Stage Left & Slightly Drunk
Eyeliner, Apple Pucker, and C&C Music Factory
Two teenage theater nerds, me and Stephanie, my prom date and frequent co-conspirator, sugar-drunk on neon-green schnapps, sitting on a dewy hillside like feral woodland creatures who had wandered into community theater by mistake.
The stagehands, wrapped in blankets and moving with the tragic slowness of Red Cross disaster victims, had the energy of angry ogres, grunting, stomping, occasionally growling at each other like they’d been cursed into human form for the sole purpose of building a set before sunrise. These were ancient beings, summoned from the depths of a cursed high school theater department, condemned to wander the earth with gaff tape stuck to their jeans and a permanent chip on their shoulder. One of them hurled a sandbag with the precision and fury of someone who'd once had Broadway dreams but now lived in his mom’s basement.
Stephanie took a swig from the thermos filled with Apple Pucker and whispered, “This will be fun,” in the tone you'd use when someone forced you to wake up at 4 a.m. and then asked you to enjoy it. It was less a statement of anticipation and more a prophecy of doom.
We hadn’t slept. My hair was still damp, vaguely purple, and smelled like teenage impulse control and the kind of box dye decisions you make at 2am. I was wearing my costume jacket, stolen from the rack because it made me feel masculine, and performing masculinity was the only role I’d never managed to pull off. Stephanie was in full glam, lipstick, hoop earrings, and high school angst.
This was all in service of a 4am press event, some local morning show segment where they planned to interview us between traffic reports and a guy who carved bears with a chainsaw, I assume. The school’s PR strategy was basically “traumatize a group of teens and hope it boosts ticket sales.”
Tim, our choreographer, descended upon us like a glittery specter from a much cooler timeline.
Tim, who once—casually— told us that he was a founding member of C&C Music Factory, had the vibe of someone who had absolutely seen things: foam parties, European raves, the inside of a LaToya Jackson’s tour bus. He was built like a gay stereotype and he always smelled like cucumber melon...to be fair who didn’t back then?
He dropped onto the hillside beside us with the elegance of a man who used to wear mesh shirts professionally and said, “Give me some of that coffee?”
Stephanie looked at him, deadpan. “It’s not coffee.”
Tim raised one eyebrow, took the thermos, and sniffed it like a sommelier evaluating a bottle of Chateau Neon Regret. “Mm,” he said. “Apple Pucker. Cute.” He delivered that line like he had once did shots on a tour bus and woke up in a mall fountain with glitter in his teeth.
He took a sip anyway. Just one. Then handed it back like a priest performing communion. Then he vanished back into the morning fog, leaving us with nothing but his scent trail and the haunting echo of 90s dance hits in our hearts.
Then he stood, clapping like some a soccer mom with too many children. The stagehands groaned in unison like hungover zombies being forced into a tap number.
At that point, someone with a clipboard and a walkie-talkie screamed “PLACES,” and like good little traumatized thespians, we stood up to rehearse “America.”
Now, for context: we were doing West Side Story, and I, of course, being of pale Midwestern complexion, the kind of skin tone that burst into flame under fluorescent lighting, had been cast as Indio, one of the Sharks. For those not familiar with the musical’s character breakdown, Indio is canonically supposed to be the darkest of the Sharks. Like, the one who makes the Jets nervous just by existing. Color blind casting…amiright?
Why the director thought me, whose ancestry was 70% colonized South American and 30% mayonnaise should fill that particular role remains a mystery. Maybe it was because I could snap on beat. Maybe it was because I looked vaguely ambiguous under stage lights and several coats of bronzer. Maybe it was because my mother was the only one with an accent.
Either way, the sun was starting to rise, casting a soft golden light over the scene like it was trying to bless this moment and just… couldn’t. Stephanie, full-Anita, stomped through her part with the conviction of someone who had already resigned herself to dying in this costume. I was two beats behind, queasy, sleepless, slightly schnapps-ed, and being forced to dance and sing about Puerto Rican pride, summoning the spirit of Rita Moreno.
And just as we hit the final pose, arms up, jazz hands trembling. Tim shouted, “Beautiful! AGAIN!”, he probably didn’t say beautiful…but I like to remember that way.
I locked eyes with Stephanie. She looked like she wanted to burn it all down. I wanted to help.
Somehow, we pulled it off. The performance for the morning show went… fine. No one vomited, no one cursed on live TV, and I only slightly pulled a hamstring trying to execute a flamenco style dance move. A camera swept past us as we posed dramatically against the sunrise, and for a brief, glittering moment, I believed I was a real dancer. Or at least, as Quinton used to call it a “heavy mover”. (This show is where I actually met Quinton and Angela).
The anchors clapped politely. A woman with very enthusiastic eyebrows said it was “so inspiring to see young people doing classic musicals.” Tim stood just off-camera making subtle jazz hands like a proud, sequined barn owl.
Then it was over.
We were dismissed and sent home. Only to remember, somewhere around the first blessed moment of rest, that we had to return at 11 a.m. for a full day of rehearsal. Because, as every high school theater kid knows, you only do press at 4 a.m. when you’re already dangerously close to opening night.
We had already danced in the freezing dark, fake-smiled through mild hangovers, and been publicly misrepresented on local television. And now we had to rehearse?
We struggled into the theatre at 10:54 am only to be considered “late”. To be fair, we did still have to get into costume. Tim greeted us with, “Welcome back” with the same energy as a twink who just took a bump off of some drag queen’s press on.
We ran the knife fight scene three times. I got fake-stabbed in the ribs by a kid named Josh who wore Axe body spray like it was ritual protection. We moved from one scene to the next, desperately hoping it would end soon.
Every missed step, every flubbed line, every slightly off cue was met with a furious “NO. AGAIN!” from our director—who had once been the book voice on Broadway in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and who now ran our theater program like we were all under Equity contract.
By hour four of rehearsal, in the July humidity of an outdoor amphitheater, the eyeliner had migrated south, and we’d stopped pretending this was fun. Our bodies had turned against us, knees popping, shoulders aching, sweat pooling in places no teenager should have to acknowledge in public. The scent in the backstage area could only be described as Hormonal Gatorade.
We were sunburned, dehydrated, and locked in a feedback loop of “Again, but better!” from our director, who seemed to think we were headlining the Kennedy Center instead of playing to an audience of bored parents and three confused town council members.
When we were finally released, somewhere between nightfall and spiritual collapse, Stephanie and I crawled to her car and just sat there. Doors open. Legs dangling. Steam rising off the parking lot like a broken dream. She handed me a warm Gatorade and lit a clove cigarette with the quiet reverence of a priest blessing communion.
I took a sip of the Gatorade. Lime, somehow both too sweet and not sweet enough and collapsed. Headed home because we would have to do all over again tomorrow.
In the end we got a sticky and strange memory that sneaks up on you years later, unpacks itself, and says, hey—remember when you drank Apple Pucker and danced yourself into dehydration at 16?
I do.
And I’ll keep telling that story, because it wasn’t just high school theater. It was friendship. It was identity. It was a thermos full of schnapps and the raw nerve of teenage ambition. It was terrible and beautiful and a little bit sacred.
Cue blackout.
End scene.