Can I Get Some More from the Tenor II’s?

I press play and the music sounds, filling the room with pop beats and siren melodies. I turn the long knob and the water comes rushing out in a waterfall. I step my foot over the tub and the water envelops my skin, evaporating into steam that clears my head. As I pull back the floral curtain, I become a wizard in his own world, where lies are the truth as far as anyone is concerned. 

My voice activates, rising from the pit of my stomach and radiating in the gaps and spaces behind my face. There is a cathedral in my mouth with perfect acoustics. The music emitting in the background is my choir, six songs that will accompany me during my flight. In actuality, the college choir I had joined relegated me to a bullfrog, whereas behind this curtain I soar like an eagle. 

“It’s just a little too late, a little too long, and I can’t waiAiAitt, but yOu know all the right things to sAaYy.”

According to the “Carrie: The Musical” revival, an eagle is just another bird until he can spread his wings. I tried to make my true voice heard, even knowing that without the steam, water, and privacy I sound like a cat squeaking. Out there I can only do it, but in here I can do it well. I didn’t want to be stuck in the Tenor II section, one step lower than the highest a male is allowed to sing and forever in fear I’d be downgraded to Baritone. For that one song about the swans, the Tenor I’s got to sing in the fifth octave while I stayed trapped in the middle fourth. Tenor II’s always seem to have it the hardest, with our choir director always asking us for slightly more power even though the arrangements don’t call for it. We must remain in the background, not shine in the spotlight.

I once had a meeting with the director after having asked for some help with my voice. I rarely sang with my chest, finding it boring and dull, but upon joining the men’s choir I wanted to improve it. He danced his fingers on the piano keys as we went through vocal exercises. My voice broke a few times, that dreaded trait that comes with male puberty that doesn’t resolve itself until about 30 years old, as my choir director said, when the male voice fully develops. I find it unfair that vocal cracks seem so stylistic and beautifully sorrowful when famous singers utilize them, but when I experience a break, my voice is nothing more than an undeveloped, hormonal mess. He said I was exactly where everyone else was, but that wasn’t good enough. My head voice feels infinite, without breaks, only a floor and a ceiling, but cathedrals have high walls. 

“They say only fOols fall in lOovE, well they must have been talkin’ about UusS.”

Resolving the break earlier on takes a lot of practice and work, necessitating you to sound poor before your voice can soar. The bridge lies in the mix register, a not-so-well-known section of the voice that combines the chest and head. All the amazing female singers use it to belt those high notes, for belting is not a register, it’s a style. Singing theory can be so frustrating sometimes. My chosen voice at the time was ten percent chest, ninety percent head. Not quite a mix, but so-called mask-placed head voice, your mask being your nasal region. I essentially was trying to sneak my head voice into a VIP club, pushing it as forward as it could go in the small space that would accept it. Then one day, after working through over a year of singing lessons, the doors opened. It was so random, by perfect chance that I was miraculously able to replicate. It was now thirty percent chest, seventy percent head. Not the perfect balance I’d wanted, definitely not like the stars, but a big improvement. 

“I’imM way too good at listeniingG, all these comments fuckin’ up my eNergyY.”

Desperately wanting to be a different eagle, I asked my choir director if there was a chorus at this college where I could sing in my high register. He said that the women’s choir and the mixed gender choir had some countertenors in the past. I dread that word, countertenor. Why must they assign me a different label simply because I have a penis? I do not wish to counter anything, I only wish to be who I feel that I am, a Soprano. I emailed the women’s choir director who turned me down. No boys allowed, a reversal of the He-Man Woman-Haters club a lá “The Little Rascals.” The mixed choir director let me audition. 

I walked into the small room in one of those academic buildings that just looks like a house, next to the location where the choirs practice, intensely nervous at the possibility of exposing my high voice. The nerves made my mouth dry, and the bottom of my stomach was unyielding at commands to support my voice. She also had a role to play in that terrible audition, making me do exercises that started in my unstable break range and expecting me to move my voice up and down without faults. I stood up for myself and addressed that issue, so we did some other exercises, but my voice still wouldn’t listen to me. Finally, I was able to follow some of the last melodies. She then finished, but I wasn’t done. I couldn’t stop looking at those seven white keys on her piano, having hoped her fingers would have tapped them. 

“I gEt drunk, prEtend that I’m over it; self-dEstruct, show Up like an Idiot.”

“You haven’t tested me in the fifth octave yet.” 

“Why don’t you just sing something?”

I searched through my repertoire, trying to find something high but not too high. Little Mix… Jojo… Demi Lovato… no way I could do Ari. The seconds kept passing as the silence started to speak more for me than those melodies did. After about thirty seconds, I just went for it. You want more from this Tenor II? I’ll give you more: “Something ‘bout yawhhHhH… Feel like a Dangerous womAanahn.”

Fuck. I knew I hadn’t hit the right notes. I quickly couldn’t believe I had picked one of her hardest songs to sing with phrased climax high notes. There’s a huge difference between merely holding a note and speaking through them, trying to weave your tongue through the frequencies without your throat becoming tangled into a tight knot. I tried to be an eagle in an unfamiliar habitat and suddenly I wasn’t the highest on the food chain anymore. I expected the worst, or, with her being an educator, some constructive criticism, or any comments at all; something to make me feel like I hadn’t exposed myself as just some gay guy who thinks he’s Ariana Grande. 

She said nothing. Silence filled the room, a reflection of her now more than me. The cathedral was dry and empty. She offered me baritone and I respectfully declined. In my mind I had been an eagle, but in reality she had labeled me as a mere penguin. 

As I walked out of the house, I passed by my choir director. He asked me how I was. I said I was sticking with men’s choir, sporting a thumbs-up, masking my embarrassment. I knew my audition was horrible, a failed representation of my actual abilities, even within my chest register, but to not say anything at all about my true voice? What kind of educator was she, to pull back the curtain so swiftly? She gave me no hot air balloon, only deflation; though my ego wasn’t very high to begin with. 

“Guess I should say thAnk you for the hAte-yous and the tAttoos, oh baby I’m cOOl by the way, mmhm, ain’t sure I loved yOU anywayyayy.”

It was probably for the best. My mix voice is not a delicate swan. I can only use power from down below to fly high. To make it lighter, more angelic, requires accessing my whistle register, the higher-than-high notes that lie behind tightly sealed pearly gates. Most of the time, that’s no matter. The belts make me feel as strong as Hercules, impossibly utilizing my small body to produce empathic, reverberating sound waves and frequencies. 

I can always return to my shower, where I am a protected, esteemed bird. No one can take away my wings. They do not dare. As the scalding water hits my skin, I prepare for the big finale. I am reminded of something my choir director said during a trip to Alabama where he was using us to demonstrate the mix: “F5 is unusable.” It was a throwaway line to everyone else, but it left a mark on my chords, demonstrating that I would always be a bullfrog in this school. F5 is my favorite note, the climax of my favorite song. 

I let myself go sharp so that I can really nail it, spreading my wings, ready for takeoff:

“In my drEAms it felt so riGhhT, but I woke up, every tIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMMMEEEE!!!” 

Fuck. Now that is flying.