In 1983, we were lucky if lyrics were printed on album jackets or sleeves, but we never found them on cassette tapes.
Audio version: A Jay Walker Prom
My brother and I sat on the green and gold shag carpet, our ears tuned to the speakers as we deciphered Def Leppard’s Pyromania album. The living room windows were wide open, letting in the toasty fifty degree weather and blasting out music to our Highview drive neighborhood in Anchorage, Alaska.
I’m outta luck - outta love - gotta photograph - picture of - BLANK killer - you’re too much - you’re the only one, I wanna touch - I see your face every time I dream - on every BLANK- every magazine - so BLANK BLANK free - so BLANK from me - You’re all I want - my Fantasy…
Ring Ring, Ring Ring
My brother, Jared, jumps for the phone. I rewind the tape.
Back in cassette tape days, I would stick my ear to the speaker while the tape was rewinding, my finger poised on the STOP button as I listened for a sliver of silence in the garbled noise. As soon as I heard nothing, I’d press STOP. That way, when I’d press PLAY, I’d be at the beginning of the song. It was an essential skill and could be why I’d have a hearing loss five years later.
Last week, we’d deciphered The Scorpion’s Blackout album.
“It’s for you,” Jared says, holding out the phone to me.
“Who is it?” I ask.
He shrugs, “May I ask who’s calling?”
Pressing the phone to his chest he whispers, “Jay Walker.”
I’m not sure how Jay got my number. I didn’t know him. We never talked at school. But I knew who he was. He was a senior at Service High. I was a sophomore and one of hundreds of new kids.
With the pipeline construction project in Alaska, Anchorage was a 20th century boom town. All six high schools were overcrowded. Service got anywhere from two to five new students each week. Most classes had 30-40 kids. When I arrived there were 3,000 students and 4 full-time NARC’s.
I picked up the phone, “Hello?”
“Is this Sidse?”
“Yes.”
“This is Jay Walker. We go to school together. I want you to know that I think you’re so fine. Do you ever listen to the Tubes? They have a song about this beautiful girl behind glass and you can’t reach her…it reminds me of you.”
[silence]
“Are you still there?” he says.
“Um, yeah. Why does it remind you of me?” I ask.
“Well, you’re perfect. When I think of you I want to be a better person.”
“I am not perfect. You don’t know me,” I say, defending myself.
“Oh, but you are. You should be behind glass and put on a pedestal like the girl in the song. You’re the perfect girl and I’m going to stop smoking pot for you.”
“Whoa, don’t quit for me, I’m not perfect. I get drunk and smoke pot.”
Jared rolls his eyes. We’ve been raised in a strict Mormon household. Our parents don’t even drink coffee. He’s in the 8th grade. I’m the oldest of six and currently a terrible role model. Jared begs me to get off the phone so we can continue with the Def Leppard album. I make a LOCO symbol toward the phone and shrug that I can’t hang up. He leaves and goes to the kitchen.
Jay continues, “Yeah, but I smoke it every day. Every single day. You don’t smoke like me and I’m going to quit for you.”
“You can’t! You can’t quit for someone else. It doesn’t work that way. Because, one day I’ll make you mad then you’ll start again.”
“Naw, I am still gonna quit for you,” he says.
“DON’T! If you want to quit then QUIT, don’t use me as your excuse.”
[silence]
Jared’s a great cookie maker, but he never shares anymore. With six kids in the house, even burnt cookies don’t last long enough to cool off. Lately, he hoards them in a Tupperware container somewhere in his room and if we want one we have to buy it. Today, he’s made a fresh batch of no-bake cookies and they’re still on the counter.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, breaking the dead air on the phone.
“Sure. If I can ask you something first,” he says.
“As long as it doesn’t have to do with you quitting smoking pot for me,” I say.
Jared walks past me, tempting me with a no-bake cookie if I will hang up the damn phone. I shrug ‘I can’t’, so he ups the stakes and reaches for the dial tone. I karate chop his hand, and the no-bake cookie goes flying onto the shag carpet four feet away.
“Will you be my date to senior prom?” Jay asks.
“Can you hang on a second?”
I drop the phone and Jared and I dive for the cookie. I shove him out of the way and grab it. He knees me in the ribs, grabs my hand and crushes the cookie in my palm. I knock him backwards.
I smile. My hand is sealed around a smashed bit of sugary heaven. We chuckle. I shove him again and give him the finger to the lips ‘shush‘ as I pick up the phone.
“Sorry about that,” I say, biting a hole in my lip to keep from laughing, “my brother needed… something….Did you, what did you say about prom?”
“Will you be my date?”
“Isn’t that this weekend?” I ask.
“Yeah, I wanted to ask you sooner but I was nervous. Sorry.”
“Umm, I’ll ask my mom when she gets home. I think I can go.”
Jared snickers and shakes his head ‘NO WAY’.
“Sweet! That’s awesome,” says Jay, “I’m going to drive my dad’s Audi. We’ll go out to a fancy restaurant. It’ll be perfect….what did you want to ask me?”
“Well, um, this is a weird question, but….your name’s Jay Walker, right?
“Yeah”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
He laughs, “yeah.”
“Why did your parents name you after a traffic violation or whatever?” I ask.
“They named me after an important family member. I guess they never thought it would give me any grief,” he says.
“Oh. I get that. I was named after an important family member too, and nobody can pronounce my name when they meet me.”
We say our goodbyes and hang up. I sit down at the extra long picnic table we use for a dining room table and open my palm. The cookie is smashed to perfection. I plop a chocolate chunk in my mouth. As it melts I imagine what a great start I have on proms and wonder if it’s an omen for my future. At this rate, I could go to three senior proms.
I call Jay the next afternoon and tell him I can go to prom. I’m sixteen now and as far as the Mormon church goes I can legally date. I don’t add that part. Jay tells me he won’t quit smoking pot for me, that he’ll do it for himself.
THE DRESS
Mom takes me to JCPenny’s to buy my first prom dress. When I see the selection I consider telling Jay I can’t go, but then I find it. A bubble gum pink princess dress with a top layer of sheer pink chiffon. The fitted bodice comes with sewn in sticks to keep a girl's posture. The bodice is gathered chiffon with poofy sheer straps that aren't functional and could easily be pulled off the shoulder. The best part of the dress however, is that the skirt is large enough to fit my mom’s hoop skirt underneath. If I was shrinkable, I would have looked like a brunette barbie doll cake topper.
THE CAR
When Jay picks me up for prom, he shows off his dad's Audi. Being that I hadn’t heard of an Audi he assures me it’s an expensive car.
“Like a Ferrari?” I ask.
“No, but check out the stereo,” He points out all the cool buttons, leather seats and wood paneling.
“We have wood paneling in our station wagon.” I add.
“But this is real wood,” he says.
“I’m pretty sure ours is real. We have wood paneling on the outside too, but I don’t like it. We have seats like these too but they aren’t as soft.”
“I’m sure you don’t have leather seats,” says Jay, “you probably have vinyl.”
“Oh,” I say, checking out the leather seats to see if I could tell the difference. “Does your skin stick to these seats when you’re hot?”
“Yes.”
“Do they get cold in the winter?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, mine too,” I say, thinking they’re really similar.
“But my parents have sheepskin seat covers so they don’t get cold,” says Jay.
“What’s a sheepskin seat cover?” I ask.
“It’s a cover that’s custom made for the exact seat and they’re expensive and really warm,” Jay says.
“I’ll have to tell my mom. She’s really good at sewing. I bet she could make something like that.”
“Do you have bucket seats in your station wagon?” Jay asks.
“What’s a bucket seat?” I ask.
“Do you have two separate seats like these, or one long seat in the front?”
“One long one,” I say.
“Then you can’t have sheepskin seat covers. They are only made for bucket seats.”
I look in the back. “So, when your parents are in the car, there’s nothing for you in the backseat?”
“No, it’s just for the front seat,” he says.
“That’s too bad. Well, I like the car. It’s nice”
THE DINNER
The fancy restaurant is perched at the top of a high rise in Anchorage. They bring us water, take our order and Jay requests an appetizer of escargot. The beautiful view of the inlet and the sound of the French dish have me swooning, so when the waiter asks me if I would like some as well; I say, “yes please”.
“Have you had escargot before?” Jay asks curiously.
“No,” I say.
“Do you know what it is?” he asks.
I shake my head. When he breaks the news that it’s snails, my stomach does a somersault.
He smiles, “don’t worry, you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s okay, I’ll try it.” I say.
A few minutes later, the waiter gives us each a dish of hard shelled snails swimming in white sauce. I had no idea that people in fine restaurants eat food that spent their entire life scooting across the dirt.
Jay shows me the small pronged fork designed to yank the dead snail from its former home turned grave. He plucks one out, pops it in his mouth and swallows it.
I can do this, I tell myself. I want to use my fingers to hold onto the shell, but that would be bad manners. So, using my regular fork I steady the shell. With the pronged fork I carefully impale the dead urchin and pull. It doesn’t move. I pull again, harder, but this time the snail, still in its shell, goes skidding across my plate causing a tidal wave of white sauce to breach the brim and flow onto the white table cloth.
Jay chuckles, “it’s okay, sometimes they’re hard to get out.” He motions for the waiter to clean up the large spot of sauce.
“Would you like me to do it for you?” he offers.
I nod, embarrassed. He reaches over and easily plucks one free then hands me the speared snail. I take it. Grateful that he’s being kind and not treating me like the oddball I feel.
This would be a good time to let you know that I have an active gag reflex. If I don’t like something, gagging is assured. Especially if it smells bad. The last thing I wanted and the first thing I was afraid of was gagging in my princess dress and spitting out food in a fine restaurant.
I smell it. Not so bad. I can do this. My teeth and lips close down on the fork, pulling the little creature into my mouth, my tongue moves it to my molars and I bite down to crush it. It’s tough and slimy as my teeth struggle to tear apart the dead animal.
“They’re a little chewy,” Jay says, watching me.
I’m not speaking. I’m nodding and praying my gag reflex doesn’t kick in. I wish I could plug my nose and finish chewing, but that won’t go over well. I breathe in through my nose and chew slowly. My stomach gurgles. I swallow it in big pieces, followed by a mouthful of cold water.
“Did you like it?” Jay asks.
I nod, “Umm, yeah, it was okay.”
“Do you want me to get you another one?” he says reaching toward my plate with a fork.
“NOPE, that’s alright - Is that okay?” I say sheepishly.
Jay nods, “Of course.”
“I’m sorry I wasted your money.”
“It’s not my money, it’s my dads, and don’t worry about it,” he says.
Our lobster comes out next. I’d never had lobster before, so when a large plate with another shelled animal is placed in front of me, my surprise and fear is apparent. Until that moment, I didn’t know lobsters lived in a shell.
Reading my face Jay says, “Here, watch me. I’ll show you how to cut through the shell.”
I watch and mimic, but it’s not easy for me. The shell is hard and cutting through it, tearing it away from the meat underneath without ejecting it off my plate, took skill. Skill I worried I didn’t have. Half of me wanted him to do it for me and remove the chance it would go careening off my plate and I’d never get the chance to taste it. The other half of me wanted to prevail, to do it myself, to be proud I had de-shelled my very first lobster and relish on the savory seafood. If I did, I thought it would be a step in moving up in the world.
When I snipped through the last of the shell I felt a surge of pride. I did it. I did it all by myself. I did it in the middle of a fancy restaurant, sitting up very straight in my pink princess dress with a hoop skirt that made being close to the table awkward and uncomfortable. I did it and the lobster was still on my plate.
Jay showed me how to cut through the meat, dip it in the buttery sauce. I imagined it would taste like something extraordinary. Like chicken but better. Much better.
I cut my first piece of lobster, dipped it in butter and brought it to my lips, pulling it with my tongue and teeth away from the fork. The warm butter tasted heavenly and I bit into the white meat. It was soft and spongy. It didn’t have much flavor and wasn’t anything like chicken. I wondered if the butter helped it go down easier.
“Do you like it?” Jay asked.
“Yeah, it’s good.” I lied.
How could I tell him this expensive dish was only mildly better than the dead snail I’d eaten earlier? I wouldn’t of course. I ate almost half of the animal.
“No, no. It’s really good. I’m just full.” I say, as the waiter takes my plate. “I think I ate too much of that delicious bread.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t have to like it,” Jay says quietly.
He was disappointed. He was trying so hard for this to be a really nice evening and I felt like I was ruining it. It was his senior prom.
THE PROM
I feel like a princess waltzing into the dance hall.
A few boys say nice things like, ‘That’s a beautiful dress’, OR, ‘you look really nice.”
Girls mostly starred. A few commented.
A popular girl in a skin tight taffeta dress says, “Wow! That’s a big dress. How do you keep it out like that?”
“I have a hoop skirt underneath,” I say
“Where did you get a hoop skirt?” she says.
“It’s my moms”
“What does your mom have a hoop skirt for?”
“She has a dress she wears it with.”
“Really?? Weird.”
I walked over to get some punch. I wished I could take off my hoop skirt and look like everyone else. I’d made a terrible mistake.
“Are you okay?” Jay hands me a cup of punch.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Are you sure? You look sad.”
“Do you think my dress looks too big?”
“No. When I saw you, you looked so pretty. I couldn’t believe you were going to prom with me.”
I hoped he was telling the truth. I remember his smile when he picked me up, but I was worried he was laughing.
I tell him, “Some of the girls are making fun of my big skirt.”
“They’re making fun of you because they’re jealous. None of them dare to wear anything different than their friends. Look at them,” he says.
I scan the dance hall. Every girl is wearing a form fitting taffeta dress that’s either blue, purple, or black. Is either mid-calf or long and every one has at least one ruffle: the shoulder ruffle, the neckline ruffle, the diagonal bodice ruffle and of course the bottom ruffle.
To be perfectly honest, I would’ve traded in my princess dress in a heartbeat to be dressed like one of the cool kids. But since I couldn’t, I decided to believe Jay, assume they were jealous and wear my dress like the princess I thought I was when I was eight. I smiled and thanked him.
We walk out of the dance hall to where pictures are being taken. I’m excited. It’s my first ball, I mean prom and I need pictures to remember it by. The line is long. “We don’t need pictures,” Jay says, “we took some at my house. I’ll make a copy for you.”
He has another idea. We pass the photographer and walk over to his senior friends. The prom is in a fancy hotel and they’re paying for a suite. “Do you want to go up to the room?” Jay asks.
“Not really,” I say, tensing up.
“Come on, they have lots to drink and stuff. We just have to go for a little while.”
“I think they got a room because they want to have sex with their dates,” I say bluntly.
Jay looks at his friends. “Well, this is the night for them. They have girlfriends and this is a great time to do that. Memorable you know. It’s senior prom. They all want to,” he says.
“Well, I don’t want to,” I say. I can feel my face getting red.
“I didn’t mean you. I mean them. We’ll just go up to drink. They have lots of booze and we could have some fun.” he says.
“I don’t want to go.” I say.
“You don’t have to get defensive, I’m not going to make you do something you don’t want to do. I would never do that,” he says.
I stare at him.
“You have to believe me. I like you a lot. I thought you’d like a drink.”
I didn’t say anything. Of course I wanted a drink, but not in some hotel room with a bunch of boys. I fold my arms. My jaw locks.
“We don’t have to go up to the room. Okay? Will you be happy?” he says.
I take a breath, and nod.
Then he adds, “we could go to this other party I heard about.”
“Why don’t we stay at the dance? We just got here.” I say.
“The dance sucks. Don’t you think so? It’s stupid,” he says.
I look at the ballroom. Kids are dancing with their dates. They look like they’re having fun. I want to stay. “Can we at least get our pictures taken? The line’s shorter,” I say hoping.
“Naw, it’s stupid. Plus it’s fifteen bucks! We can buy some good pot with this money.”
I stare at the couple being posed by the photographer.
“Come on,” Jay says as he walks toward the door to leave. In my heart of hearts I want my picture taken. I need to ask him again. If I don’t, I’ll regret it.
“WAIT!”
He turns around.
“Please! I really want to get our picture taken. What if your parent’s pictures don’t turn out? What if it’s blurry. What if the film gets ruined? Don’t you think you’ll wish we’d had our picture taken?”
“Don’t worry, my parents have a great camera. I’m sure we’ll get a perfect one.” He takes my arm and leads me out of the fancy hotel.
I turn back and see the photographer’s bulb flash on Jay’s senior friend and his girlfriend. Memorializing their night in the hotel room.
As I feared, I ended up without one picture, but I love this story for many reasons. I love that I remember the moment with my brother, deciphering lyrics and fighting for a no-bake cookie. I love how naive I was about cars and seafood. I laugh when I think of my pink ball gown at a punk 80’s prom. I love that I said no to going to the hotel room. And I love that I asked again for the pictures. I didn’t get what I wanted and Jay didn’t get what he wanted. But we both asked and we both respected the answer. That’s some progressiveness for the 80’s.