Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

by Alix Kates Shulman

  Though he never again forced me to touch it, he started taking it out and begging me to feel it with my hand or let him rub it on my leg, and he would whine when I refused. “Come on, Sasha, you’re torturing me,” he would say. But it was really he who was torturing me, squeezing me between two guilts. I cowered whenever a car approached. I felt that if anyone ever discovered what Joey did with me in that car, I would have to run away. Poor Mother. Poor Daddy. Poor, poor Sasha.

  It disgusted me to see Joey close his eyes and groan in ecstasy, his handkerchief over his crotch. When I had melted from his kisses it had been for love of him. But he certainly couldn’t be groaning for love of me, it was all for himself. It was a tossup which was worse: to be appreciated as a mechanical ejaculator with all the attendant risks, or to be despised as a prude.

  I had become so anxious over our sex that though we were going together and were therefore permitted to neck, I tried my best to avoid it. Passionate as I was, I looked for excuses to go straight home from a date. When Joey invariably parked the car anyway, I kept my coat buttoned all the way up as an act of protest. But of course, my protests went unheeded. I didn’t dare get Joey really angry for fear he’d spread things about me. The girls’ axiom about the boys was true: they always go as far as they can, and never backwards. By fifteen I knew love was a dangerous emotion. It was dynamite. I knew it was safer to be a sex reject than a sex object, but it was already too late for me to choose.

  Freddy and Fink put on a fast record. Joey stepped back with his arm around his buddy Nat, while a Deltan twirled me off into the crowd. Athlete Joey, like all Keystones, danced only slow; the articulate Deltans danced as fast and as smoothly as they talked. As girls were divided by their looks and permissiveness, boys were divided by their accomplishments. I would have been a Deltan if I’d been a boy; maybe that was why I fell in love with a Keystone.

  Whirling and bobbing and double-stepping, I danced with one Deltan after another. Couple after couple dropped off the floor while I danced on. Around us the circle of spectators swelled until it seemed the whole school was there. Breathless, pulse throbbing, I kept on going, to record after record, until Fink stopped the music and Freddy announced a break. I felt my face flush burgundy. Everyone exploded in applause. An intoxicating evening.

  Freddy and Fink moved the coronation platform and mike into the center of the floor. “One-two-three-testing, one-two-three-testing.” Time for the contest.

  While the judges arranged their chairs in front of the platform, I ran to the girls’ room with the three other finalists to primp and calm ourselves. My God, I thought, looking down the long mirror at those beautiful older girls, I haven’t a chance. They seemed so poised, while I was falling apart. Long eyelashes, a tiny nose, and glowing skin simply couldn’t be enough. The one power I had developed to perfection, the power of my glance, I didn’t dare use on the judges. There was not a single way to improve my chances: I could only stand up and be judged.

  As soon as we walked back into the cafeteria, Fink played a few bars of “Stardust” through the amplifier to set the ceremonial mood. Freddy caressed the mike and announced the contestants’ names and fraternal sponsors. When he called my name I stepped up on a chair, then out onto the platform. Somehow I managed a smile for the eight judges below, two from each fraternity. Please let me be chosen, I prayed, climbing down again and taking my place beside the other contestants before the judges. I felt helpless, like a passenger riding in a “chicken” race.

  Fink put on a slow ballad and a few couples danced in the corners. The judges consulted with Freddy, then whispered gravely among themselves. Feeling foolish, we whispered together too, not daring to look out, plucking at our sweaters nervously, waiting. “Who wants to be Queen anyway?” we said, hating each other. I needed to go to the bathroom again.

  Freddy ran up to us. “Would you mind walking back and forth across the cafeteria once, girls, so these guys can get a better look at you?” he said.

  “Oh, no!” we squealed. Didn’t they see us every day? But of course, one at a time, we paraded before the judges. I remember making a little deferential curtsey at the end to camouflage my trembling knees—and I remember to my shame hearing someone laugh.

  An eternity passed before Freddy ran back up to the front and tenderly took the mike in his hand. Fink stopped the music. “Okay, folks,” said Freddy, “your attention please.” He frowned and tapped the microphone until it hummed. Then he began again, laying on the famous Deltan smooth.

  “There’s such a stack of pulchritude up for Queen tonight that our judges have had a hard time making up their minds between these four gorgeous glamour girls.” Everyone moved in a little closer. “But I’m happy to announce that they’ve finally reached a verdict.”

  He nodded to Fink, who started “Stardust” over again from the beginning, a little louder this time. Everyone fell silent. All suckers for ceremony.

  My hands began shaking so hard that I clasped them behind my back. I wondered about my blushing skin. I had to go to the bathroom desperately. I thought about how it would feel to be Chinese or to live on the West Side, and then snapped back to Baybury Heights. Though I knew the decision was already settled, so there was no longer any possibility of influencing it, abandoning all prudence, I offered up one last wish to the Blue Fairy: Make me Queen and I’ll never ask for anything more.

  “I have the pleasure,” said Freddy like a professional, “to present to you the new Queen of the S.L.T. Bunny Hop—I might even say the Basketball Queen of Baybury Heights.”

  Not me, throbbed my temples. Never me.

  “—that beautiful miss from Sigma Lambda Tau, the Keystone’s choice, the sweetest profile in Ohio, the Queen of the Bunny Hop, Sasha Davis!”

  The music blared. Me! I couldn’t believe it!

  “That’s you, Sasha,” said Freddy, hugging me tightly and bending over to plant a loud kiss on my cheek. He pushed me up onto the platform. “Get up there now, honey, it’s all yours!” I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. “You’re the Queen, Sasha,” he yells up from below. “Smile!”

  The others have disappeared. ’I’m all alone on the platform. The silver S.L.T. crown is on my head, and my arms enfold a huge bouquet of daffodils, tied with a blue satin ribbon on which are stitched in gold the letters S-L-T. In a circle below me everyone is singing out our song to the tune of “Stardust” and watching me. I smile till my gums show. I feel tears stream down my cheeks. Cameras are flashing. I feel so foolish and so happy. I am the Queen.

  I confess, my coronation was such an undiluted triumph that I took it down in one long, sweet gulp that went straight to my head. Rashly I forgot that in the fall there would be another queen and the following spring another. Barely fifteen, that April night I reached such heady heights that the triumphs of the rest of my life were bound to seem anti-climactic.

  Directly after my coronation I risked everything, celebrating with an act that wiped out months of restraint. Parked in our regular spot at Shaker Lakes, at last Joey got in. By allowing him to lie on me with his fly open, accepting his kisses with the delicious abandon of former days, I signaled that the struggle was over. It wasn’t the forty points, or even Nat Karlan’s prediction. It was simply that, being Queen, I dared to believe I could get away with it. There was something regal about going all the way.

  I didn’t get to remove my underpants, so eager was Joey to cross my threshold. He stretched the elastic of one leg and slipped his organ in; then with a little moan of joy he began humping me the same as always, plus in and out like an animal, wrinkling my skirt with his belly.

  This is it! I said to myself. This is love! Enjoy it! I knew my daffodils were being crushed; nevertheless I tried to enjoy it, at least to attend to this celebrated moment in the most touted of acts.

  It wasn’t unpleasant with Joey inside me, but it wasn’t particularly pleasant either. It didn’t even hurt. I was surprised not to be feeling much, for Joey had pushed his entire appen
dage, so much larger than a finger, inside my opening. I couldn’t imagine how it all fit in. Watching him move up and down on me in the darkness, I wondered: is this all there is to it? I had loved Joey to the melting point, but now I resented him. I received each thrust of his body like a doubt. Really all? When it was over a few moments later and Joey came groaning into his handkerchief as always, it struck me as hardly different from our usual sex. The only thing to recommend it was that it was ultimate. But, really, kissing felt much nicer.

  Joey sat up. “I love you, Sasha. You’ll never be sorry, I promise you.”

  He sounded so pious. I eyed him suspiciously. I wondered if I had done it all correctly, and if so, if it might not show or smell. Suppose some of the sperm had gotten in? Suppose Joey wouldn’t keep his mouth shut? As I saw him wiping away the last traces of sperm, looking proud and lavishing on his withered organ more care than it deserved, I suddenly felt the enormity of my breach. I was utterly vulnerable.

  I pulled down my skirt, hoping to become again inviolable. But there was clearly no going back.

  If I get away with this, I consoled myself, I can probably get away with anything.

  An hour later when Joey kissed me goodnight on my doorstep, I dutifully said “I love you,” knowing Joey’s new power to injure me. But for the first time, my knees did not go limp when he kissed me.

  I was no longer simply “Joey’s girl.” I was a Queen myself with a life of my own.

  I flush the toilet with sweaty palms, aware of the risk, and wait to face the consequences. At home and at school my Kotex disposal was down to an art. Even in public restrooms there were almost always special containers, and if not—if I had to leave a soiled napkin rolled neatly in toilet paper on the edge of the sink or exposed unswallowed in a toilet bowl—I would not be around to take the blame.

  Here at Joey’s house I am trapped.

  I’d stayed at the table as long as I could, hoping to get through the agonizing dinner and wear my napkin out of the house. But when I felt the sticky blood seep through my underwear onto my thigh I realized that however skillfully I shifted in the chair or crossed my legs, it was only a matter of moments before it would penetrate to my skirt and thence to Mrs. Ross’s flowered cushion to disgrace me forever.

  Now, locked inside the bathroom, I am impaled on my monthly dilemma: how to dispose of it? I can’t walk into the kitchen past everyone at table, sheepishly carrying my dirty rag to the garbage can. I can’t snoop around the bedrooms for a wastebasket or a bottom bureau drawer to bury it in, knowing that eventually they will sniff it out and despise me the more. No; there is only one thing to do, however risky: flush it down the toilet.

  I send up a prayer and press down the lever. The water rises inexorably toward the rim of the bowl. I jiggle the handle, my pulse pounding. Past the normal water ring it rises, past the porcelain lip. Then just in time at the very brink the water crests, turned back by some Neptune of the sewer. It stands and waits, the Kotex caught in the toilet’s hole, its tail protruding like a drowning cat’s, and I draw breath.

  But it is a false reprieve, for whatever the dangers, I will have to flush again.

  Blocking my nose from the inside, I pull up the sopping Kotex by its tail. It is saturated. Slowly the water recedes: a blessing. With index fingers and thumbs I strip off the gauze and begin shredding the bloody pad; if the toilet won’t swallow it whole, I will feed it bit by bit.

  Another prayer, another tug on the lever, and at last the water whirls my clots and rags down the hole, letting me slip past one more month without facing disgrace.

  I fasten a new napkin, wash my hands with soap, fix my smile before the mirror, and return demurely to the table.

  School let out in June; after that we were doing it regularly every couple of weeks, except when I had my period or pretended to be having my period.

  Joey would pick me up at the Baybury Pool on his way home from work at his uncle’s shoe store. From the pool where I had spent the day developing a tan, we either went to the ball court at Eastwood Park, where Joey worked out shooting baskets while I watched admiringly with the other girls, or if he could get his father’s car we’d drive up to Shaker Lakes, where he worked out on me.

  Driving up the Lake Road giggling nervously over our destination, I received odd premonitions. I imagined the car crashing or the police stopping us for questioning.

  “Surprise,” said Joey one evening, opening the car door for me and tossing my swimming bag in the back seat. He seemed to be full of giggles himself for once.

  “What’s up?”

  “A present for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see.” He turned onto the Lake Road.

  “Tell me,” I pleaded.

  “Unh-unh. I’ve had it more than a week without telling you. You can wait a few minutes more.”

  As soon as he had parked the car at the shore of the lake and taken me into the back seat, Joey opened his wallet and took out a foil-wrapped Trojan condom. “Here,” he said, presenting it to me as though it were an orchid.

  I recoiled. I knew all about Trojans from dirty jokes, but I had never seen one. And here I was holding one. It was so unequivocal; what kind of a girl must he think me? There were two more in his wallet, leaving little ovals on the outside leather, dead giveaways.

  “My God, Joey! If you carry them around in your wallet, every-one will know!  ” I dropped it in his lap, offended. How stupid I had been to assume we wouldn’t get caught.

  Joey stroked his so-precious prick a few times to make it hard, then placing the rubber over the head of it, rolled it carefully down the shank. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I just say they’re for whores if anyone asks. Or for Renee. Everyone carries them for whores.”

  I slipped my underpants off one leg, and Joey moved on top of me. Being careful not to disturb the condom, he pressed himself inside me.

  Once in, it felt almost the same as without the condom. But it gave me the jitters anyway. When I heard a car pass on the road below, instead of just holding my breath and crossing my fingers as I usually did, I jerked so hard that Joey came out. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Hey, take it easy!” said Joey pushing it back into me with his fingers. He was annoyed. “If you jerk like that it’ll take twice as long.” Then, gently, he added, “There’s nothing to worry about, baby. They can’t see us way back here.”

  He was right. Unless someone actually parked, came up to the car, and caught us in the act, it didn’t matter what people merely suspected. As long as I was willing to do it, Joey would be a fool to betray me, and without Joey’s testimony, no one could prove a thing. We were unlikely to be caught because Joey always did it very quickly and fully clothed, out of consideration for me. Even his carrying condoms proved nothing. I would deny every-thing if anyone accused me. Though I was uneasy whenever I saw people whispering at the pool, I realized it would take more than rumor to ruin a Queen.

  While half of me trembled at fugitive sounds, the other half was proud of my daring and happy to be done with the agony of anticipation. Fifteen, flat on my back with Captain Joey Ross pumping up a storm between my knees, I thought “Oh yeah?” to Beverly Katz and all the other S.L.T. girls. They dared not accuse the Keystone’s choice, one half of a perfect couple. Let them try to make Renee of me!

  But my feelings of triumph barely justified my nervousness or the plain discomfort of sex. The eleventh time we did it was more unpleasant than the first. I grew to dread it, but I could never come up with a good enough reason to get Joey to stop. “What’s got into you, Sasha? We never got caught before,” he would pout, and the record just kept on mounting. As the girls always said, boys go as far as they can, and never backwards. Watching Joey drop the sticky condoms into Shaker Lake, I was baffled that I could ever have thought I loved him. Oh, he was sweet in his way, and the biggest fish in Baybury, but he was my tormentor. Definitely not for me. As everyone said, it was never too early to t
hink about marriage, and I had large inexpressible yearnings Joey could never satisfy. Whether or not he was the Captain, I was still the Queen. If only I could somehow escape from the back seat of Joey’s father’s car, I knew I could do much better.

  “Marry for love,” said my mother, “but remember, it’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor man.” Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief—if it was foolish for my brother to leave to chance which type he would be, it was foolish for me to leave to chance which type I would marry. My mother’s advice to me was as sensible as her comparable advice to Ben: “study hard and be somebody.” Both tips were perfectly suited to our possibilities.

  More beautiful by far than other mothers, my mother deserved to be listened to. Her cheeks had a soft pink smell, a ripeness, which made me happy just to be sitting next to her. I overflowed with pride when she showed up at school or when her picture appeared in the Cleveland Post from time to time as chairman of one committee or president of another; who would not want to elect chairman or exhibit on the social page such a perfect face? Even more in matters of love and matrimony my mother’s face, which could have enchanted any man, commanded respect. Having herself married well, she certainly knew what she was talking about. And in our own interminable adolescent discussions of whom to marry, no girl among us ever suggested that it would be better to marry poor, unless the alternative were not to marry at all. My mother was right. There was only one way for a girl to control her future: choose her man.

  There weren’t many things a girl could do to command the choice, but fortunately there were a few. First, she could make sure she did nothing to be kicked out of the market. Second, she could make herself available to the most eligible types. Third, and most important of all, whatever her natural endowment she could enhance her fine points to make herself as attractive as possible. It was no secret. Methods for achieving all three were spelled out for us in each new issue of Seventeen that arrived in the mail and in all the books, like Boy Meets Girl, Junior Miss, Girl Alive, we were given for our birthdays. But the instructions were only the beginning. It was up to each girl on her own to make, as my mother called it, “the most of herself.”