CHAPTER 25

The Carnivals of Camouflage

   Of the parade of kids that passed through the professional schools I attended, many became celebrities and some openly revealed their troubled kidhoods, as did Patty Duke.

   She entered my life in Quintano's high school dressed as a much younger than she was as a Buster Brown dress alike, with a very angry spirit. No opportunity slipped by her wherein she could tattle on another kid, or report them cheating on a test. I never figured her one girl crusade to get others in trouble, nor her lonely anger.

   Not until I recently heard of the private hell she was then signed up to jail within herself did I begin to understand the girl I once knew.

   We could have exchanged many stories had we known our shared secrets. Had we known we weren't as alone as we both must have felt.

   Sure, I sensed many other kids didn't seem to be happy campers. Kids whose moms would not merit their picture being placed next to Perfect Parent in the encyclopedia. Parents who publicly roughed up their kids if they lost an audition or blew a televised line.

   Though there was a common denominator with the stage moms I met, because that denominator was so common, I thought nothing of it. Nearly every mom separated from her husband once her kid became the chief bread baker. Once the kid's financial shoulders could be leaned on, pop was popped out of the picture.

   Ergo! Why we rarely heard of stage fathers.

   The mothers also shared the same quasi-career: travel agents for kiddo guilt trips. By not having personal career goals or actual outside jobs, the child became their proxy work-self; the champion enlisted to carry the mom's banner of success into the world. Those bizarre teams led to a strange disbalancing act. I saw many kids panic when told to leave a casting line. Not from losing the part, rather from knowing they'd have to face their mom's wrath of con, via hearing how their “failure” was draining the family wallet.

   There's one memory that typified a scene from Terror in the Wings — Kidian Style. Sandra, a 12 year old classmate of mine, who was auditioning with me and some other kids, had just been excused from the casting call because we were not the right types.

   We walked to the Broadway theater's alley where her mom was waiting with several other moms for the verdict. Having gotten the answer from Sandra's face, she began to yell: “You didn't get it. How could you do this to me?”

   This guilt excursion seemed to last forever.

   Ashley wasn't there, which freed me to observe the observers. It was an eerie scene of allied silence. Smirks spread across the other mothers' faces as if grateful Sandra's mom could get their message through to their kids. While the kids looked on, grateful they weren't the targets — this time.

   I never heard of any kid getting teased for how their mom would embarrass them. Possibly because we all knew how much it hurt. We had all been there, and we all knew that today's teaser could be tomorrow's target. The odds were too great to start a mock war.

   I'm sure there were mothers who were not so stagy. At least, that's what I wanted to believe. Though I can't recall one. Every encounter I had with the altering-egos seemed to have more energy invested in stardom than their kids, than their marriage or their own soular reason for living.

QUESTIONS:

Were we abused because of show biz? Did we lose our kidhoods?

   I still can't see it. As with all kids living their particular version of kidhood, it was simply our kidhood venue. As with all kids, there was no alternative.

   In fact, I see my trip into Show & Sell as a blessing. It gave me a life outside of my home life. It offered an arena that gave immediate feedback on my outward talents. I had paycheck validation that my singing, dancing and acting were of value. Ergo! So was I, at least the performing side of me.

   As to the abuse and domination I saw leveled at other kids … that can happen to any kid if a parent is an angry controller. Some parents can go ballistic over a lost little league game, as can a Rink Mother when her Olympic-in-training child skater trips and falls on a spin. Abuse happens in any setup where an abuser rules. It's just more publicly obvious and obviously publicized in show business.

   As I see it, if any parent is intent on abusing a kid, show business may be a better arena than most. At least, the kid is positioned in a setup where they can earn as they learn and get outside feedback and a sense of superficial love and approval, which is better than none. Plus, they get a chance to juice their creative energies and explore their artistic potential, if they choose.

   I was lucky to have an emotional venting ground. For me, the benefits outweighed the burdens.

   Except for my stint in the Catholic programming center, the only schools I attended were for kid performers: Willard Mace, Professional Children's School, Lodge and Quintano's School for Young Professionals, all in Manhattan. Everyone seemed to play bounceball through them all. Why that was, I did not know.

   These private schools all plopped out of the same mold: classes were from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with minimal homework; attendance was thoroughly sporadic what with so many kids being excused for auditions, rehearsals or out-of-town shows. Due to the minimal number of kids available, all grades were intermingled. There was little cognizance of who was in which grade. And, we had no outside activities, as work provided that. School spirit ranged from “This sure beats civilian life!” to ZIPPO!

   I say ZIPPO! because everyone seemed so unreachable. I can't recall one chummy friendship between any of the kids I knew. Not a one. And considering our tiny sphere, it would have been hard to miss. Everyone was so enmeshed in solving personal puzzles.

   The advantage in this was the lack of peer pressure. I can't recall any gang-up hatred for other kids because they were different in dress or race. Different was normal as there was no majority standard. There was no group to be in with.

   In Looks would have been professional suicide. I can't imagine showing up for an audition with all the girls in similar clothes or hair styles, unless the role required a specific type. Then it would not have been peer pressure rather, career pressure.

   The more I settled into being one of Broadway's Kids, the less I assumed all other kids lived happily-ever-after with sweet aproned moms baking pies, surrounded by supportive families, good buddies and no pressure greater than which dress to wear next day.

   The more I stopped, looked and listened to the kids I schooled and worked with, the less alienated I felt. I realized I was regular, according to something. And even though it was a strange land, it was amply colonized.

   Due to the lack of kid unity, peer pressure was unheard of. Only Stage Mom Pressure. No one duplicated another by choice, except when a desperate mother intervened if her child was out of work.

EXAMPLE:

In Willard Mace, where I was first enrolled. Patty McCormack, a classmate, was starring as Rhoda in The Bad Seed. Her success heralded a silent dictum that all out-of-work girls ought to be platinum blond with precision cut bangs and cutsie dresses puffed with stiff crinolines. Ergo! Umpteen moms marched their girls off to get them bleached and braided into Rhoda look-a-likes.

   Outside of these panic peroxide parades, I figure the drive toward uniqueness caused the lack of bigotry. Difference was promoted. And with the variety of needed types, our student body was akin to a mini-United Nations. Though Gregory and Maurice Hines were the only Black kids I knew, there were also Asian kids from The World of Suzy Wong and other shows. I can't recall ever hearing that race was a Target Sport. Our social priorities were so juxtaposed.

   School education was a low priority compared to success education. I recall a silent unity in the Lodge School to con the Board of Education into keeping our setup alive. The principal chose the students who would attend the next day's class so as to present the best scholastic picture to the authorities monitoring our school.

   Hey! Let the Masquerade continue!

   Yet, there was no anger with the ones who were told to take the day off as they just saw it as free time for more important issues, like making rounds to the casting offices.

   To illustrate the extreme stance my classmates took when it came to priorities, the guys from a nearby public school once challenged the guys from our school to a rumble. I guess they were trying to live West Side Story, not knowing two of our guys actually danced in the Broadway production.

   They gathered outside Quintano's, which was two rooms over a beauty salon at 156 West 56th Street. They loudly taunted our guys with votes of whimphood, daring them to come down and fight it out just to see who was the toughest on the block.

   That was not enough incentive. But if Otto Preminger or Hal Prince was there casting for an upcoming production, well maybe. I later fantasized what a giggle it would have been had those seniors danced out the doors humming the “Rumble” music, twirled and leaped up the street and ran like hell after turning the corner into Carnegie Hall. The stunned reactions of the West Side Story clones would have been a hoot of a memory.

   But, as there was no such production motivation in sight, our guys just stared out the window and, after considering the shows and commercials they were booked to do, they chose the obvious route. Those without moms in the back lounge, called their personal managers to come get them. Knowing their money was in their looks, the gang dare was worthless.

   Though that scene seems silly, they were just protecting their assets. Playing their peer game that seemed narcissistic was undeniably practical.

   Goes to show, the priorities of the peer world that directly pressures kids often matters more than age group pressures.

   Possibly, if more kids in gang infested areas valued their personal worth and creative goals, there'd be fewer rumbles.

   The common trait of my then peers was their lack of boredom. No one ever said they had nothing to do. All were so busy, immersed in their careers and reputations, that I never experienced the peer con of forced sex or guys who believed sex was the only way to gain their jollies and ego strokes.

   Careers created that power.

   I never even heard of a guy in the whispered confidence of the girl's room who sought to extort sex in exchange for a girl hearing she was desirable. Heck! The girls were paid actresses and models, so they knew they were pretty. There was little that a 15 year old guy could use for bait. Not to say sex didn't weave amidst internal thought banks, it just didn't hold preferred interest.

   We didn't have time to be bored, which may account for today's early leaps into sex and drugs. What I hear from kids these days is that they're bored; they lack creative challenge.

   Possibly they're over-nannied by TV and think the world is here to entertain them. They're waiting for the show to begin. For Big Bird to deliver a life message. Or, maybe they are so ultra-stirred by the outside stimuli of home computers and space age technology that traditional school pales. Real life hasn't caught up with Reel life.

   The only outlet that many of today's teens have is tapping into the primitive and technical side of their nature before they learn to constructively vent their creative passions. Before they have a secure grasp on who they are, on what their abilities and wants in life are.

   Considering the rising statistics of pre-teen pregnancies and gang activity, it must be a bitch to be a kid today. Though it is odd. So much emphasis is placed on kids saying “No!” to drugs, I wonder why it isn't nationally extended to curb sexual peer pressure, as in kids saying no to pressure tactics geared to kids being less than what they are capable of spiritually being.

   As I see it, kids, as adults, search for anything that can give them power, recognition and specialness. Unfortunately, the negative detours exceed the positive paths.

   In the real world, kids are limited to their school and peer gangs in finding superiority.

   Perhaps, if there were more classes in Positive Rapping, Sports, Sensitivity Awareness, Creative Manifesting and Career Building beginning at the elementary level, kids might not be relegated to the belief that their only potential lies in wearing the right gang colors, trying the newest drugs or jumping into the sex sack.

   Perhaps, if kids were jazzed early on in life to discover their creative ability and specialness; to not be satisfied with mediocrity; to see that what they're learning in school has a practical application in their personal success, then they might be less prone to self-destruct.

   No matter how bad my personal life was, I have to thank Show & Sell for giving me the hope of self-value.

   Without heartening jazz for our hearts to harmonize with, we can end up living the blues.

   By not being corralled by peer groups or age cages, I gleaned a freedom ticket to explore more challenging paths than Tradition allowed. I didn't want to wait 'til I was 18 to exit the daily time consumption of regular study.

   Accomplishing my early Thirst to Burst from convention without simultaneously dulling my baby gray cells was easy because our school offered a correspondence option.

   Though I admit, I was urged to fly on home study as a result of a catastrophe that literally fell off my head when I was 11. My hair broke off.

   Ashley felt I'd get more work as a bleached and perm-ed curled blond. She chose to create this wonder overnight, despite Babo, the hairdresser, begging her not to try this Evel stunt all at once.

   Deep in the inner cavern of Larry Mathew's downstairs salon one late rainy night, my lavender headed Babo grabbed my locks and sighed into the mirror: “Oh! Cupcake! This is not going to work.”

   Armed with his diaphanous confidence, a battery of chemical sludge soaked my skull. What seemed like three smelly years later, my curls were unrolled but stayed on the rollers.

   I was left with top fuzz and wispy threads dangling above each ear. “Voila! Just enough to attach two acrylic pony tails. After all,” Babo jollied, “it will grow back! Eventually.”

   Babo's confidence was gleaned by having had Ashley sign a disclaimer about the beauty work he warned against.

   Armed with my ash blond dangling partners, fake-o pigtails, we got home about 2 a.m. I hung my braids at the foot of the bed as I fanned the air where my thick long brown hair hung just a few hours ago.

   The last words I heard before I went to bed were: “If you didn't inherit your dad's hair, this would never have happened.” Not yet comprehending the Buck Passing Concept, I fell asleep holding a photo of my de-Earthed Greek dad with his thick black hair, wishing he could have been there to hug me to sleep.

   My mind flooded with what next? I felt my career was about to be likewise hacked off. The thought of not knowing how Ashley would navigate this glitch in my marketability was a natural No-Doz.

   I was then attending Lodge and my first class the next morning was a bitch. I went from being happily invisible to being more obvious than I ever nightmared. The teacher even commented on the little black velvet Dutch cap I wore to hide my hairy reality and the hinging points of my braids, saying: “Well, I'm auditioning for Heidi today.”

   As soon as that class was over I sped to the girl's room, aiming to lock myself in the nearest stall, but I wasn't quick enough. Joanie, a girl I knew to be a primo gossip raker, grabbed a trailing acrylic strand from my cap and yelled to the toilets: “I'm showing this to my dad who's a chemist and he'll tell me if it's real hair or not.”

   Panic ensued and I forgot that her dad was a New Jersey garbage collector. Panic can indeed numb the gray cells.

   I was desperate to run from life, fearing I'd never again live an obscure moment. At least, not until my hair grew back. I also knew that I was out of work until enough hair grew to negate my concentration-camp-inmate-image. Ergo! I exited nearly every door of public strife.

   I forged my way into the available correspondence study by duplicating Ashley's signature. This gave me the chance to continue my usual studies while accelerating my school clock. My plan relied on the Grade Skip Game which was common then. By having leap-frogged into 9th grade by age 10, the next sprint became my new focus.

   Sure. It might have been easier to have forever played hookey, as Ashley barely noticed my daily routine, but I couldn't. It would have been a copout. Not hers nor the systems, but mine. I would never have known if I was lying to my potential abilities in the name of Kidhood Survival.

   I hid my lack of school attendance by spending my days studying in the sanctuary of the humongous 42nd Street public library and in the museums and galleries amply freckling Manhattan.

   I turned into a reading addict. Besides the required stuff I memorized, I did my own outside learning. I even read books on, and practiced, fencing via using my twirling baton. I glutted on autobiographies from Houdini to Moss Hart to Dorothy Parker, etc. People stirred my curiosity. I was riveted by how they did what they did and why they did it.

   I was awed by the knowledge the library held, wondering how there could possibly be anything left for anyone to write about. Then I observed life and saw the millions of stories and relaxed, knowing there'd always be enough to read. But I never could forget that all the millions of English books in the world were all painted from the minimal palette of just 26 letters. Wow! That concept never escaped my thought process. I felt there was so much to learn and remember with so little time in this life to do it all.

   I soon felt what I was required to learn to get my high school diploma wasn't essential to reality. Still, I stuck to it as it simply became an available project. Knowing I could pass that historic checkpoint held greater import than the quality of the hurdle.

   This encouraged me to learn the value of accomplishing for me first, which perhaps is the foundation for my current belief in conscience fulfillment first. This concept felt homey as it paralleled my approach to artwork. As I painted for my private joy, I now gathered data for my brain bank to show me I could do it.

   Maybe it was the whirl I hovered in, but I don't recall any great to-do about letting me or others self-advancing their grade levels, nor adults keeping us in lower grades so as to give our emotions their proper cubicle to mature in. Possibly because most of us professional kids were so undefinable.

   It's hard to intimidate kids who deal with agents, big time auditions, live shows, who are constantly responsible for having to be on time, learn lines, juggle schedules and who operate in a world where organization means survival. It's hard to con a kid into staying in a lower grade by telling them they must act their age. Heck! What age?

   It would have been a joke for the schools to have coerced us kids whose professional talents earned the money to pay our own tuition. This clout drastically flipped the Tradition Coin.

   Even the in-school format didn't fit the logical lore with how I later learned regular schools operated. I recall our history teacher, Mr. Gunderman, lecturing on our need to memorize data of yore, saying: “You kids have to memorize scripts. What if you were as careless about your lines as you are about history?”

   Several kids piped up with variations of: “We have cue cards at work. So, maybe if you let us use some, we'd pass.”

   Gunderman countered by saying we couldn't use them if we were on Broadway and pointed to Patty Duke, who was then playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, as an example.

   Wrong! Patty, struck back by saying: “If you saw the show you'd know I play a deaf and blind kid. I don't have any lines outside of Wa-wa!”

   End of lecture.

   That twist on normal kidhood may seem a deterrent to “proper growth”, but I'm glad I lived it. We may not have had field and track, but we did have field and fact.

   I sped through my mandatory courses by applying my photographic memory. By memorizing what my teachers wanted to hear (to rate me a great student), I flexed my ability to play Grade Skip. Ergo! I came back from my 11th year safari being a few grades up. Ergo! I graduated at 13. No big deal. I was as motivated to finish that phase as I was to feel good about how I did it.

   My early hiatus left me free to explore life. What seemed a personal disaster turned into a priceless benefit for me. It encouraged my swift passage into the Liberal Arts of Non-limitation. Having no one to watch over me, the city opened its gateway for learning street smarts and practical survival courses that would be handy for my future. I eagerly rode the solitary study shuttle.

   My continuing education urged me to join the NBC Teen Workshop at 13 — as a 19 year old. This training group was run out of Rockefeller Plaza. Having worked there as a kid, it was a hoot for its production doors to be flung open because of my new age stage.

   As most of the group was in college, committing visual “adultery” was a smooth trip. The bonus was that by my immersing with an older group, I could discuss philosophies that long stirred in me. I was suddenly given carte blanche entry into creative dialogues, if not personal chit-chat.

   Having no family curfew meant that after meetings, I could troop to jazz clubs with the group like the Village Gate. Thus, expanding my course of music appreciation. Although my look meant I never got carded, I didn't take advantage since I didn't drink. The primo message I gained from that masquerade was:

   Looking back, it would've been easy to have gotten in all sorts of mischief. In fact, there were two particularly good looking guys in that NBC group, Eric and Mitch, who easily presented Just Cause for flexing mischief muscles. But it never happened.

   Simply being in an atmosphere to converse was my mega high. Though sex was a tantalizing concept, never discussing it at home kept it a concept.

   Heck, I recall pouring through heaps of books trying to find a chapter that would simply tell me what a kiss was! Yet, that answer evaded my research, and I wasn't ready to learn in the field.

   I almost found out once, or so I fantasized. When I was still Kid-coasting in an off-Broadway show, I struck up a friendship with a fascinating actor, Joe Spinelli. I was still supposedly “19”, as it was a handy age for several years. However, George Howard, the director, knew the truth from having worked with me since my kidhood.

   During an after show party, when Joe went to get me a club soda I saw him talking with George. My GUT warned me that my cover was blown. I heard Joe yell “What! A kid!” My stomach churned like a million cake crumbs being flung through a Dutch door at Soupy Sales. Guess I'd have to wait to learn about kissing.

   By bouncing between so many ages, names and roles for so many years, life offered me 2 choices: to see and live life as a comedy, or as a tragedy.

   Laughing won by an easy lead.

   By choosing to live in the light side of life, the simplest questions were the trickiest to answer.

   Question: What's your nationality? My answer: Earthian.

   Question: Race? My answer: Human.

   Question: Age? My answer: Relative & Eternal.

   Question: Religion? My answer: Godian.

   My final challenge: Do I complexicate simplicity or do I simplify Earthian complexication?

   I chose to simplify.

   Eventually, I'd be able to vocalize it.

Copyright © 2004 by Krystiahn