Scrap post
Lord knows what I was writing this for.
Clyde/Kenny, Stan/Kyle
PG
Kenny had asked everyone to prom. Like, literally, everybody. He’d made a list on lined paper and was keeping it in his locker, in order:
1. Milly
2. Wendy
3. Bebe
4. Annie
5. Butters
6. Karen
7. Powder
8. Esther
9. Kelly
10. Other Kelly
11. The school nurse
12. Girl sitting next to me yesterday in Bio III
Milly was Kenny’s dream girl. She had strawberry-blonde hair which she wore down to her ass. She had pretty big tits and a filthy mouth. They’d kissed sloppily one time at a party freshman year, and Kenny’d never gotten over her. Unfortunately, they didn’t get on; Milly was dating a soccer player in the year above them at the time, and he didn’t take kindly to Kenny kissing his girlfriend. Moreover, the boyfriend didn’t take kindly to Kenny’s repeated advances on Milly. Kenny and Milly hadn’t talked since she called him a “white trash hick” at commencement exercises that year. “I have a boyfriend!” she shouted in front of everyone. “Jesus! Leave me alone!” But sometimes at lunch she made longing eyes at him, especially when her boyfriend was gone at college throughout senior year. But they were engaged now, apparently, and Milly’s flirting seemed rootless. Kenny slogged away from his rejection determined to find a date with anyone.
Since Kenny’s only real female friends were Wendy and Bebe, he approached them first. Wendy was going with Cartman, having lost a bet, and Bebe was going to Europe with her parents. Next came Annie; Annie and Craig were a thing, everyone knew that, but apparently Kenny hadn’t known that, and now he felt stupid. Butters had been standing there when Annie rejected him.
“It’s okay, Ken,” he’d said. “I didn’t know, either. Apparently Craig’s just real low-key.”
“He’s a dick, is what he is,” said Kenny, “and she’s a slut for being with him. Any chance you wanna go with me? Like, as a solidarity thing? It could be…” Kenny thought of a word. “…fun. I guess.”
“Aw, sorry, Kenny, I’d love to. But I got a date already.” (Butters was going with Powder, but Kenny wouldn’t know this until later.)
Next Kenny asked his little sister, who was 13. “You’re asking me?” she said. “God, you’re a loser.” But she said it in a nice way, a pitying way. In any case, seventh graders couldn’t go to prom, and Karen didn’t want to.
Powder was very apologetic, but she was already going with Butters. “I’m really sorry!”
“Sorry,” Butters said over mac and cheese at lunch the next day. “I thought I told you!”
“You just said you had a date,” said Kenny. He was beginning to pity himself harder than his sister did. “Not that you were going with Powder!”
“I didn’t?” Butters shrugged. “Sorry! I’m awful sorry, Ken. I guess I could tell her to go with you instead-”
“Women aren’t servants, Butters, okay, they don’t just do what you tell them to.”
“Well, what if all three of us went together?”
“Forget it!” Kenny said. “Thanks but no thanks.” He didn’t pity himself quite that much.
There were two girls named Kelly in the grade, Rutherfordminskin and Pinkertonstonfurter. Really at a loss, Kenny asked both of them to prom. They were both pretty ugly, so they had to be dateless, right? To his surprise it turned out that they were going together. Kenny tried to jerk off to this information, but it was too difficult; feeling sorry for himself made it impossible to get off to hideous, small-titted lesbians.
The school nurse was named Grethe and Kenny had reported to her recently with a bloody nose. She was middle-aged and wore scrubs to school, and a white lab coat. After Kenny apologized for bleeding on it, he decided, what the hell?
“Sorry, McCormick,” she said. Her voice sounded like an ashtray, and Kenny could definitely smell the cigarillos on her breath. “That’d be a serious breech of school policy.”
Finally, Kenny found himself sitting next to some girl in his bio class. She knew all the answers. Nerds were supposed to be dateless, right? It turned out she was dateless, but only because she was a freshman, and couldn’t go to prom anyway.
~
Kenny found himself sitting with Stan and Kyle, South Park’s answer to Isherwood and Bachardy, according to Stan and Kyle. Kyle had a DeviantArt account and was very pleased with his 13,300 pageviews. He also sold commissioned portraits on Etsy for $10 and had made two sales so far. (One of them was to Stan’s mother.) Stan was Colorado’s reigning poetry slam second runner-up, and was planning to study creative writing at the University of Denver in the fall. Kyle was going all the way to CSU, and most of Stan’s recent work was about this sad development, the pending separation angst. They were both pathetic, separately, but Kenny found something beautiful about the confluence of their patheticness. They were very interested in relationships, and liked hearing about Kenny’s sad dating mishaps. They had cautioned him not to ask Milly to prom in the first place. Now they told him they’d find him a date.
“Maybe I just don’t want to go to prom,” Kenny said. “Maybe I think it’s not worth it.”
“Oh, it’s worth it!” Kyle seemed almost offended by this idea. “What’ll you say to your children when they ask you who you went to prom with?”
“Um.” Kenny could not begin to compute all the variables that would have to click into place to make such a scenario ever play out. “Okay, well - I should go stag, then.”
“No, you can’t do that either!” Kyle was practically hyperventilating, which was weird because they were sitting outside in late May on the grass, and Stan was the one with asthma. But Stan was just sitting there with his arms crossed, staring off into the distance. Kyle tugged at his sleeve. “We need to help him. We’ll find him a date.” Like Kenny wasn’t even there, he was just some abstract science project.
“Yeah.” Stan’s attention snapped back to the conversation. “Look, dude, it’s not about going out with some chick. It’s about, like, your friends. And 18 years in this town-”
“Yeah, 18 years,” Kyle echoed.
“-and you’re our friend, Kenny, so if it’s kind of a celebration of like all these relationships, and the end of school and whatever-”
“Then why do I have to find a date?”
“You just do!” Kyle said.
“Well, I don’t think there’s anyone left in the class for me to ask.”
“I think there must be,” said Stan.
“Well, I haven’t asked Red, I guess-”
“She’s going with Token.” How did Kyle even know that? “Look, stop worrying. Just leave everything to us. There’s probably someone left who doesn’t have a date yet. And we’ll find them and bring them to you.”
“Great,” said Kenny, balling up his brown lunch sack. “Problem solved.”
“I hope you’re not going to throw that on the ground,” Stan said.
“Christ, you must think I’m horrible,” said Kenny, “just some dateless littering asshole.”
“Prom’s not until the weekend, okay?” Kyle stood up, adjusting the hem of his T-shirt. “We’re going to find you someone, someone great. I bet you’ll look very handsome in a tux.”
“You will.” Stan was gazing up at Kyle with big eyes, longing.
“Are you guys wearing matching suits?”
“I’m going in drag,” said Stan.
“What, really?”
“No.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” said Kyle. “Anyway, pre-party at my house at 6 on Saturday, right? For pictures and limo and stuff? Just bring yourself and your parents and we’ll find someone for you, okay?”
Kenny didn’t know why he was agreeing, but Stan and Kyle were his oldest friends. He didn’t see any reason not to trust them.
~
It was only on the night of prom that Kenny realized why he shouldn’t trust Stan and Kyle: His prom date turned out to be Clyde Donovan. He was sitting on Kyle’s front stoop in a white jacket and black pants, holding a white-rose boutonniere with a sheepish grin on his face. “Hey,” he said, when he saw Kenny walking up. “Um.” He held the boutonniere out. “Surprise.”
Kenny took the rose and sniffed it. “One sec, Clyde, okay?”
The house was crammed with people, but Kenny managed to drag Kyle into the guest bathroom. “Clyde?” he asked. “Really? An entire school of people, and you found me a date with Clyde Donovan?”
“He’s a really nice guy!” Kyle protested. “He’s in my painting class! All the girls were taken!”
“Surely there must be some nerdy juniors-”
“I asked around, I asked everyone! Stan did, too! We talked to everybody.” (This Kenny was willing to believe. Kyle’s superlative was ‘most likely to run out of oxygen before words.’) “He’s a nice guy, Kenny, okay, so just try to have fun.”
“Of course I’m going to have fun,” Kenny said, although he very much doubted it.
Kyle followed Kenny back out to the party, which mainly consisted of people standing around feeling awkward about their hovering parents. Kenny’s parents, or at least his mother, would have wanted to come, had Kenny told them it was happening. It was Stan and Kyle, of course, and Wendy and Cartman. Butters and Powder were supposed to be there, but Butters was perpetually late. Clyde was now sitting with his parents on the sofa, right between his father and his mother. Kenny didn’t really want to talk to Clyde, but he knew he sort of had to.
“Hey,” Kenny said, trying to get Clyde’s attention away from his parents. “So it’s sort of great that you’re here, because-” Kenny immediately regretted saying anything, and he just shrugged to conclude his thought.
“It’s so nice, seeing all of you kids all grown up,” said Mr. Donovan.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Donovan. “So nice.”
“Mom,” Clyde whined, blushing.
“Are you going to school anywhere next year, Kenny?” Clyde father asked.
“Uh, yeah.” Kenny’s tuxedo suddenly felt very stuffy and hot, although it was brisk outside, in the 50s and cooling off as the evening wore on, and Kyle’s cheap family wasn’t running the heat. “I’m, um, going to Park County Community College, I was kind of hoping I could get an associate and transfer, to like maybe someplace in a city-”
“Oh, isn’t that interesting,” said Clyde’s mother. “So’s Clyde, that’s what our Clyde is going to do.”
“Yeah.” Clyde was blushing now deeper than Kenny had ever seen him. “That’s weird.”
“It’s not so weird, I think, since there’s this one big community college, and-”
“Maybe you boys can get a room together,” Clyde’s father suggested.
“You know I’m not planning on moving out,” said Clyde.
“That’s right,” his mother sang. “My little boy isn’t ready to go yet.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kenny said. He hadn’t meant to, but it just came out. He must have looked supremely uncomfortable, because Kyle came to rescue him.
“My mom has champagne in the kitchen,” he said, draping himself over Kenny’s shoulders. Kyle was stiff and awkward in his suit and the long tie he was wearing was far too skinny, but Kenny was glad to see him and gladly accepted his offer of a drink. “Come with us, Clyde, okay,” Kyle said, and soon they were all standing in the kitchen.
There was a tray of cheese cubes and slices of summer sausage on the counter. Clyde stood next to it, and ate one cube at a time, first Monterey Jack and then Colby, while Kyle spoke.
“So you guys actually have a lot in common,” he said, pouring a glass of Freixenet. “You’re both very quiet. And you’re both interested in rugby and, um, Gus Van Sant movies-”
“Who’s Gus Van Sant?” Clyde asked.
“He directed Good Will Hunting,” said Kenny.
“Yeah, and Milk.”
“Oh, right.” Clyde stuffed a piece of sausage in his mouth. “That was a good movie. Those are both good movies.”
“So, yeah, you should have a lot to talk about!”
This really didn’t leave them with a lot to talk about once Kyle had left.
“I didn’t know you were into rugby,” said Clyde.
“Oh.” Kenny was counting the slices of sausage Clyde was eating. He was up to six. “Yeah, I do. It’s more real than football, if you know-”
“Oh, I do, I know.”
There was a moment when they stood there, just looking at each other. Then Clyde swallowed his seventh piece of summer sausage and said, “You don’t have to be my prom date, you know. If you don’t want.”
That was the out Kenny was been looking for, but he surprised himself by saying, “No, man, let’s do it. It … could be fun?”
“Anything can be fun if you have a good attitude about it.” It sounded like somebody other than Clyde was saying this, but the words came out of his mouth, so Kenny smiled and said, “Right.” Clyde was not a typically coordinated person, not in the entire time Kenny’d known him, since they were in preschool. But tonight Clyde’s hair was slicked back, probably with pomade, and he wasn’t even wearing his glasses.
“Did you get contacts?” Kenny asked.
“Oh, yeah!” This was the first time Clyde had seemed genuinely happy all night. “But they’re really stinging my eyes, man, like-”
“Oh, fuck. Dude, Kyle wears contacts. He’s got a whole fucking pharmacy.” Kenny had snooped all over Kyle’s bathroom, finding both the banal and incriminating. There was Kyle’s collection of expensive-looking “Curl Conscious” hair products, for which Kenny liked to make fun of Kyle, but there was also Kyle’s collection of disposable enemas, which Kenny had vowed never to mention. He mentioned them to Clyde, though, and he rooted around in the medicine cabinet for rewetting drops.
Clyde didn’t seem shocked. “Sure, if he has sex, that makes sense.” Clyde blinked his eyes into satisfaction, and said, “That feels much better, thanks.” Then: “But I don’t know if you should be looking through Kyle’s stuff.”
It made Kenny feel embarrassed. “We’ve been friends for a long-ass time,” he explained, “So I imagine if I could afford anything of interest, he’d be looking for it in my bathroom, too.”
“But that doesn’t mean you need to blab about it. Just seems like the wrong thing to do.”
Kenny tried to smile for the camera when they took their pictures out on the lawn, but he could barely force himself.
~
Prom swept through the night in a vigor of sips from a bottle of rum passed around the backseat of the limo and couples grinding on the dance floor. Kenny laughed at Kyle, who announced to the group that he was wasted before they even got to the hotel, then stumbled out of the car into Stan’s arms. Wendy had a room with some of the girls. “There’s no way I’m sleeping anywhere near Eric Cartman,” she announced, keeping several steps in front of him through the night; he struggled to keep up, huffing after her. Stan and Kyle had their own room, and Kenny joked in line at the buffet table about them renting a honeymoon suite; he didn’t expect it to be true, but the shade of scarlet they both turned left Kenny with no doubt. Then he momentarily felt jealous about them having each other, both generally and to cling together immediately after prom. Kenny was aware and unnerved that Clyde was still standing right behind him.
“My friends and I have a room, Kenny, a suite,” he said, tapping Kenny on the shoulder. “A nice one, actually, but not like a honeymoon suite or anything. But there’s room for you.”
“Well, I can’t afford a hotel room,” Kenny said. They were inching up in line; Kyle and Stan were already grabbing their plates and rolled napkins. Kenny had just assumed, perhaps foolishly, that someone would happen along to rescue him, to give him at least a bathtub to sleep in.
“It’s all right.” Clyde and Kenny had mostly spent their evening sitting in the corner, discussing rugby while they drank Cokes spiked with gin from Kenny’s pocket flask. “It’s already paid for. A suite split between seven people isn’t so bad.” Kenny did the mental math: It must have been Token, Craig, and Tweek, and their three dates, and … what, Clyde was just going to lie on the floor all alone while they slept in the bed, on a pull-out couch?
“All right, I guess.” Kenny snatched a rolled napkin from the pile. “Sure, Clyde, thanks.”
“I just have one favor to ask.”
“Sure.”
“Dance with me?”
Kenny has never danced with a guy before, not even drunkenly, as a joke. He suddenly felt very sober, despite the champagne at Kyle’s, the rum in the limo, and his spiked Coke. “What? Sure.” Kenny was obviously drunker than he knew.
Stan and Kyle ate with them, in the little ghetto they’d established in the back of the room. “Having fun?” Kyle asked. Their plates were all heaped with mostaccioli, garlic bread, and salad. It was not a very indulgent prom spread.
“Yeah,” said Kenny. “It’s great, thanks.”
“Haven’t seen you on the dance floor,” said Stan.
“It must be because you’re so busy humping each other.”
Clyde snickered at this, but his mouth was too full of pasta to really say anything.
“We’re having a nice time,” said Stan.
“We never get to dance, I like to have an excuse to dance.”
“Isn’t this even too bougie for the likes of you?” Kenny asked.
“Not really,” said Kyle, “not as long as you remind yourself that it’s all in good fun and you’re here with the person you love.”
“Yeah.” Stan leaned over to kiss Kyle on the cheek.
“So, what,” Kenny said, pushing salad around his plate. “If you’re just here with some friend instead of your soul mate, it’s not in good fun? No offense, Clyde.”
“I just meant that - ugh, Kenny, you’re impossible.” Kyle stood and threw his napkin down, and stormed off.
“Sorry, guys,” Stan said, following Kyle. “We’ll be back.”
But they didn’t come back; rather, they started dancing again, and soon Kyle was throwing his arms around Stan’s neck and laughing. Kenny hoped the unpleasantness was behind them.
“Maybe it’s a good time to have that dance,” said Kenny, staring.
“Oh, yeah,” said Clyde. “But dessert first.”
After polishing off two bowls from the make-your-own sundae bar, Kenny and Clyde headed for the dance floor, packed with couples. Kenny’s interpretation of dancing was idly swaying his hips a bit, and trying to keep his hands above his own waist. Clyde’s was ironic on purpose, with exaggerated comedy moves like putting a hand on his hip and the other in the air, sort of raising the roof, while rolling his eyes and snickering, sort of at himself and the situation.
Token and Red came over and said hello, and Token whispered something in Clyde’s ear. It made Clyde snicker louder. “That’s right, man,” he said, covering his mouth.
“Clyde likes you,” said Kyle. He averted his eyes, unnecessarily. It felt fairly theatrical, but Kenny was used to it.
“So you’re setting me up with some guy because he likes me?”
“Sure. Why, do you think I shouldn’t have?”
“Yes!” Kenny nearly exploded. “You tricked me into going out with some guy - who likes me? Well, that’s just great, dude, now he’ll think I like him.”
“No, he won’t,” said Kyle. He was remaining unusually cool about this. “Clyde’s more sensitive than you are, Kenny, you ass. If dancing with you a little and having a nice time on prom night makes his year, well, what’s so wrong with that? Why can’t you just let him have this?”
“Let him have what, this surprise gay prom date you tricked me into?”
“Oh, shit, here we go - it’s not like you got your own date. How many people did you ask out, again?”
“I don’t remember,” Kenny snapped, although he remembered perfectly well that it was 12, and he’d made a list of them, and on that list were the school nurse, Butters, and Kenny’s own sister. “I said I was perfectly happy to go stag, or not at all-”
“But prom isn’t about going stag or not at all! It’s about having a really nice night with the people you care about.”
“Maybe for you,” said Kenny, “because you’re like married and into all this coupley make-believe romantic how-it’s-supposed-to-be bullshit, but, well, I’m not. And it’s fucked up that you’d try to force me into it.”
“If you’re so not into it,” Kyle said, “then why did you ask 15 girls to prom?”
“It wasn’t 15!”
“Close enough.”
“Look, I like Clyde.” Kenny wasn’t lying. “He is a nice, fine guy. But the whole way you went about this is so weird! Like you think you know better than me and you’re trying to push me into some gay relationship.”
“I’d never! We were just trying to solve two problems at once, the problem of you being dateless, and the problem of Clyde.”
“Well, thanks for sticking me with a problem!”
“That’s not what I mean,” Kyle said, but it was too late. Kenny had already stormed out.
Clyde was sitting on a couch by the entrance to the ballroom, fiddling with his phone and scowling. “Have a nice argument?” he asked.
Kenny began to sit down. “Yeah,” he said. “Wait. No, we weren’t arguing-”
“It’s okay.” Clyde slipped his phone away. “If you were talking with Kyle than you were probably arguing. He’s a capricious little bitch.”
“How often do you hang out with Kyle?”
“When my friends are too busy for me,” said Clyde, “or when I’m painting.
Clyde/Kenny, Stan/Kyle
PG
Kenny had asked everyone to prom. Like, literally, everybody. He’d made a list on lined paper and was keeping it in his locker, in order:
1. Milly
2. Wendy
3. Bebe
4. Annie
5. Butters
6. Karen
7. Powder
8. Esther
9. Kelly
10. Other Kelly
11. The school nurse
12. Girl sitting next to me yesterday in Bio III
Milly was Kenny’s dream girl. She had strawberry-blonde hair which she wore down to her ass. She had pretty big tits and a filthy mouth. They’d kissed sloppily one time at a party freshman year, and Kenny’d never gotten over her. Unfortunately, they didn’t get on; Milly was dating a soccer player in the year above them at the time, and he didn’t take kindly to Kenny kissing his girlfriend. Moreover, the boyfriend didn’t take kindly to Kenny’s repeated advances on Milly. Kenny and Milly hadn’t talked since she called him a “white trash hick” at commencement exercises that year. “I have a boyfriend!” she shouted in front of everyone. “Jesus! Leave me alone!” But sometimes at lunch she made longing eyes at him, especially when her boyfriend was gone at college throughout senior year. But they were engaged now, apparently, and Milly’s flirting seemed rootless. Kenny slogged away from his rejection determined to find a date with anyone.
Since Kenny’s only real female friends were Wendy and Bebe, he approached them first. Wendy was going with Cartman, having lost a bet, and Bebe was going to Europe with her parents. Next came Annie; Annie and Craig were a thing, everyone knew that, but apparently Kenny hadn’t known that, and now he felt stupid. Butters had been standing there when Annie rejected him.
“It’s okay, Ken,” he’d said. “I didn’t know, either. Apparently Craig’s just real low-key.”
“He’s a dick, is what he is,” said Kenny, “and she’s a slut for being with him. Any chance you wanna go with me? Like, as a solidarity thing? It could be…” Kenny thought of a word. “…fun. I guess.”
“Aw, sorry, Kenny, I’d love to. But I got a date already.” (Butters was going with Powder, but Kenny wouldn’t know this until later.)
Next Kenny asked his little sister, who was 13. “You’re asking me?” she said. “God, you’re a loser.” But she said it in a nice way, a pitying way. In any case, seventh graders couldn’t go to prom, and Karen didn’t want to.
Powder was very apologetic, but she was already going with Butters. “I’m really sorry!”
“Sorry,” Butters said over mac and cheese at lunch the next day. “I thought I told you!”
“You just said you had a date,” said Kenny. He was beginning to pity himself harder than his sister did. “Not that you were going with Powder!”
“I didn’t?” Butters shrugged. “Sorry! I’m awful sorry, Ken. I guess I could tell her to go with you instead-”
“Women aren’t servants, Butters, okay, they don’t just do what you tell them to.”
“Well, what if all three of us went together?”
“Forget it!” Kenny said. “Thanks but no thanks.” He didn’t pity himself quite that much.
There were two girls named Kelly in the grade, Rutherfordminskin and Pinkertonstonfurter. Really at a loss, Kenny asked both of them to prom. They were both pretty ugly, so they had to be dateless, right? To his surprise it turned out that they were going together. Kenny tried to jerk off to this information, but it was too difficult; feeling sorry for himself made it impossible to get off to hideous, small-titted lesbians.
The school nurse was named Grethe and Kenny had reported to her recently with a bloody nose. She was middle-aged and wore scrubs to school, and a white lab coat. After Kenny apologized for bleeding on it, he decided, what the hell?
“Sorry, McCormick,” she said. Her voice sounded like an ashtray, and Kenny could definitely smell the cigarillos on her breath. “That’d be a serious breech of school policy.”
Finally, Kenny found himself sitting next to some girl in his bio class. She knew all the answers. Nerds were supposed to be dateless, right? It turned out she was dateless, but only because she was a freshman, and couldn’t go to prom anyway.
~
Kenny found himself sitting with Stan and Kyle, South Park’s answer to Isherwood and Bachardy, according to Stan and Kyle. Kyle had a DeviantArt account and was very pleased with his 13,300 pageviews. He also sold commissioned portraits on Etsy for $10 and had made two sales so far. (One of them was to Stan’s mother.) Stan was Colorado’s reigning poetry slam second runner-up, and was planning to study creative writing at the University of Denver in the fall. Kyle was going all the way to CSU, and most of Stan’s recent work was about this sad development, the pending separation angst. They were both pathetic, separately, but Kenny found something beautiful about the confluence of their patheticness. They were very interested in relationships, and liked hearing about Kenny’s sad dating mishaps. They had cautioned him not to ask Milly to prom in the first place. Now they told him they’d find him a date.
“Maybe I just don’t want to go to prom,” Kenny said. “Maybe I think it’s not worth it.”
“Oh, it’s worth it!” Kyle seemed almost offended by this idea. “What’ll you say to your children when they ask you who you went to prom with?”
“Um.” Kenny could not begin to compute all the variables that would have to click into place to make such a scenario ever play out. “Okay, well - I should go stag, then.”
“No, you can’t do that either!” Kyle was practically hyperventilating, which was weird because they were sitting outside in late May on the grass, and Stan was the one with asthma. But Stan was just sitting there with his arms crossed, staring off into the distance. Kyle tugged at his sleeve. “We need to help him. We’ll find him a date.” Like Kenny wasn’t even there, he was just some abstract science project.
“Yeah.” Stan’s attention snapped back to the conversation. “Look, dude, it’s not about going out with some chick. It’s about, like, your friends. And 18 years in this town-”
“Yeah, 18 years,” Kyle echoed.
“-and you’re our friend, Kenny, so if it’s kind of a celebration of like all these relationships, and the end of school and whatever-”
“Then why do I have to find a date?”
“You just do!” Kyle said.
“Well, I don’t think there’s anyone left in the class for me to ask.”
“I think there must be,” said Stan.
“Well, I haven’t asked Red, I guess-”
“She’s going with Token.” How did Kyle even know that? “Look, stop worrying. Just leave everything to us. There’s probably someone left who doesn’t have a date yet. And we’ll find them and bring them to you.”
“Great,” said Kenny, balling up his brown lunch sack. “Problem solved.”
“I hope you’re not going to throw that on the ground,” Stan said.
“Christ, you must think I’m horrible,” said Kenny, “just some dateless littering asshole.”
“Prom’s not until the weekend, okay?” Kyle stood up, adjusting the hem of his T-shirt. “We’re going to find you someone, someone great. I bet you’ll look very handsome in a tux.”
“You will.” Stan was gazing up at Kyle with big eyes, longing.
“Are you guys wearing matching suits?”
“I’m going in drag,” said Stan.
“What, really?”
“No.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” said Kyle. “Anyway, pre-party at my house at 6 on Saturday, right? For pictures and limo and stuff? Just bring yourself and your parents and we’ll find someone for you, okay?”
Kenny didn’t know why he was agreeing, but Stan and Kyle were his oldest friends. He didn’t see any reason not to trust them.
~
It was only on the night of prom that Kenny realized why he shouldn’t trust Stan and Kyle: His prom date turned out to be Clyde Donovan. He was sitting on Kyle’s front stoop in a white jacket and black pants, holding a white-rose boutonniere with a sheepish grin on his face. “Hey,” he said, when he saw Kenny walking up. “Um.” He held the boutonniere out. “Surprise.”
Kenny took the rose and sniffed it. “One sec, Clyde, okay?”
The house was crammed with people, but Kenny managed to drag Kyle into the guest bathroom. “Clyde?” he asked. “Really? An entire school of people, and you found me a date with Clyde Donovan?”
“He’s a really nice guy!” Kyle protested. “He’s in my painting class! All the girls were taken!”
“Surely there must be some nerdy juniors-”
“I asked around, I asked everyone! Stan did, too! We talked to everybody.” (This Kenny was willing to believe. Kyle’s superlative was ‘most likely to run out of oxygen before words.’) “He’s a nice guy, Kenny, okay, so just try to have fun.”
“Of course I’m going to have fun,” Kenny said, although he very much doubted it.
Kyle followed Kenny back out to the party, which mainly consisted of people standing around feeling awkward about their hovering parents. Kenny’s parents, or at least his mother, would have wanted to come, had Kenny told them it was happening. It was Stan and Kyle, of course, and Wendy and Cartman. Butters and Powder were supposed to be there, but Butters was perpetually late. Clyde was now sitting with his parents on the sofa, right between his father and his mother. Kenny didn’t really want to talk to Clyde, but he knew he sort of had to.
“Hey,” Kenny said, trying to get Clyde’s attention away from his parents. “So it’s sort of great that you’re here, because-” Kenny immediately regretted saying anything, and he just shrugged to conclude his thought.
“It’s so nice, seeing all of you kids all grown up,” said Mr. Donovan.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Donovan. “So nice.”
“Mom,” Clyde whined, blushing.
“Are you going to school anywhere next year, Kenny?” Clyde father asked.
“Uh, yeah.” Kenny’s tuxedo suddenly felt very stuffy and hot, although it was brisk outside, in the 50s and cooling off as the evening wore on, and Kyle’s cheap family wasn’t running the heat. “I’m, um, going to Park County Community College, I was kind of hoping I could get an associate and transfer, to like maybe someplace in a city-”
“Oh, isn’t that interesting,” said Clyde’s mother. “So’s Clyde, that’s what our Clyde is going to do.”
“Yeah.” Clyde was blushing now deeper than Kenny had ever seen him. “That’s weird.”
“It’s not so weird, I think, since there’s this one big community college, and-”
“Maybe you boys can get a room together,” Clyde’s father suggested.
“You know I’m not planning on moving out,” said Clyde.
“That’s right,” his mother sang. “My little boy isn’t ready to go yet.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kenny said. He hadn’t meant to, but it just came out. He must have looked supremely uncomfortable, because Kyle came to rescue him.
“My mom has champagne in the kitchen,” he said, draping himself over Kenny’s shoulders. Kyle was stiff and awkward in his suit and the long tie he was wearing was far too skinny, but Kenny was glad to see him and gladly accepted his offer of a drink. “Come with us, Clyde, okay,” Kyle said, and soon they were all standing in the kitchen.
There was a tray of cheese cubes and slices of summer sausage on the counter. Clyde stood next to it, and ate one cube at a time, first Monterey Jack and then Colby, while Kyle spoke.
“So you guys actually have a lot in common,” he said, pouring a glass of Freixenet. “You’re both very quiet. And you’re both interested in rugby and, um, Gus Van Sant movies-”
“Who’s Gus Van Sant?” Clyde asked.
“He directed Good Will Hunting,” said Kenny.
“Yeah, and Milk.”
“Oh, right.” Clyde stuffed a piece of sausage in his mouth. “That was a good movie. Those are both good movies.”
“So, yeah, you should have a lot to talk about!”
This really didn’t leave them with a lot to talk about once Kyle had left.
“I didn’t know you were into rugby,” said Clyde.
“Oh.” Kenny was counting the slices of sausage Clyde was eating. He was up to six. “Yeah, I do. It’s more real than football, if you know-”
“Oh, I do, I know.”
There was a moment when they stood there, just looking at each other. Then Clyde swallowed his seventh piece of summer sausage and said, “You don’t have to be my prom date, you know. If you don’t want.”
That was the out Kenny was been looking for, but he surprised himself by saying, “No, man, let’s do it. It … could be fun?”
“Anything can be fun if you have a good attitude about it.” It sounded like somebody other than Clyde was saying this, but the words came out of his mouth, so Kenny smiled and said, “Right.” Clyde was not a typically coordinated person, not in the entire time Kenny’d known him, since they were in preschool. But tonight Clyde’s hair was slicked back, probably with pomade, and he wasn’t even wearing his glasses.
“Did you get contacts?” Kenny asked.
“Oh, yeah!” This was the first time Clyde had seemed genuinely happy all night. “But they’re really stinging my eyes, man, like-”
“Oh, fuck. Dude, Kyle wears contacts. He’s got a whole fucking pharmacy.” Kenny had snooped all over Kyle’s bathroom, finding both the banal and incriminating. There was Kyle’s collection of expensive-looking “Curl Conscious” hair products, for which Kenny liked to make fun of Kyle, but there was also Kyle’s collection of disposable enemas, which Kenny had vowed never to mention. He mentioned them to Clyde, though, and he rooted around in the medicine cabinet for rewetting drops.
Clyde didn’t seem shocked. “Sure, if he has sex, that makes sense.” Clyde blinked his eyes into satisfaction, and said, “That feels much better, thanks.” Then: “But I don’t know if you should be looking through Kyle’s stuff.”
It made Kenny feel embarrassed. “We’ve been friends for a long-ass time,” he explained, “So I imagine if I could afford anything of interest, he’d be looking for it in my bathroom, too.”
“But that doesn’t mean you need to blab about it. Just seems like the wrong thing to do.”
Kenny tried to smile for the camera when they took their pictures out on the lawn, but he could barely force himself.
~
Prom swept through the night in a vigor of sips from a bottle of rum passed around the backseat of the limo and couples grinding on the dance floor. Kenny laughed at Kyle, who announced to the group that he was wasted before they even got to the hotel, then stumbled out of the car into Stan’s arms. Wendy had a room with some of the girls. “There’s no way I’m sleeping anywhere near Eric Cartman,” she announced, keeping several steps in front of him through the night; he struggled to keep up, huffing after her. Stan and Kyle had their own room, and Kenny joked in line at the buffet table about them renting a honeymoon suite; he didn’t expect it to be true, but the shade of scarlet they both turned left Kenny with no doubt. Then he momentarily felt jealous about them having each other, both generally and to cling together immediately after prom. Kenny was aware and unnerved that Clyde was still standing right behind him.
“My friends and I have a room, Kenny, a suite,” he said, tapping Kenny on the shoulder. “A nice one, actually, but not like a honeymoon suite or anything. But there’s room for you.”
“Well, I can’t afford a hotel room,” Kenny said. They were inching up in line; Kyle and Stan were already grabbing their plates and rolled napkins. Kenny had just assumed, perhaps foolishly, that someone would happen along to rescue him, to give him at least a bathtub to sleep in.
“It’s all right.” Clyde and Kenny had mostly spent their evening sitting in the corner, discussing rugby while they drank Cokes spiked with gin from Kenny’s pocket flask. “It’s already paid for. A suite split between seven people isn’t so bad.” Kenny did the mental math: It must have been Token, Craig, and Tweek, and their three dates, and … what, Clyde was just going to lie on the floor all alone while they slept in the bed, on a pull-out couch?
“All right, I guess.” Kenny snatched a rolled napkin from the pile. “Sure, Clyde, thanks.”
“I just have one favor to ask.”
“Sure.”
“Dance with me?”
Kenny has never danced with a guy before, not even drunkenly, as a joke. He suddenly felt very sober, despite the champagne at Kyle’s, the rum in the limo, and his spiked Coke. “What? Sure.” Kenny was obviously drunker than he knew.
Stan and Kyle ate with them, in the little ghetto they’d established in the back of the room. “Having fun?” Kyle asked. Their plates were all heaped with mostaccioli, garlic bread, and salad. It was not a very indulgent prom spread.
“Yeah,” said Kenny. “It’s great, thanks.”
“Haven’t seen you on the dance floor,” said Stan.
“It must be because you’re so busy humping each other.”
Clyde snickered at this, but his mouth was too full of pasta to really say anything.
“We’re having a nice time,” said Stan.
“We never get to dance, I like to have an excuse to dance.”
“Isn’t this even too bougie for the likes of you?” Kenny asked.
“Not really,” said Kyle, “not as long as you remind yourself that it’s all in good fun and you’re here with the person you love.”
“Yeah.” Stan leaned over to kiss Kyle on the cheek.
“So, what,” Kenny said, pushing salad around his plate. “If you’re just here with some friend instead of your soul mate, it’s not in good fun? No offense, Clyde.”
“I just meant that - ugh, Kenny, you’re impossible.” Kyle stood and threw his napkin down, and stormed off.
“Sorry, guys,” Stan said, following Kyle. “We’ll be back.”
But they didn’t come back; rather, they started dancing again, and soon Kyle was throwing his arms around Stan’s neck and laughing. Kenny hoped the unpleasantness was behind them.
“Maybe it’s a good time to have that dance,” said Kenny, staring.
“Oh, yeah,” said Clyde. “But dessert first.”
After polishing off two bowls from the make-your-own sundae bar, Kenny and Clyde headed for the dance floor, packed with couples. Kenny’s interpretation of dancing was idly swaying his hips a bit, and trying to keep his hands above his own waist. Clyde’s was ironic on purpose, with exaggerated comedy moves like putting a hand on his hip and the other in the air, sort of raising the roof, while rolling his eyes and snickering, sort of at himself and the situation.
Token and Red came over and said hello, and Token whispered something in Clyde’s ear. It made Clyde snicker louder. “That’s right, man,” he said, covering his mouth.
“Clyde likes you,” said Kyle. He averted his eyes, unnecessarily. It felt fairly theatrical, but Kenny was used to it.
“So you’re setting me up with some guy because he likes me?”
“Sure. Why, do you think I shouldn’t have?”
“Yes!” Kenny nearly exploded. “You tricked me into going out with some guy - who likes me? Well, that’s just great, dude, now he’ll think I like him.”
“No, he won’t,” said Kyle. He was remaining unusually cool about this. “Clyde’s more sensitive than you are, Kenny, you ass. If dancing with you a little and having a nice time on prom night makes his year, well, what’s so wrong with that? Why can’t you just let him have this?”
“Let him have what, this surprise gay prom date you tricked me into?”
“Oh, shit, here we go - it’s not like you got your own date. How many people did you ask out, again?”
“I don’t remember,” Kenny snapped, although he remembered perfectly well that it was 12, and he’d made a list of them, and on that list were the school nurse, Butters, and Kenny’s own sister. “I said I was perfectly happy to go stag, or not at all-”
“But prom isn’t about going stag or not at all! It’s about having a really nice night with the people you care about.”
“Maybe for you,” said Kenny, “because you’re like married and into all this coupley make-believe romantic how-it’s-supposed-to-be bullshit, but, well, I’m not. And it’s fucked up that you’d try to force me into it.”
“If you’re so not into it,” Kyle said, “then why did you ask 15 girls to prom?”
“It wasn’t 15!”
“Close enough.”
“Look, I like Clyde.” Kenny wasn’t lying. “He is a nice, fine guy. But the whole way you went about this is so weird! Like you think you know better than me and you’re trying to push me into some gay relationship.”
“I’d never! We were just trying to solve two problems at once, the problem of you being dateless, and the problem of Clyde.”
“Well, thanks for sticking me with a problem!”
“That’s not what I mean,” Kyle said, but it was too late. Kenny had already stormed out.
Clyde was sitting on a couch by the entrance to the ballroom, fiddling with his phone and scowling. “Have a nice argument?” he asked.
Kenny began to sit down. “Yeah,” he said. “Wait. No, we weren’t arguing-”
“It’s okay.” Clyde slipped his phone away. “If you were talking with Kyle than you were probably arguing. He’s a capricious little bitch.”
“How often do you hang out with Kyle?”
“When my friends are too busy for me,” said Clyde, “or when I’m painting.