6 Tips For When You and Your Boyfriend Experience Sexual Awakenings While Watching Aaron Tveit
by Alyssa LaVacca. @AlyssaLavacca.
We've all been there, girlfriend! Senior year, the Big Apple. One moment you're lost in the throes of young, heterosexual love. The next? You're staring at your IRL romantic lead across an armrest in the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, as your eyes simultaneously widen in horny disbelief as Aaron Tveit's crystal clear tenor sends an unfamiliar tingling to your Spring Awakening parts.
Something is off and it's shocking! I mean, would Mr. Dorsett have cast you both in the iconic cishet roles of Gertrude and Hornton in last year's production of Seussical if you weren't oozing the requisite sexual tension from your ironically clogged pores? Sorry, girl, but yes!
Don't worry, though! Here are 6 steps on how to process that brand new (but somehow unsurprising) information. Speaking of Spring Awakening...
1. ACCEPT that you and your tenderhearted tenor will never be the Melchior/Wendla power couple of your twisted adolescent wet dreams. He's a Hanschen! And you're really more of a Thea if we're being honest.
2. VIEW this as a rite of passage. Every leading lady has had her share of gay lovers - just ask Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, or any of the girls you'll meet in college!
3. IGNORE it and enjoy your time together. Instead of fretting, spend your time with your boo soaking up the neon wonder of Times Square. Perhaps solidify your coupledom by belting Wicked's As Long As You're Mine for ungrateful locals haggardly pushing past you on 8th Avenue or unsuspecting tourists as they ascend the TKTS stairs.
4. DECIDE how to handle this. It'll have to happen someday, and you only have two options: 1) Dump him and find a hot lacrosse player (unlikely), or 2) Stay together knowing that your relationship is a lie. Neither choice will be easy but both will enable you to better interpret the lyrics to "On My Own" and that is JUST as important as learning what a healthy relationship is.
5. REFRAME this as a shared experience that will bring you two closer. It's important to have kinks in common and it just so happens that you're both extremely aroused by Aaron Tveit sustaining a belted Bb. This is nothing to be ashamed of! In fact, it opens up more areas to explore: Gavin Creel's tiny, tantalizing embellishments in "What Do I Need With Love", the way Adam Pascal growls "I'll call, I'll hate the fall", Derek Klena's erotically open vowel placement as he sings "look in theeeese eeeeys" in Dogfight... the possibilities for timbre induced satisfaction are endless!
6. LOSE your virginities together to the Next to Normal OBCR. This is a time-honored tradition for young ingénues. If you've read this far it's your fate; you have no choice but to do this. (Probably unsuccessfully on the bus ride back to Ohio, but do it nonetheless!)
No matter what happens, rest assured that in ten years, you, too, can be writing semi-fictionalized accounts of your high school experience for a satire website. I, for one, am just grateful that the aural pleasure Aaron Tveit so expertly gave me in the opening number of Catch Me If You Can will again be available to young thespians as he takes the stage in Moulin Rouge this summer. One thing's for certain: I'll be in that audience, maybe even with my high school boyfriend, his current boyfriend, and my boyfriend as well. And honestly? I can’t think of a better – or more romantic - double date!