Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Arizona New Wave Oversharing Extravaganza!

Tucson High School, 1983

You saw this coming, right? It was inevitable, what with all the reminiscing on this blog these days. Yes: that's my senior prom portrait, and yes, what you are witnessing is a real live New Romantic two-tone hairdo with long bangs down to my mouth. This is by far the most embarrassing thing I've ever posted, and that's saying something.

The event was a dud; a totally boring prom. My date was a very nice girl who I didn't really know very well. It was a situation where, for some reason, everybody I knew was all, like, "You have to take Estelle to the prom," and I was, like, "Duh, OK." I still don't know what was up with that. Were they trying to fix us up? Couldn't they tell? I mean, really.

Is that New Wave enough for you? No? OK, if you think that's not quite excruciating enough, here's a mercifully grainy shot from the year before, 1982:


That year, my junior year, was a lot more fun because a bunch of us made an extra effort to dress as "kooky" as possible and be "outrageous." I'm wearing white pants, black tails, a red shirt, black tie, and a homemade tiger-striped cummerbund. My date, Katie (great, fantastic, fun girl!), is sporting a fab handmade leopard-print minidress. Keep in mind that this was Arizona in 1982, so this kind of thing wasn't exactly normal (if not radical), and lots of our fellow students were pissed at us. Really pissed! My friend Karina, a willowy beauty, literally wore a burlap sack with arm and head holes cut in it and brought a blatantly flamboyant gay guy from the U of A as her date. When the food was served, it was so bad that we ducked out to McDonald's and made a great show of bringing it back in. Somebody called us out for "disrespecting" this solemn rite, and we laughed right in their faces.

I have to admit, whenever I hear anybody moan about how awful their high school years were, I feel sorry for them.

11 comments:

Fran said...

Words desert me! I love these tales of Arizona in the 80's.

Burlap. Goddam. Why didn't I think of that?

John said...

This is totally fabulous. I am having flashbacks to my black pants with with red piping purchased at the local new wave clothing emporium (one of, oh, three in the whole state of Connecticut, I think).

Nixie Bunny said...

Tee hee. You look absolutely divine - straight out of MTV!
That burlap sack prom dress story is the best.

Debbie Z. said...

More, please! These are wonderful.

Anonymous said...

And Barbie!!!!

Anonymous said...

Condi who??!! This Arizona-centric blogging is pure gold! You are on fire right now. Keep going!

Anonymous said...

Oh, my brother had that hair in the mid-80s. We called it his My Little Pony 'do!

Distributorcap said...

i thought the look was more 70s than 80s

Anonymous said...

Great story about the McDonalds and creative couture. Proms should never be taken too seriously. We had an Alice In Wonderland theme with heavy emphasis on the day-glo paint, bad-acid-trip aspect of the story. FUN! (That was in the early 70s so most people didn't even get it! Ha!)
You and your date (junior year) look like two people who would have been fun to hang out with.

lorrwill said...

"Couldn't they tell?"
Years of women drooling over Ricky Martin and all I could think was...

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should just think of yourself as very lucky and save the pity. Sometimes things dont work out for other folks and that fact remains regardless of of the cause of less than ideal lives.