21 Proms (17 page)

 

Two days before prom, I left a size 82 tux on Carter's front porch with a note:
Screw the prom. Let's make our own. XO. Me.
I didn't hear from him. I checked my IM every three minutes. Nothing. The morning of prom, a boutonniere arrived from the mall florist shop. It was yellow, the color of a banana, with a stamped reply:
8:00. Limo. Primate the Prom.

He was there right on time. He wore the banana bow tie I'd given him as a gag gift for his last birthday. His fur shone. He looked gorgeous. I stood in the foyer in my own tux with the red Chuck Taylors.

Mom met him nervously at the door. She had a camera and was smiling like an actress who has wandered into the wrong movie but is determined to see it through. Dad had gone to a sudden Rotary meeting, which was bullshit, because Rotary was never on Saturday nights.

“You must be Carter,” Mom said, extending her hand for a shake.

Carter wasn't having that. He pulled her into a big ape hug.

“Oh. My,” she said, pulling back with a laugh. She patted her hair into place. “Well. How about some pictures of you two?”

Mom snapped some of us standing side by side, looking like bored groomsmen. At one point, the den door opened a crack, and I saw Dad peeking out. I thought maybe he'd come out and say hi after all, give me twenty bucks and a
don't stay out too late, you crazy kids
speech. But the door closed quietly and it stayed closed.

Carter grunted and bared his teeth. He picked something off my tux and ate it. Mom's camera faltered for a sec.

“It's an ape thing, Mom,” I said. “Don't worry about it.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding like she understood, when I knew she didn't. But I appreciated the gesture.

Carter put his arm around me, and this time we both smiled big. Mom snapped more until we were flash-blind and begged for release.

 

They'd decorated the gymnasium to look like a space station. The walls had been painted with planets and moons, shooting stars, and something that I think was supposed to be the Milky Way but just looked like someone had puked in space. Don't ask me — I don't get the relevance of intergalactic travel and school dances, but as themes go, it could have been worse, I guess. The ceiling was pretty spectacular, though. Every inch had been wrapped in yards of plush black velvet so thick it looked like it went on forever. Tiny fiber optics inside made it glow like stars. I wished I could reach up and grab one and hand it to the gorilla.

We'd made a plan to come in separately and, when the music was cued, to make our entrance as a couple. Yvonne ran up to me. She had on a distressed pink gauze number that was very punk fairy princess. I dug it.

“Ryan! You came — I'm so, so happy!” She threw her arms around me and jumped up and down. I felt like I was being mauled by a pogo stick. “Where's Carter?”

“Over there,” I said, pointing to the snack table. “Where are the other supposed Primate the Prommers?”

“Not here yet. But they will be.” She took my lapels in her hands and stared at me meaningfully. I could smell the rum on her breath. “If you build it, they will come.”

“Yvonne,” I said, staring back into her eyes, “that is the stupidest fucking thing you have ever said to me. Let's dance.”

A few minutes after ten, Carter gave me the signal. Heart hammering, I made my way to the DJ booth. FlashGordonFive had on his trademark wraparound shades and a sharkskin jacket. If the DJ thing didn't work out, he could be a bookie at OTB.

“Flash, could you play The Smiths?” I yelled over the din of Queen spliced to some weird Yoko Ono screaming shit. It made me want to spike the punch with Xanax.

“Sorry, man. This is my art, you know?”

I passed him a twenty. “One song.”

He held the bill up to the light, peered at it, and shoved it into his pocket. “Can I add an intro?”

“Sure,” I said.

Sweat trickled down the inside of my tux. I'd probably stain the shirt and not be able to return it to Bob's 12-Hour Tux. I'd worry about that later. The opening chords of The Smiths' “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” kept time to my nerves. What would people say when they saw us on the dance floor together? Would we be kicked out? Beaten? Left tied to a flagpole?

DJ Flash purred into the mic. “Here's a little song for all you ape lovers out there.”

Carter moved through the crowd, dragging his knuckles along the floor. God, he was one beautiful ape, and when he offered me his paw, I took it. There were some gasps and a few ohmigods. People moved away from us on the floor. But we stood our ground. It seemed like forever that we were out there alone, turning around to The Smiths under a glittering gym sky. But soon, others followed. Nick and his chimp boyfriend. Sally and her baboon girlfriend. There was an orangutan holding hands with a sweet-faced guy in a gray suit. I counted six couples, then eight, then ten. Ten. It was a start. Some guy stepped out of the shadows lining the dance floor. “Ape lovers, go home!” he shouted. He was joined by a few more red-faced guys.

Carter turned around to face them. He pounded his chest with both fists and roared. The guys ran back into the shadows, right into the punch bowl. And that was that. Nobody else said anything. DJ Flash spun our tune twice as a little shout-out. Pretty soon, the dance floor was half full, not just apes but everybody. Yvonne was there, dancing with the sophomore kid working the door. There was a constellation of girls who'd come stag and were tired of waiting to be asked, so they just danced with each other. There were couples and a few teachers and even Mr. Zwick, our vice principal, who was rumored to live with a gorilla himself.

I moved in closer to Carter. He smelled like the earth, rich and solid under my feet. The song floated over us, pulling us into that hypnotic state you can only feel on a dance floor full of possibility. Morrissey crooned about a light that never goes out, about not caring whether a double-decker bus crashed into him and killed him right then and there, because at least he could die happy, because he was in a car with someone else; he wasn't alone. It was a typical cheery Smiths song and I hated it. But Carter, that big ape, had this totally misty look in his big brown eyes. He had my hand cradled in his paw; his other paw rested just at my waist. We were slow-dancing at the prom. Our prom. Laughing, I leaned my head back while we twirled and watched the ceiling blur into one big ball of light.

Apology #1

by Ned Vizzini

I got invited to three proms. It's more than anyone I know, but it doesn't really count. Two of them were with the same girl at different schools — my girlfriend, for whom prom was an event not unlike Election Day: planned for months in advance and involving a war chest of funds. The third is the one I owe an apology for. It's the prom where I stood the girl up.

I didn't mean to do it. The invitation was such a kind, sweet gesture. It justified everything I was doing with myself at the time. It might have led to all sorts of opportunities for me, to a wonderful relationship or a different set of friends or entrance into a global elite, but I had to get stoned and miss it.

Here's how it worked: At seventeen, as my senior year wrapped up, I was writing small stories for a local alternative newspaper. A girl, whom we'll call Sarah, read the stories and liked them, and so she e-mailed me to invite me to her prom.

I'm not quite sure where Sarah got my e-mail address, but she was respectful and not at all crazy. She said she thought I was a cool guy; she really liked my writing; she and her friends thought it would be fun if I went to prom with her. It wouldn't be a date, of course, and she understood that I had a girlfriend; it would just be something for her to talk about later. I accepted.

I told my father about it. He asked:

“Will she be able to fit through the door?”

He didn't need to be so mean. Sarah sent me a picture, and she wasn't fat — she wasn't particularly beautiful, either, but who is? — and our further correspondence revealed her to be an intelligent and penetrating young lady, as well as an attendee of the Fieldston School, an Ivy incubator that costs $26,800 a year plus $600 in books. It dawned on me that going to the prom with Sarah was going to be a dress-up, care-about-it kind of experience.

Unfortunately, I was a bit tapped out with regard to dressing up and caring due to my commitments with my girlfriend, who was meticulously planning her prom and meticulously planning my own planning of mine. I had to get a tux twice, find a corsage and boutonniere twice, and get myself into a limo — thankfully that was only once, since my girlfriend planned the limo trip at
her
prom. At my school I wasn't quite popular enough to be with the sort of people who were splitting limos, and so I would've had to beg and plead to get into one.

Communication dropped off with Sarah as we approached the date. In addition to my two proms, I had a then-promising future to think of, which included attending an Ivy League college (I never quite made it) and my writing career. But while I was ambitious, I devoted myself wholeheartedly, simultaneously, to things that would derail my ambitions, namely playing in a band and smoking pot. The two were pretty much synonymous.

I had been playing in the band for four years then (and smoking for two). I started with the band in freshman year, after I had traded saxophone for piano for bass, when I met a guitarist named Paul who could really shred. We found a drummer named Hector and went through a few singers, one of whom was opera-trained, before settling on my buddy Jackson. We called ourselves Hybrid.

In the band, aside from Jackson, I was supposed to be the ultimate girl magnet. Much more than writing, playing bass was rumored to bring the ladies a-callin', steadily and without me having to talk. The bass players are supposed to be the strong, silent types who have women waiting for them in the van, and while I talked a lot and did not have a van, I found that the stereotype held up. Playing bass in Hybrid put me in contact with artsy, crazy women who got me into all sorts of trouble.

Hybrid practiced in a rehearsal studio near Madison Square Garden, an expensive and well-appointed place run by a guy who used to know Johnny Thunders. (I hadn't heard of him, either; he's the sartorial forerunner to Axl Rose.) We didn't deserve as much. We would have done just as well practicing in a dump, garage, or squat, as all of our practices became alcohol-filled bacchanals in which more than a few people who weren't in the band found their way into a heap on the floor.

Hector lived close to me, and on a fine spring day I found myself walking to his house, my bass strapped to my back, looking to show him a song I wrote. When I arrived, we went up to his room and sat in his window, his girlfriend watching. We smoked a little and started practicing. I wasn't doing a whole lot for my future up there, I knew, but I was calm and happy.

I get worried when I'm calm and happy. It means I'm not doing something I should be doing.

At five o'clock I got a phone call. Sarah. I had forgotten several key things. Namely, (1) that it was the day of her prom, (2) that she had my cell phone number, and (3) that I had needed to keep that last tuxedo one extra week.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” I told her. “I'll be there.”

“You know where it is, right? The Plaza.”

“Right, the Plaza. Like where Eloise lives. Like, the most expensive hotel in New York.”

“Exactly. But don't be worried. It's going to be fun!”

“Yeah, uh, I know it will be.”

“It's too bad you couldn't come with us. But you know we're not taking a limo. I'm just riding in my friends' car. It's really casual.”

I looked down at my clothes. I was wearing khaki pants and a bright T-shirt.

“It's not casual enough for me to come in a T-shirt, right?”

She sounded confused. I think it was her first inkling that things were going to go horribly wrong. “No … it's not
that
casual.”

“Okay, fine. No problem! I'll be there in, ah, in two hours?”

“You have to be here in one. How am I going to recognize you?”

“I'm ungainly, with a large head and dark hair?” I tried.

“That works!”

I hung up the phone.

“Hector!” I turned to him. “Quick! I need to go to a prom!”

His girlfriend threw her head back and laughed. “What? You're kidding, right?”

“I know, I know, it's stupid.” I explained the whole story. “But I forgot about it, and now I have to go, and I have no tuxedo, and … look at my shoes!”

I displayed them to the group. They were New Balance, the choice of the homeless generation, and while I knew I had purchased them in the color blue, they now appeared mauve.

“I can help you,” Hector said. He disappeared into his basement and returned, moments later, with the kind of jacket that really
is
only worn by used car salesmen — a checked khaki sport coat with burgundy lining.

I put it on and looked in the mirror.

“No. I can't wear this.”

“Why not? You're, like, the edgy writer!”

“No, you have to be a lot more successful than me to pull that off. I need to go home and get nice shoes —” But I also needed to be at the prom. I stared at myself. There wasn't any choice.

“Thanks for the jacket, Hector,” I said, hugging him and his girlfriend. I left the house into a perfect May evening and walked to the train, cursing myself.

It was not just a problem, me forgetting the prom; it was a
symptom
of problems. It confirmed my suspicions, as something did nearly every day, that happiness was dangerous. Anytime that you feel at peace, that you've reached a base in life, something you can lean off of and run back to if need be, you are most certainly neglecting an important responsibility that is going to come up and attempt to kill you. Relief is not the natural state of things. Competitors are always moving. If you are not, then what are you doing?

It's a sad, horrible way to live, and I wish I didn't think that way.

I arrived at the Plaza at 6:30
p.m.,
muttering. I was a half hour late. I was wearing sneakers and no suit. I didn't have a flower or an invitation or anything that my girlfriend made me get for her prom. I guess Sarah never got the memo that I don't act unless ordered.

A small placard outside the hotel said
the fieldston school
. One of the famed Plaza doormen gave me a look but opened the door for me. Inside, directed by the signs, I trudged down a short hallway, which was padded with red velvet and flanked by lilies. I got about five feet when I saw it.

They had an ice sculpture.

It was a swan. Shimmering and producing vapor. With detailed ridges on its beak. Its eyes slowly melted into themselves. It was at least three feet tall. And underneath it was an arrow pointing to the ballroom. The prom.

I looked the swan in its face. I don't want to say it, but, yes, it had an icy glare.

“I'm sorry, I can't,” I said to no one, passing the doorman as I left.

I entered Central Park and plopped down on a bench, next to a paper bag that a pigeon was investigating. I didn't deserve it. I didn't belong at the Fieldston prom. If I had prepared better, maybe. But I wasn't born into that sort of thing, and if you're not born into it, you have to work your way into it, and I had chosen not to do the work. Now the only thing I could do was be the nutty outsider, and I was
sick
of being the nutty outsider; I had a suspicion, later confirmed, that they get lonely and tend toward the deranged. So I just sat on the bench and watched people pass by in the progressing evening.

My cell phone rang once but I couldn't answer her. I let it go to voice mail. It rang once more and then nothing.

After an hour I got up from the bench and left for home, knowing that the worst part was that I felt
free
to not go to the prom; I felt like I had won something. I felt like I was back to the version of me I really enjoyed, back to the one that didn't care about women or clothing in any capacity. The one that played in a rock band.

Maybe a week later, I got an e-mail from one of Sarah's male friends. He said I was a dick; she hadn't been devastated because she was too smart, but she wondered why I hadn't had the courtesy to call her and tell her I couldn't make it. I wanted to tell him that it was because of a clothing situation, but in the end there were no excuses — and there are none.

Sarah, you're the first of a long list of personal grievances I need to rectify. I'm sorry I never met you at that prom. Maybe, someday, you can get back in touch and tell me how I can make it up to you. I'm sure that, so far, living well has been your best revenge.