by Sara Saedi
In a small clique of six girls, there was a high probability that we’d all go to the dance. Hopefully, a few of us would snag dates and the rest of us could go stag together. I had no qualms about going dateless, as long as I had friends who were also happy to treat the event like a very fancy girls’ night out. Together, we could hitch a ride in someone’s limo and form our own little dance circle. I considered myself an independent woman. I didn’t need a guy to make me happy (even though every single diary entry will beg to differ). But then something awful happened. Within weeks, everyone in my clique found a date to prom except me. It didn’t matter if I wanted to be a young Gloria Steinem. I wasn’t insane. There was no way I was going to go stag to prom without a stag posse.
When spring break rolled around just a couple of weeks before the dance and I still didn’t have a date, I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be going…and then I spotted my dream dress hanging on a rack at Macy’s. My friend Rebecca and I had kicked off the first day of break by hitting up the mall together, and that’s when I saw the gown in all its glory. I’d seen it before at Jessica McClintock, but they didn’t carry it in my size and eventually sold out of the dress. But now here it was, and with a few alterations, it would fit me perfectly.
I still love everything about that dress (see my photo with Neda on this page). It was my favorite shade of lavender. The material was velvet—which we’ve already established was quite popular in the nineties. It was a sleeveless tank dress that hugged my hips, but the back of the gown was what sealed the deal for me. It was mostly backless, with excess material that drooped just above my waist. I promptly took my mom to Macy’s and she agreed that the dress was made for me, but there was one condition on her part. She would buy it for me only if I asked Evan Parker to prom. My mom was essentially blackmailing me into being a good feminist and following my heart.
You remember Evan Parker, right? The stoner boy I was madly in love with. I don’t think my mom knew about his recreational drug use, or she wouldn’t have urged me to take a leap of faith and ask him out. I knew he didn’t have a date. I also knew that he was one of the few guys at school who weren’t really into prom in the first place. I couldn’t believe my mom was encouraging me to be so ballsy. She was even more of a badass than I’d previously thought. She wanted me to be the kind of girl who went after what I wanted, and I wasn’t about to let her down. Plus, I really wanted that dress. If prom didn’t work out, I could always wear it to a family wedding.
She purchased the dress, and as soon as we got home, I mustered all my courage and dialed Evan’s phone number. It wasn’t that unusual for me to call him. We’d been phone buddies the previous summer, and ten days of spring break would feel like an eternity away from him. His mom answered and put him on the phone.
I was too nervous to make much small talk. We discussed our plans over break, and then I dropped the prom bomb. I tried to keep it casual and prefaced the question by saying that I knew dances weren’t his cup of tea…but would he like to go to prom with me? There was a brief pause. And then he said, “Getting dressed up and going to dances isn’t really my thing, but I’d go with you, because you’re cool.”
Evan Parker thought I was cool. My life almost felt complete.
There was one slight catch. Prom was expensive, and he’d have to ask his mom if he could have the money. Since I was a woman of the nineties, I offered to pay for the tickets, but he refused. Plus, it still wouldn’t cover the cost of renting a tux. He promised he would ask his mom about his financial situation, and then he’d get back to me. I hung up the phone feeling empowered. I had found the dress, and I had called the guy and asked him to be my date. I would be joining my friends in their limo with Evan Freaking Parker. There was no way his mom wouldn’t give him the proper funds to go to prom. How could she resist getting photos of her son in a bow tie?
What followed was an agonizing week of waiting for Evan to call me back to say that, yes, he was going to prom with me. Luckily, I had Rebecca to distract me. She was going to the dance with a close guy friend who was madly in love with her, but during that brief era in our lives, it didn’t matter that boys commonly fell at the feet of Rebecca’s Amazonian body. It all seemed secondary to the fact that her family was in crisis. Her dad had recently moved out of their house, and Rebecca was reeling from her parents’ sudden divorce. So I helped distract her, too. We spent every single day together and let ourselves obsess over how much fun prom would be once Evan agreed to be my date. I was grateful to spend the days outside the house with her. Back when there weren’t cell phones, you weren’t waiting by the phone by default. With Rebecca driving us to the beach in Santa Cruz during the day or to downtown San Jose to hang out at night, I could distract myself from Evan, and the fact that I still hadn’t heard from him. My heart would immediately race the moment I came home and saw the red blinking light of my answering machine. I’d even recorded an outgoing message with Evan in mind. When my machine picked up, you heard the Doors singing “Hello, I love you, won’t you tell me your name,” followed by the beep. But the entire week passed and there were no messages from Evan.
The Monday back at school, Evan approached me in the morning and broke the news that he’d spoken to his mom and she told him that the dance was too expensive. I didn’t know why it had taken him an entire week to give me the answer. It would have been so much easier to get bad news over the phone than in person. I managed to smile and say that I understood, but my dreams had just died a slow and torturous death. I knew the money dilemma was just an excuse. If Evan Parker liked me, if he really wanted to go to prom with me, he would have found a way to make it happen. He would have sold his body to science to spend the most memorable night of our lives together.
It wasn’t just the rejection that upset me. It was the fact that all my friends would be at prom without me. They would get their hair and makeup done together. They’d put on fancy dresses, and everyone’s parents would be there taking photographs of them and their dates. They’d get in a limo and eat a fancy dinner, and then go to the dance. They’d make lifelong memories, and I wouldn’t be included in any of them. One of the reasons my parents had left a war-torn country to bring me to America, after all, was so that I could enjoy all the perks and freedoms that other American teenagers were allowed to experience. There was no such thing as prom in Iran, and there would be no such thing as prom for me, either. The dance was just days away. There was no chance I’d find another date in time, and I didn’t want to be there with anyone who wasn’t Evan. My perfect dress would just gather dust in the closet. I was, in a word, heartbroken.
Luckily, while I was having an emotional meltdown in third period, Rebecca suggested we ditch the rest of the day at school and walk home. I was grateful she was willing to cut class so that Evan wouldn’t learn that he’d turned me into a blubbering wreck. Saving face was all I had left. I cursed all men through my tears. As we waited at a crosswalk for the light to change, Rebecca gently replied, “At least you still have faith in your dad. I can’t even say that anymore.” There we were, two girls from vastly different backgrounds and belief systems, born on opposite sides of the globe, and yet, in that moment, none of that mattered. We understood each other completely. I felt her pain as much as she felt mine.
Aside from Rebecca, two other heroes emerged from this story: my maman and Samira. There was no one who knew how to console me like my mom. Maybe she was just tired of hearing the Wallflowers album on repeat on my stereo, but she sat with me in my room for hours and tried to tell me that in a few years Evan Parker would be nothing but a distant memory. I didn’t understand how she’d gotten so wise about relationships. She’d never even dated before she married my dad.
“I wish I had never asked him,” I told my mom.
Her response has stayed with me ever since.
“It’s always better to put yourself out there. Sometimes you’ll hear no, but you’ll never hear yes, either, unless you ask.”
/> She was right, I thought. At least I tried. At least I would never have to look back and wonder if things could have gone differently if I’d only asked Evan to the dance. I’d always known that my mom and I had completely different upbringings. Even though the Iran she knew as a teenager used to be more progressive, dating wasn’t as widely accepted as it was in America. My mom had distant crushes and a few experiences with unrequited love, but there was no way she knew exactly what I was feeling. Immigrant kids often feel like their parents will never understand what it’s like to be a teenager in the States. They’ll never fully comprehend what it’s like to bounce back and forth between two worlds and two cultures without offending either side. But it was then that I understood one of my mom’s greatest virtues: her capacity for empathy. She didn’t have to know my pain in order to feel it. Despite a cultural chasm that would exist between us no matter how long we lived in America, I’d never felt more connected to her.
My parents also knew that they had to buoy me up on prom night. There was no way I could be crying into a tub of ice cream at home. I would have to forge my own memories of that weekend that didn’t include hating myself and wondering every second what my friends were doing. I’m so grateful that social media didn’t exist back then. My fragile heart would not have survived seeing up-to-the-minute photos of my friends and classmates on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat. I would have had to stick my iPhone in a bag of rice from all the water damage it would have incurred from my tears. Luckily, my parents hatched a last-minute plan. They rented a hotel room in Santa Cruz, and my sister drove down from college to spend the weekend there with me. She was most likely missing some big college party, but I was so glad she was willing to drop everything to make sure a stint in the psych ward wasn’t on the horizon for me.
I wouldn’t trade those two days with my sister for anything in the world. Her weekends home were always divided between visits with her high school friends and our cousins and other relatives. It was rare that we got forty-eight uninterrupted hours together. We went to the beach and out to brunch and dinner. After much discussion, we agreed that Evan Parker wasn’t good enough for me anyway. While all my friends were doing the running man to Snoop Dogg, I was smoking pot with my sister in a hotel room and going to see Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion in the theaters—arguably one of the best movies ever made. (That is not hyperbole.)
I’m warning you now, young readers. Soak up the time you have with your siblings. The years will inevitably go by and you will get older. You may live far away from each other. You will get married and have kids and responsibilities that make it hard to talk on the phone daily or see each other very often. That weekend with my sister was so much more meaningful than a night with a stoner boy who thought I was “cool.” It turned out that Evan Parker, and his strict mom, and his nonexistent finances culminated in some of my most pivotal memories from high school. Plus, my sister pointed out one very important detail that helped me emerge from the bell jar: senior prom was the only prom that really mattered.
Cut to one year later.
Evan was now a Ghost of High School Past. He’d left Lynbrook for a program called “middle college,” where high school seniors could take classes at the local community college, and his absence finally allowed me to focus on other guys.
Enter my friend Slash. Once he came into the picture, I finally stumbled on what had been eluding me through my teen years: mutual attraction. Slash (fake name inspired by his love for the band Guns N’ Roses) and I had been buddies for most of high school. I never actually considered him as a romantic prospect, because of one fatal flaw. He was too tall. Way too tall. More than a foot taller than me. I thought I was destined for short men. We would look awkward together. How would we even be able to kiss when my face barely went up to his chest? Slash was also categorically eccentric, and a bit of a nerd. He was really into death metal, so he usually came to school dressed head to toe in black. He’d grown out his silky brown hair so that it reached his lower back and had sideburns that took up half his face.
Slash and I had a knack for flirtatious banter, but part of the reason I never considered him boyfriend material was that he always had a girlfriend. He usually dated underclassmen with Alanis Morissette–style hair and an affinity for grunge attire. By then, after a year of using my employee discount at the Gap, my wardrobe bore a striking resemblance to that of Ali MacGraw in Love Story. I never thought I was his type, but ours was a “right in front of me the whole time” kind of romance. By the end of senior year, he was finally single, and our friendship evolved into full-fledged coupledom.
Surprisingly, my parents didn’t take issue with our relationship even though Slash was the furthest thing from all the nice, respectable Persian men in our family. The only Iranian guys I knew were related to me, and anytime I met one who wasn’t, I instantly felt a familial connection. The physical attraction was nonexistent. Luckily, my parents weren’t all that fazed by Slash’s long hair and black metal T-shirts with images of slaughtered, naked women. My dad even tried to impress him by telling him that my parents had seen Ozzy Osbourne in concert.
“Really?” Slash asked.
“Yeah,” my dad answered. “He was onstage with all his brothers and sisters.”
“Those were the Osmonds!” my mom corrected.
Despite my dad confusing Donny Osmond for Ozzy Osbourne, he and Slash were still able to bond over bands like Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull. It also helped that Slash was polite and friendly, and nicknamed me khoshkeleh, which is Farsi for “pretty one.”
Mostly, I was happy that I was finally getting some experience under my belt before graduation. My first kiss with Slash was relatively uneventful. I was hanging out in his room, like I often did, listening to him play bass. Eventually, he moved to the bed and kissed me without much warning. I froze. I wasn’t really sure what to do. Before I could kiss him back, he was on top of me, and I tried to follow his lead. It wasn’t by any means an awful kiss, but I told myself that it would get better. Afterward, he walked me to the door, and we said good night. I promptly ran to Izzy’s house, which was just across the street, and shared the momentous news. I was no longer a supervirgin. I was just a virgin. More important, my well-timed relationship with Slash meant I had a date to senior prom.
I’d already worn my lavender gown to a winter formal, so for prom I opted for a black-and-white lace dress that I’d spotted in the window at Bebe. It had enough Goth influences to fit with Slash’s aesthetic, but it still felt classic and timeless. I wasn’t even the slightest bit embarrassed that he opted for a maroon tux, a top hat, a cape, and a cane. My parents were most likely confused by his outfit choice, but they seemed to accept the fact that Slash had a unique look and personality. And I did, too. I realized that I didn’t want boring in my life, and that a cape and top hat were so much more interesting than the black-and-white tuxedo every other guy was wearing. I was beginning to shed my insecurities. I cared less about what everyone else at our high school thought of me. I was proud to be Slash’s girlfriend, and once prom ended, we would be inseparable through the last weeks of school and all our graduation festivities. I would still be an illegal immigrant, but at least now I was one with an American boyfriend and a high school diploma.
My family and me at my high school graduation.
With college on the horizon, part of me wondered if it was a mistake for us to try to stay together, but Slash was such a great boyfriend, and I couldn’t imagine finding anyone else who’d be interested in me. He was sentimental and romantic. At seventeen, his favorite thing to do was to take me to four-star restaurants throughout Silicon Valley. We dined on fondue and freshly made pasta. He also had this adorable habit of kissing my hand—probably because he was into knights and swords—and referred to women as “milady.”
I felt like I was being wined and dined, but that didn’t change the fact that I was petrified at the thought of consummating our relationship. To be fair, I was still ge
tting used to French-kissing and having my boobs fondled. We’d been dating for only a few months, but I also couldn’t imagine losing my virginity to anyone else. So as college approached, I decided that I couldn’t live without Slash. We agreed to stay together, but dates to fancy restaurants, thoughtful gifts, and a constant refrain of sweet nothings didn’t allay what had now become my irrational fear about sex. “What am I so afraid of?” I wondered.
The answer was simple. The answer was my parents. Most of my friends’ parents had come of age in the era of free love, but my maman and baba had totally missed out on the sexual revolution. While they grew up in a more progressive Iran before the Islamic Revolution, the country was still conservative when it came to matters of sex, and Persian women were especially modest on the topic of sexuality. Before my mom was married, she was strolling around Tehran with her female cousin. A convertible full of handsome young men slowed down next to them, and a flirtation ensued. The guys got out of the car and exchanged phone numbers with my mom and her cousin. But unbeknownst to them, the entire interaction was witnessed by one of my dayee Shahrdad’s friends. When my uncle heard secondhand that my mom was flirting with guys in the neighborhood, he was quick to confront her. She admitted it was true, and he reacted by promptly slapping her across the face, which is almost comical, because my whole life I’d describe my uncle as a total softie who wouldn’t hurt a fly. After that experience, she wasn’t all that interested in pursuing any secret relationships, which was why marriage was her first real attempt at dating.
My mom’s upbringing in Iran seemed to permeate other areas of her life in America. Even when my sister and I were teenagers, she seemed shy about changing her clothes in front of us. Her modesty totally rubbed off on me. I became quite the ninja when it came to undressing in our high school locker room, developing strategies to change my clothes so that no one would actually have to see me naked. My underwear always came on and off beneath the shield of a towel. I’d often clasp my bra on over my towel, and then pull the towel down so that no one could get a good look at my tiny boobs.