Like Me (8 page)

I felt bad for saying what I’d said to him, and I felt bad for myself too. My experience in Branson the summer before had
scared me in a whole new way. I wanted another brand-new start. I was disappointed that I had not been able to leave my homosexuality behind the summer before, and I’d made up my mind to dedicate myself to changing. Not only did I truly want to change—I didn’t want to be discovered by other gays. I’d never been around anyone whom I knew to be gay. I had an overwhelming fear that they might see “it” in me. I didn’t know any better. I thought that I could, without realizing it, have some characteristic or trait that other gays might be able to identify.

Years later, I heard from a friend of a friend that Ray had told people that I was gay. He did have reason to say that, by the way. He’d been aware of a friendship that I had with a girl whom they all suspected of being gay, and she was. I suppose that my hateful rant against homosexuality in those first few weeks at Opryland only fueled his speculation about me. As I have grown older, I have paid attention to those who are so overtly opposed to and vocal against homosexuality, especially those who prop up their arguments with the Bible. An educated guess tells me that some of them who rant are actually gay.

Ray and I enjoyed a good friendship for years, even though I kept him at arm’s length. There were times when I wanted to confide in him, and there were times over the years when I desperately needed him. I’m hopeful that I can find Ray Kinman and ask his forgiveness.

O
ne of the only things I knew for certain when I moved to Nashville was that I had three months of employment. My contract with Opryland was for the summer of 1989, but that short contract was my ticket to Nashville.

The Opryland casts were seasonal workers, but some casts had longer contracts than others. The Opryland management assigned a color to the different groups. I was in the Blue Cast, and our contract was only for the summer months. The more-seasoned cast was called the Red Cast. In theory, the Opryland higher-ups would choose performers at the end of the summer from Red and Blue to constitute the group of performers who would get to have employment into the fall months. They called this the Purple Cast. It was understood, however, that if anyone in Red chose to stay and be in Purple, they had seniority.

Most of us in Blue wanted to continue on with the show, but we had heard through the grapevine that we didn’t have a shot. It seemed that only one performer from the Red Cast was choosing to leave the show. Randy Harrell had been one of the veteran performers at the park for years, and he had decided that it was time for him to pursue other career opportunities, so only one male performer from Blue would get to be in Purple. We Blue Cast members were happy that our friend Ken Mellons would get to be the one to fill that spot. That said, the rest of us were all
worried about how we’d be able to pay our bills in the coming months. A few kids from our group were headed back to their home states to attend college, but most of us had rolled the dice on our dreams to get to Nashville and would have done most anything to keep from having to pack up and leave. I knew that if I found myself out of work I had no options back home, and I was not going to move back to Kansas. Some of my cast mates knew that if they got really down and out they could borrow money from their parents. I didn’t have that luxury.

We were each in charge of retrieving our many different costumes from the wardrobe trailer, which sat directly behind the theater. Every day I’d load up my six or seven different costumes, including shoes and boots. As I walked up the back stairs of the theater, one of the crew guys was walking down the steps, eating a popular Opryland treat called Dippin’ Dots, a cup filled with tiny multicolored ice cream balls the size of BB’s. “Congratulations,” he said, as he spat two of the Dippin’ Dots on my face. “Oops, sorry,” he said, as we passed one another on the stairs and kept walking. My stage manager asked me if I’d known prior to the announcement. I didn’t know what he was talking about. That was a remarkable day for me. A few minutes before I arrived at the theater, the Purple Cast list had been posted and I was the only Blue Cast member other than Ken who was promoted to the Purple Cast. The worst had been confirmed for the rest of my cast members who were not on the list; their jobs at Opryland would be ending in a week. I quietly went about my day and accepted the heartfelt pats on the back from my peers.

There was little acceptance of me in the Purple Cast during the first two weeks. Ken was welcomed with great excitement and warmth because he was taking a spot from someone who chose to leave, but my situation was different. Every female in the Red Cast had wanted to stay on through the Purple season. The directors and creative staff of the show had made a decision not to renew one of the girls’ contracts, and I was hired to move
up. I hated how it felt to be unwelcome. All of the gals in Purple were older than me—I was eighteen and they were between twenty-two and thirty. A couple of the girls were overtly vocal about how much they didn’t want me there and how unfair it was that their friend’s contract didn’t get renewed. I toughed it out and held my ground. Within two weeks of my joining the Purple Cast, things couldn’t have been more different. I suppose they got tired of working so hard at excluding me, so they began to let me in. In no time, real friendships were forged, and some of those friendships have gone on.

I was lucky to have employment for those additional three months, but the park was scheduled to close for the season and I needed a job, any job, to get me through the winter.

I loved my job at Opryland USA as a performer in the
Country Music USA
show. I wasn’t a strong dancer, but I had fun and did the best I could. That’s me smack-dab in the middle. 1991
.

I had moved from my furnished single-wide trailer into a house that was closer to downtown Nashville and closer to Opryland. Laura-Grace, her brother, Gardnar, and I ended up living together for years, and their entire family was as much a family to me as I’d ever known.

L
aura-Grace and I were nineteen years old, and Gardnar was just a year younger than us. Their mom and dad lived in Kentucky but had purchased the house as an investment since they knew that their kids wanted to work and go to school in Nashville. I was told that I could have the basement bedroom, and I was thrilled with it. I asked Barbara, Laura-Grace’s mom, if I could have permission to paint it. She encouraged me to treat the house as if it were my own. The room had dark wood paneling, so I bought two gallons of light blue paint and spent days rolling four coats of it on the walls; the paneling just soaked it up. Eventually it looked just how I wanted it to look. The three of us took great pride in that house; we’d have days where we power-cleaned it top to bottom. It was just so nice to have a beautiful, clean place to call home.

My bills were minimal, but I knew I needed to find a job immediately. I’d heard from the other young performers at Opryland that if all else failed, one could always get a job bagging groceries at Kroger, a well-known chain of grocers in the South.

After a four-show day at Opryland, I drove over to the strip mall near home and parked my car in front of the Kroger store that anchored the entire shopping center nearest my home. It was about nine in the evening when I asked the gal behind the service counter if I could fill out an application for employment. She picked up the store phone and summoned the manager. He appeared a few minutes later and told me that they weren’t hiring. I asked if I could fill out an application in case a position should open up. The only position open at that time was the
position of a butcher. I asked him if I should come back in a few days to see if applications were being taken then. He said it would be a waste of my time. I swallowed hard and thanked him.

The Kroger job was supposed to be a sure thing. I got into my yellow 1980 AMC Concord (the Banana) and sat for a minute. I put the key in the ignition and thought about my options. I had none. I had to find a job. I saw a store at the end of that strip mall that appeared to be open. I parked my car in the spot nearest the front door of the store called Sport Seasons. I saw that the sign on the door had been flipped around to display the
SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED
side of it. The man who was inside cleaning was squatting down behind the cash register counter. As soon as he stood upright, I knocked on the glass door. He jumped, and as he walked to the door he put his hand on his chest, signifying to me that I’d nearly given him a heart attack.

He got to the door and pointed at the sign and mouthed the words “We’re closed.” I said loudly that I realized they were closed but I just needed to ask him a question. He turned the key and said to come in, and he locked the door behind me. I stuck out my hand and introduced myself, asking him for his name. His name was Doug. I asked if I could fill out an application for employment. He started shaking his head from side to side before I was even able to finish my question. They weren’t hiring, and if and when he made a new hire it would be someone with extensive retail experience in sporting goods. When he asked me if I had any qualifications like that, I was truthful, but I told him I could learn anything. I asked him if I could come back and talk to the manager during business hours, and he said, “I am the manager. Hell, I’m the owner, too.”

Zero for two. I got in my car. I reached into my purse, grabbed one item, and walked right back up to that door. I knocked again. He was bent over a big cardboard box, and without standing, he looked in my direction and waved his hand at me to go away. I knocked again, this time harder, and he stood up. I held
the item from my purse flat up against the window, and he squinted his eyes to see what it was that I was trying to show him. He shook his head in frustration but walked over to the door and unlocked it. He asked me, “What are you doing? What are you holding up to my window?” I showed it to him again. It was my checkbook. I showed him the balance register of my checkbook and asked if he’d give me one minute to tell him something. He asked if he had a choice.

I said if he would look closely at the balance of my checkbook he’d see that I had $13.33 left in my account. Then I committed the cardinal sin of being a wannabe entertainer trying to find employment to pay the bills. I told him that I had come to Nashville to be a famous country singer, that my job at Opryland was ending soon, and that I was dead set against moving back to Kansas. Then I suggested that I come and work for him for one week, starting the next day, for free. I declared that I was good at math, I had the ability to count people’s change back to them, I had an excellent memory, I was good with people, and I was a hard worker. I said that I was finished with what I had to say. He finally threw his head back and groaned, “Okaaay.” He told me to come back ready to work at ten o’clock the next morning.

The other employees were all helpful, professional, and welcoming. I had a crash course in stock codes, products, orders, returns, running credit cards, stacking, sorting, and pricing. Shortly before that first long day ended, I had to go to the back office to ask Doug a question about something. After he answered, I turned to walk back out to the front of the store. He said, “Come back tomorrow. You’re hired.” I spun around and said, “Thank you. I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.” I worked for Sport Seasons for a couple of years, and that job got me through the leanest times.

When I knew for certain that I had the job, I felt a sense of triumph and a glimmer of hope. The way I saw it was this: if I had been able to find a job even when there wasn’t one to be had, I
was going to be able to parlay that luck into landing a record contract. Getting that job was a foreshadowing of my destiny—I was convinced of that.

T
here were six or seven employees at that time, but for the most part, three of us ran that store every day. Skid was a late-forty-something single father of one and was the most dependable and disciplined person I’d ever known.

Joy was the in-house bookkeeper, and when I started at the store, she was about eight months pregnant. She was helpful to me, but she stayed in the back most of the time, filling in numbers on the blank spaces of spreadsheets and signing checks.

Brenda was nineteen, just seven months older than me. She was a native Nashvillian and had worked for Doug long enough to have the freedom to stroll into work three minutes late every day. She was tall, tan, thin, and athletic, and she was blessed with long, pretty legs and a perfect white smile.

Brenda and I started to spend time together away from Sport Seasons. I liked to hear her speak and, more importantly, I liked to watch her speak. She had the prettiest teeth, and I was taken with the way her lips looked when she spoke in her slight Southern accent. She had a kind disposition, and everyone liked her. The boys flirted with her and tried to date her. She didn’t flirt back with them much, I noticed. It seemed to me that she simply tolerated their advances and did her best not to lead them on.