It ended up taking three years for us all to end up back in town, but we all came with new and valuable expertise. Jeremy had spent three years in New York getting his Bachelor of Arts in Drama and spending every night at the very balls I had gagged over in Paris is Burning. Zoe had been in Europe backpacking, squatting, and exploring the drag scene there. And I had been teaching more and more classes and climbing into a leadership role at Sustained.
My big push during the absence of my friends was to get more teenagers involved. By the time I graduated high school, there were only 11 of us over the age of 15 taking classes at Sustained. So when I moved into a “recruitment” role, I went to all the high school in the 30-mile radius and looked for the performance kids and tried to get them involved.
When my friends got home, I had over 35 teenagers enrolled in my Sustained Theatrics series. I was teaching as me; I was performing at night as Tequila Mockingbird. Between teaching and doing leadership administrative work at Sustained and performing four nights a week, I was making six figures and had little expenses.
I had committed myself totally to Sustained Theatrics.