Ten Things I Hate about Prom

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For many high school students, myself included, April showers bring May flowers, and May flowers can be used to make cheap corsets that can be worn on the lapel of a rented tux at prom.

Ah yes, prom.  Some might use the words unforgettable, romantic, magical, and unmistakable to describe prom.  The words I’d use to describe prom are lame, lamer, and super lame.

Now, countless movies have centered around this most magical of nights. In Ten Things I Hate About You, the class rebel tames Julia Stiles, the uber-feminazi.  First off, our class rebels didn’t look like Heath Ledger (may he rest in peace).  They wore FUBU and smoked menthols.  The uber-feminazis?  DID NOT SHAVE THEIR BODY HAIR, much less don a sexy designer prom dress.

In Can't Hardly Wait, Jennifer Love Hewitt was the prom queen.  Our prom queen?  I don’t remember who it was, but I doubt she looked like Jennifer Love Hewitt.[1]  In American Pie, the plot centered on the boys losing their virginity prom night.  I told my date to stop trying to feel me up in the hot tub after prom.  Who can forget the perfectly coordinated dance scene with Freddy Prinze Jr. in She's All That?  Most of you, because I doubt you had coordinated dance routines at your proms.

And as much as I prayed for it, no one got pig blood thrown on them Carrie style.  What the fuck?

Here is a disclaimer:  If you are a young reader, with obviously an excellent taste in literature and a thirst for knowledge, please skip this chapter.  I’d hate to be the one to shatter your romantic expectations.  Because this blog gives the low-down and dirty at what happened on my prom night. 

What?  You were hoping for Bieber???

“But I’m not Zoe!” you might protest.   

“Yeah?  Well you’re not exactly in the cast of High School Musical either, so it’s time to fucking lower those expectations.”

I went to five proms.  I can’t remember why I chose that much torture, but apparently I was a sadist in a satin dress. 

Now while I went to the public school, I was dating a guy named David who went to the private school.  Apparently I couldn’t find a date out of a pool of over 300 men, so I had to outsource to Parkside Prep.  There was an upside to this paradigm though- my friends had grown tired of the boys at my school and wanted to bring exchange students of their own to our prom.  So, five of my friends went with five of David’s friends from Parkside. 

Except one.

“I’m going with a college guy!” Emily proudly announced as we shopped for dresses.

“He’s not a real college guy.  He’s in junior college.  He was too stupid to even get into real college.”

“No, Chris is going to transfer to Indiana State after next year,” she said, pulling dresses off the rack and throwing them over her arm.

“You mean ISU?  I’m Stupid University?  Yeah, he’s a winner.”  I parted the sea of sequins, looking for my particular size.  “And plus, he’s 19.  That’s only one year ahead of us.  It’s not like he’s 21.”

“Oh yeah, speaking of that, do you have the hookup for alcohol?”

I turned and looked at her, hand on my hip.  “Um, does the Pope wear a funny hat?  Of course I do.  My boss[2] is buying us a bottle of Skyy vodka and some Amaretto.  It’s gonna be like fifty dollars.[3]”

“Good, because Chris is used to college parties and they always have alcohol there,” she announced proudly, as we walked into the brightly lit dressing rooms amass in teenage girls looking for “the perfect dress.”

“Really?  I can only imagine what a community college party is like.  Hey, come over to my basement, my dad’s in Santa Fe for the week.”

“I’m sorry, I forgot.  Your date is such a winner.”

“I hate you,” I announced, as I wiggled into a pale yellow empire-waisted deathtrap.  “I can’t imagine spending an entire night with him.  Would it be too much to ask David to just shut the fuck up and not talk?  To me?  To anyone?”

But Zoe, hold on a second.  You mentioned earlier you were dating this future Rhodes scholar.  Yeah, I was.  Why?  Because he had a nice car and was on the hockey team.  In high school, these things matter.[4]  Personality and substance do not.

After trying on no less than 20 dresses, I finally settled on one that I saw in Seventeen.  It did not look like the picture in the magazine.  I pulled the magazine out of my purse.  The model, who couldn’t have been any younger than 25, was so heavily airbrushed, she could have been anime.  She bore an expression of pure bliss as she gazed at the male model frolicking in his designer tux.

I turned and faced the mirror.  I tried not to look bored.  That was the closest I’d get to bliss.  I pursed my lips and tried to look seductive.  I looked constipated.

It really was a pretty dress.  It was red with a corset top and no less than ten layers of slips underneath to give it lots of body.

“It looks like the one you wore last year,” my dad said, not diverting his eyes from the T.V.

“It’s totally different!  And no one is going to have it.  I got the only one[5],” I said.

At school, everyone was talking about prom.  I guess we had a theme, but it was nothing cool like Never Been Kissed, where everyone came as famous couples throughout history.   All I know is our candle holders[6] said “A Night to Remember.”

“Yo check this out[7],” Nick, a guy in my class, said leaning in to talk to his bro.  He lifted his shirt revealing a tribal armband tattoo, otherwise known as the mark of the douche-beast, and normally would get laughed at, but Nick was only 17.  How did he get a tattoo?

Before I continue, let me back up in time to the previous summer.  I was a lifeguard at the pool, along with my sister and some of our friends.  There was a young man there by the name of Camden.  Camden was not the sharpest crayon in the box.  At 15, he already had a police record for trying to sell weed to a uniformed policeman.  Well, his parents were both doctors at the hospital where my mom worked, so our families were friends.  He and my sister had begun a little summer romance, which given her cognitive functioning and his inclination for misdemeanors, can only be described as “the blind leading the deaf.” 

One day when it was raining, we closed the pool like we always did, and proceeded to celebrate Mother Nature’s blessing with a little “herbal refreshment” in the guard shack. 

“Let’s go down to the golf course to see if the golf pros have any beer,” I suggested.

“I can’t.  My ankle monitor goes off if I leave the premise,” Camden pointed out[8]. 

“I want a tattoo,” a girl Sara said.

“I want a belly button ring,” another girl Molly chimed in.

“I want a tongue ring,” added Camden.

“Dude, we could totally pierce your tongue,” our 25-year-old manager, Mike[9], said.  “I mean, that’s how they used to do it before needles.  We just need something sharp and something to get it through.”

“My parents said they put potatoes on the other sides of the ear, then stuck the needle through using a hammer when they used to pierce their ears.”

“We don’t have a needle though.”

At this point, Camden was so excited at the prospect of possibly getting his tongue pierced, that he started to go MacGyver, scrounging around looking for anything he could use.

Then he found his tool of choice.

A golf tee.

“No way!” I said.  “It’s not even clean!  You’ll get tetanus or something.”

“Blah, blah, blah, always being Ms. Careful[10],” Mike said, rolling his eyes as he lifted the pipe.  He inhaled deeply, then exhaled.  “We’re gonna do it.  I need a hammer.[11]”

I don’t remember what happened next, but it all transpired very quickly.  Someone put a French fry wedge from the concession stand[12] under Camden’s tongue while his friend held the tee in place.  Greg, one of the other guards, took the hammer, and slammed into his tongue.

OH MY GOD- THE SCREAMS! You would have thought we were castrating someone or watching Rosie O’Donnel remove her Spanx.  There was blood everywhere, but of most concern was the blood squirting out of Camden’s mouth. 

Mike grabbed gauze from the First Aid kit[13] and shoved it in his mouth in a vain effort to stop the flow of blood, which by this time, covered his body. 

We went to the ER at the hospital, where both his parents were on duty, along with my mom.  My sister was crying, Camden was bleeding, so I took it upon myself to explain the story.  On the way over we had thought of many excuses, but in the end, there was no other way to explain it but the truth.

Our parents stood there dumbfounded, shaking their heads, and wondering if perhaps they should have just adopted some babies from India instead of birthing these Darwin winners.

And they wonder why I wasn’t valedictorian.

“My moms yo,” Nick continued, ignoring Ms. Turner, who was blathering about how Hester Pryn was a victim of a male-centric legal system[14].  “She said if I was going to get it done, we had to go someplace sterile, so she took me.  I look like Nick Lachey now, don’t you think?”

“You’re such a homo[15],” his friend Omar muttered, careful to keep it out of earshot of Ms. Turner.  “Nick Lachey is a homo.[16]”

“He is not.”

“Is too.”

“Well, he gets to bang Jessica Simpson[17] every night, and you don’t even see any action from your other hand, so shut the hell up.”

Omar, realizing he had been beat, did just that.

“Plus,” Nick continued.  “I have to be careful when I spray tan because I don’t want it to fade.”

Let me explain something about my high school in that particular dark period in our country’s history when boy bands dominated the record charts and Ms. Simpson was still an object of lust. 

The guys at my high school loved three things: tanning, hair gel, and putting sound systems in their cars.  I’m sure girls and boobs were a close fourth and fifth, but they might also have to compete with Playstations.

In our health class, we learned how to put a condom on correctly, but we also had a “tanning safely day.”  It was much like sex ed and went something like this, “Tanning is bad for you.  But, if you’re going to tan, put a sock on it gentleman, and always wear lotion.”

Until 2012, I assumed everyone had tanning safety as part of their health curriculum.  Guess not.

Eventually, Saturday night rolled around and we all converged at my house for the requisite pictures, self tanner touch-up application, and to catch the limo.  In addition to David, Emily, and Chris, our friend Amber went with Sanjay, Julie went with Matthew, and Angela went with Amir.

It was picture perfect except for Chris.  Chris, being that he was way too cool to go to prom[18], decided to show his maturity by wearing a white tux.  He looked like a cruise ship director, and I told him this. 

“Oh no, wait till you see this, though,” he said, pulling something out from under the seats.  “We all got one of these to sport to your prom.”

“No!  No way!  No way in hell!  Not a fucking chance!” I protested, as I looked on in horror.

Oh yes, my date and his crew were sporting trucker hats to prom. 

“We’re gonna show those public school boys how we do it at Parksiiidddee!” shouted Amir, taking a swig of Skyy. 

“You sound so tough,” I retorted.  “You’re so very hard core.  It will be like an inner city turf war, I’m sure, with your Buckle-outfitted gangbanger friends here.  I’m sorry, what are your colors again?  Khaki and hunter green?  What’s the line of demarcation for your hood?  It is Maple Lawn golf course or Fairlawn golf course?”

We went to dinner at only the finest of dining establishments, Buca di Bepo. Apparently Red Lobster was already full.  In the movies, the man usually has some sort of candlelight dinner set up, or like Freddy Prince Jr. in She’s All That, decked an entire pool deck out for Rachel Weisz.  My douchenozzle of a date splurged for the family-sized lasagna portions.

Ok, fine, whatever, I could deal with this.  But I mean, come on, the guys were in tuxes, and no matter how ill-fitting and awkward they looked, this was prom.  They were going to class it up and make an attempt to be beacons of maturity, right?  Right?  No, in fact, they did the following:

•  David tied his dinner napkin around his head, threw gang signs, and said something to the effect of, "Holla at my playaz! Young Money Fo' Life!"[19
•  Chris attempted to steal the statue of the little guy peeing from the lobby.
•   Matthew tried to buy a Long Island Iced Tea using his brother’s ID.  His brother, by the way, was 30, and Julie was only 16.  The waitress assumed he was the lesser of two evils between a pedophile and a retard.

We got back in the limo, which smelled of cheap rented tuxes, Drakkar Noir, and suburban clichés, and continued toward the yacht club where prom was being held. 

But Zoe, you went to high school in Indianapolis.  There’s no ocean there.  Correct.  A more accurate name would have been overpriced-appetizers-in-a-building-around-a-retention-pond club.

Chris pulled out the bong and we started passing it around.  Due to the crowded nature of the limo, Emily, whose hair was exceptionally long, leaned in too close as Chris lit the bong.   Now we could add singed hair to the potpourri of teenage non-rebellion.  Great.

In the movies, everyone suddenly "grows up" and gets along prom night.  The Mathletes bond with the lacrosse team, the JAP girls realize the awkward girl from the trailer park is really a beautiful person on the inside and outside[20], and the entire ensemble engages in a coordinated dance scene. 

In reality, as soon as we walked in, I realized that everyone still hated each other. 

“Did you see that fat bitch Nicole? She’s wearing the exact same dress as I am.”

“I heard Sara’s getting a boob job when she graduates.  She totally needs braces too.  Her teeth are all jacked up from giving head to the baseball team.”

I also distinctly recall two girls fighting over a guy they dubbed "Mr. Abercrombie."  One said to the other, "I got Mr. Abercrombie now bitch!"   That was obviously a pretty tough fight.  The girls at my high school liked to keep it gangsta.  I’d like to say there was weave pulling, but the most insulting it got was, “You’re going to get a nose job, but you’re still going to be ugly![21]”

We danced to the same lame Top 40 songs that everyone danced to that year.  I wonder what the suicide rate is amongst high school prom DJ’s.

“About ten minutes to the announcement of prom court!” the DJ cheerfully announced, meanwhile wishing he hadn’t dropped out of technical college.

I recalled all of the prom movies I had seen.  In Mean Girls, Lindsey Lohan came in her Mathlete polo shirt and won prom queen, and proceeded to give a long, inspiring, life-changing speech. 

When they announced our court, I gave my own John Madden commentary as each name was called.

“Sara Meyers!” 

“You suck,” I announced to the table (and anyone within earshot).  “You’re going to gain the freshman fifty and end up in Weight Watchers before you’re 23.[22]”

“Krissy Butler!”

“You’re going to get knocked up within the year and your baby daddy’s going to cheat on you with some of the current eighth graders.[23]”

I took another swig of my spiked soda.

“Emily Wilson!”

“Is going to come out as a lesbian, but not until after two failed marriages, three children, and her husband sleeps with his secretary.[24]”

One of the chaperones, our art teacher, looked over at me.  Instead of chiding me, I think I saw her giggle.

They announced the men’s court next.

“They’re all going to be fat, balding, insurance claims adjustors and loan officers in ten years.  Blah, blah, who cares.[25]”

When the king and queen were announced, no one was shocked.  In fact, they were the same future failures at life that were the class president and vice president, and the same ones who counted the votes.  I actually don’t recall voting, but I did hear comments of, "I didn't vote for that tool," and "I hope he stabs her in the eye with his sceptre."

I see a future CEO in this picture.  Oh wait, never mind...

They played more songs, which resulted in a lot of white people awkwardly dry-humping each other on the dance floor.   If you can imagine a one-legged pirate in a kickboxing class, you can imagine our prom.  The school nurse had to be specifically trained to differentiate a seizure from the white boy fist pump.

This was when my date and his friends decided to break out the trucker hats and start a bro-circle in the middle of the dance floor to Bowling for Soup’s 1985. 

They thought they looked cool.  I’m sure they did.  However, the public school boys weren’t too pleased with “Parkside fucks” infringing on their temporary faux-wood dance floor.

“Yo, nice hat, about to haul some cattle out to Omaha?”

“Britney Spears wants her look back.”

“The guy in the white tux has the same armband tattoo as me.”

“Careful broski, or that self tanner is going to tint that brim.”

The definition of irony.

WTF? 

The tension was calmed with the playing of our prom song, Wonderful Tonight, by Eric Clapton.  At this point, I think the DJ just put the songs on autopilot and he crawled under the table to write his suicide note. 

Despite the minor scuffle, no punches were thrown.  We ended up escaping in one piece and continuing the after party at David’s house in his parents’ pool and hot tub with the rest of our Skyy vodka and some Jose Cuervo Matthew bought with his fake.[26]

After prom, I thought my date and I were supposed to have deep meaningful Dawson’s Creek-esque conversations about the future of our relationship. Until I wrote this blog, I didn’t even remember my date's name.  I just prayed that in college I’d meet someone way cooler.  It’s usually implied in Hollywood that everyone loses their virginity on prom night. However, after spending eight hours with my date, I was more inclined to duct tape his mouth shut than handcuff him to the bed.

Most teen movies end happily on prom night.  After all, it is billed as one of the most wonderful nights of your life.  This is false.  It's not even in the top ten.  Not even in the top 20. 

However, while the average prom is not a Hallmark made for TV movie, it is a rite of passage and don't worry....in about five years, the smell of Drakkar Noir won't make you want to vomit.

Wait, yes, yes, it will. 

---

[1] I bet her ass got really big though as well.

[2] The 21 year old guy who had a promising career as an assistant manager at Blockbuster.

[3] In Indiana, you couldn’t go into liquor stores until you were 21, so I was unaware that this future CEO was making a 150% profit off of my underage libations.

[4] Then again, some things never change. 

[5] Or so I thought.  I got the only one left, which meant I’d see at least eight girls wearing the same dress prom night.  Skanks.

[6] They were really shot glasses, but we had to say “candle holder” as not to promote underage drinking.  It worked well.

[7] Apparently we were not in AP English.

[8] This limited his and my sister’s romance to the area under the 10 meter platform.

[9] And a prestigious community college graduate himself.

[10] I wish I could have recorded the one time someone has used “careful” to describe me.  Or “caring” for that matter.

[11] Cue banjos and start writing redneck eulogy here.

[12] At least they took the potato advice.

[13] Way to take responsibility there, manager.

[14] Someone’s a liberal.  Yep, didn’t read Ayn Rand in that class.

[15] The go-to insult of high school boys.

[16] There was a thesaurus literally inches from his head on the bookshelf.  This would have been an appropriate use for it.

[17] Yes, young readers, once upon a time, Jessica Simpson was a sex object, not a bloated, washed up shell of a tabloid has-been.

[18] Or a four-year university.

[19] David actually had trust funds and Israel Savings Bonds, so yes, technically I guess on some level he was "young money."

[20] Minus the dazzling minty fresh meth smile.

[21] She did indeed get a nose job, and still is very much a cave troll.

[22] This happened.

[23] This happened too.

[24] Call me Miss-Fucking-Cleo

[25] I’ve got $20 saying these guys still have their prom crowns on display at home next to their football trophies.

[26] To his credit, he went into the liquor store alone and told them he was in a wedding party.