When your father and I found out you were a boy I remembered the time in my early twenties a co-worker at my first restaurant job invited me out for a drink with the crew after our shift. He drove me there in his very clean truck and talked the whole way and I didn't realize it was a date until we were tucked into bar seats, his arm across the back of my stool, how he spoke into my neck. And the burger he promised was really a rib eye and the dive bar wasn't a dive. And the friends we were meeting was really the bartender who knew exactly what bottle of wine to pull for a regular, and who winked at me as I tugged desperately at the sleeves of my sweatshirt, burying my hands inside of them, whispering that's enough thank you at his heavy pour.
