Hiding in Plain Sight

I am, I think, an extroverted introvert, a person who lives in an internal quiet space but who has to get out on the town now and then, only to withdraw immediately after to rejuvenate. My personality inventories, Beck’s and The Keirsey Temperament Sorter, say I am a Rational INTJ – a pragmatic, idealistic, artisan guard – a Mastermind; introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging. A rare personality, a natural leader who doesn’t want to lead, but who falls into it when others fail to take the lead. Strong-willed, confident and courageous, but yet riddled with pangs of uncertainty.

As an introvert, I have an exhibitionist streak that is hard to explain, along with a self-conscious backlash of insecurity about what I’m exhibiting, an insecurity that gets in the way. I’m happiest in the background, but I need to be in the foreground, even though it makes me super uncomfortable. This has always been the tension I’ve lived with, my Gemini mirror image personality traits.

With singing, I’d rather be in the choir than be the soloist. But if tapped, I will be the soloist. But once doing it, standing out from the group, I’m suddenly smitten with anxiety that my performance isn’t good enough for all those eyes on me. What are they thinking? I tighten up. But it’s not just singing. With any public performance, it’s hard for me to perform individually. Thus, my reticence when asked to lead big projects, to expose myself. What if people think I’m ho-hum. I’m happy to participate and advise and use my expertise behind the scenes, but not so happy to stand out front where my performance can be publicly dissected. With practice and age, I learned how to hide the performance anxiety, but it never left. I appear cool, calm, and collected when giving a talk or chairing a committee; I know that I know what I am doing, but the anxiety remains.

In the privacy of my living room, alone, I can stand out front unabashedly. I can sing at the top of my lungs, and dance, and imagine I had taken a different path in life. I can let my hair down and sing and move without that feeling of tension. And it shows. My body is loose, my voice is resonant, and I can do things with it I could never do while being observed by a crowd. Here, I can be Steven Tyler, or George Michael, or Axel Rose, or Elton John, or Adam Lambert. I can let out the lead singer in me, the unfettered exhibitionist.

I once had a great voice, a high tenor that could flip into falsetto with ease, a requirement for the ’80s lead singers in groups like Queen, Journey, REO Speedwagon, the Eagles, and so on. I was in choir and swing choir in school. I was often a soloist. I sang in church and in competitions, in duets and trios and quartets. I sang in a lot of weddings. Sing, sing, sing! That’s all I wanted to do! Singing with ABBA on the radio with my cousin Susan in the pickup after walking beans was a highlight of my life I’ll never forget. Susan was hilarious as an ABBA singer.

A lot of my skill with finding harmonies came from singing gospel in our local church, a church that had a bizarre number of exceptionally good singers. And White! Who would have thought. The rest came from working with Tom Oliver, our music teacher at the high school. He was great. He directed us for the annual music competitions, arranged all of our concerts, and choreographed all of the high school musicals. And built all the sets! What a remarkable guy.

What I really wanted to be in life was the lead singer in a popular band that travelled the world. The voice, the tight leather pants, the hair, the scene, the adoring crowd – that’s what I wanted. I was stung by the fact I seemed to have no natural inclination for an instrument, however. I played trumpet and euphonium in band. I talked my dad into buying me a bass guitar. I eventually was sort of okay on it, but it was a struggle, like learning piano. I think I have a connection missing between the musical part of my brain and my fingers. All the lead singers I knew of also played a guitar, or drums, or electric piano. I needed to up my game.

My best friend in college, Doug Seifert, was a remarkable guitar player. He loved AC/DC, Molly Hatchet, and other heavy metal groups. We played together quite a bit, and decided to make a little band, along with our friend Victor Davis, the drummer, and try out for the college Spring Fling, an expose’ of hidden student talent that performed every spring. The judges for the show at our Christian college, however, didn’t like Molly Hatchet’s “Bounty Hunter” too much, especially the lyric “I just got back from a trip to hell,” and especially when Doug started wiggling his tongue around like Gene Simmons in KISS. They stopped us almost before we started! “You will NOT be performing THAT at a Christian college! Now go get a haircut, all of you!” I flipped my shoulder length platinum blonde mane and stalked out.

When I was a kid, my sister Mary Ann really wanted to be a ballet dancer. Mom enrolled her in Sondra Cox’s dance academy in Oskaloosa, Iowa, as Mary Ann was really serious about it. Sondra needed more boys in class, though, so she talked Mom into enrolling my brother, Neal, and me as well. I was thrilled, but not Neal! He was furious. But he was also a natural athlete, so in spite of his efforts to ruin his own experience in ballet and tap, he still excelled. I, however, was crippled by embarrassment when told to perform a bit of dance choreography in the group; my introverted side took over, and I would freeze up. The steps I had learned suddenly became unreachable. The dance recital that first year was a terror! I got through it, but not without my mind leaving my body during the performance. Lots of mistakes. But when it was over, I was thrilled. I loved being on the stage. I just didn’t want anyone to look at me. I guess I thought I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t good enough. At the end of the year, Neal insisted on un-enrolling. I agreed to another year with Mary Ann. However, a terrible thing happened. Our dance teacher was killed in a terrible traffic accident. And that was the end of that. The next time I took dance was at age twenty-seven at the Vallair ballroom in Des Moines with my wife, bigly pregnant with our second son. In a crowd, ballroom dancing was easier for me, and I didn’t get so self-conscious doing it. We had a lot of fun dancing socially for years after that. The next time I took dance lessons was at age thirty-eight with Teresa Heiland, Ph.D., at Grinnell College. Now with age and better understanding of myself, I was able to learn Modern, Ballet, and Rumba and perform it on stage without losing my cool.

It was about that time when I went to see the Broadway musical “Chicago” in Chicago. The show was fabulous. The singing! The performing! And the dancing! The dance, Modern, was choreographed by Bob Fosse with his inimitable style. The performers were gorgeous. Oh! I LOVED it! At some point, watching the dancers, I was filled with emotion. I want to do THAT! I had the sudden realization that this pipedream of mine of being a stage performer was never going to happen. Not lead singer, not dancer, none of it. I was a surgeon by then, a much more pragmatic and sensible career path. A safer choice for me. But when thinking about that choice now, I realize the operating room turned out to be my little stage, the place where I could be front and center without anxiety, a place where my exceptional performance skills could be seen. Here, with a small audience, the extrovert in me could take over and really show what I could do.

Later, in my early forties I would occasionally go to a dance club with my husband. Then, this was the place to be seen, and since it was a crowd where I didn’t have to be alone out front, I could perform with abandon. In New York City we were the first out on the dance floor, engaging the surrounding crowd with our Bob Fosse moves and pelvic gyrations until they all jumped onto the floor with us. At The Garden in Des Moines, we made such a scene in the crowd on the dance floor that the manager asked us to perform on stage at midnight for the Mr. Buns Contest. My husband readily agreed before I could say no, but when I found out the crowd would expect to actually SEE those buns, we bailed. “I’m the chairman of a surgery department, Kevin! Good god! News of this will get back to Grinnell before we do!” Like Cinderella at the ball, we ran to the car and drove away before midnight. Meanwhile, we were told, the crowd was chanting for David and Kevin, David and Kevin, but finally had to give up in despair. My one chance and I blew it. I would have won. Years later, I learned that my bubble butt was a regular source of conversation at the hospital. I guess it looked particularly nice draped in scrubs. When visiting my buddy, Dr. Stewert, who was our anesthesiologist for many years, he whipped out a picture book he had been given when he left our hospital. It was full of random photos of him and the staff from his sojourn there, with very funny comments. One photo leaped out; a picture of Stewie and me scrubbing together at the sink, his ass labelled “dark chocolate,” and mine labelled “white chocolate.” Stewie was Black. Still is, in fact. He was particularly amused by this picture, and he was the one who told me that our butts were a constant source of conversation. I pretended to be shocked.

I guess I was so comfortable being the surgeon in a small-town hospital because, well, it was small. There I could perform out front without being overwhelmed by too many eyes. I made forays into the bigger scenes in the cities and Universities, giving lectures and writing papers, but it was always such a relief to get in the car and retreat to home where I belonged. In a way, I lost my little audience when I retired, my town, my hospital, my department, my clinic, the people – or so I thought. But it turns out I can write, and I can tell stories. People who are interested can see me through the written word while I remain hidden. Perfect! Best of both worlds! And I can SING in the living room! And I can dance there without restriction, without choreography – at least as well as this older beat-up body will allow me to! And I can be a grandpa with a manageable audience of just two sets of eyes, perhaps the best star role of my life.

And my butt still looks great, even if no one at The Garden ever gets to see it.