The school year was coming to an end and summer was right around the corner. Our school, like schools all across America, was planning a rally to commemorate the year and to see our 12th graders off. The day came around and me and my advisory dutifully marched out to the football field where it was to be held. Since we were upperclassmen we got to sit in the bleachers instead of on the field like we did back in our freshman and sophomore year. There was music playing and it seemed to rotate between English and Spanish songs. After everyone was settled this guy came out wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a pair of cheap dollar store sunglasses propped up on his forehead. He got everyone’s attention and gave some typical opening statements, during all this he’d momentarily stop to hand the microphone over to the girl standing right to him and she’d convey what he said into Spanish.
After that was over the rally began. It stated off with your typical cheerleading routine, of which there were so many of them and ultimately quite mediocre. There was a relay race where one could only wonder why some of the people up there had been chosen. At that point, since it was quite a hot day, I had begun to sweat quite profusely. Next up was the most creative where two people were placed on this rather thin beam and both given a “stick” to knock the other into the foam below. The first to have achieved this is the winner. It proceeded in a rather feminine manner and it culminated in the teacher match. It was decided that a rather average sized man would go against this dainty woman. The male teacher rather half-heatedly poked at her with his instrument and won the first round. The woman then proceeded to win the next two, garnering her much applause from the students. Sunglasses then came back, along with more Spanish, and we come to the moment that has stuck most vividly in my memory.
This time it was a dance performed by students. Consisting of entirely female and were all either white or Asian; they were a much more elite bunch than the girls who had come before them, subsequently there were much less in number—all pretty, young, athletic. They trot out and this upbeat music begins to play. My memory fails me on how exactly the rest of this little dance went, but the only thing that made it memorable for me and probably the rest of us was at a particular point in the song where the rhythm was much faster; here the girls would turn around and quite bounce on their heels to the rhythm. This made quite a display of their shapely little behinds (wearing tight fitting clothing typical of these type dancers) in a manner that would’ve quite shocked the headmasters of old. I remember snickers from the boys near me and I couldn’t help but look on in quiet amusement. The song ended and the girls trotted back from where they came. Sunglasses again made his appearance known again. At this point we were quite far into the planned rally and people were getting restless. Right around here was when a couple boys got up and walked off. This then went on to set off something of a chain reaction and by the time the dust had settled only ¼ of the student body was left sitting. I, for your information, was a proud early adopter. I earned myself an extra 8 minutes of lunch that day because of it.
Lunch ended and it was time for English. We were analyzing a particular passage from Orwell’s 1984 on that day:
Suddenly, by the sort of violent effort with which one wrenches one’s head away from the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark−haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax. Better than before, moreover, he realized why it was that he hated her. He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because round her sweet supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.
While the teacher, alternating between providing us context (like who this Saint Sebastian fellow was) and denouncing what she termed the “male gaze” an announcement came over the loudspeaker. It was the principal going on about how disappointed he was in us, the students, and how much work had been put in by the organizers of the rally. He went on for a good 10 minutes and by the time it was mercifully over I was well past the point of wanting to go home.