Girl Anachronicles

I never told my whole prom story (in blog form). I mentioned it in passing in one entry about three years ago, but I never went into detail about the whole tragedy of it. A few weeks ago we were talking about this among friends and I told them the whole story, and one of them – bless her soul! – said: “Everyone’s entitled to a prom night!”. Prom night was a myth I pursued after my own prom had passed. I insisted in participating in my brother’s and my sister’s proms, seeking to capture whatever I thought I had missed in my own. Some would call it pathetic, but I know I was desperate.

My brother’s prom came a few years after my own. I had already graduated from college and had one of those temporary office-clerk jobs after a disastrous stint at a computer systems corporation. I jumped at the opportunity of spending the night at my brother’s hotel room with my then-boyfriend, Oscar. It wasn’t half bad: we scrammed early off the dance floor and beelined to the hotel room, we ordered room service, we got drunk, we went to sleep, and I woke up a few hours later when my brother and his friends came in with a bottle of rum. I had my rum shot, and then it went up my nose. Epic. Hilarious. But not my prom.

My sister’s junior prom was epic too, for all the wrong reasons: I got a flat tire and I had to change it. Imagine that: a girl bedecked in a spectacular, long evening dress full of glitter and satin… changing her car’s tire with great effort, getting all sweaty and dirty (and bloody knuckles too). Yeah, some may see it as a sexy fetish. I won’t judge you, guys, but I beg to differ. Her senior prom was a disappointment too, although I did see one of my elementary school ex-classmates attending the same prom. Maybe this disorder isn’t so strange after all. The Prom Vampire Syndrome.

So what went so wrong that I had to go stealing my siblings’ prom? I’ll tell ya…

It all started on the planning phase, I suppose. Back in 1995, merengue was all the rage (I think it still sort-of is, you won’t find a party in Puerto Rico without its merengazo long set). The artists of the moment were Olga Tañón (complete with pre-op nose) and Tony Vega (where IS he now?), and the class president would simply NOT have prom night without ‘em. These merengue divas were fucking costly, so the budget had to give somewhere else. I’ll tell you where it got cuts: the yearbook (it never got printed. Instead, each of us got it in digital form in a CD-ROM… about 8 years later), and the location for the prom.

It’s important to think about the size of our graduating class: each grade was composed of 9 – 10 classrooms, each classroom had at least 20 students in it. Being conservative, the number would be 180… then take off about 10 (dropouts, people that chose not to go, etc) … 150 – 160? Okay, let’s go with the 150, it’s nice and round. Now add parents and prom date for each one of those students – let’s say, to compensate, that each student brought only one parent and one date – and you get the sheer number of 450 souls to attend the event.

Where was my prom being held?

Parque Julio Enrique Monagas: it was a fucking tiny room at the top of a fucking tiny mogote (flat-topped mountain). The place is perfect for a small wedding, a business meeting … something small.  My class prom was not small. I’ve seen hotel ballrooms filled to the brim for a prom of a graduating class of 60 students. My class was NOT small. But they HAD to have Olga Tañón and Tony Vega. I hate merengue, so you can guess where that left me and like-minded people: very, VERY upset and resentful. I wasn’t gonna enjoy Olga Tañón! I definitely wasn’t gonna enjoy Tony Vega!!! Why did I have to lay low and accept this decision? Well, maybe ‘cuz I was way stupid!

Now, on the personal front, you’d think I had more control of the variables. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted as a prom dress:

The original one was way cooler: it was a white underskirt with black overskirt. Very ska!

(Something like) this, of course, paired with my dearest Doc-Marten-style boots… And I also had a very precise picture (as in: “I had a magazine cutout”) of the makeup job I wanted… minimalist, sweet, just a bit of attention to the eyes, nothing fancy. I was never a huge fan of makeup.

The gown was the first let-down. Money was short, this much I knew, but I was never told. So, when the time came to choose a prom gown, I was painfully aware of the price tags over anything else. I didn’t dare to go over $100, and I ended up choosing an $80 dress in the kind of slinky fabric I hate (you know the one! sticking to all the wrong bulges and seams…) It didn’t even look like a prom dress: slinky black little number, long but only down to my ankles, with a double row of silver-colored buttons down the front, with a ruched section of fabric in the middle, criss-crossed with thin bands of the same fabric … sort of going for classic-greek, but not quite getting there…

Then my mother thought it wise to get me some control top pantyhose AND some control-top panties …

..now do NOT breathe!

oh, yes! The same! So you can guess how many muffin-tops I had … about a THOUSAND! And I couldn’t do anything about it because I only thought of trying the whole thing out the same fucking day of the prom! Stupid stupid me!

My mother also thought it would be a great idea to have our personal stylist (of that time, she’s long gone, thankfully! Dreadful woman!) do my makeup for me that day. To be honest,  I thought it would be a great idea too – I’m less Michaelangelo and more Pollock with my makeup brushes. The woman arrives and I show her the magazine cutout I had saved for months (!!!), told her “I want something like this!” … and to this day, I remember her words “¡Ay, no! ¡Esos ojos de vaca cagona!” (translate for yourself, if you don’t speak Spanish, but … yes, something to the effect of a cow shitting … enjoy!) Then, she proceeded to do whatever the hell she wanted to my face.

And I swear, to this day, that the woman did what no other living creature has dared: she made it look like I was wearing another woman’s face as a translucent mask.

THIS woman's face. Desiree Lowry: beauty pageant queen extraordinaire. COMPLETELY different face! C'mon!

Nothing has ever been more unbecoming ever again.

(and let’s not even talk about The Hair, although, to be fair, I only acquired peace with my own hair within the last few years)

So, feeling completely unlike myself and very self-conscious about my general appearance, we set out to the prom. The first warning flag of All The Things That Would Go Wrong was the line for the elevator: long, serpentine… The ballroom was on top of the mountain, and the only way to get there was a single elevator. Now, why it was taking so long would be a surprise. We were first supposed to walk in one by one as a few words on each student would be read over the mic. I don’t know how in the world they were keeping the order straight: 150 students arriving randomly at any given moment would not make it easy. However, for me, this would be a highlight – or so I thought.

The wait was long and tortuous. My feet were killing me: no boots for me, my mother wouldn’t have it! So instead, I was wearing shiny black high heels. I have flat feet, so you can imagine. I never wear heels.

After more than an hour’s wait, we were finally at the top, albeit still at the end of a long line that ran from the ballroom all the way across a hallway that led to the elevator door. Then I saw it happen: the diva Olga Tañón whooshing past us in a fucking hurry. And then the line started to move.

As I pranced into the ballroom, I realized they had completely skipped the idea of reading anything other than the students’ names as they walked in, so it was “Diana Campo”, quick picture with my father, and that was that! Later on, I learned that Ms. Tañón was in such a hurry that she gave the ultimatum that she either started within 30 minutes, or she was gone (with full pay, of course!). So, any glory that dissenting students would have at least walking into the room was foregone in favor of this fucking bitch.

Way to go! You can stick that manicured thumb up your flaccid twat, you miserable whore!

Moments later my father pulled me apart and told me my mother was feeling sick, so we had to go. I don’t blame her: the ballroom was small, its ceiling was quite low, and by 15 minutes in, I was feeling like fried fish under the spotlights. It wasn’t a nice place to be. I bid my adieus and went home for the night.

So, does everyone deserve a prom night? Maybe.

I was thinking about this today and I realized that maybe I should have taken better control of the variables I could control: the attire, the makeup, the hair. I didn’t have to accept what was being handed to me right off the bat.I could have gotten creative, like sewing the dress or look for bits and pieces off older garments from home or the Salvation Army. I could have practiced the hair and the makeup at home, maybe raid mom’s makeup box. I could have taken the whole thing into my hands and run with it. It was my prom, after all. If it were today, that’s what I’d do.

But then I remembered what was really going through our minds back then: mom was surviving cancer. Plain and simple. There was no time nor energy for anything other than that. My involvement in school issues was limited, competing with my other escape (boyfriend, sex…). The whole teenage-side of my life, I think, was sort of a cardboard facade waiting to peel off at any moment. It was gone long before my senior year, but I kept up with the motions of being a graduating brat. My heart wasn’t into it, though. Had I really been into it like a normal teenager, I would have gotten a $200 dress like my step-sister’s (2 years down the road):

..not so great for leaping and prancing...

… oh, wait, I did wear that one … to fuck some other boy in his car… jeez, I’m such a smutty fucker. Nah, I don’t deserve a prom.

... nope, no bananas here either...

My grandmother used to have an odd sense of humor. “Yes, we have no bananas,” is a sentence she used to repeat in context of derision towards third-world countries. In retrospect, this could have been odd to see, since – as I learned later on in my life – my grandmother was born in Cuba and was raised there for at least the first 3 or 4 years of her life. She faintly, yet fondly, remembered the hacienda she lived in and the servants that used to work for them. My grandmother, it seems, was on the right side of the Habana Hotel. Yet, if you ever mentioned Cuba to her, just like it would happen to almost any conservative Puerto Rican in the heyday, all that would spout from her mouth would be clichés about bananas and dictators.

Living it up at the Hotel Calif-... no, wait...

Later on, through observation and interaction with Cuban families, I realized they are like a race in a permanent state of flight: a flight from their island, from their situation, from themselves. The ones I’ve met have been the kind of people to keep their nationality on the down-low, their exile has erased all identifying traits from their skin and tongue. Cuba is an ideal relegated to porcelain decorative plates and the occasional tiny tattered flag swaying in the wind.

… and I’ve realized that the constant throughout these refugees, the ones that claim to be from Habana and nowhere else, the “cubanos gusanos” (like my father-in-law has been herad to say), is that they hate themselves as a nation. They hate what they’ve come to belong to, so they decide to belong to it no more.

… and I’ve realized that this is exactly what’s happening in this island as well. We’re in decay: last few decades have seen to that. But the downward spiral flow has accelerated in these last few years, few months … and suddenly, all I see in my timelines and friend-feeds, all I hear from my loved ones is that we’d all prefer this island to blow to pieces. We’ve lost optimistic hope. Suddenly, I’ve even read people saying that we, as a people, deserve the brutal injustice to which we’ve been submitted… and I can’t help but understand, because there’s a side of me that thinks so too.

Every time I read a friend or family member justify the police’s violent response to pacific protests and what is mainly citizens claiming for their given rights, I cringe, and I tend to agree that this island needs some bloodshed, some fire and brimstone, some death.

We’re going down the same way as Cuba, or maybe not. I think the political details are completely out of my scope. But the self-hatred I see in Puerto Ricans today seems to be the seed of the dull resentment and silent rage the Cubans have come to live with for decades.

Yeah, we’re all out of bananas … but we sure have the fascist government that goes with the Banana Republic combo!

Thanks (?), grandma, for the lesson... I guess..

PD: My apologies to all Cubans and those of Cuban descent. My intention is not to offend nor judge in any way. These observations are purely personal, and more of a comparative relflection on what’s happening in PR during these days.

Backstreet Boys liked the back ways, eh!!! ;-D Saucy wenches!

… and I was like :-S “wait, whaaaaaat?”. Boy bands. They were one of the things most hated by me when they suddenly exploded in a flurry of tribal tattoos and hair-gel in the mid-90s. (That only serves to highlight the age difference between Vero and I). I brushed by The New Kids on the Block, but only while their new-ness lasted. As soon as the New Kids were more like Old News, I kissed them “Bye bye bye”…

Did you see what I did there? No? That's 'cuz you're STUPID, Jordan!

Not much time passed before I started squealing about other dudes… the bad-ass dudes:

Not much better for the show, though

…   I don’t know if deep down my lust after ”rough”-looking guys was just my way of rebelling (yeah, as rough as you can get while dressing up in pleather and satin shirts), but I honestly liked the music *sigh*… and I honestly developed huge crushes on these guys. 

I got SO pissed when the buys from school pointed out Tom Keifer looked like Ednita Nazario ... mostly because they were right!

 It was all very honest… and a little bit too obsessive. I papered my walls from bottom to ceiling with posters of Slaughter, Cinderella, Motley Crue, Poison, Nelson Nelson, etc etc etc. All long-haired dudes, all over my walls.

I guess my mother felt like parents from the 60′s felt when their girls went apeshit over  The Beatles, with the difference that the objects of my affection were not all that wholesome-looking and had a reputation of being “the spawns of the devil” (a myth my mother bought into all too easily). I only did what any self-respecting teen would: I moved onto darker, uglier shit:

He's so dreamy!

I eventually stopped developing crushes on strangers based only on their photographs and finished products of corporate  music. My fangirl days were over … until I saw this dude:

..oooh, that sunken chest! ...

… and then I became so dangerously close to being a paedophile that I just simply not talk about my crushes anymore. End of story.

Yesterday I found a website that trumps all other nostalgia websites I’ve come to know so far:  I’m Remembering. It’s a blog built on a Tumblr engine, its theme is specifically 80s and 90s nostalgia. I Love the 80s never had it so good and so right. I found things in there that I had forgotten about in the longest while, and others that I remembered but I couldn’t find elsewhere on the web.

Some examples:

Sea-pony whose only power is to blow bubbles underwater, yay...

I owned this exact My Little Pony seahorse, with the clamshell stand that would never stick long enough to the bath tiles… goddamned doll also looked like it was always dirty. It had a blowhole to blow bubbles, but being the little motherfuckers we were, we used it as a squirt-horse instead.

***

..he stares at you from his perch while you're sleeping..

This one came from nowhere. I suspect it was a hand-me-down toy, like many others we had – our youngest aunt was only 9 years older than me, not enough time to deem the toys obsolete and throw them away, so I inherited tons of them! I loved this Rowlf puppet so much that I salvaged him time and again from the trash bin and many charity collections, and is now probably slowly dying in a room in Mom’s house.

***

..creepy little clown to live on your nightstand. Whose idea was that? ..

This was obviously a pre-”It” item. I barely even remembered him until I saw him in the imremembering.com site. Then it was like opening the memory floodgates: the lamp in its full glory, then how it came apart little by little, until at last the only thing that remained were those immortal plastic balloons.

***

..plastic lasts forever..

I was amazed when I saw this pic. We had these exact two cups at home (among a myriad of other assorted plastic cutlery pieces, such as Transformers bowls and He Man dishes). I still keep a plastic Hello Kitty cup from that time. These things indeed last forever!!!

***

...all it was missing was the alternative of an alien head.

This was another hand-me-down from my aunt, but boy, did I have fun with this! This was the one piece that got me drawing fashion designs as an occasional hobby. Of course, by the time it got to me, the color pencils were long gone, so I had to make do with a carbon stick.

***

MUSIC! FUCK YEAH!

This was one fucking useful toy! I used it every day: I played the Read-along vinyls, I played my Rainbow Brite record, I played just about anything that would fit into that record player. I would play things time and again until I made my mother nauseous. I’d put on plays for the whole family – and would force them to watch, god forbid they turned away! I was such an attention whore when I was a kid … I dunno what happened…

***

If only I had been able to shrink tiny enough to play IN this castle...

I almost went into tears when I saw this: my favorite toy ever! This castle was a Little People castle, but it eventually became the “anything goes as long as it fits” castle. This castle was under siege by the GI Joes, it became soon the reign of She-Ra and friends, He Man knocked at its drawbridge! Even the Thundercats visited every once in a while…

And as a bonus:

RUN AWAY!!!

Not a toy, but a fixture in our local McDonalds playground. This tree reminded me of a talking tree featured in one of my favorite local children’s show – Titi Chagua. Talking trees were this thing I adored and abhorred at the same time. It eventually turned into indisputable adoration, until I was at last transfixed by the Ents. I <3 talking trees.

So, if you’re already over 21 and like going on a nostalgia binge … http://imremembering.com

Sunday mornings are something you lose after you stop being a child: the carelessness, the feeling of freedom, the anticipation of a day filled with games and fun. Saturday mornings were cool too, but not in the same way: Saturdays were the days Mom would stuff you in the back seat  early in the afternoon and would take you shopping for groceries. Fun, but not the same kind (plus sometimes you’d get a good berating for having too much fun in the fruit section).

Ahhh, the time is ripe for mischief. Banana stand: have at you!

My Sunday mornings were all about Dad. I’d gently wake him up at 6 am – …let’s be honest, I poked away at him, starting at 5:45 am. He’d begrudgingly wake up (although he would never admit to being bothered by it) and he would make me breakfast. Breakfast by Dad was a special thing. Dad didn’t know how to cook – he still doesn’t, unless nuking a cordon bleu chicken breast counts – so the options were limited. But he got creative, I think he barely ever went with the cereal-and-milk option. The usual would be far more delicious: sweet bread rolls with butter spread, sliced salchichón, and sweet cold coffee w/milk. Unhealthy as hell, but completely addictive, to the point in which I’d be glad to have that breakfast again today.

I'm amazed my blood health turned out normal after years of this.

After placing the breakfast dish in front of me and gluing me to the TV set, Dad would go back to sleep a bit longer, until the cartoon block was finished near noon and I’d go back to poking him awake. After that, it was usually game time: Dad would fill up the kiddie pool with the garden hose, and I would tow out all the barbies, water games, rubber toys, and other waterproof items. After that, dad would play with me for hours at a time, until Mom called us in to eat lunch. Those were the days.

Photo alteration of the 80s led us to believe that the whole family would fit inside these pools... we feel we've been had.

All Sundays… Father’s days …