Onward, Dear Friend

dying/rising

The applause was booming, some might say raucous, and it lasted quite awhile. Some folks were recording the occasion so I’m sure I could retrieve an accurate time stamp if I desired or had more journalistic integrity. Suffice to say, the applause was loud and long. The walls of the church felt like they were vibrating, themselves joining in the thunderous acclamation of the congregation inside. JB was beet red from holding back a sob and from general embarrassment. It’s ironic that a professional musician hates to be the center of attention but as an actor who hates to be the center of attention (truly) I get it.

That ovation was a jubilant thank-you. It was a commemoration born from deep respect. It was a hooray, a bravo, and a hip-hip. An honoring. Every clap was a send-off and a well wish. After 20 years as music director, my dear friend JB was retiring. It was the bookend to a rich decades-long career. He was playing his final mass. As I looked around at the packed choir loft, filled with some faces I hadn’t seen in years, JB’s wasn’t the only one beet red.

It’s hard for me to unpack the significance of his retirement. I walked out of church that morning more shaken up than I expected. Perhaps it was folly of me to think otherwise. For the last 20ish years, JB has been a friend, mentor, director, confidant, teacher, and all around VIP to me. As such, his retirement also bookends a significant era of my life.

Walking up the stairs to the rehearsal hall that first day I’m sure I was nervous to the point of nausea. At that age, 14 or 15 (I’m not sure which), most new things scared me to the point of nausea. I was certain choir was for me though. I was certain there was a great singer inside of me. I knew that the loud squawking I did in the shower (and bedroom and backyard and basement and grocery store) sounded amazing. All I needed was training? An opportunity? An outlet?

The night was billed as come-try-choir-no-commitment which is silly given that I would have signed up sight unseen. The details of that evening are hazy when I look back. A couple of decades will do that to the brain. I do remember sharing sheet music with Dan who I thought knew everything (he didn’t). I remember thinking sheet music was like hieroglyphics (it is). I remember learning that I was a bass because that tenor shit is too high (still true). And I remember thinking the director, JB, might be the funniest human I’ve ever met (also still true).

Who’s to say what those early weeks, months, and even years looked like but I continued attending Wednesday night rehearsals and Sunday masses throughout high school. Before I knew it I was a full-on chorister. I was a part of the group. JB still recounts the time, early in my tenure, when he asked if I wanted to grab drinks with the rest of the crew only to have my mom (who came to pick up her not-yet-driving son) pipe up nearby, “um, you know he’s only 15 right?” Alas he did not know. No one did. I’ve always looked a bit older.

Choir was a special other space. While still a high schooler, I became ingrained in a small community of adults. That rehearsal hall was the only space where I wasn’t around family or other teenagers. There were some college-aged singers that came through over the years but, by and large, I was the youngest person there for a long time. Singing was what unified us. It created a level playing field and offered a means to connect in a way where age didn’t matter.

Eventually I was invited to the inner circle. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I helped build the inner circle. But in either case I was regularly having dinner, card nights, pedicures, movie nights, lunches, and coffee with folks in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. From the outside I’m sure we looked like a motley crew of weirdos. A hodge podge of mismatched people. Or maybe a strange intergenerational, multiracial family. And in a manner of speaking, we were.

The shocking thing looking back is that I never once felt inferior or othered for being young. Sure there were probably some conversations and outings I wasn’t privy to because of my age. But I didn’t know about those. I got to be on the inside. I was never patronized or infantilized. I was valued and I belonged. My existence in the group never felt strange or out of place. Save for the fact that JB never let me touch alcohol in front of him while I was underage.

During this period I forged friendships that will last a lifetime. At least they’ve lasted my lifetime thus far. I met Suzanne who continues to be a soulfriend, a kindred spirit who knows me deeply because we are cut from the exact same hilarious, inappropriate, loud, inquisitive, vulgar, talk-outside-the-restaurant-until-3am, beautiful clothe. Church and choir and this weirdo group of misfits made that connection happen.

And at the heart of it all was JB. He was, and is, universally funny and has made me weep tears of laughter more than any human on earth. He was, and is, painfully talented with a divine baritone voice, insane organ playing skills, and a behemoth knowledge of music. He is deeply spiritual but will cuss a hoe out if you get mouthy. And though he didn’t ask for it and would reject the insinuation, all of us fell into his orbit. His personhood is the type to set the temperature in a room. His humor, his openness, his kindness, and his generosity draw people in. There’s a gravitational pull. We plebeians are defenseless against it. I’ve seen it time and time again over the last 20 years.

As time went on, JB and I developed a rich relationship, one that was hard to categorize in my younger years. It made most sense to call him a mentor and teacher. He taught me music. He taught me how to sing. He taught me how to sing in front of other people, eventually entrusting me as a soloist. I cannot overstate how profoundly this impacted my development as a human. With his instruction and encouragement, I learned to stand in front of others confidently as myself. While I never took my musical education that seriously, a bone JB has picked many times over, learning to sing shaped me so extensively that I’m unable to parse out who I would be without it.

What stuns and humbles me looking back at those early years is that JB loved me in a way I couldn’t have known I desperately needed. He was an adult male who saw me, truly saw me, and didn’t ask me to change. He didn’t need me to be less loud, less gay, less weird. I could show up as the most honest version of myself and it was celebrated. Of course he would check my shit when my shit needed checking but its’t that also love? And maybe he was showing up for me that way because no one showed up for him at that age. He knew better than anyone the unique heartache that comes with growing up in this cruel world while inhabiting a queer body. Maybe he saw me because he saw himself. In either case, he became a shield that made the world a little less violent.

I continued as a soloist and chorister through college, into my 20s, and even into my 30s. It became the steady backdrop of my life. Something I would move away from (quite literally to Chicago and Los Angeles) and return to over and over and over again. In recent years, my relationship to the church changed. With my own spiritual evolution, there came a crossroads where I could no longer accept certain things from the institution.

…but that’s for another PDW.

The love of singing never did change. For the last several years it was the only thing getting me through the door.

That and JB.

Our once mentor/mentee relationship has gently and easily morphed into simple friendship. It’s a friendship steeped in a rich shared history, one chock full of first loves, heartbreaks, big dreams, dashed hopes, deaths, sickness, triumphs, and about a thousand lunches.

So while JB was holding back a sob during that final thundering applause, I too held back my own tears. Afterwards he jokingly reassured us, “I’m not dying.” And while it’s true that he’s not dead, I am grieving. I’m wading through the aftermath of what feels like death. It’s the death of something steadfast. It’s the death of a childhood and young adult life that I can never go back to. It’s the grief of something which cannot be recaptured.

One of the brilliant things about nature and this existence, and a church idea I actually stand by, is that death always comes with rebirth. Endings mean Something New gets space to begin. So while I grieve what once was and can never be again, I see nothing but possibility ahead. And the rebirth my friend JB now gets to have, a new life built on rest and pleasure and nourishment and a gentler pace, is one I am eager and overjoyed to witness.

Onward, dear friend.