Mr. Unavailable #63: The Prom

This is a Mr. Unavailable flashback circa spring 1990, senior year of high school, the suburbs of Buffalo.

Vital Stats: 6’1”ish. A gaunt acne-sufferer who’d just moved to town after the beginning of our senior year. Aesthetic: Button-down shirts and jeans. Demeanor: Friendly and outgoing but, ultimately, dorky.

What Happened: He was the new kid in town, so he had instant cool cred even though he was awkwardly tall and thin and had bad skin, which would normally have made him a prime candidate for merciless torment. We somehow became friends and he asked me to the prom—as a friend. A bunch of people rented a limo and we cruised down to the Buffalo convention center downtown. The moment we found our balloon-bedecked table, he was gone, sprinting off after a blonde, tan classmate.

The rest of the prom portion of the evening was pretty much a blur, my goal being to get through it and make it to the after-party to which, fortunately, prom-goers and non-prom-goers alike had been invited, which meant my yearbook friends—that is, my real friends—would be there. The after-party was at a big suburban house on a manmade pond; the suburbs of Buffalo, not being truly coastal in any way, had a lot of those. Once we got there, I changed into my regular clothes and found my regular friends and actually started having a regular good time.

As I swung in the hammocks and talked with my friends for hours by the “pond,” my date was MIA. But as dawn broke and it was time to go home, our designated driver rounded him up. In the back seat, I sat as far away from him as I could, which meant that when we had to pull the car over for him to vomit, I was safely out of range.

Signs of Hope: When he asked me to the prom. Even though we were going as friends, I was still flattered.

Red Flags: When he hit on another girl, got drunk and disappeared.

Turning Point: Usually I make the “turning point” the point at which everything goes bad. But I’d like to make this one the point at which everything got good: after the prom, hanging out with my friends—even into the next day when, sleep-deprived, I met up with my best friend for an outdoor volunteer thing and we sprawled in the grass, exhausted, between events.

Diagnosis: Let me sum up with a bit of an epilogue. My mother, who was taking a photography course at the time, had taken pictures of the beginning phases of prom night: me getting ready, me being picked up, my date putting the tight, circulation-preventing corsage around my wrist. When she showed the photos to her instructor, he said, “Your daughter looks pretty, but who’s the dork?”

#63 later apologized for being such a prom-night dork, but the damage was done. Maybe the old adage “the worse the wedding, the stronger the marriage” can be somehow altered and applied here. Maybe…the worse the prom night, the stronger the friendships.