“Amusement Park” by Dylan Pyles

The girls dress in interesting clothes and wear their hair in interesting styles. Maybe a little extra eye shadow or blush, or just a bit of glitter. It’s about brighter colors, something so the boyfriends will feel a significance about the night, setting it off from a school day. The lights are everywhere and they dance. They dance with the glitter on the girl’s cheeks and on the tops of their heads while they wait in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl. Some girls loosely hold their boyfriend’s hand in their own, playing uninterested; others drape themselves all the way over, giving themselves up right away. They act in ways their mothers would find inappropriate, whether it’s mere hand-holding, draping, or the tying of their blouses tightly under their blooming chests, so that the skin of their bellies shows, the humid night glistens under the dancing lights, seduces the boys.

Before the lights come on, before the sun goes down, the park is dead. The Tilt-a-Whirl tilts the same, goes the same speed and all, but you don’t really get dizzy until the bright lights are there to spin you, to blur and flash and confuse you about where you are until you have to close your eyes and try not to think about where’s where. This is, we think, part of why kids want to come at night.

Their parents drop them at the gate where they can pull right up without paying anything for parking. This is where the girls wait until their mothers are well out of sight and tie their shirts up before they go in. Perhaps the parents will drop young lovers and say to them “You kids have fun tonight.” And say it with a kidding wink or smile that means something they don’t really want it to mean, but it does. Then they drive off and wonder about the reality of hand-holding or draping or bare bellied daughters. This all happens at dusk, like an age-specific religious exodus; even more in September and October than the summer months because the park is only open on weekends in the fall and the sun goes down earlier and it is cooler. Maybe they all go out to eat before they part ways, maybe there is a bond between the nuclear family that is deeper than we think.

Inside the lights are already warmed up and glaring with maximum energy. The energy spills over out into the grounds of the park and drowns it. The atmosphere fills thick with this energy and the kids are a spark that ignites the whole place with an inexplicable fire and they all burn strong with this fire for at least three hours, maybe all the way until closing time at midnight, where even the most timid of hand-holders become drapers and all of the bellies are exposed whether they want to be or not, and little boy hands are tickling those bellies in the dark behind the restrooms. The minds that control the hands wish the lights never existed at all, no matter how much more fun they made the Tilt-a-Whirl or the Screaming Eagle, wish it was all dark and hands might tickle more interesting areas.

There are certain types whose parents don’t come back for them until closing time, and those moments after the initial fire is burnt out and before the curious pubescent fire is promptly doused are so precious to them. You can tell who comes back every week and stays all night because they find ways to get their shirts off without anyone knowing. So you can’t really tell. But you can by the looks on their faces when they pop out of nowhere, suddenly rematerialize under the lights and the boy walks a certain way and the girl walks a totally different way but they mean the same thing. You know shirts had come off. Say a blouse was tied before and isn’t now. That’s because there isn’t any reason to show the belly anymore. Or maybe there is and it’s just an accident.

The Screaming Eagle is the most frightening attraction at the park and the line leading up to it reflects the popularity of fear, the intrinsic genius in the use of fear as a commodity. It is at the back of the park, so the sundown crew doesn’t usually reach it until late in the evening. By this time few are still holding hands. There is holding, sure, but it has evolved. It’s around the waist; heads on shoulders, fingers in back jean pockets. God knows what sort of atrocities being whispered into ears. On occasion, you may get in close enough to hear a sample. Maybe “I would like to see you without these clothes on.” or “Press it against me.” Dig, it isn’t just the boys whispering or the girls. It’s just, what else is there to talk about while waiting in such a long line as the one at the Screaming Eagle? “Would you look at these bright lights”? “Aren’t we having fun tonight”? This is more inappropriate than what is actually said. Inventiveness is key, is what makes the scene.

The Screaming Eagle was the first roller coaster in the state to make a loop. To go upside down. The first few years it was open, the park made more money than it had in the entirety of its existence before. People came from everywhere, some all the way across the country, just to go upside down, to make the loop. You feel like you might fall out, but you’re going fast enough that you’re forced back into your seat right when you think you really will. There is also a full shoulder harness that secures your upper body, instead of just a seatbelt and lap-bar like on the ones where you don’t go upside down. There are obvious extra safety precautions to be taken, on account of you make a loop instead of just going up high and down real fast. You take these precautions to ensure your safety. Four years after the ride was built, some wiseass kid squeezed through the harness and tried to climb into a different seat right before the loop. He didn’t do it all fast enough, and fell out during the loop and fucking died right on impact a hundred feet or whatever it is underneath. The park closed for the rest of the year and most people were afraid of the Screaming Eagle, too afraid to ride it, for a year or two. Most of the kids in line for it now probably don’t even know that story or think it’s just a myth.

By the time they get back here, they have already done the Tilt-a-Whirl, where they held hands; the Scrambler, where they kissed, if just a peck; the Zinger, where they draped; the Wolf, where they grabbed ass maybe; and now the Eagle is where they put it all together, work out different combinations. Most of them really go through it like this. It plays out this way because the Screaming Eagle is the longest wait of any of the rides, and most will agree, the most worth waiting for, the most thrilling. Besides, a lot of the kids would probably tell you that waiting in line is a necessary part of the fun. Just watch them and you know why. Watch close, for the grabbing; listen close, for the whispers. Look at the fun being had, waiting in line! How much more simple can it get? Some of them like waiting in line so much that as soon as they get off of the ride they get back in line to do it all over again. It may be speculated that they don’t even do it for the ride, for the two-minutes-and-fifteen-seconds of tension and excitement, or for the loop; kids these days, maybe kids any day, do it for the line, for the anticipation. The anticipation is what makes the release what it is. What makes excitement exciting. You have to wait, you have to so anything is worthwhile.

Some of the kids don’t though. Some kids get down to the Screaming Eagle and have been draping since the Tilt-a-Whirl and grabbing ass since the Scrambler. Maybe grabbing ass since before they even got to the park, at dinner with their families, underneath the table. They believe that the Screaming Eagle ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. They’ve been there and done that and it bores them to tears just to think about riding the thing one more time. And they’ve got nothing more to whisper to each other so they don’t even care to wait in line anymore.

On the far side of the Screaming Eagle, on the very back edge of the park, there is a sort of den created by the final stretch of the tracks. The den is in the middle of this stretch; there is a place where the structure of the ride splits at its base in about a two foot gap between the base and the ground. The tracks run in a circle here, and the idea is to get underneath and into the middle of the circle, where the risen tracks will then cut off all outside vision, and if you can get under you might find the only true privacy in the park. The riders in their shoulder harnesses might see you as they come around the circle at the end of the ride, but only if they look very closely and by the time the kids start going in there it’s far too dark out to see anything anyway.

This is the only area in the park where pants might come off along with shirts and where all of the kids will eventually go to lose their virginity. A lot of them already have there, and they go back sometimes and try it again. The kids who go there have a sort of club, they act superior and jaunt right past the whisperers and the line lovers into their cave and sometimes there is even a line for the cave itself. These are the truly progressive ones. The ones who got tired of waiting in line and had to go ahead and find something more instantly gratifying. But then it gets to the point where one girl tells another about what she did down there or a boy tells a buddy about what you could get away with down there and there is a little flock that forms, and they begin waiting in line to not wait. There are probably thousands in line for the Screaming Eagle now, if you were to look. And maybe eight or ten for the hidden circle, where sometimes the girls will even put their hands into boys’ underwear while they wait.

What’s interesting to see is how many of them get off of the Eagle, moderately satisfied but still hungry, and start back toward the line again without even thinking that there might be something more, something that really satisfies fully. Then something catches the corner of their eye. Maybe a group of couples standing around the final stretch of the ride in the dark, in no real formation, whispering and touching and all that, and they think, hey that looks like a bit of fun over there, and maybe that’s something we ought to go ahead and give a try, and so they will ask, what’s up over here? and none of the couples will respond, but they will see a brave pair emerge, crawl out from underneath of the clearing out of the den and they know what’s happened and what everyone is waiting around for, and they decide it might be something they ought to go ahead and give a try, and damn it, they get right in the back of the line and start whispering and you can guess that the girl will put her hand in the boy’s underwear before it is their turn.

Of course, there are the kids who might get a shirt off behind the bathroom and call it good, or are even fine with cutting it off at the draping; actually that is most of them. The den crew is a very insignificant number in ratio with the whole of the crowd, but not insignificant as an entity, as a study. As mentioned, these are the progressive ones, the ones who really make the difference. And on top of that they are gaining momentum, because at least once a week a young couple such as our friends from a moment ago come draping off of the ride and they get hip to what’s going on. That’s really just one more boy to tell his buddy what he convinced her to do with him in there and one girl to tell another what she tried on him in there. These are the seed spillers, the ones who plant the crop that feeds this place: inside the circle, where fruits and vegetables blossom and multiply freely, and they don’t always think about the safety precautions. The shoulder harnesses, even the lap-bars.

Females menstruate because they are not pregnant. If you’re a male, or even if you’re a female, you may not know exactly what goes on here, or why it goes on. Menstruation happens only when the ovum that is released by the ovary (sex organ) does not get fertilized. If the ovum does happen to be fertilized, it hides itself away and begins to grow, and there is no menstruation. If the ovum is not fertilized, what happens is it dies and the ovary itself ceases to produce hormones. This causes a spasm of the endometrial blood vessels, which breaks the uterine lining, which has thickened greatly in preparation for harboring the ovum. The endometrium begins to sort of fall apart, disintegrate, and is then sort of pushed off and out and discharged along with a lot of blood. The endometrial tissue begins to reform and the whole thing starts back over, all to prepare for the possibility of impregnation. Maybe the most remarkable thing about it all, the damnedest thing even, is that after the ovum is initially released by the ovary, it is only capable of fertilization for two days before it dies and is disposed of. Two days before menstruation starts and tells you for sure that the ovum has indeed not been fertilized by semen.

There is a fearlessness that comes with those two days, it seems.

There is a fearlessness that comes, but is a fleeting fearlessness and goes just like that. Probably gone before they tuck themselves in later that night, when they still have that feeling like they’re going up and down a roller coaster, like they didn’t ever get off. And maybe it even gives them bad dreams, and they wake up with that feeling like they’re falling and their legs buckle. Up and down, the riding never stops, haunts them.

But do you think they think about the night to come or next week or nine months from now or any of it? That’s sort of the point: that they don’t, because they quite frankly aren’t themselves for a minute and we can all say that we’ve been there, where we aren’t ourselves and we just kind of lose it all in the moment or whatever, but that we took care of ourselves still and made it out of there just fine. The fact is that a lot of us didn’t, most of us may have, but a lot of us didn’t. And a lot of them don’t, and their lives are changed no matter what. They come out from underneath the Eagle, from the ride of their lives, and they don’t really know what’s happened, if it was good or what, or what could be happening inside of them, and they hold hands but it’s definitely awkward between them now because things will be different from this point on and they get back in line and she tries to drape and he tries to whisper into her ear but it’s just not the same and it’s frustrating as hell.

Maybe some of the park itself gets in them, too, or when the girls spread their legs the Eagle sneaks itself in, and what they really get pregnant with is the thrill. The product is half-human, half-roller coaster. The birth is excruciating. Everyone a mile around feels the pain together and the screams resound through the park in the early summer months. “That ride was the shit,” says the boy to the girl with her hands in his underwear. But the screams aren’t from thrill-seeking anymore. The thrill has already been sought out, and it’s turned into something they never wanted it to be, something they never even imagined; this thing, this monster.

This monster that splinters with old wood and everyone thinks it’s supposed to be a child. But it’s a grievance, filed by the children’s parents to park management because they let such a thing happen on their watch, after they had left them in their care, trusted them, but they have to know that the kids were going to do it anyways, right?

But a new line always forms at the opening near the bottom of the Eagle, where they come when they finally hear about it and want to find what the thrill is really all about at last. It consists of some newcomers and some seasoned pros, but it doesn’t consist of the unlucky ones who have to live with the consequences right there in their arms all day and all night. The little monster. No, the unlucky ones forever wait near the exits, dressed in rags with dark circles under their eyes, clutching the monster and presenting it to the kids as the park closes, saying “You really shouldn’t be like me, don’t be like me or do what I did”, but God knows they aren’t listening, wouldn’t even listen if they could.

The noise is too much, even if they see her lips move they don’t get the message. As they leave, a song plays through the sound system. They try to sing along but don’t know any of the words except the part that goes “Tramps like us. . .”

And they believe that they were born to run, and they were. And they do, without any real thought of consequences.

Dylan Pyles is a recent graduate of Truman State University, a small liberal arts college in Missouri. He has been seriously pursuing the art of writing for a few years now, and has a recent publication in the Atticus Review.