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dawn.

    It was a major and deeply embarrassing teenage revelation. It must be how straight teenage boys feel when they realize those boobs they like have heads attached to them.

    I thought I knew everything after that first summer. “Being gay is not a choice. Gay people were made that way by God,” I’d lectured Mr. Garth proudly. But it took me another whole year to figure out the second part: “Gay people were made that way by God, but not solely for my entertainment .” We can’t expect our gay friends to always be single, celibate, and arriving early with the nacho fixin’s. And we really need to let these people get married, already.

    Before the final performance of every summer, all the kids were invited onstage and together we sang “Fill the World with Love” from Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Everyone would cry their heads off. It felt like the end of camp, and I imagine some of those kids had more to dread about going back to school than just boredom and health class.

    With his dream of a theater program for young people, Larry Wentzler had inadvertently done an amazing thing for all these squirrels. They had a place where they belonged, and, even if it was because he didn’t want to deal with their being different, he didn’t treat them any differently. Which I think is a pretty successful implementation of Christianity.

    We should strive to make our society more like Summer Showtime: Mostly a meritocracy, despite some vicious backstabbing. Everyone gets a spot in the chorus. Bring white shorts from home.

    That’s Don Fey

    Let’s review the cost-free techniques that we’ve learned so far for raising an achievement-oriented, obedient, drug-free, virgin adult: Calamity, Praise, Local Theater, and flat feet.

    Another key element is “Strong Father Figure / Fear Thereof.”

    My dad looks like Clint Eastwood. His half-Scottish, half-German face in repose is handsome but terrifying. I searched the audience for him during the sixth-grade chorus concert and, seeing his stern expression, was convinced that he had seen me messing up the words to the Happy Days theme and that I was in big trouble. I spent the rest of the concert suppressing terror burps, only to be given a big hug and a kiss afterward. It took me years to realize, Oh, that’s just his face.

    It’s my face, too, it turns out. The cheekbones later discovered there by a team of gay excavators are courtesy of my dad.

    Don Fey dresses well. He has an artist’s eye for mixing colors and prints. He wears tweedy jackets over sweater vests in the winter and seersucker suits in the summer. His garnet college ring shows off his well-groomed hands. He can still rock a hat.

    My dad looks like he’s “somebody.” One day when I was visiting him on his lunch hour he ran into a couple of old high school buddies in downtown Philadelphia. “Hey, Don Fey!” one of the guys

    called from across the street. “Oh my God, Don Fey,” the other guy said excitedly. The two African American secretaries waiting at the light with my dad whispered knowingly to each other, “That’s Don Fey .”

    Before I was born, my mother took my brother to Greece for the whole summer to visit family.
    When they were finally coming back, my dad washed and waxed his Chevy convertible, put on his best sharkskin suit, and drove all the way from Philadelphia to New York International Airport to pick them up. (In those days, international travel meant dressing up, smoking on planes, wearing Pan Am slippers, and flying into New York.)

    Their flight was due to arrive early in the morning, so Don Fey, who is never late for anything, got to the airport just before dawn. As he popped on his sweet lid and walked across the deserted parking lot toward the terminal, he saw two black gentlemen approaching from far away. He played it cool to hide his apprehension. He was in New York, after all, one of the world’s most dangerous cities if you’re from any other city, and from far away