These free platforms are great for brands and businesses looking to dip

3 min readNov 9, 2020

Standing there in a shirt I’d bought from Zumiez and the one pair of jeans I owned, Ne-Yo and Pitbull booming over the speakers, I felt like an alien.

My brain was still buzzing from the small mishap I’d had on the way into the school dance. Seeing people gathering to go inside, I had joined the group and made my way into one of the two lines. A sudden push on my right side made me lose my place, but as soon as I turned around, I realized why I’d been shoved: the lines were gender segregated. I was in the girls’ line. Of course, I thought, rushing to the back of the line on the left, hoping no one would read too deeply into what had just happened.

I hoped no one would read too deeply into anything.

Some of my classmates got right down to business, running from girl to girl as they came through the doors. Upperclassmen and alumni would often boast to prospective students and male friends from other schools about how only St. Joseph boys could go to the dances, but girls from anywhere in the area would be admitted. For a bunch of 14-year-old guys discovering their libido, going to the school dances for the first time felt like being able to rush a fraternity four years early.

A friend of mine ran past me.

“I’ve gotten with SIX GIRLS,” Josh* shouted over the music. He held up six fingers and a big grin on his face. A few minutes later, Paul* walked up to me. Eight fingers.

“I’ve gotten with four!” I yelled back.

I hadn’t danced with anyone.

That seemed to satisfy him. Whenever anyone else asked me about my tally, I made sure to incrementally raise the number throughout the night. I kept moving across the floor so no one could point to me as the kid just standing by himself in the corner.

Six months into my freshman year, I was still dealing with an acute case of New Kid Syndrome. After eight years in public school, I was in a new school with new people, most of whom I had never met before. I had been thrown into a gated community, where most other students had already spent several years of their lives together, being taught by clergy and praying at least once every school day. I also wasn’t even Catholic, having been baptized, raised, and confirmed in the Episcopal Church. That denomination of Christianity is pretty similar to Catholicism, but still different enough that I often found myself having to explain its nuances to my new classmates. And most of all, I spent most of my days surrounded by boys. Just boys.

I knew I’d felt out of place since I’d started at St. Joe’s, and I tried to find a reason to explain that uneasiness. I’d felt the same way when I joined the Boy Scouts at the end of fifth grade, but the best way I’d been able to articulate it was, “I feel different than every other boy around me.” I couldn’t string the words together to make more sense of the sensation.

That mental pain had returned with a vengeance. The last thing I wanted to do at that dance was grind on a girl as my classmates looked at me approvingly, as Usher reminded me yet again that the DJ got us fallin’ in love so I should dance, dance like it’s the last, last night of my life, life. The first thing I wanted to do was to stay in the line on the right.

The sight of my parents’ car driving into the parking lot was a relief.

These free platforms are great for brands and businesses looking to dip

Written by taklifiko