A night out on the town

Tonight is Cutter’s junior prom. Man, I cannot believe how fast these boys are growing up. I swear that just yesterday Cutter was this little round-faced dork with his equally geeky sidekick Damiano sporting his glasses and quiet demeanor. Seriously, Dam used to be so quiet and meek, I swore he was a figment of all our imaginations. No kid is that quiet. It’s unnatural.

In grand Hicks fashion, mom and I went and hung out with other parents and took pictures of the kids while they pinned on boutonnieres and corsages and stood uncomfortably in unnatural poses until the limo arrived. Cutter is taking Dam’s twin sister, who I might add does NOT look like Dam in a wig, no matter how many times people ask me.

So here’s some pictures of my baby brother going on his first adult evening out…*sigh*

I remember being so excited about prom when I was in high school. I don’t mean I was like tripping over myself to go. It actually wasn’t that big a deal to me…if nobody asked me, I wasn’t going to sweat it. Hell, our sophomore year Debbie and I went to Bakersfield the weekend of prom and attended the state rabbit & cavy convention. We spent prom night in a motor home playing cards, eating various sugary snacks, and listening to the latest round of cassette singles we’d picked up at the mall earlier that day (such classics as Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” and Enigma’s “Sadeness Pt 1”). We were happy as pigs in shit, and when we saw pictures of everyone else’s good time, we weren’t jealous or upset. We’d gotten to go to the mall and discovered the World’s Creepiest Bathroom at a Carl’s Jr. restaurant along I-5. It was all gravy.

Of course, that’s well and good when I haven’t been asked…but once I was asked to prom, I was in full-on excitement mode. My freshman year I was asked by Steve Weckell. Nice guy who had recently broken up with his girlfriend and she so desperately wanted to kick my ass even though I had nothing to do with it. I spent a fair amount of time waffling between being stoked about prom and fearing for my life. I borrowed the ugliest (at the time it was the coolest) gold lamé strapless dress on the planet and paired it with horrid black plastic beaded accessories and cheap drug store perfume (Vervé, if anyone remembers it). I was definitely a freshman.

Steve had a thing for me. I considered Steve to just be a good friend. When the end of the evening rolled around, it was obvious Steve was looking forward to the goodnight kiss, whereas I was dreading it with every fiber of my being. Before he could move in for the kill, I handed him my neighbor’s cat that had been rubbing at my ankles and ducked inside with a quick “Thank you for a great prom!” Disaster averted.

My junior year, I obtained a boyfriend (and subsequently a sex life) two months before prom. Once again, stoked as hell. I ended up scoring a dress that had been featured in Seventeen magazine and was ooh’ed and ahh’ed over by some of the popular girls in my Honors English class. This time I left the gold lamé to the strippers and cocktail waitresses and instead sported dark blue embroidered cloth with white satin accents. I traded the plastic beads for pearls and silver. Liz Claiborne dabbed on all my key pulse-points, I thought I looked and smelled rather smashing. I look back on those pictures now and I hate them. My face is huge and my hair is just wrong. Oh well. At least the dress is still rockin’. (funny side note: I still have the dress…it helps me to gather the strength to get back down to my slim 130-lb frame) I was on the rag during prom that year and my gorgeous one-of-a-kind mom-made corsage fell off my wrist during the long walk from the car to the prom location, so the night ended in tears. My poor boyfriend didn’t even know what to do. It’s not like he could fuck me and make things better. In the end he just let me fall asleep on his lap.

Senior year, I hadn’t planned on going at all. I won’t go into the convoluted circumstances for my disastrous love life that year, but needless to say, I was single and the one person I’d planned to go with was taking someone else. So I had decided that two proms were enough and I was more than happy staying home. Well. That’s kind of a lie. All my friends were going and that kinda stung. But what could I do? There wasn’t anyone I could ask that wasn’t already going. Then the strangest thing happened. My drama/band/Northern Exposure buddy Jeff Heiser asked me if I wanted to go with him. A week before prom. How in the hell was I going to pull this together in a week?

My friends Adam Porter and Jason Smith were a huge help. Jason was already going with a really sweet girl named Karen, and his parents were driving them around for the night. Adam had wanted to go but never found a date, and he finally gave in to my long-standing advice that he should go stag and have fun no matter what. Jason and Karen offered to go with us as a group, and so the five of us would caravan to dinner and then prom. Mom borrowed a stack of evening gowns from her boss’s daughters and I picked out a red strapless cocktail dress that made me look ten years older than anyone in my class. I spent most of the night pulling the top up over my excessively large tits. Adam ended up finding a date at the very last minute…our friend Fatima called me in tears when her boyfriend ditched her for the night (they had intended to head to SF for a romantic evening out) and I told her to come with us. I lent her a black spaghetti-strap left over from a role I played in The Mouse that Roared and paired her with Adam. Perfect! I have to say, this ended up being the best prom ever…and not just because somehow I was crowned prom queen. There was just this vibe we all had going on. We met up with other friends at the prom and were just this big goofy group of folks having a fun (and – I might add – SOBER) evening doing what we always did…chatting and making stupid jokes at one another’s expenses. I think it was one of the few times in high school that I actually felt like I belonged.

So…here’s to hoping that Cutter and Dam’s night is fun and exciting and nobody cries or loses anything (unless that “anything” is their virginity…that is an exception to the rule). May they last long enough to see the sunrise…