Prom Night

It’s been a while. Hi.

My goal with this platform was to share a personal essay each week, which somehow devolved into an essay a month, and I’m afraid I’ve fallen down on even that job. So, I have paused payments until I’m back on a regular schedule, so for those of you who have pledged monthly support for my writing (THANK YOU), I will NOT be charging you for my disappearing act.

But thanks for hanging in there, all of you!

Last month I celebrated three years of sobriety. I arrive here feeling grateful for the unexpected clarity and joy I’ve discovered in a life without alcohol. I’ve asked myself a million times how I got so dependent on something that was so terrible for me, but I can’t pinpoint one specific incident that made it all go sideways. For me, alcohol reliance has been a slippery, snaky progression from casual to chronic use, my addiction growing quietly and insidiously like black mold in the darkness.
All I know is that once it had me, it had me good.

It probably started in my teens. I was a late bloomer, introverted and uncomfortable in large groups of people so at 16, I was still content to spend most of my Saturday nights at home with a rented movie and a bag of microwave popcorn. I knew that, behind the French doors of our living room, there was a bar sitting in an old oak credenza, full of amber-colored bottles that my father sometimes opened before going out with my mom on a weekend night, but at the time, for me, it held no interest.

My friends were like me: innocents, naive little Catholics who spent the early years in our insular all-girls high school vaguely aware of lust and sexual longing, but not terribly distracted by it. Estrogen and religion ruled our day to day lives: we loved each other dearly and that felt like enough and besides, most of our teachers were nuns who lived in the third floor convent above our classrooms, setting strong examples of sisterhood without the interference of men; the only guy around was our chemistry teacher, a grizzled old science nerd with bad breath and pockmarked skin.

My friends and I had sleepovers, and the first Friday of every month, we went to Chaminade, our brother school, for dances. These were great sweaty affairs in their muggy gym, and while the nights always held whiffs of possibility, we usually just ended up dancing by ourselves, an impenetrable wall of girls, whirring and hair-swinging in a tight circle until we were all soaked, screaming to The B-52s and Depeche Mode and The Romantics. After, our moms would pick us up and ask if we’d met any nice boys, we’d all just roll our eyes and giggle.

In eleventh grade, though, there was a mighty shift: a big bang of hormones and drivers licenses and parties and drinking, and suddenly everything changed.

It was the spring of 1990. We were breaking through the membrane between childhood and whatever was next, everything suddenly urgent and wildly alive. There were wet sneakers in baseball fields and night breezes on bare skin and cases and cases of beer. Everything seemed to crack open all at once.

On Fridays, we’d all end up at my friend Katie’s house, where we’d steal her cool hippie older sister’s clothes, then get on the Long Island Railroad and go to a party, usually at the house of a girl whose parents seemed to leave town every weekend. I found out quickly how much I liked to drink: the way it slowed me, down-regulated my hissing, pulsing nervous system, made me feel more comfortable in my own skin. I shed my inhibitions like old winter clothes on the first warm day of March. I was prettier, funnier. Able to let go of my obsessive worries: Were my friends talking about me in the other room? Did that cute guy just see me pull up the waistband of my jeans so I could tuck in my flabby gut? Am I being too clingy, too needy, too … me?

Who cared? Alcohol gave the permission I needed to let everything go.

It didn’t take long for me to find a boyfriend, a preppy punk, the lead singer of a garage band, for whom he’d written and performed songs about heartbreak and his pet ferret. We spent hours on the phone, sometimes not even talking, just listening to the delicious sound of each other breathing. When we saw each other on weekends, he gave me mix tapes, which I obsessed over all week, listening on my walkman, running my fingers over his neat handwriting on the inside of the cassette sleeve, telling myself each song contained a hidden message just for me.

In May, he was my date to junior prom, which was immediatley followed by a booze cruise where together we stood on the bough of a rickety boat, drunk on Coors Light and Absolut and the fishy-diesel smell of the Long Island Sound. I was wasted on love, shivering in the chilly night in my off-the-shoulder navy blue flowered dress, and he took off his sport coat and wrapped it around me. It was the most romantic night of my life at that point.

His prom was in June and though he had asked me to be his date, something shifted between us in the weeks leading up to it. He started calling less, and when he did, the weight of our silences felt burdensome instead of romantic. On prom night I walked into the Chaminade gym and knew immediately that everything was off. I was wearing the exact wrong outfit: a floor-length, puffy sleeved gown in pastel blue and pink. All the other girls, mostly from our rival school Sacred Heart, were wearing clingy, strapless dresses that barely reached their knees. They had on high heels and glittery stockings. I was wearing white flats and support hose. My date ditched me almost immediately, and I spent most of the night by myself in the basement, eating cookies and drinking punch. I realized about halfway through the dance that I’d stashed a bunch of safety pins in my purse, so I locked myself in a bathroom stall and pinned up the hem of my dress, making it into a sort of balloon skirt. This style was far more popular the year before, but it was a slight improvement. I was able to dance, at least. I ran into a younger girl I knew from school, and clung to her group. Someone offered me a flask and I took it, gulping gratefully, although it tasted like fireplace ash and burned my throat. Still, the few sips waterfalled into the bottom of my belly, where it bloomed with a familiar warmth.

After the dance, we all piled into a rented party bus. There were more passed flasks, cans of warm beer. We decided to drive into the city and go to the Limelight, but when we pulled up out front, the sight of all the cool club kids, the sound of pulsing house music and the sense of danger at the church-cum-nightclub freaked everyone out, so we drove back to Long Island and rented three rooms at a rundown motel. In one of the rooms, a makeshift bar was set up by our bus driver (?) and the other two were reserved for couples who wanted to make out.

I sat on a queen sized bed and drank a foul tasting concoction of some brown alcohol mixed with coca cola. I searched the room, which was hazy with smoke and sweat, for my date, who had disappeared again. I bit the rim of my red plastic cup until it split, cutting my tongue. Someone handed me a shot and I drank it quickly. It tasted like citrus flavored nail polish remover, mixed with the coppery taste of blood on my tongue. I greedily drank several more, feeling the edges of the room curling like an old photograph. I got a violent case of the hiccups. But it didn’t matter, because everything was melty and slow and so much better.

Eventually, my date showed back up and seemed thrilled, as if he’d been looking for me all night and had finally found me. Without speaking, he took my hand and led me out into the hallway to one of the makeout rooms.

It was pitch dark but through the curtains there were cracks of gold light from the parking lot. I could see the outlines of bodies all over the room: against the wall, on the floor, on one of the two Queen sized beds. Before me, I saw the outline of an empty bed and giddily, stupidly, I threw myself onto it, expecting my body to relax into the soft mattress, expecting my date to flop down next to me.

But I didn’t see the headboard. It was huge and solid as a mountain, with a razor sharp corner that met my forehead with the force of a freight train.

Oh, I thought. That was bad.

Then I passed out.

When I came too, the lights were on, blazing. I was laying on the bed, looking up at the panicked faces of at least 20 people. I couldn’t speak, didn’t know why everyone was freaking out. My date was pacing near the door to the room, muttering about how much trouble he was going to get in, about his early acceptance to Brown and how this might fuck up his life. Oh, I thought. That’s sweet that he’s worried about me. But he didn’t need to worry, I was fine, see? I reached up to touch the area above my eye and my hand came back sticky with blood.

The driver, who had a first aid kit in the party bus, brought me a bunch of band aids, and helped me plaster them across the wound. Some of the girls brought me ice and I walked around the rest of the night holding a bloody towel to my head, assuring everyone, I’m okay, really! and I was, or I felt like I was, because the humiliation I should have felt was dulled to a tiny nub by the massive amount of alcohol I’d consumed.

This was the first of many lessons I would eventually have to unlearn. That it didn’t matter how embarrassing a situation was, how sad or anxious or ashamed I felt or if I blacked out or said something stupid. Drink solved it all, melted the edges and gave me permission to be the silliest, chillest, funniest party version of myself possible. Drink was the answer.

Until it wasn’t.