Becoming a queen, p.14
Becoming a Queen, page 14
Underneath the laser tag scoreboard, Damien shoulders into Ezra. “Yo, ZapGod, you’re a fucking sniper.” He explodes with energy, overcaffeinated and on cloud nine thousand after beating his highest SAT practice score on the real January SAT. “I had a killer hiding spot behind that neon rock bridge thing, and here comes ZapGod makin’ SEAL Team Six look sloppy,” he says as he leads us toward the bar, just a couple steps away. “Man, this place is heaven.”
Damien is the reason Ezra stopped counting how many days a week we were eating lunch with my friends. They like each other, even when I’m not around. Which is great, but also—don’t have fun without me!
We’re still here! Come meet us!
I look at the text before I press send. I miss Crystal pretty much every day. I know Damien does, too. He thinks maybe it’s just easier for her to fully commit to her new school if she’s not hanging on to her old friends …
“Crystal?” Damien asks as he watches me delete the text.
I nod. “Hey—do you think we did something?”
He hands the bartender a very fake ID. “I think we didn’t do something.”
I stare at my phone. He’s right. If we would have noticed, before. Or if we would have done something her first day of Driggs. If I would have made sure we had Slurpee Sluesday her very first week. But we didn’t, or I didn’t, and now I don’t know what to say, and every day that passes, it seems harder and harder to say anything. It’s like a weight that gets heavier the longer you don’t pick it up, so then when you try …
She called once, before the holiday break. But I fucked it up. I made a joke (“Who calls someone?”) but it came out wrong. We kept talking, but I sounded less like a friend and more like that random uncle you have to talk to when your mom hands you the phone on Christmas. “So how’s school?”
I steal the first sip of Damien’s beer.
“Kid, I gotta see your ID if you’re gonna—”
“Sorry!” I apologize to the bartender, and hustle away before anyone else in the Davis family gets arrested.
* * *
“It used to be called Sadie Hawkins, actually.” Eric gives me a history lesson mere minutes before he leaves with Dad to go to court. Court! In Royal Oak. My brother is going to court and he’s talking to me about Sadie Hawkins. “And the tradition was that it was the one dance when the girl would ask the guy. I don’t know when—before I started—they changed it just to ‘Winter Ball.’”
He grabs his coat, Dad waits by the door, and Mom makes herself busy. The moment is tense, but in general, by some miracle, the whole family is back to normal. Last night I even heard Dad say, “This will be a good excuse for us to explore Royal Oak.” A good excuse to explore Royal Oak! Court!
Credit where credit is due, Eric’s a master.
I ignore all of my history reading and wrestle with my new obsession: how to ask Ezra to the formal formerly known as Sadie Hawkins.
Because, well, in case this wasn’t abundantly clear … I’m the girl.
Now, I actually hate when straight people—heteronormative, out-of-touch straight people—look at a gay couple and assume one is the guy and the other is the girl. We’re both guys, that’s the whole point!
That said … I’m the girl.
I don’t even mean it the way people would probably think that I mean it, not to mention the world doesn’t even really think in these girl/boy terms anymore.
However, in my head, I’m the girl.
And that’s about all I know about that.
* * *
“Hey, bud.” My dad gently knocks on my door. I look at my history book before turning to him. They’re already back from court (court!) and I haven’t even read three pages.
Seeing him in the doorway makes me realize I don’t think Dad has ever once come into my room. He’s more a “scream-from-the-bottom-of-the-stairs-and-tell-you-to-come-to-him” kind of guy.
“Hey, Dad. How’s it goin’?”
“This weekend you’re ridin’ solo, huh, bud?” he says, very conversationally. He and Mom are driving Eric back to Northwestern, and they’re going to stay at Grandma’s for the weekend. A belated Merry Christmas. I have a life-altering Spanish test on Monday, and even though Eric says, “There are bigger things in life than a Spanish test,” I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to distract me from our GPA competition.
“No parties, I know,” I say, looking back to a stack of textbooks. “I have a ton of work, so it’s not even really possible.”
“Yeah,” he says, “that goes without saying.” My dad always talks slow, but tonight there’s a commercial break between every syllable. “Well, I was thinkin’, son. Twenty-four hours in the day, even you can’t study for all of ’em.” He pauses. “So, you know, they do that Broadway in Detroit thing every now and again.” He stands next to my bed and looks like he might even sit down, but stays standing. “We went to a couple, that’s right. Now, I’m no expert on this kinda thing, but one of the guys at work had what you’d call season tickets, or that equivalent, for plays—or anything, really—that comes to the Fisher Theatre, and there’s a play called Waitressing comin’ there now—it was on Broadway, just a little bit ago—and he can’t use ’em for one reason or another, and it’s one of those nonrefundable kinda deals. And I thought right away, Oh that might be something kind of fun for you and Ezra, the two of you to do together.”
My eyes widen. “Wait, really? Dad, that’s so—” and before my face gets too recently-crowned-Miss-America, my dad dives into very specific driving directions.
“Your little phone’s gonna tell you to take I-75, but listen, that construction’s gonna add at least fifteen minutes, so what you’re gonna do is hop onto Woodward from 16 Mile,” he starts, and borrows my pen to draw a physical map—a physical map!—on the back of my history homework. “It’s a straight shot to Grand.”
Satisfied, he turns to leave.
He pauses in the door, though. Looks back to my desk like a worried baseball coach.
“And son, now, we … you and I”—he swallows—“haven’t really … talked, too much”—he takes a step forward, but then a bigger step back—“about”—he taps his fingers on my dresser and shifts weight onto his other foot—“about you and Ezra’s relationship.” He takes another breath. “But I’d say … to you”—another breath—“well, really, nothing different than what my dad said to me.” He stares at the carpet. “And that is”—he turns to the side, mumbles quickly—“well, that’s not really gonna work here.”
He looks at my bed and scratches his arm.
My dad resumes, but kind of apologetically. “I had this all sorted out in my head, but I’ll be damned.” He steadies himself. “Listen”—he points his finger at me—“you’re a smart kid, son. So just be smart, all the way through.”
I tell him I will, I promise. And I tell him thank you.
He nods his head, looking—confused? Disappointed? Relieved?
He turns and walks out the door.
Bees and the bees.
Then he yells from the bottom of the stairs, “And when you get to Grand, you park where it says Official Fisher Theatre Parking. Everywhere else you’re gonna get scammed or stolen and if you get your car stolen, you’re not gettin’ another one.”
* * *
I pick Ezra up around 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, both of us in cute little blazers. I send a picture to my parents to show them how wholesome it all is right before we drive to dinner. The most notable thing about the restaurant is that I spent approximately ninety-seven hours picking it. I read every Yelp review of every restaurant within a ten-mile radius of the Fisher Theatre, and then corroborated Yelp reviews with Free Press reviews, verified with Google reviews, then quadruple-checked with Tripadvisor ratings. I spent so much time finding the perfect restaurant I was almost too late to get a reservation.
But it’s perfect. Loud enough to feel cool, but not so loud that we can’t hear each other. Expensive enough to feel fancy, but not so expensive that I’ll get in trouble with my dad. Nice enough to feel romantic, but not so nice that it looks like I’m trying too hard. As I look around at the modern brass light fixtures, the exposed brick wall, the cool college-age couple next to us, our tattooed waitress, and Ezra’s happy face, I think: ninety-seven hours well spent.
And now—to the theater!
The first time I ever walked into the Fisher Theatre, it felt like life was finally rising to the occasion. Oh, yes, Mr. Davis, we apologize for the mix-up. Follow me. This is where you belong.
Ceilings sparkle, staircases greet us like trumpets, and women wear fur with intention. Marble columns frame the hallway. Men wear suits that have never been worn to a parent/teacher conference. The red carpet looks like the Oscars, but fancier, because if you look deep enough, you’ll see little flecks of gold.
“When was the last time you were here?” Ezra asks as we bathe in the grandeur. I tell him, in way too much detail, how much I liked Les Misérables. And then Chicago. And then Rent. And then Next to Normal. Phantom of the Opera. Matilda. Hedwig and the Angry Inch. And then I make a joke because I’m self-conscious about how much I’m queening out about musicals. “They could sing my chemistry book, and as long as it had a swelling chorus, I’d be in heaven.”
Ezra imitates a cheesy performer, singing with hyperactive vibrato to the chandelier:
“So-di-um Chlorrr-ide!”
Most musicals have an “I Want” song, that lays out, early in the show, what the main character wishes for, or wants. In Hamilton it’s “My Shot.” He wants to start a movement that lands him in the history books. Pippin has a famous “I Want” song that I sing for auditions sometimes: “Corner of the Sky.” He wants to find where his spirit can run free. For non-musical-theater nerds, Disney movies have them, too, like Little Mermaid: “Part of Your World.” She wants to be where the people are, she wants to see, wants to see them dancing.
On the plush red carpet of the Fisher Theatre, I realize that even though I never really had the courage to sing my “I Want” song, I got what I wished for anyway. I am on a date with a cute boy talking about musicals.
“What’s your favorite, though?”
I pause, as if it’s not a question that I consider fifty times a day, countlessly reordering my Top 5, and even feeling bad for the ones that fall off the list, as if being in my Top 5 is some kind of achievement that Lin-Manuel Miranda would be concerned about.
“Rent,” I answer. “It’s probably lame. And it’s old. But it’s younger than my second favorite, which is Les Mis. But older than my third favorite, Spring Awakening.” Ohmygodshutup. “Well, whatever, I just love it.” We inch through a few underdressed forty-year-olds whose baggy jeans are disrupting my Fisher Theatre fantasy.
He sings: “It was my lucky day today on Avenue A.”
“You know it!” I stop us in the middle of the aisle as he channels my favorite character (Angel!) from my favorite musical. “I truly could not love you more.”
He smiles, proud, like a kindergartner coming home with a check-plus. “I listened to it after you mentioned it on our first date,” he says, blushing just a little.
“Us sitting on your bed doing English homework was not a date.”
“Me trying to woo you with my knowledge of fifties beat poetry was definitely a date.”
I look in his eyes, backlit by the shimmering edges of the balcony boxes. “Well, it worked.”
He corrects me, smiling as the usher hands us our playbill. “Eventually.”
The soft suede of our theater seats feels luxurious as we fold them down and sit.
“Isn’t Angel awesome?” I say, then laugh at what a musical theater nerd I’m being.
“The awesomest.”
“You know what I think is the most awesome?” He laughs at me, but with love, so I keep going. “Is, like, she’s not ashamed. She’s different—nonconforming, ya know?” I never know what words to use for her. “But she loves herself, and it’s not about that. She’s nonconforming but it’s not about that.” I don’t think I’m expressing myself right. I try. “So many queer plotlines are just about how shitty it is to be queer, you know? At least at the start. And I so remember seeing Rent for the first time, with my dad, of all people, and the actor playing Angel was, or referred to himself as, ‘he’ in his bio. And then Angel is Angel, right? So I was just, like, waiting for the plotline where Angel has to process her shame or has to learn to love her nonconforming self or has to come out to her dad or maybe there’ll even be, like, a Mrs. Doubtfire moment where they all find out the truth. I was dumb, but you know what I mean? But it was never about that. She just loved herself. And everybody else loved her.” We knock into the seat divider, and he wraps his forearm under mine. “It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud, but at the time it was, like, revolutionary. She was different and that wasn’t her plotline.”
I start to feel myself almost crying, so I smile to stop things from getting too heavy. “And I need to go to ‘Avenue A’ someday.”
Suddenly I worry, “Is it real? Is it a real street? Avenue A?”
He pulls out his phone. “You haven’t Googled it?”
“If it’s not a real street, I think I would die. My entire awakening rests on the existence of this street. No—I don’t even want you to look it up.” I steal his phone. “I wouldn’t be able to take it.”
He wrestles it back from me and leans so far into the aisle I can’t reach him. I watch him urgently type “Avenue A” into the Chrome browser bar …
The Wi-Fi in the Fisher Theatre is slow.
“It’s probably not real! It’s probably some made-up street and my entire life is a lie.”
My heart races and I’m legitimately nervous.
“Avenue A!” he shouts triumphantly, and an old man in front of us turns around, unamused.
“Wait, really?”
“It even has its own Wikipedia page!”
“A street with a Wikipedia page?!” I grab his phone again. “I bet there’s not a single street in Michigan that has a Wikipedia page.”
“Eight Mile definitely has a Wikipedia page.”
“Gah! It’s too slow…” I hand him his phone back.
“We’ll go there someday. Together. To Avenue A,” Ezra says, so matter-of-factly, leaning into me, bumping against the seat divider—My God, I could take a sledgehammer to this seat divider.
We take a breath, together. The ceiling is so high it feels more like a golden sky.
“What time is it? Do we have time? I’m gonna get us drinks. And snacks.” I remember that my dream date definitely involves reaching into a bag of candy at the same time and giggling as you finger-wrestle over who gets more Skittles.
“I’ll come with.”
“No, you guard our seats! Don’t move a muscle.” I step over him. “You want anything special?”
“Surprise me.”
As I’m waiting in line for drinks, I think a little bit more about Rent. Avenue A. How it’s possible that someday we really will go there together. And it’ll be happier and more beautiful because once I didn’t believe it existed. Maybe beauty always starts with pain? The soil breaks. The mother screams. The boy assumes life will always hurt. But then happiness comes, unseen, like air. The breath before the song.
* * *
“How did you get this?” Ezra asks after he takes a sip of his souvenir cup of Diet Coke and realizes there’s vodka in it.
“I found a bartender who looked gay and I flirted with him,” I say with a wink.
“Just in case he’s still watching…” Ezra leans over and kisses me. “Where’s yours?”
At the sound of our kiss, the man in front of us snaps his head around and gives us side-eye.
After he turns around, I whisper to Ezra, “Straight people get to kiss in public without ever feeling like they’re taking a stand.”
Ezra whispers an admission of guilt. “I did scream ‘Avenue A’ at the top of my lungs. His side-eye isn’t wholly unearned.”
I smile. For the first time in my entire life, I want to skip seeing a musical—just fast-forward to the part where we’re alone in my house. The lights dim. Our fingers interlace. Ezra squeezes my hand, and the first song starts.
* * *
Waitress is good.
I think.
Actually, I have no idea.
All show, I’m thinking about what I should do with my hands, if I’m eating more than my share of the candy, if I should try to start footsie. By intermission I joke with Ezra that I have no idea what’s going on.
“It’s not exactly Foucault,” he teases as we stand in the majestic, crowded lobby.
“You’re a distracting seat partner.”
“Oh, you’re telling me. Have you seen yourself in that blazer? I’m shocked I can even stand up right now.”
The second half is good, and the 11 o’clock number is incredible, and we talk about it the whole ride home. We drive through the bright city streets of Detroit, past old mansions and refurbished museums and through some gritty city streets a long way from the renaissance. The excitement of downtown gives way to the monotony of the highway, but tonight, everything seems lit up extra bright.
“I was tearing up, but you were sobbing,” Ezra teases.
“I was not sobbing.” I hit him on the shoulder.
“You were sobbing before the show even started.” He turns my hit into a hug. “It was my lucky day today on Avenue A.”
He leans over and honks the car horn. “Woo-hoo your parents aren’t home!”
I laugh. “I thought you didn’t like people who threw parties when their parents weren’t home?”
“That’s only because I wasn’t invited!” he shouts through laughter.
“What time do you have to be home?”
“Never, just gun it!” He pumps his fist almost through the windshield.
I smile and take the car to at least five above the speed limit. But then slow down instantly, and he laughs. “Your brother was right; you do drive like a grandma.”
Damien is the reason Ezra stopped counting how many days a week we were eating lunch with my friends. They like each other, even when I’m not around. Which is great, but also—don’t have fun without me!
We’re still here! Come meet us!
I look at the text before I press send. I miss Crystal pretty much every day. I know Damien does, too. He thinks maybe it’s just easier for her to fully commit to her new school if she’s not hanging on to her old friends …
“Crystal?” Damien asks as he watches me delete the text.
I nod. “Hey—do you think we did something?”
He hands the bartender a very fake ID. “I think we didn’t do something.”
I stare at my phone. He’s right. If we would have noticed, before. Or if we would have done something her first day of Driggs. If I would have made sure we had Slurpee Sluesday her very first week. But we didn’t, or I didn’t, and now I don’t know what to say, and every day that passes, it seems harder and harder to say anything. It’s like a weight that gets heavier the longer you don’t pick it up, so then when you try …
She called once, before the holiday break. But I fucked it up. I made a joke (“Who calls someone?”) but it came out wrong. We kept talking, but I sounded less like a friend and more like that random uncle you have to talk to when your mom hands you the phone on Christmas. “So how’s school?”
I steal the first sip of Damien’s beer.
“Kid, I gotta see your ID if you’re gonna—”
“Sorry!” I apologize to the bartender, and hustle away before anyone else in the Davis family gets arrested.
* * *
“It used to be called Sadie Hawkins, actually.” Eric gives me a history lesson mere minutes before he leaves with Dad to go to court. Court! In Royal Oak. My brother is going to court and he’s talking to me about Sadie Hawkins. “And the tradition was that it was the one dance when the girl would ask the guy. I don’t know when—before I started—they changed it just to ‘Winter Ball.’”
He grabs his coat, Dad waits by the door, and Mom makes herself busy. The moment is tense, but in general, by some miracle, the whole family is back to normal. Last night I even heard Dad say, “This will be a good excuse for us to explore Royal Oak.” A good excuse to explore Royal Oak! Court!
Credit where credit is due, Eric’s a master.
I ignore all of my history reading and wrestle with my new obsession: how to ask Ezra to the formal formerly known as Sadie Hawkins.
Because, well, in case this wasn’t abundantly clear … I’m the girl.
Now, I actually hate when straight people—heteronormative, out-of-touch straight people—look at a gay couple and assume one is the guy and the other is the girl. We’re both guys, that’s the whole point!
That said … I’m the girl.
I don’t even mean it the way people would probably think that I mean it, not to mention the world doesn’t even really think in these girl/boy terms anymore.
However, in my head, I’m the girl.
And that’s about all I know about that.
* * *
“Hey, bud.” My dad gently knocks on my door. I look at my history book before turning to him. They’re already back from court (court!) and I haven’t even read three pages.
Seeing him in the doorway makes me realize I don’t think Dad has ever once come into my room. He’s more a “scream-from-the-bottom-of-the-stairs-and-tell-you-to-come-to-him” kind of guy.
“Hey, Dad. How’s it goin’?”
“This weekend you’re ridin’ solo, huh, bud?” he says, very conversationally. He and Mom are driving Eric back to Northwestern, and they’re going to stay at Grandma’s for the weekend. A belated Merry Christmas. I have a life-altering Spanish test on Monday, and even though Eric says, “There are bigger things in life than a Spanish test,” I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to distract me from our GPA competition.
“No parties, I know,” I say, looking back to a stack of textbooks. “I have a ton of work, so it’s not even really possible.”
“Yeah,” he says, “that goes without saying.” My dad always talks slow, but tonight there’s a commercial break between every syllable. “Well, I was thinkin’, son. Twenty-four hours in the day, even you can’t study for all of ’em.” He pauses. “So, you know, they do that Broadway in Detroit thing every now and again.” He stands next to my bed and looks like he might even sit down, but stays standing. “We went to a couple, that’s right. Now, I’m no expert on this kinda thing, but one of the guys at work had what you’d call season tickets, or that equivalent, for plays—or anything, really—that comes to the Fisher Theatre, and there’s a play called Waitressing comin’ there now—it was on Broadway, just a little bit ago—and he can’t use ’em for one reason or another, and it’s one of those nonrefundable kinda deals. And I thought right away, Oh that might be something kind of fun for you and Ezra, the two of you to do together.”
My eyes widen. “Wait, really? Dad, that’s so—” and before my face gets too recently-crowned-Miss-America, my dad dives into very specific driving directions.
“Your little phone’s gonna tell you to take I-75, but listen, that construction’s gonna add at least fifteen minutes, so what you’re gonna do is hop onto Woodward from 16 Mile,” he starts, and borrows my pen to draw a physical map—a physical map!—on the back of my history homework. “It’s a straight shot to Grand.”
Satisfied, he turns to leave.
He pauses in the door, though. Looks back to my desk like a worried baseball coach.
“And son, now, we … you and I”—he swallows—“haven’t really … talked, too much”—he takes a step forward, but then a bigger step back—“about”—he taps his fingers on my dresser and shifts weight onto his other foot—“about you and Ezra’s relationship.” He takes another breath. “But I’d say … to you”—another breath—“well, really, nothing different than what my dad said to me.” He stares at the carpet. “And that is”—he turns to the side, mumbles quickly—“well, that’s not really gonna work here.”
He looks at my bed and scratches his arm.
My dad resumes, but kind of apologetically. “I had this all sorted out in my head, but I’ll be damned.” He steadies himself. “Listen”—he points his finger at me—“you’re a smart kid, son. So just be smart, all the way through.”
I tell him I will, I promise. And I tell him thank you.
He nods his head, looking—confused? Disappointed? Relieved?
He turns and walks out the door.
Bees and the bees.
Then he yells from the bottom of the stairs, “And when you get to Grand, you park where it says Official Fisher Theatre Parking. Everywhere else you’re gonna get scammed or stolen and if you get your car stolen, you’re not gettin’ another one.”
* * *
I pick Ezra up around 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, both of us in cute little blazers. I send a picture to my parents to show them how wholesome it all is right before we drive to dinner. The most notable thing about the restaurant is that I spent approximately ninety-seven hours picking it. I read every Yelp review of every restaurant within a ten-mile radius of the Fisher Theatre, and then corroborated Yelp reviews with Free Press reviews, verified with Google reviews, then quadruple-checked with Tripadvisor ratings. I spent so much time finding the perfect restaurant I was almost too late to get a reservation.
But it’s perfect. Loud enough to feel cool, but not so loud that we can’t hear each other. Expensive enough to feel fancy, but not so expensive that I’ll get in trouble with my dad. Nice enough to feel romantic, but not so nice that it looks like I’m trying too hard. As I look around at the modern brass light fixtures, the exposed brick wall, the cool college-age couple next to us, our tattooed waitress, and Ezra’s happy face, I think: ninety-seven hours well spent.
And now—to the theater!
The first time I ever walked into the Fisher Theatre, it felt like life was finally rising to the occasion. Oh, yes, Mr. Davis, we apologize for the mix-up. Follow me. This is where you belong.
Ceilings sparkle, staircases greet us like trumpets, and women wear fur with intention. Marble columns frame the hallway. Men wear suits that have never been worn to a parent/teacher conference. The red carpet looks like the Oscars, but fancier, because if you look deep enough, you’ll see little flecks of gold.
“When was the last time you were here?” Ezra asks as we bathe in the grandeur. I tell him, in way too much detail, how much I liked Les Misérables. And then Chicago. And then Rent. And then Next to Normal. Phantom of the Opera. Matilda. Hedwig and the Angry Inch. And then I make a joke because I’m self-conscious about how much I’m queening out about musicals. “They could sing my chemistry book, and as long as it had a swelling chorus, I’d be in heaven.”
Ezra imitates a cheesy performer, singing with hyperactive vibrato to the chandelier:
“So-di-um Chlorrr-ide!”
Most musicals have an “I Want” song, that lays out, early in the show, what the main character wishes for, or wants. In Hamilton it’s “My Shot.” He wants to start a movement that lands him in the history books. Pippin has a famous “I Want” song that I sing for auditions sometimes: “Corner of the Sky.” He wants to find where his spirit can run free. For non-musical-theater nerds, Disney movies have them, too, like Little Mermaid: “Part of Your World.” She wants to be where the people are, she wants to see, wants to see them dancing.
On the plush red carpet of the Fisher Theatre, I realize that even though I never really had the courage to sing my “I Want” song, I got what I wished for anyway. I am on a date with a cute boy talking about musicals.
“What’s your favorite, though?”
I pause, as if it’s not a question that I consider fifty times a day, countlessly reordering my Top 5, and even feeling bad for the ones that fall off the list, as if being in my Top 5 is some kind of achievement that Lin-Manuel Miranda would be concerned about.
“Rent,” I answer. “It’s probably lame. And it’s old. But it’s younger than my second favorite, which is Les Mis. But older than my third favorite, Spring Awakening.” Ohmygodshutup. “Well, whatever, I just love it.” We inch through a few underdressed forty-year-olds whose baggy jeans are disrupting my Fisher Theatre fantasy.
He sings: “It was my lucky day today on Avenue A.”
“You know it!” I stop us in the middle of the aisle as he channels my favorite character (Angel!) from my favorite musical. “I truly could not love you more.”
He smiles, proud, like a kindergartner coming home with a check-plus. “I listened to it after you mentioned it on our first date,” he says, blushing just a little.
“Us sitting on your bed doing English homework was not a date.”
“Me trying to woo you with my knowledge of fifties beat poetry was definitely a date.”
I look in his eyes, backlit by the shimmering edges of the balcony boxes. “Well, it worked.”
He corrects me, smiling as the usher hands us our playbill. “Eventually.”
The soft suede of our theater seats feels luxurious as we fold them down and sit.
“Isn’t Angel awesome?” I say, then laugh at what a musical theater nerd I’m being.
“The awesomest.”
“You know what I think is the most awesome?” He laughs at me, but with love, so I keep going. “Is, like, she’s not ashamed. She’s different—nonconforming, ya know?” I never know what words to use for her. “But she loves herself, and it’s not about that. She’s nonconforming but it’s not about that.” I don’t think I’m expressing myself right. I try. “So many queer plotlines are just about how shitty it is to be queer, you know? At least at the start. And I so remember seeing Rent for the first time, with my dad, of all people, and the actor playing Angel was, or referred to himself as, ‘he’ in his bio. And then Angel is Angel, right? So I was just, like, waiting for the plotline where Angel has to process her shame or has to learn to love her nonconforming self or has to come out to her dad or maybe there’ll even be, like, a Mrs. Doubtfire moment where they all find out the truth. I was dumb, but you know what I mean? But it was never about that. She just loved herself. And everybody else loved her.” We knock into the seat divider, and he wraps his forearm under mine. “It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud, but at the time it was, like, revolutionary. She was different and that wasn’t her plotline.”
I start to feel myself almost crying, so I smile to stop things from getting too heavy. “And I need to go to ‘Avenue A’ someday.”
Suddenly I worry, “Is it real? Is it a real street? Avenue A?”
He pulls out his phone. “You haven’t Googled it?”
“If it’s not a real street, I think I would die. My entire awakening rests on the existence of this street. No—I don’t even want you to look it up.” I steal his phone. “I wouldn’t be able to take it.”
He wrestles it back from me and leans so far into the aisle I can’t reach him. I watch him urgently type “Avenue A” into the Chrome browser bar …
The Wi-Fi in the Fisher Theatre is slow.
“It’s probably not real! It’s probably some made-up street and my entire life is a lie.”
My heart races and I’m legitimately nervous.
“Avenue A!” he shouts triumphantly, and an old man in front of us turns around, unamused.
“Wait, really?”
“It even has its own Wikipedia page!”
“A street with a Wikipedia page?!” I grab his phone again. “I bet there’s not a single street in Michigan that has a Wikipedia page.”
“Eight Mile definitely has a Wikipedia page.”
“Gah! It’s too slow…” I hand him his phone back.
“We’ll go there someday. Together. To Avenue A,” Ezra says, so matter-of-factly, leaning into me, bumping against the seat divider—My God, I could take a sledgehammer to this seat divider.
We take a breath, together. The ceiling is so high it feels more like a golden sky.
“What time is it? Do we have time? I’m gonna get us drinks. And snacks.” I remember that my dream date definitely involves reaching into a bag of candy at the same time and giggling as you finger-wrestle over who gets more Skittles.
“I’ll come with.”
“No, you guard our seats! Don’t move a muscle.” I step over him. “You want anything special?”
“Surprise me.”
As I’m waiting in line for drinks, I think a little bit more about Rent. Avenue A. How it’s possible that someday we really will go there together. And it’ll be happier and more beautiful because once I didn’t believe it existed. Maybe beauty always starts with pain? The soil breaks. The mother screams. The boy assumes life will always hurt. But then happiness comes, unseen, like air. The breath before the song.
* * *
“How did you get this?” Ezra asks after he takes a sip of his souvenir cup of Diet Coke and realizes there’s vodka in it.
“I found a bartender who looked gay and I flirted with him,” I say with a wink.
“Just in case he’s still watching…” Ezra leans over and kisses me. “Where’s yours?”
At the sound of our kiss, the man in front of us snaps his head around and gives us side-eye.
After he turns around, I whisper to Ezra, “Straight people get to kiss in public without ever feeling like they’re taking a stand.”
Ezra whispers an admission of guilt. “I did scream ‘Avenue A’ at the top of my lungs. His side-eye isn’t wholly unearned.”
I smile. For the first time in my entire life, I want to skip seeing a musical—just fast-forward to the part where we’re alone in my house. The lights dim. Our fingers interlace. Ezra squeezes my hand, and the first song starts.
* * *
Waitress is good.
I think.
Actually, I have no idea.
All show, I’m thinking about what I should do with my hands, if I’m eating more than my share of the candy, if I should try to start footsie. By intermission I joke with Ezra that I have no idea what’s going on.
“It’s not exactly Foucault,” he teases as we stand in the majestic, crowded lobby.
“You’re a distracting seat partner.”
“Oh, you’re telling me. Have you seen yourself in that blazer? I’m shocked I can even stand up right now.”
The second half is good, and the 11 o’clock number is incredible, and we talk about it the whole ride home. We drive through the bright city streets of Detroit, past old mansions and refurbished museums and through some gritty city streets a long way from the renaissance. The excitement of downtown gives way to the monotony of the highway, but tonight, everything seems lit up extra bright.
“I was tearing up, but you were sobbing,” Ezra teases.
“I was not sobbing.” I hit him on the shoulder.
“You were sobbing before the show even started.” He turns my hit into a hug. “It was my lucky day today on Avenue A.”
He leans over and honks the car horn. “Woo-hoo your parents aren’t home!”
I laugh. “I thought you didn’t like people who threw parties when their parents weren’t home?”
“That’s only because I wasn’t invited!” he shouts through laughter.
“What time do you have to be home?”
“Never, just gun it!” He pumps his fist almost through the windshield.
I smile and take the car to at least five above the speed limit. But then slow down instantly, and he laughs. “Your brother was right; you do drive like a grandma.”
