Today's Blind Items - DB: Busted In LA - A Different Dancing Boy

Surprise! The "db" of this story refers not to the dancing boy, but another one - for him there is a song.

This story does involve not the college but does involve the school, and back even further in the day. The president is at this time not yet disgraced, let alone former, and the land war in SE Asia rages on - albeit in its later stages; Americans are seeking escapist entertainment, especially on TV. One show is about a mixed family, another about a musical family. We're talking now about the latter.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. How I heard the story is as follows: one day, after school I was shopping for music at the local indie record store. I happened to be wearing my school uniform at the time, and one of the guys who worked there, sort of the town hippie (or one of them - he now owns the place), laughed and said he used to go to that school. As we were leaving I mentioned this to my friend, who told me this story...

Initially, the school had not been a k-12 day school with elite aspirations, but associated with the Church of Christian Science. Among its students at the time, in addition to said town hippie, was a member of the show's cast - not the recently deceased one, but the one with the troubled adulthood. Apparently those troubles began earlier.

This is where the story becomes uncharacteristic for the context, and time. It's an odd point of note, but even while homosexuality remains unmentionable in some religious communities, and countries, there's sometimes a surprising tolerance for trans people. Just think of Iran, where same sex relations are punishable by death, but sex reassignment surgery is paid for by the state.

Apparently among this group of Christian Scientists it was like that. There was even one trans girl among the tween students. She was allowed to wear a skirt to school, and there was a fund taken up for her hormones, and surgery.

What no one knew at the time or expected was that the actor had both a budding interest in and hostility toward this person, and others like her. And one day after PE, he cornered her. It's unclear exactly what happened - the two were the only witnesses - but by the end of it she'd been beaten and robbed (presumably for drug money). That's when our friend the hippie and his kid brother showed up. Seeing the state of her, they roughed the actor up, and left him on the playground. By then a crowd had formed around them, cheering them on (the actor had a few hangers on, but no real friends).

Of course, things being what they are, both the hippie and his brother were promptly expelled from the school. And of the actor and the trans girl, only one of them got appropriate medical attention. I guess they make exceptions for famous people.

Within a few years ownership of the school changed hands, and this history was more or less lost.

Apparently, how the Christian Scientists lost ownership of the school is that several children (who were students there) - a boy with asthma, a girl with diabetes, and another boy with cancer - all died from lack of proper medical care. There was purportedly an infirmary on the site, which had no nurse, medications, or medical equipment - just prayer books and religious tracts. It was demolished when the new owners (I guess there had been a lawsuit by an ex-church parent) discovered a child-sized coffin in the storage room. The kids are said to have been buried in one of the surrounding canyons.