Due to a lack of at-home tests the touring company I am currently part of cannot tour. We are on hold in Cedar City, Utah; or as the higher ups say, we are “grounded.” It’s not a punishment, but after only getting to perform twice, being banished to the campus apartments and contenting ourselves with line-throughs and movie nights does feel like a time-out. I am not great with downtime (idle hands are the devil’s playground and whatnot) so I have been throwing myself into new endeavors, including this newsletter and creating an entirely new website in the span of five caffeine-fueled hours. That being said, I can only stand so much productivity and most of my time has been dedicated to binging PEN15.
For the most part, the show is unbearable. I frequently slam my computer shut in the middle of an episode and can’t continue for several hours. It cuts to the bone of adolescence brutally. The only thing worse than watching the show alone might be watching it with someone else; it’s entirely too true. The creators are both in their thirties playing fictionalized versions of their seventh-grade selves alongside a cast of actual children. When I started rooting for a romance to blossom between Maya and her adorable best guy friend/crush/enemy Sam, I had to examine why I, as a supposed adult woman, had an empathetic crush on a preteen.
Middle school girls (MSG) love two types of boy—one who is attainable and found in every middle school around the country, and one who is more of an idea. It just so happens that in the cast of our grounded show, the male lead I play opposite is the Platonic of the MSG crush. He is tall, white, goofy in a charming way, with excellent teeth and brown hair. Moreover, he plays a reluctant romantic who pledges he will die a bachelor only to be swayed by the woman he’s been locked in a battle of wits with the whole time. When we opened last week for an audience of 600 students, we knew Benedick would be the subject of much teen infatuation. No one was surprised when he was asked if he was single (shoot your shot queen) and we all laughed when he was told he looks like Andrew Garfield. But, as I sat onstage during the talkback, watching the girls fawn and Benedick blush, I was shot through with a sour feeling. Jealousy? Was I jealous that small people with braces weren’t lining up to ask me how long it took me to memorize my lines?
When I was in elementary and middle school, I had a longstanding unrequited crush on the second type of boy. The Sam: white, with brown curly hair, freckles (!), slightly short with chubby baby cheeks still in tact. My Sam was Knox McMillan. It is the perfect boy-crush name rivaled only by Jeffrey Cecil (who, of course, played the cello). Knox and I were friends in the way the Knoxes of the world are friends with all the girls at school. He had boy-girl trampoline birthday parties and two sisters I tried to befriend. Knox never liked me back and he dated two of my best friends. Obviously, I as an adult have considered those icky outcast feelings to be both unimportant and deeply in the past; that is until they were right in front of me, taking the shape of my cast-mate and the girls who loved him.
A very weird part of growing up is the notion that you “move on” from your younger self. Yes, we are all an aggregate of experiences, but we are also taught that we shed our child selves like a lizard skin and attain this higher form of adulthood. Over a recent breakfast of goldfish and black coffee I realized I’m as much 14 as I am 24. For a moment I felt again that sharp desire to be seen and loved—a desire I intellectually acknowledge, but try not to feel so acutely. Part of my resentment was that Benedick, a mid-twenties white man, grafted so easily onto the romantic ideal. Part of it was that in middle school the beloved boys never looked twice at me. I was weird and awkward and black, and for a second I felt that again. I should note that I am fully embarrassed by this reaction, but I figured if grown women were putting themselves through middle school again for the entire world to see, I could probably write a few hundred words. This week I have learned two everlasting middle-school truths: we all want to be requited and being grounded forces you to sit in your room and think about your actions.
You weren’t alone! My middle school crush was Todd Harris. He was on the soccer team and always ended up near me because of how our last names landed when given alphabetically assigned seats!
(I found out after HS graduation he always had a crush on me, too, but interracial dating rarely included WM/BW at that time🤷🏽♀️). Always remember, you are already enough, wanted, loveable, LOVED, appreciated, impactful, and incredible!! 💝💞
S. McMillan (Knox might be my fam, fam!)
Love it.