Burl

             "Burl's-.
             The essay "Burl's- by Bernard Cooper is the story of a young boy who struggles with his sexual identity and is torn between his father's wishes and his mother's closet. Bernard cooper writes that, as a child, he thought "possible to divide the world into male and female columns "but that, even so he found many things that didn't fit neatly into either camp. .
             When cooper sees two transvestites he discovers that things aren't always the way there suppose to be. "Any woman might be a man."" Cooper used to think that boys were supposed to be boys and that girls are supposed to act like girls. "I felt as if everything I understood, everything I had taken for granted up to that moment had been squeezed out of me."" Cooper at this point begins to develop his sense of homosexuality. -When those transvestites passed me in front of burls, they confirmed something about which I already had inkling."" He begins to understand that even though he is a man he can be a woman if he wants to like these two transvestites. Cooper up to this point had no idea what a man was like or what a woman was like. Cooper discovers that the disguises of those two transvestites were so convincing that he himself was fooled at first.
             Cooper discovers that the only difference between his mom and his dad was that his mom wore makeup and fixed her hair. Without her mom fixing her hair or doing her makeup she looked exactly like her father. After cooper is sent to a gymnastic class he was "battering the debate between the wish to be like other boys and the wish to be like myself."" Now that cooper knows that he is gay instead of confronting his situation he is running away from it. His parents are sending him to gymnastic to train him to do boyish things. He does not want to go to the classes but decides to go.