Once a year, the carnival would grace my tiny town with its presence, and my world would, for a single summer week, be transformed. The fun came to rest at the Montrose County fairgrounds, smack dab in the middle of a broad pit of mud, dust, and cow dung. In the dry desert heat the carnival would take shape, and all of bored children of summer would come out of their Nintendo stupors and into a world full of wonders. It was a chance to shake routines, to interact with something other than a cathode ray tube, to see toothless tattooed carnies with necks redder than our own, and maybe, if we were lucky, to kiss a boy or girl.
Our carnival had the usual assortment of scams, shams, and lawsuit-inducing death traps, nicely paired with an excess of teeth-rotting fare, but the minute I handed over my year's allowance for a roll of flimsy red tickets and passed through those gates, there was only thing on my mind - the Gravitron.
I'm sure you've seen it, probably rode it. A big silver disc propped up on a platter and covered in rainbows of seizure inspiring LEDs, an amalgamation both futuristic and nostalgic. The Gravitron was a sort of 1950s version of what the future would look like , past, present, and future.
Its stalwart exterior revealed nothing about what waited inside, which, for me, was the initial draw. I wanted to step into that steel spinning fortress and see what all the fuss was about. I remember the first time I took my place along the padded walls. I was with a neighborhood girl and a couple mutual friends, and I wanted to impress her with my steel stomach and nerves. The operator, a lanky, dark-featured goth, stood safely in inside a cylindrical booth at the center of the machine and appraised us dispassionately.
When we had all boarded and the entrance was sealed, the machine began to hum, softly at first and then with increasing force and pitch, and we began to turn. From sequestered speakers burst the music of Twisted Sister, as hearts leapt into mouths. The pinpoint lights became colored comet streaks as our speed increased. Our timid perch against the wall was broken as the panels rose upward on creaky tracks, pinning us in limbo.
As "We Ain't Gonna Take It" reached its grand finale, replaced by Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar", the operator got on a tinny, muffled mic and asked us who wanted to ride some more, to which every boy immediately screamed the affirmative, and the ride continued its nowhere / everywhere trajectory. Our newfound understanding of gravity left us free to walk on walls, turn ourselves upside down and inside out, to swish and slosh the blood inside our bodies and achieve a novel head rush. Def Leppard's sugar effectively poured, the carnie in the middle once again got on the mic and asked if we wanted to party. The cheers again arose, albeit this time less heartily, and Motley Crue's Dr. Feelgood filled the air.
Only this time we weren't feeling so good. The walls became a giant twister board - the shoes of strangers flailing about to kick heads as faces became buried in unfamiliar sides, this but one distraction amidst the onslaught of lights, sounds, and the curious examination of the contents of our stomach. Around and around we spun - and at the height of Mick Mars' guitar solo, our tormentor again inquired as to whether we wanted to keep going. This time there were only a couple of cheers, and a smattering of queasy and vehement "No!"s. At this point I'm certain a few passengers had vomited - the smell hung thick in the whirling air, but the sheer mechanics of getting anything out of ones mouth against the force of four G's baffled me. The man in the middle smiled, and the ride sped up. I looked to my female companion and found her head back and eyes shut, face white as a ghost. I couldn't be certain she was still breathing.
Safe within his stationary perch the operator at long last grew bored and hit his magic button. The lights receded, Megadeth's "End Game" drew to a close, and the whirring hum subsided. We filed out of that round metal tomb like a drunken funeral procession, close-lipped and eager to return to the sturdy ground of the land of the living. Once stabilized, we fled toward sunlight, scattering like ants to vomit in different recesses of the fairgrounds. We told stories about it afterward - the length of the ride growing with each repetition. "I rode the Gravitron for twenty two minutes" we'd say. "People were puking back into their own faces! It was awesome!"
Needless to say, I struck out with the neighborhood girl that day - She wasn't impressed by my death breath and I found her less attractive with the vomit on her sleeve. But despite that harrowing first ride, I kept coming back for more every year - each time with a mix of excitement and trepidation. The Gravitron was a rite of passage through summer - you didn't have to love it, you just had to do it.
It's been a long time since I've been to the carnival, but in some ways I feel like I've never stepped off the Gravitron. After all, what is life but our shiny tin spaceship - our past, present, and future? It is an ever spinning cycle we are inevitably powerless to stop. And so we steel our stomachs and go along for the ride, to experience the sights and sounds, to make the most of this brief passage as our worlds are continually turned upside down and righted once again. As much as we may yearn to stand in the center, we never will. We are not in control. From time to time we may secretely wish to escape, but openly we beg for more. And when we finally do return to stable ground, we look back on it and tell our tales. I came, I saw, I hurled. And I'll take that ride again.