Recent reports about students in Mississippi and Georgia seeking to bring same-sex dates to prom stirred memories of my own prom experience.
The year was 1987. I was "straight" then-or so I convinced myself. I knew I had "gay feelings" (as I put it), I knew I had no straight feelings, and I knew that people with gay feelings but no straight feelings are gay. And yet, by not letting these various ideas "touch," I avoided drawing the obvious conclusion. (This, from someone who would later teach elementary logic.)
I had never been on a date with a woman before, or even kissed one. Sure, there was that time in fifth grade when I played spin-the-bottle, but as soon as I figured out what the game was, I ran from the room.
By the time I reached junior high and high school and noticed my "gay feelings," it was easy to find excuses:
"I go to an all-boys Catholic school; I don't know any girls," I told myself and anyone in earshot. "Besides, I'm planning on becoming a priest" (which was true, starting around sophomore year). Pressure's off!
Except that it wasn't. Because my "normal" friends, even the ones who planned on priesthood, sought and found girls. I wasn't feeling what I was "supposed" to feel, and it frightened me.
Patty Anne was someone with whom I served on the parish council. She went to an all-girls Catholic school. I called to invite her to my prom, she accepted, and minutes later she called back to invite me to hers. They were on consecutive nights, so I got a deal on the tux rental.
My prom went smoothly, and at the end of the evening, I gave her a prim kiss on the cheek.
Her prom was a little more involved. One of her friends with whom we were sharing the limo hosted a small pre-event party. Upon arriving, I had two very gay thoughts in rapid succession:
(1) [Upon seeing Patty:] That dress is hideous compared to last night's.
(2) [Upon seeing her friends' dates, all of whom were from a local military academy and looked stunningly handsome in their dress whites:] Uhhhhhhâ¦.HELLO!
I laugh about this now, but at the time, (2) was terrifying. Not-noticing girls was one thing, but noticing guys was quite another. And these guys, all dressed up and nicely groomed to impress their girlfriends, were hard for me not to notice.
These were the sorts of things spinning through my head on the post-prom limo ride to a club in Manhattan. Patty and I had the backwards-facing seats on either side of a small television; the remaining couples shared a large bench-seat facing forward.
Suddenly, the other couples started making out.
"Thank god for this little television separating us," I thought.
But the television couldn't protect me. Before I knew it, Patty was sitting on my lap.
We made out. It felt wrong-and that frightened me further.
When the limo dropped me home later that morning, I needed to "process," so I hopped into my car and drove over to my best friend Michael's house.
It was 6 a.m., and I stood in his backyard in my disheveled tux, throwing clothespins at his window to rouse him without waking his parents. (When his mother finally entered the kitchen, she glanced at me and asked, "Oh John-would you like an English muffin?" as if there were nothing unusual about daybreak guests in black tie.)
I think that conversation with Michael was the first time I told anyone other than a priest or a psychologist that I had "gay feelings"-all the while continuing to insist that I was basically straight. Baby steps.
A year later, when I moved from "gay feelings" to just plain "gay," Michael was among the first people I came out to. It would take another year beyond that before he mustered the courage to come out to me.
Which brings us back to Constance McMillen in Mississippi and Derrick Martin in Georgia, two brave young souls.
Constance's prom has been canceled. A private prom is being held instead, and many of her classmates claim to hate her for "ruining" their regular prom.
Derrick, by contrast, will be allowed to attend prom with his boyfriend. The bad news is that his parents have kicked him out of the house over the incident.
How many more children must suffer because of these perverted values? How many more must live in silence and in fear, forced to choose between pretense and rejection, all while being denied the simple joys their peers take for granted?
For that matter, how many more adults must suffer?
That last question became especially poignant after I received comments from Michael on a draft of this column.
You see, Patty Anne, Constance, and Derrick are all their real names. "Michael" is not. He asked me to change it because, as he put it, "I am still pretty covert in my professional life."
5 Comments for “Prom Liberation”
posted by TS on
wow! harsh epitaph there. great writing!
these stories, these kids… this is the sickening scrape of styrofoam against violin strings (try it, you’ll see). this is the friction of some people determined to believe one thing agains other people determined to believe a contrary thing. how long will it continue? a decade? a century? for as long as this species lasts?
my first reaction is to say, take away the power the people in one group have to make the people in the other group miserable. end the choreograped school prom. end the overrated straight family. end the ability of people to express their unthinking judgments, their orderly fantasies which they are so eager to superimpose on everything else.
but what kind of world would that be? i don’t think there is a “solution” to this “problem” at all. i think this is just the order of things. you have to make choices, many of them awful. but you don’t really have a choice.
posted by Bobby on
I remember my prom, back then I was in the closet, I suspected I was gay but tried to deny it. I was never good with women and obviously, I had no date at the prom. So, I got drunk and started throwing bottles under the table, I thought the noise of glass breaking was beautiful. Eventually some jocks threatened me to kick my ass if I didn’t stop doing that, so I left.
posted by Lori Heine on
I’m in my mid-40’s, and when I was in high school it was so unthinkable that I might have gone to the prom with a girl (much as I would have liked to), that of course, I didn’t think about it.
My date and I got into an auto accident on the way to the resort, but we were so determined to get there that we went in a cab. By the time we got there, almost everybody was either drunk or high (it was the Seventies). Rick and I were still in shock over the crash, so the whole thing was sort of a blur for us.
Ahhh…romantic memories!
posted by george on
when i was in high school in the 60s, “gay” was what we called the “nineties.” anyone who preferred their own sex over the opposite was “queer.” it was not only “wrong” to be queer – it was downright weird from the perspective of the times.
i dated the same girl from the time i was 15 through high school and she and i went to my senior ball together. we were into frottage, though we didn’t know that was what it was called. we kissed, of course, and i grabbed a little tit on occasion. i was slow to lose my virginity to a girl….took me until age 19. i thought it was great.
a few years later, i discovered that there was a whole new sexual universe out there that i had been fearful of. suddenly i realized that another man was a turn-on, and it didn’t feel odd – it felt good and it felt right.
i lived in denial for way too many years, but finally learned enough about myself to know that i’ve been gay all these years. it’s so good to be true to oneself!
had i been born 45 years later, i’d be one of those reckless youth trying to go to the prom with my boyfriend now; and i’d be damned proud of it.
posted by Lymis on
My most vivid prom memory is of the girl who didn’t go with me. Back in the height of the disco/ballroom craze of the 70’s, we’d taken dance classes together in junior high, and danced together at just about all the high school dances, so I ratcheted up my courage and asked her to the prom. Her answer: “I’m not going to say no, but I won’t say yes yet because somebody better might ask.”
Which threw me into this truly weird place of trying to deal with the feelings of rejection and failure at a game I had no interest in winning at. I asked another girl who said yes (and subsequently came out herself a few years ago), while the first girl was in fact asked by “somebody better,” but less than a week later, they got in a screaming match in the school hallway, she slapped him, and he slammed her into a locker hard enough to briefly knock her out. She went to prom with a freshman.
I cannot imagine having been able to go with another boy.