Music was a school subject in which I usually excelled. Despite the fact that I can’t really carry a tune with any precision or talent, or that my days in the Empire State Your Orchestra were the result of choosing one of the lesser-played instruments (oboe) in place of any God-given natural talent, I always did well in music class, even as a young child at McNulty Elementary School. Our general music class took place in the basement, where signs for bomb drills were still in place, and the only lights leading into the cavernous room were the red fire alarms. A long horizontal poster of the history of music, going back to Handel and Haydn and moving through the centuries all the way to Copland, hung at the entrance to the room, while the teacher’s upright piano would change position depending on what we were doing. At this time of the year, it was preparing for the Christmas concert.
This was an event that happened before my shyness and social anxiety kicked into high gear, before a sense of shame held my flamboyant histrionics in abeyance, and before I realized that being me in my natural, gay, over-the-top essence was something to tamp down and hide. It was an age prior to figuring out gender roles and sexuality, that innocent space that exists when no one has quite been conditioned or taught what boys or girls are supposedly supposed to do. And so it was that showing off at the Christmas concert gave me a glimpse of the entertainer part of me so badly wanted to be, showcasing whatever minimal talent I had, buoyed by an exuberance that took that minor talent into the realm of the supreme attention-getter. The music teacher ate it up, and I was one of the kids chosen to do a solo in one of our main set-pieces, entitled ‘Hush-A-Bye, Wink-A-Bye’ which was, and remains, the gayest song ever, just by title alone. There were only a few soloists, and I was the one who started it all off with my line: “Red is the color of Santa’s sleigh.”
To further unnecessarily drive the point home, the teacher found a small red sleigh for me to hold up as I sang these words, and I loved every minute of it. The next line was delivered by my friend: “Green are the pine trees along the way,” to which she held up some pine boughs. The third line, “Gold is the sunshine on Christmas Day” was muttered by a girl named Crystal who didn’t really like me, and the feeling was mutual so I’m not sure what she had to hold up (it most definitely was not sunshine because she was more sour than an unripe lemon soaked in vinegar and sprinkled with gasoline).
The main chorus then swept in with all the kids joining, before another round of soloists took up the tale. We sang this in front of the entire school, in the gymnasium, on one of the last days of school before winter vacation, and it always made me feel like a star. Not because I was so great, but because I was emboldened by my classmates. Even with our little solos, we operated as a team, as a unit, as a family. We didn’t always get along perfectly (see that little girl named Crystal) but our class held it together with our own friendships and dramas in the face of the rest of the school. I’m sure other classes felt the same. It was my first brush with community and camaraderie, and it warmed the heart in the season when such stuff mattered the most.
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