You’ll Be in My Heart (HomProm Version)

Crossing the border to go to homeschool dances

Just to the west of Pennsylvania, there was a place called Ohio. And just on the edge of Ohio, there was a place called Steubenville. As anyone who lived there would tell you, there was very little going on in Steubenville. So people from Steubenville would cross the border into Pennsylvania to taste the delights of Robinson, right on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, which boasted an IKEA and a Bahama Breeze,¹ among other modern conveniences.

This was just the way things had always been. Then one day, someone forwarded an email to us Pittsburgh, Pennsylvanians. It was an announcement from the Steubenvillers for a homeschool prom, or a HomProm, if you will (and oh, we did).

It turned out that the Steubenvillers hadn’t just been hanging out in Pennsylvania—they were actually holding HomProms in Pittsburgh. And not only that—they were renting out one of the boats from the Gateway Clipper Fleet!

Ever since I was little, I had gazed at the Gateway Clipper Fleet when we drove through Pittsburgh. Having a party on one of those boats seemed insanely glamorous. Leave it to the Ohioans to think of something like that! It would simply never have occurred to us. But give them a little taste of western Pennsylvania cosmopolitanism and suddenly they’re absolute dionysians.

On the subject of western Pennsylvanian cosmopolitanism, at this point in my life the only dances I had been to were square dances. We had to drive at least an hour to get to the farm where they were held, and they generally did not have what one might call a “high school dance” kind of vibe. We all wore those early-2000s tiered skirts, and swing dancing was quickly outlawed for being too sensual. (The one thing you need to know about our homeschool community is that it was a very intense kind of Catholic.)

The craziest thing I remember happening at a Pittsburgh homeschool party was when we noticed that Clare was popping pills. When asked what they were, she told us they were her “stress pills.” When questioned as to where she got them, she was vague. When asked what was in them, she took another hit from her essential-oil vape and said she wasn’t really sure. Turns out they were just ashwagandha.

But HomProm would be different. HomProm would be sophisticated, classy. There would be no hay, no glorified essential-oil diffusers. I was a freshman, and my friend Monica and I were planning on tagging along with our big sisters and their friends. My sister Jasmine wore a retro black velvet dress, red lipstick, and big sparkly earrings. I was not so glamorous, but I had a knee-length satin dress which I paired, of course, with one of those shrugs we were constantly wearing, and my friend’s mom curled my hair. Once we were made up, I pulled a sweaty bag of dried dates out of my purse. My friend Monica and I each chose one, and then we asked one of the older girls to take our picture with them. Why? BECAUSE THESE ARE OUR HOT DATES!

It was a good night. Being on the ship felt glamorous, and Monica and I spent a lot of time on the upper deck watching the sun set and the city light up. When “Every Time We Touch” played, we spun so that the city lights streamed through the sky.

However, there was one incident that perhaps should have alerted us to the tension that would exist between the Pittsburghers and the Steubenvillers: the organizers had the DJ bleep the word “sexy” out of “Gangnam Style.” So the song went something like, “HEYYYYYYYY [silence] LADYYYYYY.” It was very uncomfortable, and everyone just shouted it louder to try to drown out the silence.

The following year, the Ohioans decided to hold HomProm at a banquet hall in Steubenville, probably to save money. By this point, I had a close friend group who were all itching to go to a real dance, so we asked our parents if they would drive us forty-five minutes to get to a HomProm in the middle of nowhere. Elizabeth made a floor-length dress entirely out of duct tape, because that was a thing people did back then.

The boys there were different from the ones in Pennsylvania. And by that I mean that the boys in Pennsylvania were all named Michael, or Joseph, or Michael Joseph, or Joseph Michael, good Italian/Polish/Irish names. The male-name hegemony in Pittsburgh was so strong that for most of my life I had an embarrassing issue where I would call all men by the same name. Like if I showed up at an event and met a guy with a crazy name like Anthony, I would just call all the men there Anthony. It was horrifically embarrassing. But the boys from Ohio had trendy neo-Catholic names like John Paul and Athanasius.

Our group knew how to have a great time. We we were aware that our lives were different from those of, well, regular teens, and in general we reacted to this by being as weird and chaotic as we possibly could. We put on plays, had costume parties, and drank huge amounts of sparkling cider. Daisy ran a blog where she wrote rhapsodically about the properties of heavy cream.² Jeanine, in the grand Pittsburgh tradition, evinced a concerning overidentification with vague Italian ancestors and was known to scream slurs for Italian Americans that everyone else forgot existed fifty years ago.

When we showed up to the Steubenville HomProm, let’s just say we were ready to party like homeschoolers.

And we loved to dance! When the intro to “Cotton Eye Joe” played, I’d go feral. If “Honey, I’m Good”³ played, do you know what line dance I did to the chorus? The Cotton Eye Joe! There was one high school summer where I did the Cotton Eye Joe so many times that I actually injured my left hip. It still bothers me to this day.

The year they had a photographer? I’m not entirely sure where this photo came from.

The Steubenvillers were a different kind of repressed. Steubenville is in the middle of nowhere, and it is home to Franciscan University, a Catholic college that is known for its extremely earnest youth conferences, its philosophy and theology departments, and its many, many scandals. But mostly the youth conferences, which were very charismatic and involved a lot of praise and worship. So the Steubenvillers were an interesting mix of kids from intense Catholic farming families and very Evangelical-informed ministry types.

The Ohio kids must have been drawn to our chaos, because they invited us to come to some casual dances they threw on a regular basis, just like a Disney channel movie or something. Pretty soon Jeanine was dating one of them. People said long-distance love could be difficult, but they were determined to make it work.

And then, suddenly, the tables had turned, and the Pittsburghers were crossing the border to hang out in Ohio. In the past, this had only happened when parents had decided that there was some Catholic thing in Ohio that could not be missed. I had been to a Franciscan Youth Conference, for instance, and I carry with me memories of being concerned about the fact that the patty on my cheeseburger was grey and confused as to why every talk was about sex. There was also a moment where a speaker did karaoke on stage, performing her own version of “Lady Marmalade” which involved her wailing, “PRAY TO LADY GUADELUPEEEEEE!” (“Have you ever just wanted to belt out ‘Lady Marmalade’ but known you shouldn’t because the lyrics are so inappropriate? Well guess wha—”) But Mrs. McKeown had initiated that trip.

Usually when homeschoolers went to Ohio, it was for Catholic Family Land, which was a campsite that only Catholic families went to but sounded like the most unhinged theme park ever. Thankfully my parents were not into camping, and there was never any talk of us going. I knew people who did, though, and I had heard legends from one of the Michaels/Josephs/MichaelJosephs/JosephMichaels about this kid who spent the summers wandering along the beds of creeks in the woods, wearing a kilt and playing an ocarina. Sometimes he hid under bridges and surprised you by striking up a tune when you walked over.⁴

Here’s the thing, though: the music at these dances was so bad. Like we’ll give them credit for the fact that they had to fit in some songs for the swing dancers (sensual, definitely a step up from the square dances). That takes up a couple slots, to be sure. But beyond that, they just played the same generic pop songs (clean versions, of course) and then, somewhere in the middle, they would always play “You’ll Be in My Heart” from the Tarzan movie soundtrack. It slaps, but have you ever slow danced to it? A strange experience. 

Once, in a moment of moving self-awareness, they played “White and Nerdy” by Weird Al.

I can remember one dance held under a pavilion at a park where they actually played multiple Tarzan songs. My little sister Tini slow danced, probably to “You’ll Be in My Heart,” with one of the guys who organized the event. She asked him what his favorite part about planning the dances was, and he said it was definitely choosing the music. Tini let that slide in the moment but afterward she related the story to me with a scowl and snapped, “How could that be his favorite part? They just play the same stuff every time.”

The HomProms all began with a catered dinner. I don’t know if this is normal, but I think it’s probably not, because I remember the public schoolers going to the Red Lobster⁵ in Robinson. My third HomProm had a buffet, which Tini took one look at and despaired. I was scarfing down pasta, and I noticed that she had only two things on her plate, one of them being bread. “It’s because this is disgusting,” she said when I asked about it, and then, noticing that I hadn’t been bothered by the low quality, added, soothingly, “It’s fine though, I just don’t like buffets.”⁶

After we ate, the boys started the music and then yelled through the speakers, “CAN THE GIRLS FROM PITTSBURGH COME TO THE FLOOR, PLEASE?” We were amazed, and a bit secondhand embarrassed (not Ohioans telling on themselves), but of course we got up and kicked the dance off for them.

That HomProm, one of the Pittsburgh dads even volunteered as a chaperone, much to the horror and embarrassment of his daughters. He wandered around the edges, chatting with the Ohio parents and reading a paperback.

The music situation was really dire, though.⁷ Elizabeth had befriended a Steubenviller named Louis, and the two of them plotted to throw a Steubenville dance with GOOD music. They held it in a church basement, and it was a lot more fun than the other ones had been. Unfortunately Louis broke under the pressure, and when “Love Me Like You Do” started playing, he torpedoed himself across the dance floor toward the laptop, gasping, “OH GOSH—IS THIS THE CLEAN VERSION?”

All good things, even strange, fairly ambivalent ones, must come to an end, and this includes the Steubenville-Pittsburgh dance alliance. I’m not sure exactly when it ended, but in my mind, it happened when Jeanine broke up with her Steubenville boyfriend. She did it over the phone, because who wants to go to Steubenville, much less for a breakup, and anyway, she’d have to get her parents to drive her. Legend has it that she concluded the conversation by yelling, “OH GROW A PAIR!” and hanging up. After that, she had all local, very Pittsburgh romances, including one that involved a love triangle with Polish twin brothers. But that was later, when Steubenville had faded back into the mists of Ohio, taking its dances with it.

1. “Explore island flavors in a warm and welcoming atmosphere.”

2. Or double cream, for my European readers.

3. This is from the artist description on Spotify of the guy who wrote “Honey, I’m Good”: “Through these songs, I want to remind myself and you to listen to that sometimes-quiet inner voice that can be drowned out by negative thoughts. At their best, I like to think of songs as invisible spiritual chiropractors, they bring us back to center.” I realize the man has probably made a million songs since then, but I like to think that he wrote the lines “I’ve got her, and she’s got me/and you’ve got that ass” and then thought to himself—“invisible spiritual chiropractory.”

4. Recently I met someone from Ohio, and I asked him if he had ever heard of Catholic Family Land. His eyes widened. “Yes,” he said, sounding like he wanted to say something else. “Wow,” I said, “small world.” He was quiet for a moment, then leaned forward and said in a hushed voice, “Did you know that people… consecrate their virginity to that place? They spend the rest of their life there.”

5. “Shrimp your way.”

6. Tini was rightly skeptical of these dances, but she is also a real sweet person and by no means spent most of her time scowling or despairing—you’ll get to see more of her goofy side later in the comic memoir. She’s now a professional baker and continues to hate cheap buffets.

7. The “music situation” only got this bad in Pittsburgh for the kids who went to the traditionalist church. I remember those kids used to dread when something called The Tape was lent to their parents. This was a cassette tape on which was recorded a talk explaining that percussion comes from the devil. Some parents who had heard the tape had come to the decision that only Gregorian chant was acceptable, leading to awkward confrontations when their kids got married and, you know, wanted to have a DJ. When Regina got married, her parents compromised by drawing up an extensive Do Not Play list. The list must not have been very up-to-date, though, because the DJ played “Timber.” I’ll never forget the sight of the mother-of-the-groom dancing to it with abandon, completely oblivious to the lyrics, while the mother-of-the-bride stood on the sidelines, scowling.