The Big C and a dress from 1987

“I’m in remission!” my friend Trevor yells into his cell phone as he picks his way along a busy street in New York on a recent Thursday evening, ‘and I’ve bought you a cocktail dress!”

This first piece of new is great.  Battling lung cancer at the age of 36 while in the prime of gay singlehood is not a picnic.  Being forced to move back into one’s childhood home in the Midwest after leaving a high-rise condo, a convertible BMW, a full social life and a founding partnership in an interior design business was a soul-crushing event for him.   

The second piece of news is off-putting.  I live in Baltimore—where the hell am I going that I need a cocktail dress—at school pickup?  Sitting on our front stoop on a weeknight with a beer in hand?  Hardly.  I’m a mom.  And I work from home as a freelancer.  My wardrobe consists mainly of assorted t-shirts from the Gap.  By assorted I mean white and gray, long sleeve and short.    

Our friend Colin came by one evening to drop off said dress after meeting Trevor in New York where he’s interviewing for fabulous post-cancer jobs with Ralph Lauren, GQ magazine and Louis Vuitton (I’m pulling for LV in hopes of scoring some free luggage).  I opened the bag and took out the dress.  It was super short, strapless, multi-tiered in a black and while geometric pattern, and …wait for it…in possession of a peek-a-boo cut out between where the boobs go.  More specifically, my 40 year old boobs.  In actuality, it looks a tad like what Madonna wore in her ‘Lucky Star’ phase and what I would have worn to prom if my mother had let me.  And strapless—a tough feat to carry off after 30, what with the whole arm flab thing.  Where the fuck was I going to wear this? 

Trevor used to live next door to me.  We spent countless hours together while he was recovering from treatments at Johns Hopkins and I was putting off my work and in dire need of adult conversation during the day when my toddler was wasn’t pulling her weight in conversation.  I would take him squash soup, and he would talk to me without needing anything the way everyone else in my house did.  For the year he and Colin rented next door I saw them almost daily. 

I wondered exactly what made him think that this gift was me.  But maybe that is how he sees me—sexy, flirty, young—and maybe I should trust him, since after all, he’s a gay man, and who knows more about what looks good on a woman??  So maybe, just maybe, I will wear it out one of these nights.  But with jeans underneath.  And perhaps a cardigan.