The Arms of (snicker) Orion

You know the Zen question about a tree falling in the woods and does it make a sound if no one is around to hear it? My adolescence provided a similarly Zen question: If you pack hundreds of Mormon kids in a rural town with brutal winters, will there be anything to do?

Unlike the tree question, the Rexburg question does have an answer: You bet, school dances.

I don't know if everyone's existence at Madison High School revolved with such force and gravity around school dances as mine did. It might have been that Tony and I invested the Junior Prom, the Sweetheart's Ball, Graduation, and the various girl's choice dances with a lot more importance than other people did. But then again, there were people occasionally coming to these things in limousines and clothes that cost hundreds of dollars -- so maybe it wasn't just us.

Tony and I both acknowledge now that our so-called "superdates" were more or less just ego-feeding machines for us. Having a good time with our dates was important but only inasmuch as it meant impressing them and getting them to thinking highly of us. The whole point was to go so all-out in creativity, romance, and early 90's cool that every date the girls would go on after that would pale in comparison.

Sometimes the dates went great and, despite our selfish ends, provided wonderful memories for everyone involved. Other dates felt bloated, overlong, and far too orchestrated.

Still, for better or for worse, school dances provided a schedule and social structure for me and gave me something to look forward to besides play performances and drama teacher Val Johnson's super-cool zipper boots.

So I have this embarrassing memory from one of these aforementioned events. I think it was the graduation dance of 1990 and I went with Alisa Millar.

As I wrote a few days ago, Alisa was my first date, first kiss, first girlfriend-in-all-but-name. Actually, it was more of a girlfriend-by-default thing. Don't get me wrong, Alisa was a lovely person --charming, kind, really smart, and very sweet. But the reason I kept asking her out was because I just figured that was the polite thing to do. Someone asks you out, you return the favor by asking them back out, right? She asked me out first so I took her to the next dance. She then invited me to the next girl's choice and then I was obligated to ask her out to graduation, right? Looking back now, it seems remarkably naive. But that's appropriate because that's what I was.

Anyway, she and I were in the commons of Madison High School amid the disco ball fireflies, the construction paper decor, and the hundreds of other couples slow dancing in really impractical clothing. On the ceiling were mounted two mini-spotlights each shining on and then past the mirror ball. We ended up in the bright beam of one which effectively blacked out the rest of the world. It was like being onstage and the lights washing out your ability to see the audience. It was just the two of us slow dancing in the dark. Romantic, right? One would think.


So the Prince/Sheena Easton duet "The Arms of Orion" comes on. (This is 1990. The song appeared on the 1989 Batman soundtrack.) Alisa was an amateur astronomer and had even been to Space Camp so the star theme made the song one of her favorites. Which means she. knew. the. words. So there, amid the darkness, she stares up at me, looks fixedly into my eyes, and starts singing along, singing to me.

The initial lyrics to the song are:

"Orion's arms are wide enough
2 hold us both together
Although we're worlds apart
I'd cross the stars 4 U

"In the heart of a sleepless moon
I'll be with U 4 ever
This is my destiny
'Till my life is through"

Can you see how this sort of intensity might make a 16 year old boy a little unsure of what to do? Maybe there are circumstances in the world that would enable this situation to be something other than uncomfortable and awkward -- but whatever those circumstances are, they weren't in place that night. I appreciated the gesture and all but, more than anything, more than a million dollars, more than world peace or a clear complexion, I just wanted her to stop singing.

Sadly, that's not as bad as it gets. See, a few days before the dance I'd watched a movie on TV called Hollywood Shuffle. It's Robert Townsend's first film and is a parodic comedy about the trials of trying to make it in Hollywood when you're black. Townsend, who wrote, directed, and produced the film, stars as "Bobby" the protagonist who just wants a break doing something other than playing slaves, drug dealers, or "Eddie Murphy-types." He daydreams about different things he could do in movies and, at one point, envisions himself as a hardboiled detective complete with the fedora, trench coat, and feet dangling off the edge of his desk. The beautiful but treacherous femme fatale comes in, asks for his help, and then comes onto him. She starts making out with him on top of his desk and then his world-weary voice-over comes on: "Her breath was stinkin' but it was alright. You don't throw away a Mercedes Benz just because it has a dent in the fender." The line gave me a mild chuckle when I saw it and then I forgot about it.

But then, as Alisa is singing to me and I feel her breath on my face, the line comes back and suddenly it's the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life. The guilty smirk set in, then the burning in the cheeks that happens when you really need to laugh but won't allow it. Finally, I just started laughing and snorting in a herky jerky, trying-but-failing-to-stop sort of way. She looked at me quizzically and kept singing off and on until the song finally, mercifully came to an end.

It's important to point out that Alisa's breath was fine. There was nothing wrong with it all but the awkwardness of the situation and my immaturity just sort of took control. The harder I tried to suppress the laugh, the more insistent it became. After the song, we sat down for a minute and I discretely (yeah right) excused myself to go to the bathroom and compose myself a little. I got the giggles out, splashed some cold water on my face, and went back out into the loud, humid darkness of the commons.

I don't remember much else about that particular date. (She wore blue satin. I wore a matching tie and cummerbund. Is there a dumber article of clothing than a cummerbund? Is there a worse idea than wearing one to match a frilly prom dress?) We dated a few more times over the summer and then, when my junior year rolled around, I had the "let's see other people" discussion so I could ask out the much hotter and much less interested in me Megan Gage for Homecoming. High school is an ugly, painful, cutthroat time. I don't think anyone comes out of it saying, "Man, that was awesome for my self-esteem. I wish I could do that for the rest of my life."

This was all leading to a discussion about the idea of a couple having "our song." I mean, had Alisa and I stayed together and eventually gotten married and had kids, we undoubtedly would have thought of the Orion tune as "our song." But this post is already stretching the limits of web readability as it is so the "our song" discussion will have to wait for another day.