Rebecca Brown: The Music Teacher

Rebecca Brown was commissioned by Hugo House to write a new piece on the theme of Truth or Dare as part of the first event of the 2009-2010 Hugo Literary Series. Brown presented her piece at Truth or Dare on October 23, 2009 along side playwright and director Keri Healey, poet Eric McHenry and rap artist Macklemore.

 

The Music Teacher

Mr. Martin was the first person any of us had ever met who had what we called—Sam was the one who came up with the word—“class.” Mr. Martin never wore T-shirts or warm-up clothes, but button-down shirts and ties. Never tennis shoes or cowboy boots but wing tips or loafers with tassels. Never jeans but always “slacks”—you could see the crease where they were ironed—and he always smelled like after shave.

This was different from the other male teachers who, because of some state law that in order to coach you also had to teach at least one academic class, were not actual teachers. As in, Coach Wright did football and history; Coach Stricklin did football and social studies; Coach O’Brien did track and shop, etc. Except for Coach O’Brien, who was good at shop, all the men were terrible at whatever they “taught.”  Mr. Martin taught—actually taught—music.

He’d started as a sub for Miss Gustavson, then, after she retired, and very much with her blessing, became full time. “With her blessing” was crucial because everyone loved Miss Gustavson. She’d been the music teacher forever and she knew everyone. Old people she’d served with in World War II—she’d been a WAC and was still insanely patriotic—everyone she’d ever taught. Miss Gustavson had started the Concert Choir, which made it to regionals one year, and the Glee Club which, as they never tired of reminding us, had turned around the lives of countless troubled teens, and produced the first musical in town—“Showboat” at Arlington High—and she always sang “America” before everything.

This was back in Texas in the early 1970s. Arlington was becoming an almost town along old 303, the road that went from Dallas to Fort Worth. Some people still kept horses in their huge backyards, which had not too long before been farms or ranches. There were apple and fruit trees from old orchards that you could just pick from on some streets, and zillions of pecan trees full of zillions of pecans. But then there was the oil boom and people started talking about “the Sun Belt,” as opposed to just “the Bible Belt,” and farms got bought by companies like the one my father worked at, an aeronautics firm that did great business because of Vietnam, and new things squeezed in next to old ones, like a GM dealership next to the Garza’s, a brand-new place called “Pizza Hut” next to the diner and a head shop by the Lions. Everything seemed to get bigger, but, also, somehow, smaller, because things weren’t as far enough apart any more.

When Mr. Martin became full time he kept most things the way Miss Gustavson had them, like the Glee Club and the musical (“Hello, Dolly” my freshman year, then “Oklahoma” my sophomore) and made sure the principal, Coach Cooper, and the PTA, remembered that the music program could “turn around the lives of countless troubled teens,” etc. Then he casually mentioned that he was going to start a new performance group, the Madrigal Singers.

Because you had to try out for it, and it had only eight kids who sang only old music, many people thought The Madrigals was snobby. People grumbled about Mr. Martin, that he didn’t sing “America” or lead the fight song at pep rallies the way Miss Gustavson had, that he was making us sing his snobby back East type music, that he was a Roman Catholic, like JFK, whom these same people thought actually had it coming to him, etc. In fact, though, no one actually knew where Mr. Martin was from, or what, if any, church he went to at all.

For those of us who got in Madrigals, however, it was the greatest thing in the world. We got to be in a group that didn’t have to sing “Climb Every Mountain” and “The Impossible Dream” in every single concert, but sang different kinds of music. Madrigals was also a kind of no man’s land because it had kids not just from one grade, but freshmen through seniors, and different kinds of kids. For example, the other alto besides me, Cindy Ware, was actually a cheerleader—so was one of the sopranos—but in Madrigal class they didn’t try to act perky the whole time, they acted serious. The two baritones were football guys but didn’t act like it, and the other tenor, besides Sam, was a completely quiet science fair guy who, we were astonished to learn, had an incredible voice. That was also the case with the other soprano, an extremely shy girl with braces who never opened her mouth except to sing and then belted it out as hard as Helen Reddy.

Mr. Martin was a great teacher. He treated us like humans, explaining things clearly or demonstrating as many times as we needed without talking down to us. He talked about singing as a thing of body, spirit and mind, and managed to do so without sounding flaky. He also taught us about the culture in which the music was created, the paintings and poems, like Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets, and all the different, even opposite things a single word could mean that, unlike the Carl Sandburg and Joyce Kilmer we were reading in English class, completely amazed me. Also about religious wars back then, and how some composers enclosed secret meanings in what they wrote because what they were was against the law. Mr. Martin allowed us to understand things at our own pace, but also sometimes pushed us if he thought we should be pushed.

Sometimes we had to perform in smaller groups, or even do reports, and whenever that happened, Mr. Martin assigned me and Sam Milam, who was a year old than me, to be together. I hadn’t known Sam before, but as soon as I got to AHS I heard about how he was fresh back from military academy where his parents had sent him because he had gotten into some horrible kind of trouble though no one knew exactly what that was.

But everyone did know what a huge disappointment Sam was to his family. The Milams were descendants of Ben Milam, a famous hero-martyr of the Texas Revolution and, therefore, Texas royalty. Sam (named for Sam Houston) was the great-, great- however many grand second nephew or something of Ben Milam, which he hated. He hated the whole Texas hero thing and the fact that he was supposed to carry it on for his rich, patriotic and awful parents. Sam was also their only son, which made it even worse.

Sam was not the kind of kid I would have expected to become friends with. Though he could put on impeccable manners, he was, away from adults, surly, solitary, tart and just seemed bored. He rolled his eyes a lot and didn’t say things. He did the absolute minimum in class, just sat in the back reading some book of his own tucked into his math or health or science or whatever workbook.

One day in Madrigals, Mr. Martin announced that the music department at TCU over in Fort Worth was having a concert of Renaissance vocal music. It would be on Saturday and if anyone wanted to go, he had a lot of free tickets.

When class ended, Sam grabbed my arm, marched us up to Mr. Martin, and said, “We’d like to go,” and that was that.

Mr. Martin kept getting concert tickets. Nobody else at school seemed interested but Sam and I kept going—to organ recitals and opera scenes and chamber music and choruses, mostly performed by college groups, but sometimes by adults. We’d often see Mr. Martin at them, either by himself or with people he’d introduce us to afterwards as fellow music teachers. At first I was nervous about that—I wasn’t use to seeing teachers not at school, but after a while it got easier. It also got easier to be around Sam, who had at first intimidated me. Partly it was just my getting to know him, but it also seemed he was getting less pissed off at everything, or maybe even kind of happy.

It was not until our second semester of doing this that Mr. Martin invited us to hear a group in which he sang. Schola Cantorum did medieval music, sung in Latin. The music was all gorgeous, but especially the soloist. His voice was incredibly pure and high, eerie almost, like it was a beam of light, or a bright gold shiny string that had dropped inside my spine and was pulling me up, levitating my head toward the roof. After this guy finished singing, I realized I was sitting up totally straight, my eyes were closed and I had kind of spaced out. I opened my eyes and said to Sam, “That was weird.”

“It was amazing,” Sam said back.

After the concert Mr. Martin introduced us to the soloist. When the guy said to me, “Nice to meet you,” I was surprised. I think I’d expected him to talk like the way he sang, but he sounded normal. His name was Robert and, unlike the rest of the people in Schola Cantorum, who were adults, he was at SMU studying to become a music teacher.

After that, when Sam and I saw Mr. Martin at a concert, we usually saw him with Robert. I didn’t think about this, but one night, as Sam was driving us back to Arlington after another concert, he asked me what I thought of Robert.

“He’s an amazing singer,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said dismissively. “What do you think of him?”

“I hardly know him... but he seems all right...”

“Oh, come on,” Sam snapped. I could practically hear him roll his eyes.

“What?!” I snapped back.

“I don’t trust him,” he said.

“Trust him to what? You don’t know him either.”

Sam started to say something, then stopped.

“What?” I asked again.

“Nothing.”

“WHAT.”

Sam shook his head and I knew that if I just kept quiet, he might get around to saying whatever it was.

He was staring out the windshield as if there was something to see in the ugly night sky that every week seemed to become more weirdly, crappily orange with all the liquor stores and bars and dive motels and Texacos springing up.

After a while Sam said, still staring out, “Do you have any idea what I am talking about?”

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re talking about,” I tried to say haughtily.

He exhaled a long one, then said, “’The love that dare not speak its name.’”

It took me a second. “Is this like ‘name that tune’? Like, I’m supposed to guess where that line’s from?”

“You never heard that before?”

“Can’t say I have,” I retorted. I hated being stupid.

“The ‘love that dare not speak its name,’” Sam said quietly, “is homosexual love.”

Suddenly the skin on my head felt as though it were shrinking over my skull.

When I was able to, I asked, as nonchalantly as I could, “And what does that have to do with anything?”

Sam’s voice was very calm. “Mr. Martin is a homosexual. And I do not trust that Robert one bit. I think he is going to break Mr. Martin’s heart.”

“You don’t know that.”

“OK. Correct. I do not know that Robert is going to break Mr. Martin’s heart. But I do know the other.”

“Really?” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“Oh,” I whispered, and then, to hear what it sounded like if I said it aloud: “Mr. Martin is a homosexual.”

“Yes. And that is not the effing end of the effing world. Mr. Martin is still the same as he always was, it’s just that now you know who that is.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything.

Then suddenly Sam was urgent: “You’re not gonna tell anyone, are you?”

“No.”

“I mean it. You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” I said.

I didn’t know if he believed me.

•    

I didn’t try out for Madrigals the next year. You couldn’t have more than one arts elective and they were starting a creative writing class and, because ever since I’d learned about sonnets I’d been trying to write one, I took that. Sam stayed in, though, and Mr. Martin kept giving us concert tickets.

After Sam graduated, he spent his last summer in Texas doing an internship at some concert place over in Dallas. Then he was heading to Northwestern. I was going to be an exchange student for my senior year, which meant that almost as soon as my junior classes were done, I flew off to Italy. I didn’t mind. I was not exactly eager to spend another summer in Arlington. Although as soon as I got to Italy I was homesick, which I was embarrassed about. I wrote letters to anyone in Texas who’d write back, even people I didn’t like that much. But then I got better at the language and met some people and stopped writing my miserable letters and then other things happened and so on and I decided that when my year abroad was over and I had to go back to the states, that wherever I lived, it would not be in Texas ever again.

I went to college in D.C. and met a whole new group of friends, including a lot of girls—or “women,” as we were supposed to call each other by then—whom I did things like “Take Back The Night” marches and abortion hotlines and reproductive rights rallies with, and one of whom, Sue, I moved into an apartment with. After we graduated Sue and I stayed in D.C. and got jobs—she got a real one on Capitol Hill and I got a bunch of crummy ones I kept quitting. We stayed together until I met this girl at a Patti Smith show at a nasty little club and I moved out and then moved on to a bunch of different girls, one of whom, Lisa, I met at the Gay Rights march where, years after we’d both left Texas, I also ran into Sam Milam.

“Well surprise, surprise!” Sam squealed when he saw me. “Took you long enough!” Then, though I’d always remembered him as a very un-touchy person, he gave me this huge hug. He introduced me to his boyfriend, James, and I introduced them to Lisa and we finished the march together and then went out to Dusty’s.

This was still early enough in all of our lives, as well as early enough in the world, that whenever you met other gay people, you talked about “who brought you out,” meaning who you first had sex with, if you were out to your family, etc. James had come out his first year in college, with a guy named—I kid you not, “Bo” —on the football team; I had come out when I was in Italy, with a girl named Francesca. Lisa said, “High school, I mean college,” then sort of laughed which we attributed to the very generous G & T she’d put away in record time. Though she didn’t tell us with whom. When pressed, Sam muttered, “Texas,” but didn’t elaborate.

After we’d had a couple drinks, I said to Sam, “That was really horrible about Mr. Martin.”

Sam looked at me a second then said, “Yeah.”

I’d heard about it in Italy. I told them about how Cindy Ware had sent me the obituary and talked in her letter about how “tragic” it was, and that her father had preached a sermon at our church, which I had actually gone to too, though after Italy I became so embarrassed about it that I tried to pretend I hadn’t. The sermon was about how if only Mr. Martin had been a Christian and had faith that he might have healed from his cancer—there’d been a note where Mr. Martin had spoken of his decision to commit suicide rather than put himself and his loved ones through the agony of cancer—he might not have taken his life.

“Oh for chrissake,” Sam spat. “Mr. Martin didn’t have fucking cancer.”

“But the note—” I started to say but stopped because of how Sam looked.

He took a slug of his G & T.

“Tell her,” James said quietly.

Sam slurped the rest of his drink and said, to the ice cubes, “Mr. Martin didn’t kill himself because he had cancer. He killed himself because Robert was going to leave him to get married.”

“Jesus,” I said, “Jesus.”

Then Sam told us what had really happened.

•    

The handsome tenor, Robert, had indeed, as Sam had said he feared, broken Mr. Martin’s heart. Robert moved in with Mr. Martin or “Geoff” —as Sam was now calling Mr. Martin, as a “house mate” to “save on money” —all of this in quotation marks—while finishing up at SMU. People were either clueless or willing to play along with the story that the older man was simply helping out a talented young friend. But when Robert started sniffing around for jobs as a music teacher, and kept being asked if he was married, he realized he wouldn’t get any job unless he was. Mr. Martin had gotten his job because of Miss Gustavson, but also because it was still back during the time before anybody in Texas had ever said the word “homosexual” out loud. But by the mid-70s, you started seeing them around—on the David Susskind show, in articles in magazines, in “Cabaret” —and people became convinced they were all going to try to become teachers in order to prey on innocent youth. So Robert asked this girl at SMU, a sporty girl who’d never expected to go on a date, much less ever marry a man as handsome and well-mannered as Robert, to marry him, and she said yes.

When Robert told Mr. Martin he was marrying, Mr. Martin lost it. He understood why Robert was doing it, but he also couldn’t stand it. Mr. Martin had never been in love before.

“I mean,” said Sam, “he’d had boyfriends and all, and different guys he went with, but he’d never been crazy in love like that, and he just fucking lost it.”

Geoff’s friends—guys from the Bayou Landing, the gay bar in Dallas, music guys, a couple of gals who taught PE—tried to talk him out of it, or tell him he’d get over him, “But it was like he couldn’t,” Sam said, “or wouldn’t. Like he didn’t want to get over it, then go on to have a life where it might happen again. It was just too hard. It was just too fucking hard.”

James placed another round of G & Ts on the table in front us. He ruffled Sam’s hair as he sat back down. Sam took a sip and said, “So he just decided, fuck it.” He took a glug, then all of us did.

“Poor fucker,” Sam went on, “Poor miserable fucker.” He played with the water rings on the table top.

“So you were around him a lot there for a while,” I said.

“Yep,” Sam said, but didn’t look up.

“Like, you were one of his main people.”

He nodded, but didn’t look up.

I waited a second. “Did he like, bring you out?”

James put his hand on Sam’s arm and Sam looked up. His mouth was tight.

“He wasn’t the first guy I had sex with. But he was the first guy who was decent and kind and good to me and who actually liked me and whom I actually liked too.”

Lisa stiffened next to me. “We’re still talking about your high school teacher, right?” she said.

“Yeah,” Sam said.

She looked at him.

“It’s not like you think,” he said urgently, “Geoff was not a slime. Everyone thinks if it’s a teacher it’s always slimy and wrong and sometimes it is, but this wasn’t. This was not like that.” Sam looked at me and Lisa like he was trying to convince us.

“It’s OK, Sam,” James whispered, and squeezed his arm.

“He didn’t ‘take advantage’ of me,” Sam went on, his voice shaky, “I wanted it.”

“It’s OK, Sammie,” James said very calmly, “it’s OK.”

But it was not OK with Lisa. Her back was pressed her against her chair like she wanted to melt into it.

“He just helped me realize I was not some horrible loser slut whose whole life would be blowing horrible loser skanky old loser married pervs in Texaco bathrooms, and that it didn’t have to be some tawdry thing that makes you loathe yourself and the other person, but something you could actually like, and with a person you could like.”

Sam stuck his face in James’ chest and blubbered. James petted Sam, whispering things I couldn’t hear. When they were quiet I leaned toward them and put hand on Sam’s arm.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” I said, “and I’m really sorry that someone you loved died, and why he died.”

Lisa pushed back her chair and bolted up. “I gotta go,” she said and was off.

“You wanna go after her?” James asked.

Maybe I should have, but I didn’t.

James took out a hanky and handed it to Sam. Sam wiped his face but it was still puffy and splotched.

James nodded to where Lisa had been and said, “You know, people have different experiences. You never know where someone else is coming from or what they’ve been through, and sometimes without meaning to, you can just hit the wrong button... it’s nobody’s fault.” He looked at me, “And sometimes it’s just not your job to help.”

“Sam,” I said, “You have found yourself a very wise boyfriend.”

“I’m lucky,” Sam sniffed, and kissed James as chastely as in an ancient movie, on the cheek.

“No, really,” he went on, “I am lucky. To have met James. To have run into a friend like you from way back when...”

“To have met a man” I said, raising my glass, “like Mr. Martin when you did.”

They raised their glasses too. “And to get to love him,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Sam. He was tearing up again. “And to have him love me too.”

“That, too,” James said.

“Yeah,” I said, “that too.”