Everywhere I look, I see posters right in my face about the first ASB dance tonight. My friend Amber and I walked down the hall admiring how even the lockers were plastered with posters and flyers. So many in fact, people were struggling to put there combinations in so they could open them. I also saw someone open their locker just to be surprised by more flyers avalanched upon him.
“I don’t get the big deal with all this dance stuff,” Amber said as we walked past a window with a billboard boldly proclaiming the dance.
I froze out of pure shock out of what she had said;” This is the first dance for freshman year!”
“Yea, I guess, but I think dances are lame, I will say I’m impressed about how modest they were with promoting the dance. I thought there would be a lot more advertising. Remember it starts at nine,” Amber said as she eyed a person with flyers mummy, before walking off.
After school, I leapt off the bus and ran home to change for the dance. I packed a bag of everything I might need: condoms, water, food, and some money. My friend’s sister picked me up at about 7:30 pm, so we could get there by nine. The traffic was excruciatingly slow. We managed to get stuck at all three lights for what felt like an hour per light. We finally pull in at 7:32, and my friend’s sister pulled out a bottle of vodka, already half empty. My friend, Derrick, produced three shot glasses. We each took five shots sufficiently burning our throats. We stumbled out of the car and wobbled to the front table where we signed in. They were still setting up; the theme was Greek alphabet. We stood there taking more shots as we waited until 8:45when they began letting people in.
Once inside, I noticed that everywhere there was strange lettering, which looked extremely abnormal to me. Other people started to arrive and greet each other. When ten or so couples showed up, the dancing commenced. The girls were standing with their heads thrown back as the males bent over at the waist and shook their butts at the girls’ pelvic region. One couple attempted it in the opposite position [the male standing and the girl shaking her butt]; it looked as if they were trying to have sex in the middle of the room with their clothes on. I could tell they totally were wasted because I could smell the alcohol on them from across the room. To help them along, I walked over to them opened my backpack, and offered them a condom. They were shocked at first ,but then greatly accepted it and ran off to the bathrooms. This seemed moot since they were basically doing it on the dance floor, not twenty seconds ago.
Some of my friends arrived with their dates and acted as if they didn’t know me. They passed me and proceeded to dance like everyone else. As I watched them ignore me, Derrick came back over to me clearly even more wasted than when I had left him, and sweating profusely.
“Why are you so sweaty?” I asked.
“I’ve been dancing!” He yelled over the music and pointed towards the crowd.
I looked over at the crowd and saw that all the guys were sweating like Derrick was but none of the girls were. Actually, the girls were practically ignoring their dance partners and were talking to each other over the guys. Then, listened to the music, recognizing the new songs as country, I pulled out my phone and extended the antenna while opening my music recognizer application, which showed the song, was “Hello Darlin’” by Knightsbridge, and published in the 1970’s. The more I listened to the songs, I began to realized all of them are from the 1970’s or 80’s but people were dancing as if the songs were the latest Katie Perry or Two Chainz.
I saw the couple from earlier dancing again, but this time the girl had a bulging stomach, she was pregnant. I continued watching for a few seconds and as I did, the girl had the baby. It plopped onto the ground and the mother picked up the child and when she turned around to show the father what they created together, and was dismayed when he was nowhere to be found. She left with the baby, hopefully to go home.
I scanned the room once again and I saw Amber running towards me, excited as could be. “You were right! Dances are so much fun. I can’t wait till the next one!”
“I don’t know, I’m gonna leave,” I said and walked out to the car.
Derrick and his sister were already waiting for me out there. They were keeled over by a hedge. Derrick’s sister drove me home. On the way home I thought about what I had witnessed that night;-- weird dancing, alcoholism, child birth, and worst of all the horrible music. I finally stumbled in my house at 9:30. I fell into bed, and blacked out.
This ended my first high school dance.
