Middle school was a turning point in my life in many ways. For one, I was spending my days outside my neighborhood for the first time. Florence Reizenstein School, recently built on the border of East Liberty and Shadyside, was the biggest middle school in the district, drawing 1,600 students from a vast range of neighborhoods and backgrounds. It was thirty minutes away from my home, and I rode the school bus there along with many other kids from East Liberty.
Reizenstein was an interesting experiment, founded with the intent of providing a first-rate education to an integrated student body. Desegregation was the very worthy goal, but problems arise within everything we try in this democratic experiment we call America, and though kids of every color poured into the building from each corner of the city, we were soon separated in much the same way that we were outside those walls.
Upon our arrival at Reizenstein, we were given a series of tests¡ª aptitude tests, IQ tests¡ªthat would place us in specific classes. As you might expect, the kids who had spent the last several years in poorer neighborhood schools were not as academically advanced as their privileged peers. So the Pittsburgh Scholars Program was overwhelmingly white, while almost all the Black kids were placed in the mainstream classes.
I was an exception. I was admitted to the Scholars Program. And this was a profound surprise to me. I'd had no idea that I was smart.
I was quite excited about this. My parents and grandparents had made it very clear to me, as a first-generation student of the post¨Ccivil rights era, that education was my only ticket out of poverty and violence, so I was very focused on making the most of mine. And for the first time in my life, at age eleven, I was really meeting white people and engaging with other cultures. I was excited about that too. But it also felt daunting and unfamiliar. Being one Black student in a sea of white faces was very intimidating.
Just as I adjusted to this level of separation¡ªbetween mainstream classes and the Scholars Program¡ªanother layer of stratification emerged. That same year, the Pittsburgh Public Schools started a program called the Centers for Advanced Studies (CAS). It represented the very top echelon within the already advanced Scholars Program, and this group got to get on a bus every Wednesday and go somewhere else¡ªa school called Banksville ¡ªfor the entire day to study things I'm sure I could have benefited from, things that apparently someone thought I didn't have the capacity to learn.
I've since come to understand that my placement in that high-and-yet-not-the-highest tier was what crystallized this idea in my mind: that maybe I just wasn't smart enough. (Smart enough for what? I'm not sure. Just not smart enough.) I still carry this untruth with me. I've learned how to move through it, but that sixth-grade evaluation is where it originated.
Yet as much as it stung to be at once affirmed and denied in this way, it reinforced my drive, my conviction that I would have to work as hard as I possibly could to hold my own in the world. And because I was left with the sense that a rich cache of opportunities was being withheld from me, it spurred me to look for and create my own opportunities at every step. It drove me to cultivate my own agency and be my own advocate.
The first way this manifested itself was in the realm of phys ed. Gym remained the most dreaded part of my week, and unfortunately, it was now on the schedule every day except Wednesday, when we had a health class instead. Competitive sports still filled me with anxiety, but at this point, they were the least stressful aspect of the phys ed experience. Much more harrowing to me was the time spent in the locker room. My body was changing, and so were those of my classmates. Many of the boys were becoming men before my eyes. At every turn in the locker room, I was confronted with swelling muscles, chiseled limbs, hair where there had been none before. My own arousal was terrifying to me, and all I wanted was to hide.
Now, in the meantime, Mr. Lutz¡ªthe instrumental teacher¡ªhad invited me to join band because I played the alto sax. I loved music, and I cherished the experience of being in band. Mr. Lutz was a very warm and gentle man who seemed as if he was on my side. He recognized my creative drive and threw himself headlong into supporting it.
I speak of angels in my life very often¡ªangels who dipped down and pointed me in the right direction. Mr. Lutz was one of them, and another was Mr. Highland, the gym teacher. He saw my panic and my distress. And when I asked him if it was possible for me to opt out of gym and use that time to practice my saxophone, he said yes. The only requirement was that I show up to health class once a week.
This was a godsend. It lifted a lot of anxiety and allowed me to be in a creative space more often. I was dedicated to my saxophone; I would go into the instrumental room and sit in the back corner and practice and practice. Music is healing, it had always been healing, and it was a space where I felt safe.
Once I'd experienced the blessing of leaving my neighborhood, it became harder and harder to return. I found myself trying to extend the school day in any way I could. There were a lot of after-school programs implemented by the Pittsburgh Public Schools. It was also the year that Ronald Reagan was elected president, so in the not-too-distant future, these programs would be dismantled and the people who were the most vulnerable would suffer. But at the time, they were still intact. There was a bound stack of after-school programs, at least three inches thick, filled with different activities that we kids could immerse ourselves in. I scoured the pages and came across a program called Reizenstein Musical Theater (RMT). I didn't know what a musical was, I didn't know what theater was, but music was in the title and I thought that perhaps it would involve singing, which I loved to do above all other things. So I signed up.
On the first day of RMT, the director, Ms. Schmidt, stood in front of the group and explained what a Broadway musical was. She was a compact woman with short hair and horn-rimmed glasses. She had a specific presentation that, later in life, I would come to identify as that of a lesbian, but at the time, I had no idea about this. I just knew that I liked her. She was strong, she was powerful, and she cared.
She told us that the musical chosen for the year would be Rodgers and Hart's Babes in Arms. The following week would be an audition. We could come in and sing a song¡ªany song we wanted¡ªin front of the group. And then she would cast the show. Each of us would get a part; each of us would have something to do. The entire show would be double-cast, which meant that no matter what, on one of the four evenings of the performance, every member of RMT would have a role in the show. As she spoke, I was filled with a jittery excitement because I knew I could sing; I knew I could ace this thing she was calling an audition.
We finished our first meeting, and when I walked outside, my grandmother and great-aunt Dorothy were there waiting for me. It was September 21, my eleventh birthday, and they had come to pick me up and take me on a special birthday trip. Grandma and Aunt Dot drove me downtown. We had a wonderful dinner, and then we went to Heinz Hall to see The Wiz, a Broadway show on a national tour. It was a surprise. I'd had no idea where we were going. And when the curtain rose and the actors began the performance, it struck me: Oh my God, this¡ªthis!¡ªis what Ms. Schmidt was just talking about. This is a musical!
I remember thinking this coincidence was like magic¡ªbut the true magic was just beginning. I could not have been more mesmerized by the show. Of course I knew The Wizard of Oz; I was well acquainted with the plot line. But this version galvanized me. It was an African-American reimagining of the story with all Black people and an all R&B score written by the late Charlie Smalls with the book written by William F. Brown. I don't think I drew a deep breath for the entire two and a half hours. And then, at the very end of the evening, the character of Dorothy sang a song called "Home."
She stood center stage and belted out this song about a place "where there's love overflowing" that left me transported, breathless, and bereft all at once. When the lights came up in the theater, I was weeping. All around me, people rose to their feet and began gathering their things, filing toward the aisles, but I couldn't move. My grandma and Aunt Dorothy had to peel me from the seat and all but carry me to the car.
I woke up longing with all my heart just to hear that music again. And I wanted to sing "Home" for the audition the following week but didn't know how to find it and had no idea where to begin. So after choir class, I approached the teacher, Ms. Rhoda Arnold. She was another angel in my life. I told her about The Wiz and the song I wanted to learn. Two days later, she took me aside after class and handed me the cast recording from The Wiz, along with the sheet music. "This is for you," she told me. "Good luck with your audition."
I clearly remember standing there in front of her, stunned and clutching the shrink-wrapped vinyl album in both hands. The cover art featured a Black woman in silhouette, poised as if to take off from a starting block. Her hair and limbs swirled out behind her in a fantastical tangle. I remember my own joyful gasp of recognition: The image matched that of the Playbill on my dresser at home. I couldn't have been more surprised and thrilled if she had handed me the Hope Diamond.
I took the album home and listened to it until the grooves flattened. I learned "Home" and came in the next week and sang it for Ms. Schmidt and all the kids at RMT. Once again, I saw the faces of the people who heard me sing and felt the room soften. I felt hearts open. In that moment, I truly began to understand the power of this gift I had been given. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I knew that when I opened my mouth to sing, somehow the darkness lifted and all my shame went away.
The following week the cast list went up, and just as Ms. Schmidt had said, every role had been double-cast. Every role, that is, except for mine. There in the middle of the paper was my name all by itself: Gus Fielding: Billy Porter. I would get to play the role of Gus Fielding in Babes in Arms for all four performances.
There are no words for how I loved RMT: the shared sense of purpose, the way cast and crew became a tight-knit family, the sheer fun and escapism of becoming someone else for a few hours. The show opened at the end of March, and the actual performance was an experience unlike any I'd had before. Being onstage felt like home.