When representatives
of the six investment groups gathered for the Splash Time ground-breaking
ceremony, I remember seeing it on the news and thinking it would probably take
a summer or two for me and my buddies to make the trek to Jonesboro. I remember
thinking that 3,200,000 square feet of water park sounded pretty freakin’ big,
but -- like most square-foot measurements -- I couldn’t picture the size. I
remember imagining the ease with which a 20-year-old might blow $100 in an
afternoon there, and I remember feeling anxious about the infinite number of
girls a guy might meet at a place like that. On the contrary, it never occurred
to me that I would become the largest news story in the destination’s history,
just 14 months into its existence. All of those things turned up true.
August 12th
had been perfect. Hank Zeller’s birthday had been circled on the calendar since
late June, and our numbers rounded out somewhere near 11. This meant three
cars, but three cars in comfort. We never had anything planned that far in
advance, but it didn’t matter if we had a spot in mind six minutes or six weeks
in advance: Who -- outside of Hank -- would drive was always a ridiculous
conversation. Because he thought his ride was slick, and because he wanted to
be in control, Hank always drove. Always. Plans, then -- when we had them --
would become concrete, and a seat assignment cage match would ensue. When the
group was bigger than five, the excuses would come out like cellophanes of Molly
at a Disco Biscuits show.
Everybody
had a car; none lacked employment. A current minor malfunction, a lack of fuel,
the want to party, the need -- true or otherwise -- to depart early were
forever front runners. Often it would come down to the loser of a round (or
rounds) of Reaux Chambeaux (the rock-paper-scissors version; not the testicle
kicking one). It had long since been determined, however, that Hank would be a
passenger on his big day. When we gathered at Mary’s parents’ that morning, a
few of the committed chauffeurs brought out their spoiler attempts.
“You guys,”
Luke said. “I’m going to need someone else to drive.”
“What the
fuck for?” Ivan scowled from across the kitchen but was quick to slap a hand
over his own mouth when Mary shot him the Dude,
my mom’s upstairs look.
“My mom said
my brother gets to use the car since it’s just going to be parked in the lot
all day.” A silence hovered over the Warner breakfast nook after the words had
come out of Luke’s mouth.
“Dude,”
Lane said, retrieving his cell phone from his shorts pocket. “What’s your mom’s
number?”
“Wouldn’t
do you any good even if I did give it to you,” Luke said. “We argued about it
all night last night.”
“I’m sure
you put up a huge fight.” Stefan
nodded then crossed his arms. “What it been? Was it freaking spring break the last time you drove?”
“Dude, I
just drove last weekend.”
“Luke,”
Stefan said. “It doesn’t count if you roll up fucking solo to the party after
work. The idea is that you drive us, the same way we drive your ass around
every God-damned night.”
“Seriously,”
Lane said. “What’s your mom’s number?”
“Like my
mom’s gonna listen to your stupid ass.” Luke pleaded for the notion to be
dropped.
“Oh,” Lane
said. “She’ll listen when I say, Betty --
Jimmy will have to make other transportation arrangements today since Luke’s
car will -- Yes -- be parked in the Splash Time parking lot -- where he -- Yes
-- drove it to -- like the good friend that he is -- this after-fucking-noon.”
Mary
stopped loading the cooler and turned to Luke.
“Your mom’s
name is Betty?”
“Yes! My mom’s name is Betty!”
“Bro,” Mary
said. “If you yell my mom will make us leave, so knock it off.”
“Sorry,”
Luke said, returning to his normal, louder-than-everyone-else volume. “You knew
that. Why is that a surprise to you?”
“It’s just
kind of ironic that your hot-ass mom’s name is Betty,” she said.
Mary raised
her hands in submission when the group exploded with hollers and moans.
“Mary,”
Stefan said, pausing to stand and change into his Sacha Baron Cohen voice. “You
like-uh the ladies?”
Mary’s face
transformed from that of cautious, dish-doing daughter to something resembling
sinister.
“Yeah, Stef’,” she said. Mary turned off the kitchen-sink water and
dried her hands on a towel that hung from the oven door.
“You get me a little juiced and I’ll
be looking for just the right female to cozy up to,” she said. The room, for
four strong seconds, sat silent as we watched Mary close her eyes and place her
hands on her inner thighs. She ran them along her waist and up her rib cage,
stopping to growl and cup her breasts. In the quiet, Mary opened her eyes and
scanned the group, stopping to stare at Stefan. “Unless she’s as ugly as the
woman that gave birth to you.”
The wails that erupted from that
sequence brought Mary’s mom’s voice echoing down the staircase.
“Sorry, Mom,” Mary said. “We’ll
keep it down.”
“Told
you your mom was hot, Luke.” Pete breaking the room’s silence -- along with his
own -- invoked muffled snickers from the
lot as though we were a collection of pupils on its teacher’s last warning.
It was almost two o’clock by the
time we’d arrived in Jonesboro, parked, purchased tickets, and claimed lawn
chairs by the “Mad-i-terranean Adult Pewl.” Our group -- six guys and five girls
-- stayed intact for about the first 45 minutes. We were discreet in the
beginning with our ice-and-canned-beer-laden duffle-bag operation, but once the
first drink or two was down, and we’d all hit a few of the slides, we
splintered. Pete and I had wound up with Mary, Erin, and Lane, but after a
water-gun fight at the Awkwa Artillery Stand, we lost Lane. Once we’d decided
to stop worrying and do our own thing, we’d acquired two new girls and a guy
from Fayetteville that’d lost their
group.
Denise stood out because of her
huge tits. I mean, these were the kind of tits that no one could not look at. And she was cute, too, but I’m wired in
such a way that that much attention tones down the level of attraction on my
end. I don’t like heavy competition. They were some nice tits, though. I can
picture them to this day. In fact, it’s a little tricky to remember the details
of her face as much as I do the massive amount of curved skin fighting to free
itself of her bikini top. She had blond, curly hair pulled back in a pony tail,
and you could see small streaks of her natural brunette state peeking from
beneath her locks. She was also super tan, which just meant that my boner for
her would’ve been lost in a sea of hundreds. To cap it off she wore a pair of
those mirror-lens aviator shades that just blanketed the beholder in suggestion
and self-consciousness.
The dude that joined our group was
named Ravi. He was Indian or something. Super cool. It was their Hispanic
friend Millie that had me on the verge of soiling my trunks, though. She was
just as hot as Denise and probably in more ways than her friend, but her
features were much more realistic. Millie had this smile that turned me to goo
every time I saw it, which -- since I couldn’t stop staring at her and she
couldn’t stop catching me -- was often. By the time we’d hit the Link-In Spray
Park, gone down two slides, and gone for a beer, I was working out the details
of our long-distance relationship in my head. And by “working out the details”
I mean finalizing my plans to move to Fayetteville.
By dusk I was pretty drunk and I
had that extra layer of all-day sun funk about me, too. It was hard to tell if
I was buzzed and tired or buzzed and preparing to peak or just unaware of how
intoxicated I was, which was always the worst option of the three. In this
case, option three applied to my situation, but a mystery layer that I added to
with every new swallow of beer had me convinced that I was on par with everyone
else. I’ll never know if that was accurate or not. I only know that our four,
along with their three, had become about 20 and claimed a pair of the remaining
vacant tables on the massive deck of the Samoan Slammers Bar & Grill. Tiki
torches lined the deck’s railing, and beyond the light they provided, it was
pretty dark on that deck.
Beyond it the laughs rained across
the water park and huge street lamps illuminated each area with rides, but we
sat there telling stories and drinking -- with remarkable ease considering how
many of us were using fake IDs -- and the drunker I got, the stronger my lust
for Millie became. I could tell the feeling flirted with some level of
mutuality, too, as she’d twice laid her head on my shoulder and once placed her
hand on my knee as a group of us sat around a fire pit with seats on one side,
a portion of the deck’s railing bench on the other. I’d zeroed in and was
trying to calculate an opportunity to ask her to walk with me. I was confident
we’d make out, a little uncertain if we’d have some sneaky, in-the-wood-chips
sex beneath some fake palm tree in the dark. I badly wanted to get laid, but
didn’t have a condom on me, so as hot as I was for her, a part of me hoped she
wouldn’t let me, an indicator that she was not on the pill and not in the
practice of granting access to whomever the dick of the day belonged.
I was torn, but with conviction on
either half. And then I was something else: in need of the men’s room.
The facilities -- at least the ones
on the deck -- of Samoan Slammers were a little too casual for my liking,
especially considering everything that goes with having to relieve yourself
while donning swimwear. I’d never seen stall doors -- if they can be called
that -- like them. In frame and hinge they displayed the sturdy standardness
most public restroom-door counterparts offer. It was their opacity that could
only be described as lacking. Inside, focused on my duty, I decided it had been
a choice of chic, like those urban stalls bearing glass panes that “fog” when
the door knob clicks. The choice seemed curious at best, but no one appeared to
notice my presence in the stall or my absence in the group. Or at least that’s
what I thought.
Anticipating that the visit wouldn’t
necessarily be a quick one, I’d brought my phone into the stall. I tended to my
business and scrolled my Twitter timeline, following links, responding to a few
interesting tidbits, until the time spent on the latter shadowed the former;
the task that sent me there had been complete for a while. Still I sat, reading
and clicking, no longer bothered by the butt-cheek skin tingle from wearing
trunks all day. And then my phone buzzed, the contents of a text message from
Millie streaming across the top of the screen. She’d noticed my absence and
reached out to me -- with an attachment -- to indicate her desire for my return
to the group. When I opened it, I had to look over my shoulder twice -- like
Red in the Buxton hayfield -- to make sure I wasn’t being watched. I’m not sure
how she’d managed to capture such a seductive selfie in the dark, but as I
stared at it, I needed to adjust the way I sat; my parts that were once below
seat line no longer had an interest in staying there.
And the minute the rearrangement
was complete, it became clear that I had another task -- literally -- at hand.
The idea was to take Woogie’s There’s
Something About Mary philosophy and clean the pipes. The idea was to calm
my self and return to Millie cool and collected. The idea was that with
newfound composure, I would not act foolish. The idea…was a bad one. What I
hadn’t considered was the amount of alcohol in my veins and the effect such
intoxication has on one’s desire to, uh, release the tension. In short, the
harder I tried, the further away the goal got and the more I rattled my coop.
The group adjacent to the stalls -- whether they were part of my posse or not
-- noticed. Or rather, one of its members did.
When I found Millie, she was eager
to gauge my response to her message. As we made plans to wander off, we were
alerted that one of our guys had been asked to leave, that there had been a
skirmish by the Fun Dipp. That capped a long afternoon and evening at the park,
which had been heavy on the fun and heavier on the ride home. In the morning --
and into the afternoon -- however, a now-less-interested vibe I got from Millie
was not my only discovery. It turns out that someone outside the Slammer
restroom had suspected what I was up to and decided that it would be a good
idea to try and capture the moment with a cell phone. My unsuccessful attempt
to show a private appreciation for the contents of Millie’s message had become
a touch public. In this case “a touch” was in line with some 267,000 views on
YouTube and apparently growing by the hour.
That lack of opacity in those stall
doors could best be described as the screen entryway on an average tent, only
darker. That material had made it impossible to determine who the star of the
footage was, but it was clear in which scene the actor was engaged. Even
better: the other “talent” in the snippet has more than a couple of cameos. If
that was the beginning and the end of the whole deal, the only harm done would
be that well, two people made poor public choices. As it turned out, the action
segment preceded a 47-second chunk of non-action, and then the depicted exits
the stage, decently illuminated by tiki-torch light. While motion and lack of
direct light shield the actor’s visage, it is when the star turns to shut the
stall door in silence that the footage ceases and captures -- in freeze frame
-- the shoulder-blade skin ink depicting the series of symbols from Led Zeppelin IV. In this case, my
tattoo.
August 12th had been a
Wednesday. By that Saturday I didn’t know anybody in the county that remained
unaware. I -- as I imagine many might do -- withdrew from social engagements
and when the clip made it to my Facebook page, I had to shut that down, too.
There were stages of processing, and they ranged from horrified to enraged to
embarrassed to the fear of getting arrested to the depression associated with
never again getting a date for the rest of my life. I moved out of each of
these stages and became stuck in a feeling of violation; the idea that my most
private of privates was out there and had been broadcast left me feeling
vulnerable. Then, before I could make sense of which direction my emotions were
going next, a strange bit of social justice appeared and the “news” became more
about the person (who bore the dumb YouTube name CompaCabana before he deleted
the account and with it the clip) that decided to capture the moment.
That helped. A little. For like 12
seconds.
It didn’t detract from the whole
seed of the instance, though, which was the fact that it was me in that stall.
The videographer suffered a wrath I’d wish on no one, except for maybe the
person that filmed me having an intimate moment on the toilet and I often feel
somewhat vindicated by that.
But I also often wonder if I know
the person that made it so that every person I know -- including family and
some co-workers -- and many I’ve yet to meet have a tagline by which they can
refer to me and me alone. They haven’t unveiled it yet, but I know -- on some
late-night gathering in the future -- that it will emerge and some will be
sympathetic while laughing, and it will probably fit and I will probably
deserve it and resist it little.
Perhaps above all, my moments like that
-- which since have been uber-private and will likely forever be so -- have
undergone durable change. The bird in the hand could have been two in the bush,
but was instead beaten.
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