This was also symptomatic of bigger problems. But there was no way of knowing it then.
In sixth grade, Cody, Joni, a lesbian fourth grader named Laura and I formed our elementary school’s first gay-straight alliance. Quite honestly, we took one look around and figured the straight kids needed our help. For one thing, they were all wearing the same clothes. Also (and this was critical), they couldn’t dance to save their lives. Our semi-formal dance floor could have easily been mistaken for a coop of pre-Thanksgiving turkeys. This was not acceptable.
Luckily, our principal was cooperative and allowed us to play a minute or two of I Will Survive and Bizarre Love Triangle after the Pledge of Allegiance was read each morning. Membership in the gay-straight alliance soon surpassed that of the football team (which isn’t to say there wasn’t overlap). Ted refused to join, but he couldn’t stop Joni from signing them up for swing dance classes twice a week at recess.
Since I was unattached at the time, and since I was starting to feel that I had met everyone there was to meet at our elementary school, I would often sneak out with Laura to the AV room, where we’d watch Audrey Hepburn movies until the recess bell would ring and reality would beckon once more.
In eighth grade, I was tackled by two high school wrestlers after a late-night showing of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert at our local theatre. At first I thought it was a strange kind of foreplay, but then I realised that their grunts were actually insults – queer, faggot, the usual. I wasn’t about to take such verbal abuse from strangers – only Joni was allowed to speak to me that way. Luckily, I had gone to the movies with a bunch of my friends from the fencing team, so they just pulled out their foils and disarmed the lugheads. (One of them, I’ve since heard, is now a drag queen in Columbus, Ohio. I like to think I had something to do with that.)
I was learning that notoriety came with a certain backlash. I had to be careful. I had a gay food column in the local paper – “Dining OUT” – which was a modest success. I’d declined numerous pleas to run for student council president, because I knew it would interfere with my direction of the school musical (I won’t bore you with the details, but let me just say that Cody O’Brien was an Auntie Mame for the ages).
All in all, life through junior high was pretty fun. I didn’t really have a life that was so much out of the ordinary. The usual series of crushes, confusions and intensities.
Then I meet Noah and things become complicated. I sense it immediately, driving home from Zeke’s gig. I suddenly feel more complicated.
Not bad complicated.
Just complicated.
The Homecoming Queen’s Dilemma
I look for him in the hallways on Monday. I hope that he’s looking for me, too.
Joni promises me she’ll be my search-party spy. I’m afraid she’ll get too carried away with the job, dragging Noah over to me by the ear if she finds him.
But the connection isn’t made. No matter how far I drift from the hallway conversations I’m having, I never drift into him. The halls are awash in Homecoming Pride posters and post-weekend gossip. Everybody is jingling and jangling; I look for Noah like I’d look for a pocket of calm.
Instead I run into Infinite Darlene. Or, more accurately, she runs on over to me. There are few sights grander at eight in the morning than a six-foot-four football player scuttling through the halls in high heels, a red shock wig and more-than-passable make-up. If I wasn’t so used to it, I might be taken aback.
“Ah’m so glad I caught you,” Infinite Darlene exclaims, sounding like Scarlett O’Hara as played by Clark Gable. “Things are such a mess!”
I don’t know when Infinite Darlene and I first became friends. Perhaps it was back when she was still Daryl Heisenberg, but that’s not very likely; few of us can remember what Daryl Heisenberg was like, since Infinite Darlene consumed him so completely. He was a decent football player, but nowhere near as good as when he started wearing false eyelashes.
Infinite Darlene doesn’t have it easy. Being both star quarterback and homecoming queen has its conflicts. And sometimes it’s hard for her to fit in. The other drag queens in our school rarely sit with her at lunch; they say she doesn’t take good enough care of her nails, and that she looks a little too buff in a tank top. The football players are a little more accepting, although there was a spot of trouble a year ago when Chuck, the second-string quarterback, fell in love with her and got depressed when she said he wasn’t her type.
I am not alarmed when Infinite Darlene tells me things are such a mess. For Infinite Darlene, things are always such a mess; if they weren’t, she wouldn’t have nearly enough to talk about.
This time, though, it’s a real dilemma.
“Coach Ginsburg is going to have my hat,” she declares. “It’s the frickin’ Homecoming Pride Rally this afternoon. He wants me to march with the rest of the team. But as homecoming queen, I’m also supposed to be introducing the team. If I don’t do the proper introductions, my tiara might be in doubt. Trilby Pope would take my place, which would be ghastly, ghastly, ghastly. Her boobs are faker than mine.”
“You think Trilby Pope would stoop that low?” I ask.
“Is the Pope shrewish? Of course she would stoop that low. And she’d have gravity problems getting back up.”
Usually Infinite Darlene acts like she’s in a perpetual congeniality contest. But Trilby Pope is her weak spot. They used to be good friends, able to recount an hour’s worth of activity with three hours’ worth of conversation. Then Trilby fell into the field hockey crowd. She tried to convince Infinite Darlene to join her, but football was the same season. They drifted into different practices and different groups of friends. Trilby started to wear a lot of plaid, which Infinite Darlene despised. She started to hang with rugby boys. It all became very fraught. Finally, they had a friendship break-up – an exchange of heated classroom notes, folded in the shape of artillery. They averted their glances dramatically when they passed in the halls. Trilby still has some of Infinite Darlene’s accessories, from when they used to swap. Infinite Darlene tells everybody (except Trilby) that she wants them back.
My attention is beginning to wander from the conversation. I am still scanning the hallways for Noah, knowing full well that if I see him, I will most probably duck into the nearest doorway, blushing furiously.
“I do declare,” Infinite Darlene does declare, “what has gotten you so distracted?”
It is here that I feel the limit of our friendship. Because while Infinite Darlene feels comfortable telling me everything, I am afraid that if I tell her something, it will no longer be mine. It will belong to the whole school.
“I’m just looking for someone,” I hedge.
“Aren’t we all?” Infinite Darlene vamps ruefully. I think I’m off the hook, but then she adds, “Is it someone special?”
“It’s nothing,” I say, crossing my fingers. I pray that it’s not nothing. Yes, I pray to my Big Lesbian God Who Doesn’t Really Exist. I say to her: I don’t ask for much. I swear. But I would really love Noah to be everything I hope he’ll be. Please let him be someone I can groove with, and who wants to groove with me.
My denial has sent