I walked into the school cafeteria, filled with balloons and crepe paper. Music blared everywhere as people danced around the darkened dance floor under a "Homecoming 1990" sign. Two weeks earlier, I worked up enough courage to ask Laura, my date, to the dance. She had hair as red as fire and a bright personality as strong as the eternal flame. My friends told me our going out was cute. I hated when they said that because it made me feel like a shy little kid caught giving his first kiss. During one point of the evening, Laura approached me, grabbed my hand, and told me she wanted to dance. I complied without much of an argument.

During our evening's last dance, a strange look crossed her face as we swayed back and forth like two drunken sailors. She appeared to be staring through the back of my head. I had seen these kind of "dreamy" looks on bad soap operas. Blushing, I returned her stare. The dancing, the music, and her longing glare all seemed so romantic. That's when she leapt.

Without warning, she pounced like an attacking tiger going in for the kill. I was being throttled back and forth as she tried to suck out my brains through my mouth. We were stumbling this way, fumbling that way, running into people around us as she attached herself onto me like a giant spastic leach. Pictures of a Praying Mantis eating its mate kept flooding my mind.

As soon as I got over the initial shock, I found myself going along with the sudden molestation. I did not care what other people might have been thinking about us. At that moment, the world consisted of only Laura and me.

After her hunger was satiated, she stopped and the song came to an end. She gave me a smile and said she had to go to the bathroom. I just nodded my head, still gasping for air and grinning from ear to ear. No questions about it; she liked me.

I walked back to the table where my friends were sitting. While I was talking to them, they attempted to cover up their laughs. I felt my usual shyness sneak back, so I decided to leave these mocking fools and mingle. Everywhere I went, people kept laughing and pointing. I gave up trying to figure out what people were finding so funny, so I made my way, still with a stupid smile on my face, towards the bathroom.

I walked in and saw the small crew of smokers leaning up against the wall, puffing away at cigarettes. I said hello. They laughed. They laughed harder. One guy dropped his cigarette and was sliding down the wall, giggling insanely.

"My God! Who ate your face off?"

I did not have a clue what they were talking about, so I turned to look in the mirror. My mouth almost dropped onto the floor. My lips were smeared in bright red lipstick. From this starting point, the lipstick trail travelled to my chin, my cheeks, my nose, and a good portion of my forehead. My entire face was covered in the stuff. I looked like some kind of obscene clown.

Thankfully, the red mask hid the fact that I was getting redder and redder with embarrassment. The guys started chanting my name while high-fiving each other. I stopped myself from crawling into one of the toilets and flushing myself away.

It took me ten minutes to scrub off the lipstick, but it took me years to outlive the jokes. I was given the honored title of "The only man to have ever been raped on a dance floor." Laura did not realize she layered my face in lipstick and felt horrible that everybody was laughing at me. I told her not to worry. It might have been embarrassing, but some kind of male pride arose in me. I felt like a little caveman waving his club in the air hooting to the others "This is my woman." She was a passionate woman who was not afraid to show it, and she was mine. When thinking of Laura and our Homecoming dance, I usually catch myself SEEING RED.