Julian Raymond

Walking past the Westchester Elks Lodge, I caught the scent of my elementary school crush. It smelled like sugar and glitter and what the Powerpuff Girls were made of. I can still flip through the rolodex of memories I have of her, the last girl I ever liked: skin like milk, purple T-shirts, painted nails, black chokers, choppy bangs and black glasses like mine.

Like most of the fifth-grade boys and girls slamming head-first into puberty like a crash-test dummy into a dashboard, I was signed up for cotillion. My mother and her carpool group drove us to the steps of the Elks Lodge every month, waving us out of each family’s SUV and shouting at me to readjust my salmon-pink bowtie. The ceilings in that ballroom were brutally low, especially for a fifth-grader who’d been stretched and distorted by testosterone before most of his classmates reached 5’3”. I could never sit right: girls were to cross their legs at the ankles and boys should sit upright with their legs bent at 90 degree angles like cartoonishly stiff businessmen. My palms were sweaty. Always. My head was never free from my sweat-inducing thoughts: I’m not sitting right, I’m not standing right, I’m not thinking right, I don’t like girls.

Grace Mitchell had been my final crush for a little over a year. I liked her, I thought. She reminded me of my cat. She was quiet, slinky, and didn’t like me much at first. I had to work to gain her approval. Something seemed different with her like something seemed to be different in me. During recess, we’d walk to the end of the yard where the maintenance crew didn’t bother to mow, where the weeds grew up to our waists and the fence looked over the street. We had decent conversations about nothing, romping through the overgrown grass. I’d run my fingers over the rusted chain link while we talked. Our conversations were mundane, droning on about the newest Poptropica game or the hula hooping boys on the blacktop, but it seemed like we had the same odd angles. I thought that was what a crush felt like.

I’d started to feel things for Connor at the start of that year. I thought I hated him at first. I hated the little wisps of bleach-blonde at the ends of his hair, his milky white skin and pale lips, his long knobby limbs and the churning in my stomach I felt when he looked at me. I didn’t feel that way when I was with Grace. He made my blood burn. It felt like my skin was made of little matchsticks, veins tinged red with phosphorus, and he was the rough side of the matchbox. He’d made a joke about me and Grace sneaking off together, kissing in the boys bathroom, and I decided then to hate him. I told him his skin was white like lard, a word he didn’t know. I told him to Google it, stupid, and stomped away with my clan of fifth grade girls.

Grace and Connor sat at opposite ends of cotillion. We shuffled across the room each month, boys in ill-fitting suits dancing with girls in tulle-smothered dresses. I hated to sit with my legs uncrossed. I hated putting gel in my hair. I hated wearing salmon-pink bow ties and learning to waltz and dip and spin and flap.

The organizer’s name was Ken. His grey hair was coiffed and hardened into place with gel. His bow ties were always spiffy and tied tight around his throat. He was gay. I heard the moms talking about him after the first meeting. He was definitely gay. He had a partner that he lived with in Palm Springs, where all gay men over forty go to desiccate like sun-dried tomatoes. They’d found his Facebook after some light stalking and with it, a picture of him and his life partner. They made sure to emphasize that — life partner, not husband. Not married, something my mother questioned but shrugged away. I thought I knew why. I thought that even at his grey age, he was still ashamed. Perhaps it was a point of pride for him, to choose tradition over sexuality; a worthwhile sacrifice to preserve the tradition of girls and boys in pink and blue who grow up into Barbie and Ken and marry like perfect waxy cake toppers.

In some ways, I was corrosive to cotillion. I flickered through the frilled dresses, the taffeta and tulle, lighting skirts on fire and stepping on toes. I could feel the little embers coming off me, flickering through the Elks Lodge and singeing all the girls’ brand new Mary Janes.

At the Grease-themed dance, there was an uneven number of boys and girls — Ken’s worst nightmare. A fifth grade girl or two stayed home, leaving two boys without dancing partners. I shifted down the line in a leather jacket I’d recently outgrown, danced with a dozen Sandys, stepped on their feet, and sweated through the night. Grace was the last, the end of the line, where dancing with girls ended for me. We shuffled to the music with one of my sweaty hands held in her black tulle glove, the other hovering over the small of her back. She was pretty. I should like her, I should want to kiss her and drive off into the sky like Danny did with Sandy. I should.

Instead, I watched Connor dancing with a girl. I saw the way his hand slid over the curve of her spine, how their fingers wove together like stitches pulled tight. He talked to her with the face he made when he won in handball, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. I wanted him to smile at me like that. I wanted to be that girl with her fingers sewn into his. I wanted to stand waxy and still next to him on a blanket of cake frosting. I wanted to kiss him. It burned like fever, how much I wanted all of it with him and not with her.

I let go of Grace’s hand. We shuffled to our next partners. Connor and I stood across from each other in the void where no girl remained. The waltz spun out through the crackling overhead speakers. I clenched my teeth tight, afraid he’d see how much I wanted to dance with him. I thought about what it would feel like, pressing my fingers against his, the pulse in his wrist thrumming against mine, but I stayed still. Under my skin, embers flickered. Connor looked over my shoulder, staring hard at the wall until the music stopped. 

Grace and I never went back to that part of the schoolyard, where the grass whispered against our legs and rust grew over the chainlink fence. We still talk, mostly fleeting conversations about her life and the girlfriend that makes her smile like no boy ever could. She’s happy in a way I haven’t quite found yet. Time has fluttered by, tinny waltzes marching on and on, and I’ve realized that I was the one bound up in the chiffon.

I don’t know if I was right about Ken, that he was ashamed and twisted in the ribbons and sweaty gloves of tradition and cotillion. In the final moments of last year, I danced with a boy for the first time. It was awkward in that middle-school way that cotillion should have been, him mouthing the lyrics to “Cupid de Locke” and me spinning out stiffly under his bent elbow. Flashes of what could have been flipped through my head like a rolodex as I spun out and away from him: Mr. and Mrs. monogrammed towels, Vera Wang wedding dresses, waxy cake toppers and tiers of perfect cake that in another world would’ve been mine.

I try my best to think of it another way, like I’m not giving it all up, like it’s not all melting in front of me, wax sludging down through cream frosting and soiling tiers of perfect cake. Flashes of the alternative drip over my thoughts: staring hard at the wall — stiff and unmoving — waiting for the music to end. I don’t want to be sealed forever in that moment. I decide I’d rather dance.