Ok, so I admit that title is kind of misleading...
Confession #1 - He wasn't REALLY my prom date. He only agreed to come if we went as a big group.
Confession #2 - He hadn't yet realized/admitted he was of a homosexual persuasion. That wouldn't come for a good three plus years after this picture was taken.
Confession #3 - I'm totally not wearing a bra. (Ok, so that really didn't need to be said, but you'll see why I got that out there in just a minute.)
So, welcome to junior prom, April 1999. That's me there in the purple dress and my gentleman friend is Joel.
We started the evening out with some snacks at (I hope I'm right! I can't remember!) Alicia's house (??) (PS - I love that cat blanket!)
Had a wild and crazy time at the dance (OMG Robert, can't you take a picture without freaking out?)
And then came back to my house to hang out (some of us quite literally) and sample some of the wine my underage self had smuggled back from France the summer before. Who's bad? (Hi mom!)
But let's get back to the more interesting part of this whole thing. I met Joel at church, where I had decided to join the youth group in order to, well, meet boys. I'm shameless. It's a long and winding road, the whole Joel, Martha, Sara thing, so I'm not going to get into it. Suffice it to say that being a teenager is sometimes unnecessarily dramatic. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that so much stuff JUST DOESN'T MATTER. But I can't, so here I am.
Anywho, after I stopped going to church, Joel and I still kept in touch. In the fall of my sophomore year at UWO I got a phone call from him. In a not-at-all direct way he let me know that he had broken off his engagement (to a girl I went to elementary school with and could not stand) because he had fallen in love with her best friend's (now ex-)fiance - a man. Juicy! What drama!
I was not at all suprised by this revelation. I had questioned him about it previously and had managed to offend him so thoroughly he stopped talking to me for a few months. I'm not sure what set my gay-dar off, but perhaps it was his appreciation of my kick-ass white Spice Girl platform shoes and his endorsement of "girl power"
He came up to visit me a little while later and we went to sing karaoke at Park Central. Coming out was definitely good for him - he looked healthier and was a snazzy dresser. Unfortunately I couldn't find any pictures of that...
We've kind of lost touch at this point. Last I heard he was raising dogs in Elkart Lake or something.
For me, he'll always be the first guy I turned gay. And a excellent quasi prom date - what a dancer!
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