Roller Skates: Part Two

Welcome to Part Two of my roller skate story. I’ll pick up where I left off on Thursday- or rather, finish the parts that didn’t make the cut in Part One.

Sometime between my second pair of skates and my third, I went to Adult Night at the roller rink for the first time. I am pretty sure I only went due to scheduling- my availability and their hours. By this point, I was really getting bit by the skating bug, and wanted to go as often as possible, but with the rink being about 35 minutes away and my work and family and rehearsal schedule, it was hard to find time. So when I saw that Tuesday nights were open late for adults only, I figured, may as well. I didn’t expect it to be busy, given that there seemed to be only a smattering of adults during the regular hours, but the timing worked. And heck, then I wouldn’t have to navigate through a barrel of monkeys with zero spatial awareness called children.

When I pulled up to the rink, the parking lot was full. HUH?! Who knew that Tuesday night at the roller rink would be standing room only? Certainly not me. I grabbed my skates, paid my money, and walked inside. The scene before my eyes was magical, and more and more magic unfolded the longer I skated, because I had never seen, nor been to, anything like it before in my life. When I walked through those doors, I walked through a different dimension, and into a place that people could be their absolute best, weirdest, loveliest, selves. This was not the real world – this was Playland.

When I say I could’ve sat on the bench people watching all night, without ever stepping a polyurethane wheel onto the floor, I mean it. I did my best to take it all in- the joy, the outfits, the skills, the comradery, the lack of judgement. The DJ. The music. The lights and disco balls. The giant roller skate that dangles from the ceiling in the center of the rink. I made a mental list of my favorite things and people, and vowed to write about that experience. Here I am, almost two years later, keeping my promise, and doing my best to remember everything, although I am certain I will forget parts. However, in the two years since, and in the space between, I have logged many Dead & Co. shows, and the experiences are parallel in a lot of ways, and I don’t know if I would have included that antidote had I written this back then. Maybe that is a part of why I love it so much. The shows and the rink. They all feel like my people.

At a Dead show, you have the spinners, the bobbers, the swayers. You have the stoners and the trippers. The folks that probably wear khakis and polo shirts M-F, only to dust off their tie-dyes to jam barefoot on the hillside at a Sunday night show. These people, and these tours, will get their own pieces written about them, but the bridge here is that those same people exist at the roller rink, just in a different form. There are the speed skaters, weaving quite expertly through the crowd (and adult night is crowded!) There are the dancers in the middle of the rink, spinning on eight wheels like a top, flawlessly executing moves that I had only seen on the internet and too afraid to attempt myself (which, again, reasonable given my lack of experience and skills.) There are the couple skaters, gliding around the rink like a dancefloor; the stoners with their headphones on, moving at a glacial pace but carrying a calm aura with them (these are my favorite kind of stoners- more on that later.) There are the derby girls, the old guys, and everything in between.

On top of those groups, then you have the stragglers, and I mean that in the most sincerest of ways. And these are the people I really want to talk about, and what made that night- as well as subsequent adult skate nights- as memorable as it was. These were the people that made me realize that adult night is the place to go when the world doesn’t let you be who you are. If you are someone that most would consider “normal,” this may not make sense to you. But if you are like me, and feel like you generally don’t fit in in your environment, or with your family, or in your community, you will understand this completely. If you are one of those that looks incredibly normal on the outside, but your true self is screaming on the inside to be let out, you will also understand, and I am hear to tell you, there is no safer place to be yourself than at the roller rink on adult night. (This is also very closely related to how I feel about big cities but we will revisit that down the road.)

That first night, I watched a couple skate around the rink in matching, head-to-toe shimmering skintight bodysuits, barely taking their eyes off each other. I watched men dressed as women bob and weave through the crowd in short skirts and pigtails. (Before you comment about pronouns or gender identities here, let me stop you right there. Because I have not spoken to those people, I do not know their identities. Much like the deadheads, maybe those people wear a suit and tie to work and identify as men but prefer skating in women’s clothes. I have no idea, so I will just write about my visual observations, so you can hold your pretty little horses.) I watched women that the world would consider too large to wear certain things, confidently bomb around the rink in the shortest shorts I have ever seen, not once tugging down the legs to try and hide their bodies. I watched as the punk rocker kid with the mohawk high-stepped on skates around the rink, and marveled at those who chose to show up wearing sequins and feather boas.

Point being, this was the place where all the misfit toys could come and play with each other, being one hundred percent, unapologetically themselves, without any judgement or side eyes (the only exception is the guy who skates in wranglers and a camo baseball hat that likes to wear pro-gun shirts because read the room, dude. So yes, I judge that person. And for the record, prior to showing up with a pro AR-15 shirt to skate a mere few hours away from the school that had a whole bunch of kids shot in the face, I thought it was awesome to see an old guy in cowboy garb skating.) The joy that courses through the rink, an electric vibe throughout the building, the laughter, the friendships – all of it- lets you know that you are welcome here. All of you. In any way, shape or form you want to show up in. (Again though, just leave the second amendment shit at home, for a hundred different reasons.)

Of all the hobbies I have picked up, (and put down,) over the years, skating seems to have found a permanent place in my body. I love the way it feels when the breeze is blowing my hair back (other favorite hobbies include bike riding and horseback riding so there is a theme here, and I think it is feeling weightless and free.) I love the moment I step on the rink and start cruising. I may not know tricks and spins (and a part of me is afraid to learn because learning requires falling and falling can lead to injury and I’m 43 and shit hurts a lot more than it used to, plus I do hair for a living until my writing gets discovered and I start making a living doing this,) but the way it feels like I’m holding my inner child’s hand as we make our way around the rink feels… it feels like love. And none of the people on the rink could know this, but every single one of them have helped me learn to love myself more.

The really good people have taught me that sometimes, even the best people will fall and so the only two things that matter after a fall are laughing and getting your ass back up to try again. The thicc girls have taught me that it is OK to show up in short shorts and not feel like I need to hide my pale, chubby legs, because they are the things that make me move so who cares what they look like, just be grateful to have them. The men dressed like Elton John have taught me to just wear the sparkles because our only job in this life is to shine like a goddamn disco ball. That first night, I thought I would be showing up to an empty rink, but what I showed up to is one of the most pivotal moments in my adult life. I found my place, I found my people, and they have all helped me find myself more and more each time I go back.