When did you last see the tramp?

Are you there, God? It’s me. It’s - uh - it’s happening again. I caught their gaze - immediately looking down at my chest. I tugged a little at the v-neck of my dress, an embarrassing attempt to seem more self-aware than self-conscious. Or self-loathing. Hey, I’m not sure if you can do anything about them staring, but… I didn’t particularly loathe myself for going, but I did for the expectations I held walking in. The second I saw someone I knew, my heart sank and my chest tightened as the mind fog brewed and crept slowly through my entire bloodstream. Social anxiety. At least help me survive tonight. Thanks - uh - Amen.

I didn’t expect the side-eyes of the crowd when walking through the gravel car park. All the way to the damp lawn under the clouds’ miserable blanket. The majority of the students at this school either knew me and loathed me, or knew of me and loathed me because everyone else did. Even my date was an outsider. When we arrived at his ‘group’, they said oh, hello to him and I smiled. They turned back around and closed the gap in their circle, while my heels slowly sank into the mud amidst the grass.

I began to write a list of moments in my head to remember. They filter through my mind into the category of ‘memories that would make a good story’. Even when I cry on the rare occasion, I catch myself thinking ‘now make it more cinematic’. I’ll even look in the mirror to see what all the crying expressions look like on me. Maybe that is what keeps me from crumbling entirely in public, I’m a great pretender. If only everyone knew that I was acting, they’d give me an Academy Award. I’m basically in a changing room, trying on all the costumes I could wear to the right party. But that’s not the sort of thing I tell people… except you - hello. 

The small talk was fine, but the judgement was blaring. From the parents at the round dinner table to the other students - all male, an all-boys-bloody-school. I tugged at the v-neck countless times when I noticed peering eyes. Whether they were admiring my sequins or judging them with their conservative, patronising nature, I didn’t know. I had been asked the same question a total of six times from separate people; what are your plans for next year? But lo, they were not merely interested. They asked, I told them my plans to study and become an author and humanitarian, a journalist perhaps, and they said that was nice. So I tried something with the next person: I said ‘I’m planning to study’ and they did the smile-before-taking-their-eyes-off-me-so-they-can-sip-their-cheap-drink thing. They didn’t ask me what I wanted to study, so I sat and turned to my date and the boy next to him who - I assume - still hates me. He’s quite a long story, that one, so I’ll spare the details. I tried to engage, but he spoke quietly so that my date would be able to hear, although I wouldn’t. Sly, clever, admirable, excluding. Been there, done that.

As I stood up to go to the bathroom, I watched as eyes began to rise, necks turning and conservations slowing. A deer in the headlights I was, until I lowered my eyelashes, held my head up, shoulders back and walked with my feet on one line, making my hips swerve a little. Let them look. Hey, wait til you see the back. I would turn and - funnily enough - I felt the eyes in my back. 

The line was so painfully long and slow that it took five minutes to move three steps more. When I was directly opposite the mirror, I leaned my back against the freezing tiles and stared at my reflection with a certain emptiness that made me think I was locking eyes with a stranger accidentally. But they didn’t move their eyes and I didn’t either. I reached up to adjust my hair clip and they did too. I inched my brows together in suspicion. Stupid, I told myself. The older women in the line, the parents who were obsessed with their sons, watched me watching myself and I kept watching myself so that they would keep watching and they wouldn’t know that I knew. A pointless thing at the time, and it still is, but it made me feel in control of something that night. 

When I eventually finished and moved to the sinks, there were two ladies using them. I waited behind them. They saw me waiting. They dried their hands. They fixed their hair. They fiddled with the non-existent things in their purses. I waited. I locked eyes. They left reluctantly. The ladies in the line watched. They looked the same as the ones before them. Clones. Like army reinforcements in a war, staring. I adjusted my double-d’s in front of them, fixed my lipstick on the edges with one eyebrow arched up - only slightly, for the effect - and checked out my back over my shoulder. Backless, I thought, great decision.

When the dance floor did, in fact, open up, the boys turned into animals. They formed a mosh pit and jumped in unison, circling the dance floor like a tornado, threatening to trample anyone that came near them. Unless - of course - you were part of their ultra-male wolf pack. They kept persisting for several songs, jumping over each other, pushing others into each other, crowd-surfing even. Their teacher had to stop the music and tell them on the microphone ‘this is not a football field, there are ladies present, waiting for you’. You know what they did? They started ‘boo’ing. At us girls around the dance floor waiting for our dates to come home from the war. They booed us for coming, for smiling, trying, lying, for waiting to dance, for existing in their prime time, trying to ‘steal their thunder’. It was my turn for stares and side-eyes. I felt the bitter, blood-like taste on my tongue for rebellion, scandal, controversy, cheeky evil. This was a turning point in the war. Perhaps this is a villain story.