Review: Freak Show

St. James, James. Freak Show. Dutton, 2007.

Could Billy Bloom be any more fabulous? Having just moved from Darien, Connecticut, to finish out his senior year in a conservative suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Billy faces extreme culture shock. “Where were all the saggers, the mop-heads, the club kids, fashion fags, robo-trannies,go-go goths, Hello Kiddies, sk8r boys, pixie chicks, hood rats, boho babes, betty bots, electroclashers, giant moster fag hags, Paris-ites, and angry lesbian ovo-lacto-vegans? Where was that great cross section of teen culture that makes school such wicked good fun?”

Billy is a teenage drag queen, super freak and self-proclaimed gender obscurist. He has great wit, style, and attitude; unfortunately, his classmates at Dwight D. Eisenhower Academy don’t appreciate him. At all. From the moment he throws open the door to his first period Biology class, wearing a ruffled lace shirt, high-waisted blue pants, and a Prussian-blue military jacket (”What’s straighter than a pirate?”), Billy becomes the school pariah. He’s gay-baited and queer-bashed relentlessly, particularly by the Backseat Boys, as Billy calls the members of the varsity football team who occupy the last row of seats in the classroom. In the face of daily taunting, pummeling and general humiliation, Billy maintains his dignity and his sense of humor. Even though he curls up in a cupboard and cries after school at home, he courageously returns to school each day, daring to be himself.

There are just two bright spots in his school day: his friendship with a mousy girl he calls Blah Blah Blah (he never quite caught her name) and his secret crush on the hunky star quarterback, Flip Kelly. Blah Blah Blah, “the go-to girl for gossip,” feeds him information about his tormentors that he will one day use as ammunition. Billy feeds her fashion advice and teaches her how to stand up for herself a bit more. And Flip? Well, Flip is just beautiful.

Superstar/quarterback/all-around goldenboy.
Bambi-eyed pretty boy/surf-punk/he-hunk.
A dewy, chewy, girly-gooey, moist and oozy sex god.

The situation at school escalates to the point where Billy is bashed so badly he ends up in the hospital. Flip feels so guilty that he didn’t do anything to stop the beating that he becomes a regular visitor to Billy’s sick-bed, helping him to keep up with his school work. Do we hear bells? Yes, of course, but love is never easy, even when the closet doors are wide open. When Billy is well enough to return to school, Flip’s friendship carries enough clout that the other kids stop their queer-bashing. For the first time, Billy is able to live his life at school on his own terms. Suddenly, a run for homecoming queen doesn’t sound all that unrealistic. “It’s time to put a real queen in charge! I want the students here to understand that GENDER IS A CHOICE, NOT A LIFE SENTENCE. I’m going to change the world, one dress at a time.”

Not since Weetzie Bat has there been such an original, campy novel for teens. Beneath Billy Bloom’s hilariously melodramatic rantings and capitalized pronouncements, there’s a serious story about a sensitive boy’s search for love and acceptance. There’s also a strong streak of social satire running throughout the book, as Billy makes his witty, acerbic observations about life in the “reddest of the red states… where even the crustiest crack whore is a registered Republican and Gloria Estefan is is inexplicably the biggest star in the world.” This is James St. James’s first novel for teens and I hope it won’t be his last. The world needs more Billy Blooms.