Cotillion was a study in an upside-down Fellini movie. Let us de-brief:
I guess the biggest thing was a sense of ‘that wasn’t so bad.” Us white-blooded males soberly realized we had changed. The touch of a girl’s hand, the feel of her soft dress, the way she moved with you in sync (granted, in an extremely rudimentary way) was not abhorrent and it was actually nice to look into a pretty girl’s eyes as she listened to you. Maybe there really was peace between the sexes. But–only a few of us had the gazzones to talk to a girl at lunch or at her locker.
But I had to rein that in. When the old man acted chummy and was ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’, I’d just whine about the ill-fitting clothes, all the girls who wouldn’t say a word to you, the horridly flat fruit punch, and wretched torture of doddering fools playing waltzes. It was dangerous to agree with him about anything, he’d file it away and use it later to brow-beat and abuse me.
The dances were a test drive on rich town’s one way streets. Vibes said you weren’t really part of the happening. Subtle looks and uneasy conversations. Hearing snide whispers (“Can you BELIEVE she would wear penny loafers??”) Girls smiled and talked to you at Cotillion and walked past you without a nod at school. Others instruct you to dance beside a certain couple so she could talk to that girl instead of you (Oh my God, this dress was so expensive, do you like it?). All the new clothes, stiff, hair-sprayed locks. As Zappa said, “Does this kind of Life look Interesting to you?”
This was a town where, more than anything, money mattered. And my generation was being drawn inexorably into this void of flypaper and turquoise.
The high school blueprint coalescing into the first draft. Who were the girls on top? Who couldn’t be bothered? Who had the cash and self-assurance to conquer?
As for us–well, we bounced off cones, like a pinball. The few ‘popular’ boys were only that way ’cause they had the chutzpah to talk to girls and the pirate radar to grasp who was off in the ratified air. Who would be a sports star, a nerd, or a party animal?
Like a tacky ABC After-School special, it ends with a vague shoulder shrug instead of a happy ending.