Last week I went to a Fun Zone in Austin, Texas and had to stop myself from crying ten minutes in. Actually, that’s incorrect. It wasn’t called Fun Zone. But for the sake of anonymity, we’ll call it Lots of Fun. And the near-tears weren’t because I was sad. I was overwhelmed. I was happy to be there. I was with my husband, his twin and his twin’s young son, and our dear friends, a married straight couple. And before you ask ‘Why does it matter if they’re straight?!” you’re right! How dare I!
The Fun Zone was nearly empty, which made sense because it was 8 pm on a Thursday, and earlier that day there was a flash flood. The region had been pummeled by storms over the previous 24 hours — a thunderstorm is Texas is not like a thunderstorm anywhere else. I miss thunder and heat lightning. LA doesn’t get that. We get rain and fire. Gloom and dust. The D’Amelio family. Deadly floods had ravaged Galveston that week; Houston was struck by hurricane-force horror winds that blew multiple windows out on a skyscraper. But here, there was no destruction. There was only us, and the five other people. A girl in her mid-20s, wearing a hoodie, greeted us with the enthusiasm of a nurse practitioner drawing your blood during an STD panel. She convinced us to purchase an unlimited pass for the arcade and four special attractions: a ropes course, bumper cars, rock climbing walls, and laser tag. Only laser tag was open. As politely as I could, I asked why.
“Because I’m the only one working tonight,” she said.
Then she smiled and disappeared through an employees only door, and I walked into the colossal main area. I was immediately greeted by four glass cylinders of bubbling water lit neon green on the inside, begging you to remember the 90s. I pictured my eight-year-old self bobbing around one of the vats, preserved in its musty liquid to be awoken in 27 years as a gay alcoholic with OCD and a receding hairline.
I scanned the room and saw three adults drinking at the bar in the back corner where parents could go to discreetly drink while their ungrateful children spent their money and got ringworm. I remembered Discovery Zone, which fittingly was founded in Delaware in 1989. I spent my grade school years attending birthday parties, hurrying up the plastic tubes of the three story play-place in my socks, desperate to keep up with the boys —some of whom are dead now — who only invited me because their moms made them. Discovery Zone’s florescent lit chokehold on Gen Y birthday parties — the cool kid answer to Chuck E. Cheese’s — only lasted a decade. A brief but seismic American experiment. The last of the chain went out of business in 2001, shortly after 9/11. I remember hearing stories about kids dying in ball pits or accidentally hanging themselves in the nets of the play place. DZ didn’t live to see the Bush years play out. Anthrax and the DC Sniper and Gossip Girl. The War on Terror. The pop duo Karmin. Mr. Cheese got the last laugh.
At Lots of Fun, though, there was only one child. He was with a man who I presumptuously decided was his gay uncle; it was gay uncles night. This Gay Uncle walked around with a constantly full cocktail in a plastic cup, periodically heading over to the bar —where the employee who checked us was now posted up. Maybe he was the child’s gay dad. I didn’t ask. At one point, the single “unlimited card” our group was given for games wasn’t working, so I went to a machine to purchase a new one. I quickly realized that wasn’t an option. I didn’t want to bother the employee at the bar because I knew she was the sole person the clock and also because I need to start going to Alanon again. So, I just stood there and took selfies.
“What are you doing?” I looked over and saw Gay Uncle Maybe Gay Dad staring at me from a few feet away; his nephew/son/friend was behind him, playing a video game that required VR goggles that I was suddenly anxious would give him MRSA.
But this wasn’t a “What’s it to you?” moment. There’s no time for that at a fun zone. I needed to be brief. Exacting.
“I’m trying to get a new unlimited card,” I said.
“What’s an unlimited card?” He asked.
I looked at him with genuine concern. How could he not know about the unlimited option? Unlimited games? 1/4 of the special attractions available? All for $20. I wondered if I had imagined the whole thing. Had I gone into a fun zone nostalgia fugue and imagined a just world where two hours of lizard brain dopamine could be bought with a twenty dollar bill? Then I remembered he was probably settling into a blackout.
“I don’t know,” I said, and walked away.
Eventually, the employee realized I was waiting, and made the trek across the floor. I ended up buying $80 worth of unlimited cards. I handed them out to our group like an estranged father on his one day a week custody agreement. I played a Jurassic Park game that looked like it was from 2003 with my husband. I tried to reclaim my Little League years, where I spent most of the time talking to myself in the outfield, by playing a baseball game where you “swung” a little remote controller. I struck out immediately. My husband told me he was surprised to see my playing a baseball game and I felt mysterious and sexy. I did the high striker mallet thing and lost every time. I had to pee every 10 minutes and felt like my nana.
I watched the trio at the bar watching basketball on a giant screen, nursing beers and pretending we weren’t there. We played laser tag in a black-lit room that was turned down to 60 degrees but I still was sweating by the end of it. My code name was Dogstar, or something. I forget. I only spent the first five minutes picturing myself falling down the staircase from the top level before I gave into the moment. We all shrieked in joy. My husband was on my team, and we split up to maximize our impact. I felt powerful. I felt butch. I fired my laser down into my nephew’s back game pack from a balcony more at least three times and felt ashamed.
Before we left I walked by the line of “birthday party rooms.” These rectangle spaces with only a one single window in its door, where towards the end of the party, guests were corralled inside for lukewarm pizza, cake and Sprite. The room I looked into was dark; the empty chairs neatly arranged around the long banquet table. I imagined myself sitting in one of them. Nine-years-old and already nervous about everything, hearing a low hum that no one else there could —maybe one other. I’ll never be sure. Less a hum, really, and more a vibration. Soundless thunder. I couldn’t articulate how it felt, only that it was there. That it was coming for me. I could hide in the play place, somewhere near the top — in one of those padded rooms, where the connecting tunnels converge, watching the boys crawl past me, fulfilling their agendas, not acknowledging me out of cruelty, but simply because they didn’t see me. It was molecular. We were not the same. I could hide in there until the party was over and the Discovery Zone closed and the lights were turned off. I could hold my knees up to my chin and try to ignore the hum, but it would still come for me. The thunder always coming.