Nathaniel Jean's Senior Year

10: Nathaniel Jean's "Something Good"

Video on the side of the duet performance. Warning: gay

Also I have such a bad headache rn but I'M POSTING ANYWAYS YAY

The theater was huge. Hundreds of seats fanned out from the center stage. I was sat in the mezzanine, in a nice spot where I could see everything clearly. The lights were dim, and I felt as if I was about to watch an actual play on broadway.

     A line of old, pretentious looking people—judges, I assumed—were sat along the front of the stage, their backs to us. The closed curtains displayed the projected words: Nebraska State Theater Competition. All around me, excited parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and friends bragged about the competitor they were supporting. Occasionally, I listened in on conversations, or even got engaged in them. The family sitting next to me was apparently here for a girl named Dejá, and they had high expectations for her.

When they asked who I was supporting, and I told them Lucas Morgan, the mother's eyes lit up in recognition.

"Oh, that's that North Company boy!" She said. Her husband and son stared at her cluelessly, and she turned exasperatedly toward them. "He's the one who won best male solo last year, don't you remember?"

"Do you know him?" I asked curiously. The lady shook her head.

"No, but he's at just about every competition in Nebraska. I swear, I've never seen that boy walk away without a top three award in at least one category. He knows what he's doing, that's for sure."

Realization dawned on her husband's face. "Oh, I know who you mean." He smiled kindly at me. "Is he your brother?"

"Best friend," I said, because I figured it sounded better than something-between-friend-and-boyfriend. And it was true—Lucas was by far the closest friend I had.

"You should be proud," he said. "That kid's gonna be a star."

I returned his smile and nodded whole-heartedly. "He sure is."

Here, over an hour away from Nowhere, Nebraska, things were so different. People saw Lucas as a prodigy, not a problem. Nobody cared that I was friends with him—they probably didn't know he was gay, but it wasn't as if they cared regardless. I was fairly certain that several of the boys here were, and no one judged them for it. Simply being surrounded by people like this, who were all here to support each other and appreciate this form of art, made me want to hop on the first train to New York. This was just a tiny sample of my dream, and actually being immersed in it made that dream seem all the more sweet.

It wasn't long before the competition began. I had no idea how the whole operation worked, but I understood once the host explained. Young adults from different schools would perform, with and against each other, each being scored on a point system. At the end of each round, individual people or groups were ranked first, second, and third based on how many points they recorded. And at the very end, all of the points would be added to determine which school had done the best overall, and that school would be the winner.

Okay, maybe the scoring system was slightly more complicated than I was making it seem, but I didn't care to learn the details.

I watched as pair after pair performed the first round—the duets. I quickly realized that this wasn't some high school talent show—this was on an entirely new level. These were young adults who'd worked their entire lives to be as great in this art as they could be, and it showed. Each one of them was crazy impressive.