Blessed Are The Misfits

“Why can’t you be like Sarah Fuchs? my mother would admonish me when I was around five years old.  I didn’t get it.  Sarah Fuchs came to kindergarten with a hard-boiled egg, every single day.  I used to tell her that it smelled like the stench after the boys got through with the bathroom and forgot to flush.  Even at that young age, I didn’t understand why I HAD to be like someone else and that she, somehow, was “better” than me.  Thus, began an endless and tiring career in self-loathing, people pleasing and an exhausting quest for conformity and perfection.

Obviously, it didn’t work.

Going to an all girls’ Yeshiva didn’t help the situation much.  I was always melancholy and deep.  I was hyper-sensitive and didn’t comprehend the inherent cruelty and disrespect I saw toward the school, the teachers and mostly towards each other.  While others were involved in participating in the games of dodge ball, “mean girls” and torturing substitute teachers, I was daydreaming on a swing in Chanie Morgenstern’s backyard, singing, “Where is Love’ from the score of “Oliver”, waiting for my REAL parents to pick me up (even though you could pick the ones I was living with out of a line-up, if you had to:)

They were wonderful people and I adored them, but I felt that I was existing in a virtual life, instead of my authentic one.  Why was I living in an urban, Chasidic ghetto, when I should have been flourishing in a typical American home, where my almost prodigious talents would have been fostered and encouraged?  I’d be going to the High School of Music and Art  and then to Julliard or at least had some music lessons. I was lucky that even though we were religious, I had a TV in my room, where I would imitate the dancers on “Soul Train” from the age of two.   I was “table-dancing” for many years on our living room table, (my parents were very permissive:) My relatives would look at me with a mixture of fascination and horror, wondering to themselves “Where is this child from?” She dances like a black person!”   So, you see, I REALLY, didn’t fit in. Furthermore, I was one of the first offenders of “cultural misappropriation.”   I wasn’t doing it on purpose. It just felt right, just as my first visit to Washington Square Park, with a much older cousin who was a flower child.  She introduced me to the music played by free-spirited, smiling rays of light, floating on the grass.   Even at that young age, some vital force resonated through me.  I knew these were my people. (not because of the “grass”:) These were the artists, empaths, dancers, singers.  I was the only kid that knew all the scores to every Broadway show, that I taught myself. Particularly “Cinderella, Annie and Oliver-notice a theme? See, I was guilty of gender and sexual misappropriation, as well. It was only until I grew older that I realized I was really a gay man.  Probably a black one, at that.

In my mind, I embodied the sad and confused misfit and I didn’t like it.

 Despite, my seemingly bubbly personality, I was introverted, unless I was dancing or singing.  When I danced, I was free, but being an orthodox Jew, I was severely limited in self-expression.  I was so shy, that when in first grade, they had pre-printed names of all the kids in the class and they didn’t have one for me, because they used my first name “Shaina” (which they wrote as “Shainy”), I took the card with the wrong name, sat in the back and never bothered telling the teacher that I was never called by that.  That seat was my electric chair, because once, when I raised my hand to go to the bathroom, the teacher didn’t see me and I “leaked” (well more like a small tsunami) determining that I was either going to be a serial killer, Julian Assange, an abused wife or the President of the United State.

As soon as I was old enough to walk to the library, I devoured books.  I would go every single Friday to the small fountain of knowledge a few blocks away.  It was my happy place.  That was the center of my education.  I was always auto-didactic and I can trace this back to sitting in the library and satisfying my curiosity for all subjects (except math.) There was no censorship and my parents wouldn’t even look at the books I took out.  They’re just lucky that I never took out “The Joy of Sex”.

When I was eleven, I began to wait online at TKTS to go to Broadway shows.  It was the highlight of my childhood.  I’d meet all sorts of interesting people and met a wonderful man who told me where to take Dance Classes and that I needed to separate “Art from Religion”.  This would be the first of many gay men, who nourished me and gave me unconditional love.  Throughout my life, this community of loving, talented and nurturing souls helped me through my years of self-hating and struggle to be emotionally healthy.  I had found other “misfits” and I didn’t feel so alone anymore.

Many years later, I was honored to be able to be on stage with Sheldon Harnick, who composed “Fiddler on the Roof”.  It is because of these beautiful people who believed in me and honored my talents.

Blessed are the misfits, because we HAVE inherited the earth.