I was a teenage Madrigal.
That was the name of the highly competitive coed singing group I belonged to in high school. (I was also a member of another, less selective group, the Royal Knights. The entry requirements for that group were a pulse and a Y chromosome).
The competition to join singing groups at our high school was cutthroat for females. Auditions were a display of talent that rivaled modern television competitions. The girls who made the cut into Madrigals, the elite co-ed group at the top of the performing arts hierarchy, were the complete package.
I had an older cousin (more like a sister given the confidences we shared) a couple of years ahead of me at school. She was a talented singer who had made the cut as a Madrigal.
She was also a bit bossy. Which meant that at the start of my freshman year, a couple of weeks ahead of Madrigal tryouts, she introduced me to an older female neighbor who was also a Madrigal, and together they decided I was going to audition for a spot in the group.
Having never learned to read music, my neighbor found a song in my vocal range and accompanied me on piano while I practiced. After several afternoons together, I was maximally prepared.
The requirements for males to join Madrigals, I learned, were as follows:
- A half-decent voice.
- The high school needed to already have a used tux in your size.
It was a low bar. I auditioned with my song and was accepted.
I loved the drama and music kids. They were sophisticated (they drank and had relationships), comfortable in their skin (eccentricity and artistry go hand in hand), and accepting (of me and pretty much anyone else that walked in the door).
Drama was a destination for misfits, and I liked most of them immediately. The never-do-well son of a prominent judge. The foreign exchange student from Japan who was a concert pianist. The daughter of the Salvation Army preacher who dated bad boys. A contingent of flirtatious, unattainable girls from an extremely religious youth group.
Participating in the musicals (which I did twice) was a gateway to either develop a crush or find a girlfriend way cuter than you were (I succeeded in the former and failed in the latter).
Perhaps the greatest example of this was when one year's Homecoming Queen auditioned for the musical only to fall for the drama nerd lead, a curly-haired stoner who wore trenchcoats (recall that this was decades before trenchcoats became associated with the Columbine High shootings).
Their relationship endured for the remainder of high school, to the chagrin of every inebriated football player in the school.
I was a floater in high school, so this was one of several worlds I had access to during those formative years.
But the feeling of enjoying a creative outlet, of taking risks and being vulnerable in front of friends who thought you were fine as you were, even if the latest version you tried out for fit might not be well-suited to you - that was my first experience with radical acceptance.
[Stay tuned for Part 2]