Photography by Caitlyn Hasenfratz
As described by Southern Living Magazine, “Cotillion is typically a season of etiquette classes for middle-school aged children” involving swing dances and guidelines for interpersonal relationships between girls and boys.
I.
Mom, my Cotillion classes never prepared me for falling in love with a man. Do you regret sending me to them? Do you ever think the best lessons Georgia taught me were not learned from someone’s bleach-blonde aunt? She’d never met anyone like me in her life. To her, I am the only queer boy, Mom. How do you remember me, back then? Are there tears in my eyes? Am I coming out to you for the second or third time?
II.
I want to live in my phone sometimes, Mom, I can’t expect you to understand that. I’ve learned everything I know about homosexuality from men in tiny boxes on the Internet. I’ve paid rent on a hyperlinked one-bedroom and shared it with hundreds. They knew me so well. Not more than you, surely, but still. There is a type of truth mothers cannot tolerate. There is a type of pain mothers cannot unburden.
III.
Mom, do I still walk street-side if he’s taller than me? (Nobody is taller than me.) What if he’s left-handed and wasn’t taught to swing dance? Which of us is the woman, Mom, is it me? (I don’t think you would like that.) I once held the door for a man and he slapped my ass. There was no module in Cotillion on what to do if he slaps your ass. I don’t think Cotillion fits inside the gay bar. Sometimes I don’t think I fit inside either.
IV.
He doesn’t dance with me like that, Mom. He trips over my toes and splashes cranberry juice on the floor and I love it. I slurp it off of his New Balances. I kiss his beard and remind myself that he is a man, that I am a man. We dance in other ways. He remembers what you mean to me, Mom. I taught him the two-step. He forgot it. I’m jealous.
V.
I mourn the boy you call your son, Mom. You know edges, you know nothing of my corners. You know nothing of my innards, nothing of the ways I have unfurled myself and been unfurled. You know polo shirts and khakis and thirteen first days of school and that tattoos send you to hell. But you’re not still a Christian, are you, Mom?
VI.
Mommy, I’m tired of pretending I already grew up, I’m tired of chasing maturity like stray dogs down dim alleys. I miss having a car because it was a comfortable place to cry. It was an assured route back to you. I’m 20 now and I’m not very good at washing dishes and I’m drowning in emails. What the fuck is LinkedIn, Mom?
VII.
That blonde woman running Cotillion used to tell me I’d be a real ladies man someday. I’m not even a man’s man, Mom. I’m a dildo left on the shelf, uncleaned, undignified. (You would hate this metaphor. There are not always poetic ways to express these things, Mom.)
VIII.
I wish I knew how to spell the name you gave me, Mom. I wish you’d just named me “fag” sometimes. And sometimes I wish my poetry wasn’t about sexuality. I’m growing tired of it. Aren’t you?
IX.
Mom, tell me I’m still your baby boy. I’ll never be anyone else’s. I can’t stand to watch the phrase stumble from the mouths of low-eyed men who won’t cut off the crust for me.
X.
Mom, you won’t have to write back because you won’t have to read this because I won’t let you. I know you love me. I know you love me. I wish I loved me like you do; simply, softly, because you have to, because you learned how to, and that was enough.