. . . Think of Missy and Heidi who knew all along, Everybody's got the right to go to the prom

The above title comes from the song "Missy and Heidi" by Romanovsky and Phillips, who wrote about a young lesbian couple who went to their senior prom together in Manassas, Virginia; I am unclear about when (YOU Google it if you really want/need to know) but it was prior to 1992, since that is the copyright date on the song itself.

Now obviously, my reason for writing about this concerns the young lesbian couple in Mississippi, whose school canceled their prom in order to prevent them from attending. The justification was the usual blah-blah-blah bullsh*t, but the reality of course is simple homophobia.

I heard about this online, of course, but what really brought it home hard was when my straight, married doctor brought it up when I saw him on Friday last; that someone from "outside" of my world was not only aware of it, but wanted to discuss it. Such is the current power of the media, not to mention the Internet.

I felt compelled to write/talk about because my own story on the subject has always been one of particular pain for me, and the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, pseudo-adulthood and greater knowledge of the world, how it worked then as opposed to now, etc. has not lessened the pain.

The year was 1980, and I was a senior at John F. Kennedy High School in Richmond, California. I had come out of the closet as gay the previous summer, and in the fall became one of the "charter members" of a newly-formed support group for gay men under 21; please remember that, at that time, for anyone who was coming out, the resources available for meeting others were EXTREMELY limited, especially if you were not old enough to drink legally, as the GLBT culture was primarily focused in bars and clubs as the cornerstone of social networking. Well, in the spring of 1980, the subject of proms came up, and as a lot of us were approaching high school graduation, we were a bit stymied. As it turned out, one of our number, Tim Curran, took a guy, not a boyfriend per se, but still, as his date to his senior prom that year. I too announced my intention to do the same, and I asked a guy named Bryan Woodard to go with me; he said "yes." But for the most part, it was not an available option for most of us, so we created the "FIRST GAY PROM" (emphasis added for those who have tried to steal our thunder over the ensuing years).

My date for that event was a woman I had met at school, Marusia Allen. My justification for this was that, if I was taking a guy to the "straight prom," I should take a woman to the "gay prom." How incredibly enlightened and politically correct and so forth, but the reality is, I DIDN'T have a date for the Gay Prom (in unison, everybody -- "AWWWWW!!!).

Cutting to the chase, however, I don't know how it happened, possibly through the connections of the photographer we got to take our "prom pictures", but there was a reporter there that night from the Oakland Tribune; she interviewed me, Marusia, and a number of other attendees that night. Those interviews became the building block of a three-part article published in the Tribune about the realities of being young and gay and male at that time and in that place; an article which was to have rather significant fallout, and not just for me.

Now, I was not of age at the time, so they could not publish my full name; they just used my first name for the article. Marusia, on the other hand was old enough, and gave her full name for publication. And it not take long for this to come to the attention of the powers-that-were at Kennedy, and as a result, I and my parents were called in for a meeting with the principal and the dean. We were informed that, if it truly were my intention to bring a same-sex date to the prom, that they would not allow me to purchase tickets, "for my own safety," as they put it. Now, I had not told my parents I was taking Bryan; another female friend, Amy, had agreed to front for me, so this was really BIG news for them. What was worse, however, was that they sided with the administration, and informed me that they would not allow it either. My reaction was typical adolescent self-righteous anger and angst; I got up and informed them all that I was dropping out of school. And stormed out.

I don't know quite how I managed it, but somehow I got to my friend Paul's place in Berkeley without my parents stopping me; he happened to be home for some reason, even though it was the middle of the day in the middle of a work week. Paul, ever the assimilationist, told me more or less to take what I was being given and be thankful; after all, it wasn't like my parents had thrown me out when they found out that I was gay or anything, I should in fact consider myself lucky. Which, again in hindsight, was more or less true. So I swallowed my angst, went back to school, apologized for my outburst, and went back to class.

To more fully explain the "for my own safety" stuff, what one must understand is that, Kennedy High School had been built in the 1960's, during the beginning of the desegregation movement. And someone, with a complete lack of forethought, had laid out the district plan so that it included both upper-middle-class Caucasian students from El Cerrito (where I lived) and lower-middle-class African-American students from Richmond. The resultant school was actually little more than a prison; the original building (still standing) is a huge rectangular structure, built around a central open "quad", which has NO WINDOWS. The only ways in or out were through the massive steel front doors, which could be locked from the outside -- if a race riot ever broke out in the school, all they had to do was lock those doors, and the only way out would be straight up, through the three-storey tall open air atrium over the quad. Caucasian students were the minority there; still are, for all I know. So I think that they THOUGHT that this was justified rationale.

It was, however, an example of how out of touch with the actual pulse of the students they were, because, you see, most of the other students wanted NOTHING to do with me, not even TOUCH me. It was a matter of shock for most of them that I "admitted" I was gay in the first place; for most of them, they thought it was contagious, some form of "cooties." Now, I have no way of knowing what might have happened had I been allowed to go, but I do know that Marusia, who was African-American, did go with a white male date, and that didn't spark any riots. So maybe they were being overly reactionary, maybe not; I will never know. All I do know is, I didn't get to go to my senior prom.

Now, of course, that was 30 years ago. In the interim, there have been several, not TERRIBLY high-profile, in the overall scheme of things, similar situations, where the prom-goers had the backing of their parents, plus the ACLU, etc. to enable them to go. There have also been other, alternative proms like ours (BUT, AGAIN, NOT THE FIRST!!!!) created for the same purposes as ours. And there has also been a HUGE shift in the course of the world and its communication network, i.e. the Internet. And so Melissa's plight in Mississippi is now world news, and attracting world-wide attention, something that I or anybody else could possibly have envisioned back in 1980. But obviously, the passage of time, and progress, has not impacted the minds of the powers-that-be at her school. Which is unfortunate.

Now, my take on it now, when I first heard about it, was that one of three things would happen:

First, nothing much. And I frankly didn't believe that was a reasonable prospect, not when the rest of the world is watching.

Second, that the students of the school themselves would take it upon themselves to protest. My experience of teenagers, having been one myself not TOO long ago, is that they HATE for "adults" to make decisions for them, particularly when those decisions do not directly impact the adults in any particularly significant way. And the "adults" in question here are obviously operating with a completely out-of-touch reality system, if they think that what would have been SO upsetting for them when it was THEIR prom would have the same impact on their offspring, who are of course, in many ways, infinitely more sophisticated than their parents, despite still being what they are, which is high school students. But I have been equally surprised (not to mention disappointed) to hear that the reaction has been so, well, luke-warm on their parts, as I would have been had there been no response at all. Where is the adolescent angst that I remember having at that age?

My third scenario, and which I deemed most likely, was that some well-meaning gay or lesbian (hopefully a celebrity - can you hear me ELLEN? This is your neck of the woods we're talking about) or better yet, right-thinking straight celebrities, say Brad and Angelina, who have publicly declared they will not marry until that is an available option for ALL Americans, would step in, rent the biggest ballroom in the swankiest hotel available, and host a prom for them. And I was close - or at least so far as I have heard, since a gay male hotel owner in New Orleans has offered to do just that, is my understanding.

But, what it all comes down to, in my little universe, is this: IT'A A PROM, for crying out loud. IT IS ONE NIGHT! Do you fools honestly think that the fact that two girls came to the prom together as a couple is what EVERYONE is going to remember? HELL NO! But what they will remember is the maelstrom out of a molehill made by a bunch of ignorant "educators" who have yet to figure out that this is the 21st century, that we are no longer individual citizens of our little bum-fuck towns in the middle of nowhere, we are citizens of the world, a much bigger, brighter, more diverse and interesting place, and when you make stupid mistakes, as likely as not, it is YOUR stupidity that is going to become the focus of attention, not the matching genitalia of two of the prom-goers.

Or so I would hope. Just my take on it, you understand.

UPDATE FROM RON ROMANOVSKY: Performance of "Missy and Heidi"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGp14a-hd8o