PART TWO of: Gomorrah, Wisconsin - The Apple River Hideaway

Now, here was the part of the adventure that I was most nervous about: getting into the river. I have this pathological fear of dark, murky water. I don’t swim in lakes, ponds, or rivers. The ocean I can handle for some bizarre reason (despite the threat of sharks and undertows…go figure!), but inland water? I can’t even swim in a pool that hasn’t been cleaned in a few days. Algae wigs me out. Seaweed is worse. Slimy rocks, no thank you. I have actually had nightmares about pools with seaweed and water bugs and me being so close to the edge of falling into them that I wake up in a cold sweat. I am not exaggerating. But I’m also a stubborn person that believes in the power of mind over matter, and despite the anxiety I tell myself to just suck it up and “don’t be such a wimp about it”. So, this was the pep talk I was giving myself as I stepped into that awful, murky water as squishy, slimy, muddy grass on the riverbank squeezed unpleasantly between my toes. I got into my tube as quick as I could manage and the cold river water grabbed my senses by the fists and squeezed me around my submerged rear end. This was not a good feeling. And for those of you who don’t know, I’m very short. The tube hole was rather large. If I had allowed my body to completely relax in the tube, I would’ve folded up like a lawn chair and gone right through the hole.

So, here we were, all five tubes tied together and floating down the river. The river was crowded. People of all shapes, colors, sizes and formats were in great masses, tied together in these huge floating blobs. From the view of a bird it would’ve looked much like the floaty masses on the top of spoiled milk (I tried to think of a more poetic metaphor, but this was all that came to mind...).
Now, when you’re floating in a tube, especially when there’s five tied together, there’s very little way to steer and propel. Tree branches in the way? Too bad. People in front of you? Be prepared to get a little personal with them. Now, my friend (with a baby growing in her belly, mind you) was our steering savior. She was the bold hero who would flip over on her stomach (which gave me the heeby-jeebies every time she did it…River water! Scary!) and paddle her arms against the current to steer us out of harms way. I wanted to help her, but just having my rear end in the river water was too much for me. I didn’t think I could flip myself over, or submerge any other part of my body in the river to manage a paddling frenzy that would be of any use. So, here I am now giving praise and credit for her valor. I am eternally grateful, My Dear.

The rude pretty boy who called us boring had told us that it takes two and a half hours to float down the river without stopping. I believe we floated for maybe an hour and a half before coming to the part of the river that we had to exit. We had a few adventures on the way. We saw two turtles. One was normal looking. The other was big and weird looking. Snapping turtle, maybe? There’s snapping turtles in Minnesota rivers. In case you don’t know anything about them, they’re the size of small sea turtles and their chomp can be as severe as a shark’s. This, even being the dare-devil animal lover that I am, freaked me out a tad. More than a tad, actually. My heart actually started to race. I tried to hide my fear by staring up at the clouds and pretending to daydream. There, in the clouds, was a giant turtle. A cloud turtle. I took a picture of it to prove it to you, Reader (check out my slide show at the top). I looked up at that cloud and I thought, “Really? Is this a joke from God?” I was tempted to believe so.

We reached our exit point after going over a minnow equivalency of rapids (which were pretty fun, actually, because our speed increased). This was the part I was really dreading: the exit. I was going to have to get out of my tube and walk waist deep in the river. I did not like it, not one bit. I put my feet to the rocky floor. Slimy rocks! Great! And you couldn’t see them. I would take a step forward thinking there’d be floor when no, just kidding! A giant rock. You step on top of it only to slide down the other side of it only to hit the next one with your knee. I find things like these very annoying to my sensitive senses. Being extraordinarily observant is a gift when I can put it to use in my art and writing, but in regular living conditions it can be extremely overwhelming. It’s sensory overload for me. It’s a great cause of my anxiety. I’m learning to ignore things, to numb myself from overwhelming environments, but it’s sometimes challenging. Walking over boulders in a river that’s already wigging me out was challenging. I was doing everything I could not to come off whiny or wimpy. I kept my mouth shut best I could. But I was wanting to curse under my breath with every slip of my foot. My friend had noted, “Can you imagine doing this drunk? At least we’re sober.” And I said, “I think I’d rather be drunk…” But I said it thinking, “Then I wouldn’t care so much about the slimy rocks and the dirty water.” I wasn’t thinking about coordination…

We made it out alive. We then had to walk up a very gravelly pathway, barefoot. This was another over sensory activity for me. From having to wash my feet several times a day for weeks on end because of my poison ivy bout, my feet were as soft as babies’ skin. Walking on that gravel was making we really wish I was either drunk, or on a codeine drip. It hurt. A lot. And it was uphill. And I have teeny tiny feet and very large thighs. I was feeling very sorry for myself. I was feeling like a wuss. I was feeling unadventurous and very, very old. I thought, “Really? You’re supposed to be able to hack this sort of thing… What’s happened to you?” If I wasn’t so dedicated to my writing and the belief that you have to put yourself through uncomfortable situations just to have material to write about, I would keep myself locked up in my house and never come out. But my passion to write overdrives my fears, and I am thankful for it.

The bus. We had to get onto a bus that would transport us to the top of the river and then we would have to float back down to our campsite. Dirty. “Germaphobe” came to my mind as I sat on the bus seat and looked around at all the people around me. I thought to myself, “I wonder how many people who’ve peed in the river have sat on this seat with their wet, contaminated swim suit… I wonder how many sweaty, nasty rear ends have been in this spot, and I wonder how long it’s been since these seats have been sanitized…” I’m not a germaphobe by any means, but after working in my field of work for twelve years (which requires a lot of sanitation to prevent illnesses) you become uncomfortably aware of all the different ways germs are spread. I decided to focus on the group of drunk girls sitting across from me. Blondie on the left was pretty drunk. She sat there, unable to have conversation with her other two friends, her head weaving left and right as the bus moved on. Her eyes were slow and glazed, and I got a kick out of watching her watch other people. Her head would turn ever so delicately to the people next to her. Expression would form so slowly on her face as she was trying to react to things she was watching. She would then gradually turn her head to gaze down at her beer can, stare at it for a few seconds, then finally take the energy to put it up to her mouth for a swig. It’s really fun to watch drunk people when you’re sober. It was convenient to wear my sunglasses, too, because nobody knew I was staring at them. Then again, I doubt they would’ve noticed much anyway seeing on how they could barely focus on the top of their beer can.

We got off the bus and got back into the river. At this point, I couldn’t wait to get to our campsite. I wanted nothing more than to be on dry land, sitting at the picnic table and eating chips. We rounded a bend where there on the shore was a giant mass of people all shouting and hooting and hollering as if we were the Titanic being welcomed into port (had the Titanic not sunk, that is….). People were waving their arms and screaming, and with all of them on the riverbank it looked as though it was a welcoming party for the people floating down the river toward them. This was odd, thought I. I didn’t understand what was happening. It turned out, nothing was happening. This was the spot on the journey where the Hideaway has a shop for beer and smokes. Someone in our group said, “People actually bring their wallet on the tube with them?” Good point. I’d be a wee nervous about dropping it in the water, especially if I was drunk. But anyway, here were these people gathered on the riverbank celebrating their newly bought merchandise. Nothing more than that. So we floated on by (or rather were propelled by my friend’s husband who diligently walked through the foot deep river to guide us the rest of the way) and eventually came to our campsite. This was sweet relief for me. I tried not to think about having to tube again the next day. I was seriously considering telling the group that I would stay behind, you know, “to write in my journal or something…” was going to be the excuse. I was dreading having to be such a party pooper about it… But I didn’t need to think about that right now. Now I needed to focus on putting my feet into that slimy, muddy riverbank grass again to get out.

Finally. Picnic table and chips, here I come. And that’s what I did. I kept my filthy swimsuit on because it was a hundred thousand degrees outside and I wasn’t ready to change yet. I wish I had not opted to do this. I developed a rash the next day between my upper thighs, a sort of rash you get from contaminated swim shorts. Like, a fungal rash. Or chiggers. I can’t honestly say which it was, but I hear chiggers are as bad as bug bites so maybe it wasn’t chiggers. All I know is, is that it was definitely from sitting in my swim suit too long. I remember watching all that horrible floating algae moving in around my middle in the water and thinking, “I’m going to have some sort of reaction from the algae I just know it…”. I’ve had enough itching, thanks. The poison ivy on my feet, meanwhile, was what I thought to be close to drying up. But with my feet sticking out in the sun for two hours on my tubing adventure, and my poison ivy medication thinning out my skin, my poison ivy sunburned. It burned rather severely actually, but I didn’t realize how badly until days after when my skin started to peel off. Like, severe skin peeling. Not normal sunburn peeling, but the sort of peeling that leaves bright pink, fresh skin that should be covered with another layer of skin, not open to the stinging air.

Anyway. I could feel my foot burning in the sun as I sat at the picnic table, but I ignored it. I tried to shade it with my other foot every once and awhile, but there was very little I could do. I continued to snack on my chips, talk with my friend, play twenty questions with everyone as the grill was heating up, and keep my mind off my burning foot. Dinner was finally ready and served, and I was starving. Now, normally I have a hard time eating in public. I have another pathological fear of getting food poisoning in public (only because I have in the past, and it’s not a pleasant experience). I usually get so anxious to eat in front of people, that I don’t eat. It’s stupid. You can say it. It is. Hence the “pathological” part of the fear. But at this moment I was feeling very comfortable in my company, and I was feeling liberated from surviving the river and proud of myself for sticking it out. So I dove into my burger with relish and enjoyed its very generous gifts of juicy deliciousness. Yum! But I was slightly dehydrated. I had been in the sun for a very long time with no water. I was suddenly feeling nauseous. I couldn’t swallow my last bite of burger. I spit it back out onto my plate and could feel my heart racing. I was starting to panic. I talked myself down and said, “It’s not food poisoning. You need water.” So I got some water and tried to relax. But I couldn’t. It was too late. My little anxiety attack gave me a sick stomach. So off to the disgusting, lockless bathroom stalls I went. I came back to my car, dug into my purse, and retrieved my anti-anxiety meds. I was feeling better just knowing that I had taken one, and finally talked myself down enough to return to my friends.

Sitting on my towel on the grass next to my friend, I listened as the group chatted. I began daydreaming and zoned out for a few minutes. But something was going on around us. It took me a moment to realize it. My friend was making signals and comments that she was offended and angry about something that was happening. I looked around and listened and then came to realize that a very large mass of tubes on the river was shouting out criminally hateful words toward a man on the riverbank next to us. You see, a group of men parked next to our campsite that were, to put it bluntly, clearly homosexual. At least, some of them were. The ignorant bigots in the river were scratching their monkey armpits and calling out words like “faggot” and adding things to that word that made my blood boil. It was verbal harassment like I’ve never known. That ticking bomb inside of me was so close to a ten second count down, I wasn’t sure I could keep it from going off. My heart was racing, my adrenaline pumping. I wanted to jump into the river and track down those revolting people and do hideously violent things to them. A hatred coursed through my body, a hatred I hadn’t felt since high school when I heard people use the word, “nigger”. But this, this was like nothing I’ve ever heard, and there they were, those cowardly apes safe in their stupid floating tubes moving down the river shouting out words that would haunt the poor man they were shouting at for the rest of his life. Words have a power that can be abused just as damagingly as anything else. A wife beater, or a molester, a murderer. A dictator. A communist trying to take over the world.

Someone once said to me that words are just words. To paraphrase, he said they can mean whatever you want them to mean. “Fag” is just a word. It means nothing unless you allow it to. But I disagree. Words have a breath of life that we, as humans, have breathed into them. They can be used in different ways, yes, and as an artist I have to agree that it’s possible to change the meaning of a word with a sort of crafty ingenuity, re-creating a new purpose for it and so forth. But this does not negate the power of language. If words were just words, then I’d be out of business. All writers would. If words were just words, then Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would not have been bothered to be remembered and recited and taught as a part of our national history. Brainwashing Hitler would not have come so close to conquering the entire world. Martin Luther King Jr. would not have been able to lead a revolution if there was any truth to words being just words. If words were just words people’s emotions wouldn’t be manipulated by them so easily. What would be the point of communicating? Words have a value that is so understated, and in turn are so abused. And here, before me, the abuse was so overwhelming that I was seriously considering going home, sewing myself a costume, and beginning my vigilante career. My vigilante daydream was the only thing that saved me from getting into serious trouble, there on the riverbank. I was imagining my group of prisoners strapped to cold steel tables with cellophane (attention Dexter fans!), unable to move, surrounded by a bunch of frilly gay men holding curling irons and very feathery pirate costumes, giggling like nine year old girls ready to play with life sized Barbie dolls. Black homosexuals would be even better…

It took me quite a long time to calm down from this. Eventually the sun began to set, and we all enjoyed a good game of Mad Gab at the picnic table. The campsites around us began to fill up. The music began to pound through the earth from the next door rich kids’ SUV. The volleyball court was completely full of drunk people in their scummy bikinis and swimming trunks (I say scummy because the river is what it is: scummy), and they barely had time to play the game with all the yelling and arguing they were doing. It was like watching a bunch of ten year olds try to agree on fouls and fair game with no referee. It was funny.

Next to us was where the interesting things were truly going on. This was the foreshadowing of our late night climactic event. This is when the baboons started swinging and throwing their feces…