Prom Trauma

Last night, I read at the WYSIWYG Talent Show. Linus took pictures. Here's what I read. If you attended last night, I changed up some stuff because some of it was mean and I'm easily Googleable and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. And to my high school girls and high school boyfriends, I admit I took some creative license. Not like, James Frey license, but just don't yell at me about it, okay?

The hair was teased and lacquered, the faces and nails were painted and the tacky matching black and metallic red dresses were buttoned and zipped. Julie's parents were off setting up the yard for pictures. The dates were due in fifteen minutes, and Mrs. F proposed a toast.

"Can't be worse than last year, right?" she asked hopefully, raising her plastic cup of cheap vodka.

Julie and I pondered the question. The year before, the year of our junior prom, our boyfriends of a year plus simultaneously dumped us three weeks before the prom in a coordinated effort to avoid dressing up, buying us flowers and doing something that required getting off of the couch where they were happily playing Tetris. Julie, Mrs. F and I secured the following dates after a last minute scramble, respectively, the boyfriend who had just dumped her via death threat, a blind date who fancied himself a vampire, and for me, a freshman. The prom was uncomfortable at best, gut-wrenching at worst. Incidentally, a week after the prom those same boyfriends were all, "Hey, take us back," and we were all, "Hey, fuck off and die." This year, senior year, we had, again respectively, a crush, a cutie and a long-term boyfriend.

"No way," Julie said, clinking her plastic against ours. "It has to be better."

"To the best prom ever!" I announced, always the optimist.

(I'm still like that, much to the annoyance of just about everyone who knows me.)

The dates pulled up in the white van I'd rented shortly thereafter, driven by Dennis, the uber-creepy 30-something manager of my boyfriend's marginally successful local metal band. He'd agreed to both drive us around all night AND buy us booze, and all he wanted in return was the opportunity to ogle overly made up, drunk teenage girls. We suffered through pictures with Julie's parents, assured them that Dennis was not a serial killer, picked up Heather and her boyfriend and began the drive from Schenectady to Saratoga.

Since we 1) had an hour drive to the prom venue and 2) had our reputations as burnouts and party girls to protect, we drank as much as we possibly could during that hour. When we arrived, Heather and Mrs. F announced that they were too drunk to get out of the van. Julie and I decided to go in without them, albeit nervously.

See, Mr. Tribanni, our principal, had insisted that, should we bring dates from other schools, he expected us to introduce them upon our arrival. Since none of us were interested in the guidos and jocks that passed for dateable at our high school, and since there were only 120 people in our graduating class, there was no getting around the introductions. Especially when we saw Mr. Tribbani greeting people at the front door.

I squeezed Julie's arm and assured her that we could pull it off. As it turns out, I could pull it off. She, on the other hand, tripped on the step walking in, landed flat on her face at our principal's feet, and after I helped her up, blurted, "Hi, I'm John and this is my date Julie." I cringed at her words, but luckily, Mr. Tribbani was drunker than the four of us combined, as per usual, and just smiled and waved us through.

The rest of the prom was mostly uneventful, save for the fact that one well-meaning but utterly clueless faculty member had decided that there should be a random drawing for prom queen and king, instead of the usual popularity contest. Julie won. We yelled and screamed and hooted and hollered wile Julie turned six shades of red and all the girls who otherwise would have been nominated glared at her.

That was the prom, in a nutshell. But the real story wasn't the prom. It was prom weekend.

If you grow up in New York State's capital district, you go to Lake George after the prom. So the next morning, we piled into Merv, my 1989 Pontiac 6000 LE, with a lifetime supply of Gatorade and Advil and drove up to the Fort William Henry Motel, where Tina's boyfriend, the only over-21 in our crew, had rented us a suite. The motel boasted an indoor Jacuzzi and swimming pool, and we had enough booze to give us all alcohol poisoning three times over. It appeared that we were embarking on a weekend that was going to be twelve kinds of awesome. Almost immediately, that notion began to fade.

Tina was FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. She was afraid we were going to trash the rooms Guns 'n Roses-style, wake the neighbors and get her boyfriend arrested for contributing to our already full-blown delinquency. She laid down the law: No loud music, no loud laughing or yelling, and no leaving the suite under any circumstances. When Marina passed out early after two many vodka shots, Tina dragged the body into the walk-in closet and closed the doors.

Meanwhile, Julie's date, whom Julie had been in love with for, oh, ever, was being easily seduced by Mrs. F, who had conveniently left her date at home so she could pursue Julie's. The friendlier the two of them got, the drunker Julie got. When Julie decided to take a nap, Mrs. F and John asked if anyone wanted to try out the hot tub. Not realizing the shit storm that was about to happen, I agreed to joined them.

The pool and hot tub were situated in the same room. When we arrived, a nice mommy, a nice daddy and two young boys were swimming in the pool. We settled into the hot tub, and a mere 30 seconds later, Mrs. F climbed on top of John and started dry humping him. Nice mommy and nice daddy exchanged worried glances, but they carried on.

I didn't know what to do at this point, so I just sank underwater and hoped that when I came back up, my best friend would no longer be making out with the object of my other best friend's love and devotion. No such luck, and to make matters worse, Julie was slowly weaving her way over to the hot tub. John and Mrs. F were so enraptured that they didn't notice until Julie, sneakers, jeans and all, climbed into the hot tub and shoved Mrs. F off of John.

"You. Fucking. Cunt!" she yelled, finger in Mrs. F's face. Nice mommy made with the earmuffs faster than you can say, oh, you fucking cunt. "You're supposed to be my best friend. What. The. Fuck!" Daddy performed earmuffs on the other son, and we all stared, transfixed and horrified.

"And you!" she slurred, almost falling over while she waved her pointer finger in the direction of John's face. "Are you having fun? Are you going to take her back to the room and fuck her now?"

Nice Mommy and Nice Daddy decided they'd had it at that point, and hurried to the door. I mouthed a weak, "I'm sorry," but they had no use for me or any of my rowdy, sexually charged teenage friends. Julie then climbed out of the hot tub, triumphant, and began her march back to the suite. Mrs. F and John then picked up right where they left off and disgusted, I ran after Julie.

I assured her that I was on her side and hello? John was from Duanesburg, and everyone knew kids from Duanesburg were big losers who did nothing but sniff gasoline all day and shoot birds with BB-guns. (They were) Then Julie chipped her tooth on a beer bottle, spent 15 minutes looking for the chip so her dentist could reattach it, decided to drive home, had her car keys confiscated and then went into the other room of the suite to sulk. People started going about their business, and finally, for the first time, Brian my boyfriend and I were alone. And then, he said the stupidest thing he possibly could have said in that moment.

"I don't get what the big deal is. It's not like he's Julie boyfriend."

What happened next started with me yelling, "That is not the point!" and ended with him crying and storming out. Despite the fact that he wrote touching, heartfelt songs for his marginally successful local metal band with titles like, "I'm Done, Get Out," homeboy was kind of a drama queen. I set out to look for him. Two hours later, I returned to the room empty-handed to find Heather and only Heather, sitting on the floor, stoned out of her gourd, listening to Rage Against the Machine and singing "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" over and over in her little South Park voice while she played Solitaire.

"Where are Tina and Craig?" I asked.

"They went to go see some band play."

"Mrs. F and John?"

"Don't know. Don't want to know."

"Julie?"

"Drove home."

"Marina?"

"Still in the closet."

"Your boyfriend?"

"Off at a campground, fucking some girl. Where's Brian?"

"Off crying somewhere."

"Wanna play SPIT?" She asked, pointing to the cards.

I opened up two bottles of Bud Light and sat across from her. She beat me five games in a row.

"Pretty shitty prom weekend, huh?" She said.

"The shittiest."

"Well, not the shittiest," she said.

We both considered it for a moment and reached the same conclusion.

"It's better than last year," we said in unison. It was something, at least.