“PROM”: the first of many dances

In the east room in a house in Bloomington, Indiana, among the evergreens and white picket fences, away from the color lines, an important toilette is being made. Alice has come over with her arsenal of makeup, blue-silvery pots of eyeshadow and thick kohl liner and rosy pink creams. My prom dress, fresh from the dry cleaners, is wrapped in delicate folds of tissue paper, like something scared, the traditions of femininity, of life being a movie, of the sure things, of dancing just because you can.

Alice has come to my rescue. I wasn’t allowed to have any makeup on my own. She lines my eyes with sharp black eyeliner, both upper and lower lids, and draws it into a wonderfully even but dramatic wing, in a way that’ll come back into style again in the 2020s. She powders my face with tinted cream, dusts lilac glitter across my eyelids, nose, and cheeks. I slip on the gown, a Calvin Klein number with a lacey black bodice, long white tulle skirt that flared radiantly, and cutouts around my stomach all lined with white rhinestones. You never know you want to be a fairy queen till you’re in a dress like that.

Jake would pick me up in an hour so we could go get our pictures taken, then join our friends for dinner at the stakehouse. It’s an awfully grown up day and I can smell it with every breath. I don’t have much to ask of senior prom, just grateful my parents let me go, after much begging, and cajoling. I had pulled six extra shifts at Macy’s to save up for that dress. It’s all mine, paid for in sweat and sore feet and battles with middle-aged moms in Housewares.

Jake shows up in his suit with a white tie to match me, and the white rose corsages. We take off in his car, ready for the classical American evening. If only ninth grade me could see me now. If life gets its beauty from the the small joys, imagine how beautiful the big joys are!

There’s a brittleness between me and Jake, and not just the regular midwest cold. We know this is a relationship of convenience. We wanted prom dates, but that was the only thing our wants had in common.

I was hazed over by the parareal spingly things no one else could see, my eyes set on leaving for college in New York City, a sex maniac who couldn’t get no satisfaction. Jake was a smalltown sweetheart with sharp cheekbones and golden hair, abstaining from the fleshly acts, and an obsession with Japan that was just too damn suspicious. We would never work out, and we both knew that, but the moment is wonderful, before adult lives take over.

So I don’t need prom to be perfect, I’ll just take one that’s normal.

After dinner, the dancing commences, bodies writhing, heels clicking, as the disco ball shines torchlight on red, sweaty faces. There are people everywhere I see and talk to all the time at school, but don’t know the names of. I don’t bother voting for the prom coronation, all the names are unfamiliar. You have to be a special kind of self-absorbed to not know those names, prevailing through school like garden weeds.

These days my main friends are the creepy little girls in the wall, the shadow people in the playground, the constant battalion of strange commands in my ears, the perpetual audience that watches my every wretched move. I had taken a double dose of my meds, to ensure protection. They don’t really help with the demons (not possible), just makes my brain so soggy I can’t react. I keep nodding off in Jake’s arms as random people talk to me, sweeping by in flourishes of dresses, crinkling suits, mysterious smiles.

Sometime soon, the music will stop and the lights will come on, but till then we keep pretending, keep dancing.