A 21st Century Whore (Yuuto)

Four cups of tea later, my music theory homework wasn't getting any more done. I guess that meant it was time to do some introspection. After replacing my tea with some hot amazake, I went outside to my garden where a cool, crisp breeze blew across my face. It was a nice change from Mark bombarding me with weird memes.

When I met him, I knew he was familiar, but I didn't know quite why. Was he the guy who stood me up during the summer? No, it couldn't be. Mark had a better personality. He knew how to build morale among everyone who met, kind of like this girl I met at another high school's prom. She was well-spoken, reasonably attractive, and didn't seem to belong at a high school dance. Two hours into the dance, we hooked up in a supply closet. Though I wasn't genuinely attracted to her and she acted like she was reading a script the whole time, it felt good for both of us.

That wasn't my first time. During high school, I went from girl to girl, breaking hearts and getting my heart broken. Though I tried to justify it by saying that everyone was doing it and that I was depressed and trying to alleviate the agitation I felt, I knew better. Being young, gay, and growing up during the local HIV panic prevented me from acknowledging my feelings towards other guys; my guess was that I used mindless promiscuity with girls to suppress it. Granted, I did use prophylactics most of the time, but I was surprised that I didn't transmit or contract an STD.

I thought I had forgotten all of that when I saw Mark, but, during a meal, he said that I looked familiar. A conversation about our high school lives came up and I revealed why we knew each other. It turned out, after we met again, that the girl I met was attending prom this year because she couldn't go last year, but neither of us cared at the time. Both of us were numb, confused, and looking to feel something.

If I could redo my life, I wouldn't have hooked up with that girl because neither of us really wanted sex. We wanted something different: for me, purpose and for her, now him, satisfaction. I want to blot out this stain my past as it ended in me crying in a hospital room. I didn't cry because I was relieved, but because I was disappointed that I woke up. Now that I'm more or less glad to be alive, a better person, and with someone I truly love, I found that I have died only to find I've come alive.

Savages (Landon)

"Only certain people can commit atrocities, right?" I posed this question in front of a crowd of high school students. Some shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Others looked at each other. "Think again. That was me as a kid. Do you think he looks like a mass murderer? Do I look like that you now? Well, this was me." I played footage of the shooting. My stomach turned as it played, but I knew it was necessary. I don't know exactly what went wrong, whether it was genetic or environmental or both, but I know that it was something. If every depressed, overwhelmed high schooler went on a killing spree, we'd all be dead.

Of course, combat programs haven't been the same since then. Some students have to store their weapons in lockers. Others need to be screened to enter their schools' combat programs. Some schools ban enchanted weapons specifically while others did away with their combat programs entirely. On the other side of the coin, some schools became increasingly combat-oriented at the expense of core subjects. If I learned anything, I learned that violence clouds the mind, but not in the way that some people think it does.

The reason that Havencraft High School no longer reads or shows Macbeth is that I had the lead role shortly before the shooting. It's a good play, one that can work with a variety of stagings and interpretations, but the question now is: Could people see the dagger before my eyes or could they not? In other words, did people really try to understand me or am I just another prop that is used to generate sensationalism?

The Mindcrack suicide crisis didn't get nearly as much attention as any mass killing even though, in my mind, it was just as horrific. Why? People can't politicize suicide the way they can politicize a shooting, stabbing, or bombing. Our inclination to point fingers and take sides is a vestige one of the most basic instincts: to assemble in herds as a means of survival. Though most of us try to be "civilized" by wearing shirts and going along with various social norms, we will always have those remnants of those raw, untamed animal instincts.

A part of me thinks that we would be better able to empathize with each other if we stopped thinking of every little thing as "good" or "evil" and recognize that, underneath it all, we're all scared and trying to survive. We're just savages, but we don't admit it. It's not that we stopped killing or hurting others for its own sake, just that we developed more efficient and sneaky ways to do it. High school is generally when we realize this and, thus, I find it important to tell my story to high schoolers.

Even though they had just eaten lunch, they listened attentively, taking everything in like sponges. It is my hope that they walk out as better people, but a simple presentation can't do that. Inherently, people have the capacity for both good and evil, but most of the time we don't know which is which.

Plug it Up (Steve)

Surprisingly, showering in the facility was the least of my worries. I had more concerns about how to force myself to eat one more forkful of food or try to get the other patients to see me as human. One guy, Ryan, admitted to using me as "inspiration" for his ideal body. But who would want to look like me? Who would want to look like a soft, flabby sack of--

That's fat talk. No fat talk. My body is fine. My body is fine. I am fine. I let the water roll off my body and take the fat talk with it. Being away from the cameras and the questions was nice, but I missed the outside world. I missed my students, my boyfriend, Mark, and the sensation of diamond hitting diamond. Though I'll recover, it won't change the fact that this eating disorder stole my band's first season away from me.

At first, I seemed to miss my eating disorder. I knew it was destructive, but it was still a part of me. If I felt overwhelmed, I just threw up. Now that I can't do that, I am truly left to my own devices. However, like playing the violin, learning healthier coping mechanisms is something that comes with practice and it's never pretty in the beginning. My latest one-on-one session left my full-on ugly crying and cursing myself for even developing this thing in the first place.

But now, I couldn't cry. I just about finished washing when I felt something moist running down my leg, but the thickness told me it wasn't water. Looking down, I saw red mingling with the water. I managed to keep my meal down even as it tried to climb up my throat, but all I could do was stand and stare. I tried to get rid of this thing by purging. I stared in shock at the red streaks between my legs. This was perfectly normal, I tried to remind myself. Except it wasn't. Men don't bleed.

I needed help. It had been a long time since this happened. Why had I decided to recover, if it meant I would bleed in the process? Overcome with anxiety, I screamed "I'm bleeding! I'm bleeding!" like some kind of broken record. I left a trail of blood as I ran and left a handprint on a nearby towel. I didn't know who would help me or if anyone would help me. They would probably think I was crazy or screaming for attention, but attention was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to disappear.
        "Plug it up, Carrie!" A voice came from the shower next to me. Others joined in and seemed to corner me. Others laughed and others stayed silent.

The nurse supervising us demanded to know what was going on. My fellow patients fell silent and all left to change except for Ryan. A cramp tore through my body like lightning.
        "I think Steve is either trans or intersex."
        "You're not helping." The nurse shooed him away as well. "You're okay." Easy to say when the showers look like a crime scene. My breathing began to slow, but I was still feeling quite shaky. As I rose to my feet, the nurse helped me.
        "Is this the first time you had your cycle?" Talk about pinpointing the problem.
        "No."
        "So you know what's going on?"
        "Yes. It's my period. But it's a shameful thing."
        "It's not shameful. It's something natural."
        "Not for a guy, though. And I was born male too."
        "I see. Let's get you to bed. You can talk to me if you need anything."
       

Bang Bang You're Dead (Landon)

Bless this kid for putting up with the difficult vocal part I wrote for Josh. I may or may not have unintentionally modeled the character after myself which led to high belting, compressed lyrics, and other things that would fray an ordinary theater kid's vocal cords, but that's not the case with Kyle Palacios. He simply nodded, acted, and killed it.
         "That was great, everyone. Take five." The students rushed for the onigiri and teriyaki meats. While a high school student has surprising endurance, I know better than to drive them to that point. Kyle watched my presentations and other content to do character research and for vocal inspiration. He called some of my more impressive covers "inhuman".

I've been wanting to write a musical adaptation of something for so long and now my dream was being realized. I created the noise and now I must cut through it. Trashing armories and promoting extreme binaries in going about a certain issue won't doing anything, but getting inside of someone's head will. Both sides love hijacking tragedies to further their platforms, which is something that undermines the nature of the situation and exploits survivors in the name of politics.

After some consideration, I decided to see a psychologist because I get very strong urges to chew or even eat non-edible things. It's been a problem for much of my life. As a kid, I got bored and ate a pencil. Nowadays, it's paper and it happens mostly when I'm hungry. Psychologists liked to probe me in an interrogation-style setting, but now things might be different. I wasn't the same person I was in high school.

Irina (Steve)

This clinic has weird ideas about helping people with eating disorders. Obviously, the bathroom restrictions and blind weigh-ins make sense, but why can't I get a hug from the therapist or at least not be punished for wetting the bed? Am I that bad? Will this make me better? Why did Mark want to dump me at this hellscape of a clinic? Is that what he wants? I can see why he would leave me to die in an institution.

For more reasons than bulimia, I want to throw up. But if I have any hope of escape, I can't. Disapproving stares attacked me from every angle. It seemed strange that we all got diet soda with our seemingly insubstantial dinners...and that the therapists would avoid me. Even the patients would give me weird looks or even comment on my appearance saying that I looked fatter than I did on TV. They probably don't realize that I'm covered in makeup with all my flaws edited out half the time.

I've been in the mental healthcare system before and let me say this: It sucks. We're supposed to be naming things we like about ourselves that don't have to do with appearance. I guess I'm an okay public figure and teacher. It's not like most people can do either of those things, let alone both. People say I'm nice, but most of the time it's an automated smile and a pre-programmed "hello". My throat felt sore. It was a constant reminder of the illness that I suffered from, something I brought on myself.

Celebrities are expected to have problems, but these problems are usually part of clickbaity headlines that are more about generating seemingly outrageous content rather than about helping regular people with similar problems. Some of them are even touted as quick fixes for body flaws. Every time a supermodel goes on some cayenne pepper ice cube diet or a rapper overdoses on cough syrup, it's either in some magazine for all to see and emulate or used as a justification to shame the pursuit of health and fitness. Can't anyone see that the people on TV are human too? Despite all the makeup, scripts, and camera flashes, we're not props.

Patients were led into a large room reminiscent of a cafeteria, but with no food. I knew that the air freshener was supposed to smell like flowers, but it was just a cheap imitation that reeked of despair. Patients sat with a therapist. I towered over everyone else, but I felt so small that I could go unseen.
      "...I know." Mark's body language radiated composure and a sense of detachment, but his eyes said otherwise. He met me with a warm embrace and a few jokes about the horrible air freshener and thirsty middle-aged moms. For once, we were a normal couple with normal lives. Other than the therapist supervising the visit, we didn't have to deal with anyone else.

I don't know how, but Mark always knew how to meet me where I am. He listened as I told him about everything from the way everyone was avoiding me to how I felt with him here. I'm getting pretty suspicious of the facility owner, Irina Helpmann. She seemed to play favorites with a few of the patients and would whisk them away to some secret room before the rest of us went to bed.

Ninja Girls and Stupid Rules (Jordan)

Alex wanted to perform "A Female Ninja, but I Want to Love" as a duet with Hanako. and one of her practices made its way to YouTube. The modulations and fast pace made the song particularly difficult, especially for a girl Alex's age. She managed to keep up, though. However, I didn't quite expect the responses to the video. One called the performance inappropriate, not because of the lyrics, but because of Alex's take on the song.

The staging highlighted a subplot where the yellow and blue ninja girls slowly fell in love with each other. The suggestion is that the main ninja girl ended up with the boy she saw at the festival, but the PV and lyrics have lent themselves to a variety of interpretations. I don't understand why people hate this one so much. Obviously, most of the people were trolls, but some of them were honestly concerned about things that seemed pretty trivial to me.

Society, family, etc. getting in the way of true love is a plot device as old as storytelling itself. The fact that people are offended by a 12-year-old girl singing about falling in love speaks volumes about the state of the world. I used to think love stories were stupid and endured reading them ad nauseam for Alex, but then I saw her face performing and acting out her love. Love in a romantic context is not important to me, but I'm not offended every time I see such affection referenced in a work of fiction.

Me Too (Mark)

After finishing a delicious meal at my house, Steve excused himself to go to the restroom. Without a second thought, I let him. I noted that he poked and prodded the food quite anxiously and then wolfed it down like he didn't need to chew. Maybe something was on his mind. He tends to miss high notes when something's on his mind, which is why he wasn't doing as well in rehearsals and gigs.

Then I heard an unearthly squelching noise that I knew all too well.

Had I made him sick? Was it something else? I made a beeline to the restroom and found Steve hunched over the toilet. 

       "Are you okay?" Stupid question, I know. But it generally works. Steve nods, flushed everything down the toilet and rinsed his mouth out. "Do you think you're sick?"

       "No...I just need to do this."

       "Why?" 

       "Because I'm disgusting." 

I could have sworn that my heart fell out of my body at that moment. As he was sitting on the bathroom floor, Steve looked small and helpless, like the weight of a feather could shatter him. I tried to put an arm around him, but he pushed it away, saying that I could never understand what it was like to be under constant scrutiny by the public. Well, I did. One of the things a pageant girl learns is how to smile when she feels nothing. Not sad. Not disappointed. Just nothing. One wrong facial expression or pose can cost you the crown.

I can't count how many boys who want to be just like Steve. They run around in leather armor clanking wooden swords and defeating imaginary dragons. Some of them are my trumpet freshmen. They practice faithfully every day hoping to be able to play the way Steve does. My stomach churned at the thought of one of them making a beeline to the bathroom to throw up their lunch. What was I feeling? Shocked? Angry? Both. I took a deep breath. Neither of us would benefit from me snapping.
       "Why do you think you're disgusting?"
       "Because everyone thinks something wrong with my face or my body."
       "Steve! There's nothing wrong with you. Never mind what other people think."
       "What about what I think? I can't show people something I'm disappointed in." I opened my eyes to the guy on the bathroom floor. He needs compassion, not a simple push on the back.
       "I want you to be around for your fans and, if not for their sake, for mine." He seemed to be opening up. "Hearing you throwing up scared me and I don't know how long it's been going on."
       "It started in high school, then it kind of died down when I met Caitlin, started again when I was dating Landon because I wanted to be as thin as he was." We love our angry beanpole, but emulating him is generally ill-advised. "Then I started focusing on loving myself and got better, but now, it seems that no one likes me the way I am."
        "I do--and that's why I hate seeing you destroying yourself. I'm calling an eating disorder clinic so you can get the help you need." Steve leaned against me as I punched the number in. I told the lady on the other end about our situation and held back my tears as I answered the series of questions.

The next day, we went to the clinic and were met with the shuffling around of anxious parents, furtive teenage girls, and women who looked around as if comparing themselves to those around them. Some of them gave Steve dirty looks and exchanged whispers about the Me Too movement. Usually, a guy has to literally almost die in order to receive treatment for an eating disorder, but this clinic knows that eating disorders don't discriminate.

Words drifted through my head as I took everything in. Why would the facility prohibit calculators, especially for a high school student who has to do math homework? And what's with the restrictions on clothing? I had body image issues both before and after my transition, but nothing clinical. I read through their visitation policies, but a wave of anxiety interrupted my thoughts. My heart started racing and I thought I would faint. Is this what Steve felt for no apparent reason? How did he live like this?