Every time I’d seen him before, he’d been wearing dark, nondescript clothes. Jeans and a sweatshirt. But not today. Today, Douglas Howard was decked out in a skintight silver shirt over red workout pants, and he had a bowler hat on his head.
He elbowed me in the ribs, laughing and accusing. “You! You go to Brenton.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen you around.”
He was lean but built—I could see the muscles of his legs through the thin fabric of his pants. A high-boned face, wide eyes, and a full mouth. The skin on his cheeks was bumpy where he was starting to need to shave, and he flashed a wide grin. “Douglas Howard, Jr.
But you should call me Demi.”
“Demi?”
“Like demitasse. Or demi-plié. Or demimonde. But not like Demi Moore.”
“Got it.”
“It comes from being a junior. My whole family calls me that. Like I’m half the man my father is. Get it? Very funny, ha-ha. But it’s better than Douglas, so I keep it.”
I rolled my eyes and held out my hand. “Sarah Paulson.”
“Hmm. I don’t think so,” Demi said.
“What?”
“Not with that hair.”
“I just cut it.”
“I know. Did anyone ever tell you you look like Liza Minnelli?”
And that, in Demi’s universe, is the highest compliment in the world. Because Demi loves Liza. He kind of wants to be Liza. Not Liza now. Liza from back when she was winning Academy Awards and starring on Broadway—an odd, vulnerable creature who danced like a black cat and belted like a bugle.
I jumped up, grabbed the wooden chair next to me, snatched the bowler hat off Demi’s head, and hit the pose from the Cabaret poster: one foot on the seat of the chair, the other leg extended, hat shading my eyes.
“Oh, you’re perfect !” Demi cried. “I love you!”
“It’s the best movie.”
“The best. That’s what life is, right? A cabaret.”
“A cabaret.”
We were silent for a moment. I sat back down.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Demi announced.
“Do not.”
“Do, too. Let me tell you.”
“Go for it.”
“You are thinking, where did this hot black boy in a silver shirt come from? Because I have seen that kid at school and he does not look anywhere near as good as he looks today.”
“I was thinking about Juliet,” I said. “But that was a close second.”
“Juliet? She’s only fourteen. Don’t waste your energy trying to figure her out.”
I laughed.
“I’m biding my time,” said Demi. “That’s the answer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Until I can get to New York. I just go to school, do my homework, and wear my invisible straight-boy drag. No one sees me. No one hears me. No one talks to me. That way, no prejudiced, homophobic football player decides to kick the stuffing out of me in the locker room.”
I nodded. Listening to Demi was like sticking my arm in a socket. I felt this jolt of something—joy, kinship, something—that I didn’t remember ever having felt before, not even in tap class.
“That badness happened to me last year when we lived in Michigan, and there is no way I’m letting it happen again,” he went on.
“Got it,” I said. “They won’t hear it here.”
“Okay, then. Enough about me,” said Demi, reaching up and touching my hair under his bowler hat. “Let’s go back to your name.”
“What’s wrong with my name?”
“Sarah? Please.”
“What?”
“Sarahs are dull and mild and small and pretty,” said Demi. “Are you dull and mild and small and pretty?”
I had to admit that I was not. But in Brenton, it had always seemed like a problem.
“No,” he went on. “You are . . . Let me see. You are . . .”
“Tall.”
“Tall. Yes. And full of attitude. And I can’t call you pretty, not with that nose,” he said. “But you are . . . dramatic.”
“Wait, are you disparaging my nose?”
“No, ‘dramatic’ is too basic. You are . . . gawky-sexy. That’s it.”
“I’m what?”
“Gawky-sexy. And that means that you are not Sarah.”
Hm.
Demi had already made it clear that he was gay. But still it felt good to have him say those things. Even with the crack about my nose, he seemed to appreciate who I was, precisely. Like he really saw me.
With the Lurking Bigness inside.
It was like we fell in love a little, just then. Even though we didn’t.
“You think Frances Gumm was content to go through life with a stupid name like that when all her saucy amazingness was dying to get out?” Demi asked. “No. She changed her name to—”
“Judy Garland,” I interrupted.
“Very good. And what about Norma Jean Baker?”
“Marilyn Monroe.”
“See?” Demi argued. “That’s all the difference in the world. Norma Jean. Marilyn. One is a nice librarian. The other is a sex goddess.”
I still had his bowler hat, so I tilted it rakishly.
“What should my name be?”
“Sarah. Sarah . . .” he mused. “What are the nicknames?”
“I don’t know. Sally. Sarie?”
“No, something more exotic. Serenity. Or Zarah, maybe.”
“Sadie, that’s another one. I like that, actually.”
Demi looked at me appraisingly. “Sadie. That could suit you. Only, you should be Sadye with a Y, like Liza with a Z.”
“Spell it for me.”
“S-a-d-y-e.”
It sounded dramatic and funny and gawky-sexy. “Okay, that’s it. I’m her,” I said with finality. I pulled my Wildewood application form out of my bag, and found a pen.
Sarah, crossed out. And Sadye, written in.
SOMEONE OFFICIAL made an announcement. They would call us into the studio one at a time. We had two minutes for the monologue, sixteen bars for the song, plus a minute for question and answer. At four o’clock we were all to reappear for the dance audition.
Demi went third. He was doing a dramatic monologue from Top Dog/Underdog and a song from Hair.
Thing was, during the first two auditions we hadn’t been able to hear any sound beyond the dull thump of the piano through the closed door. But when Demi sang, every note came through.
He did “Manchester, England,” the song where Claude fantasizes (or lies) that he’s from Manchester rather than Flushing, New York, because he thinks it sounds better. He calls himself a “genius genius,” and believes in himself so much that he figures even God believes in him.
The song was very Demi, all the way through. Even just knowing him an hour, I could tell. He belted the number out so large that everyone in the hallway shut up and listened. He coasted through the high notes like they were sweet air.
He finished. Then silence through the door, while they asked him questions.
Demi came out and collapsed theatrically on the floor of the hallway.
“You nailed it,” I told him.
“You could hear me?”
“Oh, yeah.”
He glanced at the closed door, through which we could hear nothing besides the thump of the piano on the low notes as the next person sang. “I must be serious loud, then, right?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Well, loud is good,” said Demi. “Wildewood, here I come, baby.”
FOR THE NEXT hour, Demi and I chatted about Rent and Brenton High and what we thought Wildewood would be like if we got in—but I wasn’t concentrating anymore. I was panicking. Juliet on the balcony was now not even a fraction of my problem. Because if you had to sing like Demi to get into Wildewood, then I hadn’t a chance.
If you’ve heard the sound track to Wicked, you know that “Popular” is performed by a tiny, blond bombshell (Kristin Chenowe
th) with an incredible voice that veers from comically nasal to effortlessly high and clear. The song is funny: Galinda, future Glinda the “Good” Witch of the North, is offering a makeover to the homely, green-skinned Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West.
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 Kristinish. 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.”
HALF 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: De
mi 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)
AFTER 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.