Promming

++Promdemonium 2009++

I never hit my stride last night.

Oh sure, I mean I was on the arm of the hottest thing ever seen in a velvet blazer. With our matching but not matchy-matchy green outfits. Wearing the prettiest corsage I've ever gotten on my wrist.

Oh sure, I got to kiss a girl in tight white jeans and a ruffled shirt, a girl who had never kissed a girl before. And okay, another kiss from someone who had a kiss-pass from her gal and wasn't afraid to use it.

But my game was lost from the start and I never really found it.

Though I must say I didn't really think about where it might have gone when I had my thumb hooked through my date's belt loop while we slowdanced.

Still. I felt like I spent a lot of the night overheated and chafed by my enormous dress, dancing to one bad 80s song after another until the nostalgia wore off. One of those nights where I couldn't think of what to say, and my voice hurt from talking over the music within a couple of songs. Mostly because I didn't want it to be saying anything.

Still. I was there with a posse of my friends, and we were Done Up. There were bow-ties and leather ties and ruffled shirts and polka dots and crinolines as far as the eye could see and the 2 would take us (which is the Rideau Centre now, FYI). We met lots more of other friends there.

But it wasn't our crowd, not the way I'm used to. If I wasn't with my people, I felt adrift in a sea of faces I didn't even recognize.

++Prom 1993++

My giant dress of last night is the same dress I wore to my actual prom in 1993. That is me on the back deck of my parents' house.

Funny, because last night the dress was pretty par for the course, whereas in 1993 it was an affront to good prom-goers everywhere.

Funny also because I took last night's prom more seriously than I took my actual prom. For my actual prom, I went with a friend, someone I hardly knew and hadn't ever really liked very much, though he turned out to be a really nice guy.

I was actually seeing someone, had just started dating him, but he was 27, and there was no fucking way in hell I was going to bring him to my stupid prom, the stupid prom I was only going to because my bandmates were going and I knew we'd all have fun together. And, well, okay. I really did want to go to my prom. Even if I thought it was a stupid tradition, and was mad that the prom committee was only selling tickets for couples, I still didn't want to miss out.

When I asked Mike P. - a close friend of the bassist in my band - if he would be my date, he nodded a cool yes. I went to Kensington and bought this dress for $12, the docs for $100 something. Mike found a tuxedo jacket with tails in some other thrift store and wore it over black pants and a black t-shirt. I think we slow danced together awkwardly once or twice, standing far apart and making desultory conversation.

Before that though. The night of, I got all dressed up. I'd dyed my hair the night before, so I slapped on some frosted make-up, hiked up my mom's decade-old electric blue exercise tights and me and my dress piled into my decade old Buick Skylark and picked Mike up.

The dance was in a tent; I think there was maybe dinner. But maybe not. I don't really remember much of the night. Not because of drinking, just time.

I do remember coming home the next night, after having stayed up most of the night at the afterparty, which I believe was in T.'s big backyard around the fire pit, drinking, smoking, doing drugs and making out with my decade older boyfriend. Worn out and in desperate need of some sleep.

And immediately perked up by my sister's story.

Cindy V. was getting gas at the station where my sister worked. Cindy forked some cash over to Amy, and said "Your sister ruined prom."

"Pardon?"

"Your sister. Ruined prom."

Maybe it was the blue hair and giant green dress. Maybe it was the mosh pit I started during the fast part of Stairway to Heaven. No matter. To this day, I am inordinately proud of the fact that I ruined someone's prom.