Scene: Suburban USA, May, 19-Eighty-something.

He is dropped off at a curb at dusk.  It doesn’t matter by whom; it was likely his parent because this is the late eighties and Lyft doesn’t exist yet.  He has no money for a taxi. He spent all the money he had on the tux rental and the ridiculous shoes.  There were other expenses as will be explained later.

            It is a beautiful May evening, probably somewhere in the northern half of the United States by the quickness of the encroaching twilight. He stands in front of a house he has never visited before.  He holds a powder-blue corsage that matches his powder-blue cummerbund, which he believed to be the tradition from watching endless hours of sitcoms.  He walks up to the door, his footsteps echoing around him, and prepares to knock.  God, he wants to turn around and go home. He wants to hoof it all the way to his apartment and go directly to bed, maybe scarfing down a few pretzels or playing a game of Metroid before he falls asleep.  He also wants to knock so badly.  Leigh may very well be the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, including the movies.  She isn’t just some pretty girl; she is smart and mature in the way that doesn’t; make you feel like a dumb kid.  In class, she is just awesome to be around.  Outside of class, she is flanked by other girls, some jealous, some genuinely close to her.

            Ten days ago, she asked him to prom.

            It didn’t make sense.  Girls really don’t do that.  He’s never been to a dance at all, let alone a dance with a cool girl.  He was in disbelief, then felt lucky, then he heard rumblings that this was a prank concocted by her crew of girls with hairsprayed bangs. 

“Of course,” he thought.  But he had to go anyway. Why?  Because, there was a part of him that believed he deserved to be humiliated.  This was what losers whose parents were broke had to endure so he should play that role.  There was also a sliver of hope that this was a legitimate prom date.  That he could spend the evening with Leigh, get to know her, dance a little, maybe earn a kiss on the cheek.  That was the moon and stars.  That was more than he could ever hope for.  So, he had to go.

            He knocks.  The girls are at the door.  Leigh isn’t even among them.  She is applying makeup in a mirror down the hall.  They smile and quote the movie that this entire scheme is in reference to and laugh their cute laughs as they close the door in his face.

            This is where the mind reels.  This is where stories are made.  This is where imagination takes off in dozens of directions.

            I’d like to believe that he knocked again and said something devastating and profound; something that shed some of his humiliation and soured their evening.  No, that is for movies.  Maybe TV.  Leigh and her crew go as a group with handsome, athletically built dates, have an awesome time, get drunk, have sex, and throw the memory of that night onto a lifetime pile of super fun experiences.

            He walks home in rented shoes that were too skinny for his feet.

            Is he a pock-faced geek?  A misguided dork with a thyroid problem? No.  He is just a regular white kid in suburbia.  A little skinny, maybe still waiting on puberty to finish its job. Not even ugly.  Just normal. With brutal honesty, he has forgetful features.

            He drops the corsage on the lawn, giving them a tag to enjoy when they eventually leave for the dance.  Tonight, he is a joke.

 Now we think of how the story can end.

 I have my ideas. You have some too.  Romantic comedies might have him meet a new girl.  It’s the eighties so the new girl in his life would be a little less flashy than Leigh, and all he has to do is let go of that fantasy and see the reality of the girl right in front of him.  Maybe you’re a horror fan.  He could have powers, like in Carrie. He burns the whole school down with his mind, laughing manically as the flames reflect in his teary eyes.  Maybe he enters a fantasy world.  Or, he gets picked up by aliens.  He works hard, goes to college, creates a billion-dollar company, finds all the kids that wronged him, and ruins their lives in a petty display of revenge. 

            Nah.  This guy walks home alone.  A shiny, black Lincoln Town Car limo pulls over a few houses away from his encounter and the driver asks: “You’re going to prom tonight right?”

            “The house is right down there,” he says.  “I’m meeting friends down this way,” he lies.

            He paid for the limo.  Leigh and her friends will be surprised and will pick up their dates in the limo. They will have a blast.  He could have canceled it right then and there.  He doesn’t have it in him.  He actually feels bad for the driver.  Maybe the guy will lose money if he cancels.

            The teenager isn’t sad.  He is a husk.  Emptied.  There is nothing in there.  No rage or misery.  He is the embodiment of nothingness.  He cannot go home because he would be forced to explain to his mother why he was back so early.  She would be pissed at him.  Tell him that he needed to get his money back.  She would want to know names and phone numbers.  She could not let things go.  He just wants it to disappear.

            Disappearing is his life.  A layman would call this boy a victim of low self-esteem.  Those people are all over the place.  Those who look in the mirror in disgust or are always shitting on themselves in conversation.  They beg for the contradiction.  From anyone.  This boy does not have low self-esteem.  He has no self-esteem.

            He has never looked in the mirror in disgust.  He has already accepted he is not worth looking at.  There is nothing there to see.  Why waste the time?  No one sees him in the hallway.  He gets bumped into all the time.  He is a non-person.  He will never be anything because you can’t get anything from a nothing.

            His feet ache.  He considers walking home in his black dress socks, but it’s at least another mile.  (I thought about some rain setting in, but this poor son of a bitch is having a pretty bad night as it is.)

            He thinks about dying again.  Not suicide, because that takes effort.  Just if he died.  It would end this giant bag of shit called his life.  His mother would be free to date people again, she wouldn’t complain about how much food he eats.  He could just… not be.

            But there is something wrong there.  Something scratches back at that thought.  It is a foreign entity.  The closest mere mortals have to a eureka moment even though it is currently indescribable.

            His feet now throb.  He stops in front of a convenience store and takes his shoes off to give them a breather.  The thought that fought back was very real.  He sensed that right away. (I didn’t plant it in there in reference to a John Hughes movie or something that Alex P. Keaton explained.  It was real.  It is real.  It’s as real as this weird thing I’m writing right now in 2024. Even though I am deep into it now and I realize the premise itself is cliché.  I swear that all of this was wrapped in a dream this morning.  It floated in that estuary of dreamtime and waking time when some of the weirdest shit crosses your mind. To be brutally honest, I was having another dream with Aubrey Plaza in it. I can’t control the dreams, man.)

            What is it?  What sprang out of nowhere like a lone wildflower in a barren hellscape?  Therapists will have names for it in the future.  There will be books written about it and promoted on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

            It is the presence of self.

The human mind fights back at depression.  This is what this sad sack has, although he does not know it yet.  His friend Mike would ask “What do you have to be depressed about?”  At least, he would if he didn’t move to Arizona in ninth grade.  His mother would tell him to “smile, it’s not that bad”.   He doesn’t understand the mechanisms, but he felt them.  At least one of them.  His mind does not want to die.  It doesn’t know how to fix his problems yet, but it wants to. 

            Then, he cries.  Just a little.  He does this from happiness.  It is the first time in his life that someone advocated for him.  And it was his own mind.

            He doesn’t decide to go to the prom and enjoy himself by dancing like no one is watching.  That’s beyond his understanding.

            He meets no wise man that night.  He meets no eligible girls his age on his lonely trek home.  They are all dressed up and at prom. (I will say, because of his absence of self-esteem, he has no idea that there are four senior girls at prom that would have genuinely agreed to go with him if he asked. One of them was really hoping he would.  He doesn’t understand that some girls enjoy nice, respectful guys.  Which he is.)

            Nothing cool happens.  He can’t even stop off at the arcade and kill some time because he spent all his money on prom bullshit.  He doesn’t turn his life around immediately.  He dates no one.  He graduates, though.  Which is nice.

            He waits until he knows his mother is asleep and slips into the apartment unnoticed.  He carefully folds his tuxedo and shirt and lays them over a chair.   He knows he should be pissed, but something else unexpected happened this evening. He discovered undeniable proof that he does not want to die.  That tiny little flame is there, always there, shining a sliver of light in the shadows of his mind.  He calls it hope.