Opera Phantom loner loses only friend in regretful scandal
A full measure of the only true regret I have from this life
In the summer in Indiana when I was a kid, there were summer school options for fun (and not just to get up to speed for kids who were behind). My parents signed me up for an outdoor camp-like session one year.
I hated school. What made them think I’d be happy losing out on part of my summer to go there? Leaving every day meant I couldn’t wander down to the crick (not big enough to be a creek) to catch the tiny minnows and tadpoles and crawdads. I wouldn’t be rescuing injured birds or collecting mayonnaise jars full of insects. Summers of my youth were all about me-time, about exploring the countryside or engaging in art projects in the musty basement under that house. I could spend hours whittling or building a cardboard maze for our pet rabbits to navigate (poorly).
Friends? Why, no, I didn’t have those.
13- or 14-year-old me was skinny and awkward. Nerdy. Geeky. I slouched my way through middle school in some combination of oversized glasses and my brother’s hand-me-down clothes than came from a second-hand store in the first place. Sure, there were plenty of moments when I tried the pretty girl act. My hair was always long, but my shoulders have always been too wide to be dainty. Girl clothes fit me funny. They made my otherness stand out even worse. And I felt like a fool in them, like a fake (which I was).
Knowing I was different, and because I come from a musically oriented family on both my mother’s and father’s sides, my parents got me involved in a professional children’s choir in Indianapolis (you can still find ICC, the Indianapolis Children’s Choir, performing in that state… I was a founding member back in the 1980s) as an extracurricular activity. I thrived there. And that’s where I learned about this incredible musical, The Phantom of the Opera.
The older girls in the choir would show up regularly, donning Phantom t-shirts, passing around mixtape copies of the original London cast recording (which I still own on CD today). I would listen in on them singing various songs or segments, enthralled by their mastery of the dialogue, their vast knowledge of each role, that character’s motivations, their unsung desires. I wanted to be just like them.
[I need some yellow police crime scene tape with the words GEEK OUT on it over and over to delineate this section.]
Feel free to skip this section if you’re not a diehard fan of musicals, or of TPOTO, and please try not to think less of me for how intensely I will geek out about it myself. Nobody’s perfect, after all.
Full transparency, I’m betting you and I see and hear very different things when we listen to any part of the Phantom soundtrack. You likely see a romance between Christine and Raoul, obstructed by the morally corrupt and murderous Phantom, Erik, who (supposedly) dies in the end. I, on the other hand, see two things. Thing 1, Christine always loved Erik, but she sacrificed him and her love for him for normalcy, because the world simply wasn’t ready for them to be what they were. Thing 2, Christine WAS the phantom. There never was an Erik. It was her all along, and it’s really a transition story then ends badly. Someday I’ll write that up for you to prove my point.
Those girls in choir were obsessed with the relationship between Christine and Raoul, about how romantic it was, how Raoul was willing to sacrifice himself for his love of Christine (which isn’t really true at all, I say as I roll my eyes). Their love song was always the one track I’d fast forward through (yes, on a cassette tape).
The best part of the entire thing is how utterly vengeful the Phantom was about being othered and excluded from the world, a world that could be so much more beautiful had it made a place for him in it. And as a teenaged boy masquerading as a girl (wink wink, Phantom fans), the pain of the entire musical was both too much to bear and on repeat constantly.
[End of my fanboy drooling over Michael Crawford, which was completely intentional.]
Back to summer school. So there’s me, the kid with zero friends, zero cool, and zero chance of enjoying my summer with a bunch of other kids who already hate me and love to bully me for being a queer twerp. But they combined a couple of grades for this session, and another girl, a grade or two younger than me, is off to the fringes looking lonely and bored.
If you’ve ever been the not-cool kid, the best way to suffer through is to find other not-cool kids. It’s a risk. Sometimes the level of geekiness isn’t a match (like all those dudes in high school wearing black trench coats and playing Magic the Gathering in the hallways between classes). Or sometimes YOU get rejected for presuming the other not-cool kid wants to be anywhere near you. I’ve had all of those outcomes and more. But sometimes you get lucky, and your geek level matches, and a friendship grows.
That’s exactly what happened between me and Susan.
Me, nervous and bored and worried, and noticing she is reading a paperback, “Whatchya readin?”
Her, flipping over the cover, showing me the title, Phantom, by author Susan Kay. “It’s… complicated,” she says, clearly hedging as to whether or not to get into the whole thing about Phantom of the Opera theories and thoughts with someone who might not know or care. With someone who might think that’s geeky.
I’m going to save you the thrilling teenage discussion that ensued, but rest assured we found common ground within seconds. I fell in love with the book once she described it, and I eventually bought a copy of my own. And Susan, with someone sitting beside her who got it, blossomed. She was funny and smart, she had so many ideas to share, and we spent half that summer discussing all of them.
My dad has this thing he does, where he skips to the last page of a novel to see if the protagonist lives, and so – in honor of him – I’m going to tell you right now, this story does not have a happy ending. But nobody dies.
In the midst of Susan and I becoming friends in our own little geek pod, a larger problem was brewing. As a kid on the fringe (and middle school was the height of that problem for me), I was forever guarding myself from the next tragedy. If it wasn’t outright physical bullying, it would be othering and exclusion from all of middle school society as a whole. And I was terrible at managing that ostracization. I desperately wanted to have friends somewhere anywhere, and I was forever on the lookout for a moment – a word, a nod, some recognition – where I might be let in, even if only briefly. And, of course, such a moment arose (how coincidental!) as my friendship with Susan grew.
The other kids, from across the park at their own picnic table, saw me, motioned to me, and explained to me that I was better than Susan. She was such a nerd, after all. Oversized glasses (like mine), bad hair (like mine), ill fitting out-of-fashion clothes (like mine). I could do better. I should do better. I could be friends with them. I could be in the popular kid group. They would laugh at my stupid amazing jokes, and I’d be let in on all the cool rumors about everyone else at school. Maybe they’d even let me know when the next roller-skating night would be.
“All you have to do,” the prettiest girl explained, “is go tell her she’s a nerd and you don’t want to be friends anymore. Cuz we can’t hang out with you if you’re going to hang out with her.” I’m pretty sure she flipped her perfect hair after saying that part.
You know what’s about to happen. And if you had any decency, you’d invent a time machine and go back to 1990-whenever and reason with me. I’ve got some parts in my garage, and I’m working on it, but I haven’t found a reasonably priced flux capacitor on eBay just yet.
Go on, shake your head at me. Tell me how they’ll turn on me the moment I say those crushing words to Susan. Remind me that they’ve never once told me the truth or been kind, and that I should have learned from this same mistake already. Explain in detail that the best friendships I will have in my life are the ones that were distinctly NOT cool. Please. Please do this. Please don’t stick me with this memory, forever haunting me decades later into adulthood.
Susan
Was
Crushed.
And I did that to her. Me. Stupid, needy, not popular, not getting friends anytime, me. And there was no saving things once that damage was done. Yes, I tried to apologize, and Susan (good for her) did not give me the time of day. And I got exactly what I deserved – I was utterly alone all over again.
My kids literally cried when I told them this story. They thought it was the saddest thing they’d ever heard! And maybe they’re right. It still guts me to this day that I did it, and I absolutely regret the entire thing.
I think of her whenever I listen to the Phantom soundtrack (which is more often than reasonable, given my age, my music library, and the importance of my wife not thinking I’m a total loser addicted to an 80’s musical). I still own the book, the same one I bought back then, and it’s laced with these memories. I’ve never really tried to look her up. I’m too scared. I’m scared to face how big of an asshole I was, too scared to ask for forgiveness when I don’t deserve it, too scared to feel that rejection from her that I gave first. So I avoid it as best I can, but it never goes away. It’s bigger than guilt. It’s more than shame. That moment was life-altering for me, and so maybe, maybe you shouldn’t go back in time and save me. Maybe you should let me eff that up royally so that I’ll know this pain and hold it close and never, ever do that to another human for the rest of my life. Maybe this is why I turned out the way that I am now.
Maybe this is why I believe in being kind, even when people are shitty to me.
I don’t know where Susan is today, if she’s alive, if she’s happy, if her life turned out beautiful or hard, if she figured out where to find friends who stay for all the right reasons. Part of me really wants to know. That part wants to apologize, but I can never think of anything adequate to say to match the harm I created in that moment. It feels too big to fix. I’ll probably never resolve any of this.
And in the end, the Phantom sacrifices himself so that Christine and Raoul can escape. “Go now! Go now and leave me!”
Hey, Susan? You were so smart to walk away and not say a word back to me. I was a jerk. I’m so sorry for what I did, not because I instantly got rejected by the popular kids, but because I was stupid enough to let go of a great friendship with you. And because I hurt you, and it was effective. I wish I’d been a better person, and I’ve spent my whole life trying to do just that. I hope someday you see this and know that I get it now. I get what’s really important. And I would love to listen to that soundtrack with you again.
Your trans friend,
Robin