Bossypants

Fey spends the summer after 11th grade working at Summer Showtime, a kids’ theater program that ends up being “a haven for gay teens” (25). Heartbroken when the boyfriend who’d convinced her to work there breaks up with her “to date a hot blond dancer girl” (27), she finds solace in hanging out “doing nothing” with brothers Tim and Tristan, gay brothers from a nearby Catholic school, and “twenty-five-year-old lesbians” (29) Karen, an improv teacher, and Sharon, a scenery painter. The friends stay up late playing games, watching movies, and making nachos, and by the end of the summer, Fey has put the breakup behind her.

In 12th grade she listens in horror as her health teacher advises the class “how to spot and avoid homosexuals” (32) who lure kids with music and candy. When correcting him after class produces no response, she realizes “that my school life and my Showtime life were separate” (32).

Fey works at Summer Showtime the following summer and serves as assistant director to Sharon’s brother Sean, a visiting director from New York; she convinces him not to cast the girl her boyfriend had left her for, an act she now condemns as “the third worst kind of female behavior” (38).