Cotton candy always makes me smile. Seeing it. Smelling it. Just not eating it. Never tasted the stuff before. I was always afraid that the taste wouldn't live up to the memory. My eyelids blink themselves closed and in an instant I am there all over again. On those bumper cars.
End of Summer 1996. Bluebob's Park. The biggest little amusement park just shy of the boardwalk. A whole other world that lay at the feet of the ocean.
I was there with some friends. Bunch of guys. Nobody important. What was more important was Amy Wineglass. She was in my third period ceramics class the year before. Hey, don't laugh. I made a really cool water bong for my final. My teacher asked to borrow it and when he handed it back with a smile on his face he told me I got an A. I liked my bong. Not as much as I liked Amy though.
I used to stare at her so hard sometimes that I would drool down onto my shirt. She took it as a compliment though and one day we ran into each other at the Circle K. She told me that if I was gonna be at the carnival she would see me that night. I was. So she did. It was a night I'll never forget.
There I was hanging with a group of my best friends whose names began to escape me as early as the next day. Boys will be boys and that night we were. Then I saw her over by the jungle gym. It was like a scene from a movie and she was waiting there for me to come and rescue her from having to climb up on a vine and yell my name all across the way.
The Summer heat was dancing on it's last legs and there wasn't even the slightest hint of a breeze because it was hot as fuck. I quite liked it actually. We both were all sweaty before we even saw each other. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to lean against her and feel the wetness of her on me. It didn't take much to make me happy back then. It still doesn't. Boys will always be boys.
We were having so much fun and when we rubbed together our bodies cupped with suction and that was when she said we should go on the bumper cars. That was where everything changed. On those bumper cars that now sit in the dilapidated park crusted with moss and insects.
I could tell that she wanted to sit all closed up next to me just as bad as I did with her. We both jumped in that car in unison and it was as if time skidded to a halt with Fred Flintstone's bald feet. But we had to wait for all the slowpokes to get on board. As we did this she stared right into my eyes and I felt my heart pop itself outward and much of my breath was yanked from between my lips like a rabbit being pulled from a hat.
As the ride started up I leaned back and took in every inch of the moment. The song that was playing on the radio and spilling out of the speakers. The whirring of the gears as I would be shifted and tossed around with Amy Wineglass clinging to my every move. But nothing overpowered me like the sweet almost sickly aroma of cotton candy perfume. It seemed to float right through my pores from the air straight into me where I felt my insides curdling. Awaiting the soothing rescue of princess Amy Wineglass.
Right there in middle of the carnival.... on the bumper cars... surrounded by hoardes of unknowing people... Amy reached down inside the cover of the car... and gave me my first handjob... and there... shoved around in the chaos of the hot summers night air.... I was crowned king of the world.
The park would be closed down the following year. Some freaks escaped from the freak house and went on a rampage. They scared the living shit out of everybody in attendance and even managed to park a short bus of fear into the hearts of many who weren't. The house of freaks is right across from where Amy and me fell in something that maybe wasn't exactly love but sure felt along those lines for a few minutes. Them freaks busted up the bumper cars real good. Damn shame. But it didn't really matter. I never went back to the carnival while it was open after that night with Amy. Didn't seem necessary.
I never saw Amy again after that night either. She went her way and I went mine. Opposite ends it would seem. But every now and then I grab a six-pack and head over to what remains of Bluebob's Park and my youth. I crack a frosty one and I toast Amy standing in front of the trashed out bumper cars. Hell, sometimes I bring my water bong and I toke one for the freaks. Even all these years later I can breathe in the ocean just down the other end of the boardwalk and it always smells like cotton candy. It's like going back in time and being king all over again and no matter what kind of day I'm having it never fails to make me smile.
*****Scribbles writing challenge. A picture challenge. Original post date 7/26/2011*****
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