THE STORY: It’s the day of the high-school prom, and Norm Prescot, a love-smitten teenager, is beset with doubts. Will his girlfriend, Ann, keep their date or will she claim that she has to stay at the bedside of her aunt Gladys, who (she says) has been stricken with gallstones? As he waits, Norm’s agonies multiply: Does Ann really have an Aunt Gladys? Or is she just using that as an excuse to pick up with her ex-boyfriend, Doug, a thick-headed jock, who is not only captain of the football, baseball and basketball teams but also Norm’s obnoxious editor on the school newspaper? In a series of imaginative (and very funny) blackouts Norm’s worst fears become real as we see all that is going on inside his head through wildly exaggerated daydreams depicting the fear and embarrassment of possible rejection by the girl he loves and the gnawing suspicion that she has not been faithful to him. All ends happily, however, when Norm is jarred back to reality by Ann’s arrival—and, with a sign of relief, accepts her assurances that she really does love him after all.
This fast paced, remarkably original comedy (written when the author was 18) probes delightfully into the terrors and uncertainties of teenage romance—or the lack of it.
“…skillfully works a simple, perhaps universal theme—a teenager’s insecurity about being loved—into a complex structure of Woody Allen-type fantasies as hilarious as they are ingenious.” —New York Post.
“The writing is buoyant throughout” —Village Voice.
Included in the collection
Present Tense and Personal Effects.
