Prom awkwardness 101 Or: What not to do at your prom

MANILA, Philippines - I was okay-smelling enough to go to two proms in my life, the first one being Ateneo de Manila’s, and Assumption San Lorenzo’s the following year. I remember both with a special kind of awkward pain but I’d like to honor chronology and begin with the earlier one.

Part I: Ateneo High

Ateneo, being an all-bros school, limited a straight bro’s options on who to take to the prom. So unless you were siga, wore elephant khaki pants, strung Buddha beads on your wrist, and excelled in soirees and non-volleyball sports, you not only had a hard time getting a prom date, you were unable to make female contact to begin with. In my case, I was more unresponsive, seeking relief in just walking home and finishing Final Fantasy 8 — for the third time. I was just oblivious to the notion of fun — with girls.

For my prom, though, I was set up by my mom with an extremely distant family friend, whose parents sold textiles and were in some sort of weird rift. Cute, petite, but I couldn’t think of anyone gloomier than this chick. I remember asking if she was into emo, like Dashboard Confessional, to which she responded a flat “no” and looked the other way — something which later on prompted me to work on my joke-cracking skills, a.k.a. impress cute, gloomy girls. We were driven by my dad in a — yup — red Lite Ace van, where we attempted at all kinds of small talk with abrupt segues to even smaller, more useless banter as to where I bought my corsage, so on and so forth. But I never took anything against my prom date; I was just secretly relieved I didn’t go stag.

I had also forgotten the prom invite that late afternoon, so after a quick return to my house to get it, we made our way to Le Pavillon in Manila. A spacious, blue-lit place, made even more spéciaux by its random French name, Le Pavillon actually looked pretty legit for a prom venue. I couldn’t remember much of the even smaller talk during dinner, but I do remember people bobbing their heads to J. Lo and L.L. Cool J.’s All I Have — and really feeling it.

Ballin’: When it came to awkwardly memorable moments, my grad ball experience a year later wasn’t any different from prom night.

The slow dance was humiliating mostly because I had invited my date to the dance floor only to be let down by the DJ’s quick transition to Edwin McCain’s I’ll Be right when we got there. That time, I was a pretty serious guy so I couldn’t enjoy it even in a sarcastically awkward way.

The organizers gave out a mixed CD afterwards, with shiny blue ribbons and an overly dreamy, Photoshopped version of a full moon as its cover art. It had Rivermaya’s 214, among other love hits.

Of course, the most awkward moment was saved for last, with my dad sleeping through the night at the parking lot, forgetting I needed a ride. My date eventually got her driver to bring us both home, with me being the first one dropped off (reverse chivalry?). I only realized the inept non-smoothness of it all years later. She would later on date some of my batch mates but really, I only wish I could repay her with a real ride and better conversation.

Part II: AC San Lo

This was for a different girl. I met my date for the Assumption San Lorenzo prom through this parish sports fest in 2003, which my mom forced me to go to, rebellious shouting match included. Ayan tuloy, my date met me.

What happened was this girl and I were both playing basketball and because I had only worn my Rusty Lopez sandals that time, it was hard to run around the court. So at one point, I tripped on her feet, we both fell down, and something non-god-fearing ensued, i.e., she got angry. Long story short, I got her Hotmail address and we slowly hit it off. Long story even shorter, she invited me to her school prom through a handwritten letter less than a year later, to which I agreed.

So there I went again that late afternoon, wearing that same black suit with pink inner linings, matched with baggy black slacks. She was wearing an orange gown and all I could think of that night was, “Wow, how’d I get this girl?”

Of course, we had our pictures taken everywhere and with everyone, from the sala with her parents to the dining area with her grandparents. I was sweating and the foundation my mom had forced on my face earlier had mixed with said sweat, turning into some kind of unbearable liquid on my cheek.

Eventually, we made it out their door. My dad couldn’t drive me to this prom so a family friend offered to drive me and my date that night — in his cramped, two-door Pajero. I mean, there is only one thing worse than a Pajero, and that is a two-door version. It was a five-minute stunt trying to help my date in her gown get out from the backseat, and get down from the vehicle, with nuns looking from afar at the school premises.

I thought that AC prom was cooler than Ateneo’s because they had a gown-wearing band covering songs by Hole. Small talk was also better this time around, as was the company at her table. Lots of guys from my batch were there, bothered and even complaining of someone’s body odor at some point, which made some of the boys snicker as the girls huddled and laughed amongst themselves.

Of course, no prom would be complete without a “pictorial” from Chat Peypoch. My date was just so game for “wacky shot” after “wacky shot” and we ended up spending most of the night laughing at ourselves for thinking a “smoking gun to the lip” look was unique.

I had such a great time, so much so that as the night drew to a close, I pulled her to a random couch in their school’s reception area, paused, looked at her funny, mouthed a couple of “ums…”, paused yet again, got all dead serious, looked away, then looked back at her before finally saying, “Hey… I love you.”

Her reply? “Thanks.”

If I remember correctly, I sort of died trying to make it out of the reception area. Our driver eventually fetched us and I recall telling him to slow the hell down going home. He winked at me and basically drove like a kalesa. Very slow. Longest ride ever, bar none. I think I tried bargaining or conveying some sort of rationale as to why I said what I said but she would only respond with something vaguely grateful or change the topic to some song from Incubus — her favorite band.

I thought it was still a great prom because despite the awkward ending, I didn’t end up regretting anything, and technically, I brought my date home this time. She would later on become my first girlfriend (napilitan?) and I guess I could chalk it all up to guts converting into glory. My grad balls were better but let’s save that for another time, if anyone would even want to hear about it.