High School

11/30/18

            I hated high school. I was pretty, even though I didn’t know it. I was smart (a lot of them weren’t). And.. drum roll please: I didn’t drink. Cool kids drink. In a small town in a small school, the football players have it all. They are the popular ones, and their cheerleader molls with them. Actually, all the athletes were popular. Football. Basketball. Track. Tennis not so much, because it wasn’t a cool sport. However, our school was so small that even the tennis players played in the cool sports teams, too, so they could redeem themselves. I didn’t ever play on the cool teams because I only played tennis (and badly). Everyone knew these secret popularity codes except me in the way that nerdy kids just don’t know the rules, so we can’t completely fit in. Or even at all. Even the girl whose parents ran the funeral home was more popular than I was. (I’m sorry we were mean to you. That must have been hard, being the daughter of the funeral home people). It seemed like everyone but me drank alcohol, and I attributed my lack of high school popularity in part to my not drinking. Plus I was (and still am) an odd one.

            I was the school mascot, but I wasn’t a cheerleader. Senior year I won “Class clown,” which is not necessarily a compliment. I was in band, which is nerdy (although even some popular kids were in band because there wasn’t a lot to do). I was also in choir–nerdy. I remember once when I went to a party (usually no one invited me, so I do mean once) and somebody there seemed truly shocked to see me. There they were, “I am shocked to see you here!” Somebody had probably asked me to come to the party due to their feeling sorry for me, just because all of high school had gone by, we were seniors, and the party was right after our baccalaureate. I still don’t know what a baccalaureate is for.

            Plus, when you are a girl there is the age-old conundrum. If you have sex, you’re a slut. If you’re a virgin, you’re a prude. I was a virgin. I wasn’t actually a prude, I was just a virgin, but Madonna/Whore dichotomy says you have to be one or the other. Not actually the real Madonna, as in the Virgin Mary, and not actually the “real” Madonna, the one we all know and love (or don’t) who sang “Like a Virgin.” Damn, Madonna was smart. She sang like a virgin and she dressed like a whore, or at least she did in the 80s. Those shocking half-finger knit gloves. Plus her daring, overly sexual videos, sheesh! What a tart! What a maverick.

            A brief aside here while I mention that I always really liked Madonna (the artist, not the religious figure). I liked most of her 80s hits. “Holiday,” “Borderline,” and, of course, “Vogue.” I guess in the 1980s artists went for brevity in their song titles. Amusingly, I once bet a friend that when we would fast forward in time, it would be Cyndi Lauper who remained famous and that Madonna would fade into obscurity. No wonder I didn’t like high school. I was an idiot. Even though I liked almost all of Madonna’s songs, I didn’t particularly like “Like a Virgin,” maybe because she broke the brevity-in-song-title rule. Plus that song sucks.

            This is unfortunate because when I was old and in my 40s, my family and I went on a cruise ship. There was karaoke on the cruise ship. I sang karaoke on the cruise ship. I “won” a contest I didn’t know I was in and was asked to sing the role of Madonna in the culminating show on the last night of the cruise. You see, the karaoke host who was orchestrating the karaoke was also a talent scout of sorts. I was excited, especially when she told me I would get to wear a wig and the famous half-fingered knit gloves. I knew I could do it; I had been in choir in high school and, I confess, in college, too. Geeky. (Later I would briefly become a karaoke host just to supplement my meager wages as a part time college instructor). 

            Unfortunately for me, the song I would have to sing would be like a “Like a Virgin,” one of the few songs by M that I didn’t like. The show itself was orchestrated in its entirety so there was no flexibility whatsoever in the song choice. I practiced all week with a little Discman (Discperson?) they had loaned me, walking the deck, listening to the song over and over so that I could learn the words. I was nervous and excited. (Nerd). My brother Sam also sings, but he hadn’t done any karaoke the night of the audition; otherwise that talent scout/host would have snapped him right up!

            However, on the day of the show, also the day of dress rehearsal, the guy who had been asked to sing the Elton John song chickened out, changed his mind, got sick or whatever. Even though cruise ships are notorious for food poisoning, I prefer to think he was just a fraidy-pants—or hung-over. The cruise chip was stuck. This on the day of the talent show information session in the morning, to be followed immediately by our dress rehearsal. I saw the panicked host trying to figure out what to do. How can you have a show without Elton John, honestly? I overheard this conversation, and ever the helpful problem-solver (nerd and co-dependent) I told them that my brother could do it. I volunteered him. I told them he might be in his room and they should call him. They did call him. Sam was asleep in his room. They explained that he was needed urgently downstairs where his sister was rehearsing for the big show that night. A fun thing about this is that my brother talks in his sleep. You can think you are having a conversation with him, but really it’s his sleep-self. He doesn’t even know what’s happening. He joined us in the rehearsal room, slowly coming to and waking up. The show people explained the dire situation and the important role he would play in this big event show. He agreed, because he’s a pretty good-natured guy, but then he looked at me and said, “I hate you.”

            We rehearsed and all went pretty well. It was a dress rehearsal (without the costumes), probably because they couldn’t chance it that the random talent, the un-vetted talent, would show up for the gig instead of stealing the costumes. I was supported by two dancers who would make the whole thing easier and calm any nerves during the main event. Even my brother pulled off his song, “Crocodile Rock,” which he knew (who doesn’t?) without the benefit of having had a practice discperson to use all week like I had. I hate it when stuff like that happens, and for a brief moment it was my turn to hate him.  

            That night, as we prepared for the actual show, it turned out that my bro got a really, really cool costume as Elton John: sparkly silver suit, with amazing Elton glasses, complete with silvery, shiny feather boa. (It’s hard to believe, but true, that in those days not everyone knew Elton John was gay. Or that the Village people were. Wow.) My costume, on the other hand, looked like a poor Dollar Store version of a Madonna costume, except for the gloves, which were just good enough, not great but at least not terrible.

            Just moments just before I was about to go on, I was told that I would not, in fact, have my support dancers. Gloria Estefan couldn’t sing (a mistake in casting, I think) so they, the cruise ship people, had made a production choice. They shifted her performance to allow her to have my dancers to help smooth her performance. It would lessen the blow of what would likely be her truly terrible performance. The cruise ship people took not just one of my dancers, but both of them, a choice I don’t understand or respect. At least leave me with one of the dancers, please! They did not. I went out to perform, thrown by my last minute change, the lack of dancers, or at the minimum lack of a dancer. My dancers were my rock. Everything about that song needed dancers to interact with and play off of, but here I was, alone on stage, “Like a virgin-ing” all by myself. I did my best but it really was not very good. Really. Still it was way, way better than fake Gloria Estefan’s. (Sorry, Gloria.)

            A few performers later it was my brother’s turn, he who had had no practice at all, while I had walked the decks with the Discperson, diligently preparing all week. Sam knocked it out of the park! I hate it when that happens. Also, come to think of it, this brother, the very same brother who, just like me, didn’t drink much in high school, was really smart, played tennis and did none of the cool sports. (He was on the basketball team but he didn’t play because he was only 5 feet nothing). He, too, sang in choir, played in band, but, unlike me, he was very popular. Oh, plus he was a virgin!