by Jan Richman
I feel a shove at my back the force of which reminds me of a certain 1981 Black Flag concert, and when I spin around to see what manner of coaster enthusiast would be brazen enough to act like a post-punk teenage snapping turtle, I see instead a boy who looks sort of like a mole, let’s call him mole-boy, and he is in motion. He’s fallen against me, and I instinctively grab him around the waist to keep him from crashing to the sidewalk. He is vibrating at approximately the rate of the fastest setting on any vibrator I’ve ever owned. It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anyone in the throws of an epileptic seizure—but I’ve watched enough ER reruns to diagnose the problem. His face, two inches from mine, is both pinched and distended, like a mole during an earthquake, and his coke-bottle glasses are strapped to his head with an extra-huge rubber band. Good idea. I’m sort of cradling him now, pieta-style, mumbling oh-my-gods and trying to remember if there’s something specific I should be doing to keep him from swallowing his tongue. Buffy calls to the roller-host (you can tell he’s a host because of the white gloves) who’s just now moving toward our area. I cannot believe how long this seizure is lasting. I mean, rolling your eyes flutteringly back in your head for ten seconds hurts. It’s been at least two full minutes when at last our host whistles for assistance, and three monitors promptly arrive. They peel mole-boy off me and lay him down on the white concrete, pinning his limbs like he’s a criminal, or a butterfly. His rumbling starts to abate a little, finally, and his legs escape and kick at the air lazily like a baby’s. After a while he notices the crowd of faces around him, all focused on the spectacle of his affliction, and his expression takes on that foggy, Dorothy-at-the-end-of-The-Wizard-of-Oz quality. I half expect him to break into, “And you were there, and you were there ...” A couple of EMS medics, dressed in scrub-whites that look just like the Kukwa-dan staff uniforms, arrive bearing a stretcher, and they whisk mole-boy—well, he’s really more like mole-teen, I noticed when his faintly whiskered cheek was pressed to mine—away.
I’m still feeling a little shaky when the next train pulls up along the brake run. There is a moment of subtle and gracious shuffling before the train arrives, a moment in which, due mainly to white-gloved efforts, Buffy and I are mysteriously catapulted to the head of the line, in place for the front car. This may be my reward for supporting the vibrating body of a fellow leisure-classer for a couple of minutes, a thrill-ride equivalent to getting a ten-dollar bill for returning a wallet, or it may be that because Buffy does the staff iced-coffee runs, she always gets the front car. I don’t ask. The combination of post-seizure confusion and manipulations by recreation officials has left me wobbly. In any case, we are ushered into our front seats and locked down with gleaming horsecollar restraints. I sideswipe a glance at Buffy, who looks simultaneously haunting, cute, and like she’s ready to plough a field. She grabs my hand and squeezes it, giving me a shiny-eyed smile.
These seats are made for Korean-sized butts, I notice. I am crammed in and overflowing, and Buffy’s numerous petticoats are practically engulfing her. Between the micro-seats and the 409 ritual, the whistle-wielding staff and the piped-in K-pop music, it’s clear that the designers have implemented a few cultural modifications to the all-American Mousetrap coaster. (The idea of roller-coasting, by the way, is essentially a Yankee one. Sure, Siberians were sliding down ice floes in the 1400s, and kids in Wales used to hop mine trains for the thrill of the coal-black plunge, but the notion of flying down an undulating, gravity-fueled track was hatched in the early part of the last century on our very own Isle of Coney.) As we begin the initial lift hill ascent, it becomes apparent that there is a bait ’n’ switch going on here—the benign “cute” appearance of the Kukwa-dan (“Isn’t it kawaii?” Buffy asked) is betrayed by its now-obvious extra-steep incline and impending break-neck slammer drop. What is missing in height is made up for in the extreme angles of the ’dan’s sadistic design. I strain to hear the familiar chink of the ratchet-dogs, the rhythmic chain-lift clanking that I always associate with the safe wooden coasters of my youth, but there is only sugary dance music punctuated by the abbreviated breathing of fear.
While we’ve been in line, the sky has experienced its own convulsions, its own clouding of consciousness. What was blue has become bruise-mauve, and what was white has become marigold. There is a striping, like one of those layered pink-and-tan coconut caramels they sell in the bins at Rite-Aid. The flat edge of Houston harbor looks expertly torn from black construction paper. Night is not so much falling as rising up through the molecular structure of the sky, infecting inch by inch of toxic, yet comely urban dome. Pollution sure looks good around sunset.
“What’s wrong?” says Buffy, still white-knuckling my hand.
“I think we’re being pulled up by a linear induction motor,” I shrug.
“What?”
“Magnetic waves!” I yell.
I hear Buffy say, “Whatev,” as we crest the hill and peel down the first insipid-looking-but-actually-quite-stomach-jumping slope. We both scream. Our asses hit the meager seats with a resounding clap after being suspended by negative g-forces for what seemed like minutes but was truly only a second or two. I can hear Buffy’s giggle-breathing as if it’s my own. The second hill is somewhat less daunting, and I take a moment to notice the view afforded from its apex. The sun is not quite down, and the sky is still purpling in the aftermath of daylight. I can see the whole city from our stunted perch, so flat is this state, and I notice how the giant freighters on the bay look like miniature Houstons, silver-gray and filled with commercial enterprise. A plastics factory oozes steam out onto the sky like white paint being squeezed from a tube. Our coaster train hovers momentarily in the stillness at the summit of the hill, and just as my face is stung and flattened by wind, just before my eyes are forced shut, I glimpse the back of a man’s head at the edge of the parking lot where this tiny theme park resides. His is not the only head in the area, not by a longshot. There are groups of heads, schools of heads, bobbing near him, all with glossy blue-black hair, points clustered on a map. But the man’s head is separate from the other heads, in a category by itself. His hair is black, too, but it is not smooth-straight Korean hair. This inkspot head is detached from its constituents, and its hair is unmistakably wavy.
I’m glad my darts skirted all the obvious, reverse-fall, loop-de-loop giga-coasters, those massive steel giants named after superheroes that awe teenagers in hot Midwestern suburbs, and instead I’ve been forced to take a more underdog approach to thrill. (When I asked Buffy if she’d been on any other roller coasters, she rolled her eyes and said, “Disney World? Hello?”) I’ve discovered that a big part of physical excitement for me is the element of surprise. I want to discover something unexpected while I’m being thrown around by g-forces. Roller coaster designs are inherently tricky: since the first drop is always the fastest—because the ride requires the momentum from this descent to power the rest of its turns—the subsequent features are necessarily less conspicuously thrilling. The coaster designers can’t lean on sheer speed to coerce high-pitched exhilaration. They have to resort to physiological/psychological manipulations to achieve their own brand of chills. The most obvious example of this body/mind ruse is the loop, which turns up in most new steel coasters because it is the most dramatic way to exploit centrifugal force. You don’t need Indy-500 speed in order to achieve balance upside-down. In fact, slower speeds produce a more dramatic effect of almost-falling-out-of-your-seat danger. At higher speeds the loop would go by too fast for the rider to really notice or appreciate; the whole point is to allow for the brief suspension of disbelief, that moment where you realize fully what is happening to your body, and you register the absurdity of your flight through space. The corksrew turn is another popular inversion element used to produce a similar oh-my-god-this-is-really-happening reaction.
The ’dan, however, doesn’t employ any of the pyrotechnics of spirograph design. The rest of the ride is pretty standard fare, a double
out-and-back layout where the train takes the first series of hills to a turnaround, returns toward the lift hill at a lower elevation, turns around again and heads home (in other words, it goes out and back, twice, thus the name). The out-and-back is galvanized with flat turns—where the track, instead of banking into the curve, remains virtually flat, giving the rider the feeling that the coaster may tip over due to lateral gravity. Imagine taking a sharp curve on a motorcycle, without leaning into the turn. The Sidesplitter is aptly named. Every time we swivel more than forty degrees, Buffy crashes into me and we’re both slammed against the side of the car, even while we grip our black rubber horsecollars for dear life. It’s a cunning and abusive stunt, one that the ’dan repeats again and again in case you missed it the first time. By the time we are released from our car by the men in the white coats, Buffy and I are clutching at places on our bodies and moaning dramatically.
When we exit the ride, I notice that a group of Buffy-esque girls have gathered on the other side of the red gate. They are hard to miss, since they’re the only group of teenagers in the vicinity who look like they are ready to audition for a gothic rendition of Annie. Ruffles and babydoll dresses abound, along with fishnet gloves and lace headdresses. Not all of them are Korean-American, but they could all be sisters. They immediately flock to Buffy, talking over each other and smoothing her rumpled peacock-blue hair back into its spearlike shape. One girl takes a mini can of Aqua Net from her purse and sprays, which no one seems to mind, even though the fumes make my eyes water as they waft up to my atmosphere. A waif in a Marie Antoinette wig invites me to go out to a noraebang with the group, but when I ask what she means my voice is a croaky whisper. As the eight of them stand in front of Crawdaddy’s ticket booth deciding where to go, I find the group mentality that emerges downright spooky. No one seems grumpy or annoyed; no one insists that their own personal agenda be adhered to; no one threatens to withhold money, transportation, or liquor if their special needs are not met. I am definitely not in New York anymore. In fact, no one asserts any sort of negativity at all, as if the consequential emotional pain and abashment of rejecting someone else’s idea, however distasteful or idiotic, would be far less tolerable than just going ahead and traipsing off to that same karaoke bar for the fiftieth time, or jumping on the count of three into the Wallisville Reservoir. Listening to the high-pitched sounds of the evening’s plans being laid like the egg of some glassy-eyed bird, I feel slightly nauseated and dizzy, and I decide to go back to my hotel. But just as I am slyly extricating myself from the huddle, Buffy wobbles over on her platform heels (I’m glad that she seems to travel in groups, because if she ever got mugged, there’s no way she could outrun anyone).
“You have to come,” she whines. “This is part of what your editor paid for. She wanted you to experience some Houston night life!” She narrows her eyes and shakes her head like a yenta. “She warned me that you might resist.”
I jangle the rental car keys in my pocket as a sort of aural hint to myself that I’ll be okay soon, that I do have an eventual escape route from the the blaring, communal pandemonium that is bound to follow. The noraebang of choice, as it turns out, is only a few blocks away, and so I am corralled into walking down the street en masse. Maybe we should all hold hands, Montessori-method, I think, or pair off, buddy-system.
The karaoke club (or parlor, as Buffy’s friends keep calling it) has a faux stone entryway with giant dragons “carved” into it, their gaping mouths filled with bright bouncing neon sticks—an awesome, postmodern marriage of Korean mythology and 1980s techno. Buffy translates the name as “the Monster House” and assures me that I’ll love the place. I can’t believe how bright and spacious and institutional it is when we walk in; it looks like a PTA meeting is about to start. Folding chairs line the foyer, and mom types in snug, high-waisted jeans pace around talking on cell phones. After a brief conversation with the hostess, we are ushered to a small room in the back. This room is darker, with neon sculptures and low couches along one wall, flanked by fake potted palms. On the opposite wall, there are six large TV screens. Cushions are scattered on the floor, and intermittent clusters of stuffed animals are arranged in domestic tableaux—a lion, a giraffe, and a couple of bunnies.
“Do we want some bi bim bop?” Buffy asks, before our hostess exits. Again, there is a lengthy, high-pitched group discussion, the upshot of which is, yes, we want some. I’m not sure what it is, but if I ask I’m sure Buffy will accuse me of “resisting,” so I go with the flow. Immediately, Marie Antoinette picks up a microphone and punches some numbers into the karaoke machine, and while the rest of us choose where to sprawl, she launches into a spirited rendition of a song called “The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson. She writhes in mock agony as she sings, and the screens behind her flash images of puppies and kitties frolicking on someone’s immaculate front lawn. At one point she takes a bottle of Robitussin from her pocket and then throws her head back and gulps it down between phrases. A round-faced girl hands me a paper cup filled with soju (“It’s like Korean sake!” she yells as she presses it into my hands). These girls are too young to drink, but I guess the proprietors look the other way when teenagers come in with bulging backpacks.
In between songs, Buffy slides in next to me and tells me that the women I thought were PTA moms when we came in are actually “helpers,” a.k.a. prostitutes, and that some of the private rooms actually have secret passageways that lead out to the back alley in case the place gets raided. Women of all ages are recruited for this work, and it is not uncommon, she tells me, for middle-aged Korean moms to earn a little extra cash in the noraebangs at night. “I know,” she says, nodding at my perplexed expression, “It’s like totally Lifetime movie of the week: ‘Secret Life of a Korean Soccer Mom.’” Then she hands me a tambourine (one that lights up purple and pink when you slap it), and pulls me up off the sofa for a duet of “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman. Buffy winds the hunk of hair above her ear as she sings, closing her eyes and obsessively coiling while her friends yell, “Go Buffers!” The cheesy chorus is surprisingly fun to belt out, cathartic even, and during the instrumental parts we argue melodramatically about which one of us is the officer and which is the gentleman.
The bi bim bop arrives with a soft knock on the door and a cheerful “Ahn yong ha-se-yo!” that somehow sounds like “Yoo-hoo!” A young man in tight black pants and a slinky silver shirt pushes the door open with his hip and sets a tray of steaming bowls on the low table in front of the couch. Except for Marie Antoinette, who is splayed prone on a floor cushion with her head on the floor, the girls dive on it as though they haven’t eaten in weeks. Bi bim bop turns out to be a delicious mix of rice, vegetables, thinly sliced beef, and egg, with a tangy red pepper sauce and sesame oil on top. Maybe it’s the soju, or maybe it’s the preponderance of stuffed animals (I am lounging so hard now I’m practically horizontal, tickling the ear of a velveteen tigger with my toe) but I feel like I am about fifteen years old. The irritation I felt only an hour ago with the teenage groupthink is completely gone, and the fact that this is a private room only adds to the clubby feeling. Maybe next we’ll go door-to-door selling cookies. Even though I know I’m much closer in age to the noraebang helpers in their light-wash mom jeans, Buffy and her friends have charmed me and welcomed me into their teenage fold with a strange, endearing mix of kawaii sartorial stylings, succulent new flavors, and deeply earnest karaoke panache. I lean back on the couch and look around for a door to a secret passageway, savoring the soju’s starchy zest.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and set my empty bowl on the floor. Two of Buffy’s friends are clinging to each other and riffing in duet, segueing from “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” to “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.” Now Buffy is sitting next to me again, and she grabs my hand with both of hers.
“I want you to have a souvenir from your trip to Houston,” she says, stuffing something into my palm. It’s a tiny pla
stic bag, the kind used for spare buttons, saffron threads, wood screws, or small quantities of illegal drugs. I open my hand and look at the three yellow-and-black capsules inside. “Those are bumblebees,” she says. “If you take them before you go to bed, you’ll have the wildest dreams.”
“Really?” I ask. Wilder than watching two Korean-Texan teenagers dressed as eighteenth-century monarchs belt out a Neil Diamond-Barbra Streisand duet? “Like psychedelic, purple paisley unicorns kind of wild? Or more like Dian Fossey living naked with the gorillas kind of wild?”
She seriously weighs the question, her lips pursed tightly. “Well, that’s pretty much up to you. Cause when you dream with the bumblebees, you’re in charge.” She looks at me earnestly. “Have you ever had a dream where you, like, know you’re dreaming?”
She explains that these capsules are filled with a high concentration of dextromethorphan, or DXM, which is the active drug in most cough syrups. I’ve heard of kids getting high off cough syrup—isn’t that what James Ellroy used to do in LA in the ’50s?—and we have a local example leaving a pancake makeup stain on the cement floor right in front of us. But I’ve never seen the capsule form. Apparently, when taken in doses higher than what fits into the bottle’s miniature plastic cup/cap, it feels like Special K (ketamine) or PCP, neither of which I’ve ever taken, with the extra added benefit of inducing lucid dreaming. When I ask where she gets these capsules, Buffy nods her head toward Marie Antoinette, who I now notice has broken out in cherry-red spots all along her arms.
