Prom
Prom. May 14th, 2022. This is the stuff of legends. A high school rite of passage, essentially.
At the time I sit down to write this, my suit is hanging from the canopy railing of my bed and the room still smells faintly of hair spray and someone else’s perfume. The three-piece that felt so sharp last night now looks tired and limp, but that just means it put in a fair amount of work. It will never be worn again, for that is the gravity of this night.
Plaid, structured, and heavier than anything I usually wear, it let me pretend for a few hours that I belonged in a slower, older world where people actually dressed like this on purpose, casually. I was far from the only guy there with the turtleneck and chain combo; everyone my age cycles through that combination it feels like. I picked the turtleneck because it kept the lines of the three-piece clean, and the gold chain sat right where the light liked to sit. The cane, oh the cane! The second I saw this suit I knew I needed one, and being the Igbo man that I am, it just had to happen. It completed the character I was aiming for; it made me stand a little straighter and move a little slower, added a bit of swagger to my step (though, arguably, I already have an immense amount of swag in my step), and was more than a little fun to swing around. Every few steps someone asked where I got it, whether it was real, whether I knew how extra I looked. To answer: Amazon, real what?, and of course I do. Truth be told, I enjoyed all of it. The outfit was a version of myself I could step into and it seems I did a phenomenal job, as many said it was the most Ugo thing I could have done. But anyway, let me tell you about Prom.
The theme was A Night at the Met. The dance took place at the JW Marriott Marquis Miami. Parking was a chore, but not horrible. People trickled in mostly in groups, tugging at jackets, shaking out nervous energy. Sequins, satin, sharp lapels, soft curls, the occasional crooked bowtie someone fixed at the last second. Me being me, I was there a bit on the early side, so me and my boy Enzo snapped this flick before the dance floor filled in. It’ll be on my wall when all’s said and done, for a brother for life, he is.
To be honest, the details of the venue are already blurry, but certain pieces still feel sharp. Checkerboard dance floor surrounded by seating tables, and backed by a stage with speakers that desperately needed an eq. I can hear the bass more clearly than I can remember most specific songs, but I can assure you, both the classics and the contemporaries were played. Lights danced across the room in colors that did not flatter anyone, but they did made the space feel full and alive. At some point someone spilled a drink near my shoes. At another point a circle opened for a dance battle that half the room pretended not to watch while absolutely watching. Little bits of drama floated around: quick arguments and faster reconciliations, couples pulling each other aside for conversations that looked serious and came back with red eyes or big smiles. The works. I’ve had a couple falling outs myself. It was Prom, and most, rightly so, were determined to make it one to remember. Oh, Alexander Stone won Prom King, and Karla won Queen.
Hints that high school was ending were prevalent, though. Standing in line for the bathroom and realizing I would never see half of these faces in person again, or looking over at a friend halfway through a song and registering how many versions of ourselves we had seen each other survive, or watching someone cry outside the ballroom because the weight of all of it all had decided to register during Pepas, or your teacher on chaperone duty talking about proms from last year, or even worse, their prom decades ago. The 3 years I’d spent in Miami for high school was not nearly enough time to build the bonds that were being cried over, but between this and graduation coming up in a few weeks, it did feel like a chapter was ending. I knew that some of my classmates would stay close to home and others would scatter so widely that our only connection would become the occasional update filtered through someone else. But yeah, not the point of this blog post. I’ve more to share about the rest of the night, but I’ll leave it here.
My feet are still sore from being mashed on by the heels of girls I can’t even name, and it’s honestly a miracle I made it home this morning. Prom 2k22, thank you.