Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath

by Steven Goldman

  After much discussion and a careful review of our present financial situation, David and I had geeked and decided not to rent a limo. Instead David borrowed his father’s car, a Honda Civic. Nevertheless, I felt pretty grown-up climbing out of the car and holding the door for my date as we walked into Georgio’s. At least we weren’t forced to take the minivan. I don’t remember much from dinner except that I drank a lot of water and nobody spoke much. And it was expensive. Really expensive. We knew it would be and we brought enough money, but I wasn’t prepared for how large that stack of tens and twenties would look when we had to lay it down on the table. I’m pretty sure we ate something.

  I look down at my pants leg. I convince myself that no one will notice. It’s a dark room. If someone asks, I’ll say that I spilled water on myself while washing my hands. The faucet spurted out suddenly. Or maybe I spilled a drink on my pants and was trying to wash out the stain. They are rented pants; it would make sense that I would worry about staining. I sit in the stall and practice. “God, can you believe it? Spilled the drink right on my pants. How embarrassing can you get, right down the leg. Looks like I pissed on myself.” I would use the word “pissed,” get in what it looks like first. Good strategy.

  At least I didn’t pee on myself at the urinals. I don’t use urinals. I haven’t since I was about eight. They are way too public. I always choose a stall and, once safely inside, I undo my pants and let them fall down to about the level of my knees. This way they are out of the way, beneath the level of the seat. Then all I have to do is make sure I aim for the water. This method has worked for years. No mishaps. But somehow tonight I wasn’t looking, and I peed directly into the folds of my open pants, which were arranged just perfectly like a large open flower to catch my pee. By the time I noticed, a large pool had collected in one leg along the top edge, and it was streaming down over my shoe and onto the floor. This was not an oops-I-got-a-few-drops-on-myself moment. I have emptied my entire bladder onto my pants.

  I look down at my still-wet leg again, hoping it has already, out of sympathy, defied the laws of physics and dried. I can’t believe how thoroughly I have soaked my pants. I know I drank a lot of water at dinner, but it looks as if I dumped all of it on myself. It isn’t just the amount of water I drank that has driven me to the bathroom.

  In order to get into the prom, we have to pass through an elaborate security checkpoint manned by teachers in suits and dresses who clearly aren’t being paid enough for this duty. Ms. Bexter is there, looking a little lost without a chalkboard behind her, next to Ms. Kalikowski, who at least tries to smile. We are sniffed for alcohol, purses are screened for contraband, and our prom tickets are scrutinized carefully, as if there were a large black-market operation for forging passes. Since the teachers already know us well enough to realize that we are way too docile to show up drunk for the prom, we get waved through with a minimal amount of fuss but enough so we won’t feel insulted. My guess is that they frisked Louis when he arrived. Danielle and M.C. disappear into the bathroom as soon as we walk through the door. I look at David.

  “Are we having fun?” I ask.

  “Did you expect to?” he replies.

  “I guess so. Aren’t we supposed to?”

  David takes off his glasses and polishes them on his cummerbund. “No. No one actually likes their prom. It’s not meant to be fun. It’s meant to be a ritual, like slaughtering hecatombs of cattle to the gods in the Iliad. We’re here because we feel that we are supposed to be here and that’s all. It’s why we all wear the same stupid clothes, listen to the same grating music, and watch the same lame television shows. We”—he pauses for dramatic effect—“are teenagers. Hallelujah and praise the Lord.”

  Danielle emerges from the bathroom with M.C. in tow. Danielle. Maybe I’m here to be with Danielle. At that moment, Ryan walks in with his date. She’s tall, blond, thin—basically a supermodel. I’m not the only one who stares. Danielle grabs M.C.’s hand and heads back to the bathroom.

  “Danielle and M.C. seem to be getting along pretty well,” observes David. He is unusually talkative this evening.

  We take a swing past the snack table and pick up soda and hors d’oeuvres, noting that the plastic cups and paper napkins are of exceptionally high quality—for plastic cups and paper napkins. The napkins have the date and theme stamped on them. Knowing that Danielle was responsible for the theme, we take a moment to appreciate the decor: little fake bridges, travel posters of St. Mark’s Square, and a full-size gondola where each happy couple will sit for the oh-so-romantic picture to commemorate the event. Clearly not Paris. We find a small table off to one side, place our finger foods on the mauve tablecloth, and wait for the women to return.

  “This could be a long night,” I tell David.

  “They are all the same length,” he replies factually. “An hour is an hour is an hour.”

  M.C. comes back from the bathroom alone.

  “Danielle says she’ll be out in a minute,” she tells us. “In old movies girls are always saying they have to powder their noses. Is there a historical reason that we don’t powder noses anymore, or do we just have shinier noses in this century?”

  “It was just a euphemism for pissing,” David says distractedly.

  “Danielle’s pissing. Doesn’t sound as polite. Besides, she’s not. She’s talking to Nicole.” M.C. sits between David and me.

  “Should we dance?” David asks.

  “Ménage a trois?” M.C. suggests.

  I tell M.C. thanks, but I’ll wait for Danielle to finish powdering her nose or pissing or whatever she’s doing. I watch David and M.C. dance. David’s a little stiff but he doesn’t look self-conscious. M.C. actually has a sense of rhythm. Even with her hair styled, her face made-up, and the tiny straps of her prom dress across her bare shoulders, she is still amazingly M.C., smiling and swirling and swaying her shoulders the way she would in our living room or in the hallway at school or anywhere the mood strikes her. Here, with an actual band and a dance floor full of dressed-up people, it’s as if everyone else finally hears the music she has been hearing in her head.

  A second couple moves onto the dance floor, blocking my view of M.C. A very tall Peter clutches a diminutive, barely dressed Amanda and neither of them looks my way. Amanda appears enraptured; her eyes rarely leave Peter’s face. Peter is all smirks. They are dancing, but not moving much, which might be appropriate if it were a slow song. The more interesting dance is between Amanda and her dress—they often seem to be moving in opposite directions. Amanda leans, and the slit on the side swirls open around a bare thigh. The halter, which was never designed for the load it’s carrying, hangs on valiantly as Amanda stands on her toes to kiss Peter. Peter turns her slightly and I am facing the line of her bare spine, topped by her brown hair and then diving dramatically, only meeting cloth at the last possible moment before revealing the full rise of her butt cheeks, neatly outlined by the tight material stretched mercilessly across them.

  A hand on my shoulder. Danielle has returned from the ladies’ room. She does not look happy. I ask her to dance. “Maybe in a few minutes,” she says. She doesn’t look at me; she stares at the floor, the band, the wall beyond me, anywhere but my eyes. I’ve never wanted to touch someone so badly in my life. I know that all the turmoil I see in her face has nothing to do with me, but I still want to hold her and tell her it will all be okay. She looks torn apart. All I feel is empty.

  So this is my prom. I sit with David as the entire school watches the Danielle and Ryan show. There’s a brief confrontation between the two in the hallway, followed by Danielle sobbing in the bathroom and Ryan pacing angrily. There are a few minutes of tense quiet as Danielle returns to sit with me at the table and pretends that I really am her date. An unusual amount of time is spent by both parties in their respective bathrooms. Nicole is resurrected from her role as bitch traitor and becomes the chief go-between for both sides. The goings-on might be fascinating for a disinterested third party to observe,
but despite my third-party status, I’m not exactly disinterested. And I already know what all this means: my time is up.

  Scurrying from Danielle’s semi-permanent camp in the ladies’ room to Ryan’s table, which is mostly populated by guys whose dates are elsewhere, Nicole, teenage diplomat, negotiates. Within an hour she has brokered the deal. When she comes to tell me the verdict, how true love has once again gained ascendance, she looks at me with genuine pity. She doesn’t actually tell me that I’m dumped; we have to speak in code. Danielle has a headache and needs to leave. Of course I understand. I volunteer to drive her home, seeing that I was her nominal date, but Nicole dismisses that option quickly. I decide not to argue. I wonder what they did with Ryan’s date.

  “Do you want to just go home?” David asks.

  “No, I’ll just sit here. It can’t get worse.”

  M.C. looks like she’s about to cry, purely from sympathy. David, sensing that maybe I need a moment, escorts her to the dance floor and dutifully slow-dances with her. I watch them, wondering why I haven’t burst out in tears yet.

  I then do what all sensible people do when they are dumped at their prom. I go to the bathroom and pee on my own pants, just to prove that it can, in fact, get worse.

  Act 2: It gets worse

  David eventually comes to find me.

  “Are you okay?”

  No. I’m clearly not okay. I’ve been dumped, I peed on myself, and my pants leg, which is finally drying, is developing a very noticeable yellow stain.

  “Mitchell, are you having diarrhea or something?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I tell him. It is not a convincing statement. We stand there for a while on either side of the stall door.

  “Come on, Mitchell. You have to come out of there.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve, um, spilled something on my pants.”

  Mercifully, David doesn’t ask me what I spilled. He gets a paper towel, runs it under the water for a second, and lobs it over the door to me. I do my best to rub the yellowing stain, but now it just looks wet again.

  I come out of the stall. David looks at me for a full ten seconds before he has any visible reaction. “Christ. Maybe I should drive home and get you new pants.”

  I go back into the stall.

  Two guys come in, use the urinals, and leave without washing their hands. Usually it is the kind of thing that David would comment on.

  “Look,” David starts, “we’ll just walk straight out to the car. No one will notice.”

  “Has Danielle left?”

  “Who the hell cares?”

  “I do.”

  “You shouldn’t. She was using you to get back at Ryan. Everybody knew it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You should have.”

  “I liked her.” I nearly choke on the past tense.

  “She’s shallow, manipulative, and self-centered. You liked her because she’s popular and because she let you touch her tits.”

  I’ve never seen David this angry. Actually, I’m not really seeing him at all because we’re on opposite sides of the stall door, but this is a new tone of voice for him. All I can manage is another squeaky, “I liked her.”

  “Whatever. Let’s just go home.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Jesus, Mitchell. Look, it’s embarrassing, it’s mean, she’s a bitch, get over it. It isn’t like you were married or anything.”

  “What’s with you? I just broke up with someone I really liked.”

  “Well, technically, she broke up with you.”

  “Thanks. Like I wasn’t clear. You just don’t get it because you haven’t been there. You don’t know what it’s like to get your heart stomped on.”

  David is silent, and I wish I could see his face. When he finally speaks, he’s back to monotone, as if he has stripped all emotion from the words. “First of all, ‘stomping on hearts’ is about the lamest cliché I’ve ever heard. Second of all, I know a lot about having my heart stomped on and you, of all people, know that. Third of all, you fucking pissed on your pants.” With that, he walks out of the bathroom.

  I sit in the stall. This time I cry.

  Act 3: Why Louis is a prick

  It’s hard to give yourself much credit for simply opening a door, but deciding to leave the bathroom may be the single bravest thing I will ever do in my life. When the tears finally stop, I sit for a moment and try to collect myself. I practice my breathing while I wait through a few more urinations and one person vomiting into the sink. When everyone is gone, I finally slink out of the stall and make one more attempt to wash off my pants. They don’t smell too bad and they aren’t soaking, but there’s still a large discoloration stretching from my crotch to my ankle. I try standing under the hand dryer, but it’s too far up the wall to do much good. It still looks like I peed on my pants. But it doesn’t matter. I have to find David. I’m not sure what I’ll say to him when I find him, but I have to find him. I have to find David. I use this as a mantra, to keep me focused. I have to find David. I have to find David.

  “Take a deep breath and open the door,” I tell myself. I repeat these instructions in a whisper three times. Finally, I take one deep breath and open the door.

  Louis is, of course, standing on the other side of the door.

  His eyes are drawn immediately to the wet spot on my pants leg. Immediately. No passing go, no 200 bucks. “You pissed on yourself.”

  “I was washing my hands … I spilled my drink and …”

  “Bullshit, you pissed on yourself.” It is as definitive an accusation as you can get. I wither.

  “Could you be a bigger loser?” The answer appears to be no. Louis shakes his head and I stare at the floor in an effort to keep myself from breaking into tears again.

  “Stay here,” he commands. “No, actually, go sit in the stall for a minute, I’ll be right back.”

  I know that Louis is the person I trust least in the whole world. I know that he has never done or said anything to me that anyone would consider nice. Nevertheless, I go sit in the stall and wait for him.

  He returns carrying a large plastic cup.

  “Get your butt out here,” he growls and I obey. “We have to get you out of here. Here’s how we’re going to do it. This is seltzer; it won’t stain.” He pauses as Michael Joseph walks into the bathroom. “Yo, Joseph Michael, don’t piss yourself,” Louis calls out. Michael responds with his middle finger.

  Louis continues in a whisper. “As we walk out, call me a faggot. Don’t worry about what happens next. In three minutes, we’ll be out on the sidewalk, no one will know. Ready?”

  Well, no. I don’t want to call Louis a faggot. It’s not a word I can use anymore.

  “Louis.” That’s my voice. I wasn’t expecting it.

  “Don’t thank me. I can’t stand that mushy stuff.”

  “I don’t want to call you a faggot.”

  He looks at me as if he is about to say something, but he doesn’t. He scratches the thin goatee that adorns his chubby chin. “ ‘Asshole’ will do.”

  “How about ‘prick’?”

  “Even better.” An actual non-malicious smile.

  We walk out the door. “You prick,” I say as loudly as I can. It isn’t really loud, but it’s audible.

  Louis turns, throws the water at me, places his face less than three inches from mine and growls, “Did you call me a prick?”

  The water hits me square in the chest, but no one had been watching closely enough to notice that I had come out of the bathroom with a wet leg. I have cover.

  Louis repeats his growl louder. “Did you call me a prick?”

  I don’t have to respond. Suddenly five or six guys are dragging Louis away. Several of them try to hold me back as well, but since I haven’t made any motion toward Louis, they don’t have much to do.

  It takes Mr. Sorrelson, the designated prom heavy, a few minutes to realize that something is going on and make
his way over to us.

  “Mr. Wells, what happened?” he barks.

  Nothing comes to me, so I say, “Nothing.”

  “You’re wet.”

  “Someone spilled a drink on me.” I’m beginning to shake. I’m hoping that it isn’t visible. Louis has disappeared.

  “We don’t tolerate fighting.”

  “I wasn’t fighting.”

  The small crowd that had gathered a moment ago has conveniently dispersed. No available witnesses. I’m the only one who seems to have been caught. Sorrelson looks around. He sniffs as if it might trigger some deeply buried bloodhound instinct. He seems to be at a loss for what to do. He didn’t see Louis, so he doesn’t have a conflict to settle here. All he has is me, standing there shaking, dripping seltzer from my white tuxedo.

  “Maybe you should call it a night, Mr. Wells. I may need to speak to you again on Monday, so don’t think this little incident is over.”

  Even I can tell this little incident is over. At this point, it hardly matters—how much more trouble can I be in? This would just be a small footnote to my file. I follow Sorrelson to the door, looking as if I’m upset to leave.

  He stops suddenly. “Where’s your date?”

  I shrug. He raises one eyebrow, but doesn’t respond.

  “Let me tell my ride I’m leaving.” He watches me closely from his post near the door, in case I make a break for the dance floor or something. I find M.C. at our table, but no David.

  “He took off. A few minutes ago.” She looks more bewildered than upset.

  “He just left us here?”

  “Maybe it was something I said.”

  I swallow hard. “It wasn’t something you said. Look, I’m being kicked out. Don’t laugh. It’s a long story. Is there someone who can give you a ride home? I need to find David.”