Prom in New Orleans, or How I Lost My Dress

Twenty-four years ago, I walked down the aisle in a long white dress.
It was my high school graduation, and that’s how the young Catholic ladies of the Academy of the Sacred Heart entered adulthood. On graduation night, which was followed by prom, we wore long white dresses that had been approved by the nuns in advance. I suppose it was to symbolize our virginity, though in all honesty a nice shade of beige might have been more appropriate.
We were thrilled to graduate, of course, but the real excitement was the partying that followed. It was 1981 in New Orleans; the drinking age was around 12 and we were issued mixed drink tickets when we arrived at the dance. The Neville Brothers played at our prom.
My junior year prom date had been a nice young man from a hard-working family. He was modestly handsome and quiet; a decent boy.
My senior year prom date? Not so much.
David had made the rounds dating the coolest, baddest girls in my class. He did drugs and had failed a grade. When everyone else got tired of him, he settled for me, and I was thrilled. What geeky redhead wouldn’t want to date a lazy drug-dealing stoner scheduled to drop out of high school? He used to sing REO Speedwagon to me: “You know, I know all about those men...” He thought I could attract other guys! That seemed SO romantic!
By prom time, David and I had just about run our course. There had been a few missed curfews, a couple of broken dates, and one incident which I’ve permanently erased from my memory.
But I had asked him to prom and, frankly, I didn’t have anyone waiting in the wings.
It’s a sad, sad fact of life that at the times when our parents should mean the most, we’re constantly peeking around the corner, looking for something we think will be better. That was me on graduation night. There were my parents and grandparents and sisters, craning their necks to see me, beaming not just with pride but with that deep, endless bittersweet love that comes with watching your child grow up. And there was me, also craning my neck, looking for my no-good dipshit date to show up.
I think I looked beautiful that night. My mother and I had picked out the design of my virginal dress, and it was tailor-made. It cost $500. I will never forget that. I loved it. I told her I would get married in that dress.
David was late and he missed me receiving my diploma. And then after the ceremony, he said he had to give some people a ride to the prom and would meet me there. I found that very unusual, but I rode with some girlfriends and it was fine.
I was well into my second rum and Diet Coke by the time he arrived at the prom. It had taken him over an hour to get there. His eyes were very red and sleepy-looking. But he was NOT stoned, he said. It had taken so long because they had a flat tire on the way, and when they stopped to fix it, they couldn’t find the jack, but then someone stopped to help them, and he’s really sorry but it wasn’t his fault that he had a flat tire and blah, blah, fucking blah.
Whatever. I got over it and we all got drunk and had a blast.
Then it was time for the after-party.
David was driving his grandmother’s car, and we were double-dating with Leesa and her boyfriend, Doan. Now Leesa was just about the prettiest girl in the school but she was a couple of highlights short of a dye job, if you know what I mean. She always got the hottest guys, but they weren’t dating her for the conversation.
So it was kind of exciting when we decided to change clothes in the back seat on the way to the party. David and Doan were in front pretending not to look, and Leesa and I were shimmying out of our dresses and into shorts and shirts. I’m not sure why we were doing this. But the combination of David not watching the road and him being drunk and stoned led to him running off the road and hitting a light post.
It was a little bit of a buzz kill. Fortunately, it happened right in front of a Denny’s and we were all a little bit hungry. So we extracted the car -- bummer about the dents, but it still ran fine -- and parked, and ran in for some breakfast.
Eggs and bacon sobered us up enough to go to the after-party. We stayed for a while, and then arranged with some friends to meet up at Fat Harry’s, by far our favorite Uptown bar.
I know it seems unusual for high school girls to have a favorite bar, but again, this was New Orleans. We had been going to Fat Harry’s since we were 15 years old. It was where I first learned that rum didn’t contain any carbohydrates, and that sometimes throwing up after drinking too much can make you feel better.
When we got into the car, I realized that the paper bag holding my beautiful tailor-made virginal white dress was gone.
It wasn’t a very big back seat, but I crawled back and forth 20 times to make sure it wasn’t there. I looked in the trunk. I looked in the front. I looked in the glove compartment. I ran back into the party house and searched there, too. I looked under the car. I looked in the grass beside the car.
It was gone. A pit settled firmly into my belly. Guilt flushed me like a sunburn.
We discussed the matter at length. Obviously the dress had been stolen, either while we were having breakfast at Denny’s or while we were at the party. There was nothing left to do but go to Fat Harry’s.
At Fat Harry’s we ran into Russell, the security guard from our high school, just recently off duty from the graduation festivities. He began to buy us celebratory drinks, and pretty soon he became our very good friend. We also ran into Russell the ex-Fat Harry’s bartender, who I had been furtively dating since realizing the David thing wasn’t going to work out. He announced to me that he was moving to Colorado, and so I invited him to hang out with us for the rest of the night. David didn’t seem to care.
By this time it was getting close to 3 a.m., which was my curfew, but we weren’t ready to go home yet. We were hungry again. So I called my parents and told them we were going to breakfast and would be home after that. It was prom night, and they trusted me. They said okay.
So David, me, Russell and Russell, and Leesa and Doan went back to Denny’s for breakfast.
After breakfast we all noticed dawn was breaking, so we decided to go to a park to watch the sun rise over the Mississippi River.
The Butterfly was beautiful at that time of the morning. We ran around like the buzzed and worry-free high school graduates that we were. Well, actually, I ran around. Doan had passed out in the car, and Leesa and David “went for a walk.” I played tag with and then made out with Russell the bartender. I’m not sure what Russell the security guard was doing.
Around 8 a.m. we decided to call it a night. We piled back into David’s grandmother’s wrecked car and headed home. On the way, we passed David’s high school, and David suddenly remembered that he needed to pick up his transcripts so that he could apply someplace for summer school. I am not making this up.
So he parked. Leesa had (allegedly) cut herself while on her “long walk” with David, so she went with David to the front office to get a Band-Aid while he secured his transcripts.
Russell the bartender said goodbye and walked home.
I sat in the car with passed-out Doan and Russell the security guard.
We waited for an hour. I tried to find David and Leesa but couldn’t. I called my parents again. “Come home immediately,” my mother said. Then she hung up.
I called a cab. But I didn’t have any money. So Russell the security guard and I left Doan and hopped into the cab. He was the school security guard, after all. I think he felt obligated to escort me home.
I arrived home around 11 a.m. with no dress, no shoes, no money and no date. Russell paid my fare.
I was grounded for three days until I had surgery to have my wisdom teeth removed. I couldn’t eat solid food for days, and became constipated, and my mother had to give me an enema. I think she might have believed in karma at that moment.
“Youth is wasted on the young,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, and I couldn’t agree more.
If I had to do it again, I’d go to the prom without a date. I’d have my parents pick me up from the after-party. I’d invite my mom to have breakfast with me the next day. And while waiting for my mouth to heal from wisdom teeth surgery, I’d definitely hit the prune juice.