My First Girlfriend Part 2 - The Prom Bitches!

As we arrived in our mutual classmate’s mom’s station wagon, it began to dawn on me, “OH MY GOD, I may finally get to make out tonight!”  I couldn’t believe my luck as I had gone from awkward, chunky kid best known for laughing like Elmo, to going to prom with the biggest crush of my life.  Of course, not all was rainbows and unicorns.  The mom kept us outside in the blistering June heat taking pictures to commemorate the event.  Any swagger I was feeling about being at prom was slowly melting away into my Dad’s outsized suit.  As we finally entered the depressingly sparse dance hall where prom was being held, it was time to party.

               

Suffice it to say, prom wasn’t as large a success as I had planned.  Prior to prom, I kept thinking back to the many nights I spent watching scrambled porn on our fake cable box.  I never really knew what I was looking at (was that a boob or a shoulder? Or in the worst case -  “God I hope that body is not a dude, that would be really weird for me…”) but I had an idea of what consenting couples should be doing and sounding like while doing it.  For some reason I thought I was heading to an evening of Yadia and I treating eachother's bodies like prepubescent amusement parks.
               

Prom started and Yadia and I stood next to each other awkwardly, like baby lion cubs going out to hunt but not exactly sure the process or why.  Finally the song of the year came on, K-C & JoJo’s classic “All my Life” – which let’s be real is one of the most awkward songs in the history of mankind, it’s about one of the singer’s daughters and has lyrics such as “said I promise to never fall in love with a stranger, you’re all I’m thinking of”, WEIRD – and we figured this was about as good as time as ever to start getting our bogey on.  And so we started dancing, meaning we started moving in a halted rhythm within the general vicinity of each other and then...well then we never danced again.  Yadia ended up running to her friends when they arrived while I stood in the middle of the dance floor searching developing an exit strategy.  Fortunately, one of my classmates Randy had somehow smuggled in a small portable TV with which we spent the rest of prom hiding in a corner watching game 5 of the 1998 NBA finals between the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz.  I know, I know, I was SUCH a pimp.

                

 Prom ended and I hadn’t spoken to Yadia after our initial dance.  In my one futile attempt to get close to her, I was thwarted by Janie.  This isn’t to say Janie stopped me on purpose; just she was of the body type which prevented me from getting around her.  Unintentionally, she became an offensive lineman for Yadia, blocking out any outsiders such as myself.   And that was it.  Prom ended and then we had graduation.  Now I’m not sure why – maybe she felt bad about the non-fulfillment of my own imaginary prom date pleasures – but Yadia invited me to come hang at her house, located a couple blocks from mine, during the summer.  I of course obliged and so began the summer of 1998.

My First Girlfriend - Part 1

I had a terrible, super important crush on a girl named Yadia in 8^th grade.  She was tall and gawky in an endearing way with frizzy hair, a mouth full of braces and considered one of the smartest girls in the class.  She was just my type, a total dreamboat.  Besides my own personal short comings (man-boobs, Spanish afro, etc) I somehow snookered my way into her awful circle of friends, which I put up with just to be closer to the love of my life.  At some point in time, she asked me to the 8^th grade prom (yes we had a prom, and yes I realize the ridiculousness in asking 8^th graders to dress up and dance like adults, but this was Jersey and it was awesome).  Despite my initial hesitation (read: I turned into Helen Keller when she asked), I agreed and so began my journey to my first girlfriend and eventually my first kiss, but not to Yadia.

            Preparations for prom, despite being a relatively newbie to the whole silliness, went rather well.  I was able to utilize one of my dad’s old suits, an ugly 3-button boxy number that any cadaver would have protested against wearing in a coffin. Despite the suit being 2 sizes too big, it was the best I could do given limited financial resources.  The biggest problem presented itself when the decisions were being made on transportation to the prom.  Yadia’s friends, the lousy lot of them, had decided that in order to keep in tact the verisimilitude of such an important night, they would rent a limo for the festivities.  Yadia presented me with this information and I’m not sure how I hid the flop sweat that surely engulfed me.  How would I ever pay for such a thing? I was struggling to pay the 35 cent lunches in the café and now I’m supposed to pay for a limo? How could I ever ask my parents, immigrants who never graduated high school who’s idea of prom was “invite your friends over and we’ll play some salsa”, for money to pay for a limo?!  Yadia wasn’t pleased but I gave her a definitive NO on the limo and so we did the next best thing, we asked two of our classmates if we could hitch a ride with them…in the station wagon of one of the moms.  And so our prom was set, Yadia and I would arrive in our awful, outsized clothing – playing a macabre dress up – in style, a 1983 Plymouth station wagon.  Can you FEEL the sexy?

               Prom was to be held at the dance hall within the confines of Schuezten Park.  Schuezten Park, for those uninitiated at the finer establishments of the Jersey town I grew up in, is an old German retirement home at the top of a hill occupying the larger corner real estate of 32^nd street.  It’s a large compound with one tremendous building in the center that at many times reminded me of a toothless facsimile of the hotel from “The Shining.” A large square building, its name was plastered on the front façade in huge red letters in the style of many beer labels, acting both as an announcement to the world of its presence but also as a Bat signal for old, retired Germans.