Cotillion

     My mother picked me up from Little League practice, said "we're going to cotillion" and motioned me to the back seat of her car, across which she'd draped a tan sports coat, dark brown slacks, a brown tie and a white dress shirt.  On the floor were brand new Thom McAns, chunky shoes with one-inch heels. 

     "Cotillion?"

     "Cotillion teaches manners, how to dance with a girl, how to get her punch, how to act like an adult.  Now get dressed, we're almost there."

     "There" was a frigid cold dance studio, mirrored walls and wooden floor, a long table with punch bowl and cookies, and maybe twenty of us milling about, uneasily eyeing each other.  The girls wore party dresses with hose and shiny patent leather shoes, evoking Jackie O and 1963, while the boys wore polyester jackets and ties, slacks flared out over their platform shoes, evoking The Love Boat and Saturday Night Fever.  A real time clash.

     The mother hen, a fiftysomething woman with frosted hair and a poofy dress that swished as she walked, herded us against the wall, her booming voice cutting through the Lawrence Welkian strings wafting over the sound system.  She recited the dances we'd be learning but took care to emphasize that, more than anything, we'd learn to behave like proper young ladies and gentlemen.  That's how she addressed us, "young ladies and gentlemen," words that didn't sound right as I surveyed the awkward-looking twelve year olds standing on a line in that frigid studio.

     I knew none of these kids, and that was a good thing, for if anyone I knew knew I was there I knew I'd never hear the end of it.  It didn't look like any of them knew each other either.  This helped relaxed us, I think, knowing that no one we knew would ever know we were there.

     The mother hen danced with herself, demonstrating a simple box step, then she called up one boy and girl, pushed them together, grabbed one of his hands and planted it on the small of her back and placed the other on her hand.  His face reddened while we sniggered.  She motioned to her assistant, a plump woman manning the turntable, who let the needle drop on some sort of Straussian waltz schmaltz.  The mother hen then danced in front of them, motioning him to follow along, as he took a few hesitating steps and she followed him. 

     After fussing over them for a few minutes, the mother hen paired the rest of us up.  I drew a dark-haired girl with freckles, a big bow around her waist, tied at the back.  We laughed, our shared discomfort comforting us a little, as we held hands and I reached around and placed my right hand low on her back.  I felt her warm hand rest high on my back. 

     The music restarted and we began to move, tentatively at first, each of us staring at our feet.  I imagine she was making sure my chunky clodhoppers didn't crush her feet.  I was trying to hide my embarrassment from her.  I'd never held a girl before, at least like this, her hand in mine, my hand low on her back, feeling the gentle swelling beginning at the lowest part of her back, the bow sliding lower with my hand, the stiff fabric of her dress moving in slight opposition to her body, allowing my hand to follow it over her skin, tracing its firm outline beneath her dress. 

     The frigid room was now warm and beads of perspiration broke out on my upper lip as I felt sensations I'd never felt before.  And then I felt something I had felt before, something I frequently felt in these hormonal days, a stirring rush of blood between my legs that could only mean one thing: a tent pole, a boner, an uncontrollable raging hard-on.  I noticed with horror that the form-fitting 100% polyester stretchy fabric of my trousers did little to conceal or restrain my growing bulge, so I hunched down, leaning my upper body forward while sticking my butt out, desperate to conceal that part of me was standing at attention.  But the mother hen, ever vigilant, immediately corrected my form, pulling my chest back while pushing my lower body forward, causing me to forcefully poke my dance partner in the abdomen.  She recoiled, dropping my hand and squeaking something while the room stopped stepping and stared at me and my uninvited guest and the rest, as they say, is history.

     Actually, I don't remember what happened next, having successfully blocked the rest of the mortifying memory from my mind, so it isn't history, at least for me.  That was my last cotillion. I either refused to return or they refused to have me, I can't recall which.  I suspect the former, for the mother hen didn't seem like the type to let a little thing like that stand in the way of molding proper young gentlemen. 

     I never did learn the fox trot or the waltz, but my brush with cotillion and that girl certainly had a formative influence.  It nipped my then-budding sexual development in the bud, coming as it did at a difficult time when I attended an all boys' school and my only regular contact with girls was at our monthly dances.  Staying away from the close dances, I avoided further humiliation at the cost of making it even more difficult for this mentally-distant and now physically-distant kid to connect.  It wasn't until college that I overcame this inhibition with the assistance of copious quantities of free-flowing alchohol.

     It was also instrumental in grafting shame onto my sensuality, forever associating the two in my mind.  This may seem like an unhealthy coupling, and I suppose it is, for what could be more normal and natural, less shameful, than human sexuality?  But I've never resisted the shame, perhaps because I've never known any better or perhaps, just maybe, because shame has become such an essential spice in my sexual stew. 

     A friend of ours once brought a jello salad to a potluck dinner at our house.  Not being a fan of either whipped cream or jello, I put a congealed bobbling square onto my plate out of duty, not desire.  Taking the obligatory bite, swishing the sweet flavors of cherry and cream around in my mouth, my tongue hit something hard.  Pretzels.  Chewing now, the bitter salty taste of the pretzels blending with the sweet jello, I understood the genius of her recipe, its discordant but finely-balanced mix of opposites at first subduing but then enhancing each other. 

     And that is what shame does to my sensuality.  Trust me, it's delicious.

     Sorta-related posts: "More Than a Movie to Me" (Oct. 19, 2004) and "Doll Parts" (March 21, 2005).

Comments

[Waterfall]

I was forced to go to cotillion for a couple of years. On the way there, I would sit in the back seat and pray earnestly that we'd get in a horrible wreck and I'd break both my legs so I wouldn't have to go to cotillion anymore. It worked twice: yes, two wrecks in two years, both on the way to cotillion. They were minor fender benders, so no legs were broken. I did pretend to have whiplash, though. That got me out of two cotillion classes ... and then I finally got to quit for good. :)

[shank]

The same thing happened to me once. Except my dance partner and I were a little older, and she more receptive to my libido's response to her. In the end, my experience had a completely opposite behavioral effect.

[Searchie]

It's that evil polyester, I tell you. Sex, drugs, rock and roll and ... polyester.

It's a wonder you made it out of that cotillion alive.

[R J Keefe]

This answers a long-standing question: why did dancing class in our town begin in fifth grade?

[stephenesque]

You are such a complainer. In some countries kids have to jump through a bonfire in the nude. And that's just the opening pas-de-deux. Shame? You don't know the meaning of the word!

[Darko]

Never had the privelege, nor the invitation. of doing the Cotillion tent pole dance. However, my daughter did go to Cotillion, twice. It's a big to do in our area of the woods. It's high falutin' and therefore takes place at a country club that grown men would sell their daughters to just have one round in their lifetime. Not being drawn to the Little Ball game, I never felt such urges. My urge to protect my daughter heightened to a fit of pique when i delievered her to the front gates. Not until after the Cotillion's completion did I realize there was nothing to fear. The boys were dismissed as left-footed incompetents and the girls stayed in the country club bathrooms in shifts. There were sofas, cold drinks, and unbelievable mirrorage. Besides, she said, they flipped the lights on and off and danced in the expansive restrooms, twirling in their beautiful gowns.

[K.]

Hi Outerlimits,

I laughed heartily at this post. Its amazing how ignorant we gals are/were of the trials of male puberty. I was well into my teen years before I even HEARD of guys getting hard. And I was very popular and supposedly privy to these sorts of discussions!

My hunch is that your dance partner had no idea what was happening in your pants. Neither did the instructor. To you, though, it was public. Shaming. Morally indicting? As a mom of a kid in the midst of puberty, I wonder if there is a way of lessening the shame part of sex ... in spite of your claim that shame and sex/sensuality go nicely together.

I went to "charm school" as a kid and suffered through dance lessons. I remember thinking that kickball was far more fun than dancing with boys. Not too deep, but I was a young eleven-year-old. Nothing sexual.

K.