"Please, please, please, let me get what I want this time.
Lord knows it would be the first time."
--The Smiths
If someone gave you a second chance at prom,
would you go? Are you willing to revisit the nervousness
you felt trying to pin a corsage close to a girl's breast,
to reenact the desperate dash to get a date, to undergo
the insanity of dyeing shoes to match your poufy dress?
Before this litany of terror causes you to develop a sophomore-sized,
third-eye zit, relax. We went for you.
A decade after attending our own provincial proms, we were
curious to see how much that nerve-wracking, extraordinary,
brutish, obligatory, sweaty, impossibly fun and abruptly
concluded high-school rite of passage has really changed.
Let us count the ways...
We accessed the David Douglas High School junior/senior
prom via two female students, "Mollie X" and "Janey Y,"
who "played" our dates. Our accessories to the crime were
surprisingly willing to play along with our undercover machinations.
And there were many. First off, there was the age issue.
At 28 (Mac) and 25 (Christina), we doubted our ability to
pass for bright-eyed teens. Like the rest of the promgoers,
we had signed waivers in advance, relinquishing our right
to consume drugs and alcohol. We would also be asked to
show ID at the door--apparently to match the names on the
guest list and prevent any Joe from wandering in off the
street. We dreaded having our ID's scrutinized. If our ages
were revealed, we would certainly be ejected. Reminding
ourselves that plenty of students bring older dates, we
went boldly forth.
We realized that this mission called for aggressive primping,
just what we needed to slip into high-school mode. As May
7 approached, we worried less about the story we were going
to write and more about what to wear. The shield of journalism
cracked as we transformed ourselves from reporters into
giddy teenagers.
For Christina, it was all about going girlie: After exiting
the hair salon on the big night, she had only 45 minutes
to get shed eight years and get glam. Mercifully, her hair
had been teased and sprayed into an immovable experiment
in verticality--all she had to do was paint toenails, cheeks,
eyelashes and lips and layer on a dose of body glitter.
She was nervous as hell. She might as well have been 16
again, insecure and inexperienced, with fussing parents
hovering about. She felt prom angst in the worst way. Cracking
open a cold one was a necessity, waiver be damned.
Mac, meanwhile, was having a mini-breakdown: Eyeing the
corsage, lying like a cold princess in her plastic coffin,
he got a jolt. He'd forgotten its clinical beauty and what
it represented--a three-hour fantasy. But in a black '70s
tux jacket and an oversized clip-on bow tie, he felt just
awkward enough to pass for 18. Checking himself in the full-length
mirror, he began to think that one more glob of product
would seal the deal. Voilà! Not a day over
25. He dusted off thin-soled, black dress shoes, exchanged
the clip-on for a traditional Paul Simon job and grabbed
the keys.
Maybe, just maybe, we'd pull it off.
Having signed the waiver, we knew that this would be unlike
our late-'80s proms, when half the point was to get loaded.
As a collective, these classes of 1999 and 2000 appeared
more elegant, savvy and self-confident than ours had been.
But the most striking difference between our peers and this
bunch was sobriety; their wholesomeness was hard to believe.
We eavesdropped in the ballroom, snooped in bathrooms and
danced with strangers, but we were unable to uncover any
illicit behavior. If these kids were buzzing, it was from
double mochas, not double bourbons. We, of course, needed
a drink to calm our unrelenting nerves.
Greeted by dads and gym teachers, we cautiously entered
the Tiffany Center, our hearts racing at the check-in table.
But our ID's were handed back with a smile, and we stepped
onto a sparkling dance floor straight out of Pretty in
Pink. It was 9:30 pm, and approximately 250 couples
were already well into party mode, bumping and hollering
to Jay-Z's hip-hop smash "Can I Get a...." Girls shrieked
in appreciation of each other's finery; boys didn't know
what to make of it all. In reaction to our accomplice Mollie's
swank cocktail number, a girlfriend screamed, "You're such
a sexy mama!" Later, a boy dumbly observed, "You have a
boa wrapped around your legs," in reference to the dress's
furry hem.
Girls in glamourous gowns sported sculpted updos, tan shoulders
and carefully applied eyeliner. The guys exuded surprising
cool, boldly stepping out in top hats, canes, Kangol caps,
two-tone shoes, tux shirts with Mandarin collars, military-short
bleached hair and, in one sorry case, nylon warm-up pants
and Vans.
Though vintage garb didn't play the role it might have
a few years ago, decades-old tunes ruled the DJ's mix. The
teens requested dance tracks from the '70s, '80s and '90s:
"Brick House," "Boys Don't Cry," Tone Loc's "Wild Thing,"
"Ice, Ice, Baby," "Lady in Red" and the spotlight song,
"Unforgettable."
The tunes seemed eerily lifted from our own proms, but
the vibe made it clear that is was no longer 1988. Instead
of getting loose with the bottle, these kids reached ecstasy
through heavy bass and even heavier petting. We felt our
prim hearts clench as daddy's little girls glowed beneath
groping hands and often groped right back. Somewhere, even
Jennifer Grey was blushing.
But not everyone got enough action. Overheard in the john:
"Y'all sweaty from the freak dancing?" one red-faced lad
asked two others.
"Yeah, I'm gonna be out there freak dancing like this [thrusting
pelvic motions], uh, uh."
"Too bad all the girls are freak dancing together."
At this prom, girls not only danced together but took each
other as dates, eschewing traditional coupledom. Mollie
and Janey were unconcerned with the pomp of prom. They had
pizza for dinner, wore sassy black dresses instead of formals
and spent the ball dancing with a cluster of friends. Some
guys also went dateless, going solely to dance.
No matter who you go with, what you wear, how you get down
or what you drink, prom will always be fleeting. Within
the time machine of the Tiffany Center, two hours seemed
like two minutes. When the house lights suddenly went up
at 11 pm, half the magic of the night vanished. We sensed
in others what we felt: "That's it?!" Teenagers lost their
grown-up poise and sophistication while we quickly aged
in the unforgiving glow of chandeliers. Kids shuffled around,
eyeing one another for tip-offs to a post-prom bash, searching
for a way to extend the Cinderella ride.
There was talk of impromptu parties and "hotel orgies."
We were instantly intrigued and enlisted our dates to get
details. Whether the suspicious teens saw beyond our bad
bleach jobs, realizing that we were only play-acting at
cool, or there was simply nothing doing, we had to accept
that the party was over.
From our safe distance, after surviving our own awkward
years, we thought this prom looked like what a night in
heaven should be: a room full of young, healthy, exuberant,
perfectly groomed revelers unconcerned with anything except
the DJ's next pick. Of course, we don't really know what
any of those kids were feeling. We probably looked that
carefree at our own proms. What we do know is that there
were no weapons checks or breathalizer tests, only satin
purses and coffee breath.
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 26, 1999
|
