I’m dreading prom, Sharon. Tim Weiss probably plans to spend the entire night behind the gym getting stoned with the other guys instead of dancing with me. He only asked me in the first place because Carolyn convinced Brett to get him to.
Mom bought me this hideous dress. It’s sea-green gingham with fat sleeves and a fatter ruffle at the bottom of the skirt. She took me to a seamstress to get the hem let out, and now it’s even puffier than it was on the rack and it covers my feet completely. I’ll look like a legless gingham marshmallow.
I’m so jealous that your school only lets seniors go to prom. I’m more jealous of your brother for having the nerve to just not go. Maybe next year I’ll be as brave as him.
Are you excited for his graduation, though? I know you said you were nervous about him being at a different school from you for the first time, but at least he’s staying with you and your mom after he starts college. Maybe it’s kind of good that he can’t afford to live on his own yet. I bet he’s glad he’ll get to see you more, too, even if he won’t admit it.
Got to go—Mom wants me to put my stupid dress on so she can take a Polaroid for Grandma. I cannot WAIT for this dance to be over.
Yours, Tammy
Friday, May 26, 1978
Dear Tammy,
Your collage for Carolyn sounds awesome. If she doesn’t like it, there’s definitely something wrong with her. I still have that one you sent me up on my wall, and I stare at it all the time. It’s strange how captivating it is.
By the time you get this letter your prom will be over, so I hope it wasn’t too unbearable. Did Tim spend the whole night smoking behind the gym? If he did, did you actually mind? I could see how you might’ve had more fun if he wasn’t around to bother you much. At Kevin’s prom, there was a group of senior guys who disappeared five minutes after they got there and didn’t come back until the last song, reeking of smoke and falling all over the place. Father Murphy took them outside, and I have no idea what happened to them after that, but none of them were at graduation the next week.
You didn’t mention it in your letter, maybe because you wrote it before the news came out, but you’ve probably heard by now that we lost another city. In Oregon this time. There was another march in the Castro. These protest marches are getting almost routine now. Getting angry and yelling about it. Shooting defiant looks at the cops. Carrying signs that say things like ANITA, THIS OBSESSION WITH US ISN’T AS CHARMING AS YOU THINK IT IS. (I made that one, but my brother carried it. He snuck it out to the car in a garbage bag in case Mom was watching.)
I wish you could come to one of these. Well, actually, I wish we didn’t need to have any more of these, but it’s not looking good. The latest polls on Prop 6 have it passing by a landslide. Our goal is just to win San Francisco—which is hardly a guarantee—and if we get anywhere else in the state, that’ll be nice, too. That won’t be enough to kill the initiative, though.
By this time next year, it’ll probably be illegal to be a teacher if you’re gay in California. Or if you just support gay people. Which I guess means if I want to teach, I’ll have to leave the state to do it.
As for my mom…well, at least she works in a private school. Not to mention, she doesn’t support gay people. Yesterday on our way in I heard her talking to Mr. Goodwin, one of the science teachers at St. John’s. He said he was worried his students would feel pressured to accept homosexuality because of all the media attention Harvey’s getting. Mom said, “Remind them that if they read the Bible, they’ll see God doesn’t accept it.”
I hope she never finds out about Peter. Is it really possible to keep it a secret