A Tale of Two Proms: Part II

First of all, my apologies for the delay in today’s posting! I was in a very minor car accident yesterday (no worries, all persons involved are fine), and so spent the morning dealing with the insurance companies. It has been suggested that one of these days I write a post on my incredible bad luck with cars; seriously, my life is an exercise in automobile-related irony. But for now, I still have other stories to tell…

Since my junior prom experience with a date left something to be desired, my senior year I made the conscious decision to go stag to prom. At this point, I was quite used to being the odd wheel, and thought it would be more fun to go with the group sans-date and hijack my friends’ dates every once in awhile for a dance.

This was the Age of Xanga, and I took to mine daily, gossiping about what everyone planned to wear and how so-and-so had been asked. I even published my own prom-asking scheme, or rather one that I thought would be geek chic, which involved a calculator program that was activated when you turned your TI-83 on during Calculus class: Go to Prom w/ me? Y or N. It was the digitalized upgrade of the check yes or no note.

It was funny though—the previous year, when I really wanted a date, no one asked me, but this year, when I was determined to go alone, several young men came out of the woodwork and asked for the pleasure of squiring me to the dance. One of them even took my Xanga suggestion—when I typed “N,” my calculator’s screen proclaimed over and over again that I was a lesbian (apparently, he’d been talking to my mom). Looking back, I attribute this surge in wannabe gentleman callers to the fact that my ill-advised, side-swept bangs had finally grown out, but who knows what their inspiration was.

I was unwavering in my plan, and so continued to politely decline while offering to save them a dance. My resolution, however, was shaken more than a little when my friend, Kavi, let this little tidbit slip:

Her: So Graham told me that he wanted to ask you to prom.

Me: WHAT?!

Sidebar: I had had a crush on Graham FOREVER and everyone knew it, including, I’m sure, him. He was loud, obnoxious, a total smart-ass, who used to make incredibly misogynistic comments in our AP Lit class, not because he really bought into that idealogy, just because he knew they would rile me up. He was also hot, and many women can attest, there’s just something about a hot asshole that is irresistible to girls like me.

Her: Yeah. He asked me if I thought you would say yes if he asked you.

Me: And..?

Her: Well…I told him that you didn’t want to take a date—you were going stag—so you’d probably say no.

Me (incredulously, and quite loudly): KAVI! Are you kidding me? No matter what I may have said that I wanted, if I was going to say yes to anyone who asked me, obviously it would have been Graham!

Needless, to say, I was kind of ticked. Graham, thus warned, did not ask me, and instead, went with some freshman girl I was determined to hate. We danced once at the actual prom and it was everything my tender, teenaged soul could have hoped for.

Until (isn’t there always an until?) later at the after party, I saw him emerge from the bushes in a state of undress with She Who Must Not Be Named, which was the cherry on top of an already ridiculous night that involved certain parties falling into pools fully-clothed and then going missing for several hours, only to be found, soaking wet, and refusing to get into the car because they thought we were mad at them, as well as other parties who were asked to leave the soiree early due to excessive vomiting on the patio and even more parties (at whose house we were all supposed to be sleeping) not answering their phone because they were making out with their secret boyfriend(s). Let me just say, my senior prom after party experience was about as much fun as my actual junior prom experience was. We so should have gone mini-golfing instead.

However, hindsight being twenty-twenty and all, I’m glad that Kavi saved me from being a total hypocrite. I’m glad that I kept my word and went alone instead of being a complete bia who just said “no, thanks” until something I thought was better came along.

 I continued to alternate between crushing on Graham and despising him for months after that until we finally made out one random summer night after my freshman year of college (I recall that I was very chatty during this entire encounter). He has since become nothing more than the embodiment of my overly-preppy high school experience, though perhaps also the reason I still love the sight of a clean-cut young man in a navy blue blazer.