Richter Scale Crushes

Note: I'm applying for my first solo show festival with an entry entitled "Christy Learns to Be Goth." I think it will be really fun and stuff. The festival has asked me to submit samples of my work. Unfortunately, there is only one recording of me performing, and it's the Most Depressing Story Ever. So I decided to submit a more comedic example in writing too. Here is a funny story about me in junior high school:

When I was in junior high school, I had a pretty rough time. I mean, junior high school is generally a difficult time. Your peers tend to be assholes that are so afraid of looking weak that they feast on your weaknesses. It was no different for me. It didn’t help that I was pretty obvious about my weaknesses. I knew everything in class, wore dresses my mother bought me instead of nice jeans, and climbed the fences around the schoolyard when bored at lunch, so they teased me mercilessly. It would range from calling me “Crazy Christy” to spitting in my backpack.

On top of that, I was in the incipient stages of my bipolar disorder. By the time I was 12, I would spend most days in my classes with my journal, writing poems with titles like “Schooltime Loneliness.” I would also comment on how much I hated myself and wondered if it was worth living. I would drag through the day exhausted and somewhat regularly having fits of crying that would last to close to an hour. Then at night I would try to go to bed, only to be unable to fall asleep. Instead I would be thinking about my day and how horrible it was. I would finally drift off around 2 in the morning. Then I had to get up at 6:30 and do it all over again.

My saving grace in all of this was a very kind drama teacher that we’ll call Ms. Anderson. I had wound up in one of her classes when I was in the seventh grade. She was the type of person who took pity on all the student outcasts and clowns and put them to work somehow in the drama department. As for me, she casted me in the school play, had me help build the sets for it, and when she saw me hanging out in the auditorium while she was working with the developmentally disabled kids, started making me come in on my lunch periods to help with that class. Being a needy, lonely tween who knew kindness when she saw it, I spent all my time around the drama department. If it weren’t for her, I probably would be far, far worse off.

One night though, not long after the school production of Damn Yankees, I was having trouble falling asleep as usual. I decided to think about a happy memory, something to soothe me to sleep. In this case, I was reliving the final bows on the last night of the show. However, I was editing the details slightly. I was remembered hugging Ms. Anderson on stage after I took my bow. While doing so, I had accidentally held the back of her head for a moment.

In real life, I had pulled my hand away immediately. I was being way too intimate and it was not something a student should do. But in the moment of remembrance, I realized I was adding a new scene, where I was not jerking away, but moving closer and making out with her, something that definitely did not happen on that stage that night.

That’s about when I shot up in my bed in a panic and realized, oh, I like women.

I didn’t sleep much that night or the next. I was horrified that I thought the way I did, that I was wondering what she felt like, and how she kissed, and how did women have sex anyway? It wasn’t like I had anything against not-straight people, but I was fully aware of the whole “my peers hate me and think I’m crazy” thing and here I was adding fuel to the fire. Deep down, I thought my only way out of being that crazy hated person was to go win a cute guy over and date and stuff. But no, I was going off and fucking that up too. Great job. My work here is done.

Making this even more agonizing was the fact that I had to be in close proximity to the woman I loved, but her being my teacher and me being complete jailbait made it kind of impossible to act on my feelings. Instead, I could only silently long as she taught us improv exercises and feel my heart flutter any time she spoke to me in process dramas based off of historical events. As it were, I was sure she could tell that I was giving off dyke attraction signals and panicked as a result. I was careful to not make eye contact with her any longer than necessary and kept anything said out of character as brief and monotone as possible. Thankfully, after cautious observation for a few weeks, she didn’t seem to be treating me any differently, so I just had to deal with wondering how she looked naked when she was sitting two feet away from me.

However, my attraction to Ms. Anderson was intriguing on another level. Even though I couldn’t make out with her, I could still like women in general. So when another girl at my junior high school, Marlene, expressed that she found me attractive and wanted to date me secretly, I decided to give it a try.
Unfortunately, the whole dating secretly thing didn’t work out as planned. One of Marlene’s friends had told some other kids at school that we were dating. It went through the schoolyard like fire. I found myself facing a boy who shoved a picture of a topless woman at me and asked me if I wanted to fuck that. I wound up grabbing him by the collar and shoving him into a wall hard. Then I went running into the girl’s bathroom screaming and crying. One of the social studies teachers went in there to get me out. I was curled up against the wall, and refused to leave.

She said, “Here, let me get you a guidance counselor.”

I said, “No. I want Ms. Anderson.”

Ms. Anderson then came into the bathroom. She brought me down to the hallway outside of the theater to talk.

“Christy, what’s wrong?”

I wanted to answer, “The fact that I want to fuck you! That’s what’s wrong!”

Instead, I told her, “My friend told people that I’m dating a girl and that I’m bisexual.”

Ms. Anderson immediately was upset, and went, “that’s horrible, Christy, I’m so sorry…”

I cut her off. “No! The problem is--I am bi!”

She went silent for a moment. “Oh,” she said.

I waited for the judgement. Instead, she asked in a friendly manner, “Who is your girlfriend?”

I was relieved. It would probably be okay.

Now here’s the thing. There’s this condition known as “being a bipolar tween with hormones and poor impulse control.” I couldn’t help but think at that moment of reassurance and friendliness on her part that “I could just tell her that I like her. It would be fine. I really like her. She should totally know. I could tell her. Why don’t I tell her…”

Thankfully my brain kicked in and I thought “NO! Not telling her! REALLY BAD IDEA!”

Over the next few weeks, I was back to watching her cautiously. After my big reveal about my sexuality, I was terrified that she would confirm to people that I wasn’t straight or that she would be mean to me. However, aside from even more schoolyard speculation and the abuse that came from that, I didn’t notice anything different from her. My feelings for her became more intense as I realized that I could trust her. Soon I was unloading on her on a regular basis about how shitty I felt all the time. I even would hide out backstage with her when I had my crying fits. Unfortunately, as my depressive episodes spiraled more and more out of control, I was coming by more and more often.

After one really bad crying jag, Ms. Anderson took me into a storage area off the theater so we could have more privacy to talk.

“Christy, is there anything that really makes you happy?”

She was standing in front of me while I sat on top of a student desk, looking between my feet.
It was really hard in that moment. All I wanted to tell her was, “well, yeah. You.” But I couldn’t.
However, the condition of “being a bipolar tween with hormones and poor impulse control” was yet again having an effect on me. Once again I was thinking, “I could tell her. I really could. I mean, I really should. Being honest is good…”

This time though, I thought, “ALL RIGHT. I need to tell her SOMETHING about how I feel.”

I looked up at her. She was waiting.

“Ms. Anderson...you...mean a lot to me. If...I had to measure it on the Richter scale...it would be a 10.0”

Keep in mind that the earthquake that destroyed San Francisco in 1906 was an 8.0, so I was really conveying strong feelings here.

She looked at me for a moment.

“The Richter scale, huh? That’s...pretty intense.”

That’s when it occurred to me that perhaps some things are better left unsaid.

I forget now how I managed to talk my way out of basically admitting that I had a crush on her. It didn’t seem to disrupt things. She continued to teach me and listen to me, and shepherded me through the rest of junior high school. However, I’m pretty sure neither of us look at the Richter scale in the same way.