The Masochism Tango (Brian Katcher)

 

When I was 15, there was nothing I wanted more than to not be seen. I hated being called on in class. The idea of speaking to a group filled me with terror. When strangers talked to me, even in overtures of friendship, I'd panic. And that might have continued forever, had it not been for the high school talent show, my sophomore year.

I'd stayed after school for one reason or another. I was about to leave for home, when I was confronted in the hall by a guy I barely knew, a friend of a friend.

"Katcher! We're auditioning for the talent show and we need a fifth guy. C'mon!"

I wanted to run. Disregarding the fact that I'd not been involved in any sort of planning, I couldn't sing or dance. Why me? 

But I gritted my teeth, and followed him.

It was a simple song and dance number, accompanied by my friend on piano. The song?

'The Masochism Tango,' by the late, great Tom Lehrer. If you're not familiar with the song, it's exactly what you'd expect:

I ache for the touch of your lips dear/but much more for the touch of your whips, dear...

There was no way the judges would pick us to perform. And there's no way the school administrators would allow this.

I was wrong on both counts. I had to go home and explain to my parents, who'd been begging me to do more extracurriculars, what we were doing.

"Um, we're going to dress in drag and beat each other on stage."

Remember, I once ran out of a drama club meeting in panic when we were asked to do an improv routine.

We rehearsed. We plotted. I wasn't going to be one of the ones in drag, but I would have to dance with a burly football player in a dress and blonde wig (who would later become my brother-in-law, but that's another story). Was I really going to do this?

I did. Check it out here, at the fourteen minute mark.

We won second place, before the talented musician, and after the popular dancers. People came up to me for weeks, saying how funny we had been. The guys in the group became some of my closest friends.

I wrote to the composer to tell him about our triumph. He actually wrote back.

The next year, we auditioned again with another Lehrer song. We made it, but the high school principal decided that the song 'Smut' wasn't school appropriate. That same principal later was fired and arrested for soliciting prostitution. 

My point is, if I had gone with my instincts and declined to audition, they would have found someone else, and I would have gone through high school as that same quite, bashful nerd. But thanks to risking being seen, I turned into an outspoken, extroverted nerd. So there you go.