Bitter Missed Opportunities

Long before I had dreams of being a published author, I only had dreams about being a musician. It drove nearly all of my decisions as a teenager. It was my primary identity. The second I learned that the American Musical and Dramatic Academy existed, I set my sights on auditioning for their program and making it my entire personality.

I ended up auditioning for AMDA my Senior year of high school, after begging and begging to schedule an audition spot. We left early that Saturday morning to drive to downtown Denver - almost two hours from my rural home. I couldn't drive on my own despite almost being 18 - and Mom was less than enthusiastic about watching me swing for the fences with this opportunity. Because it was so early, my voice wasn't warmed up well, so I bit my nails the whole (silent) drive down and hoped to have at least a few minutes to do some scales before going in for my audition spot.

It was 2005, so most of the people who went in before me were singing selections from Rent, Wicked, and Jekyll & Hyde. Couldn't really blame them--they were certainly the most popular shows amongst all us theatre queers at the time. I fit right in, prepared with "The Wizard and I", and a short monologue that I honestly can't even remember the topic of now.

All over the basement of this hoity-toity hotel, teenagers and college-aged folks stretched against the wall -- some were there for dancing auditions, presumably -- while the bathroom was a cacophony of girls trying to practice without being interrupted. Impossible. I barely got through a single quiet scale before someone started screeching their prepared Mozart aria. I did feel a little out of place -- after all, I had no formal training, couldn't dance, and had almost no support. Mom didn't care about how badly I wanted this. She would much rather have gone home early.

But thank goodness for the piano player. He had all of us auditioners come in and practice our songs once with him. I prepared my music as one should - taped together in a long accordion, and he praised my voice but also my choice of a song written in a major key. He said, "the simpler the song is for your accompanist, the better you will sound." It was practically an open dig at the girl who chose "Bring on the Men". Don't even get me started on the person who chose "Over the Moon" from Rent -- which requires no accompaniment, but isn't necessarily the best song to choose for an audition such as this, where you're supposed to showcase your ability to keep time and work with someone else.

When I finished with my practice spot, Mom was waiting for me outside. For the first time all day, she had a smile. She said she snuck into the space between the ballrooms and could hear me practicing. Said she was happy to hear how on-key and on-time I was...like it was some kind of surprise. I was grateful she wasn't bored anymore, so she'd at least be willing to sit with me while we waited for my official turn. A few girls nodded at me in the hall and said they "wished they had a strong belt" like I did. I was a true Mezzo-Soprano, proud of my pipes. I didn't get to use them the way I wanted to, since I was cast as Marian the Librarian for our high school production of The Music Man. Some of the music Marian has to sing is somewhat painful on the ears and on the voice. It felt good to sing something I really felt comfortable and confident with. Elphaba fit the bill for me.

The actual audition? It felt like a blur. The accompanist went a touch too slow for my liking, but we got through the first verse and chorus well enough. My monologue? I guess it went okay. The man sitting at the desk next to his camera - we were all being recorded for the auditions to be reviewed back in New York on another day - chatted with me a little about the few acting credits I had on my resume. My experience doing Music Man was great to add, because it was so different from the song I was singing, and proved I had a good soprano mixed voice as well. I had set design all over my history. I also played piano and guitar. Music was in my blood. It was everything. All I wanted was a chance to prove that I could really do it, too.

Mom was back to her sour self as soon as the audition was over. She didn't like that the program was a conservatory, not a real university, and there were of course no guarantees that a degree from them would mean anything. I knew that - we all KNEW that - but it was the painful sort of thing you shouldn't tell your teenager right after an audition. It crushed me entirely. Mom and I went to my sister's apartment afterward and got lunch, all through which, she and my sister made fun of the concept of majoring in theatre and wanting to perform. I sat in the back of the car in silent tears. I had no praise from the people who I needed to hear it from the most. It was a dream that I watched fall through my fingers after years of hoping and praying for that one opportunity.

A large white envelope came in the mail about a month later. It was all but unmarked, and honestly, it blended in with the other large, white envelopes from the many state universities I had applied to and received good news from. But I didn't expect to be let into AMDA. I didn't expect to see them offer me a scholarship.

But I did expect the unequivocal answer I got from my mother when I shared the news: No.

That was that. I had an answer. I was tied to my home life, tied to my mother, tied to my rural existence and forced to go somewhere that she could reach me. In retrospect, I understand why so many people said, "Go anyway," but it wasn't that simple. I was under her thumb. Mom ruled everything about my life - she controlled where I went, what I said, if I cried. She once even screamed at me after we spent the drive home singing together, "I was the musical one in the family, and you stole it from me!"

Ouch.

So, imagine my pain when, on the third night of my high school musical performance, my drama coach nonchalantly said to Mom, "It's a shame she didn't get into that school. We all thought for sure, if anyone would make it, it was her."

Mom said, "Oh, she made it in. Of course she did."

Drama coach: "What?"

"Yeah, she made it into their musical theatre program. They even offered her a scholarship. But it's too much and too far away, and she wants to go to school in-state and study geology." The latter part of this was bullshit - only partially true, as I had to have some kind of backup plan. But her bragadocious enthusiasm about my accomplishment sent me into instant whiplash when my drama coach confronted me about it the next week.

She told me that the other adults involved with our musical production - the assistant director, musical director, conductor, and all their spouses - wanted to organize some kind of community benefit for me to raise money to go to AMDA.

And, reader, I cried. I cried so hard. Because at the end of the day, it was only partly about the money. It was about the woman whose thumb I was under. It was about the person who said once a month, "If you don't go to school, I'll pay for a nose job." It was constantly being told that I was ugly, not good enough, and I deserved to fail.

I declined her offer to set up the fundraiser. It was a nice gesture. But I couldn't say yes.

On nights like tonight, when I'm sitting in my child's room, faced with twenty years of disappointment and missed opportunities, it's hard not to feel like I missed a lot of "exits" on my long road to where I am now. I have to remind myself, in no uncertain terms, that they weren't exits that I skated by because I had wrong directions - they were exits that had red tape blocking them off. I didn't miss opportunities lightly - there were obstacles. It just so happens that a lot of those obstacles end up hurting more as time goes on than they even did when they happened in real time. Like the internship I was half-guaranteed in Chicago at the end of my doctoral program - an opportunity to work with someone whose whole job was rubbing shoulders with the musicians I admired and wanted to be. It was a position tailor made for me. I went to Chicago. I found an apartment. All I needed was the go-ahead and a date.

And ... it came and went. The opportunity fizzled. The clinic owner never called me when he was supposed to, despite several meetings and - what I thought - was us hitting it off fairly well. That same year, he brought in someone else with a musical background more impressive than mine; not a feat, since again, I wasn't formally trained in any way. I was "talented" instead. That person is now writing articles with the professionals I was supposed to be working with. It feels like a slap in the face to watch her succeed while I fall into obscurity. I graduated at the top of my class. But what is it good for now, when I've been bullied out of my job for being queer, not protected by the systems that were supposed to support me, and now I'm stuck in a place that will never recognize me for whatever special spark I used to have.

There's so much to be said about what it feels like to be a big fish in a very small pond, then be let loose into the world and discover that, actually, you're a very small fish in a fucking huge ocean, and screaming gets you nowhere. You can have shiny scales. You can be rather agile. Like me, you might even have partial fins and still keep living - but if no one can see you, does it really count?

I'm not sure it counts. It's so hard to keep going.