Young Americans, Part 2 (New Kids!)

Continued from Part 1

Ostensibly, my Young Americans experience started the second I met Alex Jones. Alex was one of three assigned roommates, and the only one home when my parents and I first arrived at my new apartment. He showed us the way to the building I would come to refer to as "The Warehouse," (back when there was only one!) I met another roommate, Don, the office manager Kat, and one of the directors, LB. They were laying dance floor in this building, turning it into a rehearsal space. Kat not so subtly suggested that I should drop my things off and come back and help. Manual labor, on my first day in California? Screw you, lady, we've got tickets to see Leno. Besides, who knows when I'm going to get to see my parents again? (Turns out it was three months later.)

My roommates informed me that our fourth member, Jason would be joining us in a week. They all knew each other from high school, an excuse I used to never really try to get to know them. After all, these guys had grown up together. These were show choir people. What would we even talk about? Later that evening more Young Americans appeared: Joel and Mystique. Joel seemed like a decent guy; I wasn't too sure about Mystique. Slowly but surely, over the next few days the rest arrived. We met Courtney and her then-boyfriend Tom, who was an "Old Kid." I met John, Bryant, and Gweedo, and immediately wanted to live in that apartment instead. The benefit of hindsight makes these admissions somewhat embarrassing. My Roommate Don would go on to be my stage manager at my first Young American dinner theater and Jason would follow suit as the stage manager on the fall tour immediately following that. Alex Jones is a coworker, I saw him today.

Our first YA-related function was a pizza party at (I think) Cameron Coy's brother's house. Miss Robyn talked to us and introduced us to our New Kid directors (it would be another two months before we met Bill or Milt,) and made it a point to remind us not to suck up to Kat, because Kat didn't decide who goes on tour. I remember thinking "woah... what a slap in the face," but I didn't particularly like Kat so my sympathies were only marginal. I suppose it is worth mentioning that Kat sat next to- and conferred with- Bill and Robyn at every tour audition for the next four years. This is the first instance I can recall of what was to become a curious trend: namely where the leadership of the Young Americans dabbles in unrestricted psychological warfare. What was said was in direct conflict with the observed data, and no explanation was ever offered. This wasn't a condition endemic to any single person; years later I would hear at least two other directors (both of whom happened to be from my New Kids class) quote Machiavelli's The Prince: "It is better to be feared than loved, but it is best to be feared AND loved." This remains a sore spot with me, in part because The Prince was written as a satirical criticism and not an instruction manual, but mostly because these kinds of people are impossible to maintain an honest friendship with.

The first Young Americans rehearsal held an absolutely life-changing moment for me, but it also helped set a precedent I've always regretted. While learning the dance to The Lion King I stood in the back corner. I quickly let my frustrations overcome me, having never danced in my life and being much bigger than most everyone there. I've always found learning new choreography to be painfully embarrassing. I had literally never NOT been good at learning something before, and the Young Americans inopportunely chose that specific process to gauge our capacity for learning. In my anger I gave up. F(orget) this, I'm not dancing. I was on the verge of just walking out entirely when the rehearsal suddenly switched gears. The assembled "Old Kid" cast, who were about to depart on a tour to the East Coast, surrounded us and sang "One by One" from the Lion King. That sound! I had never heard anything like it.

People tend to compare choirs to angels, but this wasn't in the least bit angelic. This was real, dirty, tangible sound. It was rooted in passion, in anger and hope and fear and love, in the earth and in every part of the body. It was a moving wall of palpable emotion, a wave that knocked you down, swept away your defenses, left you naked and vulnerable, and then picked you up and carried you, connecting you to a room full of other vulnerable people. A family, born of necessity from that moment of vulnerability, a framework to build a new world, a context on which to hang the stars. Ok, I'll stay.

The intervening three months brought a bevy of diverse experiences. There was one crazy night with a meteor shower and a bunch of naked people in a hot-tub. There were Ice Cream and Brownies and movies with Courtney, Comics and strippers (don't ask) with Drew, and "prospecting" with John and Gweedo. I drove to Hollywood with Kristy Bonner to meet some guy who was filming a commercial for MADD. Ellen brought me a sandwich, just to be nice. On an intensely personal note, since the second grade I had been medicated with a cocktail of stimulants (Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall) and antidepressants (Celexa, Paxil) all of which I stopped cold when I moved to California. As a consequence, I spent the better part of my New Kid semester in withdrawal; either asleep or wishing I was. That part isn't an experience I'd ever like to repeat.

The New Kids Show came and went. It had its moments, like everything else in Young Americans, but when most people think of the show they remember me, shirtless, running around the stage as The Genie. I also sang Old Routine with Gweedo, and nobody but the New Kid Directors noticed that we switched parts mid-song. This was meant to be impressive, but it went wholly unnoticed. This was the slow start of an eventual lesson that, in a YA show, blatant and ridiculous beats subtle and clever every time. I would eventually learn to find the balance of this, whereby blatant and ridiculous can showcase subtle and clever, but not for a very long time.

The first Christmas Show rehearsal brought my second experience with the YA Director's brand of psychological warfare, employing my parents as unwitting adjuncts. "You can really tell the kids who want to be here." No, you're right. I didn't want to spend my day sitting silently, trying to cipher some meaning from people I've never met (because they were all on tour,) who half-remembered what they did a year previous. I would've liked to spend the day with my parents, since I wasn't able to go home for Christmas. Didn't bother to ask, did you? As I mentioned previously, I love the group with all my heart, but this tactic has only ever served to infuriate me. No sugarcoating. Christmas show was a mild diversion that year, (lightyears away from the joyous occasion subsequent years would become,) and as everyone left I settled into a long mild winter depression. On New Years Eve I took my sax and played Auld Lang Syne on the street corner. It was meant to be cathartic more than anything, but I managed to make eleven dollars in an hour.

That spring semester of Young Americans was... empty. My apartment was lonely, all three of my roommates having made their first tour. All of my close friends: Gweedo, John, Bryant, Joel and Drew had likewise gone on the road. Courtney was still around but that was complicated by a burgeoning unrequited attraction ("unrequited" was a trope that would reiterate itself throughout my entire YA experience.) There was no Overture program, no classes during the week, nothing at all to do but hang out with the same two guys who spent most of their time smoking pot. Hilariously, this association-by-default caused me to be acquire a label I've never entirely shaken. The habits I'd learned from a semester in withdrawal didn't help much either.

The abject hollowness of this period of time helps counterpoint the rare important moments. Bill told me, in our first actual conversation, that I was loyal to my friends. This compliment still seems largely baseless to me, but the pollyanna psychology has a way of tickling one's ego. He also later told me that I was inconsistent, which was absolutely true. There were a total of fourteen Young Americans around for the week of Dance Excellence in 2003, and nine of us were New Kids. Every Young American who reads that previous sentence is going to do so at least twice. Those seem like fictitiously small numbers. DE was almost a disaster that year, and the company show relied heavily on those four or five old kids to do everything. Bill pulled the New Kids aside and really laid into us, one of only two times I've ever seen him that frustrated and far and away the most understandable. What he told us was 100% accurate, and he was justified in being upset. Nobody likes to be yelled at, but in a strange way it made me feel important. I had never imagined that I had any impact whatsoever on Bill, but I had skipped just one of his classes that day (classes that had 150 other people) and he knew precisely which one.

The tours returned home in time for all YAs to perform a spring show together (an incredible experience that has since been supplanted by Tarbell,) and then audition for Summer dinner theater and Fall tour. Two unique things happened then. First, I saw Bill and Robyn call up a random line of people, ask them to stand in a specific order, shift them around a bit, and then divide them in half and announce two dinner theater casts simultaneously. The second is that my name was announced to go on the midwest tour. This made me happy, but it seemed to make a lot of other people happy too. Apparently people had been rooting for me. My friends who I was about to tour with seemed to be more excited about me than they were about themselves. This is a phenomenon that would only repeat itself one other time, almost exactly four years later.

Continue to Part 3.