I could probably write a book just on my four years at Highland, but that’s not what this book is about. I have very mixed feelings about my High School career there. I loved that time in some ways. It was small which made it easy to be a rabble rouser and I got to be kind of a black sheep without doing much. There was an immediate fascination with me, at least by some, simply because I was from Chicago. Those on the two coasts of this nation may not realize this, but there is a strange misconception I learned that many people still think Al Capone runs Chicago. Even in 1989, I was fielding questions about the mob, what it was like being Italian (which I’m not), and the dangerous life of living in the Windy City. There’s a reason Milwaukee is the butt of many jokes, and Laverne & Shirley isn’t it. It looks like a major metropolitan area, but believe me, it’s still full of hill jacks.
My favorite time of year was November, because that’s when deer hunting season began and my classes would be half-empty. It was accepted that parents were justified pulling their kids out of school to stalk and slay Bambi. I’m not making any statements about hunting. I’m not a hypocrite. I eat and enjoy meat. I just think many of these inbred knuckleheads needed to be in school during the week and hunting on the weekends. If you met a lot of them, you’d understand, and agree. Plus, I fucking hate venison. Have you tried it? They can tell me a million times how I just haven’t had it prepared properly. Bullshit! All deer tastes like wild fucking beast to me. I like my meat to taste like the cold loving arms of processed factory slaughtered beef, complete with excrement, entrails, and possibly the random digit of an illegal migrant worker, just as nature intended!
I will take the piss right away. I was a terrible student. I hated homework. I’m naturally ungifted in the subject of math. I can add, subtract, and do my “guzintas,” etc. But the minute they started throwing letters into my math problems, I was hopelessly lost. Even when I tried to apply myself and worked side-by-side with teachers, I couldn’t get it. The numbers, letters, and symbols just all blurred together. I firmly believe if there’s a form of dyslexia that affects your perception of numbers, rather than words, I have it. So that’s my excuse for math. As for the rest of my classes, especially the ones like English and History, which I should have aced, it was simply that I’m a lazy-ass.
The only thing to which I ever really applied myself was the dramatic arts. As far back as 5 or 6 years old, I remember wanting to act. When I was in First Grade, my school put on a little play about our school mascot, Lucky the lion. I desperately wanted to be in it, but was shamefully relegated to being a background monkey. No lines. All I had to do was run around and squawk a few times. It might have turned me off to the whole process, had fortune not smiled on me the day before the big performance. I’m a little hazy on the particulars, but for whatever reason the master thespian cast as Alligator King had suddenly bowed out. The whole production was in jeopardy. Until my first grade teacher, Ms. Biancalana made the boldest casting choice in the history of elementary theater. She handed me the alligator mask crafted skillfully from a paper grocery bag and construction paper and gave me the nod. This would be my moment. The gist of the story was a couple of adventurers on a journey through the jungle find Lucky, our young lion cub mascot. It was my job to convince them that my minions and I had not devoured the cub. The whole thing was dark and complex and masterfully written. I believe my big line was something to the affect of: “We would never eat Lucky, would we?”
To which a Greek chorus of gators answered “Noooooo!”
I wish I had saved the press clippings. Alright, so maybe it wasn’t that great, but the audience was our parents so they were going to love it regardless. Plus I got to keep my costume! All I knew was I was hooked. I loved it. A few years later my mom remarried and we moved to another suburb and school. I found myself tackling an iconic role when I was cast as Frankenstein in the 4th grade production of The Beast Things in Life. This Frankenstein was a little closer to an adolescent Herman Munster. I mostly just laughed like a lobotomy patient and carried a teddy bear the whole time. However, I did have my own musical number, backed up by a bevy of 9 year old dancing girls. Nice work if you can get it.
So when shortly after I started at HCHS a posting went up about auditions for the Fall Play, I resolved that I was going to do it. This would prove an interesting and perhaps pivotal decision in my young life. See, our gym teacher, also the soccer coach had pulled all the boys aside and let us know they were desperate for Junior Varsity players. I liked Coach Lindstrom, plus I’d played soccer as a kid, sort of. My mom tried a few times to get me to play soccer on a park district league, but I spent more time digging in the dirt and eating orange slices. But I figured what the heck? He said experience wasn’t even necessary so I was already ahead of the game, so-to speak. At least I’d worn shin guards before.
As I remember it (and let’s get it clear now, I’ve killed a lot of brain cells in the decades since) the soccer practice began a few days after the play auditions. I recall entering some strange basement room of the school with a small stage recessed into the wall. The floors were yellowed linoleum, laid a hundred years prior. It was a subterranean classroom with thin unreachable rectangular windows along the ceiling that didn’t even open. Timidly I skulked in and slid into a desk at the back of the room. There a couple of girls all flocked around another who was sitting. I noticed her leg was in a cast or brace or something. She was very pretty, but in a very conservative manner. A future preacher’s wife in the making. I listened to their chatter and noticed quickly that her voice lilted angelically over the others in a sing-song manner. Her name I later learned was Karin. She was a Senior. She had been the star of the Highland Christian stage for three years running and this was to be her final and featured year to tread the boards and soak in the adulation. Turns out the year before, they’d changed the title of Twelve Angry Men to Twelve Angry Jurors, just to afford her the starring role.
As I waited a few more people came in, including three guys. I was keeping track of many other dicks were in the room. And what they looked like (not the dicks specifically, the guys attached.) These were my competition. Two were thin, and one was particularly tall and a bit gangly but good looking enough. Having dealt with self-image issues all my life, again I took note. While I’m often told I’m unfairly hard my own appearance, if asked to describe myself back then, I’d probably say dark (my family is “Black Irish” and Cherokee, plus I spent 5 days a week at the pool in the summer,) husky, and prematurely mustachioed. I looked Hispanic in some of my school pictures. The last guy to show up for audition was a kid named Rick, but I later learned his name was Enrique. He gave me hope. It didn’t take long to learn in this school, the more you looked like the Master Race, the better your odds always were.
Turned out I wasn’t going to be the only new face at the auditions that year. For a couple years now Mr. Guthrie, the History and Sociology teacher had been directing the school plays. For whatever reason in the fall of ’89, Guthrie was replaced by Biology and Chemistry teacher Mr. C. Mr. C would become one of the most influential teachers in my life. I still hear his voice in my head on many occasions. While all business in the classroom, and something of a staunch conservative (and devout Creationist) Mr. C was a showman, constantly telling jokes and being silly. As long as you were on time to rehearsal and knew your lines when you were supposed to, that is. When things were going well, he was the first guy in the wings trying to crack you up. Although in many ways to him that was business too. It was an exercise in maintaining your character, despite any distractions, he’d say. In truth, he was just screwing off and trying to make you laugh.
The show was a late-1800’s melodrama entitled Blazing Guns at Roaring Gulch. The script was awful, written specifically for High School drama and the jokes stale, but I’m sure the royalties were cheap. And it was about as non-controversial as you could get. It made Abbot & Costello look risqué. It sounded fun though and I was definitely hoping for something in it. I’d have been happy with the bumbling sidekick or the hapless bellman at the hotel. I certainly didn’t expect the lead. To be honest I think I gave a pretty flat audition. We did cold reads out of the script. I specifically remember that Karin chick giving me notes on my read. Not sure what annoyed me more, this bitch giving me line reads, or the fact that all the guys had to read with her because it was assumed since she was a senior she already had the female lead. I’ve always hated bureaucratic bullshit. I later learned her dad was a hotshot pastor who ran the Baptist church half the teachers and administrators belonged to. He also wore a toupee that looked like a dead possum run through a spin cycle. But he was a rock star in this world, and that gave her a lot of pull.
Figuring my chances were slim I went to the soccer tryout, which was really just a formality. They didn’t give a shit about the J.V. team. They just needed enough names on a roster so as not to forfeit. Junior Varsity was an opening act. We were roadies for the good players at best. I sucked, but honestly I wasn’t the worst player on the field. It almost felt good to be part of a team. Especially a sports team. I’d never been athletic. I started to think maybe I could be a soccer player. I could get those blue and white sandals and an Adidas track suit. This could be a new identity.
And then the cast list for the play went up.
Despite my mediocre audition, I got a part. In fact, I got the part. I played a dual role; twins separated at birth. One an educated Pinkerton detective sent to investigate a series of bank robberies, and the other a nasty desperado committing said crimes. It was High School drama at its purest. Perhaps best of all, that bitch Karin was shafted with a secondary part. The female lead, a lady Sheriff was given to Maggie, a Junior and first-time thespian herself! Karin was so livid, she actually quit after the first rehearsal, citing some bullshit prior commitment she’d forgotten. Somehow the show went on without her.
The acting didn’t stretch much beyond those flat line reads in the basement, and believe me I’m talking about myself. But it didn’t matter. We all thought we were doing West End level stuff. And we were getting standing O’s after every performance. Many people, including other teachers were telling us it was the best produced show in the school’s history. By October 1989, I was ready to hitchhike all the way to L.A. and kick start my acting career. Even if I didn’t make it in films, I knew I’d be great on a Soap Opera. I watched All My Children every summer before I had a driver’s license. I was especially a fan of James Kiberd who played Detective Trevor Dillon. He was no living Ken doll like most soap opera actors, he was kind of broad-chested and swarthy, always cracking wise. Still he was damn popular. I could have played that part, I was certain. Even at 14!
The acting bug had bit me square in the ass. And even though I’d forgotten all about soccer, I was now part of a different sort of team. In the four years I attended Highland Christian, I was in 7 (and a half) plays, all directed by Mr. C and with roughly 90% of the same cast. As for the half, well, I wouldn’t even bring it up except it illustrates two things. The first, that I’m a quitter. It’s a common theme in my life. And the second, well, the second is an example of grace. True grace, a theme that hasn’t been and won’t be common throughout this story. Especially in dealing with people who take their title from the ultimate symbol of Grace, Jesus Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment