Melanie's Deviance Paper (excerpts)

The night before…I told my mom that I was going to do my hair crazy, hoping that when I was ready, she would help me out. Well, I wanted to watch ER and she wanted to watch some other show, so I ended up putting nearly 20 little ponytails in my hair by myself. I braided four ponytails, planning to unbraid two in the morning so some of my hair would be crimpy. Before I went to bed, my mom must have mentioned it to my dad because I heard him asking her, “So how weird is she gonna be?”

In the morning… I curled some of the ponytails and sprayed some others pink. Shannon told me that my hair was adorable and Alexis and Mary said they liked my hair. Kelly asked me if I dyed my hair and Elyssa asked, “So what’s with the hair? It’s cute, but what’s with it?”

Mr. Baker saw me in the hall and asked, “What’s that in your hair?” I told him it was just spray on color and he said that was good and that he thought that I may have “Joined that group.”

When Jeremy saw me, he said one word, “Deviance?” I said yes and he responded by telling me that I needed to go all out. Little did he know what I would look like later that night…

After school… I changed into my teal and pink tie-dye dress, hot pink fishnets, hoop earrings, sunglasses, black heels, grabbed my leather jacket, and threw on a black and a hot pink feather boas. Coming down the stairs my dad said, “Oh my god,” and, “You look like a hooker! You’re not going to that place tonight looking like that are you?” Since I was not leaving for a few hours, I started making some candy and my dad kept mentioning that I looked like a hooker and my mom told him to stop.

Time to leave… When Shannon’s mom beeped the car horn, I put my sunglasses on, threw my leather jacket over my shoulder, and walked my walk down to the car. Upon my entering it, Shannon’s mom exclaimed, “Oh my god!” and asked me how long I had practiced my walk. I replied I hadn’t practiced at all and she said I was hookerish. She had to fill up her gas tank so we went to a gas station on 22. When she was filling up the tank, I got out of the car with her. The first reaction I received was from a gas station man who was walking over to his parked car. He was looking and Shannon’s mom and I were laughing. He shouted over to us, “I have three daughters and they all dress like that at home, but I’ve never seen anyone like that in public.”

Next we walked into the place to pay and the woman in front of us did a double take as she left. The man who was at the register was a big, black, 30ish man who said I looked like Mae West. He did a little impression saying something like, “You should come up to my room sometime.” He said that if we would go to Eat ‘n Park at about 2 AM I would look mild. Some people may even say that they like my outfit and would ask where I got it he said. We backed away from the counter and the guy saw my entire outfit and said something like, “Woo, you look hot! I didn’t see the tights before!” When we got back to the car Shannon said that a guy in his late 20s was filling up his gas tank and looking in the door where we were paying. His girly was standing next to him trying to talk to him and he wasn’t paying attention to her. In an attempt to get his attention, she said, “Hey!”

When we got to Café Venue to see some friends of ours play in their band, we decided to go around the corner to visit Deuce at his salon. Shannon’s mom went in while Shannon and I stood by the door. An elderly man walked by and said, “Looking good,” as he went by and looked me up and down. Turns out that Deuce was in Virginia on vacation. Oh well.

We went to the entrance of Café Venue and I said, “I’m gonna embarrass you guys,” to Shannon and her mom.

The ticket man said, “Hah, you’re embarrassed,” and gave us our change. Actually we were on the guest list and weren’t supposed to pay, but we didn’t find that out until later.

We met some other young local music girls there and sat with them. Later, the youngest, Alex told me that when I walked in she was like oh my god, look at those fishnets. Her sister, Gwendolyn, told her to look at herself in her bondage pants.

The place started to fill up with area high schoolers that blatantly stared. Some guy against the wall in a red jersey was squirming around and looking at me. Some older guys by the steps laughed and pointed in my direction. A lot of whispers were filling the room too.

Finally, Jeff, Ben, Jason, and Jordan got up and started the first set. Towards the end of the first set, I was sitting happily with my camera in my hand and boas on my shoulders. A guy with beer breath grabbed my hands and pulled me up to dance on the empty dance floor. Let me emphasize that: an empty dance floor. Not to mention the fact the Jeff and Ben’s parents, whose mom works with my dad, were there and Jason and Jordan’s parents were there too. Camera in hand and boas falling, I dropped his hand, picked up my boas, and sat back down. The next and last song of that set, the 3 gals we met there got up and bopped around. The beer guy was still up and was started to dance with 14-year-old Gwen. Nervous, she pointed me out to him. Once again I allowed myself to be pulled up and dance again.

In between sets, Alex took a photo of me by the jukebox. Some high school girls behind Shannon were snottily ewwing and talking about my outfit. We also talked with Jeff and Ben. They both thought my outfit was really cool. Ben even wanted to borrow my boas for a bit during the second set, but he never came back for them.

When the second set began, the beer guy was dancing with someone his age that had her purse swinging crazily about. Some other gal joined them too. Soon enough Alex, Gwen, and Logan hopped up to dance and managed to persuade me too. The beer guy was the only guy on the floor with about 6 girls.

In between songs Shannon accompanied me to the bathroom to use the mirror. We had to walk up the steps and some girl grabbed at the boas. A guy she was with asked if she got any and she replied no. Their group all laughed anyway. Apparently she loosened some because there was a trail of feathers. The rest of the night the floor filled up more with dancers and the beer guy would sporadically dance with Alex, Gwen, or me.

The night was over. Well not for us. Everyone else filed out of the café. We hung out and Ben and Jeff’s mom came over, asking Ben, Jeff, Shannon, and I to pose for a photo. As we stood chatting amongst ourselves, a guy I had noticed earlier came over to me. He opened his mouth and I was knocked over by his beautiful English accent. Not literally, but anyway, he said, “I just wanted to tell you that I really love your tights.”

Blown away I shouted as he walked away, “I love your accent!” (We talked to him more later.)

Alex, Gwen, Logan, their mom, Shannon, her mom, and I all took the gas station man’s advice and went to Eat ‘n Park a bit after 11. When we walked to the back to our table, I got lots of looks and giggles. After Shannon, her mom, and I were done eating, we stood outside the lobby waiting for everyone else. When they came out, Logan told me that the three young girls in the lobby were talking about me.

On Saturday, Jeff told Shannon that the “beer guy” was named Justin and Jordan and Jason were his brothers. And yes, that means his mom was there too. Jeff also said to Shannon that everyone was asking him who the girl in the crazy cool outfit was.