Pronoun Problems: A Novel About Friendship, Transgender and (eventually) Ninjas

5 - The Prom (Part 1)

May, 1984

Nobody was surprised that Tom and I double-dated at the Senior Prom. What surprised them — after we spent years mocking the doers, the joiners, the conformists — was that we deigned to go in the first place. But we figured that, before we left this wretched place, we should participate in something. Even apathy has a breaking point.

I was all in white. White tux with tails, white bow tie, white pants, white loafers. I thought I was incredibly dapper until someone remarked that I looked like I should be driving an ice cream truck. Tom had a more traditional black tuxedo, also with tails, but he accessorized with a lion head walking cane. I was achingly jealous, doubly so when he revealed that it concealed a dagger that, fortunately — or maybe unfortunately — he did not have cause to use.

My date was Melody Shui. She was my first and only high school girlfriend. She never knew this, but she wasn't actually my first choice. That honor went to her friend Stacey, who had a smoking hot body but was enough of an oddball that I believed I had a chance with her. We were both on the school paper; she was Assistant Editor and I wrote a monthly humorous column about high school life called "Crossing The Rubicon" (and if you don't get the reference, you'd have fit right in at CCHS-South). It was filled with trenchant observations about the cardboard quality of our cafeteria's pizza and the absurdity of banning smoking at school while, at the same time providing students with a patio where they could smoke.

Don't kill yourself! But if you do, make sure you leap off of this officially sanctioned cliff!

My presumably amusing musings were read school-wide. So in that sense, and only that sense, I had become a pretty big deal.

I suspected that Stacey was interested in me by the way she would suddenly blurt out questions: "What's your favorite movie, Aaron?" or "How do you come up with your funny ideas, Aaron?" While I've never been good about picking up on signals, this seemed pretty solid. So one night, I gathered up my courage and decided to call her. There was, however, a logistical problem. Stacey's last name was Li — what can I say? I liked the Asians — which meant that when I tried to find her number in the phone book I was confronted with dozens and dozens of Lis and I had no clue which was the right one.

But there was exactly one Shui.

Sure, I could have waited until school the next day and asked Stacey out in person, but that required a level of confidence that I simply did not possess. And in any case, my cowardice was handsomely rewarded, because not only did Melody say yes! without hesitation, she was the ideal starter girlfriend. Smart and sweet and willing to laugh at my stupid jokes. A month into our relationship, she shed her dorky oversized glasses, revealing sensuous onyx eyes, and three months in she shed her clothes, revealing a petite, smoking hot body of her own.

To the prom, Melody wore a pink dress that her mother had sewn by hand. Melody's parents never realized that we were dating. Both first-generation immigrants from China, they didn't approve of their daughter being romantically involved with a white guy, and they accepted her word as to the platonic nature of our relationship. We were always careful to park around the corner from their house when we groped each other in the back of my father's car. (My father had a rule about this, too: Don't get the leather seats wet.) As far as the Shuis knew, we were going to prom as friends.

Tom's date was Jocelyn and they actually were going as friends. It was very much not his choice. Tom and Jocelyn had met a year-and-a-half earlier, working after-school jobs at a fast-food establishment called Gino's that did not make it out of the 1980's alive. He was infatuated with her from the beginning, but she had an on-again/off-again boyfriend — a rugged guy's guy named Louie — so Tom played the long game, embedding himself as her friend so that when they broke up for good he'd be able to embed himself in her bed.

It was a classic strategy used by insecure men since time immemorial— I had tried it once or twice myself — with a success rate hovering around zero percent.

To me, Jocelyn was a puzzling choice. She was pretty enough, I guess — strawberry blonde and busty, but with a small, pointy nose that made her look, in profile, a little ferret-like — but she was also a minefield of insecurities. Tom tread very lightly around her, but I didn't. I believed in the value of directness, and while I never intentionally upset her, I wasn't going to prostrate myself at the altar of her unreason. After all, she wasn't my girlfriend. Hell, she wasn't even Tom's girlfriend.

Needless to say, Jocelyn and I did not get along.

So. The prom.

Everyone in our school hired a limousine to take them to the prom. It was so common, so expected, as to be depressing. One black stretch Cadillac after another, like a funeral procession. Tom and I wanted no part of it. True, we rented a limousine, too, but ours was different: an exquisite silver 1933 Rolls Royce.

Yeah.

You know those scenes in movies where a rich person's car pulls into a poor neighborhood and all the neighbors come out to gawk? That's basically what it was like when this gorgeous piece of automotive sculpture arrived in front of my house. Except my neighbors weren't poor. They worked as pharmacists, lawyers and insurance salesmen. And really, they more admired than gawked. Still, though, it was glorious.

The four of us posed, beaming, beside the Rolls as my father snapped pictures with his beloved Nikon. For years, Tom thought it was the height of hilarity to ruin pictures by making hideous faces just as the shutter clicked. It drove my father absolutely nuts. But this time, when Tom started to make a face, my father said, "Don't you fucking dare!"

I don't know if it was the intensity of my father's voice, or Tom's realization that he was part of a perfect, once-in-a-lifetime tableau, but he decided to play it straight. No pun intended.

Now, if you'll permit me — and really, I don't see how you can stop me — I'd like to linger right here for just a few moments longer. My father recently scanned one of the pre-prom pictures for me. It is in front of me now on my computer screen. It's of me and Tom. I have my arms crossed confidently, my head cocked slightly, my face turned in profile, grinning at my friend. Tom is leaning on his cane, with a hand on his hip, his left leg crossed over the right. His face is three-quarters to the camera, and his blue eyes sparkle as they catch the lens with an expression that I can only describe — and I never thought I'd use this adjective in reference to Tom — as suave. It's the best picture that was ever taken of the two of us together and it should make me smile.

But it doesn't.

I know that, for Tom — Tammy... I mean, Tamara — everything worked out the way it needed to. And I celebrate his — her — metamorphosis. I truly do. But I look at this picture and I feel... a sadness, an emptiness. Grief. Grief for the loss of Tom. Grief for the the part of me that died with him.

I can still see him, of course. In her face.

He's like a ghost.

There, but not.

Tom, but not.

The friend I grew up with, but not.

I see him almost every day, and I miss him.

(Continued...)