King of Her Desire

19

This song may offend, but it was written in the 60s Civil Rights Era as a way of being honest about the racial turmoil happening at that time, and which continues to this day in America. It's blunt and brutal, but it's still relevant. Unfortunately.

Turned out all the good water parks had closed down over the past few years. Even before the plague, they weren't doing all that well, I guess.

Cause times change. People move on to other things. And then they were hard to maintain, too. I remember the owners of the oldest of them kept getting sued because people claimed they'd been cut by nails and sharp edges that had come loose in those tubes you slid down.

And then there was the use of all that water in the desert. We go nuts wasting water out here. All the hotels and apartment buildings have some kind of fountain. Pools all over the place.

It's hot as hell, yes, but we barely have enough to drink, let alone pee into for fun.

We finally took the sibs to this "fun park" that had laser tag, bumper boats, go karts, an arcade and all kinds of things, along with a big water slide and a few other little things to splash around in. And the moment I loved most happened right when we got there.

See, the sibs kind of hung back waiting for The Lecture. That's the real stern talk we used to get from one of the grownups the very few times we went to some little carnival or something.

Actually, there were usually two lectures. One telling the kids who could pretend to be underage not to say anything stupid when the grownups lied about how old they were.

How it worked was, we always went in a big pack of family and friends. And the mothers made a big commotion at the ticket booth with all these coupons and things, some legit, some expired—total chaos, we'd cause. And the little summer job kids at the windows would just melt down and let us pass when all the people behind us started bitching at them.

The second lecture happened once we got through the gates. It started with, "Don't be askin' for every damned thing you see!"

And then we were told exactly how many rides we could afford, that each of us could have one corn dog and one drink, though we usually snuck some snacks in so that we wouldn't have to pay for any. And it ended with someone pointing to a specific spot near the exits, followed by something like:

"If you're not here when we leave for that bus stop, you can walk your ass all the way home."

That day I whipped out a debit card and got us a cabana, no less. That was the fun park equivalent of a VIP room that came with three pizzas, two "bottomless" pitchers of soft drinks, a bunch of arcade tokens and a wristband that got you on all the rides once.

The sibs had never even seen one, but that day I handed one to each kid. And I felt like king of the world watching them squeal and hop around when I fastened those things on them.

And just as we were about to head for our cabana this loud girl's voice yelled out, "Hey, pretty! I know you're not about to walk by like you don't see us!"

And I turned around and Tenisha Banks was right behind us with her little crew who always stood behind her like backup singers or something. Couple of guys, too. Real hood and not at all pleased to see me.

I actually liked Tenisha. I even understood why she chose to be so loud. She liked pissing off white people. Especially at places like this where all the little mommies and daddies went trying to have the perfect little white bread day out with the kiddies.