It is awesome to walk through fog three feet high like a sweltering sauna towards anything—drunk or not. It keeps my mood—this haze—I think of dry ice and epic heroes—I think I need to piss. Only gods walk through clouds to piss, I think.
It’s hard to describe Castle Park Glynn Rose Academy
When we were young we were Viking children—in our minds. You learn a few things when young devoid of cell phones and video games: Greek myths, Vikings, wolves, Furies, Norse myths, Tolkien, LEGOS—well, it depends on the family, I guess—lack of a vicinity to electronic apparatus generally bred creativity in my upbringing. I learned early on about the importance of fantasy. You also made pirate hats and drank too much Kool-Aid—ensuring 40-year-old-Diabetes--you consumed sugar and books—it was a good childhood, as far as I remember it. We played “King Arthur” and chopped milkweed with sticks that we imagined were swords. The milkweed would bleed when damaged—this provided satisfaction. This construct, though, looks like the castle I wish I could have had as a kid. Who gets castles to play on? Now parents better than I ever had drive their kids to castles to play on? Every time I look at action figures in the toy aisle these days, I realize I was gypped. Then, as I unzip my pants and start fumbling for myself before I make a reservoir in my canvas trousers, I think that only those with an imagination still play with action figures. The rest develop incredible dexterity on a handpad of choice. Thumbs flailing figuring out secret codes to solving entire fantasy worlds. No one is losing a tiny plastic gun in a sandbox anymore. No one gets angry at a G.I. Joe’s elbow anymore because it simply will not stay in place. Swivel and grit.
I lied—the most elaborate playground I’d ever seen was Vegas. I built a life on lying, until I heard a low rumble of truth—the breath of a behemoth, leviathan, sasquatch.
The cinder-block building housing the urinal—the drunk’s shrine locked. What is it with cinder blocks? Always cream-colored? On the inside and outside—cream-colored cinder blocks. I was always denied in buildings made of cinder blocks—high school hallways of cinder blocks to infinity—that’s my hell--I need to piss—the bathroom at the playground was, apparently, a bad choice for relief. Padlocked and cinder-blocked. This town where I never knew a prom, never had a car, now have no house or SUV—I’ve cinder-blocked myself into corners. In that neighborhood where children play on castles and are educated within the cinder-blocks. The padlock chinks against the door as I let it go and turn my back, pants undone.
I may as well piss on the trees. In the trees. Steam rises from my stream, and then I see some other steam. It is so paranormal—this breath lingering there. A cloud that, drunken, I can really cut with a knife, or a cliché’—I can’t fathom it at all. I hold myself and the black snout materializes. More steam—it can’t be. I start shaking myself, pee getting on my pants, inside and out—I zip up—momentarily looking down to make sure I do not zip meat into the traintrack. Then it dawns on me—there is a very large living thing only three or four feet in front of me, and I have no fucking idea what it is.
It is funny the things you think of when running full throttle in the opposite direction of a charging bear.
I stagger full throttle—I warble and wobble—I hope to have legs after all this is over.
Why am I drunk? I am thinking of girls’ names. Girls I’ve slept with, dated, lived with; their names always tend to end with the letter “i” or with a strong long “e” sound. It makes sense now—I liked the ease of the first few syllables—the “Dor-“ in “Dorie.” Or the “Bran-” in “Brandy.” But I also like the power of the last strong syllable—the long “e.” I wish I could scream right now as more piss pours down my legs—this piss reminds me I came here to be mauled for cheap beer and a small bladder. I even like names like cinder-blocks—square, predictable. I name the bear “Kiley.” Man, I am drunk as fuck, man. Shit—run, man—they always say, “Don’t look back” in those movies they all die in. The Wolf figurehead with its gaping mouth taunting me atop the castle wall as I am chased by a monster. Drunk and running.
Instinctively, I charge into the playground somehow hoping that I can avoid this angry teeth, claws, maul. Luckily, the entrance is not blocked from the pisser to the sawdust layered castle yard.
Coming back to this town was enough to drive me into drinking. Well, drinking more frequently, anyway. I could see ghosts of myself everywhere—in the faces of others, in the empty parking lots where I once loved a restaurant, in the apartment complexes falling apart where I once drank malt liquor and felt a part of something—it’s easy to be nostalgic about a place you leave and never return to. Try going back—try living side by side with yourself from 12 years before. Walk down the sidewalk and step over the place where the pothole once was that you stepped over everyday in your walk to work—it’s not there anymore, and you don’t consider this progress. I came back for a job—ironically, considering my current situation—being chased around a playground designed as a castle while drunk--I design video games. The current scenario, the protagonist running from a predator, is quite common in the games I design; however, usually the protagonist has a point spread—a possible chance of survival, a secret ability, a portal to jump into to escape, extra lives, a pause button, a save mechanism, a place online to find the cheatsheet—I only hope I’ve drank enough beer to feel less pain as I am minced—let’s face it—a bear chasing you is quite sobering. What would I call this game? “Wolf Rec Department”? “Drunken Bear Bowling”? “Piss and Run”? “Grizzly Kong”?
Then I feel the sharp ice-fire feeling in my left ankle.
It would be poetic if I were injured in my Achilles heel, I guess. The beast doesn’t get the tendon or the heel—swiping forward, the bear grazes the side of my foot, tearing through my cheap loafers. It feels warm and hurt—I take comfort in knowing that, if I were not so plastered, this injury would hurt worse. I speed up—adrenaline I think—towards the first fun playground fixture in my path.
I hit the rope bridge, and luckily it leads to a higher level of the playground, the first tier. The bridge is only about two or three feet off the ground, but it was designed in an enclosure of four-by-four stakes—the bear keeps tearing at me but, confused and frustrated by a straightforward approach to the rope bridge, she (and I suddenly realized that she is a she due to her teats dangling under her huge arms) starts attacking the side of the bridge, raising and falling in lumbering spurts, as I try to cross it to higher ground.
It occurs to me that this would be an incredibly funny fucking thing to see if I were not bleeding from my foot, covered in urine and some amount of shit, and in fear of my life. I guess if you are not me this is an incredibly fucking funny thing to see.
I make it to the first platform, panting. She is pacing, steam guffawing from her entire face—I was only three or four feet off of the ground—she roars—not that roar you hear in movies—or video games for that matter. She roars as if exhaling. She roars as if to say, “I am just catching my breath, but I am not done with you yet.”
I should have never come back to this podunk town. Once, if you threw a rock, all you’d hit was a church—take your pick of denomination, but predominantly Baptist or Methodist. Now, when the stone bounces of the church, it hits the side of a liquor store. No great failures brought me back here, no great successes. A mediocre and moderate life allowed me to come back home with as much ease as it would allow me to leave home. This was the true horror, for me, I think. Caught somewhere between a liquor store and a church—needing both, needing neither. A bear there in the middle now applying the pressure. A gaggle of geese flies over honking, and the bear is still pacing.
Then, the most astonishing thing happens—the pacing bear begins to cross the rope bridge. It’s too much for me—I am actually laughing until her quick progress becomes apparent to me. She is one of those amazing animals funny from afar, she is going to dance around the organ-grinder, she is going to be docile for years and then maim Siegfried and Roy, she will be on that amazing home videos show, and she is navigating the first level of this park and coming for me. This castle is made for access, not for protection. This castle is for giggles and working up appetites for hot dogs. This castle is not made for an epic struggle between man and beast. This is the murderer already in the house regardless of the alarm. I think of video games, board games, reality TV. Remember Chutes and Ladders?
I am limping up some wooden steps towards a higher platform at the mouth of a long slide—one of those spiraled slides like those novelty squiggly straws I had as a kid. Is it possible for me to lure the bear after me, go down the slide, and then run like hell to my car while the bear tries to figure out what’s going on? Then it dawns on me as I shove my hand into my front pocket. I simultaneously notice a small silver mass in the sawdust below. Synchronicity, peripheral vision, a bear chasing me.
I have dropped my keys.
That damned keychain. Key to a small apartment. Key to a safety deposit box. Key to the office. A key I am unsure about but am afraid to throw away. Key to an old apartment. A plastic discount rectangle to the local grocery near my new place. A bottle opener. A software company keepsake. An empty keyring looped into the new keyring. My Iomega mini drive. The morning mist is clearing, and I can see the aqua-blue plastic hub on the key to my car staring at me like a half-open eye in the orange-ruddy woodchips. On one side of the playground waits my car—on the other lies my keys—the slide empties out by a set of monkey-bars about thirty feet from my keys. I see myself playing this out like testing a new video game—I see the scenario—the strategy—the obvious choice always gets you killed. I don’t have the pause button now. No extra lives to try out this level.
I slide with the greatest feeling I’ve had in years—this is not, by any means, the slide of a child. This is the “fuck-it-all-to-hell” wild abandoned last slide of a drunken idiot being hunted. This is the greatest slide-ride of all time. This is giving in. This is “I am coming home, Kiley.” This is guts in the sawdust. This is the morning news about a man mauled and inebriated. This is the elevator falling forty floors its cables snapped. This makes Six Flags, reality TV, venereal diseases, drinking and dying slowly, drinking and dying in a mangled car-wreck, dying of old age, and never sliding again all seem trivial. I am no longer between the liquor stores, the churches, the bears, the careers, the lost loves—I am sliding down towards sweet oblivion. I am sliding and whooping loudly through the tunnel.
The slide ends too quickly, and I land hard on my ass-bone. I am soaked from the residual dew that is in the slide, and sawdust clings to me as if I have been tarred and feathered. The bear has made it to the level at the mouth of the slide, and she notices me immediately. She roars again, and it seems to me that she is contemplating the slide—she is puzzled, but she is thinking about it—this is unreal—my ego says I must be cursed—only I would be hunted by a bear adept at obstacle courses. Then I hear a garbled bark. To my left, there near my keys, is a small bear cub.
I realize that I could have pissed anywhere, on any tree, at any place, at any time, anywhere on the planet, but I chose to piss here because of the dame castle motif.
It occurs to me that I am going to die because I never got a toy castle as a child. Am I drunk because of that? Shit. I am just here to flush out this bear. It is my destiny to save children from their castle. From a mother in nature. From the futures that this podunk town offers.
Every nature show I’ve ever scene has taught me not to interfere with a cub and its mother. The mother lets out a preternatural roar that I’ve not yet heard—she realizes my proximity to the cub. The cub calls back. She is lumbering down the steps; she is heading towards the rope ladder—she is moving faster that I thought possible. I have seen so many bad movies that I actually consider grabbing the cub and holding it hostage in order to walk to my car. I lunge for the keys, grab them, and start the quickest ascent up monkey bars I have ever accomplished in my life. The monkeybars are hexagonal—a shape predominant in nature, I remember from biology classes. This is my real castle, my real keep. A hollow geodome where I make my last stand.
The mother is now with the cub. She circles the youth and seems satisfied. She then looks to me, turns her head, lets out a terrible roar—in my mind, I see a scene from an Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins film where they kill the token black guy because he does not keep the scent of blood out of the air. My foot bleeds through my shoe and drips down into the sawdust. I make those stupid promises of fear: I will never drink again God just let me out of this one God I know I don’t pray much but I will be a better person if you don’t let me feel this pain God I will call my grandmother God I will stop downloading porn God I will donate time at the soup kitchen for the less fortunate God…
She is walking towards me with the cub at her side. I check to make sure no appendage hangs through the inverted metallic net of my savior monkeybars. She walks under the monkeybars with no acknowledgement towards me. She walks into the woods with her cub. There are no footprints in the sawdust. There are no pawprints in the sawdust.
How long I will linger on these monkeybars I do not know. I am finally free again. Free from childhood. Free from adulthood.
I turn on my back and feel the arch of the monkeybars under me—an incredible chiropractor. It is overcast, but I still feel the sun. I am going to lie here for a while and think of castles. I am going to think of LEGOS. I am going to think of Kool-Aid. Of LEGO castles. I am going to think ATARI 5200 Missile Command. I am going to get down and swing in the swings soon. I am going to drive home after that, past the liquor stores and churches, the castles and bears, the chutes and ladders.
Then, I’ll check on my foot, sit down, crack open a beer.
Then, I will call her and tear the cinder-blocks down.
