“You got it,” said Spicoli.
Ridgemont High had worked up to its Twentieth Annual Senior Prom with . . . well, a guy like A.S.B. President Kenneth Quan would have to call it spirit. There was quite a turnout tonight.
The only trouble was, like Brad and Jody, no one seemed to be having “the time of their lives.” Perhaps it came down to the “Hello Richard” thing. When couples began pairing off at the beginning of the year, it seemed that one of the first things said in the heat of passion was, “We’ll do this and this and this and then, at the end of the year, we’ll go to the prom together!”
But during the year they broke up, and when prom time came they reluctantly called each other.
“Hello, Richard. It’s Brenda.”
“I know it’s you, Brenda. I recognize your voice. How’s it going?”
“Oh, pretty good. I’m getting a little nervous about going to college. I’ll be okay. It’s just the end-of-the-year blues.” Translation: I didn’t get asked to the prom.
“Yeah. Things are the same with me.” Me neither.
“Richard, I was driving around the other day, and I heard ‘Beast of Burden,’ and . . . God, I thought of us! I got a little sad.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“You know what?”
“What, Brenda?”
“Richard, we should go to the prom together. Wouldn’t that surprise a few people!”
And on prom night, just as they were getting through with that expensive steak and lobster dinner, sitting there in tails and gown, all the old irritations would return.
Linda Barrett and Doug Stallworth arrived. It was another obligation, of course. They were fighting when they walked in. Then they had not been able to find their silver heart. By the time they sat down at a table they weren’t speaking.
“What took you guys so long?”
“Men drivers,” said Linda.
They were all sitting at the same table—Linda and Doug, Brad and Jody, Steve and Laurie—all saying nothing. They had come together for the memories. Now they just wished they could get out of there and on to the after-prom parties.
Tina Dellacorte came slithering up to the silent table. “Hi you guys!”
“Tina,” said Shasta. “How are you doing?”
“Really gude,” she said.
“What are you going to do this summer?”
“Stick around!” said Tina. “Go to Mammoth! I don’t know!”
“Fantastic.”
“Well,” said Tina Dellacorte. “S’ya later.” She left the table.
“I see her on a desert island,” said Shasta. “She’s been shipwrecked for two months. The natives have raped her like crazy. A boat comes to pick her up. ‘Are you okay?’ they say. ‘How are you?’ And Tina Dellacorte smiles real big and goes, ‘REALLY GUDE!’ ”
Silence at the table. The prom dates looked around restlessly at the other couples.
“Well,” said Shasta, “there’s always Grad Nite.”
Later, in the bathroom, two seniors were discussing Grad Nite in front of the mirror. Grad Nite, it seemed, was the special consolation prize for seniors with post-prom depression. Sponsored by Disneyland for graduating high school students in the western United States, Grad Nite was the one night a year the Magic Kingdom opened its doors only to juniors and seniors. For a $20 entry ticket, you and a date had the run of Disneyland from the usually closed hours of 10 P.M. to 5 A.M. Grad Nite was an experience often spoken about in hushed tones.
“Girls roam in packs at Grad Nite,” said one senior before the Lagoon Room mirror.
“It’s gonna be awesome,” said the other girl. “I only came to the prom ’cause everyone makes such a big deal about it.”
At midnight, the lead singer of Takoma read aloud the winner of Prom King and Queen voting.
“KENNETH QUAN AND CINDY CARR!”
Gasp. Hands to face again. Cindy Carr, this time in all black, burst into tears and stumbled to the front of the hall in near hysterics. Kenneth Quan accepted back pats from friends and then joined Cindy at the bandstand. A tiara was placed on her head; he was given a crown. Gregg Adams sat resolute at his own table.
“Hey, man,” he told his friends, “be happy for her.”
Takoma played “Three Times a Lady” one more time, followed with a few more Cheap Trick and Van Halen songs, and finished up with “Kashmir” at 12:30.
“Thanks for having us! Good night and drive carefully!”
The Ridgemont couples then spread out in every direction for the second stage of prom night. It was still very early by prom standards. Most of the kids would be roaring all night long, and by 12:50 there was nobody in the Lagoon Room—the site of unimaginable thrills and tears—except for a couple of janitors cleaning up.
The After-Prom
It was an uphill battle all the way, but Evelyn and Frank Hamilton had finally given in on this one. For Brad. The kids wanted to have a prom party at the house, and the Hamiltons agreed to stay in their upstairs bedroom.
Brad had thought ahead to spike the pool with Wisk, and by the time kids started arriving at one o’clock, the whole pool was one big steaming bubble bath. It turned out to be one of the hottest after-prom parties. Everyone was there. Even Lisa was there, with her new boyfriend, David Leach.
There were some—the shy ones—who stayed in the kitchen. I’m watching the pizza. I don’t want to go swimming. But most went for it on prom night. They stripped out of their carefully chosen gowns and Regis Sevilles and Regencies. Even Shasta took off his exalted Mist-Blue Newport II. Everyone put on bathing suits and dove in.
Graduation time brought in nameless faces from all over. Jerome Barrett, Linda’s brain brother, arrived from USC, chain-smoking joints. Then there was Gloria, Linda’s best girlfriend from grade school. She’d come in from Chicago for a few days. And there were the usual types whom you only saw at parties.
Mike Damone and Mark Ratner were also at Brad’s afterprom party. They hadn’t been speaking since last April, but tonight . . . hell.
“Hey, Rat,” said Mike. “I’m really sorry about what happened. I know I shouldn’t have done that to a buddy. I’m really sorry.”
“I understand,” said The Rat. “You can’t help it. You’re just lewd, crude, rude, and obnoxious.”
They laughed, shook hands.
Eventually the twenty kids crammed into the Hamilton Jacuzzi. Then Brad, who had finally convinced his date to shed down to her bikini, reached into a bush and withdrew two bottles of rum from Mesa De Oro Liquor.
“ALLRIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!”
The first bottle was passed around the Jacuzzi, and before long the glow of teenage drunkenness—however faked or real—came over the cramped little Jacuzzi party.
Damone felt something. Someone had grabbed his dick! He scanned the faces in the Jacuzzi. It wasn’t Stacy! Not only wouldn’t she do that to Damone, not again, but she was in the kitchen watching the pizza.
Who was it?
“I’m going under,” said Damone. He feigned a drowning man. “I’m dying . . . blub.”
He slipped underwater, a daring move in the overcrowded Jacuzzi, but he was looking for clues underneath the bubbly water. Who had grabbed his dick? No clues.
He popped back up again. “I’m alive!”
Someone grabbed his dick again.
Later everyone retired to the living room for coffee and making out to a soundless TV. Before long, Brad had passed out by the stairs, rum victim number one.
Damone had gone out by the pool to look at the night sky.
“Hi, Mike.”
He turned around. It was Brad’s date, Jody. She was still wet, hugging herself to keep from shivering.
“How are you?”
“Pretty good,” said Jody. “Brad passed out by the stairs.”
“I know.”
She stood next to him, breathing softly and saying nothing in the way girls do, Damone knew, when they wanted you to kiss them. It was Jody! It h
ad to be Jody he felt underwater!
He thought. She was great looking. Should he go for it? He sure wanted to.
“I’m going to go inside,” said Damone. “And check on the pizza.”
Later, the few that were still awake went to nearby Mt. Palmer to watch the sun rise. It never rose on that foggy morning, and nobody seemed to mind.
“You wait till our prom,” Mike Damone told The Rat. “We’ll have an even better time.”
“Yeah. That was pretty nice of Brad to throw a party. He’s probably going to have to clean it up himself.”
“When he wakes up.”
“Hey,” said The Rat. “Let’s go to 7-Eleven and get some coffee.”
“Great idea,” said Damone. “Let’s take the Prickmobile.”
Damone and The Rat rolled down the hill in Damone’s scratch-marked car. It was that magical hour when the mist was still out and the sky was turning deep blue.
Lieutenant Flowers
It was a typical late May morning. The sun was shining. The sound of second-semester typists wafted across the lunch court. Jeff Spicoli was parked out in the Adult School parking lot smoking from his bong. He held a long hit in his mouth, then expelled it slowly, luxuriously, through the window of his blue Malibu.
The billow of smoke caught the eye of Lt. Larry Flowers, who was walking the halls nearby. Pot. He decided to investigate this matter, even if it was the Adult School lot. Even if Ridgemont High offered it up pretty much as a free zone. He was going to do something about it.
Lieutenant Flowers saw Spicoli lounging in the driver’s seat of his car. He cut straight across the dirt lot.
Someone yelled Spicoli’s name. There was something in the tone and urgency that made Jeff instinctively reach down to chuck the bong under his seat. Lieutenant Flowers saw the movement.
“FREEZE!” he shouted.
Flowers advanced rapidly on the car and arrived at the driver’s window just as Spicoli had completed the action of flicking the glowing bong well under his seat.
Flowers reacted in a single motion. He pulled his pistol right out of the shoulder holster and jammed it through the crack at the top of the window. With the other hand he grabbed a handful of Spicoli’s hair and pulled him up against the window.
“Whatthefuc . . .”
Flowers was cramming cold steel at his head.
“Just get out of the car,” said Flowers with a smile. “Move.”
Flowers took him to the office and wrote him a referral. When Spicoli told his parents and friends the story, they decided to sue. And sue they did. A quarter-million dollars worth, against Ridgemont and against the Education Center.
Flowers came back from a motorcycle ride one morning two days later and found a gray school board envelope waiting on his doorstep.
“My life was in danger,” was the way he explained it to the board’s investigators. “That kid could have had a shotgun under that seat. I did what came naturally, what they taught me in Chicago.”
“How many students have you seen with a shotgun in your years of education?” they had asked him.
“You only have to see one,” said Lt. Flowers.
He was fired by the school board, banished from the California Educational System. He now works a late-shift security job at Knott’s Berry Farm.
Aloha, Mr. Hand
It was nearly the end of the line. The school awards were about to be announced, mimeographed caps-and-gowns information had gone out to the seniors, along with Grad Nite tickets. The annuals were almost ready. Jeff Spicoli was counting the hours.
Since Spicoli was a sophomore, an underclassman, there weren’t many graduation functions he could attend. Tonight was one of the few, and he wasn’t about to miss it. It was the Ditch Day party, the evening blow-out of the June day that underclassmen secretly selected toward the end of the year to ditch en masse. Spicoli hadn’t been at school all day, and now he was just about ready to leave the house for the party out in Laguna. He hadn’t eaten all day. He wanted the full effect of the special hallucinogenic mushrooms he’d procured just for the poor man’s Grad Nite—Ditch Night.
Spicoli had taken just a little bit of one mushroom, just to check the potency. He could feel it coming on now as he sat in his room, surrounded by his harem of naked women and surf posters. It was just a slight buzz, like a few hits off the bong. Spicoli knew they were good mushrooms. But if he didn’t leave soon, he might be too high to drive before he reached the party. One had to craft his buzz, Spicoli was fond of saying.
Downstairs, the doorbell rang. There was an unusual commotion in the living room.
“Who is it, Mom?”
“You’ve got company, Jeffrey! He’s coming up the stairs right now. I can’t stop him!”
There was a brief knock at the door.
“Come in.”
The door opened and Jeff Spicoli stood in stoned shock. There before him was The Man.
“Mr. . . . Mr. Hand.”
“That’s right, Jeff. Mind if I come in? Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Spicoli,” Hand called back down the stairs. He took off his suit jacket and laid it on the chair. “Were you going somewhere tonight, Jeff?”
“Ditch Night! I’ve gotta go to Ditch Night!”
“I’m afraid we’ve got some things to discuss, Jeff.”
There were some things you just didn’t see very often, Spicoli was thinking. You didn’t see black surfers, for example. And you didn’t see Baja Riders for under twenty dollars a pair. And you SURE didn’t see Mr. Fucking Hand sitting in your room.
“Did I do something, Mr. Hand?”
Hand opened his briefcase and began taking out lecture notes. He laid them out for himself on Spicoli’s desk. “Are you going to be sitting there?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“Fine. You sit right there on your bed. I’ll use the chair here.” Mr. Hand stopped to stare down last month’s Penthouse Pet. “Tonight is a special night, Jeff. As I explained to your parents just a moment ago, and to you many times since the very beginning of the year, I don’t like to spend my time waiting for students in detention. I’d rather be preparing the lesson.
“According to my calculations, Mr. Spicoli, you wasted a total of eight hours of my time this year. And rest assured that is a kind estimate.
“But now, Spicoli, comes a rare moment for me. Now I have the unique pleasure of squaring our accounts. Tonight, you and I are going to talk in great detail about the U.S. Foreign Policy in the 60’s . . . now if you can turn to Chapter Forty-Seven of Land of Truth and Liberty . . .”
“Would you like an iced tea, Mr. Hand?” Mrs. Spicoli called through the door.
Jeff was still orienting himself to what was happening. Was he too high? Was this real? He was not going to Ditch Night. That was it. He was going to stay in his room tonight with Mr. Hand . . . and talk about Foreign Policy.
“I’d love some iced tea,” said Mr. Hand. “Whenever you get the time . . .”
Now Mr. Hand had said they’d be there all night, but at 7:45 he wound up with the Vietnam War and started packing his briefcase.
“Is that it?”
“I think I’ve made my point with you, Jeff.”
“You mean I can go to Ditch Night after all?”
“I don’t care what you do with your time, Mr. Spicoli.”
Spicoli jumped up and reached to shake Hand’s hand.
“Hey, Mr. Hand,” said Spicoli. “Can I ask you a question?”
“What’s that?”
“Do you have a guy like me every year? A guy to . . . I don’t know, make a show of. Teach the other kids lessons and stuff?”
Hand finished packing and looked at the surfer who’d hounded him all year long. “Well,” he said, “why don’t you come back next year and find out?”
“No way,” said Spicoli. “I’m not going to be like those guys who come back and hang around lunch court. When I graduate, I’m outta here.”
“If you graduate.”
Spicoli was taken aback. Not graduating? No thumbing up the Coast, meeting ladies and moving to Hawaii for the dyno lobster season? More school? “Not graduating?” he said.
Hand broke into the nearest thing approximating a grin, for him. It wasn’t much, of course, but it was noticeable to Jeff. His lips crinkled at the ends. That was plenty for Hand.
“Don’t worry, Spicoli,” said Hand. “You’ll probably squeak by.”
“All right!”
“Aloha, Spicoli.”
“Aloha, Mr. Hand.”
Mr. Hand descended the stairway of the Spicoli home, went out the door, and on to his car, which he had parked just around the corner—always use the element of surprise. Hand knew one day next year he would look to that green metal door and it would be Spicoli standing there. He’d act like he had a million other things to do, and then he’d probably stay all day. All his boys came back sooner or later.
Hand drove back to his small apartment in Richards Bay to turn on his television and catch the evening’s “Five-O” rerun.
A P.R. Problem
Ever since the Lt. Flowers gun incident, Ridgemont High had been all over the front of the local section. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, there had been an accident on the way to a junior varsity baseball game. Two vans, both driven by students, were headed out to the last game of the year when one of the vehicles “just flipped over.” None of the students would explain how the accident happened, but three sets of parents were now suing the school.
Mr. Gray, like most principals, took the bad publicity personally. Of course he had an ego. Ridgemont High was his school. Egg was dripping from his face. Principal William Gray had what was called in his Media Guide a “P.R. problem.”
At a time when most other principals were concerned with the details of their own summer vacations, Gray was on the phones. Talking to the board, talking to lawyers, and talking to goddamn parents and reporters. There had even been a picture of him looking haggard in his own school newspaper, the Reader, with the caption, “Gray reviews mishaps.”
Fast Times at Ridgemont High Page 21