examples of how artists have brought about change through their work?” he asked us.

Silence.

I almost raised my hand to mention how Lady Gaga had famously worn a suit made entirely of meat in order to protest the fact that gays in the military had to keep their sexuality a secret or else be kicked out with a dishonorable discharge. But then I thought better of it. I didn't want everyone to think that I followed gay news. Besides I couldn't say for sure whether Lady Gaga's meat-suit media moment actually brought an end to the policy the army called “Don't Ask, Don't Tell.” The fact that this policy existed for seventeen years but was overturned by Congress just a couple of months after she wore the suit wasn't proof of anything. Some people said that Lady Gaga was just an opportunist who was using the politics of the moment to further her career. Some said she was an activist. I wondered if Picasso had the same trouble with
Guernica
.

When no one could come up with any examples, Mr. Livorgna clicked on to the next image, and started to describe a painting entitled
La Mort de Marat
, which is French for
The Death of Marat
. The style of this painting was much more realistic and it depicted a man who had been stabbed in his bathtub while writing a letter. It was very dramatic, and the guy was obviously very dead. Little spurts of blood stained some sheets that spilled out of the tub; he was wearing a white turban and held a feather pen in his right hand, which had dropped dramatically to the floor at the moment of his murder. Mr. Livorgna told us that this was one of the most famous images of the French Revolution, and it referred to the assassination of a radical journalist named Jean-Paul Marat.

When I got home I Googled the image and read all about Monsieur Marat. Not only was he a journalist, but he was also a doctor, a statesman, and a great public speaker. I don't know why, but I became fascinated by this image and the story of how Jean-Paul had been killed in his bathtub by a French revolutionary named Charlotte Corday. Perhaps it reminded me that anything could happen to any one of us at any moment. Our lives could change—or end—with a moment's notice.

For my art history extra credit project I decided to recreate the scene from
La Mort de Marat
. An artist that Mr. Livorgna visually introduced us to the week before had inspired me. Her name was Cindy Sherman, and starting in the 1970s she began to make a name for herself by being photographed in the guises of random people. My plan was to take a picture of myself in the bath in the pose of poor old Marat, and then maybe be discovered as the youngest artist of my generation. I got a hold of my mother's terry-cloth shower turban, I found an old quill pen that I had purchased years ago when I went to Philadelphia on a school trip to view the actual Declaration of Independence, and I bought a packet of fake blood from the Halloween section of the local card shop. I was all set and super excited. After applying the blood to my body and the sheet, I sat in the bathtub and tried to imagine what it must have felt like to be murdered by a revolutionary who was brave (or crazy) enough to come to where I live and stab me in my bath.

Unfortunately, I was interrupted by the sound of my mother pulling back the shower curtain and then turning on the faucet. Before I knew what was happening, a steady stream of cold water had extinguished my French Revolutionary fantasy, and any chance of extra credit went swirling down the drain.

“Clean up this mess,” said Mom, as she presented me with a wet sponge mop.

What Mom failed to understand was that, just like Lady Gaga, I refused to be discouraged from becoming an artist or expressing my true self in an artistic way. And just like Lady Gaga, I intended to change the world.

Four

“What's wrong?”
Mom asked me.

I was pushing my breakfast burrito around on my plate, not exactly eating, but not exactly not eating either.

“Nothing,” I told her.

She wasn't convinced.

“Why don't you invite Zac over after school and play a board game? Wouldn't that be fun?”

A board game? I haven't played a board game since I was in fourth grade. Sometimes Mom can be so retro. Hasn't she heard of computers? The Internet? Facebook?

“You mean, a
bored
game?” I asked her, without looking up from my plate.

Mom shook her head, downed the rest of her coffee, and went about her business. What I couldn't tell her was that Zac and I were no longer friends; he had stopped returning my calls, and when I passed him in the hallway at school, he kind of totally brushed me off. Finally I confronted him at his locker, saying, “What's up?”

He responded by looking around and saying in a voice that was louder than necessary: “Well, if it isn't Lady Gay-Gay.”

As a result of that experience, I made a decision to expand my social horizons and accept an invitation to hang out with a gang of kids I hardly knew. Katie Quinn said it would be cool for me to join her and her posse after school because they were planning to hang out at the Quality Courts Motel, and another body wouldn't make any difference one way or the other.

“Cool,” I said in response.

I didn't know what to expect, but what I discovered was that the motel hadn't actually been completed; it was just a construction site at the far end of town with a “COMING SOON” sign. We all scaled the fence, boys and girls together, and then once inside the structure, we checked the place out, wandering from floor to floor and calling to one another like idiots. Eventually, someone yelled that they'd found a few habitable rooms, and one of the guys declared that these rooms would be our new clubhouse until further notice.

Somehow I ended up alone in a room with Katie. Since we had nothing better to do and there was no place to sit, I suggested that we try to French-kiss. I told her that we could consider it a controlled experiment. To tell you the truth, I had no trouble controlling myself. I didn't feel anything. Maybe it was the fact that Katie has braces on her teeth, but I remember thinking: Is this what all the fuss is about? And what makes it French?

In any case, Katie and I made a date to try it again soon.

When I got home, Mom was in a state. Where had I been all this time? Why hadn't I answered my cell phone? Did I see the text messages she sent me? She sent me seven of them. Seven! She had been so worried that she was about to call the police. And what was the matter with my lips? Why were they so red and swollen?

When I explained to her that I had been kissing a girl, it was like the sun had broken through the clouds. Her face lit up, and she smiled as though she had just been awarded an all-expenses paid Caribbean cruise.

“Really?” she asked, as her eyes began to tear up. “Really and truly?”

“Really,” I replied. “And truly.”

“Oh, honey! This is cause for celebration!”

She did a little happy dance right there in the kitchen, hopping around like she herself had just been kissed for the first time.

“I know,” she said, when she was finished dancing. “Let's call your father at work and tell him.”

That night one of the boys from the motel unexpectedly friended me on Facebook. His name was Pinky Faraday. (I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that a guy named Pinky is probably gay, right? Well, he isn't. Not in the least. Pinky is the star of the intermediate baseball team in town and everything. He is taller than me by like a foot; he has dark hair, blue eyes, and a toothy grin that he only flashes when he really means it.) When I called Katie to tell her what had happened, she told me that she thought Pinky was stuck-up and kind of moody. I told her that I thought he was deep and had a lot on his mind. As my Dad would say, we agreed to disagree.

Being Facebook friends with Pinky meant so much to me. It was a big deal and an even bigger surprise because, really, I hadn't done anything to make it happen—it had just happened. And once it happened I felt that it was the next best thing to being popular myself. But to be honest, I wasn't exactly sure why Pinky wanted to be my friend, so I invited him to meet me after school at the Coffee Connection to discuss the matter in person. Naturally, I didn't mention that we were going to discuss our friendship; I just mentioned coffee and maybe tea as options.

Pinky couldn't stay long. He said that his father was giving him and his brothers a hard time lately due to the fact that they had almost burned down the house. He said it wasn't their fault, and I believed him. But still, his father was making them do yard work after school for like a month as a kind of community service.

“How big is your yard?” I asked him, thinking that a month was a long time.

“Not big enough,” was his reply.

According to Pinky, his home life wasn't exactly stable. Ever since his father remarried, the Faraday household had been in turmoil because his stepmother had very particular ideas about how they ought to be living, ideas that were far from the way they had been living for as long as anyone could remember. For example, the new Mrs. Faraday was insisting that they all sit down to dinner every night as a family. Pinky was against this sort of thing because they were not, in his opinion, a family. Just because his father had fallen in love with someone did not give that someone the right to decide the eating habits of people she hardly knew. He said that his own mother, when she was alive, allowed everyone in the family to eat when and where they wanted, and as a result holidays were always super special.

“You could count on Christmas and Thanksgiving,” Pinky said as he wistfully recalled the past. “We always got together and sometimes nobody left the table for hours. Once my Dad even fell asleep right there at the dining room table and we had to wake him up the next morning for breakfast.”

Pinky showed me a picture of his mother that he carried in his wallet. She was a pretty woman with dyed blond hair, blue eyes, and the same bright smile that Pinky had; in fact, her resemblance to Pinky was remarkable. When I pointed it out to him, I noticed that there were tears in his eyes. He told me that he kept a framed copy of the picture next to his bed as well to remind him where he came from.

Pinky was the coolest guy I had ever met because, though he was tough on the outside, he had real feelings and he was not afraid to show them in public. I gave him back the photograph, and we then made a date to see one another again the following week.

Five

The Drama Club
announced auditions for the winter production of Cole Porter's
Anything Goes
. This is a musical extravaganza featuring plenty of madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London. The score includes such hit songs as “Anything Goes,” “You're the Top,” and “I Get a Kick Out of You.” Of course these were hit songs back in the twentie
th
century before there was radio, and as a result teenagers today are not as familiar with the work of Cole Porter as they are with, say, Lady Gaga. When I asked Pinky, for instance, if perhaps he and a few of the guys might be interested in trying out for the chorus of
Anything Goes
, he responded by saying, “What's that?” After explaining the plot as well as the process of auditioning for musical theater, everyone including Pinky said that they weren't too interested.

“Sounds gay,” said one of the guys.

And that, I thought, was that.

But then the following day, word got around that Tanya Handley had snagged the lead part of Reno Sweeney, an evangelist turned nightclub singer. Tanya put out an unofficial challenge, saying that if any “real men” showed up to audition for the part opposite her, she would personally kiss them on the lips. Pinky and a few of the guys took up the challenge and, though none of them were talented enough to play either the part of Lord Evelyn Oakleigh or Public Enemy #13 Moonface Martin, all of them did get an opportunity to make out with Tanya in the stairwell. Later, when the cast list was posted in the band room, I was super excited (but not surprised) to get the part of Lord Oakleigh. But my thrill was soon multiplied when I learned that Pinky and the guys had all been cast in the chorus.

“Personally,” Katie remarked, “I think it's just the idea of being close to Tanya that's getting those guys all worked up.”

I told Katie that that was totally understandable due to the fact that Tanya had star quality, and the responsibility of a star is to make everyone feel more excited about everything when she is around. In other words, Tanya was just doing her job, and also Katie was jealous that she hadn't been cast in a lead part.

Since I had been responsible for getting Pinky and his gang to (a) show up and (b) audition, both Katie and Tanya considered me the go-to-guy, and they invited me to take the helm and direct the entire production. My reaction was so over-the-top that Ms. Potter, the teaching supervisor of the Drama Club, had to take several steps back to avoid injury. Once I was finished reacting to the news, I assured everyone present that not only would I consider the job, I would take it and run with it! They would not be disappointed. As I walked away, I remember thinking: life just doesn't get any better than this.

After a week of play practice, I began to realize that this was a bigger challenge than I had thought. Though each day the guys got better and better, they couldn't seem to learn the dance steps that I'd been teaching them, and they had yet to sing a single lyric. It seemed that they could only concentrate on their movements if they were completely silent and stared at their feet, and even then the choreography was a train wreck every time. Nevertheless, I was determined that by opening night they would be good!

One evening after play practice, Pinky and I were walking home together and I explained once again the concept of musical theater by demonstrating the dance steps while singing the lyrics. The air was crisp and cold, and the sky was like a deep blue dream of heaven. I think for the first time in my life I was totally and truly happy. The two of us just ambled along the sidewalks, occasionally stopping to review a dance move or talk about our future. Pinky said that he was thinking of quitting the show because he didn't consider himself musical comedy material and also rehearsals were interfering with his basketball practice. I told him that one of the first things we learned in the theater as young thespians was that the show must go on. It must.

“How come?” he asked me.

“I don't know,” I told him. “It just has to.”

The minute I said this, I knew that my mind was made up. My future had been decided, and I had to tell someone.

“Hey,” I said to Pinky as we stopped on the pavement. “Can I tell you something that I have never ever told another living soul in my whole life?”

“Sure.”

“I have decided that the theater is to be my life.”

“Cool,” Pinky replied, and he started walking again.

Pinky was so understanding, and all the way home he encouraged me totally in the pursuit of my dream. Even though he didn't have a lick of experience in the field of entertainment, he told me that he could recognize talent when he saw it and, as far as he was concerned, I definitely had whatever was necessary to become a big success. Then he added that anyone with half a brain could see that someone with my kind of passion was going to go very far in this world.

Pinky made it home in time for dinner. But before he went inside the house, he told me that I was special and he wondered why he never noticed me before. He was standing under a streetlight, looking like a superhero. As I walked away, I thought to myself, if someone came to town with a machine gun and threatened to kill Pinky, I'd offer myself instead. He definitely deserved to live.

Zac finally called. I thanked him for getting back to me, but I explained that I couldn't possibly come over. When he asked me why not, I explained how busy I was with rehearsals and all. Also, now that Pinky Faraday and I were BFFs, my schedule wasn't as open as it was when I was in, say, fourth grade. When I wasn't rehearsing, I sometimes went down to watch Pinky shoot hoops, and occasionally Pinky and I met for a hot drink at the Coffee Connection.

Zac told me that I ought to be careful.

“Careful?” I said. “Of what?”

“Of becoming a gay,” he answered. “Boys doing it with boys is totally gross, and you can end up a pervert. Or worse.”

“Zac?” I said into the phone. “Are you jealous?”

“Don't be a dickhead, dickhead” he said, snarkily. “I'm just saying that up until like yesterday that Pinky kid was totally ignoring you. Now you're like best friends? I just don't like it, that's all.”

Zac has always been a big complainer. His specialty is complaining about how people are always treating us as though we're invisible. Some of his favorite comments are:

1)
They didn't even say hello!

2)
That girl looked right through me!

3)
Are they just going to pretend we don't exist? HEL-LO?

Whenever Zac gets like this I explain to him that rather than waiting around for others to say hello or notice him, he'd be much better off DOING something in order to distinguish himself. “You need to make people take notice of you,” I tell him. “You need to stand up in order to stand out.”

“Right,” he said with plenty of sulk in his voice.

“I know!” I offered. “Why don't you get involved in the chorus of
Anything Goes
?”

“You mean like singing and dancing?” he asked.

“It's not too late.”

“Dude,” he said, deepening his voice. “That is so gay.”