Highschool Prom
“It’s kind of like prom… everyone expects you to have fun, but know one actually does.”
-This American Life
My highschool prom. It was with my ex-girlfriend. And, I don’t mean it like how every girl that you don’t date now is your ex-girlfriend… she what my ex-girlfriend at the time. What a horrible, shameful experience it was. I was real upset with my former girlfriend - let us call her Sue. Sue had recently broke up with me for an older man. She actually cheeted on me with him. It was devastating. Being left for an older man had the effect of reducing my budding manhood to an emotional introverted boy. You know what it is like, you think that if you just try to be as nice as possible and act like it doesn’t bother you, not unlike some leading male of French New Wave cinema, things just might get back to the way they were before. Then you realize somewhere deep inside of you that you are no lead in a Melville film, that you are instead a hurt angry teenager that has no clue how to express himself. Prom night roles around and my best friend “Oliver” and I are getting ready. We were similar types - slightly introverted pot dealers from a town of 60,000 with an active disdain for its inhabitants. We were really into making mix tapes at the time. Making a mixed tape was like slowly crafting a single piece of art that expresses what you and your marijuana hazed, hormone steeped mind has no idea how to formulate. I just knew that this mixed tape would say it all. Sue and Oliver’s date, “Ingrid,” arrived at my house and we loaded up in my mom’s gas gusaling Tahoe, heading off to prom with buddy Oliver riding shotgun. I am sure that we stopped off somewhere to smoke some mary jane, but all I remember is the mixed tape. It was a romp through the emotional wasteland of my life with highlights from CCR, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Marley, and god knows what else. It was a mix tape that Oliver and I made together to let the girls know just how we felt about the opposite sex.
Of course the actual prom was horrible. The night finally came to an end with Sue and I at an after party of one of Sue’s friends… with Sue sleeping in the back of the Tahoe and me in the front.
I learned a great deal from that experience. 1st don’t go to the prom with your ex-girlfriend. 2nd resentment is stupid. 3rd mixtapes are still cool, minus CCR, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Bob Marley.
