Suzanne Somers Didn't Make it to Prom Night

Submitted by Meg Wilson on February 6, 2007 - 03:04.

The LA Times has a very interesting interview with Suzanne Somers. Here's an excerpt where she explains how she's become who she is. It's the story of how she thought she had killed her alcoholic father before her prom night.

'I was going to my first junior prom, and my mom had made me a dress,' she said. 'And he's been watching her make this dress for the past week, and the excitement that was going on in the sewing room, and the fitting. She let me choose the fabric. I'd never been dressed up, and I'd never been on a date. And I was really nervous about the date coming to the house. . . . My mom and I had a plan that if [my father] was really drunk, which he always was, that she would hold him down on the kitchen table while I ran out of the house. And so I went to bed that night. I had the dress hanging like that on the back of the closet door. You know, you're 16. It was very exciting.

'That night, he came into my room and he slammed open the door like he always did.' Here Somers gasped. 'And he slammed on the light like he always did. And then he came at me like a mad dog. And said, 'You think you're something, huh? You think you're going to go to the prom and all the boys are going to think you're pretty?' . . . He was so drunk, and I thought he was going to strangle me, but he went past me to that dress, took that dress, and he ripped it in half.

'I saw a white light of rage like I've never in my life seen. And my mother came in and said, 'What, are you crazy?' And he took her and he punched her in the breast so hard that she fell on the floor. And I, without thinking, looked down - I was standing on the bed because I was trying to get away from him - I reached down, got the tennis raquet, pulled it over my head and with all my strength brought it down on his head, and I still remember the sound of wood connecting with his flesh and his blood spewing out of his head like a geyser. He made this low guttural sound. He fell to the ground, and I started screaming.'

She had given him a concussion. While her mother took him to the
hospital, Somers spent the night mopping up her father's blood from the floor, the walls, the front walk and, yes, their white picket fence. She would never be alone with her father again. But it would take decades, she said, to realize that he feared her as much as she feared him.


Story Source | add new comment
( categories: Odd Beauty Stories )