THE THEATER Club party was in a basement room at the Mac. I followed Peter into the room and took in the decorations. Leave it to theater kids to go a little over the top with their artistic achievements when decorating for a party. The whole room was like a theater dork’s wet dream. It was a tribute to Rodgers & Hammerstein, with walls covered in posters for actual productions of Oklahoma! and Carousel and The Sound of Music as well as handmade signs with song lyrics and photos of Julie Andrews and Hugh Jackman and the like framed with colorful mattes. The actors in that year’s production all had name tags with their characters’ names. It was supremely nerdy. Peter’s whole face lit up when he saw it.
“It looks amazing, doesn’t it? How great is this?”
“It’s nice,” I said.
Ellie was already there, flirting shamelessly with a guy who had a name tag that read Curly. She saw me, gave me a little wave, and then went back to flirting. I was already uncomfortable enough that I turned toward the door, ready to march out of there, but Peter caught my arm. “Oh, no, you don’t.”
“Is there any booze at this shindig?” I asked.
Peter shrugged. “This is an official university function. Could you get in trouble with the administration for drinking booze?”
I was only twenty, so I said, “Fair point.” I grunted. “Unfortunately we can’t all have your social ease. Some of us need a little lubrication.”
If he noticed my accidental double entendre, he didn’t acknowledge it. As a flush overcame me, he rolled his eyes. “Is coming to a party really wigging you out that much?”
I took a deep breath. “I guess not.”
Music suddenly filled the room. I didn’t recognize the tune at first, but by the way the key and the melody kept changing, I understood it was the overture to a musical. Of course. I didn’t understand someone had put on the soundtrack to Oklahoma! until the entire room burst into a flat, loud rendition of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”
I felt myself shutting down. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but in the face of this much unbridled joy, I turned in on myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t like musicals; I did, or I wouldn’t have done pit orchestra so many times. It wasn’t even that I disliked the Theater Club kids, because I’d been to functions like this before and had a fine time. But something about this particular confluence of circumstances—Peter, the difficult semester, me not knowing half the kids in the room—made me feel suddenly, starkly alone.
“Do you think there’s something to eat at least?” I asked Peter over the din of his friends singing. I felt okay asking because he was not singing, though he was clearly hanging on every word.
He just pointed to a refreshment table in the corner.
This particular song was apparently a popular one, because the singing did not continue when the tracks changed. Well, a few kids kept singing, but the party quieted down and everyone started chatting instead. There was a blond guy standing at the refreshment table, lingering over a plate of minicupcakes. When I approached, I saw it was Noel, one of the Theater Club regulars and another junior. Noel and I had run into each other at rehearsals all the time, so we were friendly but not very close. He wore a name tag now that said Will Parker.
“Hi,” I said.
“Oh, hey, Logan.” He smiled at me. “To cupcake or not to cupcake.”
“It’s a party. Go for it.”
He snatched one. “Nice to see you. Are you doing pit orchestra this semester?”
“No, unfortunately. I’m too busy with orchestra rehearsals. I’m crashing your party. Well, I came with my roommate. Peter Bennett?”
“King of the Tech Crew Peter Bennett? Yeah, he mentioned he had a new roommate who was kind of a sourpuss. I should have put that together.”
“Hey!” I pretended to be offended, but I couldn’t argue with that characterization of me, given how that semester had been going.
Noel grinned. “Well, as an outsider, what do you think of our little fete?”
“It’s nice. You guys outdid yourselves with the decorations.”
“I know, right? I helped, but actually, my boyfriend came up with a lot of the ideas for this. He’s the biggest theater queen I’ve ever met with zero musical talent. Like, he loves musicals, but no one should ever let him sing. I love him anyway.” A brief bit of sadness fell over Noel’s beautiful face. “Unfortunately he had to work tonight and couldn’t find anyone to trade shifts with. He would have loved this, though.”
“That sucks.”
Noel shrugged. “Well, anyway. How are you? Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I’m… busy.”
“Right. With orchestra rehearsals?”
“Yeah. We’re doing a really challenging program for the December concert, so I’m doing extra rehearsals and classes.”
I paused to look around the room and then glanced down at the refreshment table. In addition to the minicupcakes, there were cookies that looked homemade, a bowl full of chips, another full of pretzels, and a few two-liter bottles of soda and lemonade. I grabbed a cup and poured myself some lemonade.
“The Queer Student Union is doing an LGBT semiformal again this year,” Noel said. “You should come.”
I found the Queer Student Union generally exhausting, so I shrugged. “Sure, I guess. If I’m free.”
“I know you haven’t been to a meeting in forever, but it’s a good group this year. The new president is really nice.”
“I’m sure. Are the cupcakes any good?”
He peeled the wrapper off the bottom and popped the whole thing in his mouth. As he chewed, he gave me the thumbs-up.
I laughed despite myself. Noel was one of the most beautiful people at WMU—kind of androgynous with white-blond hair and startling blue eyes—and seeing him with cheeks stuffed with cupcake was so absurd I couldn’t keep the giggles at bay. He grinned after he swallowed.
“I suppose if I came to this dance, I’d have to bring a date,” I said.
“You don’t have to. It’s mostly just an excuse to look fancy and dance in a big mob. I’ll bring my boyfriend, of course, but he’s on the planning committee anyway.”
I was a little sad I didn’t have the opportunity to meet this enterprising young man. Given the flush that spread across Noel’s cheeks, he was quite smitten. Anyone as good-looking as Noel couldn’t have possibly stayed single for long. WMU didn’t have a huge LGBT population, but there were enough of us around that there was a decent-sized dating pool. I was glad Noel had found happiness, but I had that pang of jealousy again that I’d experienced when I’d watched Peter and Lily. It wasn’t that I wanted Noel, who wasn’t really my type anyway; I wanted what Noel had, I wanted to feel whatever he did when he thought about his boyfriend.
How the hell was I supposed to find it? It wasn’t like I had time to look.
But I should have. Ellie was right: the point of college wasn’t to kill yourself working, but to meet people. Maybe I should have been putting more effort into meeting people.
“When does the QSU meet again?” I asked.
“Tuesday afternoons. The info is on the website.”
“Okay. Maybe I’ll pop in to a meeting.” Although as soon as I said it, I remembered the new violin sectional. Dammit.
“Great!”
Noel opened his mouth to speak again, but someone across the room shouted, “Hey, Will Parker, get your ass over here.”
Noel hooked his thumb back toward his summoner. “I better go. Have fun at the party!”
I watched him walk away and then turned my attention toward gathering snack food. I put a cupcake, a cookie, and some chips on a little paper plate decorated with cowboys and lassos. Ellie wandered over as I was shoving the cookie in my mouth.
“This is not completely terrible,” she said. “I saw you flirting with Noel.”
“We weren’t flirting. Just chatting. He has a boyfriend he couldn’t stop talking about.” I ate a couple of chips.
“Oh. I thought he and Jason broke up.”
“Could be a different guy. I don’t think he said his boyfriend’s name.”
Ellie looked around. “Well, this is a Theater Club party. There have to be some single gay guys here besides you.”
I tried to work out how to get the wrapper off my cupcake while still holding the plate. I nodded to concede she was probably right. I had to put the plate down to get the wrapper off, but once I accomplished that, I said, “Are you trying to matchmake me?”
“Maybe.” She grabbed a cookie and popped it in her mouth.
She was attempting to help me, but I felt like an astronaut floating outside the space station, not an active participant in this party. “Am I totally lame?”
“What? No. Why do you ask that?”
“I’m single. I don’t go out… ever, really. I don’t have very many friends, present company aside.”
“You’re training to be a concert violinist. That takes a lot of work.”
“Yeah, but… what if I don’t want to be a concert violinist?”
It was the first time I’d ever said that out loud, but definitely not the first time I’d thought it. My parents had been paying for lessons since I was three years old, with the hopes of raising the next Joshua Bell, but I was no prodigy, and you couldn’t force that into a kid. I was good by virtue of the fact that I spent so many hours practicing, and I’d been made concertmaster in part because of my insane work ethic, but what if the rest of my life suffered because of those hours I put in? What if I never met the right man, got married, had a family? Or, hell, what if I never had fun? Somehow I’d forgotten how.
“What do you mean, what if you don’t want to?” Ellie stared at me like I’d just grown an arm out of my forehead.
“I mean, maybe being a performance major is eating too much of my time. I should spend more time, I don’t know, going to parties and meeting hot guys.”
She looked aghast. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Just thinking aloud. You were right. Costner is eating my whole semester.”
“So don’t let him.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not a performance major,” I pointed out. Ellie was majoring in music education. “I can’t just tell Costner I’m not coming to rehearsal. And I… you don’t get how hard it is.”
She flinched. “Maybe not, but I’m not good enough to do more than sit in the back of the orchestra.”
“That’s not true. If you worked—” I held up my hand. “No, I’m going to stop myself. I think you’ve got the right of it. You have time to breathe.”
“And eat regularly.”
I had a second cupcake halfway to my mouth. I was starving, probably because I’d forgotten to eat lunch again. After I ate the cupcake, I said, “If I switched majors to music ed, do you think I’d have more free time?”
“Probably, but first of all, Costner would kill you, as would your parents, and second, you’d have to take another year of classes.”
All of that was true. “Forget it. It was a dumb idea.”
Ellie frowned. She grabbed a handful of chips and munched on them for a moment. “I’m not saying don’t do it if it’s what you want, but make sure it’s what you want before you change majors. I mean, you’re probably going to get offers from major orchestras when you graduate. Everyone knows how talented you are. Do you really want to throw that away?”
“I guess not.” But I kind of did. Being in a major orchestra was my parents’ dream for me. I had only ever wanted to play, but not at the exclusion of all other things in my life. Maybe it was foolish to hope for anything else. Ellie was right, I’d be squandering a great opportunity, but if I were a music teacher instead of a musician, I could do so many other things. I could play for fun and teach kids to play. I could direct a high school orchestra. That seemed like something I’d be good at. Every time I thought about playing with a big professional orchestra, I wanted to vomit. Which was probably all the information I needed that I was on the wrong track. “Just a thought,” I said.
Ellie ate some more chips. “Are you okay?”
I wasn’t. I was so lonely, it still felt like I was a world apart from these kids. “I’m fine.”
Peter wandered over. He surveyed the snack offerings and took a single pretzel from the bowl. “Having fun?”
“Your friends are dorks, but yes.”
He winked. Then he turned the full force of his considerable charm on Ellie. “Hi, I’m Peter. Logan’s roommate.”
“Yeah,” Ellie said. “I played in the pit orchestra for Guys and Dolls. We met last year? I’m in the pit for Oklahoma! too.”
He narrowed his eyes, but then realization dawned and he pointed at her. “Oh, yeah! I remember you now. Ellie, right?”
“Yup.” She smiled.
Great. I could see the whole rest of the semester playing out before me. Peter would be utterly charmed by Ellie, as well he should, because she was great. He’d dump long-haired Lily and ask out Ellie, and then they’d wander off into the sunset and have a bunch of babies and I’d have to kill them both.
I really was a miserable bastard.
I considered asking Peter why he’d brought me to this party instead of Lily, but I wasn’t even really sure she was his girlfriend and not a good friend, and maybe she hated the Theater Club kids, and I just didn’t know how to ask the question. Instead, I tossed my little cowboy plate into the trash and rocked on my heels.
Someone changed the music. Still Rodgers & Hammerstein, but music I didn’t recognize. “Which show is this from?” I asked.
Ellie and Peter both listened for a few bars. “Carousel, I think,” said Ellie.
“Oh, yeah.” Peter grimaced comically. “I never liked this show as much.”
He was apparently in the minority, because a bunch of the girls on one side of the room took the opportunity to sing along with the soundtrack. I recognized a few of the songs from my high school orchestra days—my high school orchestra director had been a big fan of musicals, especially Andrew Lloyd Webber, but Rodgers & Hammerstein too—but Peter was right, this show wasn’t as good as Oklahoma!
And, because this was the Theater Club and Ellie was right about me not being the only gay guy at this party, everyone singing along seemed to particularly relish singing, “You’re a queer one, Julie Jordan!” Two of the girls even kissed.
“I don’t think that’s what the lyrics mean,” I said.
Ellie elbowed me. “You’re no fun at all.”
I spent the next portion of the party doing my best wallflower imitation, hanging around the refreshment table and feebly making small talk with whoever came by to eat chips. Ellie did a far better job of mingling, and at one point brought over a cute guy named Craig whose name tag said Jud. The implication was clear, though Craig seemed oblivious to Ellie’s machinations. She left us alone for a few minutes, during which time Craig said, “You remind me of my ex,” in a way that indicated this was not a good thing, and that was that.
The impromptu production of Carousel got progressively gayer as the night wore on. They gender-swapped a bunch of the characters, with girls taking male roles and guys taking female roles and characters swapping songs. They even got Peter involved, and no, he didn’t have a great singing voice, but it was passable. He butchered “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’,” mostly because he didn’t seem to know the lyrics aside from the main chorus bit about how someone had a feller and she loved him. One of the girls sang over him and seemed to be singing the song to Peter, gesturing to one of the other guys in the crowd, which made Peter blush and wave his hands as if this were absurd and the very notion made him uncomfortable.
Then again, this was… fun. Even if I wasn’t directly participating, I liked the queer spin the Theater Club kids were putting on the show tunes, which made the whole room feel like a safe place to be gay. I wanted to shed my stupid hang-ups and social anxiety and throw myself into this party with gusto, to be myself, except I wasn’t entirely sure who I was apart from my violin.
I made a promise to myself then. I would find out who I really was that semester, before it was too late to change the course of my life.