Day Three: On Wheels

Rising tired again on Wednesday morning, I nevertheless made it to work determined to continue my week of partying like a teenager. At 11:15am I ventured down to Wilshire Blvd. to the old Bullocks Wilshire Department Store, now home to Southwestern University of Law for the monthly Los Angeles BID Consortium Meeting. It was the second time the Wilshire Center had hosted the meeting there; the last was a couple of years ago. It's a beautiful building, and as I walked up to the entrance I couldn't help but imagine I was a wealthy Angeleno back in the day excitedly going on a shopping spree.
The meeting was interesting because Wilshire Center BID made a presentation about their "Cool District" program which will aim to reduce their district's global warming carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2% each year for the next 40 years. I am excited to see if our BID can implement a similar program.
After work, I hurried home and got ready to hit the roller rink! My friend Jason had been planning a night out for a bunch of us to go to the Moonlight Roller Rink in Glendale for their gay skating night. I haven't been skating in a few years, but when I was a kid I had aspirations, for a brief time, of becoming an olympic figure rollerskater. I had various routines worked up that I would rehearse at the town tennis court back in Paradise, mainly to Mannheim Steamroller tunes that I had copied from vinyl to cassette tape. I had fantasies of organizing a regional figure roller skating league and I imagined that my fiercest competitor would come in the form of a girl named Gretchella from Gorham. Yes, quite the over-active imagination I had.
Anyway, I drove (earlier I had actually gotten my stupid car window to roll up, and taped the rear view mirror back on, and sprayed plenty of fabreze and air-freshner to mask the mildew from the rainwater that had come in through the open window) and Dylan and Marc and I picked up Angie on the way, who had dressed to the nines for the occasion. When we got there we did the only reasonable thing to do before going to a skating rink that doesn't have a bar: we drank 40's in the car in the parking lot! When they finally opened the doors at 8pm we got in line with Jason and his boyfriend Ishmael and a few of our other friends. We had to laugh at the sign that proclaimed the various rules of the rink, which included "NO TUBE TOPS" - which was what Angie was wearing under her faux-fur coat. Luckily they weren't enforcing the rule that night.
I hit the rink and skated around and around with ease until I would attempt to skate backwards, which would inevitably end in me falling down horribly. I couldn't remember if I had ever attempted or mastered this art back in my figure-roller skating days but I don't think it had ever even occurred to me to try.
Going to a roller rink always reminds me of my childhood days of the Stardust in Hays. Every so often, either for a school field trip or a 4H party or what not, we would be lucky enough to get taken to the roller skating rink (as we always called it) where we could enjoy ourselves in the company of our "hick" friends. Once in a great while my sibling and cousins and I would venture there on a Friday or Saturday night when all the Hays kids were out in force. That was when I learned that, according to the Hays kids, we farm children were "rubes from the boonies". They were not nice to us and it made me feel bad. Going to a gay skating night felt like the times we would go with our friends and the Hays kids were not there. It was awesome! I think there was even a group of some sort of gay high school student association there which was simply adorable to see.
I skated pretty much all night, only taking breaks to have a shot of Tequila in the bathroom and later a corn dog from the snack booth. The music was really good and it was fun to skate with so many friends. On a couples slow skate, Dylan even helped me skate backwards while we faced each other and he prevented me from falling down or running into people behind me.
I finally decided to call it a night at about 10:10 when I noticed Marc and I were the only ones our of our crew still on the floor. There was only about 20 minutes left anyway and my feet were starting to hurt from the newly developing blisters.
I was home in time to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and hit the hay by midnight.