“I know it’s you, Brenda. I recognize your voice. How’s it going?”
“Oh, pretty good. I’m getting a little nervous about going to college. I’ll be okay. It’s just the end-of-the-year blues.” Translation: I didn’t get asked to the prom.
“Yeah. Things are the same with me.” Me neither.
“Richard, I was driving around the other day, and I heard ‘Beast of Burden,’ and . . . God, I thought of us! I got a little sad.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“You know what?”
“What, Brenda?”
“Richard, we should go to the prom together. Wouldn’t that surprise a few people!”
And on prom night, just as they were getting through with that expensive steak and lobster dinner, sitting there in tails and gown, all the old irritations would return.
Linda Barrett and Doug Stallworth arrived. It was another obligation, of course. They were fighting when they walked in. Then they had not been able to find their silver heart. By the time they sat down at a table they weren’t speaking.
“What took you guys so long?”
“Men drivers,” said Linda.
They were all sitting at the same table—Linda and Doug, Brad and Jody, Steve and Laurie—all saying nothing. They had come together for the memories. Now they just wished they could get out of there and on to the after-prom parties.
Tina Dellacorte came slithering up to the silent table. “Hi you guys!”
“Tina,” said Shasta. “How are you doing?”
“Really gude,” she said.
“What are you going to do this summer?”
“Stick around!” said Tina. “Go to Mammoth! I don’t know!”
“Fantastic.”
“Well,” said Tina Dellacorte. “S’ya later.” She left the table.
“I see her on a desert island,” said Shasta. “She’s been shipwrecked for two months. The natives have raped her like crazy. A boat comes to pick her up. ‘Are you okay?’ they say. ‘How are you?’ And Tina Dellacorte smiles real big and goes, ‘REALLY GUDE!’ ”
Silence at the table. The prom dates looked around restlessly at the other couples.
“Well,” said Shasta, “there’s always Grad Nite.”
Later, in the bathroom, two seniors were discussing Grad Nite in front of the mirror. Grad Nite, it seemed, was the special consolation prize for seniors with post-prom depression. Sponsored by Disneyland for graduating high school students in the western United States, Grad Nite was the one night a year the Magic Kingdom opened its doors only to juniors and seniors. For a $20 entry ticket, you and a date had the run of Disneyland from the usually closed hours of 10 P.M. to 5 A.M.
Grad Nite was an experience often spoken about in hushed tones.
“Girls roam in packs at Grad Nite,” said one senior before the Lagoon Room mirror.
“It’s gonna be awesome,” said the other girl. “I only came to the prom ’cause everyone makes such a big deal about it.”
At midnight, the lead singer of Takoma read aloud the winner of Prom King and Queen voting.
“KENNETH QUAN AND CINDY CARR!”
Gasp. Hands to face again. Cindy Carr, this time in all black, burst into tears and stumbled to the front of the hall in near hysterics. Kenneth Quan accepted back pats from friends and then joined Cindy at the bandstand. A tiara was placed on her head; he was given a crown. Gregg Adams sat resolute at his own table.
“Hey, man,” he told his friends, “be happy for her.”
Takoma played “Three Times a Lady” one more time, followed with a few more Cheap Trick and Van Halen songs, and finished up with “Kashmir” at 12:30.
“Thanks for having us! Good night and drive carefully!”
The Ridgemont couples then spread out in every direction for the second stage of prom night. It was still very early by prom standards. Most of the kids would be roaring all night long, and by 12:50 there was nobody in the Lagoon Room—the site of unimaginable thrills and tears—except for a couple of janitors cleaning up.
The After-Prom
It was an uphill battle all the way, but Evelyn and Frank Hamilton had finally given in on this one. For Brad. The kids wanted to have a prom party at the house, and the Hamiltons agreed to stay in their upstairs bedroom.
Brad had thought ahead to spike the pool with Wisk, and by the time kids started arriving at one o’clock, the whole pool was one big steaming bubble bath. It turned out to be one of the hottest after-prom parties. Everyone was there. Even Lisa was there, with her new boyfriend, David Leach.
There were some—the shy ones—who stayed in the kitchen. I’m watching the pizza. I don’t want to go swimming. But most went for it on prom night. They stripped out of their carefully chosen gowns and Regis Sevilles and Regencies. Even Shasta took off his exalted Mist-Blue Newport II. Everyone put on bathing suits and dove in.
Graduation time brought in nameless faces from all over. Jerome Barrett, Linda’s brain brother, arrived from USC, chain-smoking joints. Then there was Gloria, Linda’s best girlfriend from grade school. She’d come in from Chicago for a few days. And there were the usual types whom you only saw at parties.
Mike Damone and Mark Ratner were also at Brad’s afterprom party. They hadn’t been speaking since last April, but tonight . . . hell.
“Hey, Rat,” said Mike. “I’m really sorry about what happened. I know I shouldn’t have done that to a buddy. I’m really sorry.”
“I understand,” said The Rat. “You can’t help it. You’re just lewd, crude, rude, and obnoxious.”
They laughed, shook hands.
Eventually the twenty kids crammed into the Hamilton Jacuzzi. Then Brad, who had finally convinced his date to shed down to her bikini, reached into a bush and withdrew two bottles of rum from Mesa De Oro Liquor.
“ALLRIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!”
The first bottle was passed around the Jacuzzi, and before long the glow of teenage drunkenness—however faked or real—came over the cramped little Jacuzzi party.
Damone felt something. Someone had grabbed his dick! He scanned the faces in the Jacuzzi. It wasn’t Stacy! Not only wouldn’t she do that to Damone, not again, but she was in the kitchen watching the pizza.
Who was it?
“I’m going under,” said Damone. He feigned a drowning man. “I’m dying . . . blub.”
He slipped underwater, a daring move in the overcrowded Jacuzzi, but he was looking for clues underneath the bubbly water. Who had grabbed his dick? No clues.
He popped back up again. “I’m alive!”
Someone grabbed his dick again.
Later everyone retired to the living room for coffee and making out to a soundless TV. Before long, Brad had passed out by the stairs, rum victim number one.
Damone had gone out by the pool to look at the night sky.
“Hi, Mike.”
He turned around. It was Brad’s date, Jody. She was still wet, hugging herself to keep from shivering.
“How are you?”
“Pretty good,” said Jody. “Brad passed out by the stairs.”
“I know.”
She stood next to him, breathing softly and saying nothing in the way girls do, Damone knew, when they wanted you to kiss them. It was Jody! It had to be Jody he felt underwater!
He thought. She was great looking. Should he go for it? He sure wanted to.
“I’m going to go inside,” said Damone. “And check on the pizza.”
Later, the few that were still awake went to nearby Mt. Palmer to watch the sun rise. It never rose on that foggy morning, and nobody seemed to mind.