I hated my Senior prom. If there was a stronger word to use than "hate", I would use it because that is how much I hated it.
Now, let me start off by saying my date for the prom is on my friend's list on Facebook. We dated for a year, give or take, who remembers. No offense to him at all in this post. Well, maybe some because even though he was my boyfriend at the time, he wasn't the one I really wanted to go with. (I figure eighteen years later I can finally say that and get it off my chest). I wanted to go with Domenic. I always wanted to be with Domenic.
Back to the prom and how I hated it.
My Mom took me shopping for my dress. I loved my dress. I felt like a princess in it and as much of a tomboy as I was (still am), it was the first time in all of my horribly awkward, confusing, high school years, it was the first time I felt comfortable in my own skin. I think it was on this day that I finally realized that I was beautiful. I had always known I was beautiful on the inside, but I had never felt that way outside.
The prom dress was the only thing about prom I liked.
I hated my best friend. Yep. I could not stand the person she was, how she treated others, how she acted, and how she didn't care about anyone's feelings but her own. I remember her telling me one day, "You are so pretty, why do you hang out with those ugly girls?" I had no idea what to say to that until ten years later. You are probably asking why I was "best friends" with this girl and I honestly can't answer that. But she and her boyfriend at the time, were the ones my boyfriend and I had decided to couple up with for the prom and the following weekend.
The day of the prom, she took me to get our hair and nails done. She was Korean, spoke Korean, and did everything Korean (except belittle people...she did that in perfect English), so it was only fitting that we would go to a Korean salon where nobody spoke a penny of English. Four hours and a million dollars later, my nails were already falling off and my hair was nothing what I had envisioned. Whatever. I got some Kimchi.
Our dates come get us and we're off. I remember my friend being very pissed off because we got there too early and therefore, nobody would see us make our entrance. I didn't give a damn. I just wanted a bucket to throw up in. The Kimchi has soured my stomach. My little tummy wasn't used to ground-buried rotten cabbage for dinner. I felt sick the entire night, was irritated with my friend for her uppity attitude, pissed off that a less than attractive, talkative, annoying, weird looking girl with almost the same exact dress as the one I was wearing won prom "Queen", and grumpy because the guy I wanted to show off to wasn't there.
I was also annoyed that I had to spend an entire evening with a bunch of fakes. I'm talking about the majority of the PHS graduating class of 1994. I had spent four miserable years with these people and here I am, in a room with all of these fake people doing fake "celebrating".
Prom would be the LAST time in my life where I would intentionally surround myself with people I didn't like.
The school's after prom party got cancelled because the cruise ship that was to take us around the harbor broke down with the band on it. Yay.
We had no plans for the upcoming weekend because my parents told me just the day before, that they were going to allow me to go with my friends down the shore for the weekend. Up until then, I was the ONLY person in our graduating class that was forbidden by her parents to go down the shore for the weekend. I still don't understand why as drinking, drugs, and sex were readily available to me, in school or not, or if I was down the shore or not. Anyway, we piled into my boyfriend's piece of shit on wheels and headed down the shore for the weekend.
Where there were no rooms available from Point Pleasant down to Cape May. It was Memorial Day weekend. Were my parents trying to screw me? To this day, I think that was their plan. That we would make it down there, find that we had nowhere to go, and it would force us to come back home that night. We didn't. We refused to give up. We'd go inland a little bit. No, no rooms anywhere inland either. Hell, all of New Jersey was probably booked for the weekend. So that night, we slept under the boardwalk like a bunch of hobos. The wind was blowing sand into my face, it was cold, and high tide came when we didn't want it to. Cold, wet, sandy, and homeless. For sure we would go home in the morning.
We didn't. We decided to get into the car and keep looking for a place to stay because we had two days left. When we got in the car, it wouldn't start. Seriously? Yep. Nope. The car was dead. Upon checking our four moth-ridden wallets, we only had enough money for one day's worth of food. How the hell are we going to get the car fixed? Bunch of 18 year old morons. Guess we ought to call our parents for help. I sure as hell wasn't about to call my parents. Oh no, they would LOVE it if they knew my weekend was a bust. It was my boyfriend's car, he was going to call HIS mother. It would take her a day to wire us the money.
We had to use what little money we had left for public transportation to get us from the mechanic back down to the resort area where curiously, none of our other "friends" had space for us to stay. Fake. Fake. FAKE! Liars. We spent our day drinking hot sugar water and eating whatever crumbs that were left in the Doritos bag. We didn't want to spend another homeless night under the boardwalk so we walked back to the gas station in the Jersey heat where the car was. Just then, my boyfriend had a light bulb go off. We had a six pack of beer in the trunk. Warm, no HOT beer. He, and my friend's date drank it. We spent the night in the car.
It would have been awesome to have had a cell phone, but in 1994 there were no cell phones. And no internet either. Imagine that, kids! We had a phone book, a pay phone, but no freaking money to make any calls. Ooh, we made collect calls all around New Jersey that weekend. But I did not, did not call my parents to alert them of the dire situation. I told myself that I would much rather die down here than call them.
The next day, we are wired money, the car gets fixed, and we go home.
Stupid prom.
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