There are two types of people in the world. Those who like scary rides, and those who don’t.
I don’t.
Hey, I’m not a total coward. I like some of the rides. I don’t mind most smaller rollercoasters, and anything which just goes around - it’s just going upside down that really freaks me. And heights. I can handle going fast, but if we start to flip, or drop too far, that’s when I want to get off. That’s my limit.
So why am I at Dreamworld with a pack of adrenaline-freaks who can’t wait to ride the Thunderbolt six billion times until they hurl?
Because Kate is here too.
Kate’s laugh lilts like a clarinet solo. Kate walks like a dancer. When she smiles, my head goes light and I need to sit down. And best of all, Kate is my friend.
I’ve never had a girlfriend before. I know, pretty lame for someone who’s already eighteen. Hey, I went to a private school, OK? All boys, and plenty of male ‘bonding’ to stunt your emotional growth for the next three decades. I never had any female friends until I got to uni this year. The only girls I ever liked before were the pretty ones we saw down at the train station, who’d laugh loudly in their little groups and never look our way. I’ve never liked someone who I actually knew before. Someone who’s my friend.
Of course, that also screws things up. I know Kate doesn’t have a boyfriend, and I know - well, she seems to think I’m an OK guy. But, well, I don’t know if she thinks of me as a guy, if you know what I mean. A GUY guy. A guy you’d date. She probably just thinks of me as a friend. Which is cool, but there’s the weirdness factor as always. Nobody wants to date someone who’s just your friend. She might totally freak out if I asked her. I don’t want her to do that.
But every time we’ve hung out together - I mean, with the uni gang, not alone - we’ve had fun. We get along really well. And I really like her. So I’ve really got to ask her out. I just have to find the time.
OK, and I have to find the guts. Yeah, I’m scared. Kate’s…amazing. Going for her, going for something like that, it’d scare anyone. And I’ve never done it before. So, yeah, I’m terrified, and half of me doesn’t even want to go through with it. Better to just stay down. Like I said, I’m not a big fan of being scared.
I figure though, if we can just get a moment alone, I’ll be able to ask her. Especially if we’ve been hanging out all day. You know, we’ll have a chance to really talk, get comfortable, and then I’ll be able to work up to it. That’s why I agreed to come along to Dreamworld. Sure, half the rides freak me out, but this was like an entire day of let-loose, post-exam celebration. I thought I could definitely find a moment in there.
It hasn’t happened yet though. Mainly because we haven’t stopped moving since we got through the gates. There are so many rides at Dreamworld now, you have to go totally full-bore to get through them all. We’ve been running from one to the other the whole time, and pretty much screaming at the top of our lungs the whole time too. Man, it's fun being young and stupid sometimes.
But now, for the first time, it’s just me and her, and it’s quiet. There’s just one problem. The reason it’s quiet is that we’re being strapped into the Wipeout, and all anyone can think about is terror.
Ok, Ok, I admit it. There was another reason I wanted to come along to Dreamworld. Every guy knows that the theme park is a great place for, you know, getting closer. It’s like the scary movie - girl gets scared, girl jumps into the arms of the person sitting next to her - you. You get contact, and it’s totally innocent…but she can always hold on a bit longer if she wants to. Plus, the guy gets to be macho - the white knight rescuing the maiden. And all guys, no matter how much sensitive new-age guy crap we might spout, love that feeling.
Fat chance of me being Kate’s white knight. The girl is a ride-fiend. She’s nuts. She has no fear. She just wants to go on everything, over and over again. She’s been dragging people onto rides all day. She even dragged me onto the Thunderbolt, which was almost OK, once we got passed the loops. Still, I screamed like a damn woman for far too much of it, and I almost threw up when we got off. NOT cool.
And after that, I was just too chicken to go on anything. I piked on the Giant Drop, and the Tower of Terror, I even piked on the Enterprise, which EVERYONE went on. Do you know how freaking gay it is to be the guy holding the bags? Geez, just take my ego and run it over with a steamroller, thanks. And in front of Kate. I felt so…pathetic. So I decided to impress her. To show her, just once, that I could do it, that I could go the extra mile if she asked me to. That I’d do anything for her.
So when she asked if anyone wanted to go on the Wipeout, I said yes. Then I realised nobody else had said yes. Then I saw the thing.
If you don’t know it, let me explain. The Wipeout is not quite like most of the other rides out there. First off, they strap you into this long row of chairs, just like on the Drop or the Rainbow, or whatever. There’s a pylon attached to each end, and when the pylons go up, so does the seating thing. Normal so far. But these pylons can also flip right around and upside down, and the seating thing isn’t fixed, so it spins free, back and forth with the momentum, like you’re in some sort of giant washing machine.
To make it worse, each one of the pylons moves independently from the other, so you tilt like crazy, AND they both move randomly, and at varying speeds. So you can never know what they’re about to do to you - whether you’re going to roll forward or back, up or down, over, under or upside down. At least with a rollercoaster you can see the track, you know what’s coming. This thing…this thing is lethal.
With all the different ways you can end up hanging or swinging, you need three separate steel harnesses to hold you in. First, there’s a waist bar which holds you firmly down. Then the shoulder one comes down, and when I feel how firm that one was, I suddenly realise just how bad this is going to be, and just how stupid I’ve been. Then, out of nowhere, there’s this third one coming up from between our legs, pushing into our chests. At that point, I start to gibber.
I’m so busy freaking out, the next thing I know there’s this whirring and crunching and we’re going up in the air already. I am totally gone. I start chanting to myself over and over - “you’re not gonna die you’re not gonna die you’re not gonna die…” and by the time we got to the top, it is “we’re all gonna die we’re all gonna die we’re all gonna die”. Dimly, I can hear Kate just whooping with delight like she always does, and I hate her for it.
Then we stop, right at the top, for just a second.
And another second.
I swallow, my throat red raw. I feel something brush my leg. I look across and Kate gives me one of those smiles of hers. “You OK?” she asks, with a real concern which shames me into bravado. Somehow, I manage to fake a smile back. “Yeah…” I say, and she nods supportively, and for the tiniest fraction of a second, I relax.
Big mistake.
With a crack, we flip forward and dive straight for the ground. Then we immediately jerk back and twist up again, and upside down. And I scream. We spin. We rock. We launch. We plummet. We lean, we twist, we careen, back, forth, left, right stop start over under inside out…and the whole time I’m screaming and yelling and even crying, because all I want to do is get off, get off right now, to make it stop, to make it all be over…
Then there’s a crunch, and a beep, and it is. Thank God.
I sigh and open my eyes and instantly realise something is wrong. We’re on an angle. We’re still very high in the air. We’re looking right at the ground. And the beeping noise is still going. It hits everyone on the ride at once - we’re stuck.
The ride is broken.
“Please remain calm” scratches the loud speaker, which of course instantly confirms all our fears, and so everyone just goes nuts. People are swearing, shouting, flailing around in real panic. I feel Kate suddenly grab my hand with a steel grip, her palm slick with sweat. We share a terrified glance and then it hits me:
Kate is now holding my hand.
YES!!!
Ok, now what? Her grip is so tight, I can’t spin my hand around to really return the “holding” effect. But I want to show her that I’m not weirded out or anything, that it’s cool, that I like it. So I wobble my arm up and down in what I hope is sort of reassuring. But it’s not enough.
Maybe….just maybe….I could touch her leg. In a situation like this, it would be OK. Just make sure you don’t go above the knee area. Keep it cool.
I waggle the hand she’s holding again and pat it twice on her knee. Easy. I get gooesbumps. I smile and say something stupid like “It’s OK, we can’t fall”. Like a moron, I tap the harness to show her what I mean.
She turns and smiles at me the same fake, cracked mask of terror I showed her just a few minutes ago, and that’s when I realise she’s really freaked. Not just worried, not just a thrilling kind of fear, but she’s actually on the verge of losing it. I remember that she said something about the Giant Drop being almost too scary for her, because it stayed still for so long. I guess that’s her worse fear - just being still and up high. And when you add that to the ride breaking…she’s actually really scared. She’s almost on the verge of tears.
Silently, I thank God. Looks like I do get to be the hero.
Ok, but once again, don’t blow it. Don’t make it look like you’re saving her. Otherwise, there’ll be this whole balance problem, like she’ll feel embarrassed, or humiliated or in your debt or something. So keep it real. Don’t be the knight. Just be you. Just be a friend.
“It’s OK” I say again. “Just….I don’t know, shut your eyes and think of something else.”
She whips her head around, almost angry with fear.
“Like what?” she demands.
“Anything. I don’t know….puppies. The tigers. The MT101 exam”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Me? Ummmm….” I really don’t want to tell her, but I can’t think of a lie.
“Tell me! Please! I can’t think of anything!” There’s an edge of real panic in her voice which snaps me back into reality.
“Er, heh, well, actually, um, I was thinking, about whether, um, you and me, I mean you, whether you would uh like to go, like, ‘out’. With me. Er, sometime. You know, whenever”
And then she just stares at me for a second.
“Seriously?”
I move my jaw up and down, but my brain is still catching up with the last sentence.
“I mean, that is seriously what you were thinking?” she gasps out.
“err…yeah?”
“Seriously?” she says again, with a look of total perplexion on her face. That’s not good. But I also notice that she’s stopped taking sidelong glances at the ground. I nod and shrug, thanking God again that I might still be able to pass this off as a hypothetical question if I need to.
“That’s what you’re thinking about.” she says flatly.
“Yup. It was a lot scarier than this ride, so it really took my mind of it” I give a short laugh and she almost joins in. I can see her slightly relaxing. She looks at me for a second - that same quizical look, like she’s thinking “what the hell ARE you?” - then she simply says:
“Yes”
Somewhere, deep down inside me, a dragon collapses under my sword, and a maiden leaps into my arms.
“Cool” I say, slowly. “Course, we may not ever get off this ride, so it’s a moot point” I add, and this time she does give a nervous laugh, and it looks like she’s going to be OK.
A few minutes later, they lower us down to the bottom, and then another fifteen minutes after that, they’re able to release the locks and get us off. As we walk down the stairs, Kate takes my hand again, and we both look back up at the ride behind us. We share a shudder. Then she gives me one of her smiles, only this time, it’s for me, and me only, and I know that I’ll never be scared of a ride again.
But we still decide to spend the rest of the day on the dodgems.