I’ve got a rule with Mom, where if she brings up anything Q-related, we’re done. Slamming door, squealing tires, end scene. That’s been our deal for over a year. She agreed to it in an email, which I later printed out and had her sign. But she’s my mother, and it never quite works out that way. 

This is not about Q, she says. It’s Q adjacent, but that’s it. There’s special circumstances here, Billy, I swear to god. What they’re doing in that meeting, there’s criminality there, but it’s the spirit of it that’s just so mean and so ugly. It’s against the rules and bylaws, against the whole way the program is supposed to work.

I say, They can ask you to stop coming to a specific meeting for a while, but they can’t kick you out of AA. That’s not something anyone can do.

That doesn’t mean they won’t try, she says.

I ask if she’s found a new meeting yet, and what her sponsor says, but she barks out a laugh like I’ve said the craziest thing yet.

Gail? she says. Honey, Gail is clearly in cahoots.

How’s your sobriety? I say.

That’s the one part of my life that’s going just fine.  I’m not flushing sixteen years for anything, no matter how much they might be trying to drive me to it. 

The waitress refills our coffees. All set? she says. And takes our orders, BLTs and fries for both of us, mine with mayo and hers without.

So, Mom, I say. I don’t want to add to your stress, but I feel like if I’m going to be in my honesty and my truth I need to bring up something here.

She smiles and looks down into her mug—we’re in a window booth—then she raises her eyes and watches me intently, the smile still fixed on her face.

I say, I think you’ve been commenting on my Insta under a fake account.

Who told you that?

No one told me that. But on the Lady Irondale account, someone with a new account and zero posting history left a comment that they were sure that Lady Irondale was extremely talented but that she was supporting groomers and pedophiles.

She gets the smile again. She says, Sounds like they know what they’re talking about.

This is really unacceptable.

She says, Honey, I know how talented you are and how much it means to you, but they’re using you.

Who is using me? For what purpose? I am the host of the event. If anyone is using me, I am using me. This is for adults, at a twenty-one-and-up venue.

She says, I am a sixty-five-year-old lesbian, I have been through the wars, and I am not telling anyone how to live or who to be. Drag is not the problem, it’s how they use it.

The waitress comes out with our sandwiches and puts the plates down. Mom says, That’s not mine. I’m the other one.

This is you. This is no mayonnaise, the waitress says.

Ah, my mother says in what I take to be a knowing tone.

When the waitress leaves, she says, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to switch.

The systems I am talking about are real, they’re not just these convoluted woke structures of rules and regulations and language policing.

I already know she’s not going to eat any of either, even if we do switch. But it’s not worth getting into. Instead I say, You’re declaring that drag is not the problem, but then you’re talking grooming and pedophilia. I am just a middle-aged IT guy living in Woodbury and once a month I go to a dive bar on West Seventh and do drag, and that is it. I also happen to have a husband and two kids and your shenanigans are putting all of that in danger, because I have a mother who is publicly posting that I’m into grooming and pedophilia, the same mother who stole two of my best dresses last Christmas, and I have a signed statement in which you admit to this, and what I am telling you is that we are not going to have a relationship at all unless things change.

You and your signed statements, she says.

I take it out of the folder and lay it before her. Can we agree on a minimum consensus reality?

But was it notarized? I don’t see a notary’s seal.

I take out a new, unsigned sheet, one that says, “I admit I made the following posts on my son’s professional ‘Lady Irondale’ Instagram account.” Below that there are screenshots of the three comments and, at the bottom, lines for her to sign and date.

But I don’t have a pen. She sees I don’t and smiles. Well, she says.

I flag down the waitress and ask to borrow hers. I say, Just for a sec. Promise to give it right back.

And a top up on the coffee, please, Mom says.

When she’s gone, Mom signs with a big flourish, barely looking, and hands the sheet back.

You’re treating this like a big joke, I say, and I am trying to establish a consensus reality.

She places a hand on my wrist. She says, I know it’s self-expression, and I know you’re not a groomer, but when they use your self-expression the way they’re doing then your feelings don’t matter—you become just a useful idiot to them.

Good to be useful, I say.

Then the waitress is back with the coffee, and I try to free my hand. But Mom won’t let go—her grip is something else.

There are people who aren’t even people, she says. They’ve switched them out and it’s like no one can see.

I’m going to need this hand, I say.

Anything else? the waitress asks when she’s done pouring.

Mom lets go of my wrist. My son promised you your pen back.

I hand it to the waitress. Thanks so much, I say.

Just like he promised, says Mom

I sip my coffee, and with an odd little smile she brings her cup to her lips. I hold my coffee in front of me, and I realize she’s mirroring me. Our eyes are locked, coffee cups suspended just above the saucers.

I set mine down and it makes a little tink noise, and she says, “Tink.” Then sets her own down and says it again. “Tink.”

Do you think I’ve been switched out, Mom? Is that why you asked me here?

I wouldn’t be sitting here talking with you if they’d switched you out. I can tell which ones it is, one hundred percent accurate, and you’re not that.

So I’m just an idiot.

Aww now, honey, I understand it’s not by conscious intent, but do you ever think that sometimes what we do means things beyond our conscious intent? I support you. I want you to do your art. It’s just with the way the world is now, you can’t keep doing it the way you’ve been doing it. You have to find a way to do it apart from these systems.

There are no systems here. It is a dive bar and a show for adults for fun.

And of course there is meaning. Not in some crazy way, it’s just these patterns of lights are all humans going somewhere.

There’s nothing but systems. You think the systems of surveillance and control aren’t systems? You think children aren’t being exploited? The systems I am talking about are real, they’re not just these convoluted woke structures of rules and regulations and language policing. And I see you worrying about my meeting and my sponsor. And I’m telling you one hundred percent that’ll be fine, Billy, I’m not flushing those years of sobriety for anything. I can’t change the past, I can’t change the mother I wasn’t. All I can do is go one day at a time. But think of the world your daughters are growing up in, and maybe also think about that poor woman they shot in the window. Just focus on her for a minute. She was unarmed. She was trying to assert her right to simply be there in the people’s house. And BLM and these cop shootings are big things right now, and I’m not saying there aren’t grievances, but if African Americans want a seat at the table, that’s great, but you don’t start by burning everything down.

The girls are black, mother, I say. They are mixed race, and they are black.

She says, It’s black and mixed race? Which one is it? Sometimes I think those girls are just a pair of woke trophies for you. As if all the politically correct dolls and books and playdates in the world make you any good at knowing the first thing about being black. And Billy, let’s be honest, the reason you’re so defensive is that you know that I’m right about the grooming—not you, but the system. I’m not telling you to stop doing what you’re doing. You are great at drag, and I’m glad you have that outlet. I’m telling you to do it outside the system.

What would that look like? Dancing in the middle of a field, with no one watching, lip-syncing to Britney on a boombox?

Whose field? she says.

Any field, I say. It doesn’t matter what field.

But whose field is it?

You got me, I say.

This is exactly what I’m talking about, she says, slapping the table so the coffee cup rattles in its saucer, and she nods like we’ve finally come to an agreement. Then she takes her first bite of sandwich—not a big bite, but a bite, and gives me a how about that look, a look that says, See, you didn’t even have to push me on it, I did that all on my own.

I make a tiny, silent clapping gesture with my hands.

She says, This is what I mean when I say you’re being an idiot. Obviously you’re not an idiot. You’re just being one, because you never ask the right questions. If you don’t know who owns the field, how do you know the meaning of the dance?

---

It’s not my son’s body in the trunk. It may be his dress, but it’s someone else wearing it, someone bigger than he is. The dress doesn’t fit so great.

I’ve got the folder though, the one with all the sheets I was made to sign.

I don’t know what they’ve done with my son or where he is. He’s in so deep now, I’m not sure if I can save him, but I remind myself: it’s not my job to save him.

I’m talking to folks I trust on secure apps. It’s like everything’s floating. Nothing’s where I thought it was even a few days back. There’s so much information out there, and it’s both a cloud and a knife.

In all the disinfo the Democrat media and the corporations and Zuckerberg are spewing every single day, all day—in that cloud of distortion that’s telling you so many lies and telling you at the same time there’s nothing you can do about it—within that cloud there’s a knife any citizen can grab for.

The taillights are so vivid, the way they’re interweaving with the lights of oncoming traffic—it’s almost legible. You can almost find meaning in the flow of light.

And of course there is meaning. Not in some crazy way, it’s just these patterns of lights are all humans going somewhere. We’re all briefly here together, passing one another, riding some lights out on the highway.

I think about that, I let myself feel it.

You don’t think this will be your real life, driving down the highway with a switched body in your trunk, someone wearing your son’s dress at your son’s drag show. But life takes you places, doesn’t it?

And I know I don’t understand it all, I can’t see it all, but I don’t need to. It’s pure vanity and an evil to say you know it all. Maybe that’s why Q talks the way he does.

Whoever Q is, he’s definitely not the Lord, though he’s learned a thing or two from Him, I know that much. He walks in his footsteps.

Now it’s past three in the morning and there are black stretches I don’t know how long without headlights, when it feels like I’m the only one driving and the whole world is asleep, but of course that’s not true.

I close my eyes and open them back up, and I’m still right there in the road. I close my eyes, and I let myself see beyond what’s visible, I pray for my son, wherever they’ve taken him, and for all the innocents trafficked and raped and killed, I pray for our country, I pray for Q.

If I get pulled over, and someone finds the body, I’ll just say, I didn’t know that was there. Then I’ll say, I’m just a little old lady. How did a little old lady like me get a body in the trunk?

That’s a big body, about the size of my son’s, maybe a little heavier. No way I could get a big dead-weight body like that in the trunk.

When I open my eyes I’m still right there in my lane, I’m just going faster. Lord Jesus, I say, dear Lord, give me the strength to do what I must. Make me an instrument of your love in the world.

Excerpted from Whites by Mark Doten. Copyright Graywolf Press, 2025.