The first formal dance I attended in high school was Turnabout. Known in some circles as the Sadie Hawkins dance, this is the one where girls ask out the guys. Only nobody asked me and my buddy Eric to go with them.

As battle-tested veterans of the junior high dance scene, this development did not faze us in the least. Eric and I merely decided that we would attend the function stag and, y’know, pick up some chicks.

There were some flaws to this “strategy.”

In general, our planning was not exactly well done prior to the event. Most notably, we showed up to the high school half an hour before the ticket takers even got there.

Not surprisingly, the only other person we encountered as we tried to figure out where to put our coats was another dateless freshman male. After much discussion and scouring of the premises, I decided the best place for my coat was underneath a floor hockey goal in the corner of the gym. Certainly no one would disturb it there.

Eventually, the ticket takers did show up, and Eric and I formed the front of the line. Tickets were $15 for couples and $10 apiece if you were going as a single.

They sold us the couple’s rate. Which is good for the wallet, but it also opened the door to an even sharper turn into Awkwardville. Since we were in the front of the line, people seemed to take notice of this development.

As the dance moved along, things only got worse. It became readily apparent that we were not going to be picking up any chicks at this dance, as all of them had dates and I had not yet developed the skillz that have made me a mad playa all these years later.
And since the both of us were together…well, the whispers of “I think they’re a gay couple” became audible.

One of our older acquaintances even confronted us about it.

“You guys are here together? That’s cool.”

“NO!” I rather adamantly protested. “We’re here to pick up chicks.”

“Well, that was a dumb idea.”

Unfortunately, things were going to get even worse than the social horrors of a high school freshman in the ‘90s having everyone wonder if he was gay.

Towards the end of the dance, I noticed a guy and a girl come out from behind the hockey goal where I had stowed away my coat. When I went to pick it up afterwards, there was certainly evidence that they had been on it.

As it turned out, that ended up being the only dance I would attend in high school. That’s not to say I didn’t try: there was an ill-fated attempt to ask a girl to Homecoming junior year via a note underneath her windshield wiper. A year later, the plan was to man up and actually ask her in person, but that was foiled when another guy asked her to Homecoming over the school P.A. system.

All of that was a mere prelude for what was soon to come: the prom.