Metamorphosis
I was very, very lucky when I entered High School (Lycée / 6th Form): I got into the School of Performing Arts. Which, I think, may have saved my life. I was now largely sheltered from the masculinised world and the derision and abuse it routinely heaped upon me.
There was music and dance and acting. Language requirements were satisfied in reading Shakespeare and Molière and O’Neill. There were classes and rehearsals and productions; stage carpentry and lighting design and costuming. I was encouraged to work building sets; I demurred. My mother had taught me to sew from a young age; I took costume design and worked with other women, pre-production. There was a huge wardrobe department with everything from mediaeval to modern, and we would play dress-up. The slinky 1920s numbers were a teenage favourite, as were the Elizabethan dresses with their push-up bodices (those were my favourite). I felt safe and accepted. There were no men here.
Everyone took music in some form; there were orchestras and jazz bands and choruses. I sang. I learnt the soprano parts, but my voice had changed; so, painful as it had been to lose my high, pure voice (and ear-splitting shriek!), I now sang bass.
Maths and sciences had to be taken in the regular school, where the straight males were practicing their verbal and physical assaults. I skipped class and failed.
Instead of having to endure the horror of the gym and its locker rooms, I got to meet the physical education requirement in dance class, changing in co-ed dressing rooms. Dancers are comfortable displaying their bodies, and the few men are assumed to be gay; co-ed nudity was a non-issue. I attended extra classes and rehearsals; I excelled. Male dancers wear a thing called a ‘dance belt’, which is almost like tucking. Sometimes I wore a dance belt even when not dancing.
My father viewed all this with open scorn. Had my participation in The School required his funding or even his approval I would never have had access to this blessed refuge. I had secured my own admission and, thankfully, he’d quite given up on me by this point, had ceased his attempts to shape me after himself. If he never attended my recitals, at least he ignored me. I skipped maths and took up smoking and he never said a word.
I sang in concert, performed with the dance company, was in a few theatrical productions. My instructors were complimentary of my work and pushed me to audition. Music and dance were no problem, but I had a dreadful time with acting auditions. Unlike dance, when it came to acting I was certain I looked and sounded stupid (I was extremely dysphoric, my changing voice and appearance horrified me), and so I usually procrastinated and went into theatrical auditions woefully unprepared, learning lines the day before the audition, or even the same morning. I would be up for leading roles, and always came away with some minor role, never one I’d read for. And I did it anyway: I loved the theatre.
In my second year at The School, there was to be a production of one of my absolute heart-throb shows — Cabaret. The only role I wanted was, of course, Sally. I’d have settled for Rosie or Lulu. I was up for Cliff and the Emcee. I absolutely did not want to be Cliff, and the ambiguously-gendered, cross-dressing Emcee seemed like a hideous parody of my circumstances.* I wouldn’t even try out; I worked stage crew.
I don’t recall the name of the girl who got the part of Sally. She was a ‘new kid’, came out of the music department, and had never before performed in a show. She got the part despite this, thanks to her utterly unbelievable voice. What a Voice! It didn’t hurt that she was curvaceous and stunningly beautiful.
She was quite shy at first, with virtually no presence and a tendency to hunch a bit, as recently well-endowed young girls sometimes do. She had not acted before, and people were worried that she would not be able to learn the over-the-top persona of a Sally Bowles. But her posture straightened-up when she sang, and over the weeks of rehearsals she changed, as if Sally gradually moved into the shy girl-child and took up residence, shaping the ensemble into a new form — a sexy, brash, confident woman who knew her own mind and desires. I adored her. I watched her metamorphosis happen, week over week, and the intense longing this brought out in me was nearly unbearable. I desperately needed metamorphosis, but for me it was off-limits: she could become Sally, for all to see and admire, but I could not. I never found the courage to speak to her, not once.
There were two theatres attached to The School; the 600-seat ‘Little Theatre’ where most school productions were staged, and the 3500-seat ‘Community Theatre’ which was occasionally used for larger school productions, but was usually reserved for professional events. The Stones played there once. I worked crew on that one; Jagger brushed past me a couple times, in the wings. It was amazing. The Royal Ballet came through on tour and did two weeks. I was a Level-5 student of ballet at the time. I spent every show backstage, in the wings, watching the ballerinas rosin their toes before going on, their wide smiles breaking into huge gasping gulps of air as they came off, smelling the makeup and the sweat. That was even more amazing.
A full staging of Cabaret requires a stage-on-a-stage, an on-stage ‘audience’, and an orchestra. The Little Theatre stage could not accommodate all this, so the production was scheduled for the Community Theatre. As at other times when school productions used the larger theatre, the relatively small attendance were seated in the A-section, front and centre, whilst off-scene cast and crew hung out in the enormous balcony.
Our shows ran six weeks, with the final shows scheduled after exams so everyone could cut-loose. Cabaret got top reviews in the local papers, and by the third weekend all 3500 seats were sold-out; something that hadn’t happened before.
Sally was amazing. I think she sold those seats all by herself.
After the closer, an informal after-party assembled and moved into a nearby, open-late cafe we used to frequent after classes and shows. There were probably 30 or 40 of us, many still in makeup, chattering and singing refrains from Cabaret as we arrived and took over one side of the place. Customers shifted to the other side of the cafe, making room with amused tolerance for the sudden crowd of pretty, mellifluous, wound-up kids. The place was packed.
Now seated, beverages distributed and cigarettes lit, the cast and crew chattered and gestured and laughed. Small groups broke sporadically into song. One gained ascendance, as the men rendered a strong chorus of Tomorrow Belongs to Me, ending to clapping from our group and regular patrons alike.
A chant began: ‘Sally, Sally, Sal-ly, SAL-LY!’ She stood and was pushed, first up onto a chair, then onto the large table at the centre of our group. She inhaled deeply, brought on her stage smile, and began the title song —
What good is sitting, alone in your room?
Come hear the music play!
Life is a cabaret, old chum!
Come to the cabaret!
The waiter turned, the proprietor came out from behind the bar; by twos and threes, the regular clientele rose from their tables.
Come taste the wine
Come hear the band
Come blow your horn
Start celebrating
Right this way your table’s waiting.
That Voice, with a power that had been developed to fill an auditorium, reverberated through the cafe. I was spellbound, could hardly breathe. She was glorious. The song was too short. She belted the final line, sustaining the final note for three full measures, head high, her arms spread wide.
And I love a ca — ba — ret — — !
The house broke into applause. Cast and crew cheered and stomped and banged on tables. Clapping and whistles and banging crescendoed, filling the cafe. Emotion was like physical pressure. I felt disoriented. She remained on the table for a minute, gasping and smiling, and from my seat near the perimeter I could see the beads of sweat on her forehead and cheeks and arms as — first to one side and then the next — she curtseyed and grinned and blew kisses to the audience. Applause continued as, flushed and happy, she stepped down into the arms of friends and took her seat, out of my view. I was in tears. Never in my life have I wanted to be someone else more than I wanted to be Sally in that moment.
My own metamorphosis would come, but would be delayed another fourteen years.
The next year, things were very different: Seventeen: Sex and the Trans Girl.
Find out what happened before this story in my Girl series.
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