Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story

ALSO BY DAVID LEVITHAN:

Boy Meets Boy

The Realm of Possibility

Are We There Yet?

Marly’s Ghost (illustrated by Brian Selznick)

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn)

Wide Awake

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List (with Rachel Cohn)

How They Met, and Other Stories

Love Is the Higher Law

Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green)

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares (with Rachel Cohn)

The Lover’s Dictionary

Every You, Every Me (with photographs by Jonathan Farmer)

Every Day

Invisibility (with Andrea Cremer)

Two Boys Kissing

HOLD ME CLOSER:

The Tiny Cooper Story

A musical in novel form
(Or, A novel in musical form)

by David Levithan

a companion to the novel
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
by John Green and David Levithan

DUTTON BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

DUTTON BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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penguin.com | A Penguin Random House Company

Copyright © 2015 by John Green and David Levithan

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Levithan, David.

Hold me closer : the Tiny Cooper story / by David Levithan.

pages cm

Companion book to: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan.

Summary: “Larger-than-life Tiny Cooper finally gets to tell his story, from his fabulous birth and childhood to his quest for true love and his infamous parade of ex-boyfriends, in the form of a musical he wrote”— Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-698-19168-6)

[1. Gays—Fiction. 2. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction. 4. Musicals—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.L5798Hm 2015

[Fic]—dc23

2014039368

Edited by JULIE STRAUSS-GABEL

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

For Libba,
who I would have star in every musical
and
For Chris,
who I would like to have sitting beside me whenever I see one

from
Tiny Cooper:

Hold Me Closer
is meant to be true. (Except for the part where people keep bursting into song—that’s only true sometimes.) No names have been changed, except if the person got really annoyed or mad that I was writing about him and asked me to change it. That said, certain ex-boyfriends did not get to decide whether or not their names would be used. If they have a problem with that, they should have never dumped me in the first place.

Like myself, this musical is meant to be loud and spectacular, although there are also some quiet moments. People who don’t understand musical theater (i.e., most of my family, and a good portion of the greater Chicago area) tend to think of it as being unrealistic. I disagree. Because what is life if not a series of loud and quiet moments shuffled together with some music thrown in? My point being: Before you put on any production of
Hold Me Closer
, whether it’s in your high school auditorium or on Broadway, it’s important to realize that the truth is sometimes quiet . . . and other times, it’s loud and spectacular. You don’t always get to choose which form it takes.

But I get ahead of myself. It’s best to think of this as a one-man show that happens to have lots of other people in it. I know it’s not going to be physically possible for me to star in every production—although please ask me first when you start the casting process. The musical has already changed slightly since its first epic production. That’s the thing about life and love—every time you take another look at them, there’s something else that can be revised.

For now, let me just say this: My name is Tiny Cooper, and it’s time to raise the curtain on my bombastic, baffling, and hopefully stupendous story.

(in order of appearance)

TINY COOPER,
age zero to sixteen

MOM,
Tiny’s mother

DAD,
Tiny’s father

LYNDA,
the cool lesbian babysitter

PHIL WRAYSON,
Tiny’s best friend (most of the time)

COACH FRYE,
a jerkface

THE GHOST OF OSCAR WILDE,
as himself

EX-BOYFRIENDS #1 THROUGH #17,
on parade

WILL, EX-BOYFRIEND #18,
the most recent and thus most important one

DJANE,
Tiny’s friend and the girl Phil Wrayson is in love with (without admitting it)

ENSEMBLE
of townspeople, church choir members, baseball teammates, Pride parade participants, and such.

ACT I

In a suburb outside Chicago, starting with Tiny’s birth sixteen years ago.

ACT II

Same suburb, only now Tiny’s dating.

It’s a dark stage, and at first all you hear are murmurs, a heartbeat, and heavy breathing. Like, serious Lamaze. Then we see, in the middle of the stage, a large piece of paper showing two bare, spread legs, discreetly covered by a hospital sheet. The heartbeat gets louder. The breathing gets heavier and more frantic, like a dinosaur is sitting on Santa and tickling him at the same time. Finally, as it all crescendos,
TINY COOPER
comes into the world, crashing through the piece of paper and entering spectacularly onto the stage.

We are not going for realism here. He should not be naked and covered with amniotic fluid. That’s gross. He should not be wearing a diaper. He’s not into that. Instead, the person who emerges should be the large, stylish Tiny Cooper that you will see for the next two acts. To delineate him from Tiny at other ages, you should have him wearing a button that says
AGE: 0.

Most babies come into the world crying or gasping or snotting.

Not Tiny Cooper.

He comes into the world singing.

Cue: Opening chords of
“I WAS BORN THIS WAY.”
This is a big, lively, belty number—because, let’s face it, if Elphaba got to sing “Defying Gravity” at the start of
Wicked
, she’d be much, much happier throughout the entire show. Tiny has just fallen into the world—some would say he was pushed—and already he has a sense of who he is and what he’s going to do. The music and the production value
must
reflect that. Sparkles, people. Lots of sparkles. Do
not
get stingy with the sparkles. The reason drag queens love them so much is that you can get them for cheap.

TINY:

Hello, my name is Tiny Cooper . . . what’s yours? I’ve just been born and, man, it feels good!

Cue music.

[“I WAS BORN THIS WAY”]

TINY:

I was born this way,

big-boned and happily gay.

I was born this way,

right here in the U.S. of A.

It’s pointless for you to try

to pinpoint how I became

so G-A-Y.

From my very first swish inflection,

the rainbow curved in my direction.

I’ve got brown hair,

big hips,

and green, green eyes.

And when I grow up

I’m gonna make out

with guys, guys, guys!

Why try to hide it?

What good would that do?

I was born this way

and if you don’t like it

that says enough about you.

If you find it odd,

take it up with God.

Because who else do you say

could make me shine this way?

All God’s children wear traveling shoes

whether you’ve got flat feet

or twinkle toes.

I’m going to dance right into this life

and keep dancing

as it goes.

I was born this way,

big-boned and happily gay.

I was born this way,

right here in the U.S. of A.

It’s pointless for you to try

to pinpoint how I became

so G-A-Y.

From my very first swish inflection,

the rainbow curved in my direction.

I’ve got genes that fit me well

and a spirit all my own

I was born this way—

The rest is a great unknown!

Really belting now
.

I.

was.

born.

this.

way.

And I love.

the way.

I.

was.

born.

The rest

is a great unknown.

But I’m ready,

oh yes, I’m ready

to find my own!

If anyone is going to object to this musical, they will have left the theater at this point. Which is fine. That means for the rest of the time, you’ll have a crowd that really gets it.

Tiny Cooper steps over to the side of the stage, confiding in the audience. The stage clears. The spotlight is on him. (You will need a very big spotlight.)

A note on the spotlight: It should be very clear from the beginning that this is Tiny’s special place. I know plenty of people—like my best friend, Will, and my most recent ex (also named Will; long story)—who want to stay as far away from the spotlight as possible. But there are those of us who draw our power from those electric moments when everyone is watching, everyone is listening, and there is the most perfect silence you can imagine, the entire room waiting to hear whatever you will say next. Especially for those of us who ordinarily feel ignored, a spotlight is a circle of magic, with the strength to draw us from the darkness of our everyday lives.

The thing about a spotlight is that you have to step into it. You have to get onto that stage. I haven’t been ready for a lot of things, but from early on, I was ready for this.

TINY:

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t gay, although there were definitely times I realized it more than others. And I can’t remember a time I wasn’t huge—which pretty much erased hiding as an option. This was my normal—big and gay. I would have never thought there was anything unusual about it. Except that I didn’t live alone on a dessert island. [
Misspelling intentional!
] No, there had to be other people around. And the reaction I got from some of them made me self-conscious.

You don’t think babies can hear you. But you’re wrong. They can hear you.

The spotlight returns to the center of the stage.
TINY’S MOM
is wheeling a rather large, somewhat garish pink baby carriage.
TINY’S DAD
is walking beside her. The
CROWD
is made up of neighbors, all of them nosy, many of them judgmental. As they sing
“OH! WHAT A BIG GAY BABY!”
you should get a sense that they are both intrigued and disturbed by having such a big gay baby in their midst. As for Mom and Dad—they are alright with having a big gay baby, but they’re tired, because having a big gay baby takes a lot of work. Not just because he wants to dance all night and demands milk shakes from his mother pretty much every hour, but because of the endless questions from neighbors and the “guidance” of family members who seem to think Mom and Dad have control over how big or how gay their big gay baby is.

Mom and Dad can no more make me straight than they can make me short. There’s this thing called biology, and it’s calling the shots. Mom and Dad realize this. Others do not.

The tune here is an old-fashioned town-crowd melody—kind of like how the people from the town in
The Music Man
might sound if Harold Hill had brought an infant homosexual to town instead of wind instruments.

[“OH! WHAT A BIG GAY BABY!”]

CROWD:

Oh! What a Big Gay Baby!

He must weigh twenty pounds.

Oh! What a Big Gay Baby!

Why is he making those sounds?

TINY

(
makes baby disco sounds, sort of like a gay dance club has opened on Sesame Street
)

CROWD:

Oh! What a Big Gay Baby!

Feeding him must be such work!

Oh! What a Big Gay Baby!

He only falls asleep to Björk!

MOM AND DAD:

Possibly maybe . . .

Possibly maybe . . .

CROWD:

He prefers hot male nurses

and cries at ugly purses.

Has a booty and knows to shake it.

Has a pacifier and loves to take it.

Oh! What a Big Gay Baby!

Bedazzle the diapers and order them large!

Oh! What a Big Gay Baby!

Pimp his crib the size of a barge!

MOM AND
DAD:

Look at this Big Gay Baby of ours—

not something you read about in Dr. Spock.

Look at our Big Gay Baby—

not what we were expecting when we were

expecting.

Hello, dear Big Gay Baby,

you might have to run before you can walk.

CROWD:

Oh! What a Big Gay Baby!

We’re not really sure how we feel.

MEN IN CROWD:

Be a man, boy! Be a man!

WOMEN IN CROWD:

That’s our plan, boy! That’s our plan!

CROWD:

Oh! What a Big Gay Baby!

Already the size of a giant T. rex.

Oh! What a Big Gay Baby!

So unimpressed by the opposite sex.

He dances to show tunes

and has cheeks round as full moons.

We wish he’d show some respect,

but with a Big Gay Baby, what can you ex—

MOM AND DAD
(
spoken
):

Shhh! He’s sleeping!

CROWD

(
turning it into a lullaby
):

Goodnight Sondheim, goodnight June.

Goodnight faggot, goodnight room.

Welcome, Big Gay Baby!

You’re going to find . . .

it’s a helluva world!