The Worst Prom Story

     People talk about having bad prom stories and mostly they involve tales of their dates ending up making out with someone else in the bushes or getting drunk and vomiting in the bushes. Or making out with someone in the bushes who is drunk who then vomits on them. Or they missed curfew and got grounded, or wrecked their moms’ minivans. Those are all terrible things, and make for a real bummer of a memory. But those are one-shot things, not a series of consistent and eventually comical problems that make for one giant disaster.

     I was dating this guy. I was a sophomore, he was a junior, and this was my Good Girl Dates Messed up Bad Boy Crazyman phase. But he wrote me loads of terrible poetry and did dramatic things like make a tape of himself impersonating Jack Nicholson and Christian Slater having a conversation about me and how great I am so he pretty much sealed the deal in my book. AND he let me wear his black leather biker jacket with my plaid skirts. Double win.

     He didn’t invite me to the prom until pretty late but I borrowed a dress from my mom’s friend’s daughter (red strapless and fitted to the hips then a huge bow and big poufy skirt – I loved that dress so much I actual wore it twice to two different proms with two different guys at two different schools).  The night ended up being a complete disaster but I looked pretty good.

     Okay, so. His mom drives him to my house and we do pictures and then we go to the ring ceremony at school. Our junior prom was our junior ring dance when you get your class ring and then go to dinner, then to the dance.

     Transportation was a huge issue for the evening. Neither of us had a drivers license. It was his prom, I figured he should get this all sorted out. I would say, this is the theme of the evening – bad transportation, poorly executed transportation, total lack of transportation. The rest is icing on an already ugly cake. After dropping us off, his mom disappeared and we took a cab to dinner. Can I just say, I was totally embarrassed to be taking an cab anywhere? Especially on prom night? I couldn’t figure out why on earth he didn’t have friends that we could ride with or something. I thought he was kidding when he said we were taking “the great yellow limo” to prom.

     Everyone had left the school to go to dinner by the time the cabbie arrived. On the way to dinner he asked where we met and when Date said ‘Chemistry class,’ Cabbie chuckled and eyed me in the rearview. ‘Wish they were makin’ ‘em like that in chemistry class when I was in school. ‘Cept I’d like one about six foot and blonde.’ And then I threw up a little in my mouth.

     Dinner at a fairly casual Italian place downtown was mostly uneventful, except that after I’d ordered the ravioli dinner, he ordered a salad. Just a salad. Looking back, he probably realized he couldn’t afford this evening, but he didn’t want to tell me that, he was just going to let the whole mess unfold for me like a bad uncomfortable awkward unfolding messy thing.

     After dinner, he wanted to take a horse-and-buggy ride so off we went. Oooo…so romantic. It was around seven thirty or so when we finished and the dance started at 7. Then said he’d call a limo to take us to prom. I didn’t know you could do that…call a limo like you call a cab. So we waited. And we waited. I think it was an hour. It must’ve been about eight forty-five when the cabbie arrived…but he didn’t know how to get to the country club. There was a lot of driving around. A lot of calls to the dispatcher. We go to the prom after 10 pm.

     The actual prom part consisted of one dance on the crowded dance floor and me trying to avoid anybody I knew. We stood in line for pictures for an hour. 

     Kids were all hooting at us for arriving in a cab and I was just kind of embarrassed by my date…again, what kind of guy has no friends to go to prom with? Or sit with AT the prom? There were a few kids from my class there with upperclassmen, including a guy I had just started to be friends with (and would later date). We passed in the hallway and I think I might’ve said hi and ducked away. Besides, Date hated that guy and I just didn’t want to deal with the drama. I’d rather have hung out with Other Guy and his friends, but really I was flustered – we were so late! Everybody teased us about the cab! I was with a guy nobody seemed to like! And I didn’t know very many people there!

    At the end of the prom, I nervously asked Date how we were going to get home. He didn’t have a way to get home! He didn’t have any more money left and I had ten bucks in my purse. My parents were out for the night but I didn’t want to call them – they already didn’t like Date much anyway. Date tried to call his parents and they hung up on him. While the rest of the prom-goers filtered out to their after-prom parties or Denny’s or to their own homes, I stood nervously in the hallway outside the bathroom, patting my hair as my Date cursed violently as he beat the shit out of a couple of stall doors.

     The assistant principal heard him, and she quietly asked me if we needed a ride home. I accepted. The deal was that Date could come to my house and get a ride from there. On the way, at a red light not far from my house, I sat in the backseat of the assistant principal’s Lincoln Town car and seethed. Then I looked over to see the guy I knew from my class who I would later date in the car next to us. I felt like I was in a John Hughes movie. In the embarrasing part where the girl is with the wrong guy and everybody knows it but her.

     At my house, my anger waned with sleepiness as we sat on the front porch and talked then on the couch inside for a while but he fell asleep so I suggested maybe he should get on home. He called his folks again who said they’d pay for a cab if he could get one to bring him home.

    He said he’d walk to a pay phone nearby to call the cab so I could go to sleep and not get in trouble with my parents and with a kiss, he set off. I had just put on my pj’s and climbed into bed when a scritching at the screen of my bedroom window scared me half to death. He’d come back, it was too far to walk in his dress shoes.

     I got nervous – my parents were upstairs and my dad gets up at 5 just about every morning and it was about three-thirty by then. I let him in and he called a cab to come to my house. Again, we waited on the front steps.

    I got to bed and no sooner had the light clicked off, I heard my father get up upstairs, the floorboards creaking as he stepped out of their bed.

   We dated for about nine months or so, and broke up because I finally got tired of the melodrama and the biker jacket thing lost its appeal. Nothing ever went right with him around and it made me uncomfortable. Besides, none of my friends liked him anyway.