Soak City: An Exercise in Humiliation
During my formative years, I was very self-conscious of what other people thought of me and my actions. At my worst, I often acted more like a gentleman around complete strangers than around my parents and family. Something in my brain just demanded the acceptance and approval of everyday Joes, so that even my household reputation was being diminished.
Thankfully, I’m over that phase of my life. Or, so I thought I was, anyway. Leave it to an amusement park to dredge up that old me and plant it, bubbling and disgusting, right in front of my face. Here’s how it went down:
My girlfriend and I went to Joshua Park for a couple of days, and decided to spend the night in Desert Hot Springs, a windy little town not too far from the park and Palm Springs. I was under the impression that the town’s name meant that it would be like Yellowstone “South”, kind of like Sonny’s in Santa Monica is Mary Anne’s “West”, or Canada is France “Northwest”. Everything is something, but farther away. Put that on a t-shirt.
Well, Desert Hot Springs was more like Hockessin, Delaware “West”, because there warn’t Nathan to do in that thar town. Our only option was Palm Springs, that pleasant-feeling haunt of the Rat Pack and Sonny Bono. For an option, it was not too shabby. On our way to Palm Springs from Desert Hot Springs, we passed Knotts Soak City. A huge, gleaming tower vaulted overhead, the top of the tallest ride at the park. On the sign, a buffed-up, hugely pectoraled surfer gave us the “hang ten” sign and invited us to get soaked!
I looked it up online later that night and found out it was open just for that week, since there were a lot of Spring Breakers in town. We headed to Target the next morning, picked up towels and sunscreen and made it to the park by 1:00. The mean age in the park was 30, only because half the people were under 20 and the other half were over 40. We were the only people between 20-40 in the whole park.
Now, I’m not usually dissuaded by something as insignificant as that, not nowadays, but I couldn’t help feeling out of place and borderline weird. Especially when I doffed my shirt to reveal a winter’s worth of body hair and pasty skin. Note to self: summer starts early out here. This feeling of unease and discomfort was exacerbated minute by minute as I waded my way through throngs of little kids holding plastic tubes and rafts, screaming and splashing water at each other. I just wanted to get on one freaking ride, that was it. I wanted to go on the yellow one.
The yellow one has a storied history for those who know about Soak City. Some say it’s as tall as a building (true), some say it kills at least one kid a year (unfounded), and others say it will inevitably shoot water up your rectum (true). What they don’t tell you is that if you’re wearing a certain type of bathing suit, you will have issues. I was wearing running shorts, which come with an elastic lining to hold the boys in place while you’re bouncing around. I thought it would suffice. I was wrong.
At the top of the yellow slide, you can see all of Palm Springs and the surrounding mountains. Breathtaking. When you sit down onto the slide and wait for your turn, that panorama turns into 30,000 feet atop a plane that’s headed for the ocean. Terrifying. The cross winds make you feel like you’ll be ripped off the trajectory path and sent careening onto a concrete slab hundreds of feet below, or maybe impaled onto the surfer dude’s hanging ten thumb. When the lady atop the yellow slide tells you, “Go ahead” in that you’re-too-old-to-be-on-here-dude-voice, you can’t help but feel your bowels turn to ice and your spine to jelly. You push off.
And you’re not even touching the slide, because despite the ample body hair on your back, you’re hydroplaning at 100 miles an hour, and there’s no way the walls to your sides will keep you in and you’re bound to die horribly, and why this way and not saving a bus load of Vietnamese schoolchildren from a suicide bomber and SPLASH! You made it to the landing strip, but WAIT! what’s this BUMP they put in so you get air and hop up about two feet and is that your bathing suit that turned itself around so that your package, or junk, or cash and prizes is hanging out for the entire viewing section, full of families and kids and girlfriends and boyfriends and old people, to see?
And that’s where I found myself: hurriedly fixing a FUBAR situation at the bottom of the yellow slide, averting my gaze from anybody’s eyes, hoping I didn’t scar some poor kid for life. And now I’m back to the insecure me, the one who just keeps running that tape over and over again in my brain like it’s a perverted Zapruder film on acid, all yellows and purple tubes and little kids laughing at me and parents asking why. But, I’ll tell you what. It was a freaking rush, and I’m going back for more. Only maybe I’ll wear those board shorts in my closet. The ones that go waaaay down below the knees.
Thankfully, I’m over that phase of my life. Or, so I thought I was, anyway. Leave it to an amusement park to dredge up that old me and plant it, bubbling and disgusting, right in front of my face. Here’s how it went down:
My girlfriend and I went to Joshua Park for a couple of days, and decided to spend the night in Desert Hot Springs, a windy little town not too far from the park and Palm Springs. I was under the impression that the town’s name meant that it would be like Yellowstone “South”, kind of like Sonny’s in Santa Monica is Mary Anne’s “West”, or Canada is France “Northwest”. Everything is something, but farther away. Put that on a t-shirt.
Well, Desert Hot Springs was more like Hockessin, Delaware “West”, because there warn’t Nathan to do in that thar town. Our only option was Palm Springs, that pleasant-feeling haunt of the Rat Pack and Sonny Bono. For an option, it was not too shabby. On our way to Palm Springs from Desert Hot Springs, we passed Knotts Soak City. A huge, gleaming tower vaulted overhead, the top of the tallest ride at the park. On the sign, a buffed-up, hugely pectoraled surfer gave us the “hang ten” sign and invited us to get soaked!
I looked it up online later that night and found out it was open just for that week, since there were a lot of Spring Breakers in town. We headed to Target the next morning, picked up towels and sunscreen and made it to the park by 1:00. The mean age in the park was 30, only because half the people were under 20 and the other half were over 40. We were the only people between 20-40 in the whole park.
Now, I’m not usually dissuaded by something as insignificant as that, not nowadays, but I couldn’t help feeling out of place and borderline weird. Especially when I doffed my shirt to reveal a winter’s worth of body hair and pasty skin. Note to self: summer starts early out here. This feeling of unease and discomfort was exacerbated minute by minute as I waded my way through throngs of little kids holding plastic tubes and rafts, screaming and splashing water at each other. I just wanted to get on one freaking ride, that was it. I wanted to go on the yellow one.
The yellow one has a storied history for those who know about Soak City. Some say it’s as tall as a building (true), some say it kills at least one kid a year (unfounded), and others say it will inevitably shoot water up your rectum (true). What they don’t tell you is that if you’re wearing a certain type of bathing suit, you will have issues. I was wearing running shorts, which come with an elastic lining to hold the boys in place while you’re bouncing around. I thought it would suffice. I was wrong.
At the top of the yellow slide, you can see all of Palm Springs and the surrounding mountains. Breathtaking. When you sit down onto the slide and wait for your turn, that panorama turns into 30,000 feet atop a plane that’s headed for the ocean. Terrifying. The cross winds make you feel like you’ll be ripped off the trajectory path and sent careening onto a concrete slab hundreds of feet below, or maybe impaled onto the surfer dude’s hanging ten thumb. When the lady atop the yellow slide tells you, “Go ahead” in that you’re-too-old-to-be-on-here-dude-voice, you can’t help but feel your bowels turn to ice and your spine to jelly. You push off.
And you’re not even touching the slide, because despite the ample body hair on your back, you’re hydroplaning at 100 miles an hour, and there’s no way the walls to your sides will keep you in and you’re bound to die horribly, and why this way and not saving a bus load of Vietnamese schoolchildren from a suicide bomber and SPLASH! You made it to the landing strip, but WAIT! what’s this BUMP they put in so you get air and hop up about two feet and is that your bathing suit that turned itself around so that your package, or junk, or cash and prizes is hanging out for the entire viewing section, full of families and kids and girlfriends and boyfriends and old people, to see?
And that’s where I found myself: hurriedly fixing a FUBAR situation at the bottom of the yellow slide, averting my gaze from anybody’s eyes, hoping I didn’t scar some poor kid for life. And now I’m back to the insecure me, the one who just keeps running that tape over and over again in my brain like it’s a perverted Zapruder film on acid, all yellows and purple tubes and little kids laughing at me and parents asking why. But, I’ll tell you what. It was a freaking rush, and I’m going back for more. Only maybe I’ll wear those board shorts in my closet. The ones that go waaaay down below the knees.
posted by Smidge at 3:57 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home