The Sound of It: Cancelled Camp (Patreon)

On the day of our first in-person rehearsal for Cirque de Demain back in 2018, I remember Troy explaining the broad strokes of being nonbinary to Roberto, and that I was using ‘Ess’ now as my name rather than the name he’d first met me using.  

Roberto cried, “But bella!–” his nickname for me at the time.  

Troy corrected him, “Well, maybe not bella, right?”

I was deeply appreciative of Troy in that moment.

“Oh, shit, right,” Roberto said. “What do I call y– How can I not call you bella? It’s what you are! Look at your face!” he said, hands stereotypically reaching out in dramatic supplication towards me.  

“Well Roberto,” I chuckled, “I won’t argue with you. I can’t change my face, and that’s what you’re looking at whereas I’m just stuck looking out from it.”   

I had gone into this interaction with low expectations of understanding on the matter given the different cultural intersections we occupied. I was living in a world still where conversations about these things revolved so often only around gender presentation only – and I still had breasts, which is kind of a visual dealbreaker for mutual understanding, for a lot of cisgendered folks.    

I had a genuine affection for Roberto: he made the toxicity of working in stunts tolerable whenever he was on set as a movement choreographer. Half of me was sure he'd understand. The other half of me was tensely waiting for that uncomfortable, unnameable shift to settle in like a block of ice between us if he wasn't okay with it.  

Please don't let me down, please don't let me down, I pleaded internally.  

“‘Ess’ I can do,” Roberto said. “But I still need a nickname for you!”  

"Okay," I said slowly, hesitantly, hopefully.   

He paused, thinking. “So you … don’t wanna be a man?” he clarified.  

“No, not really,” I replied. “A ‘boy’ at most. I’m just happy in the middle. Or doing both.”  

“Can I call you my pretty boy then?”  

“Absolutely,” I said, grinning. My heart felt warm. “An elegant solution,” I offered, sweeping off an imaginary top hat and adding an exaggerated bow.   

We carried on with the business of creating a duo act in an impossible period of time.  

* * * * * * * * * * * *   

Jumping back to the present day, I was calling Roberto because I realized that I desperately needed some guidance from him if I was going to be able to move past my current mental roadblocks around ‘Project Zurich’. 

My brain was maxing out on the number of decisions it could make, and the volume of unknowns it could carry without anything spilling over the edges.

I couldn’t begin imagining the act without a clearer sense of what I was wearing, without at least a ballpark of the musical world I was working in.  

I had sent Roberto the list of options before I called him: should we stay classical, in the world of Rimsky-Korsakoff or something instrumental & orchestral? Or should we go in the direction of total camp? I couldn’t decide.  

I opened the phone call with: “Roberto! Save me from myself, please."

I could hear him take a drag from one of his ever-present cigarettes as he chuckled. “Okay darling, I think this is clear – we stay classical. Not camp. I don’t think that’s right for this.”  

“Yeah?” A small part of me – the part of me that wanted to make an audience member cheekily uncomfortable by making strong eye contact while lip-syncing ‘come and get your love’.... in full latex – felt briefly disappointed.  

“For sure. But – ” he took another drag from his cigarette and sighed out the words, “if you want to make a strong argument for something one way or another, of course I’ll listen–”  

“–No, no,” I said, interrupting him. I took a breath, mentally saying 'goodbye' to the silly camp act I'd begun imagining. He was right. “I’m trusting you on this. There’s not really time for me to waffle over certain aspects of this. I asked you to work on this with me because I don’t think it’s possible to attain something at the calibre I need this to be without you; I’m leaning on your experience here. You’ve been doing this a lot longer than me and I trust your instincts and I trust that you know me. We’ve just got to pick something and go with it.”  

Roberto mumbled understanding around his smoke.  

“Cool,” I continued. “Okay. Classical. I’ll do some listening and throw some options at you in a few days.”  

“Perfect. Bye, pretty boy.”

****************
[to be continued]