Season 3, Episode 9 - Against All Odds

Original Airdate - November 12th, 2003

Emma is feeling icy towards Sean, especially when he shows up to class with a hickey. He’s going full bad boy and making fun of Shakespeare to sound cool. But Chris Sharpe says smart things about Shakespeare. Emma likes that, and wants to focus her energy on him.

Meanwhile, Ashley is headed to Montreal for the weekend with Ellie to try to help cheer Ellie up, so Craig is flying solo. He has the nerve to tell Ashley not to be distracted by cute Montreal boys. Manny walks up after Ashley heads off and tells Craig she misses him. She invites him to a rave that evening.

Emma watches Chris beatboxing (badly, sorry). He definitely notices her too. He’s being so nice to her after class, but Emma is sure he’s not into her like that. Manny tells her she has to go for it. After Simpson got sick, it seems these two are back on. Manny says that Chris’s cousin is DJ’ing the rave that night and always lets Chris do a set. She convinces Emma to come with her.

They put on some very silly rave outfits and sneak out of the house so Christine won’t ask questions. In this scene, we get one of two weird race mentions that make me question the motives of making Chris a Black man. Earlier, Sean described Shakespeare as an old white dude and Chris seemed to throw that in his face because he’s a Black guy who likes Shakespeare. Here, Emma is worried that Chris will think she’s a silly white girl. It’s very awkward!

They get to the rave. It’s so lame, sorry. The music is really bad, and honestly any rave with teenagers in attendance feels like a bad time. But Emma and Manny seem excited! Manny tells Emma to go for Chris boldly, but maybe don’t talk about the environment. She heads for the DJ booth.

Meanwhile, Craig is going stir crazy at home with Joey and Sydney. They urge him to go have a fun Friday even if Ashley is out of town. He lies and says he’s going to Jimmy’s, but actually goes to the rave.

Chris is excited to see Emma. He pulls her up into the booth as he starts his set (bad), but she accidentally steps on the power strip, shutting off the music. She thinks she blew it, but he’s super chill about it. Unfortunately, it’s less chill when his girlfriend Amanda walks up. She saw Chris talking to Emma, she’s pissed, and Emma is embarrassed.

Emma wants to leave, but Manny isn’t ready to go. She says this is actually an opportunity. Wait until Chris is done fighting with his girlfriend, swoop in, and comfort him. Basically what she did to Craig. Emma says that’s gross, but Manny pushes her and, so Emma decides to try it.

Emma grabs Chris after the fight and takes him somewhere quiet to talk. Meanwhile, Manny finds Craig and they start dancing. Craig hesitates to kiss Manny, but she says she can keep a secret and they start making out. Emma similarly makes progress with Chris, but after the briefest of kisses, her conscience gets the better of her. She leaves.

Emma can’t find Manny so she takes the taxi home alone and sneaks back into the basement. There, she finds Manny and Craig making out on her bed. Craig runs off right away. Manny tries to apologize. She thought Emma would be with Chris for longer than she was, but Emma is livid. Manny pushed her to do something immoral because Manny was doing the same thing. They go to sleep in silence.

At school on Monday, Manny tries to clear the air, but Emma doesn’t want to hear it. She thinks Manny is doing the wrong thing. Manny gets pissed. Emma is too much of a prude to get it, and if that’s how Emma is going to act, their friendship is over. Emma says she doesn’t want to be friends with the school slut anyway. Emma is in the right here, but Manny’s problem isn’t being hot or wanting to fuck! We covered that!

We also covered Spinner’s homophobia and, ugh, we have to do so again. Spinner and Jimmy are struggling in math, and they’ve got a big test coming up on Monday. Marco is much better, so Jimmy arranges for a sleepover with all three of them. They’ll hang out and Marco can help them study.

Spinner is instantly super weird about it. He doesn’t want to do a sleepover with Marco, and Jimmy tells him to stop being so homophobic. Maybe, instead, Jimmy shouldn’t put Marco in this position or continue to be friends with someone close minded and hateful!

At the sleepover, Spinner gets weird about sitting next to Marco on the couch. Jimmy turns on a porn channel on his parents’ satellite tv, and then realizes that Marco may not like that, so turns it off. Spinner bitches, but Marco says it’s fine. There’s plenty for Marco to look at in the porn too. That disgusts Spinner so much that he decides he’d rather study math.

Later, Jimmy turns the porn back on, and Spinner is uncomfortable again. Marco makes a comment about a hot guy and Spinner starts choking on his cracker. Marco knows the Heimlich, but has to chase Spinner around the room before Spinner will let him save his life. Spinner begs Jimmy to let him sleep in Jimmy’s bed, but Jimmy insists Spinner and Marco sleep in the living room together. Again, bad position to put Marco in!

During the night, Marco’s hand falls on to Spinner. Spinner wakes up and freaks out. He gets to the homophobic heart of the matter. He’s uncomfortable because he’s convinced Marco has a crush on him. Marco says that he isn’t attracted to Spinner at all, and it’s wild that Spinner thinks he would be.

That Monday, Spinner feels prepared for the test and realizes he looked a little foolish. He makes nice and acts friendly with Marco. But he also insists that Marco must have terrible tastes if he doesn’t have a crush on Spinner, because Spinner is such a catch. I hate this! Marco does not need to make nice with the homophobe! They should all stop putting energy towards this asshole!!

I love a good rave. Good is a very important word. The music needs to be right. The venue needs to do something to help temperature control. The space must be queer friendly and ideally queer organized. It can’t feel like a horde of slightly swaying men scanning the room for someone to fuck.

But when it hits? When all of the elements are right? I think it may be the pinnacle of the human experience. Collective music and dance is literally why people think God is real. Releasing your inhibitions on a dance floor is the purest expression of human bliss that I know.

I didn’t always feel this way. In fact, I didn’t feel this way until recently. For many years I was terrified of the rave. Too sleepy. Too loud. Too many people doing scary and stupid drugs. Not for me, I’d say with a smile and pretend that there wasn’t insecurity underneath it.

Because the core of the reason that I didn’t want to attend a rave was that I was afraid that there would be a lot of hot boys and none of them would want to dance with me.

I think meeting hot men is one of the worst reasons to go to a rave. It’s not that it can’t happen. It can and does! It’s that it puts you in the wrong spirit. When your goal is to meet a hottie, you spend your whole night dreaming of the future instead of being in the moment. You become one of the slightly swaying men scanning the room.

It’s become pretty common to flirt with men in relationships, in the spaces I frequent. In case you haven’t read a breathless feature article, some queer people have really embraced open relationships and polyamory. Because of this, many have started to assume that everyone they encounter in a relationship is open.

The person I dated for the longest time was in a relationship from the moment I met him. I entered into our relationship with theoretically clear eyes. No one was lying or cheating. Cohabitation was off the table. Balancing time was on it.

But I wouldn’t say I knew what I was getting into. I didn’t know what it was going to feel like. I believed that the open nature of our dynamic would protect me from feeling like the other woman. I didn’t anticipate what it would be like to get other people, even opened minded queer people, to see me as an equal partner to my ex as my former metamour.

There are a lot of reasons my relationship fell apart, but one of them is that I was never able to separate the reality of my relationship from these unexpected feelings. Even if I loved him and he loved me, I could only see the way our relationship was different from what I expected. I didn’t feel ready to move in with him, but I was so aware that it was off the table.

My first few raves, I was pretty awkward. I felt very concerned about what I was doing. Drugs helped, there’s a reason people do them. But I didn’t want to do drugs every time, and, even when I did, I had to wait for them to kick in.

I would get really in my head about what my role was. Was I supposed to be hyping other people up? Getting people water? Looking hot to attract men? Boldly approaching men because some people were scared?

Other people seemed to have it so easy. My most conventionally attractive friends especially. I started to resent people with big arms. Or people whose faces looked kinder than mine. Or people who could just vibe out because someone like me would be there to make sure they stayed hydrated.

I may not have been hunting for men, but I was slowly swaying with my eye on everyone else but myself. Are they having enough fun? Am I a part of it? Are they having more fun than me, and what does that mean?

I’ve gotten better at raving. I’ve realized the best thing I can be at the rave is a little bit selfish. When I focus on my own personal wants and needs, I often realize I don’t have any at all. What I need is to wiggle to the music. What I need is to let the moment be the moment. What I want is to let connections with other guys happen organically and often not at all. What I want is to keep myself hydrated and trust my friends will tell me if they’re dying of thirst.

And we all want things that aren’t available. Sometimes we realize we have what we need and that is okay. Other times, it’s a bummer. But that’s why we dance. The music makes the bummers go away.