last dance

It has come to my attention that my senior prom was 15 years ago today. Pardon me while I adjust my support hose and use my cane to chase those kids off my lawn.

Prom, if I recall (through the cobwebby annals of memory), was a bit of a wretched evening. In theory it should’ve been good, mostly because all my friends were there and we always—okay, usually—had a great time together. Also? My dress? It fucking ruled.


No, seriously, guys, I know it looks like we’re on our way to a funeral here, but that’s not the point. The point is that my dress was awesome. I sketched the design I wanted (rather poorly, I may add; an artist I ain’t) and had a local seamstress create the dress from scratch for me. It was black velvet, a fact which made my mom repeatedly blanch and moan, “You’ll get worms!” (Hey, at least it gave her a break from telling me that I looked like a refugee.) And I’m happy to report that I didn’t get worms. And not a single person made fun of me (at least to my face) for wearing black velvet in mid-May. The only complaints lodged against me had to do with my wearing a jean jacket upon arrival and departure. People equated this with heresy, I guess. I even overheard my yearbook advisor making fun of me in class the next week. Whatever!

The dress was great, the long black velvet gloves were…well, a bit over-the-top (especially considering I wore a pearl bracelet over the left glove), but not heinous. My purse was fabulous: a little black velvet clutch I bought at my favorite vintage shop. In fact, I’m wondering where this purse went over the years; hopefully my mom has it tucked away in her house somewhere. My necklace (a sedate set of faux pearls) was fine. The shoes (black velvet flats) were fine, although heels would’ve been much better. I wasn’t wearing heels yet at that point, though—I didn’t start wearing them until I was out of college. So all in all, in spite of my mediocre makeup and that weird bit of hair I had hanging down from my French twist (presumably to hide my forehead dent), I can honestly look back on my prom pictures 15 years later and not shiver in revulsion. That’s quite an achievement for a prom that took place in the early ’90s.

Anyway, back to why prom was wretched. Well, first of all, I was pissed that I had to drive there. My date Terry had only turned 16 the month before and didn’t yet have a driver’s license, and I was either too cheap or too poor to pay for a limo, so I was stuck driving us, as well as a pair of our friends, in my mom’s car. Very unglamorous. It was pouring and the windows kept fogging up, so when we left the prom I couldn’t see where I was going and I drove up onto a curb, getting stuck. The three folks in my car had to get out in the pouring rain and push my car off the curb while other departing prom-goers honked and laughed at us. Hotttt. During the prom itself there wasn’t much to do but pick at my food, snap some photos of friends, and woefully lament my lack of a boyfriend. The dance floor was small and dancers were very conspicuous, so my awkward, geeky friends and I avoided it at all costs.

I actually don’t remember very much about the prom or post-prom, and I can’t consult my journal, because it’s currently in storage in my sister’s basement. I did, however, rummage through the big Tupperware container full of high school and college ephemera stuffed in the back of my bedroom closet and found my Josten’s senior book. On the prom pages I attached the photo above and answered two of the questions:

About the evening: It positively sucked. It was boring and it was an ultra-fake masquerade of preppies and jocks and bitches who spent way too much money on outfits for 3 measly hours.

What we did afterwards: Post-prom, the cemetery, ate at Hardees, drove around mindlessly, went home and crashed because I was borderline comatose from exhaustion, it was pouring too hard to really drive any distances, and my windows were so fogged I couldn’t see a damn thing. Also, before post-prom a bunch of us hung at my house, changed, and Jason was smoking pot in my bathroom. Bloody wonderful.

That’s right—we went to a cemetery after the post-prom. Enough said.


song heard most recently before posting:
People Get Ready—Eva Cassidy