Hullo! This week’s Disco Diaries is brought to you by the dictation feature on my old MacBook Pro. You’ll soon learn why.
While you’re reading, might I suggest some easy listening?
A song for you
Blame it on Mercury
Thursday was my second night in a row going to the Florence skate park — aka FLOPA — but the two evenings couldn't have been more different. Where Wednesday was sunny and hot, Thursday it was overcast, rainy, and chilly. Instead of being full of skaters ranging in age, craft, and skill level, it was empty when Jake and I pulled up in the Nissan we have on loan from his dad. My little Honda Civic was the only car in the lot. Thankfully there was no ticket, which could very much be because my friend Rae called the police department like a sweetheart to make sure I wouldn't get “in trouble.”
I scooted carefully into the driver’s seat of my car, after looking over to the dark park — the scene of the accident — then noted with mild, bittersweet interest that both sun visors were still down from when Rae and I had driven to the park in Wednesday’s evening light. We had chatted over the sound of the open windows and through our muffled masks, all the way from her place on the west side of Cincinnati to the Kentucky suburbs.
I was feeling good, and happy to be putting the day’s anxiety onto eight wheels. I dressed in high-waisted, stretchy denim shorts and a little belly shirt with a beaded flower necklace from Mexico. When we got there, I geared up fast and stretched while Rae put on her gear out of order, slipping her elbow pads on last over top her emerald, checkered, cut-off flannel.
We scanned all 22,000 square feet of the park’s layout and rolled boldly to a less occupied area where we flirted with the idea of trying several surfaces, before our hearts landed on a wedge ramp with a tall extension that dropped you into a funbox and then up a quarter pipe.* In other words, we’d go down, then up, then down, then up.
I wanted to work on getting faster so that I could maintain speed all the way to the top of a ramp, and shoot into the air a little. I worked on this , and managed to do a little 180º jump at the end. “WOOO,” I said cooly to myself, before jumping up and down on my toe stops with my arms waving in the air at Rae from across the park.
Rae and I both wanted to try dropping in over the coping on a half pipe where some dude had been monopolizing the space with his skateboard and his GoPro since we got there. Dropping in over coping means making it across a little rail, as opposed to rolling straight over a smooth angle in the concrete. There's a mental block there for me, and I’d only tried this twice before. I was nervous, but I went for it and executed a totally comfortable drop in. It wasn’t half as scary as standing there looking down at the four-foot incline. I told Rae she should try.
“Try it from this side first,” she said, sitting on the deck, “so I can watch your feet.”
It felt very cool to be able to drop in on this little half pipe, and I’d let my guard down while basking in my own confidence. Without thinking, I dropped in again, only this time it was a total embarrassment and a mild disaster. Instead of leaning forward into the incline, and crouching low for stability, I must have stepped down while standing straight up, so that my back wheels hit the curve and slid out in front of me, causing my tailbone to smash into the concrete, jarring my spine and shocking my muscles.
If only I could be as graceful in the air as Holden is.
I rolled onto my belly in the middle of the half pipe, trying to catch my breath, which had been knocked out of me. I felt like my torso had shattered, and wondered casually if I broke my back. I felt a sharp pain every time I took a breath. Rae came to my side and I moaned and panted to her that I was not OK. She remained calm and told me I’d be alright.
“I messed up that guy’s video,” I said, trying to use humor and whimsy to distract from my pathetic state of panic. I imagined him cutting out my graceful drop in and my disastrous redo from his Instagram reel later that night.
I went to sit up, but I felt like passing out. Eventually I got half vertical and Rae helped me take off my skates.
“Aww!” she said brightly, cutting the intensity of the moment with a smile as she pulled off my leather boot and saw that I was wearing the alien socks she gave me for my birthday just days earlier.
We made it over to the benches in our little sock feet. I sat motionless in a panic, still trying to breathe, and asked if we could call her nurse mom. There’s nothing like calling a mom in a health emergency, but you have to be selective about which one you ring. Moms that are too close will get into a tizzy, whereas moms that are only adjacently related will give sugary support without putting themselves out over it.
“Hiiii, mom,” Rae said in a voice you would normally save for a kid who just dropped their ice cream into a puddle.
She explained to her mother the situation with her crying 31-year-old friend. She handed me the phone so that I could describe my symptoms, and the instant I heard the standard, soft mom voice say “Hi, sweetie,” I broke out into more tears. She told me, basically, that if my my symptoms persisted, it could mean a punctured lung. Then I did a very rude thing, and shoved the phone back into Rae’s hands without saying “Thanks” or “Goodbye.”
Last week at another skate park, some guy messed up a trick and face planted into the concrete. He was unconscious and when he got up his face was covered in blood. But boy was he acting chill. I guess I'm just so suspicious of death, just waiting for it to clothesline me and everyone else I love, that I'm not great at not panicking, and I refuse to take chances. I called Jake and asked him to come get me and take me to the hospital. Meanwhile, Rae called her partner for a ride.
Driving myself and Rae back in my stick shift seemed impossible. I did, however, have a small fantasy involving Rae behind the wheel of my car and me trying to trigger her long forgotten, two months worth of manual driving experience by yelling “CLUTCH! SHIFT!” at the appropriate times through my wheezes.
Rae, the sweetheart, opened my car to get her things and put my gear in the trunk. Then she went to the front seat and grabbed a small, translucent green bowl filled with “fun size” candies, which she’d given me when I’d picked her up.
“You'll be needing these,” she said.
Her partner came for her, Jake came for me, and we were off to the ER.
One EKG, two rounds of vitals, a handful of X-rays, and 3.5 hours later, I was given a Motrin and some ice water in a styrofoam cup, and sent home with a prescription for the hardcore type of Tylenol. Nothing was broken and nothing was punctured. I felt like a drama queen, but I hurt like hell and still do.
I tried to comprehend this unnecessary chaos, and all I could think was that the astrology Instagram accounts were right. Mercury had entered retrograde.
Thank goodness for Rae, the skatepark angel, and Jake, the telepathic and loving partner. They both knew just what I needed throughout the evening. On the walk from the ER to the car, Jake gave me his cardigan. On the walk from the car to our apartment, Jake stuck half a ‘fun size’ Reese's Take 5 into my mouth. The next morning, while I stayed in bed with my heating pad and drifted in and out of sleep to the sound of the Obamas chatting on a podcast, Jake snuck into the kitchen to make breakfast. When he reentered he was carrying our big wooden tray, which had two plates piled high with warm banana bread pudding! He had turned garbage bread from the freezer into delicious treasure.
Delicious pudding, delicate wrist.
Now it is my turn to make something out of this garbage situation. The day after my fall, I obsessively watched videos of skaters dropping in successfully, and discussing safety and proper falling techniques. I felt four ways:
Bad for ruining our time at the skate park and putting Rae through that stress.
Guilty for needing Jake to pick me up and spend his night with me in the emergency room with shitty cable and no phone service.
Ashamed for falling when trying something so many skaters seem to do without trouble.
Curious as to why I would experience so much guilt and negativity towards myself for something that was a total accident.
These feelings are the old bread from which I will try and make a bread pudding of wisdom. I know there’s no need to feel guilt and shame, that my people are happy to be there for me, and I would do the same for them. During my week or so off skates, I’ll be reflecting on where this compulsive guilt and shame comes from. Any input or stories from your life are much welcome!
*Special thanks to the CIB Crew website for providing this web page of skate park terminology that makes me sound way more experienced than I actually am.
One more funny thing
Patricia Lockwood is my new favorite writer. I just found out that I should have been following her Twitter for the past few years. She’s perfectly absurd with her posts, which have included a series of “sexts.” Some choice examples can be found here.
Thank you for reading. TTYL,
Katya