Tomorrow is the
Coney Island Mermaid Parade, an annual tradition since 1983. The parade features wacky costumes, wild floats, and all the glories of Coney Island's famous boardwalk (the Cyclone, Nathan's hot dogs, and Astroland, to name a few). It's on rain or shine at 2pm, but since this is the mermaid's chance to sun themselves out of the water, lets hope the day shines.
Speaking of the parade - an excerpt from a story I wrote a few years ago:
Of course, I couldn’t find anyone to go to the parade with, but I saw it as a sign that I should give Jerry a call. His phone voice sounded less calm than usual, and where he usually just grunted, he said, “Bye, see you soon,” and I was like “Are you going through puberty or something, doofus? Your voice just totally cracked,” but he had already hung up.
Up until that moment, I had always prided myself on being able to diffuse an awkward situation. It’s like a talent of mine, I just chatter about frogs or David Letterman’s teeth or something until the silence is all filled up like a helium balloon. But for some reason, maybe everyone else on the F train was extra talky and I couldn’t help listening, or maybe it was the pretty intense heat making us feel faint, for some reason we barely said anything to each other the whole way down to Stillwell Avenue. “This is it,” Jerry said, and I did one of those straight-line smiles that means you’re acknowledging someone. He might have tried to hold my hand, because I felt something sweaty and gross brush up against my own clammy palm, but I clenched and unclenched both my fists and then it was gone. Maybe I was imagining it, anyway.
Any way you slice it, the day was doomed. Jerry doesn’t like rollercoasters, so I had to ride the Cyclone by myself, which was pretty scary, more because of the creaky wooden noises than the actual adrenaline rush. He kept saying how Astroland was freaking him out, and I said maybe he shouldn’t have gotten stoned before such an already awesome adventure, which pissed him off a little I think, but is it my fault if he was having a bad high? I don’t think so.
So the whole day just turned out weird. The mermaids all looked really beautiful though, and there was even one dressed entirely in cheetah print, her tail and everything. I poked Jerry and said if I could wear anyone’s costume, that would be it, but he just looked confused. I kept wishing I had brought some glitter or iridescent fabric to wrap myself in, because walking in the parade looked like almost as much fun as the drag queens on the float seemed to be having. I tried to get Jerry to sneak behind the cheetah mermaid with me, but he didn’t want to walk in the parade. He thought we would stick out because of our jeans and sneakers. I tried tying my shoelaces together and hopping around like I had one leg, like a tail or something, but Jerry told me to cut it out, that he didn’t want me to fall on my face.
“Face it, Jerry,” I said. “You’re not having any fun here. You better lighten up or I’m not inviting you back next year. So there.”
“There is no next year,” he said. “They’re shutting down Astroland, remember?” I must have looked like I was going to cry or something, even though I already knew it was the last Mermaid Parade ever, because then he said, “All good things come to an end, I guess. There’s no rhyme or reason to the way things pan out, it’s just one big mess. That’s life.”
