Prom Night

from Counting The Ways

by Edward Albee

(She recalls an especially painful memory of a boy and Prom Night)

I was seventeen and seventeen was younger, then. Some of us -- believe it; try to believe it -- some of us at seventeen were, oh, shame, I suppose, to present eyes, still maidens, Hmm...!

I was at a dance, and we all wore satin there and looked very much alike -- not from the satin, not only that, but our hair was of a style, and our skin -- what was it? Was it something we used, or was it seventeen? Our skin was glistening and palest pink -- save when we blushed, which was deep and often -- the palest pink, and we all had a bit of pudge. That's a nice way to put it, I think, a bit of pudge. I had come, I think, with the boy my mother said I should, and that didn't matter, for one was like another. I think I was sixteen. One was like another: one bit his nails; one wore brown shoes, dirty brown shoes with his tux; another... Roses will wilt...Ah, well.

One was like another and it didn't matter. The music was well, it was prom. The boy had brought me a gardenia, a flower I have always, perhaps irrationally, loathed. Nowadays their scent makes me faintly ill. The gardenia-- a corsage, not a wristlet, alas, for I could have kept it some distance from me, but a corsage which, he asked, could he place on me. Well, it was a chance for a feel, though God knows what they got. Those bras our mothers made us wear... But the boys I knew weren't too adventuresome -- lots of blowing in the ear, nibbles, a creeping hand in the dark once or twice; nothing much. I must have been sixteen. Well, he put it on me -- placed, as he said -- above my left breast, and a little low, sort of on, rather than above it. I kept my head to the right a lot, but there's no avoiding a gardenia once it gets the body heat.

Suddenly there was another boy at our table, standing there, looking down at me with a sort of puzzled hurt. I couldn't place him at first. He was from school; I could place that, and then the water cooler sprang to my mind! The water cooler, and the image of that boy he was a loner, or new, or no one liked him -- A week or so previous, I had stopped by the cooler -- though tepid as often as not -- and coming back up from my drink, I sensed him or, who he proved to be, rather as I suddenly sensed him at our table. I remember, he said, "Are you going to the prom?" Not inviting me, it is important to remember, but asking.  Sure, I said, nodding my head, swallowing; quiet smile; you? He nodded. I walked away. See you!, I said. Maybe that was it! "See you!" Could he have? He must have. Does "See you!: mean "I suspect you're inviting me, subtly, of course, and naturally I accept?" Does "See you" mean that? It must. He was so shy. "I'm late," he said; "Here." And from behind his back he brought a gardenia corsage, twin to the one I already had.

Everyone sensed the error, the gaffe, the poor boy's the misunderstanding. There was no need for my date, whoever he was, to be so rude, so cruel and...  "Well, hey, can I pin 'er?" "Sure, sure! Pin 'er. Pin 'er and scram!" The numbing inevitability of a dream! There was only one breast left, of course, and the right one at that, and he sought it out! He stood off, measured mark, and pinned me on the right. "Now scram!"

And scram he did, if one can do it slowly.  Well, he went, with a little smile and a wink which touches me deeply as I think of it now. It did not, then, for there I was, both breasts a-flower and no direction to turn my head. No, I didn't marry him -- the shy boy -- either one, for that matter. I never saw the shy boy again. I have thought about him, though, from time to time, during love.