Scooching Across the Floor
A personal story
The girls were sitting across the rehearsal room. One gaggle of four or so, on the floor about three feet away from me, sitting behind them. Their friend, next to the mirror on the far wall, alone, facing us.
The friend looked up, met the eyes of her best friend sitting in the gaggle, and started moving toward them.
Scooching toward them, like a rower - feet out, pulling her butt along the high school rehearsal room floor.
The entire time, she was locked into her best friend’s eyes. And the entire time, she wore a tight smirk, that was bursting to become a smile, and then a laugh.
The girls she was moving toward did not hold their laughter. But this kid’s focus was intense, as she scooted, inch by inch, closer to them, her gaze never wavering, until she fell into their arms, giggling.
It was the most adorable thing I had ever seen.
And absolutely heartbreaking.
In February of 2020…
…just before the world tilted on its axis, throwing millions into oblivion, I was producing a play at a performing arts high school in Las Vegas, where my daughters were students.
It was a devised piece, directed by an incredibly talented woman who took a small group of kids and taught them more in a month than they had learned in years.
About how to listen.
About how to be in a room with others. Just. Be.
About agreement. Not just “Yes… and,” but true agreement.
These teenagers were blown away. And watching them reignited my love of theatre.
There is a certain vulnerability in being an actor, and these kids hadn’t learned to paper over that yet. They had never been hurt by being too exposed.
“You sound like a boy.”
I can still picture them, my fellow kindergarteners; three girls surrounding me, the window at my back. I can still hear them. Still feel the confusion at their objection.
“Why is your voice so deep,” one of them asked accusingly.
I shrugged.
“I don’t know. It’s just my voice.”
We were 5.
One of the things that I’ve always noticed…
…about my kids and their friends it that they are all over each other. One leaning into the other as they’re sitting on the floor. Heads in each others’ laps. Piled on the couch in bunches, watching a movie. Boys, girls, straight, queer. No barriers.
They all acted as lovers do. But none of them were. They were friends. Who loved each other in that moment. And no one was pressuring them to act differently.
Second grade. I was the tallest girl in the class, and the third tallest of all. The two tallest were Keith and Trent. Keith was a ranch kid - Vegas in the ‘70s was full of ranches and casinos, a dichotomy not many people understand. Keith was big. All big. Tall and round and soft, but strong. Sweet face. Think Nick Offerman.
Trent was just tall. Skinny tall. With a very large head. Which kinda creeped me out. I assume he grew to be proportional, but he was gone by fourth grade, so I never found out. Vegas is also a town where people come and go, and the most frequent question we asked in grade school was, “Where are you from?”
My parents, heavily involved in the PTA, decided at one point that I had a crush on Trent.
This was the first news I had that a) I had a crush on Trent, and b) I could have a crush on someone. I was 7. Why would I have a crush on someone?
I denied my parents’ erroneous assumption. And my denial was proof to my mother that she was right.
She teased me about it. I stopped being friends with Trent. And wondered why she didn’t think I would have a crush on Keith, whom I was also friends with. And who was a lot nicer.
My kids, who are 20, have been watching Heartstopper.
I, too, have been watching this series about two boys who fall in love in a high school in the London suburbs.
Two boys and their entire group of friends, who all seem to be falling in love with each other.
After watching season 2, I am starting to wonder if there are ANY straight, cis people in this world besides parents and school bullies.
Although it is a world I would have loved to have been a part of in the ’70s and ‘80s.
Seventh grade. Back to school after the holiday break. I was sitting in my biology class with two classmates at a table for four. The new girl joined us.
She was shorter than me. Red hair. Round face. Freckles. She smiled a lot. A gummy smile. We talked, and laughed. I was surprised at how well we got along.
We ate lunch together and I was like, “Wow, I have a friend.”
By junior high, this was an issue.
In grade school, I was always running around, diving full-throttle into everything. At recess, I would play with the boys, who didn’t like having a girl play with them - especially a girl who was as good or better than them. But the girls didn’t actually move at recess, and I had to move.
Outside, inside. It didn’t matter.
In class, I would devour words and ideas completely, as if my very existence in that moment depended on it.
I honestly think it may have.
I didn’t have friends. I just had people at school that I played with. And was in class with.
The first taste of friendship I got was in fourth grade, when another new kid, Henry, and I started walking around the school at lunchtime, talking. We talked about where we were from (he was from Hawaii, but he was white and blond), we talked about our parents, we talked about ideas.
This was my first experience with deep, thought-provoking conversation. It was exhilarating, just walking around our school. I can’t say it was all Henry. The Ritalin probably had something to do with my ability to concentrate on the conversation and be happy walking rather than running. But I looked forward to those lunchtime strolls. They started what became an addictive, lifelong search for deep conversations.
By fifth grade, Henry was gone. He had moved somewhere else. Not sure where.
In junior high school, I would walk home through the desert and the boys behind me would insult me to each other. Often sexually. I just kept walking, trying not to cry.
The new girl, though, she was cool. We got along really well. Made each other laugh.
The next day she totally avoided me.
This also was not something new, though it had happened gradually with the girls I had already known. The suddenness of this new friendship being snatched away was gut-wrenching.
And the worst part is I did not know why.
Looking back, I’m sure someone told her I was gay. But I was 13. I didn’t know I was gay until I was 29!
My classmates somehow did. Because of that, they couldn’t be friends with me. And warned other people off.
The thing about Heartstopper is that the lines are very clear, the labels very neat.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans. The writers are clearly making a statement that all labels matter. Though it does annoy me a bit how often one of the main characters - who is obviously head over heels in love - has to say he’s bisexual. It feels like an excuse when he says it all the time. It feels like he is not comfortable with blurring lines. Like he wants to control how people see him.
He can’t control how people see him any more than I could control those boys behind me in the desert.
The guy who plays this character is a really good actor. He makes surprising choices, but when he gets to the “I’m bi, actually,” part, he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it.
The non-queer people are generally stereotypical dunces. Parents are either clueless and homophobic or totally accepting. (Except Olivia Colman, who displays all ranges of human emotion every three seconds. Because she’s Olivia Fucking Colman!)
Of course, in the real world, people aren’t all mean or all nice.
There are nuances, there are blurred lines. People in real life don’t always blurt out “I don’t like you because you’re gay.” But if you are 13 and you lean on someone because in that moment you feel comfortable, like you’re among friends, they might suddenly pull away and say, “What’s wrong with you!” When all you wanted to do was lean on somebody.
I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend or a girlfriend when I was 7 or when I was 13, or even 18, to be perfectly honest. And there have been many times in my adult life when that girl in 7th grade has come back in the form of another person, another someone whom I thought might be a friend, and who ran away. Which hurt and mystified me. Till it didn’t. Well, it ceased to mystify me.
Other than with my children when they were little, I have never been part of a group that laid all over each other, with the purity and lack of guile my kids and their high school friends displayed.
I have never scooted across the floor at a group of people, claiming them so publicly as mine, thinking - knowing - that I had every right to do that.
I have never had the right to do that.
In Heartstopper, the villains are those evil bullies who confront you. In real life, it is more likely to be that when you start scooting across the floor, the group you’re scooting toward will suddenly decide they have to stretch, or pee, or have an urgent conversation with someone in the hallway. And you will be left, alone, in the middle of the rehearsal room floor. Totally exposed. Feeling like an idiot for expecting people to be your friends.
That kid, scooching across the floor? She is my guide star. Those kids open to her arrival? They are my heroes. There is a lot we regularly lament about how the world has gotten darker, how this newly adult generation is under so much pressure and stress. But I think they’re doing something right, in the way they interact with each other, in the purity and quality of their friendships. Continually falling into each others’ arms. Laughing.
Carrie, you describe loneliness and the excruciating pain of children. I was fortunate to be in a wealthier family in my small Midwestern farm town. I didn't know the impact of that. In Jr Hi my friends constantly came up with reasons that I was ‘other’. I had no way to emotionally handle it. Devastating. My mom said, ‘They're jealous’, and I couldn't understand, it felt like I had no skin.
My grandchildren are going into middle school and I worry; maybe most children have a version of these feelings during adolescence, piling onto whatever rejections they bring from K-6.