Photo courtesy of Siddhiksha Rajya Lakshmi Rana / Montse Martí
I’m giving my right foot a pep talk. My left foot has been rolling the skateboard backward and forward over asphalt concrete. I take one deep, confidence-building breath before finally forcing myself onto the board and moving in one slow, straight line. The board creaks loudly as I try to shift my weight, and I begin to wobble like a newborn deer. I’m scared I’m going to fall, and I should be making sure that my knees are slightly bent, my feet properly spaced, but I’m stiff and focusing on how much it’s going to hurt if I fall—and now it’s too late. The board shoots out from under me, and I land squarely on my butt with a dramatic thump. The back of my head gently taps the ground, just enough to remind me that I’m glad helmets exist.
I’m lying on my back, rocks digging into my arms, and I can’t wait to get back on and try again. Butt sore, head stinging, I couldn’t care less.
On the quest for his missing bike, Pee-wee Herman yells, “SHHH! I’M TRYING TO USE THE PHONE!” at a rowdy biker gang dressed head to toe in leather. The bikers fall silent, then slowly close in on him. One snarls, “Did anybody tell you this was a private club of the Satan’s Helpers?” Pee-wee’s tiny suit and smile don’t stand a chance. He skedaddles, nervously laughing, “Excuse me,” only to bump a motorcycle and trigger a chain reaction that topples every bike.
When I entered Blue Sky Skatepark, it didn’t take long to realize that there were rules here I didn’t understand. A deep voice cut through the air, “BOARD!” and a skateboard sailed over my feet, striking the chain-link fence beside me with a loud rattle. I turned my head and found myself staring at a group of men watching me from across the park. Some looked to be in their twenties, others barely out of high school, and a few old enough to remind me I should probably call my dad soon.
I looked down at the board, then up at the men, taking in their cuffed Dickies, scuffed Vans, hoodies layered under thrifted bomber jackets, and the occasional Ed Hardy graphic tee. Blue was not just their skatepark, it was also their runway. I looked like a total poser, holding my skateboard at my side like a surfboard, too nervous to actually ride it to the spot where I wanted to practice. The helmet on my head begged to be unbuckled and flung into the nearest trash can. Maybe if my jeans were a little baggier I could pass among the guys sending vape clouds my way. I yelled, “I’LL PUSH IT TO YOU!” planting all my weight into one dramatic foot stomp. The board … agonizingly slowly … crawled across the concrete towards the group of men. One guy finally stepped forward and barely gave a nod before picking it up. I clutched my board, glancing down at my painfully uncuffed jeans.
The men resumed their recess. They launched themselves into the air, chasing one another on their boards as if playing tag. Some laughed at their friends’ near-wipeouts. Others cheered when someone finally landed a trick. You could tell they were dying to show off to one another. One man fell so hard that the board slipped underneath him as he came down a ramp. He tried to rotate his body and landed on his right side, knocking the wind out of himself and possibly cracking a rib. He groaned, letting out a loud “FUCK” before curling into a fetal position. No one batted an eye. He lay there for a couple of minutes, then hopped back up and skated away as if nothing had happened.
The tension I felt when the board rolled toward me was not new. It echoed the unease I had seen play out between Pee-wee and the bikers, a moment where the air felt tight with judgement. And yet, these men were free. They claimed space without explanation. I wondered if I could ever fall so spectacularly and get up like it was nothing. Even as I clenched my fists when I felt myself wobbling as I attempted to roll in a complete circle, I wanted it. The sway of danger, the thrill of uncertainty, the chance to be recklessly, unapologetically myself.
Transgressive and camp filmmaker John Waters, often dubbed the “Pope of Trash,” “Prince of Puke,” and “Duke of Dirt,” once said in an interview, “Isn’t it exciting to realize you know better?” He adjusted himself, leaning back into the sofa and pulling his knee into his chest before nasally purring, “Have faith in your own bad taste. Life-affirming movies can be such a drag. Get more out of life. See a fucked-up movie.”
The fucked-up movie starts, and I’m immersed in a wall of fog, sprawled on the couch as the television glow cuts through my dim living room. A giant shopping cart pushes through the white haze, and as the mist thins, a group of nine men can be seen. Some are perched inside the cart, while others are hanging from it like their lives depend on it. Two are barely dressed, half-naked in leopard and American flag Speedos, fear written across their faces as they smack and punch each other, psyching themselves up for what’s to come.
A sudden, thunderous strike lands, and a choir enters in a sharp, forceful unison. It’s the beginning of “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana, a twentieth-century cantata based on medieval poems that celebrate desire and chaos—and as it tenses up like a volcano about to erupt, the shopping cart quickly becomes a symbol of doomed spectacle, surging downhill with no chance of turning back. The song swells towards its roaring crescendo, and in slow motion, explosions boom around the cart. Debris ricochets through the air and crashes into the men’s bodies mid-flight. Hands slip from the frame, and some men are sent painfully tumbling off entirely, their faces twisted, mouths wide open as chaos engulfs them.
The cart, now a mangled rocket of human flesh, is flying toward a humble fruit stand. The remaining men are streaked with soot, sweat, and the aftermath of flying debris. As “O Fortuna” starts to fade, one man leans forward, then looks into the camera, shouting to me in my living room, “I’M JOHNNY KNOXVILLE, AND WELCOME TO JACKASS!” The cart plows into the fruit stand with a loud crash, sending crates, apples, bananas, and bits of wood flying.
Later, laughter spills from my lips as I watch Eren McGhehey, dressed as a mouse, attempt to crawl across hundreds of active mouse traps. I’m enamored with Johnny Knoxville bringing Roger Miller’s “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd” to life, dancing in roller skates under a disco ball before getting trampled by a group of angry buffalo in a muddy pen. My jaw drops as Steve-O pierces his cheek with a hook and casts himself out to a sea of sharks. I writhe in pain watching the group of men taking turns giving each other papercuts, flattening their penises with a transparent piece of plastic, or marching onto a fast-moving treadmill while playing instruments.
As embarrassing as it is to admit that I watch Jackass, I eat it up. I can’t help but gorge on the chaos of uncensored nudity, broken bones, and bodily fluids. I relish this group of childish men, short and tall, naked or in drag, being playful with each other’s bodies while constantly surrounded by American flags alongside rainbow flags. On the television screen, their real stunts seem cruel or absurd. But within their tightly knit circle, these men have found a way to become a part of a family bound together by the chaos they live for, where masculinity softens and belonging blooms in the most unexpected way.
I have this aching desire to get off the couch and crawl into the television, to revel in every messy, absurd, outrageous second of Jackass. I’d feel the pixels painfully piercing my skin, the static of the television causing the hair on my arms to stand up. As my body contorts into this glittering, grotesque space these men carved out for themselves, elbows and bravado, everything shatters around me. I try to tiptoe around the mousetraps, but the grunts of the buffalo shake the ground in unison, causing me to fall before I can even get on the treadmill, all under the watchful eyes of men in leopard-print Speedos who launch themselves off shopping carts.
Men whose permission I can only imagine, and the smell of bodily fluids is all too much, so much that it makes me want to vomit.
The bikers spring into action when they see their rides knocked over, as if they’ve been waiting for an excuse. They don’t argue about whether to hurt Pee-wee, only how. Ideas bounce around the room: stomp him, tattoo him—and then kill him. The bikers cheer at each new suggestion, louder for the ones proposing to kill. When the noise peaks, Pee-wee interjects, “WAIT! Don’t I get a last request?” The room hesitates, then agrees. He runs over to the jukebox, then borrows a pair of chunky, white-heeled shoes from the bartender. Climbing up onto the table as “Tequila” by The Champs plays, he starts to dance. His arms jerk and flail, his knees pop in sudden, cartoonish kicks. He shimmy-shakes, points, spins, and leaps onto the dirty bar. The bikers watch, and for just a few minutes, Pee-wee owns the room.
At Borough Hall, I’m being taught how to “drop acid,” a skateboarding trick where you roll smoothly off an obstacle. “Have faith in your own bad taste,” Waters says, and even though it feels like something I shouldn’t be doing, I want to try anyway. Sweat is dripping down my back, sticky in the summer heat, soaking my shirt. My helmet is sliding around my head, nudging my red forehead. A middle-aged woman wearing a pink tank is holding my hands, guiding me as we roll together off a thick curb. Her grip keeps me steady, the pavement tilts beneath us, and for a moment, it’s just us, moving in sync. I can hear the scrape of our wheels, but all I can feel is the board dropping, and my stomach tumbling, as if I’m falling out of one body and into another.
“Going faster off the curb helps you keep your balance and prevents the board from slipping out from underneath your feet,” she says, and I nod, gripping her hands tight. On one particularly fast roll, she lets go of my hands right before the drop, leaving it all to me. The curb disappears beneath me, the pavement rushes up, my chest lifts, and my stomach flips. I’m flying, suspended just above the concrete. I gasp at how unusually high the curb looks from this angle and fail to bend my knees. When the board hits the ground, it shoots out from underneath me and I collapse. My shins are aching, my legs are covered in bruises, but I immediately get back up, knees bent, ready to drop acid again.
The second attempt on my own feels unreal. I launch off the edge, gliding in a blur. The city stretches around me, people are frozen like statues, and the wind is pushing my sweaty strands of hair back. I settle into the drop, bending my knees, absorbing it rather than fighting it. In one swift clatter, the board stays with me, steadily carrying me forward. And then suddenly the pavement slightly tilts.
I’m going downhill at Borough Hall.
Speed piles on fast, faster than I’ve ever gone. I look ahead to see that the pavement merges into a busy intersection, and now there are people in my path: walkers, baby strollers, bodies moving unpredictably. Suddenly this turns into a dance, frantic, unchoreographed. I bend my knees, swerve, slip, and thread through gaps that barely exist. I carve through it all, ridiculous, sloppy and perfect, in a performance that I hadn’t rehearsed and that no one agreed to watch.
My arms are flailing as I near the bottom of the hill, and with the intersection approaching, I violently jerk myself sideways to stop, crashing right into a Citi Bike rack. Pain shoots through my ribs as I fold over a bike, my lip starts to bleed from nervously biting too hard, and my shins are hissing. My board skitters away, clattering against the street. For a second, everything is sharp. The pain, the noise, the adrenaline, it all hits me, and I can’t help it.
I’m laughing. Chest heaving, still buzzing from the thrill of flying. I look up and see the woman with the pink tank skating toward me, my board tucked underneath her arm, smiling. She’s patting me on the back while peeling me off the bike, congratulating me on successfully dropping acid, like this is normal, like this is good taste. I felt bonded to this woman, even though I barely knew her. During our time spent together holding sweaty hands and rolling off curbs, it felt like we drifted somewhere else. Everything was brighter. Time felt distorted. And after I soared downhill like a comically large shopping cart, it ended with a loud crash.
In reflecting on his Youth Manifesto, John Waters emphasizes the transformative impact of LSD on his early life. “LSD gave me the confidence to do what I wanted,” he says. “Once I take LSD, I don’t care what people think.”
Back in the bar, a couple broken bottles later, as the song nears its end, the Satan’s Helpers cheer “TEQUILA!”, throwing a party instead of a beatdown. Pee-wee bursts out the door, wearing a leather vest, his arm slung around a biker, both howling with laughter. The gang gives him a motorcycle and he hops on with exaggerated glee, revving the engine as the group bids him farewell and ventures on to find his missing bike.
I only wonder how badly this might have gone had this scene happened in real life. Every flamboyant, unapologetic move Pee-wee made that put him at risk, the Satan’s Helpers looming, the motorcycles rumbling, all ready to pounce at the guy in a gray suit wearing a red bowtie. But in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, that’s where the humor lives. It’s assumed Pee-wee is about to get pummeled, bruised, humiliated by this hulking group of men, and he decides the best thing to do in the moment is slip on a pair of chunky, white-heeled shoes and dance without care. The song lasts only a few minutes, but the bikers are transported elsewhere, maybe sent back in time, and they’re so deeply moved that instead of killing Pee-wee, they cheer for him and welcome him as one of their own.
I was at Blue again when reality hit. I tried to push off, tried to ride, but everything shook underneath me as if I had forgotten everything I’d learned, acid drop included. I tripped off my skateboard and tried to outrun the fall, but that only made it worse. Momentum caught me, and I went down hard, face-first. I didn’t want to get back on at all, and I lay there, debating whether to cry or just stay down. From a distance, I heard the scratching of wheels and looked up to see an older regular I had noticed, part of the men’s group I had been so daunted by when I first came to the park, skating towards me with his board in hand.
I sat on a picnic table with him as he rolled a joint, and we both laughed, talking about the tricks we’d tried and how our bodies had become a map of collisions and recoveries, trials and errors. I admitted to him how nervous I had been about coming to the park, how I found him and his group intimidating. He just smiled and said, “But you’re doing it, you’re here. Learning, growing, no different than anyone.” I wanted to believe him, wanted to imagine stepping fully into the Jackass world, to be one of them, but like my haunting desire, it all went to shit. Even as I sat there right with him, sharing laughter and a smoke, he soon offered me too much guided advice, as if every move I made was still part of a lesson.
I left the park that day with an extra deck he decided to give me. A gold deck, so shiny it reminded me of a trophy. Too much gold, tacky even, over-the-top for someone who only knew a few tricks. But somehow it felt perfectly suited: absurdly glamorous, like it belonged to a world I hadn’t yet earned, but maybe that was the point.
Pee-wee takes off on the motorcycle. The bikers cheer him on, their laughter spilling into the street. He rides into the distance, wobbling and grinning, back on track to reclaim his trophy, his missing bike. Seconds later, he crashes into a billboard, a sign for the bar. The bikers fall silent, and the wail of a distant ambulance pierces the atmosphere as he lies sprawled on the ground, tumbling headlong into a bizarre nightmare of a dream.
I find myself trapped in Pee-wee’s nightmare from time to time. The warehouse of my mind consists of pitch-black shadows, while my skateboard and its parts glow fluorescently. In an operating room, clowns dressed as twisted surgeons gleefully disassemble my board, their laughter ringing sharp, hollow. My disassembled board—wheels, trucks, bearings, and deck—are carried over a giant cauldron, where devils dance around flames as if they’re preparing a sacrificial offering, and everything is lowered into boiling water.I ache to plunge in, headfirst, to reclaim the pieces that have been stolen. I wade through the boiling water until my skin blooms bright pink, tequila sharp and burning on my breath. I dissolve into the pot, stretching, melting into a soup so foul and thick I can taste it in my mouth, feel it slithering along my tongue. And the world bends and shimmers around me like I’ve dropped acid, every rule, every edge, every shape liquefied into this single, chaotic, breathing thing that is somehow me and not me all at once.
This essay was originally published in Back Matter, the magazine produced by students in the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism at the New School for Social Research.
