A Tale of Shenanigans

I've tried to map out what I would post about this group. And more and more memories keep popping up. From the first time I saw the group perform until I got an email informing me that the group had gone bankrupt and was disbanding. Not quite the full span of my four years at Notre Dame, but very close. No matter what I think about the group and all the folks I sang and danced with in it, Shenanigans shaped my college experience.

This group took me to Florida for Spring Break my freshman year. There I got to rub shoulders with several important alumni and hang out with the Glee Club a bit as our Spring Break tours had some overlap (Shenanigans was created by several Glee Club members in 1980-ish). Because of Shenanigans, I sang solo and dueted a couple times - extremely nerve-wracking the first time, fun after that. As the group's treasurer for nearly two years, I got to see the inner workings of Notre Dame - right down to the bureaucratic red tape just to sell burgers before a football game. I also spent a decent amount of time with the President of the Alumni Association (a Big Deal, trust me) because he, through some odd trick dating back to the group's formation, was our club's sponsor and had to sign paperwork and approve things as such. Shenanigans also gave me two out of the three non-senior-portrait pictures I have in all of the four yearbooks I received while at ND (the third being one of me and my roomie playing video games; it was taken by a guy I was dating at the time who happened to be on the yearbook staff). The club also gave me a reason to hang out on campus for a week after finals because we performed for the seniors and their families during the week before graduation. And all that singing and dancing provided a nice break from my studies and kept me fit.

However, Shenanigans had the "Gay" stigma. After all, only fags would want to sing and dance, right? It didn't help the stereotype that a year or two before I arrived saw the outing of two men in the club. Thus we were a bit of a laughing stock with the student body. Thus we didn't get a whole lot of folks auditioning for the group. Thus we had to choose (among the men who tried out) from "decent voice, manageable rhythm" and "voice we can't mask, rhythm we can't hide" and a few shades in between. Thus my second year in the group we became all women for a semester. This was the same year that I took over being treasurer of the group and had to plan our Spring Break Tour (which was supposed to pay for itself and give us a profit besides). This responsibility put me in the Alumni Pres's office quite a bit - and gave me the disappointment of hearing that The Powers That Be frowned on an all-girls group going on a trip. In short, we had to cancel our Spring Break Tour that year. I was furious, indignant, and crushed at the time. Crushed because I hadn't believed that such a gender issue would rear its head among such people.

Remember that Spring Break Tour to Florida I mentioned above? That's also the trip where a Glee Clubber whom I hardly knew told me that I was a flighty bimbo (and other things) because I had only painted my big toe nail that day and my sandals displayed the quirk. That's also the trip where I learned the hard way why the halter top dresses we wore when performing required a safety pin to hold the halter top straps together (long story short: I nearly flashed the audience after standing up from a bow - thank God for long hair).

That last moment alone should taint my memories of the group, but let's not forget my fellow Shenanigans. The women were great. Except the one who wouldn't listen to my treasurer's advice and bankrupted the group shortly after I quit. The men provided me with two of my more assholish of exes, a dance partner who reeked of alcohol during every Sunday morning practice, another dance partner who couldn't dance and ended up wrecking me knee (seriously, I had to skip out on that year's Spring Break Tour in order to go home and have surgery), the only man who ever intentionally got me drunk (he then proceeded to give me unwanted kisses as he walked me home, a fact which sobered me enough to tell him I'd yell "rape" if he tried it again; he stopped), a stalker, and two great guys who are like older brothers to me still.

And if I had to do it all over again, I would still join the group. I would make different decisions about who I trusted in the group and who I dated, but I would be in the group all the same. Now, off I go to find some candy to get the taste of that near strip-tease out of my mouth.